Please give old content some love!

[Urat]

There is a pretty hefty portion of old content in ffxi that is extremely outdated, and has two factors in its uselessness.

#1: The rewards from a lot of old content are worthless, but once were valuable.

#2: This content takes a LOT of effort to utilize, and is fun for some players, yet because of point #1 no one bothers to even touch the content.

The issue really just simply lies in point #1. There is a massive amount of fun, old ffxi content that is worthless to do because players get essentially 0 reward from it.

If square enix really intends to 'finish' ffxi, before they can consider that option they really should at bare minimum take all this old content I shal llist below, and quite simply just add a handful of rewards to the content (literally just replace old useless items) with new drops that have some use/value.

That is really all it should take. In other words, the stick is already in place for all of this content, much of it was very worthwhile doing and very fun for players to work at. There is no carrot on the stick anymore though, simply replacing the carrot on the stick (via updating the rewards / loot tables to be relevant again) should add hundreds and hundreds of hours of viable play time to ffxi again.

Lets begin:

Gardening: This is currently an essentially useless past time that used to be very rewarding. Please add a handful of valuable materials that can be used for 100~110 crafting to gardening. Even just a couple being added should be enough to make gardening useful again.

Chocobo Digging: Used to be very very profitable digging for elemental ores, but not anymore because of abyssea's drop rates on ele ores. Please just add a couple of relevant items to the zones for chocobo digging. This is literally all it would take to make chocobo digging worthwhile.

At this point, a HUGE amount of old content suddenly becomes worth doing again in a cascade, as much of the old content in ffxi hinges off of other content, observe:

If gardening is worth doing, chocobo hot and cold becomes worth doing as its one of the best sources of getting arcane/wooden flowerpots, which are the best pots for gardening. Furthermore the very old arcane machines around vanadiel become worthwhile running to do their quests as they also reward arcane flowerpots.

If arcane flowerpots become valuable again, then all of the above is worth doing.

If chocobo hot and cold / digging is worth doing, then chocobo racing becomes very worth doing too as it is the only way to get chocobo coats that improve your ability to do hot and cold and digging.

If chocobo racing is worth doing, chocobo raising is mandatory too of course.

Moving on:

An Explorer's Footsteps
This quest was once the way to get the map of crawler's nest. Now that it isn't, its not worth doing. Please add a nice fat reward for players who collect all 18 tablets, to give incentive to go explore the nooks and crannies of this world you made. Maybe something as simple as a special title, or a pile of gil.

Black Belt
This belt is a mountain of work to get, and a sign of a serious monk. Please either follow up on your promise you made to add another tier of belt (maybe a reforge quest to +1 it), or update the stats on black belt for it to be a usable belt.

A belt with martials arts, double attack, triple attack, quadruple attack, in some combination, for example, is miles more valuable then 12% haste.

For example: Dmg-5%, martial arts+20, DA+1% TA+1% QA+1% is a very solid belt. Current black belt is useless despite the hours and hours and hours and hours of work it takes to get. Please fix this.


These are a handful of the large scale, highly time consuming events of ffxi that are still fun and interesting to do HOWEVER since their rewards are... just not rewarding at all, no one wants to do them.

The tiny, simply act of updating rewards of all these events would jack up hours worth spending on ffxi by a large margin, and would make players happy and also add a lot more longevity to ffxi.

[Urat]

Adding on to the list:

Campaign Weapons

The three following weapons+weaponskills need a rehaul to be ever worth a players time
Samudra (Tartarus Torpor)
Lex Talionis (Glory Slash)
Griffinclaw (Uriel Blade)

As it stands, on must mainhand these weapons to get their weaponskill in campaign. These weapons are completely useless compared to normal ilvl weapons.

Either of the following changes will make these weapons worth getting again, which in turn will make Medal of Altana §§§§ something worthwhile working towards again.

A: Add something identical to the Empyrean Weaponskill quest where we can trade the weapon to an NPC that permenantly unlocks the weaponskill for us. These weaponskills are cool and flashy, and players would love working towards unlocking them to show off as a badge of honor.

B: Add a reforge quest that lets us make 119 versions of these weapons, preferably that also just let us use the weaponskill outside of campaign, like a mini RME quest. Even just a simple reforge quest alone would make these worth getting.

C: Add a second 119 version of these weapons that costs way more Allied Notes (500k maybe?) that is the same in all other regards, it just has good proper damage.

IE:

500K allied Notes

Griffinclaw +1
DMG:133 Delay:236
Sword skill +242
Parrying skill +242
Magic Accuracy skill +188
Accuracy+20 "Uriel Blade"
Item Level 119

Lex Talionis +1
DMG:130 Delay:226
Sword skill +242
Parrying skill +242
Magic Accuracy skill +188
Accuracy+20 "Glory Slash"
Item Level 119

Samudra +1
DMG:193 Delay:366
Magic Damage+200
Staff skill +242
Parrying skill +242
Magic Accuracy skill +228
Accuracy +30 "Tartarus Torpor"


I think this is a great way for all campaign content to instantly become relevant again and player feel a need to go do campaign every now and then, if just to get cool flashy weaponskills to show off to their friends.

[Gameesh]

I love your ideas for Black Belt and Campaign WS's (Weapons).

May I also add a suggestion to breathe new life into Maze Mongers, Pankration, Garrison and Monstrosity? (eventhough the last one isn't nearly as old as the rest)

[Urat]

Monstrosity currently has best in slot pet necks, so for die hard players it does have a purpose.

Garrison could use some help, for sure.

Maze mongers though... I dunno. Its hard for them to add any buffs to it that wont conflict with meeble burrows, as they use the same zones I believe.

[Krishnaya]

Urat what server are you on? I played FFXI for a long time (maybe a decade) before the later expansions ruined the fun of the old style. there's a couple SMALL EASY things sqaure enix could do to bring the fun back to the old styles of playing. Simply boosting XP for the old style 6 person party xp in certain area's, maybe via outpost bonuses, making that kind of XP party as good of a way to level up as the new stupid EZ mode dungeons would make the old game play styles worth while again! I'm not saying nerf the new updates! No way! DO NOT nerf the new stuff cuz then new players will get upset. Simply make the old styles competitive with the new styles by boosting rewards for old styles is all!

I remember when a party had to have skill and each job being on top of stuff and doing skill chains to be good! That was way funner than the EZ mode updates that came way later.

Anyways for a year (back in 2012) or so I had a linkshell on the Phoenix server dedicated only to people who liked the old style of playing. It was becoming a popular linkshell before I quit playing FFXI again.

Now I'm going to start playing FFXI again, but will adhere to the old way of playing and will find others who enjoy that way as well. It would be so easy to make the old way as viable as the new way if SE wanted to. So easy to fix some big mistakes.

[Krishnaya]

Urat UR OP had good principles but u only touched on a tiny part of the old school play styles. What about the old 6 person XP parties? The rewards for that style gameplay need to be boosted to make it viable and competitive with the new content.

EDIT: I see now what "world" u r from. You should migrate to phoenix! And ya I didn't know that u no longer needed to do the tablet quest for C nest. Rediculous! or at least make a worth while reward i guess. but it was good when u needed to do the quest.

[Urat]

Trusts have completely negated 6 person parties.

SE needs to remove the exp penalty for parties up to 6 people, otherwise there is 0 way it can ever ever compete with 5 trusts (which dont have exp penalty)

[Urat]

I think the best solution, after thinking about it, is adding perma CP bonuses to all the old content clears via RoE objectives.

Examples:

Defeat Genbu: First time completion bonus of +2% CAP rate

Defeat King Behemoth: +2% Cap Bonus

Every BCNM clear should give a 1-2% Cap bonus

Catch every fish in the game: 10% Cap bonus

Finish the chocobo racing plotline: 3% Cap Bonus

Acquire the Desert Chocograph/Jungle Chocograph: 2% CP bonus each

Each Garrison fight should have a 1~2% Cp bonus each

So on and so forth.

SE should in the end require players to get maybe 2400 Job Points to cap out a job, which seems crazy, but if they can get a very sizable CP bonus by 100% beating the game, beating every bcnm, kill every HNM, clear every plot line, beat all the side quests, so on and so forth, then 2400 JP is an attainable goal.

This would add a tremendous amount of longevity to the game. All sorts of content would become in demand again as players clamor for a 100% completion of the game.

Garrison runs will start up again, fishers will take their rods up to 'beat' fishing, so on and so forth.

Whos in favor? If you like the idea of getting a completion log so we can 'beat' ffxi, please post in this thread so we get some attention to the idea.

[Ulth]

The triangular number formula is n(n+1)/2, and it's the formula that job points follow. So to max out a category when the cap is 20 it will take 210 job points. So the total job points to finish a job would be 2100 since each job has 10 categories. Adding one or two categories more would make the cap closer to 2400, but SE said they were done adding new ones at 10, and are probably out of balanced ideas for them anyway.

[Urat]

Dear Urat,

As I was discussing in another thread: All content for FFXI must be written on a Playstation2 Development Tool and then ported over to PC compatible data. As the years go by, there are less & less units for SE to acquire. IIRC, SE said they have less than two-dozen (24) Development Tools left. I'm afraid that if SE tried to release the content you named above, it will create a demand for more content that SE simply won't be able to fill. They need the equipment they have to be able to finish up. With so few dev kits on hand, it doesn't make sense to put any more pressure on quickly aging equipment.

Best regards,
Uncle Billy
Long Island, New York

You realise all we are just asking for RoE objectives right?

SE has been mass producing RoE objectives every single of the last updates for the whole year.

Every update they add 30~40 RoE objectives. This is clearly not hard for them to add.

We'd like to see some more completion RoE objectives identical to what they already have added and are still adding to the game

We just got RoE objectives this very update in line with what I am asking for. Its a quick and easy way for SE to refurbish old content by attaching an RoE objective to it.

Second: SE only needs to use the PS2 devkits for playstation updates. They can continue releasing PC updates as much as they please. The entire reason they already have cut PS2 support is there are no more Devkits.

PC updates are done on their computers though, the devkit is used to port the update to PS2.