Just played Final Fantasy XI

[AnimaAnimus]

you'd get past them by having a group too large for the mobs to kill everyone before some people got through.

Funny, cause I unlocked all gates and camps completely solo as did many of my friends who played at the time. Even my super duper casual room mate unlocked them all with little effort. If you needed a large group to do it you were either A: lazy or B: bad.

[Talraen]

No it was removed because people bitched and complain, and no if you were maxed out they could be taken down in a full group. Sure they were tough ( was used as a cheat a while ago on FFXIV Quest item ) that would prevent damage for a specific amount of time. They were squish. Also range bouncing was common to use on those to by pass. So no they were not all powerful if you used the landscape around you and used attacks accordingly. Of course it really did not help much so most just avoided. Your right people hated the fact that the game was really hard and and poor interface, the story was good. Hence change of directed and boom Lets nuke the place came about. Still the way people bitch and complain lately is way too much. I'm sure you can agree on this, people still wipe on old content just because either their incompetent, lack common sense, or just over confident and ignore mechanics. Unlike FFXI you actually had to use something called common sense.

Interesting. I did not know that. In any case, the high-level mobs in FFXIV weren't actually intended as content, they were clearly placeholders for future areas. It's not like the aetherial gates they guarded had anything of interest behind them, aside from the achievement for finding them all. So they didn't "nerf" hard content so much as remove placeholders due to the game being completely redesigned.

Now a days people want something for just trying and unfortunately that is what most of this game has become. I commend SE for complying to most demands, however to constantly nerf what is suppose to be considered average to hard content so anyone can access or complete is going a bit too far, Nerfing the content ok I can buy that, but constant nerfing? some of us actually like the challenge, and like to co-op with people.

If you like the challenge, you can queue up with your friends and do content at minimum ilvl. You can click off echo. There's very little nerfing you can't undo if you want to. (Off the top of my head the ones that stand out are the Demon Wall in AK, and Steps of Faith in general.) So in the current system, you get what you want, and players not looking for a challenge get what they want. And honestly, do you want every dungeon run to be dependent on actually getting four competent players?

[ManuelBravo]

If you like the challenge, you can queue up with your friends and do content at minimum ilvl. You can click off echo. There's very little nerfing you can't undo if you want to. (Off the top of my head the ones that stand out are the Demon Wall in AK, and Steps of Faith in general.) So in the current system, you get what you want, and players not looking for a challenge get what they want. And honestly, do you want every dungeon run to be dependent on actually getting four competent players?

Been there done that, on my down time I help people out. Even tried playing on first person view, that is a lot of fun lol. Only problem is ability to gauge wide aoes lol for that is more of learning patterns and pray for the best :P

[Talraen]

Funny, cause I unlocked all gates and camps completely solo as did many of my friends who played at the time. Even my super duper casual room mate unlocked them all with little effort. If you needed a large group to do it you were either A: lazy or B: bad.

Your trolling is kind of sad, man.

[Mjollnir]

Is there an easy way to find the Discord groups? I've just resubbed the other night, and I have a XIV friend trying XI for the first time. I'm thinking some additional support and conversation is never a bad thing

FFXIclopedia: https://discord.gg/wWrYMU
Blue Gartr: https://discord.gg/NwfsDj6
Reddit/FFXI: https://discord.gg/fvfmnX
FFXIAH: https://discord.gg/FxMwBy
Windower: https://discord.gg/hBgbdh

[Mjollnir]

I would like to know how, specifically, you would implement non-instanced dungeons, open world leveling, more stats on gear, and dangerous monsters to FFXIV. (I can figure out the instanced housing myself )

Hah, I'm no programmer, so no idea. I'm presuming the dungeons we had in 1.0, which were open world, were removed because of zone-size memory issues? Wow that just took me back to hours trying to get different coloured keys to drop for chests in Shposhae and doing GC leves in Cassiopea Hollow. ?

Open-world levelling... Power up those open world mobs that most people ignore and grant XP chains, or have special leves that are open-ended. There's loads of ways that can be done.

More stats on gear... so this is having a ring that's instead +Base Stat, would be eg, -50% Berserk Cooldown or +50% Berserk Duration. Something players could decide if it was something they'd prefer to take over the next.

Dangerous monsters... I mean, just whack up their stat numbers, right? Surely that's got to be better than having a world where people just dash through weak trash, eating the hits without a thought and letting them rubber band back to their spawn points

[Inuk9]

In general sandbox MMOs have way more deph than Theme parked MMOs, but they are far less balanced and way more grindy.

It's not for everyone.

[Talraen]

Hah, I'm no programmer, so no idea. I'm presuming the dungeons we had in 1.0, which were open world, were removed because of zone-size memory issues? Wow that just took me back to hours trying to get different coloured keys to drop for chests in Shposhae and doing GC leves in Cassiopea Hollow. ?

Open-world levelling... Power up those open world mobs that most people ignore and grant XP chains, or have special leves that are open-ended. There's loads of ways that can be done.

More stats on gear... so this is having a ring that's instead +Base Stat, would be eg, -50% Berserk Cooldown or +50% Berserk Duration. Something players could decide if it was something they'd prefer to take over the next.

Dangerous monsters... I mean, just whack up their stat numbers, right? Surely that's got to be better than having a world where people just dash through weak trash, eating the hits without a thought and letting them rubber band back to their spawn points

Sorry, I didn't mean specifically as in like, actually coding it. I just meant, how would you want to see it implemented in a way that would improve the game?

My issue with a lot of the FFXI nostalgia is that even the stuff that did work in FFXI worked because it fit into FFXI's paradigm. In FFXIV terms, I presume both open-world dungeons and open-world leveling were removed because of the Duty Finder. The Duty Finder relies on instanced duties to work, and existed originally primarily as a leveling method. Having open-world content for leveling would therefore compete with the Duty Finder, causing less people to use it, and thus making it less useful to everyone. Given how MMOs work, everyone would inevitably determine that either a.) the Duty Finder was the better way to level, and abandon open-world leveling or b.) open-world leveling was the better way to level, and abandon the Duty Finder. If you want a Duty Finder (and I do), the best bet is to remove any real competition from it, but give people a way to gain some experience while they wait for a queue. And that's why they made FATEs. (Again, this is all assumption on my part, but it makes sense.)

Gear stats are an entire can of worms that have been argued to death on these forums, and I don't really want to get into that. The tl;dr version is that player choice is an illusion, and designing for it is a fool's errand.

For dangerous monsters, sure you can just make overworld monsters more deadly, but how does that improve the game? As we've discussed, in FFXI people snuck past most overworld monsters with abilities that don't even exist in FFXIV. Even FFXI players would not have put up with actually having to fight their way through world maps to get anywhere. It's just a time sink. Modern FFXI has largely removed this aspect of the game by allowing mounts almost anywhere and having a huge number of travel options. So what makes you think this would be better than the current system, and why?

[AnimaAnimus]

Your trolling is kind of sad, man.

lol that's not even a troll. I am simply pointing out that you are exaggerating in a way that suits your narrative instead of telling it like it actually was.

- or -

you actually did have issues like this, which in that case means that you didn't really try, hence lazy, or that you were incapable of sneaking around them, which was not a problem a vast majority of players had, hence bad, making your perspective entirely that, your perspective, which can be reasonably assumed as being different due to lack of skill or patience and not a fault of the game itself.

[Thayos]

Ugh, I just said a couple pages ago that some of my static members might leave if the game didn't change things up at the next expansion... turns out, two of them won't be waiting that long to leave.