Suggestions: Quality of Life Stuff and other suggestions

[Fae]

I have a suggestion for making FFXI's older events which were well designed and often beloved active again. I used to play a game called Phantasy Star Online, a game still talked about and loved today. Two things they did I think would work well with FFXI and already sometimes compatible with ideas in FFXI is C-Mode (which I'll get to later) and having harder difficulty settings for the same content, which as I said is applied to some content already such as BCNM's, Walk of Echoes Surge, and Incursion but would like to see it expanded to even things like Besieged, Skirmish, Meebles, Campaign and well all prior content at some point. Having a tier above VD even for BCNM at this point would be welcome, as with new gear from Riesenjima these engagements are much less difficult than they used to be.

The second thing is C-mode meant challenge mode and it was timed and given a rating of S,A,B,C etc for your clear time. It had different objectives though reused similar maps/content. One thing about it was it stripped you of all gear, levels, etc on entry and it took a well made team to win. Starting level was decided by the challenge and players started with extremely basic gear and spells and more could be found as they dropped from defeated enemies and drops were somewhat random making each run a unique experience, but it wasn't at the cost of making runs beatable or not for S-Rank based on if something dropped or not, it was well designed and just made you use your resources and strats carefully. Players could pick their team and enter in to defeat the game in a much more difficult state, because they were without the gear they had all worked so hard for. I will be honest not everyone enjoyed this, but the rewards made it enticing for many because you could get S-Rank weapons for clearing things with S Grade, and it was not easy to do so. It really made things a lot of fun for me again when they did that, and I think it'd be a popular thing to do as many FFXI players pride themselves on skill, and gear can make even priorly difficult things not take a lot of skill to win, I just think this is a good way for dev time to potentially be spent. I think the other nice thing about C-Mode is it would give players who still liked the 75 era game, or any level of the gameplay a chance to teamup and take on big challenges and could benefit the dev team and SE by reusing old content and setting levels for the battlefield/instance so is potentially cheaper to develop which also being fun to decide what gear could drop for the run and designing the time attack using the old content. For example Limbus could work very well this way. I think the C-Mode option is nice too in that there are not prerequisites for how geared or leveled your character is, so while it takes skilled players to clear with S ratings it is something anyone can hop in to.

Thank you for hearing my ideas, while everyone will not like any idea I hope it can be of use to you. I am really enjoying Reisenjima and the Aeonic questline and the difficulty some of these mobs present, it is the most fun I had in a very long time and I can hope that more very challenging content can be designed. I think it would bring alive a lot of content priorly worked very hard to create which is all but forgotten now, and would let people relive many old engagements in a way that is fun with friends and can still further their character with some enticing gear.

[Knives]

The biggest thing I would like is for Square-Enix to add quest markers. Most missions and quests are still extremely vague with where they want the player to go to advance. Having more perception as to where to go, without having to rely on guides and FFXIclopedia, would be a huge boon.

I imagine that there are coding reasons that this has still not been considered, so I think that my wish will continue to go unrequited. An easier to code option would be to go back and add the major positions for certain quests in the mission info window. There are, however, MANY missions in the game, and doing this for all of them would still take a very concentrated effort by whoever is delegated to the task.

The game is PC only now, so I hope that accounts for something for QoL ideas like this. There are a lot of painful design decisions that I would like to see changed, but this is one of the biggest.

[Taeko]

Would it be a sin to ask for updated quest logs? Like you complete one task and it'll then hint at what you need to do next or is the content too old to do something like that?
Just think it'd be more convenient for new players (No, not asking for ugly quest markers or way points)

[Larien]

and perhaps even adding highly sought after drops such as plutons/beitetsu/boulders and so on to their drop lists, albeit in typical FFXI fashion (very low quantities).

They just did that for you. Go check out the Ambuscade buyable rewards haha.

[Fae]

The biggest thing I would like is for Square-Enix to add quest markers. Most missions and quests are still extremely vague with where they want the player to go to advance. Having more perception as to where to go, without having to rely on guides and FFXIclopedia, would be a huge boon.

To be honest one reason I like ffxi is it doesn't give in and do that. I agree with Taeko that they're ugly but beyond that, I like the open endedness of the world and the fact you can be asked to use your brain once in a while for a quest, and if you'd rather use a guide you can. MMO's where you just run into town, click everything without reading to set quest markers, and follow a bunch of arrows/go toward minimap points and read prompts that ding every time you complete part of an objective drive me nuts makes me feel like why am I even playing at all. Just cuz other MMO's do it doesn't mean it's good, just means it's popular. I can think of a ton of things I'd rather have, and this is on my do not want list to be honest, it ruins the immersion, and makes it "do what the game tells you to do" while it holds your hand. FFXI isn't an MMO that ever really held peoples hands I wouldn't want it to start doing so now. I wouldn't be against RoE having some more quests in it or something if people really thought it necessary, maybe the tutorial section helps new players, or maybe outside of getting rewards it's never used, I'm sure SE could answer better. Rather than add gaudy UI upgrades and hand holding, I'd like slicker UI that takes less clicks to do the same thing. Time is something precious to me and many of the dialogues are very slow moving especially if you have to repeat them often. Confirmations are sometimes multiple, if there's only one choice you still have to click it, there's delay between each dialogue box and so on. UI is well designed for buttons and controllers I think, but vs many computer UI it feels very slow. The best example of this is teleport crystals, I spend an untold amount of time using them and while I appreciate the recent improvements, I just feel there's much easier ways to navigate them, from a designed for standpoint. It's definitely functional and works, and friendly enough imo, but if we talk UI or usability improvements I'd put that high and quest markers on the do not want column.

Would it be a sin to ask for updated quest logs? Like you complete one task and it'll then hint at what you need to do next or is the content too old to do something like that?
Just think it'd be more convenient for new players (No, not asking for ugly quest markers or way points)

Not sure if it's what you mean but there is already a missions one that shows completed and which one you're on and most the descriptions have a hint on where or what to do next.

[Taeko]

^
Yeah, like the newer ones. Just think it'd be nice for when you come back after a long time doing something and then you're not backtracking or relying on guides too much to resume what you were doing.

[Knives]

Alternatively: add an option for quest markers. There, everybody wins.

[Castanica]

Alternatively: add an option for quest markers. There, everybody wins.

If by quest markers you mean ! then they have stated it's impossible without a major engine rework.

[YosemiteYogorockBlondelle]

You are now my most disliked person in FFXI.

In my experience campaigns are terrible because they're like throwing cocaine in front of an addict, players get addicted to them and don't let go until they either achieve their goal (13,099 HP Bayld, 1,500 Heavy Metal Plates, etc) or time runs out. Everything else during the period of a campaign gets ignored. I'd much rather the development team made permanent changes to the game that drew players back to older zones, like higher mob density, higher level monsters, quicker repop timers, slight increases to item drop rates across the board (since fewer people are farming older items) and perhaps even adding highly sought after drops such as plutons/beitetsu/boulders and so on to their drop lists, albeit in typical FFXI fashion (very low quantities).

Technically they are bringing back players to older area's in other methods but just not the method as your thinking such as an ambuscade npc in mhura, escha gear npc's to norg which are just 2 of the oldest area's to date out of few. You may be highly into the end game newer stuff to bring back peeps to the old area's and I never had (HP bayld, Heavy Metal plates, anything of that etc. sort on the mind for the campaign's. You may have all jobs completed to 99 while I simply don't but honestly I'd rather see some campaigns that brought people back to some of the older area's or even some older battlefields with better benefits for doing them. Now you can hate on me for this hard and idk maybe you love to hate or bully but its certainly not my style to suggest everyone hates you to someone on ffxi.

Now I could continue on but by doing so I would just be feeding your flames. I did have more suggestions but going to leave them out for now.

[Diavolo]

Unity chat messages about Azi Dahaka, Naga Raja and Quetzalcoatl should be overhauled - there's no need to have the 10 minute warnings show up anymore. Even the messages saying they've appeared are unnecessary. The most important part of those unity wyrm messages was the HP% being announced every 5 minutes and it's now gone altogether. It was important because it gave people an idea of whether or not someone was fighting them and on a server with a low population it was the only way to draw interest to the fights (they've gone mostly untouched except during JP peak hours). Having their HP% announced once or twice per pop would probably go a long way to drawing more interest to the fights.

They just did that for you. Go check out the Ambuscade buyable rewards haha.

Not quite what I was thinking, but I do like the fact they added currency and R/E/M upgrade items to Ambuscade.

...honestly I'd rather see some campaigns that brought people back to some of the older area's or even some older battlefields with better benefits for doing them.

That's something I think almost everyone can agree on, that older content like Voidwatch, for example, requires greater incentive in order to draw players back to them. I would just rather see that content updated/"rebalanced" permanently so players will at least view it as an option when they login, rather than ignoring it completely until a campaign comes along.

Don't take the remark about you being my most disliked person in FFXI seriously, I've got some LS mates that want more of those campaigns too, and yes, they get an earful about it.