abyssea leveling is killing alot of the game.

[leeman]

i have been playing for a number of years now and i have found that while the abyssea areas are very fun, The way EXP is gained there is not a very good idea, alot of jobs that are lower are loseing out to the area and cannot find partys to exp with. Furthur more the new abilitys Square Enix are adding do not seem to be showcased...and in my opinion the abilitys would be better enjoyed in a standard old style EXP party just like we did years before. It is just my opinion...and i have spoken to other players about it and they also share the same feelings that abyssea mega leveling is killing a chunk of the game. Square Enix needs to put better ideas into the return of the standard EXP party...the new abilitys have opened a new door to even more fun and exciteing party setups and job role functions...but it will undoubtedly not be changed since abyssea exping has made such a impact. yesterday I leveled 4 jobs to LV99 in a couple hours..and have admit it was cool to go that high in such a short time...but in the end it ruined my taste for it....i hope everyone can pick some sense of this post...i had too much to say and did not know where to start. I hope everyone replys with a peaceful and positive reply ..thank you and merry christmas and a happy new year to you all.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Nostalgia glasses, please remove them.

[Meyi]

Abyssea leveling isn't killing anything.

Do you honestly think level 75 White Mages being level synced down to 13 in Gusgen Mines, whacking away on Ghouls and Skeleton Warriors is teaching them how to play white mage all the better? There's a White Mage on Bismarck who did this and out of the several parties I've had with him, I've only seen him use cure once -- and that was on himself. Was wearing full af and a Light Staff, but couldn't even cure party mates. Hell, most of the time he couldn't even cure himself.

I was honestly thinking of not leveling any more jobs up to 75 because I was burnt out on parties. I had leveled 7 jobs to 75, and while I was really wanting a black mage taru, the thought of soloing all the way up to 75 again was making me cringe. And leveling any other job on my Elvaan to 75 made me want to gag. Level sync, while I honestly think it's a beautiful system for letting friends party with friends, is the first nail in the coffin. With level sync came astral burns and Qufim onry/Colibri onry parties.

Abyssea makes leveling fun. The first party I ever had in Abyssea was the most fun I have ever had in the game. I still enjoy it. I love running out there on my black mage and just gunning monsters down in one or two shots.

And I swear to God if I hear one more person say "colibri parties" as "oldschool", I will go insane and pewpew some people in the face. >:/ You want oldschool, go back to Sky weapons or monk burns in KRT (King Ranperre's Tomb for all the new schools claiming to be oldschool). Damn, if you're gonna be hardcore, at least be hardcore about it!

(P.S. I know OP didn't specifically mention colibris, but I've seen a lot of pink bird chat floating around the Official Forums, as if they were the first monster implemented into the game.)

[Xellith]

You see the main problem with Abyssea is not that you get exp fast - its the fact that under the old original system the EXP system was built to stop you playing the game and keep you grinding through the levels. The fact that exp is so easy to get now is allowing people to see how little content we actually have in terms of quantity and quality.

Abyssea is not the problem. The rest of the game is. Long cooldowns, unreasonable drop rate systems, particular member requirements. Lots of factors are stopping this game being great - mainly the development teams operational policy. Abyssea was a mistake simply because it made us able to skip through the grind and actually play the game.

Abyssea raised our expectations for upcoming content - expectations that the development team cant/wont meet. This is the issue with FFXI.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Realy the only thing that's missing is midlevel grind and the only trickle down effect of that is crafting. Which if you actualy take the time to farm, it doesn't matter.

[Greatguardian]

Colibri are too mainstream.

I liked 3k/hr parties on IT++ Evil Weapons in Ro'Maeve before it was cool.

[Xellith]

I remember saying "5K AN HOUR!!1 OMG SUCK IT BIOTCHES!"... memories...

[saevel]

I'm not seeing the problem with Abyssea XP. Every job is useful and no one is turned down or denied the opportunity to participate. The quantity of players has no effect on the XP awarded per member like in the old 6 man system.

For one I'm deeply glad that I don't have to deal with princess BRD's who refuse to party with PLD's, DRKs, THFs, PUPs, or anything they feel is inferior to themselves. I'm glad I don't have to wait for 30 min in whitegate for a BRD to appear, only to have to break the group. Or worse, a BRD does appear and refuse's to XP unless we're 5/6 already and everyone is HNM geared.

The old system was broke, it excluded half of the jobs in the game and greatly favored a small selection. It didn't teach you anything other then how to rapidly engage and kill pink birds. Old system sucked period, end of story.

[Alhanelem]

abyssea leveling is killing alot of the game.
No, it's not. If you want to find friends for a traditional, slow, 6 man party, you are still free to do that. It's still completely possible to do so, and you can find some like-minded individuals if you look hard enough.

Unlees grinding for weeks on end is your idea of a good time, abyssea leveling is saving a lot of the game, not killing it.

I don't dislike EXPing, but after three or four hours of it, I'm burned out for a while and want to do something else.


Abyssea raised our expectations for upcoming content - expectations that the development team cant/wont meet.The thing with Abyssea, is it makes people feel powerful. This creates an event environment that future events and content cannot possibly live up to without using the same systems. That is where Abyssea fails. It's great by itself, but creates a big question of "ok, we conquered that, what's next?" and being inevitably disappointed by the results.

[Camiie]

The thing with Abyssea, is it makes people feel powerful. This creates an event environment that future events and content cannot possibly live up to without using the same systems. That is where Abyssea fails. It's great by itself, but creates a big question of "ok, we conquered that, what's next?" and being inevitably disappointed by the results.


That's why I wish it had become the game. Abyssea makes me feel good and have fun. The rest of the game, in general, doesn't. At least it doesn't do so nearly as well. I know many disagree with me, and obviously SE disagrees with me, but yes everything released after Abyssea HAS been a let down in my opinion.

[Unleashhell]

I don't see how leveling from 30 to 99 through abyssea is helping anything. You got nothing but under skilled combat and magic skills and hordes of people that don't even know how to play the jobs they level. Your not gonna sit there and say ok I got level 30 to 99 in a day now I'll go buy skillup food and cap out my skills and I will know how to play this job!!! No sorry you wont know how to play that job. You wont know how to use it efficiently in a party. You wont know how to use abilities at the right times. Having unlimited MP refresh while just standing there does nothing for you. At least back before Abyssea you had to consider using MP efficiently and had to rest when the time came. All these are the types of things you learn through the grind part of the old exping. All Abyssea did was transfer all the SMN burned level 75 jobs people had to a more widespread format. IMO Abyssea should have been a level 70+ area, making it that people actually learned the basics and some kind of skill toward playing the jobs.

[Sparthos]

Remember when people took a year to hit the level cap and still sucked at their class? I do.

Abyssea or no Abyssea, the effort you put into the class doesn't change with extended grindtime.

[Jerynh]

Nobody is actually saying grinding for hours and hours and days and weeks is a great way to do things. But the fact that before it was more difficult to party, took exponentially longer to get a job to max level, and forced us to actually want to invest in gear for the current job we were working on regardless of the level, helped the rest of the content in the game, which is now obsolete, stay alive. The entire game is based around gear acquisition, but nobody needs good gear until 99 anymore. I think most people were bitter about that. I still am. Very very very few people had all jobs to 75. Very very few even had enough jobs high enough to try for Maat's cap. No matter what, there were always people working on another job, and thus, gear between 1 and 74 actually sold, so there was reason to keep doing BCNMs or KSNMs, reason to craft that gear (so reason to farm those materials), and so on.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Nobody is actually saying grinding for hours and hours and days and weeks is a great way to do things. But the fact that before it was more difficult to party, took exponentially longer to get a job to max level, and forced us to actually want to invest in gear for the current job we were working on regardless of the level, helped the rest of the content in the game, which is now obsolete, stay alive. The entire game is based around gear acquisition, but nobody needs good gear until 99 anymore. I think most people were bitter about that. I still am. Very very very few people had all jobs to 75. Very very few even had enough jobs high enough to try for Maat's cap. No matter what, there were always people working on another job, and thus, gear between 1 and 74 actually sold, so there was reason to keep doing BCNMs or KSNMs, reason to craft that gear (so reason to farm those materials), and so on.

Jaderattlesnake's existance defies your entire post.

[Tagrineth]

Protip: high level noobs were everywhere BEFORE abyssea

[Alerith]

I really do love this topic. So many people treat it as black and white. Either abyssea exp kills the game or it doesn't. But really, abyssea exp isn't the problem. The problem is:

Laziness.

That's isn't to say those who abyssea burn their jobs are lazy. Rather, the people who burned their jobs then didn't skill up or take the time to learn their abilities properly are the ones causing others to suffer. These are the same people who sit and shout spam in PJ who have little to no info on how to actually go about the event.

Wondering why your Blizzard V won't break 1500 damage? Wondering why you still died with invincible up? Wondering why Raja still hasn't dropped a Raja's Ring?

Knowledge is power and many people are still caught up in the "oh, I'm max level. I'm status yo!"

News flash, max level hasn't been a symbol of status since pre-WotG, back when hitting 75 was a fair accomplishment.

Do I feel abyssea was too easy? Sure. It could have been implemented differently. Do I blame the abyssea exp gains for a decline in XI? Not totally.

All the issues with players today existed before abyssea. If anything can be blamed on abyssea, its allowing these same players access to a quicker means of reaching max level where they seem to think they are infallable.

Tl;dr: Its lazy players, not the actual exp. Skill up your shit and do some research.

[Meyi]

Nobody is actually saying grinding for hours and hours and days and weeks is a great way to do things. But the fact that before it was more difficult to party, took exponentially longer to get a job to max level, and forced us to actually want to invest in gear for the current job we were working on regardless of the level, helped the rest of the content in the game, which is now obsolete, stay alive. The entire game is based around gear acquisition, but nobody needs good gear until 99 anymore. I think most people were bitter about that. I still am. Very very very few people had all jobs to 75. Very very few even had enough jobs high enough to try for Maat's cap. No matter what, there were always people working on another job, and thus, gear between 1 and 74 actually sold, so there was reason to keep doing BCNMs or KSNMs, reason to craft that gear (so reason to farm those materials), and so on.

You can't do missions, quests, or BCNMs as a level 99?

[Luvbunny]

Nostalgia glasses, please remove them.

Hah - I guess the OP sure love to take one year to get 1 million limit points needed to get those weapon skills LMAO. Some people are just masochist and have no life - taking the long slow torturous way to get things done. Everyone else do aby party, get stuffs done and move on to have a life outside FFXI.

[Ravenmore]

I really do love this topic. So many people treat it as black and white. Either abyssea exp kills the game or it doesn't. But really, abyssea exp isn't the problem. The problem is:

Laziness.

That's isn't to say those who abyssea burn their jobs are lazy. Rather, the people who burned their jobs then didn't skill up or take the time to learn their abilities properly are the ones causing others to suffer. These are the same people who sit and shout spam in PJ who have little to no info on how to actually go about the event.

Wondering why your Blizzard V won't break 1500 damage? Wondering why you still died with invincible up? Wondering why Raja still hasn't dropped a Raja's Ring?

Knowledge is power and many people are still caught up in the "oh, I'm max level. I'm status yo!"

News flash, max level hasn't been a symbol of status since pre-WotG, back when hitting 75 was a fair accomplishment.

Do I feel abyssea was too easy? Sure. It could have been implemented differently. Do I blame the abyssea exp gains for a decline in XI? Not totally.

All the issues with players today existed before abyssea. If anything can be blamed on abyssea, its allowing these same players access to a quicker means of reaching max level where they seem to think they are infallable.

Tl;dr: Its lazy players, not the actual exp. Skill up your shit and do some research.

More like it hasn't been a accouplishment since pre-ToAU. I still say abyssea was great for leveling if for only one thing, only dealing with brds and rdms in exp that REALLY want to be leveling brd of rdm.

[Luvbunny]

For one I'm deeply glad that I don't have to deal with princess BRD's who refuse to party with PLD's, DRKs, THFs, PUPs, or anything they feel is inferior to themselves. I'm glad I don't have to wait for 30 min in whitegate for a BRD to appear, only to have to break the group. The old system was broke, it excluded half of the jobs in the game and greatly favored a small selection. Old system sucked period, end of story.

In a nutshell, agree a thousand times. You pay monthly fees you should be able to enjoy the game content with little hindrance and "challenge" and get on it have fun with little "works". The grind is still there - it never goes away - the whole thing about the game is pure grind. Now you just have to do it easier, with a whole lot less hassle - and many options on how you want to grind it. Abyssea brought many amazing things to the game - and not so good thing when it comes on breeding unskillfull players - but hey at least it is extremely democratic and almost everyone can have fun and participate in the activities. Now the game is floundering again and it is going back to the dark ages - at least Abyssea still have tons of content for casual players and it never going away.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Remember when people took a year to hit the level cap and still sucked at their class? I do.

Abyssea or no Abyssea, the effort you put into the class doesn't change with extended grindtime.When did it ever take people a year to do that?

[Kimble]

When did it ever take people a year to do that?

Anytime before TOAU when exp started to get a lot easier/faster.

[Trangnai]

I'm not seeing the problem with Abyssea XP. Every job is useful and no one is turned down or denied the opportunity to participate. The quantity of players has no effect on the XP awarded per member like in the old 6 man system.

For one I'm deeply glad that I don't have to deal with princess BRD's who refuse to party with PLD's, DRKs, THFs, PUPs, or anything they feel is inferior to themselves. I'm glad I don't have to wait for 30 min in whitegate for a BRD to appear, only to have to break the group. Or worse, a BRD does appear and refuse's to XP unless we're 5/6 already and everyone is HNM geared.

The old system was broke, it excluded half of the jobs in the game and greatly favored a small selection. It didn't teach you anything other then how to rapidly engage and kill pink birds. Old system sucked period, end of story.

Abyssea didn't get rid of elitists. It just happened to be in ToAU days those elitists were brds, wars, sams. examples are brds and wars who didn't want to exp on colibri with my blu, even thought they believed i couldn't keep up with there dmg. There was a few I convinced to invite me, and to say the least they were surprised. however in terms of aby exp, it just rose the number requirement for maximum exp speed, with alot more spots comes alot more "just get X job". thought thats not to say that aby exps are not still going to try and find war, mnk, blm, whm, and blu.

Do I think Abyssea exp is killing the game? somewhat, I personally enjoy playing my job when I level it, playing it is the reason I want to level a job to begin with, not sit there and waste my curor opening chests or pay off some RMT with my gil to FC burn and just afk for 48 hours.

But for people like me there are lots of options now, unlike when Abyssea was first released (aby exp or slow solo exp), theres now FoV and GoV page burning, double exp per kill which stacks with exp rings, and theres the old options like Campaign. Granted the low level market is still somewhat dead on AH but its better then when Abyssea took over the games exp system. I can exp at a rate that while not uber fast is still fast enough for me to be content and keep my skills capped at the same time. what more can I ask for? free items from chests? I can still get that outside of Abyssea too.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Anytime before TOAU when exp started to get a lot easier/faster.I've been here since '03, it's never taken that long. Months maybe, if you 're not trying.

[Malamasala]

Well, I spent some 5 hours farming my limit break stone. I got my fair share of the boring normal zones. When you are so weak that it takes you 3 minutes to kill a DC mob. Or when you party up with someone else and kill IT mobs that take about 17 damage from your staff, and you do about 800 predator claws. Oh the joy of being outside Abyssea and doing it the old fashioned way.

Of course playing SMN you are kind of asking to take an eternity to accomplish anything. I did whack 2 ITs with Odin though, which kind of made me like him again.

[hiko]

I've been here since '03, it's never taken that long. Months maybe, if you 're not trying.


1st job!
-lvl18:unlock and lvl sub(s)
(-lvl30 unlock and lvl advanced job)
-lvl50+5n: LBs
+
farming/HELM/BCNMs/... every now and then if you wanted to get decent gear/get your spells/...
+ avilable playtime

lot of people stopped playing FF before getting 75 because xp sytem was fail.
new people who stop FF because cant get xp pt outside aby would have stopped too with old system

[Sparthos]

I've been here since '03, it's never taken that long. Months maybe, if you 're not trying.

Now now dont be modest. If you were on BRD or WHM or PLD EXP wasn't bad. THF? PUP? BLU? BST? Months to get to cap if you were lucky because when you're in a pool of DD and 5 SAM were LFP guess what? You were getting passed up every time.

The old EXP system was a joke. People are nostalgia'ing hard for a system where PTs screwed half the classes in the game so bad people thought getting 3k in Campaign was 'awesome'. No it wasnt, it was flipping stupid.


People who want to EXP the 'old' way, go get 5 suckers and camp Torama in Onzozo. Enjoy your 'superior' EXP.

[Brolic]

i have been playing for a number of years now and i have found that while the abyssea areas are very fun, The way EXP is gained there is not a very good idea, alot of jobs that are lower are loseing out to the area and cannot find partys to exp with. Furthur more the new abilitys Square Enix are adding do not seem to be showcased...and in my opinion the abilitys would be better enjoyed in a standard old style EXP party just like we did years before. It is just my opinion...and i have spoken to other players about it and they also share the same feelings that abyssea mega leveling is killing a chunk of the game. Square Enix needs to put better ideas into the return of the standard EXP party...the new abilitys have opened a new door to even more fun and exciteing party setups and job role functions...but it will undoubtedly not be changed since abyssea exping has made such a impact. yesterday I leveled 4 jobs to LV99 in a couple hours..and have admit it was cool to go that high in such a short time...but in the end it ruined my taste for it....i hope everyone can pick some sense of this post...i had too much to say and did not know where to start. I hope everyone replys with a peaceful and positive reply ..thank you and merry christmas and a happy new year to you all.

you're an idiot, merry christmas

[Dreamin]

It's very simple. Bad players will always be bad players. Good players will always find a way to be good players. Regardless of how they level and what they level. This isn't limited to just exp grind, it's the same as ppl who has Emp Weapons but doesn't have skill or gears to support them (raise your hands if you ever seen a pink/white job with emp who keep cant get TP to WS and misses most of their WSs).

What's the point of leveling every job to 99 if you're not going to gear and skill them up appropriately if you plan on using them? If you're not going to use them, then what's the point of leveling them? (time filler?).

If you enjoy farming with friends and wants to do old school exp style, then make a party and invite your friends to go to your favorite zone (and colibri camp are now always opened and no one having to deal with overcamping). Level sync it if you need to do a low level job. If you feel those exp are too slow, there are tons of FoV/GoV camp that would allow you to play the old style as well if you want. And the new GoV will get busier as people need to skill up (solo'ers who might also want to do elemental trial at the same time perhaps).

There are many other options for those people that keep going back to the 'Blame/Hate Abyssea'. I think this is one area where SE has done well and it making exp grind much easier than what it used to be. If you dont like all the unskilled players, then don't invite them for events. If they're your friends, take them out for some skilling rounds or help them with gear choice, etc.

Basically, the only way to remove bad players is to move them from bad to avg to good players.

[The_GiB]

while I don't enjoy Abyssea XPing and go out of my way to solo/ Low man XP outside of abyssea *Solo or Duo BLM Mana burning on Mega Worms in Gustav Tunnel is AMAZING XP*, you can't be a snob about it. There are people that enjoy playing the game, but can't dedicate several hours a day grinding XP to make only small gains

play the game the way you want and don't judge other people, but if you do do this, don't be shocked when your Avengers Wearing 5/5 Pink 99 MNK gets laughed out of actual end game content that doesn't contain atma :P

[FrankReynolds]

Player one spends 3 months leveling a job.

Player two spends 2 days leveling, and the next 3 months killing NMS, and doing events on the same job.

Which one do you want at your event? The guy who has no frigging idea whats going on? or the guy who sucked at first, till he practiced for 2-3 months?

Me personally.... I don't want to do events with people that are really good at xp parties. I want to go with people who are good at that event.

[Greatguardian]

The above is also why 95% of Maat Cap players pre-Abyssea were absolute garbage at the game.

Learning how to kill pink birds in a group of 6 doesn't really teach you a damn thing about the rest of the game, and generally grants you an attitude that inhibits learning anything new.

[Alhanelem]

That's why I wish it had become the game. Abyssea makes me feel good and have fun. The rest of the game, in general, doesn't. At least it doesn't do so nearly as well. I know many disagree with me, and obviously SE disagrees with me, but yes everything released after Abyssea HAS been a let down in my opinion.
Actually, the dev team has acknowledged the very problem I described in some interview. They don't view abyssea itself as a faliure, as it was quite successful overall, but that it failed by creating a nearly unfixable conundrum for future content.

[Sparthos]

BUT MAATS CAP GAIS MEANS I R EXPERT.

Expert at being mediocre at multiple classes.


that it failed by creating a nearly unfixable conundrum for future content.

Bullshit.

[Kimble]

BUT MAATS CAP GAIS MEANS I R EXPERT.

Expert at being mediocre at multiple classes.



Bullshit.


So their answer is to give us hardly any content. Oh, and make their main end game content (VW) use atmas and temp items like abyssea, lol.

[Camiie]

Actually, the dev team has acknowledged the very problem I described in some interview. They don't view abyssea itself as a faliure, as it was quite successful overall, but that it failed by creating a nearly unfixable conundrum for future content.


I would have been thrilled with more Abyssea. The only real conundrum is they don't want to do that type of content anymore.

[FrankReynolds]

The only real conundrum is they don't want to do that type of content anymore.

Exactly. They could have made atmas etc. for outside. They didn't because that was easier than adjusting the outside content. Laziness for the win.

[Olor]

honestly I don't care that I am not as powerful outside abbyssea as I am in it - what I want continued from abyssea is the style of progression (aka, not random really crappy drop rates and lots of logs)

the only power thing I would like to see continued post abyssea is more refresh on gear or refresh abilities for mages. I mean refresh in more slots (not only on random aug gear too please) and more on each piece (2 or 3 vs 1)... mages have been playing Final "sit on your arse and wait for MP" XI for too long

[Zumi]

Something is killing the game and it sure isn't abysses leveling.

[FrankReynolds]

honestly I don't care that I am not as powerful outside abbyssea as I am in it - what I want continued from abyssea is the style of progression (aka, not random really crappy drop rates and lots of logs)


The new upgrade items for relic pieces seems to be a step in the right direction. Getting 20k XP while wearing a particular piece in a certain zone may be annoying though.

[Mirabelle]

I've been here since '03, it's never taken that long. Months maybe, if you 're not trying.

Raises hand.

I took over a year to get RDM to 75. Playing casually of course. Few hours on weeknights and some weekend hours. probably never more than 12 hours a week and usually closer to 8-9. Biggest problem wasn't that levelling took that long, it was farming and camping NM's for gear. Getting subjobs levelled. Finishing mission content to progress.

Sure if you didn't have a job and family, you could get to 75 much quicker, but not everyone is in that boat. Of course I don't begrudge you hardcore folks your speed at progressing in the game. Personally very glad to still have ties to RL.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Now now dont be modest. If you were on BRD or WHM or PLD EXP wasn't bad. THF? PUP? BLU? BST? Months to get to cap if you were lucky because when you're in a pool of DD and 5 SAM were LFP guess what? You were getting passed up every time.

The old EXP system was a joke. People are nostalgia'ing hard for a system where PTs screwed half the classes in the game so bad people thought getting 3k in Campaign was 'awesome'. No it wasnt, it was flipping stupid.


People who want to EXP the 'old' way, go get 5 suckers and camp Torama in Onzozo. Enjoy your 'superior' EXP.Oh no, no, no. I've burned 12 jobs to 90+ in aby and 5 more an other characters. I'm glad XP has changed, I can lvl all of the jobs that suck and should just be given to you at 75 to start to get it over with. Still, it shouldn't take that long unless you dont' play very much. I was casual back then and it still didnt' take very long. When I started back up in 04 somewhere it went blm5, whm10, blm18, whm30, war5, nin10, war18, nin37, thf70, steal, steal, steal, steal..., steal >.<, steal -_-, ste... screw it, smn37, whm75... better. Even with that back tracking and thf it was still all less then 6mo.

[FrankReynolds]

Oh no, no, no. I've burned 12 jobs to 90+ in aby and 5 more an other characters. I'm glad XP has changed, I can lvl all of the jobs that suck and should just be given to you at 75 to start to get it over with. Still, it shouldn't take that long unless you dont' play very much. I was casual back then and it still didnt' take very long. When I started back up in 04 somewhere it went blm5, whm10, blm18, whm30, war5, nin10, war18, nin37, thf70, steal, steal, steal, steal..., steal >.<, steal -_-, ste... screw it, smn37, whm75... better. Even with that back tracking and thf it was still all less then 6mo.

I'm gonna leave your claim alone, and just say: It was so bad that it felt like a year.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

I'm gonna leave your claim alone, and just say: It was so bad that it felt like a year.I'll give you that.
Just remember, focus and determination will prevail!(In getting XP.)

[Babygyrl]

i have been playing for a number of years now and i have found that while the abyssea areas are very fun, The way EXP is gained there is not a very good idea, alot of jobs that are lower are loseing out to the area and cannot find partys to exp with. Furthur more the new abilitys Square Enix are adding do not seem to be showcased...and in my opinion the abilitys would be better enjoyed in a standard old style EXP party just like we did years before. It is just my opinion...and i have spoken to other players about it and they also share the same feelings that abyssea mega leveling is killing a chunk of the game. Square Enix needs to put better ideas into the return of the standard EXP party...the new abilitys have opened a new door to even more fun and exciteing party setups and job role functions...but it will undoubtedly not be changed since abyssea exping has made such a impact. yesterday I leveled 4 jobs to LV99 in a couple hours..and have admit it was cool to go that high in such a short time...but in the end it ruined my taste for it....i hope everyone can pick some sense of this post...i had too much to say and did not know where to start. I hope everyone replys with a peaceful and positive reply ..thank you and merry christmas and a happy new year to you all.

The problem is not the leveling in aby, its that lower level jobs (lvl 30) and up are allowed in side Aby in the first place. that is the CRITICAL mistake they made with the abyssea expansions, but they cant take it back now, and that topic has already been beaten like a dead horse already so thats all i will say about that lol

[Tohihroyu]

http://img.chan4chan.com/img/2010-04-03/tn_1270246071759.jpg

ITT: Abyssea feat Final Fantasy XI, seen it all before.

[Alhanelem]

Player one spends 3 months leveling a job.

Player two spends 2 days leveling, and the next 3 months killing NMS, and doing events on the same job.

Which one do you want at your event? The guy who has no frigging idea whats going on? or the guy who sucked at first, till he practiced for 2-3 months?

Me personally.... I don't want to do events with people that are really good at xp parties. I want to go with people who are good at that event.
No job requires 2-3 months of "practice" to understand.

Most jobs cannot be fighting NMs right after they burn to 99 because they don't have weapon skill levels. they have to keep partying to raise them. Getitng to level 99 means you're only halfaway there if you aren't a longtime player.

[FrankReynolds]

No job requires 2-3 months of "practice" to understand.

Most jobs cannot be fighting NMs right after they burn to 99 because they don't have weapon skill levels. they have to keep partying to raise them. Getitng to level 99 means you're only halfaway there if you aren't a longtime player.

Not really, it just means you have to spend a day or two skilling up w/e specific weapon that job uses. understanding a job, and being good at it in end game events are two totally different things. Odds are the guy that's just finishing the partying stage doesn't understand his role in an event setting and he definitely isn't good at it. This goes even more so for people leveling their first jobs. I mean hell... half the gear and techniques you use in endgame revolve around Job Abilities, Weapon Skills, and Spells that wren't even available until you finish leveling. How are you gonna learn em by partying?

[Greatguardian]

You don't party to cap skills. You can bring them to level 80~ cap by hitting an inanimate object overnight and then go from there. Grand total of a couple hours of actual playtime time to fully cap a skill.

[Merton9999]

I had a phenomenal time in this game in my first year. It took about six months to get RDM to 75 (playing way more intently than I ever have since), and I finished right before CoP came out. Now, I also loved Abyssea for its time, and also wish the future game would be more of Abyssea. However, nothing there, including the leveling, has been as fun as my first 75 level grind.

Here's the problem though: that old level grind was fun ONCE. In fact, the two more times I did it before Abyssea came out, the returns in enjoyment level were marginal in the extreme. I never could have continued that, and quit for about a year before Abyssea. Abyssea let me enjoy the wealth of various play styles in 3 more jobs that I could fully enjoy in fun end game content without taking the time to slow grind them, which I never would have done.

I'd agree maybe that for new players it kinda stinks that they'll never get that long drawn out leveling experience. I'll exclude ToAU leveling from that because it just sucked. I did enjoy moon, sky and KRT the first time through though. The problem is most of us have done the old way, and personally I'd pick any other game out there rather than do that again. In fact, the recent post-Abyssea content reminds me so much of the old grinds that I've done just that.

[Alhanelem]

Not really, it just means you have to spend a day or two skilling up w/e specific weaponIf you think you can cap your main weapon / magic skills in a day or two if you abyssea burned from 30 to 99, you're more delusional than I thought.

hey there, 2handed weapons, how are you? What's that? a week later and you're still not capped? Dang....

[Greatguardian]

You must really not know how to quickly cap weapons.

Like, seriously.

Get to 80 cap while you sleep on fortalices then go Retaliation spam a bunch of mandies in Altep. Done in a couple hours.

[Alhanelem]

The problem is not the leveling in aby, its that lower level jobs (lvl 30) and up are allowed in side Aby in the first place. that is the CRITICAL mistake they made with the abyssea expansionsIt's not a mistake, much less a critical one. Such people still have a lot of work to do when they hit 99, and can't even pretend to try to do any real event until they've done so. These are the people complaining that 99 limit break is too hard, and these are the people that will be unable to move past it until they grow some balls.

People such as you say this and act as if there's a ton of level 99s running around that don't know how to engage a target or cast a spell or perform even the most basic tasks.. Odds are if someone is terrible at a job, it's because they're just plain terrible at it. Making them level slower isn't going to change that. I burned DRK to 99 (though I had four jobs to 75 before abyssea came out) and it took hours of skilling up over a few days to get it to where it was useable; I now have some gear for it and can play it with competency. It's not rocket science, and it doesn't take months to figure out. Just because someone rushed to 99 as fast as they could, doesn't mean they're total idiots automatically- there would be just as many idiots in the game whether we all leveled really fast or not.


Get to 80 cap while you sleep on fortalices then go Retaliation spam a bunch of mandies in Altep. Done in a couple hours.None of the jobs I have taken to 99 so far have this "retaliation" you speak of. Not that the time savings would be significant for me with most of my skills reasonably close to cap if I were to do so. I'd probably spend more time leveling a job I dont enjoy than I would save in time to cap the skills I need. Your strategy also doesn't help you with Katana or Great Katana.

[FrankReynolds]

If you think you can cap your main weapon / magic skills in a day or two if you abyssea burned from 30 to 99, you're more delusional than I thought.

hey there, 2handed weapons, how are you? What's that? a week later and you're still not capped? Dang....

Even if it took 2 weeks, you would still have an enormous amount of time to learn your end game job, while joe blow nostalgia partier is off xping somewhere, wondering what a merit is.

[Zeo]

As a member of the "excluded" group (career BLU) back then, I was happy to say "good riddance" to that trash. Pretty much ate the imps outside the Azouph staging point for breakfast. The bulk of my merits before leveling up DRG came off those little guys.

[Greatguardian]

Well, Counterstance from subjob would have worked equally well up until a little while ago, but SE ninja-nerfed Counter so that it gives Evasion skillups instead of weapon-based skillups on procs, so yeah you're shit outta luck now.

[CrAZYVIC]

We spend 80% Of time running in parties -_- This sux. I hope they add in the future a way for auto repeat the regimen like in grounds of valor

Abbysea is fun buddy. Get your friends and do trio Dominion notes you will reach 90 - 120k per hour having Fun with your friends. The people think is mandatory play with 18 guys... Nah abbysea is a wonderfull place where you can Solo and still getting 60k per hour

[Alhanelem]

Even if it took 2 weeks, you would still have an enormous amount of time to learn your end game job, while joe blow nostalgia partier is off xping somewhere, wondering what a merit is. You literally can't get past level 75 without knowing what a merit is.

The limit break quests block the most idiotic of idiots.

Don't know what a merit is? Hey, level 75 is pretty cool.

Can't handle easy prey? Same deal - cant get easily crest drops unless someone does it for you

Can't win a very standard BCNM fight? Well, level 95 isn't that bad...

(I know you werent speaking against me here, but it's something worth mentioning for the others)

[Runespider]

The idea behind Abyssea speed leveling was to get people to endgame (as well as welcome back returnees) where the aby dev team were determined to make mass amounts of new endgame content to keep us all happy. Awesome plan!..but..

Square replaces the awesome dev team we had and now we have team failure (from 14) thats not only stuck in the dark ages but severely underfunded to boot, as such the plan didn't go through properly and now they ruined the XP grind and mainstay content and they are adding endgame content everyone hates at an incredible snails pace. It's like having a grand scheme to burn your forest down with the plans to replant all the trees AND grow crops but before the fire goes out you sack the large group of skilled people that were going to replant etc and hire 10 monkeys to do it instead.

So they goofed basically, but it's too late now.

[FrankReynolds]

You literally can't get past level 75 without knowing what a merit is.

The limit break quests block the most idiotic of idiots.

Don't know what a merit is? Hey, level 75 is pretty cool.

Can't handle easy prey? Same deal - cant get easily crest drops unless someone does it for you

Can't win a very standard BCNM fight? Well, level 95 isn't that bad...

(I know you werent speaking against me here, but it's something worth mentioning for the others)

No, I was joking about not knowing what a merit is. Wasn't trying to say you didn't know.

Skilling up takes a lot less time than leveling old school, and you can do it while doing other crap. IE. farming cruor / gil for your new 99 gear, farming pops for your af3, breaking weapon latents that would be unacceptable in a 6 man party set up, ToM trials for your new 99 weapons / staffs, etc. you get the picture.

Getting XP in a 6 man group is slow enough without DD's using crappy trial weapons, or Mages trying to spam Bbio/dia 1,000 times per mob to skill up.

[Damane]

The thing with Abyssea, is it makes people feel powerful. This creates an event environment that future events and content cannot possibly live up to without using the same systems. That is where Abyssea fails. It's great by itself, but creates a big question of "ok, we conquered that, what's next?" and being inevitably disappointed by the results.

no I think the bigger problem is that Abyssea got the "effort vs reward" ratio right (it was perfect). Now the went back to "olde" FFXI droprates... and thats just horrible. The droprates back then were horrible! the "effort vs reward" ratio was corincaca, it depended only on luck. You could do 100 Salvage runs and still not get that one piece you wanted, all yout effort was for shit. Whereas in Abyssea you go in and ACTUALLY achieve something.
Voidwatch is haveing the same problem like "olde" FFXI, "effort vs reward" is shit in there. I did countless VW battles since it got intreduced half year+ ago and still have to see a rare/ex body in my inventory...

[Luvbunny]

The problem is not the leveling in aby, its that lower level jobs (lvl 30) and up are allowed in side Aby in the first place. that is the CRITICAL mistake they made with the abyssea expansions, but they cant take it back now, and that topic has already been beaten like a dead horse already so thats all i will say about that lol

If you think this is critical mistake you are delusional lol - look at GoV Book Burn and come back to me. Even if they decided that you cannot go in Abyssea until lvl 75, people will do book burn camp outside aby. And now MORE THAN EVER there are gazillion camps where you can do this from lvl 1-99 without setting foot inside Abyssea. Crawler Nest is a great example on this where you can stay in one place and just change mobs as you lvl up on various different camps. Book burn is even better since you can afk for hours and get the xp bonus from auto repeat.

Bad players exist no matter how you get your xp and how long you level your jobs. It's not really hard to learn each jobs, you need maybe a week or two playing it regularly, and also seal farming will help you learn that job fast since it's a mini exercise fighting NMs. A few wipes will teach all the aby noobs to rethink strategy, or come up with one :)

[Ketaru]

Abyssea leveling is killing EXP parties and nothing else. The higher level cap is killing everything else.

[Sparthos]

Abyssea leveling is killing old school, slow as paste EXP parties and nothing else. The lack of content is killing everything else.

I think this sums it up.

[Luvbunny]

If you think you can cap your main weapon / magic skills in a day or two if you abyssea burned from 30 to 99, you're more delusional than I thought.

hey there, 2handed weapons, how are you? What's that? a week later and you're still not capped? Dang....

Oh hello there - yes you can cap your main weapon skill in 2-3 days if you know where and what to fight and eat the saltenas/elshena/montagna food according to your weapon skills. Yes 2 handed will be a bit slower than single handed weapon. Heck as warrior you can skill ups dagger, axe, sword, and clubs super fast this way. Ground of Valors benefits also help a lot. Example: As lvl 95-99, you can get skills from 100s to 275s in Boyahda Tree doing book 1-4 in 6 hours or less. Magic skills will definitely takes longer to skill ups, perhaps 2-3 weeks playing daily for 2-3 hours.

As for learning your jobs - abyssea NM seal farming events are good for this. The mob is challenging enough for aby nooby babies and the rewards are rather good, and yeah they will wipe a lot in the beginning but they should be able to come up with strategy sooner or later :) If you are 275s and up skillwise, these seals NM is great to max your skills - you get massive skill ups gain (without food - and extra fast with food).

[Catsby]

So abyssea leveling killing the game eh? I'll consider it a valid argument if you can show me decent content for level 30 to 98 players. In other words, why be any level besides 99 now?

[Meyi]

Those walls... can they skill up SMN magic and BLM magic as well?

[Neisan_Quetz]

/Sch dark arts, ride it for months, Blm skilled up.

Smn, either BP IT mobs or find an empty spot far away from prying eyes.

[hiko]

If you think you can cap your main weapon / magic skills in a day or two if you abyssea burned from 30 to 99, you're more delusional than I thought.

hey there, 2handed weapons, how are you? What's that? a week later and you're still not capped? Dang....
If you think you cap your skills on "old school" XP parties you're more delusional than we are (or doing very crappy xppt)
I leeched war 40-85, 2 days later i had all red procs, a skill high enough to be hitting mobs with proc weapon and lvl80+ skill on my GA (start from0 )

the job that need most work to be ready is BLU (need to learn spells) and most of the spell are from mobs you don't xppt on