What was this server like for the past 5 years?

Seems so fucking bizarre to me that nas only just now figured out how to change values to their era counterparts. Its like no one would have ever considered this to actually be an era-accurate server before a few months ago.

The extremely slow development of nasomi to get even this close to era has created a huge gap between early and later players. A total character reset across the board doesn't seem out of the question, which of course would be a shame for basically everyone. I just don't get nas' mentality towards how he's approaching this or why he continues to make changes, many of which aren't implemented correctly at first. The preoccupation with era accuracy to some date in 2007 being of higher importance than any later updates made purely out of balance and fun adjustments by SE seems questionable.

Would really like to sit down one day and just play the game and learn it rather than having fundamental, undocumented changes occur every week.

So is nasomi in charge of the changes and does he have an intimate understanding of the in-game consequences of these changes, or is he just some average FF fan who hopped on the darkstar project early and haphazardly setup a server while adapting updates made to darkstar, most of which are over his head to the point that bar-none anyone else could download darkstar and setup an equally maladjusted "era" server?

Is nasomi actually in charge or is he just copypasting nightlies of fucking dsp. He doesn't seem too acquainted with patchnote etiquette so I'm sot so sure it definitely isn't the latter.

this isn't even worth getting heated over. i'll check things out in like a month maybe to see if any positive adjustments have been made, but the current pace of the game after these collective nerfs is just unfun. games are supposed to be fun.

Not gonna lie, this game "in era" was an unbalanced hunk of shit. I didn't find it very enjoyable when I played it for a few months back in '06, which is something I'd forgotten over the past 13 years, and hadn't started remembering until like a month after playing here. For the most part, the custom aspects of nasomi were desireable to me, and I didn't even know they weren't era short of the cheap conquest items. But even back in May before these era-accurate nerfs were implemented, it was increasingly becoming apparent to me that the job balance here was kinda fucked up for lacking even a few later-history adjustments from the more recent expansion packs beyond ToAU, and I knew enough even in May that, if PLD was intended to be a tank, it sure as shit could not actually effectively play that role. I often found myself dying in parties while facetanking cause of an errant TP move. Like even back in May when "cures were out-of-era OP" and "protects were out-of-era OP", PLD was still no better at tanking through the mob's primary focus than basically every other melee job solely on the aspect of survivability by taking damage, which is when I started learning how much more effective at "tanking" NIN is. I could come to gripes with it, but I figured if any changes should be made, they should be to better balance PLD's defense and vit buffs, yet at that point I was still more distraught over how little damage PLD puts out for lacking attack-boosting traits that every other melee job has, which seemed like a necessary thing PLD ought to have as a "tank" much less a viable valuable party member when enmity seems to be controlled on bigdick damage numbers and high-value heals.
The jist of it was PLD was a pretty shitty job for parties and could barely affect the flow of enmity once you got to lv.55+, with a high chance of martyrdom and dying while playing /war, and a higher chance of upsetting randoms by losing provoke if choosing to attend as /nin instead. I figured PLD could use some upgrades, but the two big changes made to cures and protect since May, and since PLD was already a questionable job, have now completely crippled it. The cure nerf got rid of PLD's survivability through tanking and put a strain on it's limited MP pool, and the protect nerf knocks down it's survivability even more. Both of these nerfs affected every frontline job that frequently takes damage, but when the only real utility PLD ever had in the first place were fuckin Protect and Cures, PLD might as well not even be a job.
I had bought a Mercurial Greatsword and dropped some merits into greatsword to be a more effective frontline member shitting out damage frequently enough to reliably get aggro like other jobs since getting people together for charybdys and a joyeuse seems out of the question, but now that the best protect only offers 55def rather than 120def, it no longer really works. PLD now requires a shield for the extra defense, else risk dying to common mobs 12 levels below. And thats just for solo! In a PT setup, PLD may as well not even be there cause sword and shield is worthless damage unabled to reliably affect the flow of aggro when not using the better swords like riddil or joyeuse, but PLD doesn't even get riddil so that's a pointless quirk it has too.

In the end, without any future positive adjustments or rollbacks on these extremely-late arbitrary changes to cures and protect, it's becoming apparent that the only pt setup capable of still retaining efficiency are blm burn parties. You know, the pt setups that cheese the game and defy the need for frequent cures or frontline jobs needing protect.

It ultimately seems to me like wanting an "era-accurate" FFXI is actually a dumb thing which actively ignores the hard work of the hundreds of more capable people who developed the game over it's lifetime, generally for the better through balance and fun adjustments. It would seem most of this playerbase was fine with and enjoyed the idea of "retail" FFXI but with a hard 75cap and lacking DNC/GEO/RUN/SCH, which was a custom unique experience that nasomi offered. The more era-accurate nasomi becomes however, the more painfully slow and unbalanced and unappealing the game becomes, as well as removing what uniqueness this server once offered; cause again, "era-accurate" up to ToAU is not something that is unique to nasomi, but instead the goal of the darkstar project itself. Any joe who downloads darkstar and sets up a server will find themselves in the same world as Nasomi or Eden: "era-accurate" and only up to ToAU content, cause thats just the default of what darkstar is.

I would like to keep playing on Nasomi, but not if the game stays this way or worsens even greater through more "era-accurate" ""fixes"" that only serve as nerfs against players.

it's becoming apparent that the only pt setup capable of still retaining efficiency are blm burn parties. You know, the pt setups that cheese the game and defy the need for frequent cures or frontline jobs needing protect.

I would like to keep playing on Nasomi, but not if the game stays this way or worsens even greater through more "era-accurate" ""fixes"" that only serve as nerfs against players.

Thats a huge leap of faith lol. The nasomi playerbase didn't even notice the cure nerf. It's not that they're wrong for not paying it any mind. I've sometimes mentioned it and people in LS or parties are like "what happened?"
Most people pay very little attention to numbers here.
If they played with any frequency however, it goes without saying that they've felt the game had gotten more difficult if they have any awareness of their surroundings without first chocking it up to thinking the other people in their parties are to blame for "sucking".

The points i was getting at were that yeah, no one else seems to be posting about cures and protect sucking -- but just the same no one was posting about cures and protect being out-of-era. They went unaltered for years. Please try to feign intelligence in the least and just nod and agree, miku. You will look like less of a dumbass.

These nerfs against player efficacy are fucking stupid, and seem wholly mindlessly implemented sorely for the sake of trying to copy-paste the values of buffs from an era in time before most of the decent balance adjustments were implemented.
It's just plain retrograding.