Reasons Why FFXI is Declining

[Mittenz]

I would say right now FFXI's biggest issue is that its caught between 2 systems. THe developers have tried to take a fast growth system (from new MMO's) and apply it to FFXI but without giving the reluctance to give up the slow progression style of the game. This does not work. You either have fast growth easy outdated equipment and instant gratification rewards or slow growth long term rewards.
Right now as it stands it takes 3 airlixer +2's a few plasm accessories and a delve boss weapon to be considered current. Lets take MNK as an example. To max it out you need 4 pieces of Plasm Armor maxed oatixer earrings neck tojil waist to be considered good. Thats about 1.75M plasm, at which you obtain (no offence to pugs but...) about 3.5k average per run and you get about 1 run done an hour (again this is basing it to the average person not groups that go in with a full LS geared to do an NM run + tojil). Thats 500 runs or 500hrs of plasm farming lets say the updates are 6 weeks apart before they outdate most of your gear that means to even complete the previous "good gear) you need to farm plasm 12hrs a day 7 days a week to get to the current gear cap the day before it becomes irrelevant.
Now with the new updates introduction, a chunk of your top gear has already been replaced before 99% of the server even obtained it (somehow I remember this happening before oh yeah skirmish weapons lol good for 3 weeks then useless) requires you to spend a week farming bayld to fight a monster 1 time in hopes you get your gear and if not you may as well give up because if it hasnt dropped after fighting each mob 2x chances are its already outdated before you will ever see it.
There is little reason to care about or get excited over new content because you already know by the time you can get the gear its already worthless so there is no reason to grind for it, and without a reason to grind for gear there is really no reason to play an MMO.

For me personally they have taken everything I enjoyed about this game and killed it, They took my exp parties away that I would make good friends in and imo helped build a stable community that is the basis for why people play MMO's, they made 75% of all jobs useless (including the 4 jobs I enjoy playing), they took away any reason behind long term goals (my 2 mythics and 5 relics are worthless have the gil to do more but why bother) and with them alienating the not so hard core players a majority of my friends have quit which is leading me to log in less and less and eventually quit myself

TL;DR right now FF uses long term progression for fast outdated gear so no point in trying because its useless before you get it which makes MMO's pointless.

[Psxpert2011]

TEXT-WALLS, aint got time for dat playas!

Problem: Players aren't objective enough. No more initiative for high levels to PL in the dunes like the olden days!

Solution: A:Take away field of valor.
B: Restrict players under 75 to enter Abysea!
C: Bring back Tanaka-san as lead director!
D: Possible end-game content that could start from level 20~99(like nyzul?A tower of leveled floors with bosses from the expansions!)

[svengalis]

The game is just old. Do you guys honestly expect people to play this game for the rest of their lives?

[FrankReynolds]

The game is just old. Do you guys honestly expect people to play this game for the rest of their lives?

Games are not made out of raw eggs and milk. They don't spoil.

[Xantavia]

To me, the problem seems to be the game is in a permanent holding pattern right now. The release of Delve weapons came too early, outclassing new items. So why invest in anything now when it might be outdone in the next update. I also feel like buying the expansion was a waste of money at this point. I don't aspire to be an endgame player so it seems like there is nothing for me to do. And the things I would still like to do (finish WotG Bastok line, climb regular Nyzul, and do all assaults) are rough getting people for. It seems tags are kept for NNI, and people just want the moonshade earring so aren't interested in doing a different nation.

I'm at a loss at what to do. I got most of the jobs to 99 I want to level (except for pup, and would like to start unlocking stringing pummel when I hit 75, but floor 10 nyzul so yeah), and only Adoulin and Bastok WotG storyline left to complete. With the playerbase seeming so split in half, there is no longer a happy medium and the world just feels cold.

[Lotto]

When they released that forum it was to (finally) be able to listen to the playerbase and what's the result now? They're just ignoring everything. They're obviously trying to push everyone to move to XIV and that's just sad.

I just don't find the game fun anymore and that when a game starts to decline. In 2-3 updates they managed to destroy every events except delve, every old piece of gear and weapons are now mostly useless. I don't mind that they're adding new gear, that's how MMOs work but right now it's not even worth trying to get those new pieces because the next update will just crush them down and make them useless 2 months later.

[Damane]

god people, how about less whining and putting more effort into the game for once!

[FrankReynolds]

god people, how about less whining and putting more effort into the game for once!

I think your comment should be directed at the developer, not the players.

Aby expansion and the skill-up / level-up easymode options made people lazy imo. Turning up in Aby buttnaked and going afk for ages, too lazy to even open boxes, your only actual gaming achievement is turning the pages in a Dom ops book repeatedly for days on end. This kills the 'user input' aspect of being a gamer.
Turning pages in your pyjamas, is not the same as pre Aby xp parties where we were fighting imps and colibris etc. and you had to wear correct armor, not go afk, play your job right etc. Or in WOTG, campaign mobs would destroy you if you were afk and naked. This meant you had to be a gamer and not a naked leech. Attaining levels and skillups was a slow process, which trained you in playing your job, and was also important in learning party dynamics. It gave you a sense of accomplishment and self-worth, which is now entirely absent because you got lvl 99 in your underwear by clicking on a GOV npc a lot of times.
Many people including myself played FFxi originally because we wanted a more challenging game, with slow lvling and slow skill up, and structured tiered system of accomplishment. After 2010 this was nulled in various updates, to the point now you can get a lvl 99 War without ever using a weapon even once. That is where SE went wrong, they should have stayed with the original game mechanics. I think the only good thing they added since 2008 was level synch, because that allowed people to party when there wasnt a lvl appropriate tank seeking. After that, and especially in Soa, it has been downhill. I will continue to play this game as long as it is online, because I still enjoy the core content & love Vanadiel, but I miss the 04-09 era a lot.

I agree. I miss the old days when I would spend 7 hours trying to gather enough people to form a group and then spend the next 20 hours level synched to a 37 killing colibris in past west ronfaure until I hit 75.

I also really miss soloing BLM all the way to 75 because no one wanted BLMs in a group. That was way better than leveling BLM -99 in abyssea and then soloing all my skill ups. I Learned way more soloing goblin pets in one nuke than I ever did soloing monsters at 99. Knowing how to solo a level 40 pet is way more important than anything else on BLM.

My favorite thing was spending 3 hours begging for some bard to come join our merit party so that we could rape colibris for 15 minutes before the JP red mage randomly said "I'm Sleepy, See you again!" and promptly warped out leaving the whole party to wipe.

Or standing around with my flag up on thief for days on end. Or starting my own party on thief and having everyone say they don't want to party unless the party has 3 polearm sams and 2 bards.

Or soloing on paladin because wtf do we need a tank in an exp party for?

Best part was running for a half an hour to get to a camp and then the mage d/cs and then the party has to disband because no new mages can be found.

I also miss searching for people, but there's no one at your level range.

Or fighting Crabs and then more crabs and then more crabs and then when you finally level into a new camp... more crabs... I learned so much from that. Now whenever I go to NNI, Legion, Dynamis, Einherjar, Sea, Sky, VW, Skirmish, Delve... I know exactly how to handle the endless onslaught of crabs, unlike these abyssea noobs who leveled and skilled up by just killing the same thing over and over forever.

Tanking on dancer all the way to 75 taught me so much about what I would be expected to do in an endgame party. If I ever get in an endgame event on dancer, I'll know exactly what to do. I just can't wait to show off my veteran skills.

My biggest regret is leeching my red mage to 99 on my mule. I'm sure I could have learned so many things that I missed during the first 3 times that I leveled red mage and all the events I did on it.

/s

[Rojiel]

There are some things I like about the faster leveling. Back when it was slow and took months to hit 75, you could only focus on a small number of jobs if you wanted to be really good at them. Now I'm able to try out new jobs I wouldn't have otherwise and become proficient with them in a relatively short time. However, I did my time in the gulags of old FFXI so even if I Fell Cleave a job 30-99, I still know at least the basics of playing it. New players skyrocket to 99 and don't know how to play.
Back when 75 was cap, I had a string of bad luck with Corsair's LB5 and was unable to complete it after several attempts. Because of this, I wasn't welcome in most groups doing content that I wanted. Since I was in school at this time, I wasn't able to put as much time into it as I am now and never made it past 70 before Abyssea. After, I was able to get White Mage to 70 and take the easy road to 75. In addition, I was able to solo a lot of the missions I couldn't before which is one of the main things I wanted to do because I love the storyline. Moving on to the bad side though:
A trend I've noticed on my server, Leviathan, since even before SoA came out, most events were dead outside of dedicated linkshells with high application requirements. Citing Voidwatch as an example, it seemed like people had either finished it and moved on, or hadn't yet started and were intimidated by it. I'm the type to do a lot of research and then make my own groups so I was able to make it all the way to Provenance Watcher. When I wanted to make a group who would do multiple runs for drops however, I began to notice the large rift in the player base. Part of that is because people just don't want to put in the time and effort to learn how these things work but I feel at least a little bit is because some of the events are just so dang complicated. I think if there were some events that were more simplified and user-friendly, people could get decent equipment that would boost their confidence and allow them to attempt the harder stuff.

[Daemon]

I think your comment should be directed at the developer, not the players.



I agree. I miss the old days when I would spend 7 hours trying to gather enough people to form a group and then spend the next 20 hours level synched to a 37 killing colibris in past west ronfaure until I hit 75.

I also really miss soloing BLM all the way to 75 because no one wanted BLMs in a group. That was way better than leveling BLM -99 in abyssea and then soloing all my skill ups. I Learned way more soloing goblin pets in one nuke than I ever did soloing monsters at 99. Knowing how to solo a level 40 pet is way more important than anything else on BLM.

My favorite thing was spending 3 hours begging for some bard to come join our merit party so that we could rape colibris for 15 minutes before the JP red mage randomly said "I'm Sleepy, See you again!" and promptly warped out leaving the whole party to wipe.

Or standing around with my flag up on thief for days on end. Or starting my own party on thief and having everyone say they don't want to party unless the party has 3 polearm sams and 2 bards.

Or soloing on paladin because wtf do we need a tank in an exp party for?

Best part was running for a half an hour to get to a camp and then the mage d/cs and then the party has to disband because no new mages can be found.

I also miss searching for people, but there's no one at your level range.

Or fighting Crabs and then more crabs and then more crabs and then when you finally level into a new camp... more crabs... I learned so much from that. Now whenever I go to NNI, Legion, Dynamis, Einherjar, Sea, Sky, VW, Skirmish, Delve... I know exactly how to handle the endless onslaught of crabs, unlike these abyssea noobs who leveled and skilled up by just killing the same thing over and over forever.

Tanking on dancer all the way to 75 taught me so much about what I would be expected to do in an endgame party. If I ever get in an endgame event on dancer, I'll know exactly what to do. I just can't wait to show off my veteran skills.

My biggest regret is leeching my red mage to 99 on my mule. I'm sure I could have learned so many things that I missed during the first 3 times that I leveled red mage and all the events I did on it. Level 75? This is it? Why do we still feel so powerless argh.

/s

I think your observation is not the same with Stompa due to differences in time.

Pre/During ToAu
Stompa maybe referring to a moment when FFXI Was filled with many fresh new players. Exploring, learning, appreciating the game as they progressed. Nothing was rushed. You could actually enjoy the armor for 10 levels or more after putting your sweat and blood farming the gil to pay for them.

During/Post ToAu
You sound like you are talking about a moment when ToAU was released and people just stopped caring and lost hope because how hard and painfully slow people started realizing the game was. Loss of motivation for things like not being able to find people or get into an exp party. Level 75 and this is it?? Why do I feel so powerless argh.

Then came Level Sync, Gov, Abby etc..

Day 1/Present day
I was disappointed to see the same monster on a daily basis for hours and hours, getting the same exp no matter the level (Outside of Abby of course). Just it took longer to kill at 75 than level 1.

A decade later...


I'm still sick of seeing crabs...