FFXI shows us what's really wrong with MMORPGs

[Zeus]

18 hours and they still couldn't beat the boss? Do they just suck that hard or is it just that insane?

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169336

[Eric]

The boss was designed specifically to be that difficult and take that long, which is retarded design.

In contrast in WoW most boss encounters don't take longer then 10 minutes.

[Zeus]

Yeah, that's completely retarded design and just accentuates the problems with MMORPGs. I mean, if super-obsessed nerds say "that takes too fucking long", you KNOW there's an issue

[Eric]

But that's an archaic MMO design you're talking about.

Most modern MMO's are following WoW's design, and making the game as casual as possible, without having to spend your life sitting in front of the computer.

FFXI is one of those few remaining games that's still stuck on finding annoying time sinks and horrendously difficult bosses to keep their hardcore playing.

Age of Conan/Warhammer both follow a far more casual relaxing trend.

[Zeus]

I wonder why they would ever want to follow WoW instead of Everquest? :-)

[kent]

FFXI is one of those few remaining games that's still stuck on finding annoying time sinks and horrendously difficult bosses to keep their hardcore playing.

everything added in the last 2 years except this one boss has a target time of 2 hours or less (though they still manage to mess stuff up half the time).

[Don]

As far as I understand FF11 has some retarded broken mechanisms that allow you to damage a boss without ever taking damage, so obviously things can only be hard if they last a very long time so long that you're likely to make a mistake from fatigue.

Actually WoW has the same problem with its own broken mechanisms where infinite mana is easily achieved which is why boss fights AUTOMATICALLY ends after 10 minutes, because they're quite aware that you can drag out a fight literally forever, so instead they just tell you game over when your time is up instead of trying to fix the underyling mechanisms. WoW's short raids are more of a sign that they acknowledge it's difficult to contain infinity, but given that MMORPG balance is inherently impossible since just about every MMORPG has infinity combos, this is probably a necessary evil.

Basically when you have the ability to fight forever, you either need an encounter that lasts so long that there's a chance where fatigue kicks in and mess you up, or that you design an encounter where having infinite mana would not help. Everquest and WoW's raids all fall in the latter category for sure. The most representative raid of this in EQ would be Ralkor Bloodmoon where you have infinite mana, healing, and almost infinite damage at the same time and you can still lose. WoW's equivalent would probably be the Vaelstraz the Red with basically the same resources, though the mechanism to compensate for infinity is different.

At any rate the issue here doesn't even have to do with how casual the game is. EQ and WoW's raids are all relatively *quick* simply because otherwise you cannot control infinite mana otherwise.

[Shellie]

erm...LOTRO rocks?

It does need more end game raiding content..but it's coming.

[kent]

As far as I understand FF11 has some retarded broken mechanisms that allow you to damage a boss without ever taking damage, so obviously things can only be hard if they last a very long time so long that you're likely to make a mistake from fatigue.

yes and no, there is a way to negate most single damage attacks but it doesn't negate AOE attacks. and there are also some special single target attacks that will still do damage. that is never really the problem.

FFXI also has plenty of time-based content where even if you don't take damage, you won't win unless you can kill things fast enough.

[Eric]

As far as I understand FF11 has some retarded broken mechanisms that allow you to damage a boss without ever taking damage, so obviously things can only be hard if they last a very long time so long that you're likely to make a mistake from fatigue.

Actually WoW has the same problem with its own broken mechanisms where infinite mana is easily achieved which is why boss fights AUTOMATICALLY ends after 10 minutes, because they're quite aware that you can drag out a fight literally forever, so instead they just tell you game over when your time is up instead of trying to fix the underyling mechanisms. WoW's short raids are more of a sign that they acknowledge it's difficult to contain infinity, but given that MMORPG balance is inherently impossible since just about every MMORPG has infinity combos, this is probably a necessary evil.

Basically when you have the ability to fight forever, you either need an encounter that lasts so long that there's a chance where fatigue kicks in and mess you up, or that you design an encounter where having infinite mana would not help. Everquest and WoW's raids all fall in the latter category for sure. The most representative raid of this in EQ would be Ralkor Bloodmoon where you have infinite mana, healing, and almost infinite damage at the same time and you can still lose. WoW's equivalent would probably be the Vaelstraz the Red with basically the same resources, though the mechanism to compensate for infinity is different.

At any rate the issue here doesn't even have to do with how casual the game is. EQ and WoW's raids are all relatively *quick* simply because otherwise you cannot control infinite mana otherwise.

They're directly addressing 2 of those issues in Wrath of the Lich King.

Healers can no longer downrank on healing spells, and they put a debuff on potions, meaning you can't use a mana potion more then once on any given encounter.

Though honestly I felt that was so people wouldn't have to spend gold weekly to buy said potions, heh.

[Don]

I heard potion sickness is going to go away but the downranking change will significiantly affect the ability to fight forever for sure, though I think the new talents will make up for it. WoW really has too many synergy effects that end up with infinity, or close enough. Like I said I'm not convinced eliminating infinity is possible, and the Enrage (now Berserk) timers in WoW is just as good as any other method to deal with it.

So far as FF11 goes, any game that gives you ability like 'negate next hit completely' without it being tied on an hour-long timer inherently has a design flaw. There is no reasonable game design where a boss that involves 18 hours of continous fighting without having infinite mana or some sort of infinity-ness on your side (infinite tanking works too). I assume the fight was done continously because if it's not, they could just keep characters there and try again next day. The marathon raid in EQ could take up to about 96 hours but you can simply stop after a wave and try the next wave tomorrow and there's absolutely nothing wrong if a guild wants to take 96 hours of noncontinous time to get as far as they want. FF11 is simply designed incorrectly for a MMORPG as the abilities more resembles a single player game than MMORPG.

[Tessian]

LOTRO handles the timing for end bosses differently... they make the whole encounter more enjoyable by having it break up into stages. The big end Balrog fight in Rift takes about 45 minutes to do:

1) Protect NPC while she purifies the surrounding water (Balrog is tied up but sitting in polluted water that's giving him strength)
2) Keep balrog busy while other players run off and pull some levers to open up another area
3) Fight mini-boss that's protecting the fountain which is the source of the pollution
4) Fight the Balrog himself where there are multiple stages to the fight (at a certain health he starts spitting acid, at another he does insta-death flying stomps, right before he dies he goes apeshit and tries to kill the NPC.

The fight is long but not just for the sake of being long. The last section takes about 10 minutes. I'd be pissed too if a boss was made harder just to make me fight him longer. So really Zeus what you're claiming is indicative of a problem with all MMO's is just a problem with the one you picked. No current MMO of any popularity is pulling that shit; as others said above they're trying to cater to a more casual crowd these days.

[Julius Seeker]

18 hours and they still couldn't beat the boss? Do they just suck that hard or is it just that insane?

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169336

I know an FF11 fan from work who said that the reason it's taking them that long is because they don't know how to fight him correctly; something about regeneration and a handling a meteor attack correctly. The battle is still fairly long though but shouldn't take more than 2 hours.

[kent]

There is no reasonable game design where a boss that involves 18 hours of continous fighting without having infinite mana or some sort of infinity-ness on your side (infinite tanking works too).

is there a reasonable game design where a boss should involve of 18 hours of continuous fighting?

i think you're missing something, the boss was designed with 20+ different form changes, each capable of taking 30-90 minutes of constant damage. the infinity-ness of the players was somehow considered necessary by the game designers.

FF11 is simply designed incorrectly for a MMORPG as the abilities more resembles a single player game than MMORPG.

plenty of things about the game work (and certain things don't), is there really such a thing as perfect MMORPG design?

---

I know an FF11 fan from work who said that the reason it's taking them that long is because they don't know how to fight him correctly; something about regeneration and a handling a meteor attack correctly. The battle is still fairly long though but shouldn't take more than 2 hours.

tell your FF11 fan from work he's an idiot. there are 2 broken bosses in FF11, the one being talked about (Pandemonium Warden) is not the one that has near infinite regeneration and meteor (Absolute Virtue).

and no one knows how to fight either "correctly" as this was the closest PW has been killed and AV has not been killed in nearly 2 years since they made an adjustment to his behavior.

the guild that did the 18 hour fight has killed AV before that last adjustment.

[Julius Seeker]

I am not telling one of my co-workers he's an idiot because of fucking Final Fantasy 11 =P

[RentCavalier]

I am not telling one of my co-workers he's an idiot because of fucking Final Fantasy 11 =P

My brother is an idiot because of Final Fantasy 11.

[Don]

Well FF11 isn't exactly late to the MMORPG scene. There are several things that are just bad when it comes to MMORPG game design, like:

1. Infinite healing
2. Infinite tanking
3. Infinite damage

It sounds like FF11 has at least the first 2 for a battle to last even 18 hours in the first place. Again continous fighting is always assumed because there's nothing wrong with an encounter that takes 100 hours if it can be broken up into parts. In fact that's your single player RPG is.

The FF11 stuff sounds a lot like the early arrogance of WoW beta where Furor would tell players if they can't do this 5 man group it's because they suck, and this is probably why no one's ever heard of him again since the beta (probably got a restraining order from Blizzard if he wants to keep his job). One can argue whether encounters like WoW's Kil'jaeden or EQ's Kerafyrm that seems to be beaten on first day are really balanced, but an encounter that is not beaten in 2 years cannot be correctly designed. The goal of any MMORPG is not to kick the player while they're down.

[kent]

I am not telling one of my co-workers he's an idiot because of fucking Final Fantasy 11 =P

yet when someone calls the Wii a shitty system all the gloves come off.

---

Well FF11 isn't exactly late to the MMORPG scene. There are several things that are just bad when it comes to MMORPG game design, like:

1. Infinite healing
2. Infinite tanking
3. Infinite damage

It sounds like FF11 has at least the first 2 for a battle to last even 18 hours in the first place. Again continous fighting is always assumed because there's nothing wrong with an encounter that takes 100 hours if it can be broken up into parts. In fact that's your single player RPG is.

not sure if any of those apply or which of those this would fall under.

you can "Apply Reraise > Do Damage > Die > Reraise" for an extended though not infinite amount of time.

each time you Reraise you lose a set % of XP and you will eventually lose your level, at which point you will no longer be able to equip certain pieces of equipment at which point you will no longer be able to do any meaningful amount of damage.

though with proper planning and the ability to tank and heal without constantly dying you can stretch that out to well more than 18 hours depending on the encounter.

and to be clear, this is not a strategy that works most of the time (some bosses will take away your Reraise before killing you, some will kill people before they have any chance to reapply Reraise). and ultimately most players avoid doing this at all costs and would rather give up and try again later.

[SineSwiper]

Tort, who had a maxed lv75 red mage, has bitched that FFXI was the grindest game he ever played.

[Oracle]

Tort, who had a maxed lv75 red mage, has bitched that FFXI was the grindest game he ever played.

I had a lvl 68 paladin and I still think the same... fuck me, I loved that game, but it was just way too time intensive.

[Julius Seeker]

I am not telling one of my co-workers he's an idiot because of fucking Final Fantasy 11 =P

yet when someone calls the Wii a shitty system all the gloves come off.

What does that have to do with me refusing to call a co-worker of mine an idiot (in a professional environment) because some kid on a messageboard told me to do so because of some comment on a game I don't even care about?

You're nuts.

[Tessian]

I am not telling one of my co-workers he's an idiot because of fucking Final Fantasy 11 =P

yet when someone calls the Wii a shitty system all the gloves come off.

What does that have to do with me refusing to call a co-worker of mine an idiot (in a professional environment) because some kid on a messageboard told me to do so because of some comment on a game I don't even care about?

You're nuts.

obviously he didn't tell you he plays FFXI in a professional setting (unless you guys preface meetings with "Hello My name is Jon and I like to play Final Fantasy"); you guys would have to be at least some level of compatriots for him to tell you that in which case yes-- you would have a good enough friendship to tell him he's an idiot, at least in jest.

[Julius Seeker]

yet when someone calls the Wii a shitty system all the gloves come off.

What does that have to do with me refusing to call a co-worker of mine an idiot (in a professional environment) because some kid on a messageboard told me to do so because of some comment on a game I don't even care about?

You're nuts.

obviously he didn't tell you he plays FFXI in a professional setting (unless you guys preface meetings with "Hello My name is Jon and I like to play Final Fantasy"); you guys would have to be at least some level of compatriots for him to tell you that in which case yes-- you would have a good enough friendship to tell him he's an idiot, at least in jest.

True enough, but Kent sounded angry =P

Also, I don't know anything about FF11 except that it is an online RPG that uses a party system and doesn't have very high sales numbers in comparison to World of Warcraft.

[kent]

Tort, who had a maxed lv75 red mage, has bitched that FFXI was the grindest game he ever played.

that's because most Korean games don't ever make it out here. i'm almost 8 x 75. after the first one, if you know what you're doing you can do another in under a month of "hardcore" playing.

---

True enough, but Kent sounded angry =P

wasn't angry, the co-worker thing just sounded lame and like what Tessian said it was supposed to be a joke anyway.

[Don]

Apparently Sqix said that this encounter is supposed to take 18 hours and they expected people to take shifts in mid fight.

[SineSwiper]

Some MMOs punish you for playing too long. This one seems to suck the marrow out of your bones. Completely amoral and irresponsible.

LOTRO has long instances, but there are plenty of locks (reset every Weds), so you can stop anytime and try again tomorrow. Plus, the locks prevent you from doing more than once a week. There's no such thing as an encounter that even takes more than an hour, much less 18 hours.

[Flip]

Apparently Sqix said that this encounter is supposed to take 18 hours and they expected people to take shifts in mid fight.

Damn, they must have been butt close to winning!

[Don]

Length of time spent really isn't as important as how that time is spent. In EQ there's an item called the Stonewarden which is on a mob whose PH spawns once every 20 minutes, and if the mob does spawn it has like 1% chance of dropping it. It's not unheard of to take 100 hours or longer to get this item but you can always quit when you want to since staying in the same place for 100 hours continously doesn't guaranteed the item is any more likely to drop compared to splitting it over more reasonable chunks. Of course that still doesn't stop people from starting a self-help club for those who are crazy enough to try to do it in one sitting, but I think those guys only have themselves to blame.

[SineSwiper]

EQ's a bad comparison, because it's Sony, and first-generation. Both of those were in the business of sucking peoples' lives dry (and their monthly fees). The later MMOs, such as WoW, implements rested XP, which is pretty much the standard in MMOs.

Today's MMOs want to attract both casual and hardcore play. However, 18 hours is beyond "hardcore". It's unethical. FF11 may be an older game, but the content is recent, and the older MMO should be trying to implement the same ideas as the newer ones.

[Don]

There's plenty of stuff in WoW that takes a stupidly amount of time to play, but generally speaking it's divided up in a way that you can do stuff a chunk at a time. Even in EQ there's nothing that takes more than an hour from start to finish unless you ran into a rare boss that can't kill you and you can't kill him either.

18 hours is out of line for continous gameplay. If you could save your progress every hour and pick up where you left off, that'd be acceptable, even if it means whenever you wipe you got to start over from the first form.

[kent]

Apparently Sqix said that this encounter is supposed to take 18 hours and they expected people to take shifts in mid fight.

that's also AV (the 2 year-old mob that was patched to be unbeatable) not the new one that just came out. before the patch people killed AV in about 4 hours (guess they decided that was too easy).

SE has not said anything about the new mob, the biggest frustration in this game is the devs never talk to the playerbase, and it's even worse when you want them to say something to the non-Japanese speaking playerbase.

don't really expect anything at all until the next game patch in September, where they may or may not even acknowledge that they are aware the players think this is an issue.

for about 20 months, their canned response for AV was "we want the players to try and find out for themselves so we won't tell you anything."

[Don]

[
for about 20 months, their canned response for AV was "we want the players to try and find out for themselves so we won't tell you anything."

That just means there is some incredibly dumb gimmick that is involved that no one would ever find on their own without being told so.

[kent]

That just means there is some incredibly dumb gimmick that is involved that no one would ever find on their own without being told so.

agreed, and every chance we've gotten we've hounded them for an answer. about 4 months ago they released a video showing the dev team fighting it, that was what the PR guy was referring to when he said something like if you're really lucky you can do it in 10.

the video was maybe 10 minutes long and showed us nothing people haven't tried already. except confirm that the fight is retarded because it shows the same characters using their 2 hour abilities more than once.

[Don]

Maybe they had IDDQD going.

[SineSwiper]

except confirm that the fight is retarded because it shows the same characters using their 2 hour abilities more than once.

"Oh shit" abilities weren't created to be used as a strategy.

[Don]

except confirm that the fight is retarded because it shows the same characters using their 2 hour abilities more than once.

"Oh shit" abilities weren't created to be used as a strategy.

Huh? You're fighting presumably the hardest guy in the game, and you really think it's not expected that you use all your possible abilities? People in WoW used to have to farm 10 kinds of potions and then use them all at the same time on bosses, and the bosses turned out to be too easy when you do this so eventually they designed the bosses expecting to use every possible potion in the game at the same time. It's stupid to assume people will not use everything they can to give themselves an advantage, especially when you consider these aren't even exploits/cheats.

[SineSwiper]

Hardest boss or no, the 2-hour abilities (dunno the official term for those; it's not "oh shit" abilities :) were designed so that if you really get into a bind, you can pop those to get out again.

LOTRO has similar stuff, but most are on a 10-minute cooldown. Sure, I sometimes use mine in regular battle, but that's only because I have a 30-minute skill that recharges those other abilities, and THAT's my backup. (Burglars have a lot of those types of skills.)

[kent]

Hardest boss or no, the 2-hour abilities (dunno the official term for those; it's not "oh shit" abilities were designed so that if you really get into a bind, you can pop those to get out again.

all players just call them "2-hours", i don't even remember what the official game name is, most of them give an SP icon while under the effect, so i assume they're technically called Special Abilities.

very few fights require the use of 2 hours but some strategies have been developed in the game around using them (some bosses are considered unkillable without them).

some are considered way more trouble than it's worth. for example, if you use them on Bahamut, you can kill him in under 3 minutes, if you don't, it can take anywhere from 25-60 minutes (after which you time out and lose). but the two strategies are completely different, once you're set up for one and start the fight there's no deciding to switch to the other (it's possible to lose both ways).

using them more than once though should never be part of any strategy, there's no way a fight can change in so many ways that you have to use any of them twice. if it's something you have to use or else, what are you doing for the other 118 minutes in between when they're no longer active?

[kent]

so a day after this shows up on Yahoo.

The past two weeks have seen considerable feedback from players regarding the amount of time required to combat the Pandemonium Warden, a recently implemented Notorious Monster (NM). Discussion has spread significantly throughout forums, and it has become apparent that this is indeed an issue of major unrest in the community.

We would like to assure players that the development and management teams place a high value on their feedback, and the issue has since been taken under serious consideration. Together with Absolute Virtue, it has been deemed that the combative techniques for weakening these NMs are too difficult. As a result, some players have engaged these enemies using unanticipated methods which led to extended battle times. It is by no means the desire of the development team to see players involved in encounters that require an excessive amount of time and effort to complete. It was for this reason that previous measures were put into practice which prohibited NMs from being held in battle for prolonged periods. In response to these events, we have determined that further alterations are required to prevent such battles from exceeding a certain predetermined length of time.

Included in the version update scheduled for early September will be modifications to the degree of difficulty of Pandemonium Warden (and associated pets), Absolute Virtue (and associated pets), and Jailer of Love. The aim of these changes is to create battles where a decisive outcome may be reached within a shorter period of time.

The development and management teams would like to take this opportunity to express their commitment to a healthy and wholesome game environment for players everywhere to enjoy, and to thank them for the continued feedback.

i'll wait and see what they actually do in September, wouldn't surprise me if they just made them despawn after ~5 hours.

[Don]

"it has been deemed that the combative techniques for weakening these NMs are too difficult." sounds like people just didn't know you need to use the konami code while engaging these guys to weaken them to a reasonable difficulty.

I mean, EQ, WoW, and I'm sure every other MMORPG out there has bosses that are out of whack in terms of what you have to do to beat it, but as far as I know people actually won after doing these whacky things as opposed to not.

[kent]

"it has been deemed that the combative techniques for weakening these NMs are too difficult." sounds like people just didn't know you need to use the konami code while engaging these guys to weaken them to a reasonable difficulty.

reminds me of the Zodiac Spear in FFXII without a guide.

[Kupek]

Except you can play the game just fine without the Zodiac Spear.

(FF12 aside: I tried that dungeon so many different times, and most of the time, I actually got the Zodiac Spear. The time I finally made it through, I didn't get it. I had no idea it was such a rare item until I read people talking about it.)

[Don]

The concept of exclusive content that doesn't involve money or skill simply doesn't work, especially in a single player game. When you buy a game you should be entitled to do everything in the game unless the skill level needed to achieve something is beyond what you can do. But even the skill requirement should be bypassable. For example in Megaman Zero you can simply take a lot of penalty to your ranking if you lack the skills to play the game straight up.

If the Zodiac Spear is on the grid, and it is, then it should not be an item only exclusive to those who have a ton of time or have a guide (I don't consider guides as a monetary requirement due to the existence of GameFAQ).

Likewise if a boss exists in a MMORPG, it should be beatable within a reasonable commitment of time and skill.

[bovine]

I just liked the title of this article.... and you guys started talking about this, and maybe you're still talking about it. Sadly I cannot understand what you are talking about anymore.

[kent]

Sadly I cannot understand what you are talking about anymore.

i'd take that as a good thing.

[Kupek]

Don, I agree with you. But the Zodiac spear is one item in a very large game, and it's not the point of the game. This, I think, makes it fundamentally different than the battles you're talking about.

[Don]

While Zodiac Spear is obviously a very insignifcant portion of a game, I think it's just bad practice to have any content that seems to exist to either drag out the game very long or to help sell strategy guides (which doesn't even work anymore due to GameFAQ). For example getting to Night Terror in Soul Calibur 3 pretty much requires a guide because it's not enough that you never lose a fight, you still have to know which choices to pick in the branches and the choices are not done in a logical way. Any content that is exclusive in this sense is detrimental to the game.

[bovine]

Turns out the guild that took 18 hours to not even beat the boss are a bunch of terrible wussies. Another guild took the thing down in less than a minute.

[SineSwiper]

Well, it looks easy, but it wasn't easy to get that set up.

[Don]

FF11 has a lot of absolutely insane broken combinations that allows you to do an impossibly huge amount of stuff that'd never be allowed in any other MMORPG. I talked to my friend who plays FF11 and he said no one has ever actually beaten the said boss in a legitmate way. I think the way you're looking at involves using a weapon that hits weak but super fast, and using some abilities that adds a large amount of damage per hit.