My New Player Experience

[Heradite]

I have been playing through the main Final Fantasy series-every single one for the first time. I have beaten Final Fantasy I all the way through 9 and am currently working on 10.

One of my biggest questions of the series has been Final Fantasy 11 (and to some degree 14). After all it isn’t just an MMORPG (I’m not the biggest fan of the genre. World of Warcraft to me is the gold standard of the genre and even that game, I’d say is just good) but an old one. It’s getting a mobile reboot but I don’t want to play an MMORPG on my iPad.

Even though I am still playing through 10, I decided to start playing 11 on my free time. A couple days ago, downloaded and installed the game (should have waited until today). Man, getting into this game was a nightmare. For some reason, the Square Enix store wouldn’t take my credit card so I went through Paypal but I had to wait for this multibillion dollar company to verify the purchase for some reason.

Once it was verified (took like 15 minutes?), I installed the game which brought back good memories of when installers would take up the whole screen. But then...PlayOnline. It really wasn’t clear what I had to do to get my account up and running because there’s no real guide. The SquareEnix manual took me to a link that is now dead, I had no idea what PlayOnline ID was. Eventually I figured I had to go to the account site SquareEnix has, put in my activation code, and then tell the client all this. Why even though I bought the game directly from Square, they didn’t automatically put in the activation code for me and just tell me the information I needed is beyond me.

So I finally logged in to get some kind of portal I didn’t care about. I clicked “Play” and of course the game updates. Luckily it didn’t take 7 hours to update as it initially told me but 3 hours. No idea why it didn’t update before the sign-in drama. AND THEN after the update, after struggling to sign-in, I clicked play...and it told me I didn’t have Content ID or some nonsense. So naturally I slammed my head on the desk (metaphorically) and eventually figured out I needed to subscribe first. WHY NOT JUST TELL ME THAT OR WHEN I WAS CREATING THE PLAYONLINE ID EARLIER SQUARE!???

Anyways, once I get in….I couldn’t figure out a way to make the screen go full-screen as the setting to change the aspect ratio didn’t do anything. (?)

But my goal was to play the main story and the expansion stories and any big side quest along the way then move on. I’m not sure yet if that goal will be met. For one thing, the gameplay is weird? I’m not sure I like how dependent it is on the keyboard to navigate through battle menus and clicking +/- to go the menu is just odd. Even for an old game, the gameplay is pretty hard to adjust to. Also the user interface is not pretty.

Then I was struck with how large the city (Bastok) I was in...and how empty and lifeless it looked. Maybe in the heyday when the city was full of players, it was vibrant and exciting. But traveling large amount of vast spaces while most of the NPCs stand there like creeps, it didn’t feel immersive. Some of the NPCs do move in the city...so slowly, you’d think someone cast Slow on them. Compare this to the previous entries where even when the NPCs stood still, the cities were laid out and they were placed in such a way that the world still came life...and a lot of the NPCs moved at a decent speed!

Okay, fine. The maps are too big, the world didn’t feel real, and the gameplay is bad. The starting guide is helpful so I got some sense of what to do but even then...I’m still having to figure stuff out on my own. I think modern-day MMORPGs may hand hold too much but I actually appreciate a game telling me how it works and giving me SOME idea of what’s going on and such and the tutorial (even with the guide’s help) here just doesn’t do a good job.

Anyways, I decided it was a smart idea to go and start killing level one bees right outside Bastok. Only to die. Because I didn’t realize the game didn’t equip my starting weapon for some reason. Okay. Really? Soon I did kill some stuff and even started getting Trust. Which is nice because I’m anti-social. And I have started doing the story missions.

Man. After the first game, every Final Fantasy game up to his one has exciting beginnings. Heck, even the first one had you go rescue a Princess! The second one you have to run away from a battle and then prove your worth to the rebellion by undergoing a dangerous mission! The third one...well I kinda forgot but early on there was a scary ghost town and crystals giving you a destiny! The fourth one, you accidentally destroy a whole village! The fifth one I also kinda forget but I think there was a crash site you investigate/survive? The sixth one has Terra leading a charge on a town before waking up with amnesia. The seventh one you are literally bombing a reactor. The eighth one you are going to a cave to prove your worth and get a fire demon to help you. The ninth one you kidnap a princess!

In this one, I have to...walk a lot to deliver a report from one guy to another. Walking across lifeless boring maps is why I didn’t stick with KOTOR. But I did it. The second mission...was going to the wilderness so I could stand on a geiser so some test could go from blue to red. For some reason. Oh wow guys. Yeah very exciting way to begin a story. Not.

Now I’m kinda stuck because I’ve been asked to get the heads, arms, legs, and torso of some creatures. Ignoring how dark this is (like seriously, the guy who asked me should get charged with a war crime...and I guess me too for carrying it out), I went to the mines and after an hour...they didn’t drop. Not a single one of them dropped. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

So I quit to get a smoothie. I’ll probably die when I log-in unless I can get my trusts in to help or my level 15 red mage can handle whatever monster is spawned there.

I managed to beat Final Fantasy 9 despite despising how the battles are paced on the Steam version of the game (they are either sooo slow each random encounter takes forever or I turn on the speed boost and they go by too fast for me to know what’s going on). I’ve farmed for stuff in Final Fantasy IV. I can get the grind and I can live past bad gameplay for good story. But right now?

The gameplay is bad, the grind (and farming) seems to be too extreme, and the story is so far just bland MMORPG questing.

[Sirmarki]

So, basically, this is a massive rant that nobody on these forums is going to associate with, because we all play the game and enjoy it.

[Melondra]

Currently surver shut-downs are needed to get the games population back up and the economy back up to par.dont need this many servers when he population is only 700 players per server. A Server can hold around 7,000 players would recomened condense the population to get the economy back up to par.

[Sirmarki]

Currently surver shut-downs are needed to get the games population back up and the economy back up to par.dont need this many servers when he population is only 700 players per server. A Server can hold around 7,000 players would recomened condense the population to get the economy back up to par.

Asura currently has 3400 players online, at time of writing this.

I would hate to imagine what 7000 players would be like on a server, probably very unplayable.

[Melondra]

o really going to have to do a transfer Phoenix is down to around 400- 720 players its in very bad shape

[Alhanelem]

Currently surver shut-downs are needed to get the games population back up and the economy back up to par.dont need this many servers when he population is only 700 players per server. A Server can hold around 7,000 players would recomened condense the population to get the economy back up to par.

As i've said in other threads, 100% disagree.

Asura is congested. We don't want every server to be like Asura, where ambuscade and whatever content is featured by a campaign to have waiting times that don't exist on other servers. I'm completely okay with the quietness of my current server. It still has many people I know on it and I can still get stuff done.

No server has ever had 7000 concurrent users so I don't know where you're getting the ideas about that.

[Stompa]

The gameplay is bad, the grind (and farming) seems to be too extreme, and the story is so far just bland MMORPG questing.

FFXI is a well-crafted, structured, stratified, hierarchical, aspirational Role-Playing / Strategy Arcade Game.

The word aspirational is key, for beginners. A New Adventurer is ignored by most NPCs, ignored by all heroes. A New Adventurer is basically a serf, a common farm-hand. A knave!

New adventurers have no money, no fame, no nice equipment, and no power [power which is graded by levels, such as job / magic skill / weapon skill levels etc].

As you complete the mundane low level quests and mundane low level missions, and level up in jobs, and in fame, the quests become more interesting, the missions more exciting and cinematic.

But everyone starts out with the boring mundane stuff. This is aspirational, because you aspire to have high level jobs, powerful weapons, heroic fame.

In the beginning of the game, nearly two decades ago, this common farm-hand / serf status lasted a lot longer, and it really did take ages to become famous and powerful. Today in 2019, it is much faster to climb the hierarchy, and enjoy the more exciting and cinematic missions and equipment.

FFXI is truly massive, and Vana'diel is a vast and beautiful world.

FFXI is highly customisable. You need to experiment with the CONFIG.

When you experiment with window-styles, you may find that Window 8 is a green/blue deep colour, which is imho nicer than the stripey New-Load colour.

You can experiment also, playing FFXI without locking the camera over-the-shoulder during battles, so that you can zoom out, look down from high above, and spin the battle-field around to suit your preferred perspective. It feels much more free to me when I play <That way.>


I think, for me at least, FFXI is a lifestyle, it is a way of life. It is like a long-term hobby. It is measured in decades, not days. After fifteen years of playing, I am still learning new tricks and tweaks that improve my gaming experience.

So, the secret to being a New Player, is to remember that it is a Role Playing Game, and your new character is not a King or a Hero, it is a common person, who has dreams and aspirations.

By playing FFXI, you are building your RPG character, it becomes a more real and solid character, it develops as a person, it learns favourite jobs, favourite weaponskills, favourite crafts, favourite areas, favourite NPCs and Heroes.

When you first start out, you don't know what your favourite things will be, and you can only discover these favourite things, by adventuring, and experiencing the joy and wonder of Vana'diel.

[Pixela]

o really going to have to do a transfer Phoenix is down to around 400- 720 players its in very bad shape

You need to understand that very much like a small village compared to a large town, the players on those smaller servers like it that way and so Square know not to do merges.

The smaller servers function on the mindset that you join a shell and do content with friends, if you want a big server you swap to Asura (move to a large town) where the population is 2.5 to 3.5k.

[BST]

I would call "bad shape" at 1 to 50 online, 300 to 1000 is perfectly fine. Server merges only destroy communities, was it really worth losing all the players from the last merge?
While i have a character on Asura, i rarely play it, because the community there is what i call overcrowded. If you find your current world too sleepy you can always transfer, don't force everyone else to move.


Also, you have to remember that PlayOnline used to be the one-stop-shop for everything, you could use it to play Tetra Master, you used to pay for your sub through it, you used POL mail to receive all your SE announcements, and more importantly it was the way to setup your account and manage it. Now its been stripped of just about everything, creating two required management systems, making the game such a mess to administer.

[BobbinT]

Well... answering to OP...

1st issue, I think OP might be selecting less populated server, hence why he saw dead cities. On popular server like Asura, or Bahamut which I still reside, every town still very lively, although most players would hang out are on latest cities, which is Adoulin, kinda like how majority of FF14 players hang out @ Kugane.

Next... for most reason, I could agree with him. By today's standard, FF11 account registration are much cumbersome while in comparison with FF14, the other MMO, reason is that FF11 has to go through 2 layers of registration, POL & mogstation while FF14 only requires mogstation.

And POL, sadly, are kinda shadow of it's former glory. Like what @BST said, back in early 2000, ppl use that as another platform of socializing. And do consider this though, FF11 was multi-platform games, so consoles like PS2 & XBOX360 does gain some benefit from features in POL. However, I see little reason after console support has ceased. There's also the fact that patching still uses similar speed as dial-up, which was really great back in FF11 early days, but took longer for today's standard.


As for guides itself, while FF14 has you being basically pointed out where to go & what to do since their ingame guide are really plentiful & markers everywhere on map. Even skills has quite clear instruction as how to do combos & stuff. FF11 on the other hand, really relies of personal memorization, & thus unfortunately heavily relies on outside wiki/guides for many who finds it hard to track down stuff, not to mention there's practically no guidelines as where to go or what to do. And sad to say, FF11 game mechanic are not really friendly for newbie & it really took time to master them.

Despite as that, FF11 still has something better than FF14 does...

For one, their content. It's true by now that FF14 already has huge content that will kept players busy, but even so with FF11. And I can say this, FF11 has amongst the best storyline compared to other mainline series. In fact, I would say that FF11 are one of my top fave as part of FF series. Each expansion has their own independent, but strong storylines. It might not really appeal to newcomers since we all had to deal with mundane task at beginning, but that only because we do need to train ourselves for upcoming challenges.

Another thing is how content still kinda forces player to socialize, as in grouping for content challenge. Even main quest has part of it where you can't really solo unless you either wait till you get really powered or ask help from player generosity. Every time I went back between each return campaign, I always found the game still bustling with social activities. Shouts in town never cease, even doing alliances were kind of necessary when challenging harder content, where in FF14, alliance so far only meant for casual raid content (yes, even for BA despite how challenging it is).

BTW, this return campaign, I finally just finished Voidwatch story content, thanks to helps from fellow LS buddies, and with this, I think I have finally finished all worthy-lengthy story content that I know, unless I'm missing something. But I'm still going to come back on next return campaign, or maybe a day when I actually resub this game again.
And this is just my personal opinion, but I don't really like the episodic story format FF14 uses between expansions, making the game a huge-continuous story that still didn't reach it's true conclusion, while FF11 has each expansion focuses on their internal struggle & their own conclusions. Plus, how each XI's expansion introduces plethora of Vana'diel heroes, while FF14 felt like recycling them on each expansion.

And another thing: relic weapons in FF11 are really powerful, and they still do carries to current content. Sadly, FF14 has them quite butchered, even to the point where relics in current 4.0 content are only comparable to FF11's augment weapons, and they will expire their usefulness whenever new expansion arrives. On the other hand, FF11 did have way too many powerful weapon per job & they has their own specialization against certain situation, sometimes a player has to carry like entire wardrobe for just a single job to maximize their output, while FF14 thankfully kinda summarize them so that players can only focus to just one.

So yes, in the end, FF11 are not the kind of game where one would expect soloing the entire time would be fine. Grouping are heavily emphasizes in this game, unlike FF14 where majority lets ppl solo stuff unless for hardcore content. Eureka, for one, did try doing content FF11-style where ppl did get forced to group up, but sadly still less social than FF11. And given the age FF11 has, I can't really blame new players having really hard time immersing themselves within this world, but those who did persist going through this, I guarantee that FF11 still delivers one of their best.


Also, just a small reminder that one can't compare FF11 to WoW standard since this game was based on Everquest days, and so... very distinct MMO-style.