18+ hour boss battles nixed from Final Fantasy XI

I think that long boss battles, maybe not 18 hours, but several hours at least, would be fine so long as they enabled you to pause and/or save so you could come back to it later. Also, if they did initially put an 18-hour boss battle in, they probably didn't intend for anyone to play it without stopping.

make some quick time events, So that then a beam of light of something falls on the enemy, giving it massive damage and taking back 4 hours of his life.

FF games (and other JRPGs) have frequently had bosses that you could attempt to kill (and actually kill) at levels far lower than what you rationally should be doing. A good strategy might allow a very low level character to actually win one of these battles, but it's going to take a very long time. Go back 20 levels later and it's not so much a challenge.

Or you have some skill that's fatal or near fatal to the boss but you never equip it because it appears to be utterly useless in the rest of the game (a la Pot Shot in Enchanted Arms).

The problem here is that the players exceeded all bounds of sensible behavior. It's too bad the game company has to turn around and lock this (presumably working) strategy from the real hardcore players who might want to give such a thing a shot.

Ugh...so because of people that most likely don't even play FFXI my game is getting changed because people are worried about my health. I am the person who chooses to play and should be able to monitor myself as to the duration and activities as an adult. Now for kids they should have parents doing it for them. I know some don't understand but it is fun to plan and gather for a long fight like this with a large group that you know well and trying to conquer something that takes preparation, skills, and endurance.

I love how everyone reporting on this is trying to turn it into a horrific story making SE out to be evil. You missed the part of the update notice where the PlayOnline team essentially says "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!"

This was the players' fault. The method they were trying to use for Pandemonium Warden wasn't the way the developers intended it to be killed. We still don't know how they intend us to kill Absolute Virtue either, and they broke their own rules to give us hints! We're stupid, and we need to admit that "TP Burn" and "Zerg DRK" aren't the answers.

Anyone that's been playing FFXI since the start knows that whatever SE is planning to "fix" this problem won't be as nice and sensible as what you would think... I bet instead of making it easier to defeat, they'll simply make it rage within a certain amount of time, or add an ability that will AoE wipe everyone out faster or something. That'll be the "decisive outcome."

Though I've played it since the beta, the thing that always bugged me about FFXI was how utterly unsatisfying endgame events could be. People will pratically kill themselves attempting to take down a terribly time consuming and difficult HNM, and for what? A 5% chance drop of something nice that an entire alliance or 2 will have to squabble over? Nothing worse than beating a mob that took over an hour to kill and seeing that you got 200 exp and a wind crystal. Fuck you, Square, you know you could make this game more enjoyable by actually making things easier to obtain, but you don't. There's some sadism at work here... but I'm not surprised at how crazy this new boss is, considering it's from the same folks that made Absolute Virtue, that people had to WALLHACK to beat.

Cool, it seemed like a really stupid idea.

No boss is worth fighting for 18 hours. No boss.

If you read their press release they try to spin the rage timers that were added to certain bosses as concern for their players. This is a load of bullshit. The rage timers were added to prevent Linkshells (guilds) from claiming and holding them for hours to keep the respawn timer in a time zone convenient for them (these mobs have 21-24 hour respawn timers).

In addition to this, they say they will make Absolute Virtue easier. However for 3 years they have been claiming that AV can be defeated by an average group of players it "done correctly". If this were true they'd just spill the beans and tell people what the trick is. So that can only mean SE has been full of shit all along.

Conclusion: This press release is a pack of lies.

@Not Impressed -

Okay, you've worked for 18 hours solid. Without breaks? Without eating unless you can reliably type one-handed? Without being able to use the restroom? Without being allowed to let your attention wander *at all*, so that you have to spend the whole time in a state of hyper-focus because if you waver for a moment, your team will die and it'll be *all your fault*? I've done 18-hour gaming sessions myself and suffered no ill effects, but that was doing different things, not fighting the same mob for the entire time, and with the occasional short break for food or bathroom. The leader of the linkshell in question deserves major kudos for recognizing that the situation was going bad and calling a halt to it before it turned into one of those "gamer drops dead at internet cafe after marathon session" headlines. Because that sort of thing would hurt all MMOs, WoW included.

That said, I'm really not sure that PW needed nerfing. Absolute Virtue, yes; it's been in the game for four years and is still undefeated except for using strategies that SE later said were exploits or bugs. There is clearly a problem in that case. But PW's been in the game for barely two months, and was not fightable for much of that because getting the pop items from its sub-bosses took weeks. So players haven't had any time at all to work out a strategy. Being a Treasures of Aht Urhgan boss, it's very likely that PW was built with a trick in mind; another ToAU boss, Odin, will miss you entirely if you /kneel before him when he unleashes his ultimate attack. I would have liked to see us given more time to figure out PW's weakness (current theories revolve around finding a way to lock it in one form so that it can be killed), but I suppose that once this story hit mainstream media it was pretty much inevitable that they'd do something.