The Blizz Way of Patching the April 09 FFXI!

The April 09 FFXI Update

Lets start with the FFXI Rant/2c! There isn’t much to say… especially how there’s a whole disappointment thread on BG ^[1] (Not every post is negative, but quite a lot). I did wait it out a bit and see review.. but guess after reading those reviews… this isn’t something I’d pay for. I was expecting something a lot longer than usual if they were to charge “$10” for the downloadable content. Regardless, here’s my 2c about the April update.

• They finally made a distinction between SCH and WHM. Great! However, those new WHM spells takes some skills to use… but with almost 75% or more WHM being retards, I doubt we’d ever see them being widely used… if at all.
• Squeenix pretty much watered down soloing in FFXI. Composure is an awesome spell for RDM’s, 3x recast on Refresh means a good 80 mp extra in your MP pool (plus you don’t have to worry about it). But this makes it more broken when it’s soloing. 80mp can almost buy you a Cure 4, meaning you can make one more critical mistake than normal, and still being able to recover. Of course, it allows the lazy RDMs to cover up their tracks now with longer-lasting Haste/Refresh. 10min CD, 8min duration. With this, hopefully RDM’s can actually do some decent soloing now… I mean not worrying about Refresh and MP saving is a pretty big plus here.
• Salvage buff was.. lol. Out of everything they buff Mad Bomber. I didn’t think that Bomb was THAT bad, but I was surprise their statistics shows that Powderkeg wasn’t worth buffing. Wut Da Fug? (At least they buffed Salvage haha!)
• Goby Bag.. LAUGH OUT LOUD!!

The way SE labeled their earlier post made me laugh. I mean common, you tell people that’s your Appetizer. Oww Salvage Buff.. that’s pretty good shit. I was expecting a whole long list of more Salvage buff.. but only to find out “Appetizer was the Main Course!” Caught ya! They should have made that as April Fools.

The Appetizer was only really the good stuff… the rest is like wtf. Such as Angel Skin Orb wut da fug?

We have… a relatively short storyline that can be finished in <10hrs (that's for most people). Some even did it in 6-7hrs. Now lets look at the main course - Augments! Augments were rather weak... It reminds me of Enchanting in WoW. But see this is FFXI, and we all know FFXI is about throwing dice and probability. But I can't imagine they even do that for.. Augments / Enchanting. Especially how they render your item EX/Aug after you did it. The fact that these stats are so unpredictable and can come in negatives just pisses you off. Lets take Sniper Ring for example. For simplicity, lets just do STATS. It's a TP ring and you want preferably, STR DEX AGI, Stats you do not prefer is.. IND MND CHR VIT. They give you 1 Good Stat and 2 Bad Stat in 2 separate category. Well you have a 3/7 getting a good stat, and 4/6 * 3/5 in getting the bad stat you want. Shitty ... 17.1% of the people will come out with a satisfied result, others.. are sad panda. You come out with shit like these ^[3], these ^[4]and these ^[5].

I mean I can see why they do it this way…

1. The Negative stats discourage people from augments shit of top tier. You wouldn’t wanna keep blowing Sniper Ring +1 when they are nearly 4m each. 17% (only stats wise) are going to walk out happy. Well the rest will be walking out with junk. I believe augments were targeted for NQ equipments, and to burn some of the NQ’s out of the economy. Because once you Augment it, you gotta NPC it if you no longer need it. (Say, you got a better Augmented NQ one).
2. Augments allow some creativity (like SE’s famous War/Whm combo LOL). Although you wouldn’t want a -1 STR on a WS body, but sometimes it creates interesting things. Such as the -AGI that u need for skillup, or -evasion, giving it a little bit of spice.
3. Last but not least, it removes garbage from the economy. A lot of us who aren’t Sibe are probably going to get some NQ shit and try getting the good stats on it, making it comparable to HQ. It creates a demand on the NQ item, rather than selling for shit. Perhaps this is something good for staves? :) NQ at least ^^;

I wouldn’t say a big plus, but I rather SE make those stuff required for Augments hard to get, but get shit that is more predictable. Such as “melee stats plus” or “mage stats plus, melee stats minus x2”

I read a few blogs today regarding the update, including:

• Kimiko’s thoughts on April Updates ^[6]
• The Pig Blog – Massive Fail and Forum Threads ^[7] (and comments too).
• Erecra’s Blog – A Crystalline Failure ^[8]
• The Usual Starcade ^[9] =)
• The Grumpy Paladin – Yawn
• Aerroenu – A review of the patch from her perspective ^[10]
• Anexia – Post Update Madness ^[11]
• Okote Blog’ – Bitching and Moaning ^[12]

That was mostly the first 2 pages on TTTO that is about the updates and it seems to be that…. its not that positive ‘.’ Like Aerroenu ^[13]said, maybe it’s just me too :) But yea.. lol

We might be a little bit early to conclude, but… the first impression should have been good… and so far they are failing :x

That is FFXI’s April Updates 2009 ^[14] for you!

The “NEXT” WoW Patch Notes in FFXI Language.

So… to those that think the above is a little negative, how about looking at what Blizz would have added, if they were to program for Squeenix’ FFXI! I’ve converted the WoW’s upcoming patch notes, if it was for FFXI. (around 20% of it, just for a taste of what WoW is like). Keep in mind the upcoming super big patch for WoW is FREE! None of those $10 for storyline :D

You can view the upcoming patch notes here ^[15](expires soon), or here ^[16](saved on Mai server, good enough to read the texts).

— General / Outline–

• Dual Spec. Each character can now have 2 separate talent trees (2x Merit Point Setups, RDM for example, such as 8HP, WindAcc x5 and IceAcc x5 for Soloing, and 8MP, IceAccx5 and ThunderAcc x5 for your events!)
• Upcoming Ulduar in Patch 3.1. It would consists of 14 bosses in an exciting 4-season landscape (Ulduar is probably the size of 4 Salvage zone combined together, less trash mobs and more FUN bosses, with more than just Undersea Graphical Tiles.)
• Job Redesign for all 10 classes. (We’ll outline one of the changes below… for a RangerFFXI vs HunterWoW), WoW Patch Notes contains 6,474 words JUST on Job/Class changes.

— PvP Changes —

• Enemy Unit Frames. You can now see Enemy’s status a lot more better than just a “TARGET” box with percentages if you use Windower.
• Battleground (Ballista): You can now play/join Ballista anywhere around WoW. When you leave, you will be returned to the original location (such as camping in Dragon’s Aery).
• We’ve added better and fun Vehicles. Something FFXI coding probably cannot do.

— Job Changes (Hunter/Ranger) —

• Hunter: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stacks to 1000 (Giving you more Inventory Space!)
• Hunter’s Chocobo Mazurka is now RAID WIDE. (All 64 people in Dymamis!)
• Called Stable Pet: You no longer have to go into Mog House to change pets. You can now do it anywhere, 30min Cooldown (kinda like mobile moogle, pets only)
• Pet Distinction: We made your pets more unique. So you can strategically plan your pet use.
• Pet HP Up: We’ve increased the pet HP, because we saw your pets dying a lot in Raids.
• Unlimited Shot Redesigned. The unlimited shot now allows you to select which arrow, auto equips it and never fires the Rare/Ex, 100% idiot proof. Of course, only 1 arrow may be selected at any time.

— Job Abilities —

• Eagle Eye Shot: Now pierce through blinks and Utsusemi.
• Rapid Shot redesigned. It now comes with a 0.1sec Stun on 5th merit.
• AF2 Hat Recycle: We’ve upgraded that hat to have you recycle 90% of your arrows. You can jab it in and pull it back out :)
• While you have SharpShot up, your chance of Rapid Shot can proc a lot higher.
• Improved Shadowbind. It is now immune to any breaks from players for the first 3 second.
• Stealth Shot Redesigned: It now gives you a 5% increase in critical strike.
• Flashy Shot: It now debuffs the monster with a 5sec Blindness on usage.
• Camouflage: Now grants you swiftness while invisible, movement speed increased by 12%

— Item Changes —

• There will now be a warning box for all Raid zone that you enter, telling you time remaining till reset and status. (Kinda like fuck… you got there and found out you don’t have stupid Remants Permit, now they warn you as you zone in )
• The Cooldown of Hearthstone (Warp Cudgels) now reduced to 30min (12hrs equivalent in FFXI).
• Balance for PvP, such as fixing broken Pally healing, Trinket problems.
• Added a few more variety of Chocobo

These are just a preview, 2,025 words are in the item section, detailing what exactly was changed to what number.

— Craft Changes —

1,219 words that won’t make sense if I translated. At least it’s not “New Recipes Added”. (I can see a good/bad side from it)

— User Interface (Most are real… as of next week) —

• New Equipment Manager added. So you don’t have to go through your mog house/locker/storage to pick out each item. Click on RDM SET and everything will be swapped out of your mog house/safe. No more enter key spam BLIP BLIP BLIP sound.
• New high-resolution player textures for Northrend armor sets have been added. This can be turned on via Video Options instead of Dat Swapping from FFXIDATS.
• New UI enhancement for Quest, instead of going through the “Blip Blip” menu to go through some of the horrible UI design to find your quests.
• A new “Color Blind” option is available under the Interface Menu.
• Spell Effect is now splitted by “Party”, “Raid” or “Everyone”. You can turn off anyone of those.
• Added new Video Mode Ultra (should only be used on the highest-end systems).
• Added new Shadow Quality. The slider remains the same, though there is an additional step at the high end of the spectrum.
• Refund: You can now refund any item purchased via NPC up to 2hr and get a full refund instead of 50%
• Purchase: There is now a warning box to click when making an NPC purchases over 100k.
• The web-based guild calendar is now synchronized with in-game guild calendar! It comes with sign-up sheet and with guild-wide-invite option.
• Class Roles have been added to the LFP system. You can now specify your role (Tanking Ninja, DD Ninja) from a drop down menu. Comment still available.
• Mini-map is now optimized for better performance. It displays Job colors, off map tags and pings, and vehicles.
• As always, Blizzard opens Macro/Plugin Management. They provide API’s :)

— Mac Support —

• Support G15/G19 gaming hardware with LCD has been added (HELLO, SE)
• High-res player textures are supported on dual processor systems.
• Movie Recording features has some user interface improvements (Free FRAPS built in)
• A number of PERFORMANCE fixes.

— Bug Fixes —

• Numerous item did not have their value published correctly. Now corrected.
• Correct other broken stuff.
• Lots more…

Well that gave you a rough idea of the upcoming Ulduar 3.1 patch. That is a typical WoW patch and is pretty exciting. I would much rather pay $10 more for Ulduar & and 10k+ word patch notes than… some SE stuff that I can finish in 7hrs (according to some BG dude). I am 100% sure I won’t be finishing Ulduar in 7hr hehe :D so I guess… FFXi Appetizer ok.. but I’ll take Ulduar 3.1 WoW patch as main course :)