[Gredival]

I still find it funny ppl still cry about botters. It's SE's fault for being dipshits w/ 21+ hour pops.

Agreed, just do something like ZNMs, except up the difficulty.

Although that'd require SE to actually think...

Hi senseless RAR RAR SE SUX END GAME SUX INSTANCE ROX babble. Let me introduce you to some logic. Admittedly you can still sulk afterward, but if you're going to spew this worthless crap at least it's worth seeing whether or not you can defend your positions.

SE did implement a non-competitive way to get HNM gear. And people cheered and thought stuff was "finally going to change." It was called Einherjar.

The massive waves of people that finally thought they would get to have this gear quickly formed tons of pick up Einherjar shells. Within two weeks people simply complained it was too hard and those shells broke. A majority of them gave up and went back to whining about this stuff needing to be more widely available.

Now we can look back after Odin has been killed and in most cases shells that have beat Odin, are in fact, shells that get those drops normally from the Kings or shells composed of people that at one time camped Kings.

Why is this? I would say due to a number of things we can loosely group together under the title "skill."

Not to say that Einherjar is remarkably easy, but it's not remarkable hard either -- with the right amount of people if they can organize and follow directions, Einherjar is not that difficult. Building a shell of dedicated people, who can organize and listen to commands, and react appropriately and adapt as necessary is harder than actually doing the fight with those people though.

That's the rub. As lame as the Kings are to the top shells, most people cannot kill Fafnir or Nidhogg. It's not that they choose not to camp it, no they rage the damn things. And if you can't organize an SC+MB on Fafnir, you aren't going to do well in a more challenging environment, even if it's free of competition.

And don't say Einherjar was not worth it. Even if the Chambers drop crap, it leads to Odin. At the very worst it was 9 chunks of 30 minutes of time to get a shot at a 4-5 item pool with Adaman Hauberks, Dalmaticas, Koenig Cuirasses, Hecatomb Subligaria, Hofud, Valkyrie Fork, and a pretty decent new chest piece that is almost as good as the Adaberk. Then tack on the Valhalla pieces.

That's less than 5 hrs total time -- less time than you can spend waiting 3-10 days for HQ King only not get claim or to not get drops.

People say the Kings are botted and there's no fair chance at them, but in reality its just a lack of will -- lots of people won't do competitive content. People don't take their fair chance because they don't want to deal with competition.

And I mean more power to them. If you don't have fun, don't do it. But that doesn't mean the content should be changed cause they just don't want to do it.

Look at all the content people used to say needed to be changed which is just fine. Years ago people who were "casual" didn't even do Sky. It was considered an HNMLS type activity, and Byakko's Haidate was as rare as Adaberk back then. It was not only because there was so little to do besides the Kings -- the same thing was true for Simurgh, Roc, Serket, King Arthro, and Jailer centric Sea activity. All those things that more casual shells do today were all once lumped in with the big bad evils collectively called "HNMs." Limbus was not out yet though, but at first it would be an HNM thing vs. the pickup that it is today.

People only started doing these things once the bigger shells started doing them less. It's the driven people who end up at HNMLS that were willing to put more time and work in to do all this stuff first, while the other people sat back and complain it needs to be changed.

Then the strategies of the HNMLS come out. The areas clear up. People get bored of not having stuff and they are finally willing to give some activity a try. Then that content suddenly opens up to the casual player.

Sky emptied out once the HNMLS that fought for claims with the GS left, and the GS got banned. So casual people who avoided Sky or Sea started to give it a try without competition. Now you get all these people getting gear that used to be as rare as King gear.

The players of FFXI repeatedly refuse to do content that was well within their reach cause of laziness. That doesn't mean the content needs to change, it means that people need to realize things aren't going to be handed to them.

You don't get a Biggorn's Sword in Zelda OOT if you complain that the quest sucks and don't do the quest. Why should you get a Ridill by saying Fafnir sucks and not going out and killing Fafnir?

The basis of any game is that rewards come with accomplishment. Even in single player console games, you have to accomplish things (i.e. kill the boss, clear the level, complete the sidequest) to get the rewards (beat the game, next level, get the ultimate weapon).

You always have to deal with something to get gear. There is no reason competition in particular is a uniquely worse mechanism. Some of us hate puzzle based events (Assault), and some of us hate level cap events (CoP anyone?). If you don't like an event you need to either deal with not doing the event (and not getting the gear associated with it), or grit your teeth and do it.

I'd hate End Game if it were all force pop and instance shit like ZNM and I can provide fundamental reasons why.

1) Decreases gear rarity by increasing pops. With server wide pops you can strictly enforce how much of one item enters the population. But with force pops, all you can do is set drop rates. If people keep popping, they can beat your limits.

2) Encourages sloppy fighting. With HNMs, yellow is fair game. People have to come prepared to win and have to execute their jobs correctly. If not, shit gets taken, you lose. ZNMs allow shells with mediocre playing skill to succeed because there is no risk of loss.

3) Removes competitive element. I assert that by default competition is a favorable element in an End Game environment. HNMLS have the goal of being the best. By putting them in head to head situations, we can actually evaluate which LS have the determination to fight against each other, and which perform under pressure. Comparatively in WoW the only way to judge a guild is their progression. However via Point 2, progression doesn't mean shit because in instances your mistakes aren't necessarily fatal.

At least SE threw a huge bone out there by saying "Okay, you can do this other quest instead!" with Einherjar but people still complain. Maybe it's not SE, but that fact that just you can't make everyone happy because some people just don't agree with the notion of accomplishment for reward (after all that's why Gamesharks exist and why Gilselling and Botting evolved)

If botting is a problem in FFXI, that means botting is a problem. Blaming SE for having a World Spawn system is a weak excuse.

If anything, the botting problem can be fundamentally traced to SE watering down the game, not making it more extreme. In other words I blame the MPK patch, not the design of the game.

When shells could MPK each other, no shell could risk botting too much or botting too openly unless they incurred the wrath of the collective body of the server. It was like the Cold War, with MPK being nukes. Even shells who didn't like each other would still have motivations to not MPK each other because of Mutually Assured Destruction. You MPK for no reason and steal Faf now, you know you'll lose your own Faf later. Furthermore there was a high chance other shells that disapproved of your actions would come in and assist in MPK'ing you, thus obliterating you from the scene. We were more than capable of self-policing through vigilantism.

However by removing the capability to MPK, what SE did was allow 24-7 dipshits to use Chavo and Unknownlegendz and whatever other secondary and tertiary toons they have at their disposal to train spiders and darters through Nidhogg without repercussions. Because in the end the worst thing that happens is they get their alternate toon jailed, big deal, best case scenario they steal a toon. However the legitimate shells of Asura can't do anything in response because we don't have toons we can risk over their petty bullshit.

On that note.

24-7 your are a group of skillless, mentally incapacitated, morally devoid morons. Your success in Asura is a product of Asura's own failings, and your large cache of secondary/tertiary toons to do your dirty work for you.

The fact is ya'll came in and absorbed the absolute scum and filth of the server that the other shells had managed to keep out. You pretended to care about legitimacy when you were acting nice with other shells when you first arrived with ~12 people. Then you immediately started pearling everyone and anyone that applied, including the leftover Remake trash.

Then you proceed to legitimize doing anything and everything you want because you somehow "own" the server, despite your inability to do simple things like stun Gates of Hades. I mean shit, at least Remake members didn't steal Argus from people. How low can you go?

And I just love your pathetic attempts at excuses.

"Asura was already high in use of 3rd PT programs before we came" : So basically two wrongs make a right? However just because 3rd PT bots were high in usage in Asura doesn't mean every shell and every player uses them, and certainly not to the extent you guys do. Which means it's not exactly using fire to fight fire, because you are also screwing over legitimate people in the meantime. And let's just ignore that fact that most of the 3rd PT program users are the very people you absorbed when you came to Asura, or the people the other shells had isolated out.

"Chavo has connection problems" : Oh this is great. So he has a good enough connection that he can see Fafnir spawn multiple times and consistently claim him... but he cant handle the lag of a Fafnir fight. And he just decides never to come geared because he knows he'll have these problems each and every time.

Congratulations, you beat Asura by using our own trash and filth against us while the HNMLS of the servers stood divided. Just remember that you are nothing compared to what Eminence or Tribe were in their best of days. Hell you can't even match them pound for pound right now; the only thing you have going for you is your whole secondary alliance that's there to compensate for the retardation of your first alliance

You should be proud. It only took you three or four server transfers to find a server where you could win using something besides skill.

[Lionsheart]

I really had to just stand up in my room and applaud Gredival's post lmao. It's so true, 24/7 is a bunch of talentless rejects who just came together on Asura, so glad I transfered when I did.

[Wildstriker]

I don't usually do the whole 'yes man' thing, but I have to agree with Gredival's post. 24/7 is the perfect example of the untalented and scummy linkshell whose success only came about due to the endgame atmosphere of Asura. They certainly do not deserve the sense of arrogance that they carry.


PS: Keep Virelai'ing birds at the Nyzul camp, I thoroughly enjoyed beating down your bard.