Reasons Why FFXI is Declining

[vienne]

I actually liked Abyssea...there were lots of thingies to look forward to, and it KEPT OLDER CONTENT RELEVANT STILL.

never have I said I didnt like abyssea, I just dislike the whole leech pt thing and mentality that came with it, which is what everyone keeps defending in this thread if they're pro and keeps bashing if they're con.
I actually liked how they implemented empys and gave a reason to camp nm's in old zones. I liked the whole farm mob X for KI Y. Alot of good ideas but imo not the exp aspect.
And before anyone starts with that dumb excuse that we can exp in the old zones, I know, I've not leeched one job in abyssea because again imo, it seems pretty pointless to pay for a game which you let others play (lvling in other words) while you're asleep.

Anyways its the last I post about this, the discussion is pointless at the end of a post people only read what they want to read, and most can not emphatise with how others think, while I really do think there should be a solution to please both parties in this discussion.

[FrankReynolds]

never have I said I didnt like abyssea, I just dislike the whole leech pt thing and mentality that came with it, which is what everyone keeps defending in this thread if they're pro and keeps bashing if they're con.
I actually liked how they implemented empys and gave a reason to camp nm's in old zones. I liked the whole farm mob X for KI Y. Alot of good ideas but imo not the exp aspect.
And before anyone starts with that dumb excuse that we can exp in the old zones, I know, I've not leeched one job in abyssea because again imo, it seems pretty pointless to pay for a game which you let others play (lvling in other words) while you're asleep.

Anyways its the last I post about this, the discussion is pointless at the end of a post people only read what they want to read, and most can not emphatise with how others think, while I really do think there should be a solution to please both parties in this discussion.

Leeching has nothing to do with you. You don't have to leech in or out of abyssea. What you want is for other people not to leech. You want to force them to play the game the way you think they should play it.

I think I've been incredibly respectful all things considered. I didn't tell you that you have to play the game my way. That is your thing. I'm perfectly fine with you grabbing a few people and doing old exp. parties. Hell, if I get bored enough, I might even join one. But I will not let you get away with going on and on here about how the game would be just fine if everyone had been forced to do things your way. It wouldn't and it won't.

Abyssea loot distribution (and most events after it) and party requirements (procs etc.) completely screwed up the way linkshells functioned and caused a lot of them to disintegrate. There were a myriad of other problems that I won't go into as well, but none of them caused as much damage as the release of SOA in it's initial form and the updates that have followed.

TLDR; fast exp. has nothing to do with the decline of the game and I am not white knighting abyssea. You are just wrong.

[detlef]

I'd like to point out that it's not white-knighting Abyssea so much as it is rightfully scorning the old system of leveling.

[predatory]

The old system was horse-shit pure and simple, stand around with your flag up all day in Jeuno hoping to get an invite to a party, and when you finally get the /t, mindlessly racing off to some out of the way zone, and hoping the whole time, that the party didn't break until after you'd had a chance to get at least a little xp for your effort.

I don't know how many times i was just about to dismount my chocobo at the entrance to the boyahada tree only to get a /t from the person who told me to come that the party was disbanding. Or spending hours and hours on end xping on IT++ mobs that you can't hit, because they give 250 xp when they finally do die, rather than knocking out T and vt mobs for 100 and 150 xp respectively, as fast as you can pull them, but the list goes on.

Party wipes, people racing out to grab a mob while the ranger's on a long pull, and pulling half the zone because the didn't understand spatial relationships and links, tanks who didn't understand provoke and flash, whm's who just loved to benediction after the pld's invicible wore because they didn't have the foresight to pop a drink and rest their mp for that minute, players who weren't geared for their level and couldn't hit worth a damn, and of course players who didn't use food to improve their performance.

That was then, and the game has improved vastly since those days, but there has been some major screw-ups along the way, when they raised the level above level 75 and on into 99 they didn't raise the mob strengths or adjust the strengths of the gear that you got from sea/sky/rank etc, which of course made those areas, (other than an earrring here and there, and a ring or two, whatever), pretty much obsolete and outdated, all parts of the game should have been level adjusted as the players went up in levels to keep the balance of the game, but instead much of the vast world of vandiel is pretty much ignored now, and has been for quite some time.

And of course as Frank mentiioned a couple of posts above mine, linkshells pretty much disintegrated overnight, gone were the days of the big linkshell when multiple players set out on adventures helping each other get stuff done. Now we have little pockets of players trying to help each other out, but never quite having enough manpower to actually get anything done on their own, and having to shout endlessly for even the simplest of things.Which of course brings us to the now.

Now rather than creating an expansion for level 99 players SE deciding in all their wisdom, (not much IMO), to go ahead and make game breaking mobs, and rather than scale them back to where they should be, they decide to add item levels to gear. How stupid is that? You can't hit the mobs with your RME weapons and armor well let's raise the item on your gear, I know how does this nice shiny new bayld set sound? Crap you still can't hit well how about we give you a second bayld set, get that ilevel even higher. Your augmented skirmish weapons don't do much damage, How's this sound for an idea let's add +1 skirmish weapons, and we got it /snap we'll go ahead and make the best armor in the game fall from its own skirmish. Now you should actually be able to get into Delve right? Well how about we do this, let's make it an event for just a few select jobs?

Are you kidding me SE? What we are ending up with is everyone playing mnk, sch, drg, geo, brd, cor and pld, and of course everybody is wearing red, (which is cool, it's my favorite color), with very little differences between the appearance in the Iuitl, and Otrnif armor sets. This is the best you could do?

Sorry about the rant, but damn this is irritating

[nyheen]

you can defend abyssea all you want. i like the place but all i said it was unbalance but all of you people keep forgetting even SE said "abyssea was a mistake and unbalance" on some interview before. since SE already broke the damn thing they didn care at that point & kept going. that was the time they killed 75 and lower lvl pts. one of the interview with SE.

now we in the SoA days SE even made it worst, players was keep asking for broken easy gear to get in no time. (skirmish was born) so now since things moving so fast, players are going to quit and leave faster. these are the reasons why FFXI is declining(defend it all you want but it facts), like lot of people said it no long term goals anymore. you can max out like less then 2 months. back at the 75 cap days we still had LOT of S#$% to do but at 99 we have less.

so how we going to fix this now? or can we even fix this? atm less people logging on, rarely any /sh happening it just a ghost town. starting to think any updates wont fix this, it starting to turn into like the old PSO (phantasy star online) it die out as soon people became broken strong so fast and got bored fast too. so bash on the old school stuff all you want but answer this, we been caped at 75 for many many years and the game was still strong with all them events, xp pt etc going on, why did it start to slowly die out after abyssea, SoA?

[predatory]

If FFXI survives SoA and Matsui, I will be very surprised

[FrankReynolds]

you can defend abyssea all you want. i like the place but all i said it was unbalance but all of you people keep forgetting even SE said "abyssea was a mistake and unbalance" on some interview before. since SE already broke the damn thing they didn care at that point & kept going. that was the time they killed 75 and lower lvl pts. one of the interview with SE.

I'm too lazy to look. Can you show me the part where they said that fast exp. was the mistake?

so bash on the old school stuff all you want but answer this, we been caped at 75 for many many years and the game was still strong with all them events, xp pt etc going on, why did it start to slowly die out after abyssea, SoA?

Because the events were what was keeping the game going. Now the events are pointless because the gear is outdated every update. Abyssea outdated a bunch of gear, but the new gear stayed relevant for a long time and some of the old gear / events got updated back into relevance. That does not appear to be the case with SOA. They have effectively limited the content to 1-2 events for most of the population and they have replaced the gear at a rate that has been completely jarring to the bulk of the player base.

If SOA had offered moderate improvements over the previously available gear and the old gear / events had been updated to coincide with SOAs release, it probably would have been fine. But at this point, most of the game seems pointless.

[Jerbob]

If FFXI survives SoA and Matsui, I will be very surprised

I think the potential is there, and the very fact that people still post on this forum demonstrates that people would like it to survive, but there is a significant amount of back-pedalling that needs to be done before survival becomes realistic. Given that the only time that I can recall that involved SE backing down was the massive payment fiasco when Click&Fail were introduced, I have to admit that the future isn't looking great.

[Babekeke]

There's still plenty to do in FFXI, even for the best of the best.

Unless, of course, you already have 20 mythics and all relic/empys? After SE announced the info about RME update, I think more people will come back to upgrade their RMEs, maybe build new emps/woe weaps to unlock new WS, and maybe even build new mythics, since they will be back to being the #1 weapons for most jobs.

Farming VW, ADL and Pand Warden since ilvl gear is now easier, and not a massive time-sink anymore.

[Spellcaster]

they stated that rems wont be better than seekers's tho, people don't get the memo. ffxi is dead