Dear SE...

[Silex]

It seems a lot of people are missing the FFXI experience as they remember it now. FFXIV threads have had a small boom lately with people saying they miss how FFXI did something unique.

Why do we miss the old FFXI community. What made it special :
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ade-it-special

Make FFXIV more like FFXI and less like WoW:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-less-like-WoW

Also as this is my first post (I normally just read these forums) I just want to thank posters like Demon and others for supplying the SE staff with countless good analyses and feedback suggestions for the game.

[Zephrose]

Seems to be a lot of rose tinted glasses going on here. Abyessa didn't bring in new players it bought back old player that came back cause the old sytem was gone. No longer did you need 17 other people to get things done, no more sucking up to ls leaders to get gear you only needed a couple close friends that you enjoyed being around not a bunch of people you would rather see die in a fire but had to put up with to get things done and you could work towards rewards. Almost every fight offered something for everyone that helped.

Even during the ToAU era the lowbie areas were dead X-play even highlighted this when they did their review of the expansion saying the game was top heavy which was right on the money, the starter cities were dead with everyone being in whitegate or jueno. People left after abyssea when content not only went back to alliance based content but it was time restricted to 30 mins a fight that meant little to no room for error so only the top DDs were taken to reduce the chance of fail. Before with time restricted you either had the option of limiting your rewards by picking time extensions like limbus areas and final bosses that could be beaten in AH gear or events like dyna where you could take as many bodies you could to make up for lack of skill or gear. But most of old endgame you could use body chunk and beat the mobs down by kicking the dead and inviting the living. Involved less skill then a skirmish run. What was hard was watching that 1% drop go to the guy you hated above all else and he then left the shell.

If it wasn't for abyssea faster less exclusive leveling people wouldn't had leveled many of the jobs they have now cause the first time up to 75 was fun the sec less and by the third time it was so boring that you didn't take up another job unless it was a job you needed to level to get into a good endgame shell cause all you had was DDs and they were only taking whm, rdm, brds sounds familiar huh.

Sky was p** freaking easy, not getting lost on the way to kitty was the hardest thing about it, sea finding people with the right jobs and willing to help do the missions to get to sea was the hardest part, it's endgame was easier then the missions. ZNM was doom to fail once since the people that were the ones building the pops got sick of carrying the leaches along after putting so much work in taking the pics for little to no reward at the end. Salavge you had to choose between doing assaults for points or Nyzul focusing on one could mean that by time you were done with it the rush was over for the other and finding help was even harder.

Old game only seemed like it was pack cause more then one LS doing sky/sea meant you had to fight over the pre pop NMs all had at least a 2 hour respawn and one at one point was a 24 hour spawn the RMTs had on lock down. That first day might had been exciting but after fighting kirin for the 1000th time it was old and tiring. Then you had leveling that would take longer to put the party together then it would be leveling cause no one wanted to play tanks or mages.

Then you take in to account it's a 11 year old game that has NEVER gotten a graphics upgrade(a real one not the BS token upgrades we have gotten to fonts and a few icons). EVE, EQ, WoW all got a upgrade to their graphics at some point in their history's. People will use the excuse that it's the Ilvl or relics being outdated what not but you hear excuses that sound very much like people when they leave girl friends, wives, boy friends, husbands, when they get fat or loss their attractiveness when a hot 20 something comes along and shows them some attention. Just in this case it was a new game with what really got people to pick the game up in the first place and that is the Final Fantasy name. I heard everything you all are going on about from many people that left for 14 were they have the the same system. The niche this game had for the longest time was it was the only Final Fantasy MMO it no longer has that niche.

The last influx of brand new players was with the 360 release so you now have a aging player base that have other things they have to do so even if abyssea never happen it would have just meant we would have seen this 3 years ago. Wotg did more damage to the game then SoA just with SoA there was fewer to absorb the hit then with wotg thanks to the people leaving after going back to the old model that came with VW. SE over corrected with VW and then again with SoA while the reward are easier to get once you get the wins, getting into run that can get the wins are the hardest part if you don't go back to the old way of getting into good LSs.

Everything that has happen since after abyssea has been things the player based ask for but with with how limited the game is thanks to being tied down to outdated hardware they had to use cheap tricks to make content harder I.E extremely low drop rates or time events that promoted exclusion.

I think I can agree with just about every word in this post. Good post Raven. I felt Abyssea was probably the best thing to happen to this game since sliced bread. With them moving back into the old alliance based content, the game has become toxic and lonely. There's a lot wrong with the game as of late, but if I had to point out one problem that glares brightest, I'd say there isn't enough content to keep the players engaged. It's just the same regurgitated old mechanics again, different skin.

I'm sure to get flamed for my favor of Abyssea style mechanics/content, but really, it was the highest point in this games life cycle.

Again, good post Raven.

[Mostfowl]

abyssea was not bad in concept but it was bad in implementation. The lvl requirement to enter was too low and the exp too high. Also it only favors a handful of jobs, the rest are for the most part worthless. Also making insane requirements for some of the empy's wasn't a good thing. Ochain and Harp as an example. Making it 1 nm pop an hr was a dreadful idea when you need so many drops. They should have at least increased the number of nms that dropped the items needed or reduced the items needed. It really sucked when you had 5 pts camping 1 15-minute spawn nm or a 1-hr spawn nm.

The crour gear was also a miss imo. I could see the aug gear from trophies but buying somewhat good gear that could easily bridge you to the next set with minimal cruor was a mistake.

It also overpowered us. Sure it was a challenge at first but between atma and lvl vs content it is by far the easiest endgame in the game.

The one good thing I can say about aby is it finally introduced great looking af...aside from rdm and blu anyway (that gear was horrendous looking)

[Zephrose]

abyssea was not bad in concept but it was bad in implementation. The lvl requirement to enter was too low and the exp too high. Also it only favors a handful of jobs, the rest are for the most part worthless. Also making insane requirements for some of the empy's wasn't a good thing. Ochain and Harp as an example. Making it 1 nm pop an hr was a dreadful idea when you need so many drops. They should have at least increased the number of nms that dropped the items needed or reduced the items needed. It really sucked when you had 5 pts camping 1 15-minute spawn nm or a 1-hr spawn nm.

The crour gear was also a miss imo. I could see the aug gear from trophies but buying somewhat good gear that could easily bridge you to the next set with minimal cruor was a mistake.

It also overpowered us. Sure it was a challenge at first but between atma and lvl vs content it is by far the easiest endgame in the game.

The one good thing I can say about aby is it finally introduced great looking af...aside from rdm and blu anyway (that gear was horrendous looking)

I don't know where you've been since playing FFxi but all endgame/NM/Dungeon type content has always required a cookie cutter setup. This is since Sky. This is not to say other setups wouldn't work, but to say there has always been a preferred setup by the community.

As for abyssea? I don't think the low level requirement is a glare at all. SE knew their audience and wanted to make it so we didnt have to suffer from XP burnouts like the old days. Taking a year to obtain one 75 job was enough. Abyssea enabled all players to participate in something they might not have otherwise. Their later implementations to old systems to lessen the gap did come too late, but that's always to be expected of SE. Players in 11 have always been able to find new and unexpected ways to work with their new systems. They have to be reactive to our meddling because they aren't finding all the use cases to their features. There is always going to be something that could have been done better, but really, abyssea was a high for this game.

As for overpowering us, our level increase is really at the core of this. The system was meant to adjust the difficulty based on your level foremost. Adding relevant gear just added to it. Really, in the end, you should be upset they ever increased the level of our characters.

[Vold]

This game still looks and plays fine, to me. It looks good and the engine is responsive and well designed. Also re; 11 years, ppl play 1980s games still lol. Classics never die.

I logged in the other day to start to prepare for my eventual return on a regular basis. I can't deny it, after two months of FFXIV, FFXI was at best painful to look at. The 30 FPS is just a disaster. You just get used to it after so many years but once you go from 60+ FPS in FFXIV to 30 FPS in FFXI it's just damn awful to stomach. The game still looks ok graphics wise, but I'll tell you this: A graphical update to this game would do it wonders. SE needs to not think of it as wasting resources like I know they do, but as an investment to prolong the cash cow.

Too bad that window of opportunity probably passed about 2 years ago. I'm sure they'll do it only after no one cares anymore.

[Fynlar]

This game has much more serious problems right now than graphics, that ought to be addressed first.

The grafix hoars are for whom games like FF14 are there for.

[Arkitan]

5 words: Make it free to play!

[Camate]

Hello,

There have been a lot of comments asking for both content geared towards low-man groups and also for content that requires alliances. Likewise, there have also been a lot of requests for content that can scale according to your party size, much like the system that is currently used for ENMs. Below is a comment from Akihiko Matsui who shares some insight into the development team’s ideas for content moving forward.

I understand everyone's feelings and concerns.

While the below might not be a direct answer, I’d appreciate it if you could look over it until the end.

In the November version update we implemented a system where you can select the difficulty of battles. The aim of this was to make it easier to play the game.

I believe the same goal applies to the number of people needed to participate in content, and using an ENM style for battlefields, as suggested, is definitely one way to make the game easier to play.

For ENMs, we adopted the currently used system due to the way the content was structured and the way rewards were passed out. With this it was easy to create variations depending on the number of players who participated, and adding to this you also need a key item and re-entry is every five days.

With that said, it really all depends on the structure and method of rewarding players for content that is added in the future, but the development team’s focus is to make it easier to play. Based on that, we would love to keep hearing your feedback.

[Afania]

FFXII is kinda FFXI single player, but at the same time, that's not exactly accurate. Part of FFXI is its world, characters, story, and so on, which you cant find in FFXII, not only that, but the world is completely different in design and feel. Also, while FFXII International has a Job system, its not exactly what you seem to think. Its not fully FFXI like, it has a license board still, the board is simply determined by the job you choose for your character, so it still plays a lot like the original FFXII, but with jobs determining your board layout and whats on it, rather than every character sharing the same board design, with slightly different starting locations.

In the end, I have played FFXII during my short breaks from FFXI before because they feel similar. At the same time, I can not say it will ever be a real replacement, and I would much, much rather a real single player FFXI rather than playing my 50th play through FFXII.

FFXII is the most immersive single player FF, when you play it you actually feel like living in a huge game world and no over dramatic character/story. FFXI is the most immersive MMO FF with no over dramatic character/story too, in that way they're similar

Other FF single player titles play like FFXIV, linear small world with pretty locations everywhere, with an over dramatic story and characters. I wish SE make more games like FF12(one of my fav single player FF besides FF5) and 11, but they're going FF15's direction

[Jerbob]

...we would love to keep hearing your feedback.

The difficulty with us giving feedback is the fact that you don't actually make any use of most of our feedback.