Suggestion: Break the game, SE

[Aquilla]

There's a lot of poo-flinging that goes on around here. However, there's also a ton of great suggestions that often go unanswered.

I'll grant that, over the years, most people change tastes. There's no going back, and no amount of rose-colored nostalgia is going to recreate an experience. I'm not asking to go back to the days of 2k/hr dunes parties.

I'm saying that the game needs to be broken.

FFXI has gone threadbare. Yeah, people play for friends -- but it's getting to be a lonely journey as the populace inevitably shrinks.

SE, your recent additions and updates keep proving to your players that you don't know where the game's true potential lies.

Yeah, people, in general, will always whine. Aby broke the game, and it was fun. A blm could go oneshot a mob. A monk could go /war and solo VTs without stopping. Just about any job, no matter how well or poorly geared, could go in and get something done. It was fun.

To put it simply: exciting announcement right now is not a spiky red body piece with a tiny bit of str/dex and crit hit+. Multiply those stats by ten, and it'd be exciting.

Exciting won't be a raise spell that reduces my weakness time by 2 minutes, that will be 'extremely difficult to obtain'. Exciting would be making raise instacast, giving whms full-life.

Flying chocobos would be exciting. Adding the ability to call your personal chocobo in every outdoor area in the game, past/northlands included, would be exciting.

Minor upgrades/sidegrades/downgrades aren't exciting. They aren't upsetting. They're completely apathy-inducing. Break the game, SE. I realize that players of games don't make the best developers, but the players overall seem to be saying that they do not want any more piddly half-steps in a meandering way.

You've got a decent bit of nostalgia left. Unfortunately, that currency is wearing thin. One by one, your players will leave, unless you shake the game up, unless you make it alive again.

that is all.

[Kapao]

I have a great suggestion along those lines too. Why not make the game free and also put a moogle that gives you all the multiplicative gear you want.

Or play on the test server

[llello]

Really the only thing I agree with is the ability to call raised chocobos in other than a handful of areas. 99 hasn't been the cap for too long. I'm willing to wait and let the Devs rebalance and tweak the game to the 99 cap even if it takes a while. Letting people full-time godmode isn't the answer.

[Runespider]

The main thing they are failing on is just worrying more about balance than the game being fun, for all it's faults FFXI Abyssea was genuinly fun and rewarding, "new" FFXI is appaulingly boring, very much about leaving players out of content and horribly unrewarding.

[Elexia]

Letting people full-time godmode isn't the answer.

Works for every other MMO, so why not?

[Aquilla]

The main thing they are failing on is just worrying more about balance than the game being fun, for all it's faults FFXI Abyssea was genuinly fun and rewarding, "new" FFXI is appaulingly boring, very much about leaving players out of content and horribly unrewarding.

Nicely said. I'm not asking for godmode, just asking for fun. Intermediate rewards are okay. Why was aby fun/rewarding? Because you could zone in w/ a few of your friends and get something that was genuinely better than the stuff I was already wearing. It didn't make me godmode after af3+1 -- or even after af3+2 -- but it was nice.

Don't be afraid to jump in with both feet. Honestly, what giant change would happen if we did get a bit more oomph in our moggy bags? The game might be fun to play?

[Elexia]

I think the thing is, because of Abyssea people no longer like working or playing with others outside of a few friends or a clique, not even in an LS at times.

So its not that "new FFXI is boring", its that it's back to where people have to play together, but abyssea spoiled the hell out of everyone, made everyone lazy and unwilling to do anything unless you're showered in rewards for almost no work (Abyssea.)

[Aquilla]

I think the thing is, because of Abyssea people no longer like working or playing with others outside of a few friends or a clique, not even in an LS at times.

So its not that "new FFXI is boring", its that it's back to where people have to play together, but abyssea spoiled the hell out of everyone, made everyone lazy and unwilling to do anything unless you're showered in rewards for almost no work (Abyssea.)

Pft. Nine times out of ten, doing anything in aby it's easy to make a group, easy to help people out. Two people at same NM spot will team up. People will come and help to kill a NM because it's relatively easy for them to do so.

Now take that mentality into the land kings camping era, or sky endgame era, or ToAU endgame. Two groups teaming up to take down a HNM? That'll happen when drama torama takes up ballet. Likewise for any NM that was camped, regardless of why it was camped, or how hard/easy it was to kill. People weren't more willing to work together or nicer in the old days. If anything, the intense competition over uber-dorp NMs was more likely to make them into jerks.

XP? Nowadays, xp alliances will take anything and anyone. Back in the good old days, if you weren't a select few, you were likely to wait a week for your xp party, and have it disband after getting less than 10k. People weren't nicer. People refused to party with lol-job of the week. People refused to party without bandwagon-job of the week.

[llello]

I actually agree rune, I think balance has been too much of the focus lately. But its also very important for a mmo model like this.Wouldn't it "kill" FFXI faster if everyone could steamroll any (relevant) current content? I don't think the dev team, especially the current reduced dev team, could even come close to pumping out abyssea like content at a rate to keep high tier players busy. If players think this is good idea, post some reasons. No offense to OP but you post just says "because it would be exciting".

[Haldarn]

Once you get all jobs to 99, enable the character to change race into a Moogle.

The last endgame event, reclaiming Tavnazia proper, resulting in the reward of a suit of Magitek armour.

The ability to play up to six characters simultaneously without having to have multiple accounts or instances of the game running (like in single player RPGs).

An armoury where you can store/collect all gear and use it in macros out on the field.

The ability to have a castle of your own. With laser turrets.

[Aquilla]

I think what's going to kill FFXI is lack of new players, not the desperate clinging-on of old ones. Yeah, I do want an exciting game. I don't really apologize for it, mainly because I'm not queen of the universe and SE doesn't have to do anything I want.

I don't think that being able to 'steamroll' is the answer, but is the answer 'here's another sidegrade/another event that you've already done'?

Look at this board. Underneath the jaded sarcasm and outright trolling, you'll find a ton of great suggestions by people who probably know more about games than I do, about how the game could be made more fun *without* retitling it World of Mogcraft.

Yeah, I do want something exciting. There was a lot of stuff in XI that was exciting. A lot of it could be made exciting, without 'steamrolling'.

[Anapingofness]

I couldn't agree more with the thread starter.

FFXI has the potential to succeed... Even in this MMO saturated market. SE simply needs to open its mind to other possibilities/ways of doing things. They really need to start paying attention to what works in other MMO's and see how they can apply it to FFXI to make it a better game. They also need to start paying attention to what their player base is saying.

There is a reason Abyssea was such a success. For the first time in the history of FFXI players could sign on, do an event for a relatively short amount of time and still walk away with something. It's sad that it took doubling everyone's stats in Abyssea to make the game both refreshing and fun. For the first time in FFXI history I was able to freely cast my WHM spells without running out of MP after x3 spells! It was as if Abyssea allowed players to play jobs to their fullest potential.

The problem now is that SE is regressing to their old ways. They know that players enjoyed Abyssea immensely and that it cut the unbelievable grind down. So why regress?

This isn't 2005 where the only competition FFXI had was EQ and Ultima. Right now what we have is a very MMO saturated market. There are F2P MMO's that work a lot harder to retain their players and more importantly attract new ones. The fact that they are F2P means that those games have an instant head start on FFXI. That means that FFXI and SE need to work doubly as hard to attract players. People are cheap, nobody wants to spend money when they don't have to. Therefore, SE really needs to focus on the fun factor of the game. Yes, balancing the game is important but they're taking it too far. They're focused so much on balancing the game that they're killing the fun.


Like the thread started stated, the nostalgia train will only go so far. SE needs to see this as a serious problem and change accordingly. They have to stop relying on nostalgia because that will not attract new players.

[Elexia]

I couldn't agree more with the thread starter.

FFXI has the potential to succeed...

Uh...XI already succeeded lol..did you forget about the 2002 - 2012 time frame it's been running?

[Anapingofness]

Uh...XI already succeeded lol..did you forget about the 2002 - 2012 time frame it's been running?

Ahem-ahem.


FFXI has the potential to succeed*

---> * After surviving for ten years.

[Michae]

The Forums killed XI imo.

Aby had potential at first but all the QQ of the forum posters about how 'hard' everything was caused alot of 'fixes' dumbing down the game and nerfing it to hell. Now that its nerfed ppl QQ about how easy it has become and they are loosing alot of us long time vets and the newbies dont stay long cause between the ease of getting everything and completing everything there is not much to hold ppls attn

canceling my 6 yr account today in fact, sad days

[Camiie]

Uh...XI already succeeded lol..did you forget about the 2002 - 2012 time frame it's been running?

It did OK, but never garnered the numbers a game with the Final Fantasy (+roman numeral) name attached to it should have.

As for the topic, I'd be more than thrilled with more Abyssea style content. I don't know that making the entire game "broken" in the sense of universal atma or flying chocobos is a good idea, but send us to different areas in a rebuilding Abyssea or to other alternate dimensions where we can have similar experiences.

[Runespider]

canceling my 6 yr account today in fact, sad days

I'm very close to it myself, 7-8 years uninterupted subscriber and only what they have done the last year or so has lead me to not want to give them anymore of my money.

I log in only to be bored, the stuff they add is horrible, the goals they offer are out of my reach, the content they are adding in the roadmap look to be trash (lollegion).


I think the thing is, because of Abyssea people no longer like working or playing with others outside of a few friends or a clique, not even in an LS at times.

So its not that "new FFXI is boring", its that it's back to where people have to play together, but abyssea spoiled the hell out of everyone, made everyone lazy and unwilling to do anything unless you're showered in rewards for almost no work (Abyssea.)

They did it, it's like a parent giving their child sweets and candy for a month then trying to go back to carrots and potatoes, with a slap across the face for desert. Most people didn't really like the old big shells but there was no choice, points, drama, guilt trips (you got your drop now stay forever to get everyone else theirs), the drop you want taking a year+, favouritism etc and people don't really wanna go back to that again when they have jobs/responsibilites..or just cba with it.

I did the old HNMLS stuff, I had shells and schedules for every event, worked my butt off for points...big scale events were cool but the negative aspects of it were far worse than the tiny amount of enjoyment you got from any of it. How often did people complain about having to leave their friends and join some big LS because only the serious shells that devoured your playtime could achieve anything, that's what we are going back to.

Players want to be able to do stuff with friends and not have to join a behemoth of a linkshell which they don't even like half the people in, that's why games like Tera are looking so appealing.

[Shipp]

The Forums killed XI imo.

Aby had potential at first but all the QQ of the forum posters about how 'hard' everything was caused alot of 'fixes' dumbing down the game and nerfing it to hell. Now that its nerfed ppl QQ about how easy it has become and they are loosing alot of us long time vets and the newbies dont stay long cause between the ease of getting everything and completing everything there is not much to hold ppls attn

canceling my 6 yr account today in fact, sad days


All the QQ... like you mentioning canceling your account?

Guess what, I'm a vet that was doing endgame while most NAs were still fiddle-farting around on their AF1. I enjoy Abyssea far more than old-school FFXI. The fact that I could come back after a 3-4 year hiatus and get geared in an acceptable timeframe, as well as participate with old and new friends, is what brought me back. There is plenty to do in XI. Nobody is going to complete everything there is to do in a short amount of time, as you suggest.

[Glamdring]

The Forums killed XI imo.

Aby had potential at first but all the QQ of the forum posters about how 'hard' everything was caused alot of 'fixes' dumbing down the game and nerfing it to hell. Now that its nerfed ppl QQ about how easy it has become and they are loosing alot of us long time vets and the newbies dont stay long cause between the ease of getting everything and completing everything there is not much to hold ppls attn

canceling my 6 yr account today in fact, sad days

I'm on board with just about everything said here. The only reasons I still play are the desire to tie up some loose ends I've left dangling for years and to spend time with some in-game friends. There is NOTHING challenging in the game anymore in terms of difficulty, the only difficulty is finding enough people to do things that require multiple bodies (Assault, etc.). So as far as any of the feeling of accomplishment that I used to get in here... nope, not happening. I mean seriously, I can solo a third of the end-game stuff on my BARD, wtf is that about?

Trials? well, I solod 1-75 as a bst/brd (before the introduction of dancer), grinding is no problem for me, but the CHALLENGE is gone. The only real risk of death is if the random number generator that governs hit/miss/damage calculation hits one of those periodic times when every "roll" is against me. How is that "fun"? The only other challenge is trying to see a difference in drops between TH3 and TH4+, and I'll be damned if I'm going to get my satisfaction from a game by reading a 2k kill parser report.

[Shipp]

Trials? well, I solod 1-75 as a bst/brd (before the introduction of dancer), grinding is no problem for me, but the CHALLENGE is gone. The only real risk of death is if the random number generator that governs hit/miss/damage calculation hits one of those periodic times when every "roll" is against me. How is that "fun"? The only other challenge is trying to see a difference in drops between TH3 and TH4+, and I'll be damned if I'm going to get my satisfaction from a game by reading a 2k kill parser report.

RNG is how every MMO has ever been, including XI. This is not new from abyssea. If you don't enjoy the game, quit. Just don't pretend as though this wasn't how XI always was, to a much worse degree in the past.

[Aquilla]

This is precisely why the game needs a shake-up.

Vets have done it all. Vets leveled bst to 75 solo-grinding, did the sc+mb stuff, did the land kings, etc. Newer people may not have experienced that, but they did aby/VW and played that way.

Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days, but SE is the embodiment of inertia. If everything was working beautifully, we wouldn't have a shrinking populace -- and it is shrinking. Now isn't the time to pussy-foot around with tweaks -- it's time to give the game something groundbreaking.

What I'm worried about is that the recent additions to the game -- Neo-Nyzul, specifically and this:


Mocchi: Oh snap! These stats are nuts! STR and AGI +8, attack, accuracy, subtle blow, haste +4%, DOUBLE ATTA…

Those stats are not nuts. They're okay. -.-

[Shipp]

If everything was working beautifully, we wouldn't have a shrinking populace -- and it is shrinking.



Every MMO that's this old has a shrinking populace. These "tweaks" are not going to bring in any substantial amount of new players.

[Aquilla]

It's an MMO, not a banana. They don't go stale after a few days and the slowly rot off for no reason at all. If there was a will to change, there could be a change and new players and epic lewtz to be had by all.

[Glamdring]

RNG is how every MMO has ever been, including XI. This is not new from abyssea. If you don't enjoy the game, quit. Just don't pretend as though this wasn't how XI always was, to a much worse degree in the past.

didn't say I had a problem with the "dice" (not going to use RNG since that's also the abreviation for ranger), just pointing out that the only real risk left is plain old dumb luck.

[Glamdring]

It's an MMO, not a banana. They don't go stale after a few days and the slowly rot off for no reason at all. If there was a will to change, there could be a change and new players and epic lewtz to be had by all.

no, they DON'T go stale after a few days, but they do after a few years. The root code of the game is just that, the root code. MMOs die because the tech they are designed for becomes obsolete, see any of the 1k+ threads on here about ending PS2 support for that argument.

This game was BEAUTIFUL when it was rolled out, especially compared to WoW, its main competitor. But that was in the day when most players still had analog, not HD, MIGHT have had surround sound and connection speeds were rarely over 768kbps and usually alot less. Any new player looking at FFXI these days will at best describe it as "quaint". There is no way that SE is going to rewrite everything down to as basic as the graphics engine or make servers robust enough to handle modern connect speeds, etc. and without that FFXI is what it is, an antique. THAT'S why we aren't getting new players.

[Aquilla]

Riddle me this, batman: which part of their outdated code was responsible for the fun I and a lot of players had in Aby, and why has it vanished off the matrix? Which bit of code is responsible for the inability to have your own personal chicken in northlands or WoTG?

Code limitations are a stupid excuse. There's nothing wrong with how the game looks -- and I highly doubt that your own admitted lack of challenge is tied to the ability to display glowy bits on your armor.

I've said it before: I am not a game developer, and I don't know jack about developing games. However, forums here and other places on the interwebz have a ton of suggestions how to simplify and add more fun to the game that doesn't require a new graphics engine or overhaul of the servers.

If it was just graphics engines/shiny new tech, then XIV would've ruled the world by now, and not become the epitome of failure in the MMO world.

Squeenix isn't some indie developer without a dime to their name. I am willing to concede that there are hardware limitations. For example, they explained very nicely why we can't have raisega. I don't see how that justifies thinking that str+8agi+8 haste+4% is pants-wettingly amazing by any definition.

[Malamasala]

I'd love more atma content. It was the first time I enjoyed FFXI, and I haven't enjoyed it since. Of course it has less to do with being "overpowered" and more to do with it being the FIRST content that boosted avatars, which have been utterly behind since they were added.

[Aquilla]

Atma was a great idea. Especially synthetics, which rewarded completing old content. I concur!

[Glamdring]

simple, the stuff you are asking for is for keeping current players of a certain mindset. I'll grant you, SE needs to do something to retain players, and for your type maybe setting players to de facto god-mode is it. Me? I'd like an upgrade to risk/reward in content and as some others have commented something where my efforts are rewarded instead of just dumb luck; if I grind it out the drop SHOULD fall, and more than 1% of the time, I simply find that more appealing.

I still maintain that anyone looking at FFXI for the 1st time is just going to look elsewhere, maybe even at 14. 14 seems most lame to long-time players of 11 but if you've never seen what SE can do when they do a GOOD job on a game it doesn't look nearly as bad. Still, there are better games out there than 14, and if I was a person looking at starting out in a fantasy MMO I probably wouldn't be looking at anything in the current SE catalog, no matter WHAT they choose to do here.

[Aquilla]

simple, the stuff you are asking for is for keeping current players of a certain mindset. I'll grant you, SE needs to do something to retain players, and for your type maybe setting players to de facto god-mode is it. Me? I'd like an upgrade to risk/reward in content and as some others have commented something where my efforts are rewarded instead of just dumb luck; if I grind it out the drop SHOULD fall, and more than 1% of the time, I simply find that more appealing.

I still maintain that anyone looking at FFXI for the 1st time is just going to look elsewhere, maybe even at 14. 14 seems most lame to long-time players of 11 but if you've never seen what SE can do when they do a GOOD job on a game it doesn't look nearly as bad. Still, there are better games out there than 14, and if I was a person looking at starting out in a fantasy MMO I probably wouldn't be looking at anything in the current SE catalog, no matter WHAT they choose to do here.

hey, we're more alike than you think^^ for one thing, I would like risk/reward changed a lot. I dislike the utter randomness of drops. I dislike that there are no intermediate rewards -- nothing you can do at 90% of the content if you aren't going for the absolute epicness.

I'm not looking for god-mode. I'm looking for fun and excitement. So are you, and so is everyone else who comes on here to complain.

I think if SE cared enough to try, they could bring in fresh blood and reinvent this game. Will they? I don't know. it ain't exactly the roman empire.

[ishvara]

I agree, SE should put us out of our misery and probaly stop this game. I'm holding out hope for a new road map that will pique my interest or justify holding on longer. I'm really disappointed at the new content and the 99 relic trial. i worked so hard to get a bravura, solo/low man style. To be totally cut out from getting it to 99 is unconscionable. I mostly wait around for void shouts and those are slowing up lately, and the drop rates are well documented.

[Anapingofness]

That's really it. People don't want to put in the time to get nothing for it. That's how old FFXI was, you kill the same mob a hundred times and get nothing for it.

I had a friend who literally went 0/200 on JEJ. That's ridiculous! Personally I was 0/7 before I gave up on the stupid thing. The thing is, JEJ is a normal NM. Endgame things can take an even longer amount of time. Months to years even, and for what? A very marginal increase in stats. The time and effort spent to getting some of the gear in endgame was not worth the effort spent.

Abyssea changed that and people reacted positively. Now they're going back to the old way of thinking. Of course people are going to be upset. I've been with FFXI since 2005. The fact that they're going back to that very outdated way of thinking is very upsetting.

The way I see it, I am paying them to make this game fun and exciting for me. So is everyone else. Therefore we are very much so entitled to have the game improve. More importantly, I am giving SE my time to play this game. That's something they can't refund even if they wanted to. I realize it is a very callous way of looking at things but it's true. No, I don't have to play the game and I wasn't forced to play it. Fact is, I've chosen to play it much like everyone else here but that's all the more reason SE should be a bit more serious about this, don't you think? It's all the more reason that SE should respect their player base.

This game needs a breath of innovation. That innovation has practically nothing to do with the graphics. Even though this game has been out for 10 years it is still very beautiful. That in itself is a testament to the artistic talent SE possesses. Yes, after 10 years the graphics could use a bit of polish but they won't make or break the game.

What I mean is that the innovation that the game so desperately needs is the will to accept that this game has to change with the times. It needs to be more available to potential customers. That is both content wise and the ease of actually getting the game on your machine.

[Anapingofness]

I agree, SE should put us out of our misery and probaly stop this game. I'm holding out hope for a new road map that will pique my interest or justify holding on longer. I'm really disappointed at the new content and the 99 relic trial. i worked so hard to get a bravura, solo/low man style. To be totally cut out from getting it to 99 is unconscionable. I mostly wait around for void shouts and those are slowing up lately, and the drop rates are well documented.

Seriously. That thought has crossed my mind as well since I opted to go the solo/low man route. The fact that when I hit lvl 95 with the trial weapon means that I have to stop is unacceptable. Completely and utterly unacceptable.

What was SE thinking allowing us to low man the weapons only most of the way? If they have given us the option to start it low man/solo then they should have allowed us to get the weapon to 99 the same way.

[Glamdring]

I agree, SE should put us out of our misery and probaly stop this game. I'm holding out hope for a new road map that will pique my interest or justify holding on longer. I'm really disappointed at the new content and the 99 relic trial. i worked so hard to get a bravura, solo/low man style. To be totally cut out from getting it to 99 is unconscionable. I mostly wait around for void shouts and those are slowing up lately, and the drop rates are well documented.

This is actually a fairly simple fix if they want to think about it. Add another drop source. I can't be the only one who's thought that it might be time to add some 1-3 man BCNM type battles to the game. You want the time sink SE? farming pop items takes time, done. They could also add the drops to some of the other content they are currently redoing, level 75-99 ZNM comes to mind.

Here's an idea, end-game Balista-type events with Heavy Metal rewards to the winning side. If you are trying to revive older content PvP is one that hasn't seen alot of use in a long time... maybe because you get nothing out of it but regaining whatever inventory space whatever consumables you use in it were occupying.

[Aquilla]

This is actually a fairly simple fix if they want to think about it. Add another drop source. I can't be the only one who's thought that it might be time to add some 1-3 man BCNM type battles to the game. You want the time sink SE? farming pop items takes time, done. They could also add the drops to some of the other content they are currently redoing, level 75-99 ZNM comes to mind.

Here's an idea, end-game Balista-type events with Heavy Metal rewards to the winning side. If you are trying to revive older content PvP is one that hasn't seen alot of use in a long time... maybe because you get nothing out of it but regaining whatever inventory space whatever consumables you use in it were occupying.

see? that's the kinds of suggestions that i'm talkin' about ! I love both of those ideas. squeenix, get on it. :D

[Dallas]

Letting people full-time godmode isn't the answer.
I think Disgaea has great potential for an MMO

[hideka]

what you all failed to mention or even realize is that SE is using the funds from this game to fund the development of FF14. they moved our GOOD dev team over to 14 and gave us back the loltanaka dev team. SE has no intention of doing ANYTHING drastic in this game ever again. it is their hope that this game will fizzle out to the point of extinction so people will move over to FF14. this is their ultimate goal. mark my words, by Jan 2013 when FF14 hits PS3, FF11 will be done for, wether it be shut down for good, or everyone is forced to migrate to 14, it will be done. enjoy your last year.

[wildsprite]

I'll put in my 2 cents here, I want to see them fix the mess that is FFXI, and yes regardless of what you think of it, the game is still a mess, one that I don't think they have any intention of cleaning up due to lolXIV, I said it before and I'll say it again, if FFXI dies I wont be going to another SE MMO, especially not FFXIV which they should not be putting so much effin time and money into, the game was a big failure, and they claim it taints the Final Fantasy name, oh BS SE, the game taints nothing but itself, give it up and make FFXI fun enough to make players want to return and play and attract new players, stop making excuses, tell us the truth with your intentions, your failure FFXIV will not give you the returns you expect, if you kill FFXI for FFXIV then bubye SE have fun with your mess

[Dew]

Problem is that after Abyssea they went downhill instead of making it go uphill. Abyssea was a good start. After that they turned around and instead of buffing stuff they started nerfing everyone and everything they could. After 24 levels past 75 you would think your character would be much stronger, but that's not the case with all the nerfs coming.

Characters have barely got any hp/mp/stats since 75. Even the damage scale from what you could do at 75 to now isn't much. At 99 characters should be doing a ton more then at 75 and the new nms should have x3-20 times the power of 75 mobs. Adding super powdered mobs, but not powering up characters doesn't help ether.

Another problem is adding stuff the the game and never fixing it. Taking almost a year to fix an item that never even worked when it came out and has been reported broken 40+ times is a big problem. Don't add broken items. Why even bother adding the item if its never going to even do what it is supposed to. Not to mention that getting it to even drop requires luck.

Adding backward events also makes it go downhill. Getting drops shouldn't be based on how lucky you get with a random number generator. Luck should never play a factor in getting something. It should require skill and effort.

Also quit adding trashcan value rewards. Need less garbage and more rewards in events. Adding armor with 1/3rd of the stats of a lv75 armor at lv99 is kind of dumb. The game shouldn't be progressing backwards, but forwards. Nerfing stuff isn't doing anything, but making the game even worse. All this Balance stuff is retarded.

[Aquilla]

Regression is the problem.

Another problem is the sheer number of content that goes dead and stays dead. Sure, there's a veritable ton of stuff in the game that CAN be done. There's all sorts of battle stuff, like garrison, eco-war, ballista, expeditionary force, etc. that's fairly old. Slightly newer stuff, pankration, chocobo racing, assault/nyzul/einherjar/salvage, ZNM, MMM -- ton of it was lol-worthy from the getgo. Even seasonal content got stale fast. Mumor, anyone?

It doesn't take a lot to make people happy at an event. Make it accessible to players without jumping through a ton of hoops -- and give worthwhile rewards.

XP is a good reward. Meaningful XP. Nobody complained when they buffed how much xp Besieged/Campaign gave.
Crafting mats: not a *Bad* idea, but they need to be more relevant. Maybe make the crafting mats correlate with event or with the person's highest craft. I'd love another source of dragon meat, for example.
How about an event that gives xp for a craft? Or guild points?
Evolith: how many times has it been said that it'd suck way less if a.) you could attach stuff to more than just highly specific gear and b.) it had stats that weren't retardedly specific.
Gil.
Magian upgrade stuff. Clearly aby armor wasn't meant to be all that difficult to obtain, so will it matter if seals drop from other events? Take the solo lv60 ENM, for example -- that could give seals.
Dyna-currency.
Titles.

all of this and more has been said. Most people aren't looking for godmode -- just an appreciable sign that there is progression. What's the point of upgrading my gear and leveling my character to never notice a difference without a parser?

[Kuvo]

The thing is that SE has completely gone away from what made this series fantastic. Final fantasy has always been about the main story line and cutting edge graphics with epic gear and weapons being a side quest. FFXI has turned into a gear and weapon fest and nothing more. What good are these weapons and gear that takes forever to get when there is no worth while content to use them on.

I have seen people when the Almace first came out working day in and day out to get it. When they finally got it they would sit in jeuno with it equiped showing it off. Once in a while go into an Aby party and do a few WS to show off. WOOOHOOOO wow that is so worth it. As a BLM i can kill aby mobs just as quick or even faster then someone with an Empy weapon and it took me only seconds to buy the spells. To me all this game has been is "See how long it took me to get my weapon/gear show."

And the feeling of logging in and thinking today i'll be able to have some fun maybe some friends are on or my LS is actually going to do something today... has gone by by. I recently came back since november (skyrim release) to give this game another shot but my god it's worse then before.

And to SE... thank god, we as gamers, have other options.

[Falseliberty]

I would like more structured events, more aby for the casuals, more maze grinding like salvage for the more seasoned players

the problem is SE dosent seem to have the staff for for putting diff lvls of events out there for people to do

[doctorugh]

Make certain areas PVP.......if you build it they will come (or at least buy you some time to think of something to add to the game)

[Elexia]

what you all failed to mention or even realize is that SE is using the funds from this game to fund the development of FF14. they moved our GOOD dev team over to 14 and gave us back the loltanaka dev team

Lol, even though said team was on XIV AND XI at the same time? Why do think WoTG was such a slow completion process during XIV's development? You do know Tanaka was still here for Abyssea as well, right?

Not to mention if you played any older FF game or Seiken Densetsu game, I'd find it hard to believe you didn't enjoy them. Any money a company makes off of a game goes towards other projects, that's how a business works.

[Aquilla]

The only thing the XIV debacle proved is that SE is willing to hold on to however many customers they can, damn be all common sense.

SE isn't nefarious, just stupid. They aren't killing FFXI for XIV -- that wouldn't make any sense, because people who would be embittered by one shitty MMO from squeenix wouldn't flock to another MMO by squeenix.

That being said, I don't care who's doing what at SE. I'm not going to pretend to know who was in charge of what. SE, sadly, doesn't send me memos about their organizational structure. Ultimately, though, I don't care. SE opened up the forums because they wanted our opinions. Here they are.

The game needs a serious shake-up. They need to stop balancing, tweaking, or waffling. There is no reason why I, at 99, shouldn't feel more powerful than I did at 75. Aby proved that it doesn't take +5 of a stat to make a meaningful difference in gameplay. Aby also proved that it is possible to have fun in XI, to do it casually and in a non-grindy way.

Edit: Yeah, they should look into PvP. It's a real aspect of online gameplay that they are ignoring outright. Ballista died because they took their middling, tweaking, and nerfing approach to it, coupled with inconvenient access and zero to low rewards.

It's all about giving people bang for their buck. If I pay for a game on a monthly basis, than that game should be more exciting, engaging, and fun to play than the flashy F2P fare that seems to roll out on a monthly basis these days.

And yeah, I want more story, also. Unfortunately, SE's idea of storytelling is still somewhere in the nintendo era. There is no reason why gaming can't have an engaging storyline -- but quite frankly, for a franchise that was all about story, SE's recent offerings have been vapid, overblown, and godawful.

[Elexia]

And yeah, I want more story, also. Unfortunately, SE's idea of storytelling is still somewhere in the nintendo era. There is no reason why gaming can't have an engaging storyline --

Which is still better than shitty hammy voiceacting found in games like Skyrim or Dragon Age, or is that your idea of "engaging story telling?" Because I read books that beat it out pretty much every video game storyline to exist. This is the most subjective thing ever.

[Sagagemini]

The greatest problem is that Square Enix keeps the formula "let's reward the hardcore gamers for their lack of social life" while punishing heavily the majority made from casuals. FFXI was a spetacular niche game 9 years ago but these ppl grew up and their reality is completely different today.

Though some endgame linkshells are still ruled by ppl whose lives are entirely devoted to a game, the majority that are still paying subscriptions and keeping this game alive for so long, even the fresh players, are losing interest day by day with so many events relying so much on others to acquire stuff.

While it might sound nice to promote cooperative gameplay, the way events were designed in ffxi since 2003 promotes a lot of elitism and the masses are left out. One example? Try to get a af3+2 item. It's an item for your job that basically nobody else wants to do anymore since they are trying to get their 10th empyrean weapon (endgame ls leaders of course, the rest will slave-whore themselves for one empyrean.

What happens to the new players that are the breath of air that MUST be flowing inside the game? They see impossible to reach objectives unless they destroy their social lives like endgame shells require (honestly, who in their sane mind stays 5 days a week during nights at home unless you have no family or friends?) and lose interest. With games rewarding them so much faster, trying to get even a single af3+2 item seems a herculean task. You have to rely on ppl to get your Atma, then you have to rely on more ppl to get +1 seals, then you have to rely on more ppl to get +2 seals.

And you only finished 1 item. Let's not even talk about weapon trials. While hardcore gamers might see this as a perk from the game (leaving the best gear to a handful of them) its clear that this system isn't the one that keeps players logging in nowadays. The average player mentality changed.The most rare item in the world is TIME and with less and less time to play games a company that still requires you to devote so much for so little is bound to suffer from hemorrhage till it becomes a F2P.

Abyssea never made the game easier. It just created another carrot in the end of tunnel for us to hunt. The problem is, while in other MMORPG you can go on your own way to the carrot in here your pathetic character still needs the help of others to accomplish his own adventures. This worked perfectly in 2003. But not anymore.

It doesn't matter if hardcore players agree with this or not. FFXI must become more solo friendly. There is so much content in this game that even being more solo friendly it won't ruin the endgame. This is the only game where players have characters that are not tied to one class. They can farm 20 different jobs for gear. This is the only MMORPG where story matters and they can go through each one of them in their own time.

Its SE move now. FF14 will sink soon and without making FF11 an appealing game for new starters with a social life (job and family) the future is really bad towards Square in the MMORPG market.

[Elexia]

FF14 will sink soon and without making FF11 an appealing game for new starters with a social life (job and family) the future is really bad towards Square in the MMORPG market.

If 14 was to sink it would have done so in 2010 and not exist today, not during nor after a major overhaul 2 years later. SE will do just fine if they play their cards right.


Abyssea never made the game easier.

Most of us who played XI for at least more than a year prior to abyssea or ToAU can safely say, Abyssea made the game easier. Period. How often did you in 2002-2009 open a chest and got 1250 exp? Let alone open 10 chests back to back in a span of 20 seconds for 1250 exp?

How likely were you to go to a NPC and buy a full set of armor with Haste on it? Let alone how likely were you to have a weapon that beat out most Relics and Mythics for only weeks work rather than years?

[Sagagemini]

Its not about handing down every single piece of equipment to terribads. Its about making only the ABSOLUTE BEST items requiring to have a group. Things like atmas and at least af3+1 had to be soloable by any job without that idiocy of proccing that makes you having to shout for job x or y to do something for you. While players could be doing their own adventures and having tons of fun they are shouting in port jeuno. Those who are in endgame shells or have real life friends playing don't have a clue about it since most of them are being carried by their ls leaders or friends or boyfriends.

[Sagagemini]

If 14 was to sink it would have done so in 2010 and not exist today, not during nor after a major overhaul 2 years later. SE will do just fine if they play their cards right.



Most of us who played XI for at least more than a year prior to abyssea or ToAU can safely say, Abyssea made the game easier. Period. How often did you in 2002-2009 open a chest and got 1250 exp? Let alone open 10 chests back to back in a span of 20 seconds for 1250 exp?

How likely were you to go to a NPC and buy a full set of armor with Haste on it? Let alone how likely were you to have a weapon that beat out most Relics and Mythics for only weeks work rather than years?

Its much more harder for me nowadays to get a group going for VV Atma than it was to defeat Promathia back in 2005. I understand that with empyreans and 3 atmas you can basically do anything in Abyssea but first you need to get those. It was so much easier to find groups for Ouryu or any other part of COP even if you were not in a static and you could keep your progression. Now 7 years later its basically impossible to get some atmas and af3+2 items with random shouts.

How easier the game has become?


Honestly i came back to do the trivial and im not even bothering anymore about the bandwagon i lost. But you can't ask for a new player to be motivated as i am, due to my 2003 nostalgia, having to be satisfied with crap from AH or lose his social life to whorehimself in an endgame ls where he is going to complete leaders and officers gear 10 times before anything else.

This is just not the way the MMORPG market works anymore. Online gaming is becoming more and more casual. While i applaud that FFXI stays true (sort of it) to its old formula of randomness drops and devotion to get stuff (i took 3 years to get my duelist chapeau+1 back then) i also see it dying with it.

Im talking about SE future as an online gaming company. They almost destroyed their franchise with FF14 with their stubborn attitude of always being right . They have the tools to make an AAA online product BUT they must start accepting the fact that gamers now are more casual than ever and they won't devote themselves to any game that doesn't reward them fast.

Like it or not. Its money that keeps this business going and these casuals are the ones with it. Much more than the 1-5% of hardcore players.

[Runespider]

If 14 was to sink it would have done so in 2010 and not exist today, not during nor after a major overhaul 2 years later.

It's already sunk, almost every potential customer was scared off it and turned their attention to new games..or do you think everyone is waiting for a v2 of an old failed game? GW2 and Tera are the new exciting games to look forward to, the only reason 14 is still around is because it's a FF title, it embarassed them with it failing and they are now forcing it to carry on living by throwing money at it. It bombed hard and is still pretty much dead as an MMO. There is no guarantee V2 will turn this game around (they are dumbing down the game engine for a start, and the prettyness of it was one of it's only redeeming factors for many), no matter how hard they try there is no guarantee players will want to go back to try 2 at a failed, dead game.


SE will do just fine if they play their cards right.

Yeah because the way they put 14 out, ran it to be still a failure 2 years later and indeed the way they are running this game give you the idea they are ever gonna "play their cards right"? White knight much?


Like it or not. Its money that keeps this business going and these casuals are the ones with it. Much more than the 1-5% of hardcore players.

This so much, pity they don't get it.

[Elexia]

You can't dumb down a engine from a cinematics engine to an actual engine meant for building games on it. CT was more of a cinematic toolset than full on game engine.

Where did you even hear this info? Then again, based on a lot of your posts about certain subjects..don't answer that.

[Runespider]

You can't dumb down a engine from a cinematics engine to an actual engine meant for building games on it. CT was more of a cinematic toolset than full on game engine.

Where did you even hear this info? Then again, based on a lot of your posts about certain subjects..don't answer that.

They are dumbing the engine down for v2 to play on weaker PCs, I don't even play the game and I know more about V2 than a XIV white knight?

[Aquilla]

This is the most subjective thing ever.
Whether or not you like the story is very subjective. Who cares? People play MMOs for story like they read playboy for the articles. We want a story -- without it, the game feels empty -- but we play it for the gameplay/community. A game with an awesome story but terrible gameplay won't get anywhere. A game with great gameplay but shitty story can win awards. That's not my opinion -- it's happened.


However,



Like it or not. Its money that keeps this business going and these casuals are the ones with it. Much more than the 1-5% of hardcore players.
This so much, pity they don't get it.

Yeah. The problem is that challenge =/= low drop rate. It never has, and it never will be. Problem is that the red spiky shirt with the awesome str+8 and haste+4% and other assorted piddly stats is not anybody's idea of a super-awesome-drop from the new hardcore endgame event.

SE needs to radically revise their outlook on MMOs.

[Elexia]

They are dumbing the engine down for v2 to play on weaker PCs, I don't even play the game and I know more about V2 than a XIV white knight?

"White Knight" you really are an idiot.

You don't "dumb down an engine" to make it run better on a broad range of PCs, you optimize an engine to do so. You don't need to go to one extreme or the other, this is why developers use the UE mainly because of it's compatibility and optimization to run on many environments.

[Anapingofness]

Which is still better than shitty hammy voiceacting found in games like Skyrim or Dragon Age, or is that your idea of "engaging story telling?" Because I read books that beat it out pretty much every video game storyline to exist. This is the most subjective thing ever.

Hmm... See what we have here kids is someone comparing two different things. Books to games. We can break this down further because the games being compared are not the same. We are comparing MMO's, Console/Single Player Games, and Books.

In a perfect world the two would balance each other out with the quality of storyline. However, this isn't that magical place and sadly many video game companies are notorious for not hiring real writers.

Books are special. They've been around longer and people have had a much longer time to get it right with them. Even so, there are things published that should never have even been considered for publication- but I digress.
Books, for all of their history, have to have a compelling and solid structure. They have to be able to convey to us through words alone a story or a message.

Video games are even more special because unlike books they are interactive. People are no longer relying on words to convey a message they can now see what they would normally read. More importantly, people can now take the main character and control him as he begins his journey. A well made video game storyline will make you laugh and cry, much like a well written book.

Now that that basic definition is there please understand that the quality of a storyline has no bearing on the "shitty hammy voice acting found in games like Skyrim and Dragon Age". There have been plenty of games where there was no voice acting. There were also games where the voice acting was in gibberish. Those games had very good, engaging, story lines.

For me though, and I cannot speak for Aquilla, "engaging story telling" means that I can connect and relate to the characters in the storyline. It means that when a character dies, I too will feel a sense of loss. Alternatively, if there is a humorous scene I will laugh. "Engaging story telling" not only uses everything that books have taught us to deliver an unforgettable experience but it also uses the best of what video games as a medium has to offer.

[Runespider]

"White Knight" you really are an idiot.

You don't "dumb down an engine" to make it run better on a broad range of PCs, you optimize an engine to do so. You don't need to go to one extreme or the other, this is why developers use the UE mainly because of it's compatibility and optimization to run on many environments.

Hey you're the one that thinks FFXIV is awesome and if they play their cards right can make it into a success, if that's not a XIV white knight given everything that's happened idk what is.

For a game sold on being pwetty I'd call it dumbing down, you can use nicer words if it makes you happier.

[Anapingofness]

Its much more harder for me nowadays to get a group going for VV Atma than it was to defeat Promathia back in 2005. I understand that with empyreans and 3 atmas you can basically do anything in Abyssea but first you need to get those. It was so much easier to find groups for Ouryu or any other part of COP even if you were not in a static and you could keep your progression. Now 7 years later its basically impossible to get some atmas and af3+2 items with random shouts.

How easier the game has become?


Honestly i came back to do the trivial and im not even bothering anymore about the bandwagon i lost. But you can't ask for a new player to be motivated as i am, due to my 2003 nostalgia, having to be satisfied with crap from AH or lose his social life to whorehimself in an endgame ls where he is going to complete leaders and officers gear 10 times before anything else.

This is just not the way the MMORPG market works anymore. Online gaming is becoming more and more casual. While i applaud that FFXI stays true (sort of it) to its old formula of randomness drops and devotion to get stuff (i took 3 years to get my duelist chapeau+1 back then) i also see it dying with it.

Im talking about SE future as an online gaming company. They almost destroyed their franchise with FF14 with their stubborn attitude of always being right . They have the tools to make an AAA online product BUT they must start accepting the fact that gamers now are more casual than ever and they won't devote themselves to any game that doesn't reward them fast.

Like it or not. Its money that keeps this business going and these casuals are the ones with it. Much more than the 1-5% of hardcore players.

There is a lot of truth in what you say Sagagemini. Most of us with established groups don't think about the players without those groups. I'll be the first to attest to that. Like it or not, the sad reality of FFXI is that it is not a very newbie friendly game. So I can totally see where you're coming from.

Although, I will say that the Abyssea has made the game easier in certain respects. Mainly the leveling aspect. Back in the day it was a good party if you could get 5k - 10k exp an hour. I'm glad that SE lessened the grind in that respect with Abyssea, FOV, and GOV.

[llello]

And some players wonder why these forums aren't taken very seriously. We go from discussing Aby everywhere play and 10xing gear stats to peoples personal opinions about why FFXIV was a failure, random video games in general, whose is and is not a "white knight", books,hammy voice acting, pulling the plug/killing FFXI and I'm sure others I've missed.

Anyway I'm still not convinced "OPing" or w/e you would call it would inject that much life into FFXI. Please keep going with this as there were a few good ideas before this thread turned to lulz.

[Aquilla]

I'm convinced that the only chance FFXI has is if it gets broken.

It's clear that the current twiddling is doing nothing but alienating more and more players. I'd love to be wrong -- but honestly, what have they given us lately? Neo-Nyzul was declared dead on arrival. People are dubious about Legion. The upgraded lv99 empys are a joke for the work needed to complete them.

All the good updates took away the grindy, nonsensical aspects and made the game more enjoyable to play.

[Camiie]

Lol, even though said team was on XIV AND XI at the same time? Why do think WoTG was such a slow completion process during XIV's development? You do know Tanaka was still here for Abyssea as well, right?


So, what exactly was he doing? What project(s) was he most focused on? Who had what responsibilities during that time? How was his work divided? How was the work of those around him divided? Do you know? You don't know any more than those who think he had nothing to do with Abyssea.

[FrankReynolds]

One simple solution would be to make events points based instead of making them always drop one item that one guy gets.

People ( at least me ) generally don't like group content for one major reason. Because no matter how you arrange your group, and no matter how fair everyone is, and no matter how well you structure it, there are always going to be a few people who benefit from the work of the group more than others. If everyone doing an <insert event here> run gets x amount of points instead of being forced to keep their own external points list to decide who gets to lot, then people are far more willing to join groups, and do content as a group. The rate at which people get gear can easily be manipulated by changing the points, instead of adding soul crushing luck based drop rates.

I have never understood why SE would want to program game mechanics that force people to use DKP and other screwy systems. Almost every DKP hosting website has advertisements for competing MMOs and / or advertisements for gil buying / selling / bots. Not to mention the fact that they are making money off SE's product when SE could be incorporating all that functionality right into the game itself.

[BurnNotice]

I am not going to fake the funk with you guys. I personally lost interest in the game. stopped payment and all. I can't say if it's total interest, but that excitement you get when you log in with friends to do events/missions/quest were intense, exciting, fun, and rewarding is no longer there for me. Now, should I, could I, blame the development team for this? I am sure there are a number of people that feel this way. I mean, honestly SE, what are your plans on bringing the people that left the game back and what are your plans to keep the current player base? From what I am reading on this forum, I can predict a handful of people will finally resign from the game for good by the next update do to an overwhelming amount of disappointment. Sad to say, but it's true. :(

[Anapingofness]

One simple solution would be to make events points based instead of making them always drop one item that one guy gets.

People ( at least me ) generally don't like group content for one major reason. Because no matter how you arrange your group, and no matter how fair everyone is, and no matter how well you structure it, there are always going to be a few people who benefit from the work of the group more than others. If everyone doing an <insert event here> run gets x amount of points instead of being forced to keep their own external points list to decide who gets to lot, then people are far more willing to join groups, and do content as a group. The rate at which people get gear can easily be manipulated by changing the points, instead of adding soul crushing luck based drop rates.

I have never understood why SE would want to program game mechanics that force people to use DKP and other screwy systems. Almost every DKP hosting website has advertisements for competing MMOs and / or advertisements for gil buying / selling / bots. Not to mention the fact that they are making money off SE's product when SE could be incorporating all that functionality right into the game itself.

That's a very good suggestion. Personally, I would love to see something like that implemented. You're not the only one who feels shafted by spending time and effort helping the one or two people benefit. Not only that but the external point system is kind of stupid. It's too easy to manipulate against a person or for a person in terms of getting/not getting drops.

But seriously, a lot of people would be more inclined to help others if they too got something in return. Yeah, person A gets the gear/item/whatever but if person B, C, D get a point or some sort of small reward that helps them out then suddenly you have a friendlier environment.

[Tezz]

I am not going to fake the funk with you guys. I personally lost interest in the game. stopped payment and all. I can't say if it's total interest, but that excitement you get when you log in with friends to do events/missions/quest were intense, exciting, fun, and rewarding is no longer there for me. Now, should I, could I, blame the development team for this? I am sure there are a number of people that feel this way. I mean, honestly SE, what are your plans on bringing the people that left the game back and what are your plans to keep the current player base? From what I am reading on this forum, I can predict a handful of people will finally resign from the game for good by the next update do to an overwhelming amount of disappointment. Sad to say, but it's true. :(

I've played since NA launch, yada yada coolStory, and recently re-subbed after taking a break for FF14.

Admittedly, it was annoying staying with FF14 at launch, but overall i'm glad i have over this game.


It's the longest break i've had from 11 since launch & after coming back, WOW, i forgot how slow & convoluted this game is systematically & socially.

A Few recent observations.

FF14 population usually sits around 200-400~ (this is towards the end of patch life)
FF11 population 1200~

Both games almost feel the same socially though. It's usually just 1-3~ people ever doing anything. Both have these dull, dead moments where you're just standing around (FF11 far worse though).

It's all about linkshells & VoIP to keep things active, but in FF11 its usually the same thing. Even if there are 10~ online, its usually 1-2 off doing their own thing & ignoring or too lazy to do anything with others.
In FF14 this happens, but usually its little cliques of 8~ that run events together(which is sad considering FF11 supports alliances & hardly gets used anymore).

The best highlight of FF14 has been it's accessibility a few modern designs over many of the things that really make FF11 drag.


But this isn't about FF11 vs FF14, it's about wanting to enjoy both games. In the past, every time i reactivated FF11 i was never this bored. I eventually got around to really enjoying myself.



The very 1st day of reactivating i was have some major doubts. There's just no community or atmosphere to make it worth playing. I won't pretend to sugarcoat the core of how both games present themselves by suggesting it's better with "friends" (ANYTHING is better with friends(esp. RL) & worthwhile).

I used to be against the auto-grouping for content, but sadly both these games need it, desperately amongst many FAR more important things.
There's practically no community worth fighting for anyway, so they might as well embrace it...

......^

So, yes OP, they really just need to "break" the game and let loose. Announce a new expansion & a more revisions/revamps.
It's like they still design & distribute Lv.99 gear with Lv.75 closely in mind (its horrible). It would be nice to see more 9999 up in here (with content lolBaranced for it).

Above ALL else, i should NEVER been standing around in town in either games bored out of my mind (& NO, the answer is not to go out Solo!). Either from LFP or just nothing to do. There shouldn't be lines for events & standing around waiting on event timers that take forever to reset (multiple relevant endgame events would help this too...)

They say that "they always come back" & it's somewhat true. But the more & more i come back, the worse & worse this game keeps getting. After this month is up, i probably won't be back unless a thrilling expansion & real linkshell content is shown.




tl;dr
FF11 & FF14 have been critically boring lately, yet FF14 is going in a direction of more promise & dynamic battles/content(going, not there yet).
Announce a new roadmap & expansion.
Keep reworking/revising existing content.
I don't want to stand around & be bored (in town or events), until then, i won't be re-subbing after this month. It was a mistake.

BREAK THE GAME!

[svengalis]

The main thing they are failing on is just worrying more about balance than the game being fun, for all it's faults FFXI Abyssea was genuinly fun and rewarding, "new" FFXI is appaulingly boring, very much about leaving players out of content and horribly unrewarding.

I haven't been playing much lately because I am pretty much done with Abyssea. I logged on recently and saw a VW shout but immediately noticed he only wanted certain jobs with certain gear... I logged off and haven't logged on since. I know alot of people hated Abyssea but the great thing about Abyssea was anyone could do it. I want that kind of content back.

[Mahoro]

That might have been for T6 VW fights, which admittedly are not forgiving fights and take a certain job setup.

Not really sure if it is server specific but on Lakshmi there is a steady stream of shouts. Barring that, people are always free to start their own shouts.

To Tezz, serious question: arent their event timers in FFXIV still, or was the leve restriction or fatigue thinf loosened?

[Aquilla]

tl;dr
FF11 & FF14 have been critically boring lately, yet FF14 is going in a direction of more promise & dynamic battles/content(going, not there yet).
Announce a new roadmap & expansion.
Keep reworking/revising existing content.
I don't want to stand around & be bored (in town or events), until then, i won't be re-subbing after this month. It was a mistake.

BREAK THE GAME!

I agree with everything in your post, Tezz. They need to let loose, they need to add new stuff, not move in increments.

Everyone here on this board has seen people who quit because of tedium. Yeah, it's funny when they come onto the forums with bad spelling and bad attitude. But for each one of those, there's a hundred that just quietly stops coming. There was a reason why Aby was a much needed breath of fresh air -- and they should've headed in that direction, not bass-ackwards.

An MMO needs an active populace. I don't want to play alone. I'm not even against large group content -- I would *love* to see large-group content if it was managed right. The game has desperately needed a better system for getting people together since the get-go, and now it really shows.

Isn't it silly that in a MMO heavily based on PvE and the community, our linkshells are practically prehistoric in their utility? No linkshell ranking or ranks, no in-game calendar, no way to manage membership, nothing.

The LFG system was bad back in the day. Now it's even more laughable. No way to flag up for a specific event, other than relying on /seacom. Once flagged up, no way to get anything else done because of the time it takes to get to places/shuffle gear.

Break the game!

[Cursed]

I like what OP posted, and fully agree.
As someone who has played this game since 02/03, Abyssea was a great relief. The game was on its last leg pre-Abyssea.
I'm willing to put money on there being more player returns and a decrease in the rate players were quiting after Scars of abyssea.

FFXI parted with its own norms during the Abyssea expansions.
1. Relic's throne as best weapon challenged by new weapons
2. Lv. Cap increase
3. Smaller groups
4. Fast rewards
5. Abandonment of random reward system in exchange for return on effort system (GOLDEN)
6. Faster leveling, less prolonged repetitive grind for level progression.
7. Easier, faster, cheaper transportation.
8. Plenty of big iconic Bosses.
9. Introduction of the !! proc system (GOLDEN - even though its been milked to hell ever since and not the case anymore)
10. Elimination of timed spawned Kings (faf/aspid/kb etc)

Compare the above to what FFXI used to be... Those of us who have been playing long enough will remember just how exciting the above was in comparison to the routine sorry excuse for content we had before (wotg missions excluded)

IF SE wanted to continue to make money from FFXI, or even increase it, it wouldn't be hard.
There is a lot that can be done with FFXI.
Sadly, after all the years of bitching about PS2 limitations, I've come to realize I should have been bitching about Mr. Matsui Tanaka's creative limitations.
I'm pretty sure at least 50% of you other players have ideas and wishes for this game that would make the jaws of the rest of us drop in excitement. Sadly they will never be implimented. Your great ideas will be ignored. And a has been executive, who only cares about his paycheck at the end of the month and his bonus at the end of the year will continue to come into work everyday and try to get through it without putting so much as an iota of genuine thought into the game he has been mandated to take care of.
I'm looking at you Mr. Matsui tanaKa.

Compare the above

QUICK EDIT:
its also not right that the GREAT members of SE who produced this game and all its suffer the limitations of those holding them back.
When I think of all the individual sounds, themes, area designs, characters designs and battle mechanics of this game and the MASSIVE effort that went into producing them, it sickens me to think that their hard work is being held ransom to some madman's outlook on what a game should be.
FUN> YOUR BLOODY BALANCE!

I just purchased a 3k USD PC to upgrade from my old gaming PC. I can tell you, I won't be playing FF14 and going through it all again because of how you have pooped on me, then pooped on me some more, then disappeared and fooled me into believing things were going to finally make sense, only to return and poop on me some more.
I'm boycotting SE till you are gone. Why should I level a job, only to have you be re-introduced to the game's dev team to bring your bloody balance into it?

[Anapingofness]

I like what OP posted, and fully agree.
As someone who has played this game since 02/03, Abyssea was a great relief. The game was on its last leg pre-Abyssea.
I'm willing to put money on there being more player returns and a decrease in the rate players were quiting after Scars of abyssea.

FFXI parted with its own norms during the Abyssea expansions.
1. Relic's throne as best weapon challenged by new weapons
2. Lv. Cap increase
3. Smaller groups
4. Fast rewards
5. Abandonment of random reward system in exchange for return on effort system (GOLDEN)
6. Faster leveling, less prolonged repetitive grind for level progression.
7. Easier, faster, cheaper transportation.
8. Plenty of big iconic Bosses.
9. Introduction of the !! proc system (GOLDEN - even though its been milked to hell ever since and not the case anymore)
10. Elimination of timed spawned Kings (faf/aspid/kb etc)

Compare the above to what FFXI used to be... Those of us who have been playing long enough will remember just how exciting the above was in comparison to the routine sorry excuse for content we had before (wotg missions excluded)

IF SE wanted to continue to make money from FFXI, or even increase it, it wouldn't be hard.
There is a lot that can be done with FFXI.
Sadly, after all the years of bitching about PS2 limitations, I've come to realize I should have been bitching about Mr. Matsui Tanaka's creative limitations.
I'm pretty sure at least 50% of you other players have ideas and wishes for this game that would make the jaws of the rest of us drop in excitement. Sadly they will never be implimented. Your great ideas will be ignored. And a has been executive, who only cares about his paycheck at the end of the month and his bonus at the end of the year will continue to come into work everyday and try to get through it without putting so much as an iota of genuine thought into the game he has been mandated to take care of.
I'm looking at you Mr. Matsui tanaKa.

Compare the above

QUICK EDIT:
its also not right that the GREAT members of SE who produced this game and all its suffer the limitations of those holding them back.
When I think of all the individual sounds, themes, area designs, characters designs and battle mechanics of this game and the MASSIVE effort that went into producing them, it sickens me to think that their hard work is being held ransom to some madman's outlook on what a game should be.
FUN> YOUR BLOODY BALANCE!

I just purchased a 3k USD PC to upgrade from my old gaming PC. I can tell you, I won't be playing FF14 and going through it all again because of how you have pooped on me, then pooped on me some more, then disappeared and fooled me into believing things were going to finally make sense, only to return and poop on me some more.
I'm boycotting SE till you are gone. Why should I level a job, only to have you be re-introduced to the game's dev team to bring your bloody balance into it?

Truer words were never spoken. I have to say, I agree with you completely- I couldn't have put it better myself.

[Aquilla]

You know, I'm glad people are coming here to share their frustrations with SE's handling of this game. I agree with the above poster's comments about Aby -- it really was what broke FFXI, and made it fun.

They need to keep doing it.

One of the most recent systems introduced was Neo-Nyzul. It is, basically, everything wrong with FFXI in a nutshell -- random, lack of progression, lack of rewards. Granted, SE has made changes to it, and many people are rightfully happy with the proposed changes of allowing people to aim for a floor, and allowing people to claim rewards without depending solely on luck.

Good for you, SE, it's a step in the right direction. It's not enough.

This is what the system should've looked like when it first came to the game proper. This is the kind of a change you should've done after feedback on the test server. This was never a good idea. It was blatantly grindy, the worst kind of grindy, and it was abandoned by the playerbase soon after introduction.

FFXI is a monument to abandoned content.

Yeah, I'm glad that you made Neo-nyzul less retarded, SE. However, I'm not going to be singing your praises just yet. Less retarded doesn't mean 'good' or 'awesome'.

Have a in-game way for people to flag up for this kind of content without sitting in whitegate and praying for the right kind of a shout. Have the NMs in it, those that randomly show up, drop their actual drops with a very high percentage. Have all r/e drops be 100%. Give aby-style random buffs -- maybe a large glowing orb of awesome that can randomly spawn, you run through it and it gives you increased attack/hp/haste? Idk. Have bosses give titles. Have the trophy system give other rewards, too -- special crafting mats, perhaps. Multicolored chickens. Custom pom-poms for my moogle. Random fireworks. *

Am I happy about the proposed changes to neo-nyzul? Yes. I'm glad you listened. But it's a bit frustrating because we, as the playerbase, have been telling you this stuff over and over and over again for a decade. What you did was okay, you get a B for effort, but hardly Triple-A stuff that you should be turning out, SE.

Then go and fix the rest of your abandoned content.

* The author of this post is not a game designer, and doesn't know jack about game designing. All ideas are purely speculative, pulled from the nether regions of Boredom incarnate, and should not be taken as serious, but merely as representations of what ideas look like.

[Shipp]

didn't say I had a problem with the "dice" (not going to use RNG since that's also the abreviation for ranger), just pointing out that the only real risk left is plain old dumb luck.

RNG stands for Random Number Generator, which is more accurate than "dice" in this case.

Please tell me what "real risk" there was in the past. EXP loss? Yep, that's about it, or losing a BCNM and your seals going to waste.

There was never any risk in FFXI, aside from the risk you would have to spend hours to gain back that XP that you just lost from one mob. That's not risk, that's artificial padding.


It's an MMO, not a banana. They don't go stale after a few days and the slowly rot off for no reason at all. If there was a will to change, there could be a change and new players and epic lewtz to be had by all.
Sorry, but are you just trying to troll now?

The game is nearly a decade old, and yes, MMOs do wind down. No amount of polishing and tweaking is going to make XI ever have 1m+ subs again. It's the way MMOs work, I'm sorry you don't understand.



Riddle me this, batman: which part of their outdated code was responsible for the fun I and a lot of players had in Aby, and why has it vanished off the matrix? Which bit of code is responsible for the inability to have your own personal chicken in northlands or WoTG?
How about you quit being a smartass and use your brain. Our point is that no amount of polishing and tweaking the game is going to make it appeal to a massive amount of people who have not already played it. Yes, more aby-like things being added would probably bring back old school people, but then again, aby also was the reason why a lot of people quit, so it would be a fool's errand trying to argue that it would be the thing that revives XI. XI is past that point at this stage. It's surviving, quite well, and will remain to do so until enough people leave that everyone is on one server.

[Aquilla]

So your point is that the game is just fine the way it is? Duly noted! However, since a. SE's still running the game, b. SE is still making games, and c. SE's invited us to give our opinions to them, I'll have to disagree.

If you think the game is just fine, and everything's good, that's fine and good too. Just for the heck of it, if SE did decide to break the game and add a whole bunch of new stuff, would you get up and quit in a huff..? Rhetorical question -- it really doesn't matter.

SE needs to break the game, and stop pussyfooting around. All's not well in Vana'diel, and burying your head in the sand has never served anyone.

[Rewyen]

We all know it won't happen. Even with dwindling numbers, this game is still a cash cow. And sadly, we all complain and keep on playing in the mad hope that something new will come along, but it won't. I mean, sure, we could all get the epic expansion we've all been dreaming about, complete with two shiny new jobs and a dozen new areas. But, like every other time, people will rush through it at mach bajillion and complain that it was too short/not enough content/boring. And a month later, we're all right back here. But should they break the game? No.

What they should do is release one last epic expansion that unlocks every single area ever mentioned but never seen (Tavnazia, Mithra Homeland, Far East), fill in the rest of Aht Urhgan, connect all the loose ends, fix all the battlefields and give every job the abilities based on player feedback. Then one year later, condense the servers, do one last major update and run it as a F2P. This way, the game lives on and SE can suck every last dime out of people before it becomes a relic. This game is old and tired and has plenty of competition worth the money and time to draw players away from here. So fix FFXIV so you still have something broken to charge people for and let this bird fly free.

[Shipp]

So your point is that the game is just fine the way it is? Duly noted! However, since a. SE's still running the game, b. SE is still making games, and c. SE's invited us to give our opinions to them, I'll have to disagree.

If you think the game is just fine, and everything's good, that's fine and good too. Just for the heck of it, if SE did decide to break the game and add a whole bunch of new stuff, would you get up and quit in a huff..? Rhetorical question -- it really doesn't matter.

SE needs to break the game, and stop pussyfooting around. All's not well in Vana'diel, and burying your head in the sand has never served anyone.

As I said, people need to stop trying to be smart asses by making rant posts based on an inaccurate assumption. Stop being a smart ass, read my posts, try to comprehend them, and maybe you won't end up completely missing the point in your haste to make a "comeback" post.

[Glamdring]

That might have been for T6 VW fights, which admittedly are not forgiving fights and take a certain job setup.

I take a slight issue with this. Yes, they aren't forgiving fights, you're right there. But Requiring certain jobs? doubtful. The correct statement would be that job set x has been shown to win fairly consistently if everyone plays it right. Job set y, z, and a-n might very well be able to win it as well, it's just that noone has posted it yet. Regardless, it would require a party that was clicking on all points no matter what jobs were in the set. non-standard parties have a long history of being successful when played right, just look at all the "burn" designs as an example. Not that VW is very burn friendly, at least if you want anything from it, but the point is EMBRACE THE WIERD!!! it actually works more often than you might think.

[FrankReynolds]

As I said, people need to stop trying to be smart asses by making rant posts based on an inaccurate assumption. Stop being a smart ass, read my posts, try to comprehend them, and maybe you won't end up completely missing the point in your haste to make a "comeback" post.

The guy is trying really hard to be nice to you despite the fact that your just ragging on him and adding nothing to the conversation. It makes you look pretty silly. A lot of people think the game is going in a bad direction as of late. The beauty of a MMO is that it can be reinvented and expanded on without any limit other than profitability. That means that the game can be reinvented again and again for 50 years, or neglected and shutdown in 6 months.

I for one would like to see a radical shift and a reinvention. There are still thousands of walls that can be broken down in this game. The old FFXI was fun and while there was a lot of bad stuff, it was overall a great game. I don't want to go back to it anymore than I want to go back to the 8th grade though. Crazy long grinds for stuff that added virtually invisible gains to your character are a thing of the past and should stay that way.

EDIT: Funny side note... he clearly knew what RNG stands for. Good job explaining it to him for no reason though.

[Zinato]

The correct statement would be that job set x has been shown to win fairly consistently if everyone plays it right. Job set y, z, and a-n might very well be able to win it as well, it's just that noone has posted it yet. Regardless, it would require a party that was clicking on all points no matter what jobs were in the set. non-standard parties have a long history of being successful when played right, just look at all the "burn" designs as an example. Not that VW is very burn friendly, at least if you want anything from it, but the point is EMBRACE THE WIERD!!! it actually works more often than you might think.

This is why i'm glad they have scraped procs from this moment on. (or so they say) Abyssea could have been so different were it not for 6 jobs being locked into use, VW is following the same crippling design, and 2/3 the forum could tell you about bst/dynamis let alone dnc, thf, blu and so on. As much as players like x,y,z set-up and tend to stick to them, in this case the DEVs stepped in and said here is your set-up if you want treasure. Nothing would make me happier then removal of the specific proc in abyssea or vw and replace them with hints/procs based on what jobs are in your party. Unfortunatly, this has been said many times before and has yet to be addressed, and that assumes that something can even be done this far along. At least dynamis is based on a type of move rather then specifics but, in it's case that could very well have been worse.

*Disclaimer* there are plenty of threads to discuss dynamis procs I'm stating a fact not starting a debate.

What would be nice (and on topic) would be if they made scripted fights such as on an airship or boat that require say a certain amount of range dmg to force the enemy closer to be melee'd. Or enemies that react to abilities/spells, so for example if you cast while its casting it will follow with poisonga (like amphitrite) or if you use a 2hr so will it. ZERG ALL TEH THINGS! gets old after you do it to anything that moves and puts up a fight.

[Anapingofness]

The guy is trying really hard to be nice to you despite the fact that your just ragging on him and adding nothing to the conversation. It makes you look pretty silly. A lot of people think the game is going in a bad direction as of late. The beauty of a MMO is that it can be reinvented and expanded on without any limit other than profitability. That means that the game can be reinvented again and again for 50 years, or neglected and shutdown in 6 months.

I for one would like to see a radical shift and a reinvention. There are still thousands of walls that can be broken down in this game. The old FFXI was fun and while there was a lot of bad stuff, it was overall a great game. I don't want to go back to it anymore than I want to go back to the 8th grade though. Crazy long grinds for stuff that added virtually invisible gains to your character are a thing of the past and should stay that way.

EDIT: Funny side note... he clearly knew what RNG stands for. Good job explaining it to him for no reason though.

That was pretty cool of you FrankReynolds. For that, I give you my thanks and a cookie. Tbh, I was just thinking the same thing. So thank you for putting it so eloquently! ^^

[Fupafighter]

SE needs to make heavy metal be able to AH. I can never seem the find the people selling at a normal price... Keep getting all the retards that think 120k for a common VW drop is fair.

[Zinato]

Supply and Demand, if just being common was all it took, Ancient currency should be 100g. Also be glad its 120k i've seen as high as 150k with 130k being average.

[Aquilla]

FrankReynolds, I like ya. d(^-^)b

I don't think I'm the only one here who's waiting to hear about their plan for the future. The roadmap runs out in march, and we were promised a lot of revamping of old content, new content, and all sorts of stuff.

In fact, it's probably a pretty chilly day in Hades, since the prism staff announcement hit the forums -- though I'm not singing it's praises until I see it completed and find out how hard it'll be to get it.

It's an example of a good idea, but nothing in XI is a bad idea in and of itself. What gets messed up is the execution, and this absolute veneration of old coupled with a sheer fear of anything new. How many times, in the past, has the playerbase decried the practice of keeping the old end-game stuff as the best, while the new end-game stuff was simply sidegrades?

Not that I'm saying that the focus needs to be on epic loots. I'd love more fun in the game. I'd love meaningful activities other than killing bosses for loot. All it takes is a sense of progression and a rewards that I'm not going to turn around and NPC for content to be meaningful.

[Fupafighter]

Supply and Demand, if just being common was all it took, Ancient currency should be 100g. Also be glad its 120k i've seen as high as 150k with 130k being average.

The reason you see the 120k+ is because NOONE IS BUYING THEM. lol.....Make sense now?

[Mahoro]

That's a very good suggestion. Personally, I would love to see something like that implemented. You're not the only one who feels shafted by spending time and effort helping the one or two people benefit. Not only that but the external point system is kind of stupid. It's too easy to manipulate against a person or for a person in terms of getting/not getting drops.

But seriously, a lot of people would be more inclined to help others if they too got something in return. Yeah, person A gets the gear/item/whatever but if person B, C, D get a point or some sort of small reward that helps them out then suddenly you have a friendlier environment.

Sadly, the game has never really been 100% like this, however cool it would be if it were. For most events, players are forced to create their own rewards to incentivize people to help them. That is how DKP systems came about, where at least if you don't walk away from an event with that drop you want, you will earn a few points for the next time. I agree that some systems people have come up with are able to be manipulated. There are whole schools of thought on which points system works better than others.

[Scuro]

I have a suggestion! Take all of the suggestions to break the game, and throw that away where it belongs, because thats what killed the game in the first place! I mean it was so dumbed down for the noobs in this game that want the game broken, that it lost the thrill and elitism that made the game a challenge. I know... I should practically design this game anymore! lol

[Shipp]

The guy is trying really hard to be nice to you despite the fact that your just ragging on him and adding nothing to the conversation. It makes you look pretty silly. A lot of people think the game is going in a bad direction as of late. The beauty of a MMO is that it can be reinvented and expanded on without any limit other than profitability. That means that the game can be reinvented again and again for 50 years, or neglected and shutdown in 6 months.
A lot of people thought the game went in a horrible direction when they raised the cap after years of saying they never would. A lot of people thought the game went in a horrible direction when they made XP a joke. A lot of people thought the game went in a horrible direction when "x" happened.

I'm not ragging on him for nothing. He has his fingers in his ears going, "Lalalalalala we need a broken game where we can godmode, because that's fun, and a lot of people think so." Not everyone liked Abyssea. I, personally, do. However, Abyssea is also the reason why "a lot" of people quit. If they go the Abyssea route, they're going to lose players. If they continue to go in the Voidwatch direction, they're going to lose players.

My point is that this game is beyond its prime. It's naive of Aquilla and anyone else who thinks that anything SE does with this game is going to attract some massive amount of brand new players. It won't. It's an old game. The best thing that can happen is to slow the number of cancellations and hope to attract some of the older players back to the game.

For every person you claim doesn't like the current direction, someone else can claim that the same amount of players didn't like the Abyssea direction.




I for one would like to see a radical shift and a reinvention. There are still thousands of walls that can be broken down in this game. The old FFXI was fun and while there was a lot of bad stuff, it was overall a great game. I don't want to go back to it anymore than I want to go back to the 8th grade though. Crazy long grinds for stuff that added virtually invisible gains to your character are a thing of the past and should stay that way.

Why can't people who want those long grinds have them? People like you and me who don't want to mess with it 6+ years later have easy-peasy Abyssea where AF items just drop from the sky. Or is this boiling down to the same issue plaguing WoW where people want the best rewards while only putting in minimal effort?

People who don't want to have to put up with the old-school style do not have to do it. It's there for those who want to do it. I don't care for chocobo raising nor racing. I don't do them, I don't claim that the direction should have been changed because it doesn't suit my tastes. Then again, I'm sure this will be seen as not "equal" since it's as I thought, this boils down to people wanting access to the best gear possible without having to do the old-school grind.

There's no reason SE cannot implement both Aby-style rewards/events AND VW-style rewards/events for the people who want to do them. This does not have to be an either/or, and so far, most people arguing for Aby-style events aren't just wanting them to be added also, they want ONLY Aby-style events.



EDIT: Funny side note... he clearly knew what RNG stands for. Good job explaining it to him for no reason though.
I know he knew what it meant.


didn't say I had a problem with the "dice" (not going to use RNG since that's also the abreviation for ranger), just pointing out that the only real risk left is plain old dumb luck.

I explained it since he wanted to play semantics. See, there was a reason. Please stop the assumptions.

[Aquilla]

I'm not terribly smart, Shipp, and I really don't know anything about making video games, but it just seems to me that you keep saying 'The game is fine the way it is.' That's okay, really.

I'm not saying 'Godmode us'. I'm not saying 'Have only aby, and no VW.' I'm not saying 'Chocobo raising should have the best rewards in the game because i likes me some colorful chicken'.

What I said was, aby was fun because it broke the game. I'm not the only one who's noted how aby broke the game -- how it undid all the barriers that they told us were in place. It gave better gear than old endgame. It gave us a stupid amount of stats. It even gave us a godmode button in form of the primeval brew.

How long did zilart remain as THE Expansion for endgame? Toau came, WoTG came, and we got sidegrades. We got content that was half-baked and unfinished, that didn't give good enough of a reward for the effort put in.

Aby came along, broke all that, and it was fun. Were there complaints? Sure. A lot of them. But overall, it gave a breath of fresh air to the game. It wasn't perfect. It was, however, new.

What I am championing is the cause of the new. I'm tired of the balancing act -- tweak this, tweak that, sidegrade here, miniscule update there. Look at the root of the most of the complaints here and you'll find that a lot of people are saying exactly that.

Yeah, breaking the game means making players a lot more powerful, but it also means opening up new venues to test us. Tweaking means leaving a lot of unused, dead content. I don't know that breaking the game would attract hordes of new players. However, tweaking and balancing won't -- and its bound to frustrate a lot more.

Hey, I'm glad that you think everything is okay. I'm glad that you're accepting of status quo. You're allowed to have that opinion.

I think SE isn't trying very hard to do their best -- and since we are paying customers, we are certainly allowed to tell them why we feel that way.

Here's what I believe:

This game has a ton of content that could be made enjoyable by better rewards/easier accessibility/newness.

This game has enough uniqueness and individuality to be a viable MMO even today.

Am I wrong? Frequently, but I don't think it's about this.

[Anapingofness]

Sadly, the game has never really been 100% like this, however cool it would be if it were. For most events, players are forced to create their own rewards to incentivize people to help them. That is how DKP systems came about, where at least if you don't walk away from an event with that drop you want, you will earn a few points for the next time. I agree that some systems people have come up with are able to be manipulated. There are whole schools of thought on which points system works better than others.

Well that's kind of my point. Basically they do need to change their system. There are plenty of things they can add so that the distribution is more equal. A DKP type system is just one solution that can be added in relatively easily.

Don't get me wrong. I'm fine with working for something, if I wasn't I wouldn't have been with this game as long as I have been. I'm also fine with things being really hard to get. For example, mythic weapons. That's all rainbows and star shine! However that route should be a choice. If player A wants to work for over a year or three to get a piece of gear then you know what that's his God given right. However, don't make that the rule for everyone else. Everyone else shouldn't have to suffer through that agony to get a marginally decent piece of gear.

[FrankReynolds]

For every person you claim doesn't like the current direction, someone else can claim that the same amount of players didn't like the Abyssea direction.


Fair enough, but you can't undo abyssea now. It's clear that people do not want to go back. Saying "hey we promise that long grinds and botting are gonna make a come back" isn't going to get the old crowd who liked that stuff back. the fact of the matter is that many of the people who didn't like abyssea initially, came around and like it better now. I am one of them.


Why can't people who want those long grinds have them? People like you and me who don't want to mess with it 6+ years later have easy-peasy Abyssea where AF items just drop from the sky. Or is this boiling down to the same issue plaguing WoW where people want the best rewards while only putting in minimal effort?

Actually it's the complete opposite. Epic mode is readily available to anyone who cares for a challenge. The fact of the matter is that none of these people who say they want a challenge are willing to sacrifice gear for some challenge. You are free to go low man VWNMs with no temps, and nothing but pups and bsts in your group, but nobody does that because they really don't give a crap about the challenge. They want the gear. Truth is that if SE added a whole bunch of NMS and content that gave no gear, but added all sorts of stupid visual effects to your character, nobody would do it unless it was super easy. As a matter of fact, I bet if you look through one of the wikis, you can actually find that there are a shit load of Tough NMs, and quests that no one cares about because they only want loot.

Want to be fair? make the gear readily available to anyone who is willing to put in a moderate effort like abyssea. Then create a bunch of afterglow style epic long quests and SUPER hard mode NMS that award no gear, but give people shit like glows, and flames, and shiny stuff. Watch 99.999% of the people who said they needed more challenge ignore the hard stuff that doesn't drop gear just like they do now.

Or better yet make the event so that you can adjust the difficulty, but the drops stay the same. See how many people try to do it on hard mode.

Hint: you can already do this by not using atmas. I've done it against a few NMS just for shiggles. Have you?


People who don't want to have to put up with the old-school style do not have to do it. It's there for those who want to do it. I don't care for chocobo raising nor racing. I don't do them, I don't claim that the direction should have been changed because it doesn't suit my tastes. Then again, I'm sure this will be seen as not "equal" since it's as I thought, this boils down to people wanting access to the best gear possible without having to do the old-school grind.

"hey, nobody is forcing you to do it."

Yeah, that ought to sell some subscriptions.


I explained it since he wanted to play semantics. See, there was a reason. Please stop the assumptions.

Seriously, go reread what he wrote a few times. your way off base.

[FrankReynolds]

Now back on the topic: They could absolutely rebuild this game, and draw new customers with expansions, graphics updates, and better play scaled towards more casual gamers. That obviously can't happen on a shoestring budget with like 3 coders. Drawing new players requires advertising and marketing... and having something new to advertise and market.

[Anapingofness]

Now back on the topic: They could absolutely rebuild this game, and draw new customers with expansions, graphics updates, and better play scaled towards more casual gamers. That obviously can't happen on a shoestring budget with like 3 coders. Drawing new players requires advertising and marketing... and having something new to advertise and market.

Haha they actually need to try advertising first! I saw one advertisement via Steam for FFXI. Other than that last time I heard about FFXI was about the Pandemonium Warden bit.

But you know what? I am 100% behind that suggestion. They should stop putting money into polishing that turd (read: FFXIV) and really polish this game. Make it shine like we know it can. Hell, Blizzard pretty much re-released WoW with Cataclysm, why can't SE do the same? Granted they'd have to actually put some effort into the damn thing and listen to the players but it can be done.

[Zinato]

To go with what Frank said, they could rebuild the and it could very easily create top tier gear, each stronger then the last. Does this change how hard enemies will be? no, because enemies following will also be stronger. The big issue i've seen post abyssea is the need to zerg everything.

The game has a single method of defeating the enemy and thats stand at its side and smack it around. What would make the game more challenging (Real challenge not artifical) is enemies that can select random players and spawn damaging spheres that slowly engulf the arena. Arena's like Diabolos' that change as the fight progresses. Enemies that use moves that are reletively harmless unless two or more people hit it during its ready phase at which point it does large AoE dmg. Enemies that change colors to symbolize a weakness for a window of time. (and i'm talking 0 from other sources) more fights like this and less like VW, along with scaling enemies could make all the difference. 99 may be the literal cap but gear and monsters could let the game go far beyond that leaving room for many things to come. That is if they cared.

[Shipp]

I'm not terribly smart, Shipp, and I really don't know anything about making video games, but it just seems to me that you keep saying 'The game is fine the way it is.' That's okay, really.

I'm not saying 'Godmode us'. I'm not saying 'Have only aby, and no VW.' I'm not saying 'Chocobo raising should have the best rewards in the game because i likes me some colorful chicken'.

What I said was, aby was fun because it broke the game. I'm not the only one who's noted how aby broke the game -- how it undid all the barriers that they told us were in place. It gave better gear than old endgame. It gave us a stupid amount of stats. It even gave us a godmode button in form of the primeval brew.

How long did zilart remain as THE Expansion for endgame? Toau came, WoTG came, and we got sidegrades. We got content that was half-baked and unfinished, that didn't give good enough of a reward for the effort put in.

Aby came along, broke all that, and it was fun. Were there complaints? Sure. A lot of them. But overall, it gave a breath of fresh air to the game. It wasn't perfect. It was, however, new.

What I am championing is the cause of the new. I'm tired of the balancing act -- tweak this, tweak that, sidegrade here, miniscule update there. Look at the root of the most of the complaints here and you'll find that a lot of people are saying exactly that.

Yeah, breaking the game means making players a lot more powerful, but it also means opening up new venues to test us. Tweaking means leaving a lot of unused, dead content. I don't know that breaking the game would attract hordes of new players. However, tweaking and balancing won't -- and its bound to frustrate a lot more.

Hey, I'm glad that you think everything is okay. I'm glad that you're accepting of status quo. You're allowed to have that opinion.

I think SE isn't trying very hard to do their best -- and since we are paying customers, we are certainly allowed to tell them why we feel that way.

Here's what I believe:

This game has a ton of content that could be made enjoyable by better rewards/easier accessibility/newness.

This game has enough uniqueness and individuality to be a viable MMO even today.

Am I wrong? Frequently, but I don't think it's about this.

You bring up some good points, but I don't care for your somewhat snide remarks about me accepting the status quo. I'm not 100% happy with XI, nor have I ever been. I like Aby over the old-school style grind. However, I also don't see the problem with having that type of grind for players to do if they wish.


Actually it's the complete opposite. Epic mode is readily available to anyone who cares for a challenge. The fact of the matter is that none of these people who say they want a challenge are willing to sacrifice gear for some challenge. You are free to go low man VWNMs with no temps, and nothing but pups and bsts in your group, but nobody does that because they really don't give a crap about the challenge. They want the gear. Truth is that if SE added a whole bunch of NMS and content that gave no gear, but added all sorts of stupid visual effects to your character, nobody would do it unless it was super easy. As a matter of fact, I bet if you look through one of the wikis, you can actually find that there are a shit load of Tough NMs, and quests that no one cares about because they only want loot.

Want to be fair? make the gear readily available to anyone who is willing to put in a moderate effort like abyssea. Then create a bunch of afterglow style epic long quests and SUPER hard mode NMS that award no gear, but give people shit like glows, and flames, and shiny stuff. Watch 99.999% of the people who said they needed more challenge ignore the hard stuff that doesn't drop gear just like they do now.

Or better yet make the event so that you can adjust the difficulty, but the drops stay the same. See how many people try to do it on hard mode.

That is the thing though. More challenging events -should- reward better gear. I'm not saying that there's a problem with that. I'm saying that there are a lot of people complaining (same thing happened in WoW prior to WoTLK and Cata) that they want the best gear, but they shouldn't have to put in the effort to obtaining it. If you want that those great rewards, then put in the effort and do them. If you just want Aby-style events since they're easy and quick, then be happy with Empy+2. This isn't directed to you specifically, just in general.

To explain what I'm talking about, going to bring up WoW here. People complained and complained that they couldn't do raids. So Blizzard nerfs raids. Now everyone has the same gear. The people who wanted a challenge now have the gear, yet they don't have the challenge. Blizzard made heroic mode raids with basically the +1 version of gear from the normal raid counterpart. Then those same people who complained about not being able to raid in the first place because they were too challenging complained because now they don't get to have the top-tier gear like people who put in more effort. Then heroics were nerfed and Blizzard introduced hard-modes within the heroic raids so players had the choice of getting better gear by fighting harder version of the gear, which is basically a +2 version of the normal raid (in XI's terms). The people who originally whined about not being to raid now complain that they want hard-mode raid gear. It was never about them getting in to raiding, it was about them wanting the same gear as the hardcore players without actually putting in the time that those hardcore players do.

I see the same thing happening here. VW would be basically the equivalent of Heroic raids in WoW. Aby would be like the normal version. If people want that great gear, then they should put in the effort for it. Or, they can be happy with upgrading their empy stuff and still be far more powerful than they were prior to upgrading it.


"hey, nobody is forcing you to do it."

Yeah, that ought to sell some subscriptions.
Yes, because I certainly saw that huge influx of sub numbers rising when Aby was released.

The statement is right. Nobody is forcing you to do it. You want the rewards from it without doing it, and you want them obtained through easier means.

[FrankReynolds]

The statement is right. Nobody is forcing you to do it. You want the rewards from it without doing it, and you want them obtained through easier means.

Just because they offer you an option to get something one way doesn't mean you have to do it that way. For example: you are free to try and get to floor 100 in Nyzul isle with just 3 people.

However, I do not have the option to bring 12 people do I? Seems to me that you don't really want more challenging events. You want events that are too hard for most of the paying customers. You want to have some gear that no one else can get. It has nothing to do with the challenge. Its all about a false sense of superiority.

I have no problems getting endgame content completed. However, the average gamer spends maybe a couple hours a day playing games tops, and most of the time not consecutively. Making events that require massive time sinks, and large numbers of players who have already completed large time sinks, as the only method of completion, effectively blacks out a large portion of potential customers. Every impossible to obtain item eventually becomes the standard. They did a lot to adjust the curve so that new players could catch up for a while, but now they are screwing that all back up. They should have stuck with that.

There is always a harder way to do things. The challenge seekers never opt for that though. They always seek the easiest way to do it, and then complain that it's too easy.

If this was a standard RPG, these people would be playing on easy mode, and sad when they finished the game the first day.

[Mahoro]

Just because they offer you an option to get something one way doesn't mean you have to do it that way. For example: you are free to try and get to floor 100 in Nyzul isle with just 3 people.

However, I do not have the option to bring 12 people do I? Seems to me that you don't really want more challenging events. You want events that are too hard for most of the paying customers. You want to have some gear that no one else can get. It has nothing to do with the challenge. Its all about a false sense of superiority.

I have no problems getting endgame content completed. However, the average gamer spends maybe a couple hours a day playing games tops, and most of the time not consecutively. Making events that require massive time sinks, and large numbers of players who have already completed large time sinks, as the only method of completion, effectively blacks out a large portion of potential customers. Every impossible to obtain item eventually becomes the standard.

How is the average gamer blacked out from Nyzul when the event only takes 30 minutes? For that matter, how are they blacked out from any event you call a time sink when no current endgame event takes more than 2hrs?

I also dont think he was saying that he wants events that are too hard for the paying customers. He expressly said that if people want the better gear, they just need to put in the effort. Your attempt to portray that as some sort of ad hominem attack that he secretly wants a false sense of superiority is not supported by what he said.

[Aquilla]

You know, frank up there nailed it, but I'm not here to laugh at the 'I want sword of supershiny and nobody else can have it' people.

Here's the problem: the game has a severe myopia when it comes to reward. You want 18+ endgame? Fine! There's the Legion -- it's tailor-made for all the HNM-fighting, 18-man goodness you can get.
Your rewards are: a sidegrade. A haste+4%, str+8 and assorted stats sidegrade.

That, quite frankly, should upset the hard-mode crowd more than me. It makes me go 'meh' since I'm not in the market for end-game of that sort, but for you hard-mode people out there, it's even more meh. That's not an endgame reward, that's a joke. That's the type of shit that you should be able to get through a quest, or somesuch.

What if Legion dropped rings that gave stat+50? body pieces that were haste+25%, etc? If you are going to have this be endgame, then have it be endgame with oomph. Have it be gear that, when I get it, I can put on and see a difference.

However, you also need to have actual content for the rest of the crowd -- and that's exactly the problem. There is no content other than endgame content. There is nothing except NM-killing and loot-chasing.

Imagine starting out in this game now -- and imagine doing it coming from other MMOs. Quests are confusing, and give no rewards. The game doesn't explain to you how to participate in the variety of content -- no explanations for BCNM, VNM, ANNM, ENM, and all other dead content taking up space. No PvP, no crafting/gathering worth doing, no non-battle content such as pankration/chocobo raising/MMM.

All of this stuff is in the game, but shitty. It gives no rewards, takes too long to do, and is too hard to get into. Why can't all of this stuff be meaningful?

The game needs a serious revamp, for both the end-game and the actual playing of the game. It needs to be fun to play. That does require breaking the game. Why? because the elitist crowd who truly cared about the nerfing of the heroics are a tiny percentage of gamers. Most people want to have fun when they are playing a game, not have the item x. that nobody has. If that wasn't true, then WoW would've tanked the moment their first expansion made the former expansion obsolete.

[Shipp]

You know, frank up there nailed it, but I'm not here to laugh at the 'I want sword of supershiny and nobody else can have it' people.

No, he actually didn't, and I'll explain how.

I don't do VW. I do Aby. In another thread about inventory issues, Frank specifically said he needs 78+ pieces of equipment for gear swaps, and I said that's not necessary for any job except maybe BLU. His response was basically that "I" might not see it as necessary, but he does. He has no problem with people like me who don't carry around 80+ pieces of gear for just one job at a time, but he feels he needs to.

You tell me who has the superiority complex sweetheart. Mahoro nailed my point perfectly. If you want better rewards than the +2 gear from aby, then you need to put in the effort. People didn't baaaahhhhh about wanting Riddil without fighting Faf back in the day, because it makes logical sense that you get better rewards from harder events. Also, nothing today comes close to endgame back in the "glory" days, so I have a hard time imagining someone has a hard time getting into endgame things.





Here's the problem: the game has a severe myopia when it comes to reward. You want 18+ endgame? Fine! There's the Legion -- it's tailor-made for all the HNM-fighting, 18-man goodness you can get.
Your rewards are: a sidegrade. A haste+4%, str+8 and assorted stats sidegrade.

And you know what, it's optional. You obviously don't like the rewards, so you don't have to do VW. That is not a hard choice. Leave the more challenging/time-consuming events to those people who want to do them. I agree that the game could use more Aby style events. I'm not arguing against that. I'm arguing against you people who claim that it's going to bring a ton of brand new players in and that more challenging/time-consuming content will kill the game.




That, quite frankly, should upset the hard-mode crowd more than me. It makes me go 'meh' since I'm not in the market for end-game of that sort, but for you hard-mode people out there, it's even more meh. That's not an endgame reward, that's a joke. That's the type of shit that you should be able to get through a quest, or somesuch.

Some people actually LIKE to do those types of events, regardless of the rewards. You know, some of us do play the game for fun instead of sitting in Jeuno e-peening around.



What if Legion dropped rings that gave stat+50? body pieces that were haste+25%, etc? If you are going to have this be endgame, then have it be endgame with oomph. Have it be gear that, when I get it, I can put on and see a difference.


Like I said, and you denied, you want godmode.



However, you also need to have actual content for the rest of the crowd -- and that's exactly the problem. There is no content other than endgame content. There is nothing except NM-killing and loot-chasing.

You have Aby for the time being. I don't know what you want, +50 gear just handed to you or something? Why SHOULDN'T you have to kill NMs? What is it that you want? You keep saying what you don't want to do yet you don't say what events you do want, only the rewards you want.



Imagine starting out in this game now -- and imagine doing it coming from other MMOs. Quests are confusing, and give no rewards. The game doesn't explain to you how to participate in the variety of content -- no explanations for BCNM, VNM, ANNM, ENM, and all other dead content taking up space. No PvP, no crafting/gathering worth doing, no non-battle content such as pankration/chocobo raising/MMM.

Very few new people are coming to this game. It's been that way since about WoTG release.



All of this stuff is in the game, but shitty. It gives no rewards, takes too long to do, and is too hard to get into. Why can't all of this stuff be meaningful?

Not everyone needs a reward to do something they consider fun. Perhaps you're not understanding the point of a game.



The game needs a serious revamp, for both the end-game and the actual playing of the game. It needs to be fun to play. That does require breaking the game. Why? because the elitist crowd who truly cared about the nerfing of the heroics are a tiny percentage of gamers. Most people want to have fun when they are playing a game, not have the item x. that nobody has. If that wasn't true, then WoW would've tanked the moment their first expansion made the former expansion obsolete.
You know, this is the exact same mindset of WoW players. Look how many subs dropped after Cata turned the game into easy-mode. Also, BC was a challenging expansion which most players actually did NOT raid, only the elites. I don't know where you're coming up with your info, but you're sorely mistaken and misrepresenting the facts. Blizzard has even stated that Cata's raids were easier because only a small portion of the playerbase had been raiding from Vanilla through WoTLK.

You are trying to bring a Cata-style revamp into XI, and Cata is the entire reason why I came back to XI. It's trash in terms of endgame. If you want easy events where you get the best gear, go play any other MMO, don't try to turn one of the last MMOs into that.

[Aquilla]

Wow, that was lengthy! Well, back on track:

Break the game, SE. Be brave, and bold. Do something new and innovative. That was what made FF special from the beginning!

Try something new -- because the current approach is just death by small doses. If you make the game shiny, new, and exciting -- and it still fails -- at least it would've gone out gloriously.

[Anapingofness]

Actually Shipp... people did go "baaahhh Ridill" back in the day. I would know. I was one of those people. Besides, Ridill wasn't that great either. It was an e-peen item. Not to mention that Faffy wasn't that hard anyway.

On that note...

SE!!
Break the game!
If Shipp quits I'll get another player to take his place. Hell I'll pay for two accounts. Just make the game fun!

[FrankReynolds]

No, he actually didn't, and I'll explain how.

I don't do VW. I do Aby. In another thread about inventory issues, Frank specifically said he needs 78+ pieces of equipment for gear swaps, and I said that's not necessary for any job except maybe BLU. His response was basically that "I" might not see it as necessary, but he does. He has no problem with people like me who don't carry around 80+ pieces of gear for just one job at a time, but he feels he needs to.

You tell me who has the superiority complex sweetheart. Mahoro nailed my point perfectly. If you want better rewards than the +2 gear from aby, then you need to put in the effort. People didn't baaaahhhhh about wanting Riddil without fighting Faf back in the day, because it makes logical sense that you get better rewards from harder events. Also, nothing today comes close to endgame back in the "glory" days, so I have a hard time imagining someone has a hard time getting into endgame things.


TLDR;


Yes, If you don't carry any healing set or any physical damage down set, and I do, then your physical damage down and your healing sets suck compared to mine. This is because you didn't bother to make a set at all. Not because I have epeen gear and show it off to make others feel inferior.

I carry around a bunch of stuff because it makes my character perform better, and it doesn't require any grinding to get that improvement. I mean seriously, who wants to help a guy get his awesome strength headpiece when the guy doesn't even bother to keep it on him so he can use it afterwards? DO you really not feel annoyed when the mage runs out of mp, and you look over and hes not wearing any HMP gear while he rests? This is all stuff that can be bought cheap off the AH. not king drops.

How can you act like I'm lazy for complaining about months of grinding when you can't even be bothered to buy sets off the AH?

[saevel]

How is the average gamer blacked out from Nyzul when the event only takes 30 minutes? For that matter, how are they blacked out from any event you call a time sink when no current endgame event takes more than 2hrs?

I also dont think he was saying that he wants events that are too hard for the paying customers. He expressly said that if people want the better gear, they just need to put in the effort. Your attempt to portray that as some sort of ad hominem attack that he secretly wants a false sense of superiority is not supported by what he said.

Actually ....

Earlier today I noticed not one, not two, but four different VWNM shouts that required the melee's to have Emp / Relic weapons. They were not even for Rex but for Ig, Gaunab, Uptala and drum roll please, Pil. I'm not sh!tty you, they demanded emp / relics for ... Pil.


How is the average gamer blacked out from Nyzul when the event only takes 30 minutes?

Because the people who will be organizing these events will demand Emp / Relics and nothing else. The "average" player doesn't have an Emp, I know I've been watching. Without solid friends or a shell getting past Stage II is pretty much impossible now. Nobody even remotely cares for the +2 drops from those NMs nor the Atma's, we've completely saturated the supply with them by having to do them x50 x50 x75. 50 really was too big a number, or the NM only dropping 1~2 was too little, either way it required such a grind that people refuse to help anymore. Relics are now more realistic to obtain then Emps due to being able to do the entire thing by yourself or nearly by yourself.

So yes, "average players" aka the majority of paying customers, are being c*ck blocked from events by leaders demanding relic / emps. Basically saying "you can not participate in any new content without first making yourself several Emps / Relics". And yes it's several, because at this point in time people have different jobs. And if the event leader needs a DRK, and you leveled DRK but have an Almace or Ukon, then your told to go piss off. If the event leader is looking for "Ukon WAR Onry" and you got a Torcleaver but also have WAR leveled and fully geared, your told to piss off.

[Zinato]

This is the flaw in Empyrean's design and the recreation of dynamis. Super weapons were never ment to be an every man item, and this holds true for nearly every MMO. However, now enough people have empyrean to make it "standard", the problem this causes is a rift between content. On the one hand those with empyrean find the content too easy since the weapons themselves are far superior to any non-super weapon counterpart. Then on the other hand, any player unable to gain an empyrean will likely find content too hard or else players will gain the idea of empyrean = faster and therefore only useful way to win. (Since zerg has been the play style for quite some time now)

The problem lies in the uncloseable gap of power in the Weaponskills along with double dmg aftermath, this on low delay weapons makes a major difference. When SE announced new Weaponskills for players that threatened to be as powerful as empyrean, those with the weapon fought back and eventually got the weaponskills weakened. (Not without reason however, they did after all create a weapon vs 100 merits) Had the weaponskills remained in power its possible empyrean would be counteracted and the situation wouldn't be what it is now. Alternatively if the aftermath or even the weaponskill itself was unlocked at 90 or more so 95 the balance would likely be restored. The fact that for larger teams empyrean is dime-a-dozen and for smaller teams its much more of a time commitment the balance will continue to shift. As more people make empyrean out of nessessity the gap grows ever larger and the means to acquire ever smaller.

Imagine for a moment, 6 months from now leveling drk, this is long after the abyssea rush and many ls' will be burnt out on creating empy after making so many others. But, you must have 90 GS to even have a chance of using the job, and whats more this may only be your second job. (This issue affects any DD regardless of how many other jobs a player has.) The common argument is just level a mage, but this not only lowers DD available for runs but from the players perspective has nearly the same result since magian staves are up to 8 or more per mage, excluding WHM. (besides, if a player is forced into a role they dislike its highly likely they wont hang around long.)

[Sagagemini]

The day FFXI breaks the random system for drops and start a point system it will rain in hell. Unfortunately that would be the best change for FFXI. There are so many interesting jobs in this game and so many events that a point system wouldn't remove the longetivity of the game for the casual or the hardcore.

But it would remove a lot of frustration. FFXI became more of a game about things you can't do unless you whore yourself to a linkshell (unless you are a leader, officer or virtual girlfriend from one of those) then things that you can actually log in for 2-3 hours and get things done. A lot of players appreciate that others can't achieve meaningful thing in 2-3h but they are just sick (lack of social life) and don't know yet.

I don't know if its linked to the japanese culture of self-suffering and this is why this random system drop still exists. The proc stuff made it even worse cause now you gotta have a friend nin another whm and another blm.

[Duelle]

Because the people who will be organizing these events will demand Emp / Relics and nothing else. The "average" player doesn't have an Emp, I know I've been watching. Without solid friends or a shell getting past Stage II is pretty much impossible now. Nobody even remotely cares for the +2 drops from those NMs nor the Atma's, we've completely saturated the supply with them by having to do them x50 x50 x75. 50 really was too big a number, or the NM only dropping 1~2 was too little, either way it required such a grind that people refuse to help anymore. Relics are now more realistic to obtain then Emps due to being able to do the entire thing by yourself or nearly by yourself.This may have been the intention all along, going back to that interview where the devs "claim" they didn't call Abyssea a mistake.

Conspiracies aside, you'd probably have to create a new incentive to make people either grind merit points in abyssea or kill those mobs in exchange for something else. Like, say, an item "created" by killing three abyssea zone bosses that can be traded for one of the items required for the other trials. Could make it specific for each weapon (maybe a sword wielder gets "Blade Shard", a G-Axe user gets "Axe Splinter" and so on). Trading merit points for said items (probably 20 or so) would also work.

[Mahoro]

Actually ....

Earlier today I noticed not one, not two, but four different VWNM shouts that required the melee's to have Emp / Relic weapons. They were not even for Rex but for Ig, Gaunab, Uptala and drum roll please, Pil. I'm not sh!tty you, they demanded emp / relics for ... Pil.



Because the people who will be organizing these events will demand Emp / Relics and nothing else. The "average" player doesn't have an Emp, I know I've been watching. Without solid friends or a shell getting past Stage II is pretty much impossible now. Nobody even remotely cares for the +2 drops from those NMs nor the Atma's, we've completely saturated the supply with them by having to do them x50 x50 x75. 50 really was too big a number, or the NM only dropping 1~2 was too little, either way it required such a grind that people refuse to help anymore. Relics are now more realistic to obtain then Emps due to being able to do the entire thing by yourself or nearly by yourself.

So yes, "average players" aka the majority of paying customers, are being c*ck blocked from events by leaders demanding relic / emps. Basically saying "you can not participate in any new content without first making yourself several Emps / Relics". And yes it's several, because at this point in time people have different jobs. And if the event leader needs a DRK, and you leveled DRK but have an Almace or Ukon, then your told to go piss off. If the event leader is looking for "Ukon WAR Onry" and you got a Torcleaver but also have WAR leveled and fully geared, your told to piss off.

To be fair, i was responding to the point that grindy time sinks are blacking average players out. From a design perspective, no event takes over 2 hours in current FF endgame, so the argument that there are scads of casual or average players who cannot put in time or effort to do SE's events strains credulity. They might be grinds, and I myself do not appreciate artificial grinds like VW, but the intent of the programmer was never to black people out.

As to the phenomenon you are talking about, that lies SOLELY at the hands of the playerbase. Shouting for Relics or Empyreans ONRY in shit like Pil is sheer idiocy. There are various solutions for average players running up against that kind of mindset. One is to join an LS. Another is to start their OWN shout groups.

[Fupafighter]

They should make a DKP system added to LS's lol. So you can't be cheated out of your armor. Like say everyone gets 5 points for events attented and there is a minimum amount of say 100 before you can lot certain armor. This way LS leaders can't abuse people and people get rewards. Via we have to sign in for events with the LS before we start.

[Shipp]

TLDR;


Yes, If you don't carry any healing set or any physical damage down set, and I do, then your physical damage down and your healing sets suck compared to mine. This is because you didn't bother to make a set at all. Not because I have epeen gear and show it off to make others feel inferior.

I carry around a bunch of stuff because it makes my character perform better, and it doesn't require any grinding to get that improvement. I mean seriously, who wants to help a guy get his awesome strength headpiece when the guy doesn't even bother to keep it on him so he can use it afterwards? DO you really not feel annoyed when the mage runs out of mp, and you look over and hes not wearing any HMP gear while he rests? This is all stuff that can be bought cheap off the AH. not king drops.

How can you act like I'm lazy for complaining about months of grinding when you can't even be bothered to buy sets off the AH?

Pardon, but when did I say I don't have hMP sets, nuking sets, MND sets, etc? I didn't. I said I do not need to have them in my inventory 100% of the time. On my mage jobs, I always have my main set of gear plus hMP gear. Situational pieces that might not need use at the time are satcheled or sacked.

You're the one assuming incorrect things. I said nobody (aside from maybe blu) needs to carry 78+ different pieces of equipment for one job for any given event. I never said I don't have 78+ pieces that I use on my jobs. I said I don't have to carry them around in my main inventory 100% of the time while I'm on said job.

Also, you're still trying to portray yourself as superior about gear sets when you just attempted to say that the only reason I feel the way I do about endgame events is because I'm an elitist. Get your story straight. Am I an elitist, or a gimp? Make up your mind please.

I'm beginning to feel like Mahoro is about the only person in the thread who actually has reading comprehension instead of jumping the gun and slanting what someone else says.

[Shipp]

Wow, that was lengthy! Well, back on track:

Break the game, SE. Be brave, and bold. Do something new and innovative. That was what made FF special from the beginning!

Try something new -- because the current approach is just death by small doses. If you make the game shiny, new, and exciting -- and it still fails -- at least it would've gone out gloriously.

Let me requote the relevant parts.


You know, this is the exact same mindset of WoW players. Look how many subs dropped after Cata turned the game into easy-mode. Also, BC was a challenging expansion which most players actually did NOT raid, only the elites. I don't know where you're coming up with your info, but you're sorely mistaken and misrepresenting the facts. Blizzard has even stated that Cata's raids were easier because only a small portion of the playerbase had been raiding from Vanilla through WoTLK.

You are trying to bring a Cata-style revamp into XI, and Cata is the entire reason why I came back to XI. It's trash in terms of endgame. If you want easy events where you get the best gear, go play any other MMO, don't try to turn one of the last MMOs into that.

Yes, let's turn XI into the game that has now lost more subs in one year than XI and XIV even have combined.

You said you don't want godmode, but that's what you're wanting with them "breaking the game."

[Fupafighter]

Let me requote the relevant parts.



Yes, let's turn XI into the game that has now lost more subs in one year than XI and XIV even have combined.

You said you don't want godmode, but that's what you're wanting with them "breaking the game."

To be fair...I don't play these other games except FFXI, but if they had a MUCH higher population than FFXI, wouldn't that mean they're more likely to lose more subscriptions lol? Just sayin.

[FrankReynolds]

Pardon, but when did I say I don't have hMP sets, nuking sets, MND sets, etc? I didn't. I said I do not need to have them in my inventory 100% of the time. On my mage jobs, I always have my main set of gear plus hMP gear. Situational pieces that might not need use at the time are satcheled or sacked.

You're the one assuming incorrect things. I said nobody (aside from maybe blu) needs to carry 78+ different pieces of equipment for one job for any given event. I never said I don't have 78+ pieces that I use on my jobs. I said I don't have to carry them around in my main inventory 100% of the time while I'm on said job.

Also, you're still trying to portray yourself as superior about gear sets when you just attempted to say that the only reason I feel the way I do about endgame events is because I'm an elitist. Get your story straight. Am I an elitist, or a gimp? Make up your mind please.

I'm beginning to feel like Mahoro is about the only person in the thread who actually has reading comprehension instead of jumping the gun and slanting what someone else says.

In the other thread, one person listed out over 100 items that they could easily need on them at any given time. The same can be done for many of the other jobs in the game. No one is going to waste their time listing out all of their gear for every one of their jobs so that you can critique it.

Even if they did, it would still boil down to you saying "I could manage all that gear with the space we already have. So you can't have any more space"

The bottom line is you saying that people can't have more space because you are better than them at managing inventory, and that is a bull crap argument.

Reading comprehension is also a pretty funny argument being as in the other thread you said:


you assumed I was against more inventory/storage and attacked a position I never held to begin with

and yet you continue to argue that we don't need more inventory / storage here. Perhaps you don't comprehend the words that you are using Because you clearly want to assert your superiority at inventory management. You keep asserting that we don't "need" to carry things as if you are the authority on what can and should be done in the game. I bet you would take a different stance and turn all "elitist" when someone pops in claiming they don't need to swap gear at all. Trying to paint me as an elitist because I carry relevant gear is just lol.

[Duelle]

Yes, let's turn XI into the game that has now lost more subs in one year than XI and XIV even have combined.Erm, if you're gonna mention WoW, at least get the facts right. The majority of the subcriptioin dip was because Cataclysm made dungeons and raid content much harder at the entry level than they were back in Wrath of the Lich King. This in effect meant tanks and healers became super picky over who they wanted to run with, which made pugging really difficult. Combine that with the fact that PvP was an utter mess for 2/3 of the expansion and there's your answer. It wasn't until gearing and content as a whole was made more accessible that people started coming back (AKA 3.3 between the Hour of Twilight dungeons, Fall of deathwing AND raid finder).

In short, when the expansion launched they went back to a design model where people were basically bashing their head against a wall in trying to kill things in dungeons and it pissed a lot of people off. It diluted the tank and healer pool because you had less people wanting to take up those roles due to how much more difficult content was, and PvP was a mess because of several class changes for most of the expansion. You can tell it was bad when Blizzard chose to cut an entire tier of content just to wrap up Cataclysm as soon as possible and move on to whatever is next.

[Aquilla]

I won't pretend to know enough about WoW or any other game to make meaningful comparisons.

However, I will stand firm with my opening post. Yeah, SE needs to 'break' the game. It needs to make their players powerful in the world of Vana'diel, because we, as the players, have worked to be powerful.

It also needs to make the content to match. Low drop rates are not challenge, and never have been. Faffy was never a challenge to kill - in fact, it was a joke, doable with six people who knew which end of the pointy weapon went into the mob. Taking two, three years to get a drop off Faffy and his ilk didn't mean that a player worked for two, three years -- it meant that they worked for five-ten minutes, and all the other time spent killing Faffy was essentially wasted time.

I also want to champion the causes of lost content, and not just for the sake of epic lewtz. I want crafting to be meaningful. I want synergy to be meaningful. I want evoliths to go from 'you're kidding me, right? acc+3 vs. beasts only?' to 'I should toss this str+5 stone onto my Legion-begotten red jacket of mediocrity.' I want the hunt registry to have less of 'let's watch Netflix while I wait for this mob to spawn' and more of 'Here's this orb. Throw it into a burning circle, bring all your potions and lucky charms, and see if you can beat it on your own/with two of your best friends/just you and your moogle'. I want chocobo racing to involve me racing my chocobo. I want the potions to stack to 99.

Are any of these things a good idea? Maybe. I say, SE, try it and let's see. Revamp the game you have, and toss it out there to duke it out with the big guys. Maybe your reputation will go from 'That company that made the one good RPG and has been turning out soggy crackers since' to 'Hey, this is cool. Not like WoW and all the other WoW clones out there. You should try it.'

A cat can dream!

[Duelle]

I won't pretend to know enough about WoW or any other game to make meaningful comparisons.I was more annoyed at the person I quoted suggesting that tuning things down and making stuff accessible drives people away, when both this game and WoW have proven the exact opposite.


I want evoliths to go from 'you're kidding me, right? acc+3 vs. beasts only?' to 'I should toss this str+5 stone onto my Legion-begotten red jacket of mediocrity.'Meh, personally evoliths need to be scrapped and remade. I'd take from the one thing TOR got right and borrow elements from their gear modification system. Any piece of gear that is not rare/ex could be put through a process (probably using synergy) to have all of its stats stripped from it and instead 3 or 4 evolith slots. Elemental affinities would be removed from the slots themselves and be kept on the evoliths to signify their allignment. Then assign the evolith shapea to a type of equipment buff (say, square evo sockets being for boosts to base stats, triangle sockets being more stuff like +attack or +acc, and circle sockets being for extra effects like Enhances Refresh or Enhances Dual Wield). At least this way you have some sort of modifiable gear and give evoliths some use. Then it'd be a matter of balancing values per evolith and so on.

Oh, and they should be crafted. None of this nonsense of randomly dropping in chests.

As far as the hunt registry, I agree that it should be more along the lines of a pop item leading to you killing the target NM. I wouldn't make it an orb though. Something more along the lines of "the NM is in X zone. Y item can lure it out, which can be obtained from Z mobs in that same area" or something like that.

[Aquilla]

XD well, the above works too. Brilliant ideas, I'd get behind it!

[Fupafighter]

Are we not powerful lol? This is an MMO...We are supposed to work together, and look how powerful we are when we are together.

[FrankReynolds]

Are we not powerful lol? This is an MMO...We are supposed to work together, and look how powerful we are when we are together.

Nope, we are supposed to play in the same game together. I do not have to be on your team to play an MMO with you. Teamwork is just one very small part of a very large game. Not that teamwork is bad but people shouldn't have to schedule play dates to enjoy an MMO.

[Zinato]

You know, in other FF games (or RPGs for that matter) you can get stupid powerful stats and I mean beyond 9999HP and the like, (BTW, we barely come to 1/5 that) yet there are still challenging boss fights. Things which make you think outside the box, or just equally crazy powerful enemies. Group or not it proves the concept is more than possible. All this does is keep us weakened there by ensuring monsters don't have to be powerful either. Sometimes feels like Fisher Price presents MMO complete with smaller numbers. (What I mean by this does not refer to the "challenge" of the game but, rather the lack of epicness.) 10 DMG to an enemy with 100 hp is the same as 10000 DMG to an enemy 100000 hp just less satisfying.

[FrankReynolds]

You know, in other FF games (or RPGs for that matter) you can get stupid powerful stats and I mean beyond 9999HP and the like, (BTW, we barely come to 1/5 that) yet there are still challenging boss fights. Things which make you think outside the box, or just equally crazy powerful enemies. Group or not it proves the concept is more than possible. All this does is keep us weakened there by ensuring monsters don't have to be powerful either. Sometimes feels like Fisher Price presents MMO complete with smaller numbers. (What I mean by this does not refer to the "challenge" of the game but, rather the lack of epicness.) 10 DMG to an enemy with 100 hp is the same as 10000 DMG to an enemy 100000 hp just less satisfying.

Yeah, when I convinced the guys from work to try FFXI, they all commented on how low all the stats and damage numbers were. At the time I had no idea what they were talking about (this was way back when I only had red mage leveled and had just joined my first linkshell :P). But now I have realized that as silly as it seems, this is actually a turn off for some people (who doesn't like to see a big number really?).

[Mahoro]

They should make a DKP system added to LS's lol. So you can't be cheated out of your armor. Like say everyone gets 5 points for events attented and there is a minimum amount of say 100 before you can lot certain armor. This way LS leaders can't abuse people and people get rewards. Via we have to sign in for events with the LS before we start.

Any good shell has one of these already. And people who are abusd by LS leaders should question the research they did before choosing to join that shell.

[Fupafighter]

Nope, we are supposed to play in the same game together. I do not have to be on your team to play an MMO with you. Teamwork is just one very small part of a very large game. Not that teamwork is bad but people shouldn't have to schedule play dates to enjoy an MMO.
I'm done talking to you on all threads retard...

[Camiie]

Any good shell has one of these already. And people who are abusd by LS leaders should question the research they did before choosing to join that shell.


It doesn't always work that way, dear. A previously good shell can go south for any number of reasons.

[Mahoro]

It doesn't always work that way, dear. A previously good shell can go south for any number of reasons.

We are talking in vague hypotheticals, but a shell abusing its members typically means there was a flaw in the rules used to set up the shell.

[Zeratoangel]

You know, this is the exact same mindset of WoW players. Look how many subs dropped after Cata turned the game into easy-mode. Also, BC was a challenging expansion which most players actually did NOT raid, only the elites. I don't know where you're coming up with your info, but you're sorely mistaken and misrepresenting the facts. Blizzard has even stated that Cata's raids were easier because only a small portion of the playerbase had been raiding from Vanilla through WoTLK.

You are trying to bring a Cata-style revamp into XI, and Cata is the entire reason why I came back to XI. It's trash in terms of endgame. If you want easy events where you get the best gear, go play any other MMO, don't try to turn one of the last MMOs into that.

LMAO you got that ALL WRONG. Cata did the complete opposite of easy mode, the only thing easy in Cata was leveling. Cata's raids were INTENSE when they were released and the heroic modes still are. The difficulty INCREASE in Cata is what drove alot of people away.

Most players didnt raid in BC?? I guess all those Kara/Gruul/Mag/SSC/TK pugs didnt exist. You MUST be referring to the last raid of the expansion, The Sunwell, because all the raids aside from Black Temple and the Sunwell were quite easy even for casuals.

And again, Cata raids were easier? I'm pretty sure you're talking about WotLK. Wrath had the highest amount of raiders at any point of WoW's life. Mainly because, it was so easy to just gear up and jump in and on normal mode it was a complete faceroll. Cata had roadblocks just in heroic dungeons not even counting normal raids...try again.

Most of the people on these forums despise WoW and have no idea what you're talking about, but I do. I'm usually not a person that picks apart posts but this just disturbed me with the amount of misinformation in it. PLEASE get YOUR FACTS straight.

(Disclaimer: I'm not attacking you, I'm just attacking your "information". So don't take offense and attempt to use personal attacks like so many others do.)

[Zeratoangel]

Erm, if you're gonna mention WoW, at least get the facts right. The majority of the subcriptioin dip was because Cataclysm made dungeons and raid content much harder at the entry level than they were back in Wrath of the Lich King. This in effect meant tanks and healers became super picky over who they wanted to run with, which made pugging really difficult. Combine that with the fact that PvP was an utter mess for 2/3 of the expansion and there's your answer. It wasn't until gearing and content as a whole was made more accessible that people started coming back (AKA 3.3 between the Hour of Twilight dungeons, Fall of deathwing AND raid finder).

In short, when the expansion launched they went back to a design model where people were basically bashing their head against a wall in trying to kill things in dungeons and it pissed a lot of people off. It diluted the tank and healer pool because you had less people wanting to take up those roles due to how much more difficult content was, and PvP was a mess because of several class changes for most of the expansion. You can tell it was bad when Blizzard chose to cut an entire tier of content just to wrap up Cataclysm as soon as possible and move on to whatever is next.

You beat me to it, it seems lmao. You were just a bit gentler than I was :3

[Psxpert2011]

There's a lot of poo-flinging that goes on around here. However, there's also a ton of great suggestions that often go unanswered.

I'll grant that, over the years, most people change tastes. There's no going back, and no amount of rose-colored nostalgia is going to recreate an experience. I'm not asking to go back to the days of 2k/hr dunes parties.

I'm saying that the game needs to be broken.

FFXI has gone threadbare. Yeah, people play for friends -- but it's getting to be a lonely journey as the populace inevitably shrinks.

Yes, One idea I have is: Every full moon, let everyone receive +50 on every stats, 20% movement speed and 20% haste to their normal actions! That's because the freaks come out and aggro! The MPK patch is lifted and Goblin Smithy has a taste for Whms! :P

I have more creative juices than that:
Let's go crazy! When the moon is RED, it's PVP night everywhere, where there's no musical tracks, primarily the ballista zones... Forget that- make it every zone!


SE, your recent additions and updates keep proving to your players that you don't know where the game's true potential lies.

Yeah, people, in general, will always whine. Aby broke the game, and it was fun. A blm could go oneshot a mob. A monk could go /war and solo VTs without stopping. Just about any job, no matter how well or poorly geared, could go in and get something done. It was fun.

To put it simply: exciting announcement right now is not a spiky red body piece with a tiny bit of str/dex and crit hit+. Multiply those stats by ten, and it'd be exciting.

Exciting won't be a raise spell that reduces my weakness time by 2 minutes, that will be 'extremely difficult to obtain'. Exciting would be making raise instacast, giving whms full-life.

Flying chocobos would be exciting. Adding the ability to call your personal chocobo in every outdoor area in the game, past/northlands included, would be exciting.

Minor upgrades/sidegrades/downgrades aren't exciting. They aren't upsetting. They're completely apathy-inducing. Break the game, SE. I realize that players of games don't make the best developers, but the players overall seem to be saying that they do not want any more piddly half-steps in a meandering way.

You've got a decent bit of nostalgia left. Unfortunately, that currency is wearing thin. One by one, your players will leave, unless you shake the game up, unless you make it alive again.

that is all.


I don't think the DEV team are really enjoying their job along side FFxi anymore... I think they lost their fire. There's probably people there who never played/ enjoyed any FF game or played it just enough and said "meh"...



I'm probably sure if they work with potential fans that grew up with the game, a lot more sense will come out in future updates.

[Shipp]

Erm, if you're gonna mention WoW, at least get the facts right. The majority of the subcriptioin dip was because Cataclysm made dungeons and raid content much harder at the entry level than they were back in Wrath of the Lich King. This in effect meant tanks and healers became super picky over who they wanted to run with, which made pugging really difficult. Combine that with the fact that PvP was an utter mess for 2/3 of the expansion and there's your answer. It wasn't until gearing and content as a whole was made more accessible that people started coming back (AKA 3.3 between the Hour of Twilight dungeons, Fall of deathwing AND raid finder).

In short, when the expansion launched they went back to a design model where people were basically bashing their head against a wall in trying to kill things in dungeons and it pissed a lot of people off. It diluted the tank and healer pool because you had less people wanting to take up those roles due to how much more difficult content was, and PvP was a mess because of several class changes for most of the expansion. You can tell it was bad when Blizzard chose to cut an entire tier of content just to wrap up Cataclysm as soon as possible and move on to whatever is next.
Oh wait, which quarter was it that WoW started gaining subs back? Oh right, it hasn't. PvP has always been a mess in WoW, that's nothing new. In Vanilla people complained about Rogues. In BC people complained about Locks. In WoTLK, it was DKs and Pallies. In Cata, it has been mages.

Dungeons have been easy long prior to 3.3 HoT dungeons. Even the Zul dungeons were faceroll easy by last summer. Instances weren't more difficult, you just couldn't AoE everything down without CC from the beginning of the expansion. WoTLK was the exact same way when it was launched, but people sat in ICC gear for nearly a year before new content, so they got used to just AoE gunning instances.


It also needs to make the content to match. Low drop rates are not challenge, and never have been. Faffy was never a challenge to kill - in fact, it was a joke, doable with six people who knew which end of the pointy weapon went into the mob.
Let me guess, you started in ToAU?


I was more annoyed at the person I quoted suggesting that tuning things down and making stuff accessible drives people away, when both this game and WoW have proven the exact opposite.
I didn't say tweaking drop rates or making things more accessible turns people away. I said "breaking the game" as Aquilla wants to say, which is just a nice way of saying, "Let me godmode," turns people away from MMOs. I have no problem with drop rates being increased. None. Never been against that. What I am against is wanting Abyssea type buffs all the time, outside of Abyssea, while you're just strolling along the dunes.

[Shipp]

LMAO you got that ALL WRONG. Cata did the complete opposite of easy mode, the only thing easy in Cata was leveling. Cata's raids were INTENSE when they were released and the heroic modes still are. The difficulty INCREASE in Cata is what drove alot of people away.

Most players didnt raid in BC?? I guess all those Kara/Gruul/Mag/SSC/TK pugs didnt exist. You MUST be referring to the last raid of the expansion, The Sunwell, because all the raids aside from Black Temple and the Sunwell were quite easy even for casuals.

And again, Cata raids were easier? I'm pretty sure you're talking about WotLK. Wrath had the highest amount of raiders at any point of WoW's life. Mainly because, it was so easy to just gear up and jump in and on normal mode it was a complete faceroll. Cata had roadblocks just in heroic dungeons not even counting normal raids...try again.

Most of the people on these forums despise WoW and have no idea what you're talking about, but I do. I'm usually not a person that picks apart posts but this just disturbed me with the amount of misinformation in it. PLEASE get YOUR FACTS straight.

(Disclaimer: I'm not attacking you, I'm just attacking your "information". So don't take offense and attempt to use personal attacks like so many others do.)

I never said Cata raids were easy at launch. I said look at sub numbers since Blizzard made them easy, and I'm sorry, but if you still have problems with any of Cata's raids at this point, I don't know what to say. Aquilla's whole argument is that breaking the game and making it easy (when she argues that stuff is already easy, baffling, I know) will bring in new subs, it'll revive the game, etc. After Blizzard nerfed the hell out of Cata dungeons and raids, have you kept up with subs? They're still dropping.

I've played WoW since '06, I don't hate the game, I just don't like what it has become. I have no reason to make up stuff about WoW. Currently, the game is face-roll easy. It has been since about summer. A lot of the raids were padded with artificial difficulty, much like AV in FFXI. He wasn't difficult, it's the, "Oh crap instant death everywhere for being unlucky," mechanics that inflated his difficulty. Blizzard tried the same type of thing in Cata, and I hated it there too. I agree that those mechanics are not challenging, just annoying, however Blizzard has severely dumbed down the game that requires a skill level lower than WoTLK did... yet subs still keep a'droppin'. Thus my point, "breaking the game" and allowing us to godmode is not the answer.

That doesn't mean I'm 100% happy with everything. That doesn't mean I don't think drop rates should be increased. That doesn't mean I don't think certain fights should be tweaked. It means that allowing us to godmode around Vana'diel is not the answer.

[Aquilla]

Aquilla thinks that SE needs to break the game because pussyfooting pisses people off without making anyone happy. I've never heard anyone tell me 'Wow, I'm really happy that heavy metals only drop off VW and I won't finish my Empy weapon this year. Altana knows that if I did, I'd up an' quit the game right off.' or 'Wow, I'm so glad Arise is going to be super-rare. If this was something we could buy off a npc, I'd up and quit. Five minute weakness is sacred'.

Aquilla's also been playing the game since before CoP came out. Aquilla thinks talking in third person's pretty effing weird, so that ends now. Faffy *was* a joke at lv. 75. Faffy was killed by 6-man parties at lv75. Even if that particular NM with its spike flail and breathiness was somewhat unique, killing it every day for months would make even the biggest idiots in vana'diel experts.

Low drop rates are not a challenge. SE needs to understand this. I'm sorry that we gotta disagree on this taru, because I like summoners a lot, but they aren't. Perhaps taru needs to train Shiva to fetch him coffees in the morning. It'd make him a whole lot more personable and less likely to run off to the forums tryin' to argue for the sake of arguing.

Waiting for a NM to spawn for 3 hours also isn't a challenge -- but thankfully SE hasn't decided to go back to that particular mode of 'hard'.

I also never said I want godmode. If you think getting stats+50 on end-game gear is godmode, you've been whipped pretty darn hard by SE.

I came to this realization fairly recently, actually. See, I zone into Aby, get all the wonderful aby buffs, and I can go around the zone killing regular mobs relatively quickly, tanking NMs for my friends, and man, it was fun. I zone out of aby, and lv99 is the same as lv75 -- I don't feel any more powerful. I don't do any more damage. Aby proved that SE's old gear progression was downright silly. Get cheap lv74 int+4 rings on blm -- save up for snow rings -- no difference. int+2 is a pointless increase. Aby proved that all those HQ items which went for millions of gils while giving an extra acc+1 or acc+2 were stupid. People who insisted on stopping leveling at 60 to get that hauby or that SH or that elemental torque were also, by extension, pretty damn silly. People who leveled in full AF to cap did just as well.

Now I'm supposed to pretend that str+8 and haste+4% are 'these stats are nuts'? Seriously? That little quote in itself proves how far out of touch SE is with any notion of 'fun'.

I've also said a lot of times, and constipatetaru up there has ignored, that I do want lost content be made relevant and fun. There is nothing fun about most of the content currently in the game. Nobody wants to do content for 0 reward. That's been proven over and over again. People would, probably, do all sorts of stuff if they could get something decent out of it.
Crafting has also been a joke for most of this game's lifespan -- it's 'low-drop rate' difficult, not 'hard', because it'll take you a stupid amount of a rare ingredient to level up at higher levels, and when you get that coveted lv100 you got nothing. Not even a T-shirt that says 'I leveled clothcraft to 100'.

Yeah, the game needs breaking, not tweaking. It's not anger that sinks a game - it's apathy. It's the feeling, upon seeing the latest update, that nothing in there excites you. Nothing in there makes you go 'oh, wow, I want to go play that.' or 'wow, I want that piece of gear.'

Seasonal content has also been a joke for a very long time. Every once in a blue moon they come up with a new furnishing. That part is cool. However, to date, I have never heard anyone tell me 'Wow, I'm so glad Mumor is back this year. I love to cheer a pretend-celebrity on.'

Over the years, I've seen lots of people go. I've seen people leave because a new MMO came out. I've seen a taru leave after three years of clothcraft lv 99. I've seen people leave because they've spent a week's worth of playtime trying to get an xp party on their lv65 drk. I've seen people leave because they couldn't beat ma'at.

I've also seen people leave because they just up and got bored. They didn't tell me 'I'm so powerful now. I kill everything.' They usually didn't say anything.

So what do we, as players, say? 'Crafting is supposed to be 'hard'. You can't expect to finish it in a month. Go spam ENMs for Galateia/farm money.' 'Make your own parties! Be nice to people! Get the best gear you can and you'll level up eventually!.' and 'Ma'at is supposed to be hard. Farm money! Get more potions! Update your gear!'.

'Go quit the game then and play WoW.'

And then, it gets awful lonely. How many people are still clinging onto the game only 'because of friends?'. What then? If this game isn't fun to play -- and I don't seem to be the only one who thinks that it isn't -- is the answer to go tweaking, or to put some actual innovation into the damn game? Something other than 'Hay guys, I took these HNMs that you used to fight and tossed them all into this new zone. Also, you get nothing new as a reward. Enjoy.'

I think FF series has potential. A whole lot of potential. Despite SE trying to smother. I think that it'll take very little to make this game shine again. Unfortunately, it has to come from a place of courage -- not a place of 'gawd, if we make them too strong, they'll kill everything and quit!'

Now, I'm told 'Go play on the test server and godmode.' Jeez. Joking aside, it's a bit sad that people are told that. It is obvious that players want to be made more powerful, that the game needs to be more fun, faster, more engaging. If that wasn't the case, you wouldn't have this undercurrent of 'Go play on the test server.' and 'All you need is perma-Embrava.'

[Aquilla]

Gobblin' goblins, I wrote a lot. Phew!

[llello]

I don't think players are trying to be nasty or snide telling you to play on the test server. Its almost what your looking for. Ill state this now so I don't get accused of being in the " bring back 2005" or w/e you call them crowd. I'm all for adjusting drop rates, tweaking jobs, lowering huge Aoe to non targets from high tier NM's, and other positive changes.

On the other hand, what did you expect at 99? Did you think it was going to be like FFX where you can take characters fully around the grid, get their ultimate weapon, give them some form of auto-haste, and have an unstoppable killing machine that hits for 99,999 and is only hindered by the more gimmicky mobs in the arena?

If you and other players are that concerned about being unstoppable and seeing huge red numbers, you should advocate for a MMM maze/rune combo that grants a perma-brew effect while in said maze and caps your non-gear haste %. Make it all huge monsters that hit for crap and have huge hp pools. Auto-cap magic crit. rate. Make armor that only works in these "broken" mazes with stats like Str+100,Dex+100 Eva+100, crit. rate +50,Subtle blow +50, haste +25.999%( or hell uncap gear haste in there), on one slot . I know you continue to say you don't want godmode , but outside of Aby or other areas designed for that, what you propose would basically be. There is nothing wrong with this type of play in a controlled environment (like Aby). Or ask SE to rescale everything so you see big numbers if that's what you like (ie. 5k ws becomes 50k, same effect on target as 5k tho).

[Zinato]

I said "breaking the game" as Aquilla wants to say, which is just a nice way of saying, "Let me godmode," turns people away from MMOs. I have no problem with drop rates being increased. None. Never been against that. What I am against is wanting Abyssea type buffs all the time, outside of Abyssea, while you're just strolling along the dunes.

I think I'm seeing two different conversations in this thread. I chose this quote because it sorta addresses both. I'm all for "breaking the game" but to be exact more like "breaking the game mold". The idea that I would like to see is new styles of combat, things that would prevent zerging, battles that are scripted, new types of events rather then gather 18 people beat up boss monster. (or in dynamis/limbus case pray you don't get links and wipe while proceeding to said boss monster.)

I'd also like to see players get larger stats from gear, buffs etc. (also, possibly progression of gear and example would be if dynamis gear made getting limbus gear easier, which in turn made nyzul easier to complete for even better gear.) Now to clarify, this doesn't require "godmode", godmode would be if players had an overwhelming advantage, to the contrary what I would prefer are stronger monsters to match. Larger more climatic battles where DMG in the 1000s is bouncing around, in reality player vs monster variables remain, however everything is on a grander scale. However, as can be guessed something of this magnitude would completely change the way we all play, as well as all previous content either outright outdated or needing overhauls to compensate. Thus, "breaking the game". That's my preference anyway.

Oh, and on the note of drop rates, yeah drop rate increase would be nice, and hopefully more content to go with it. (Rather than the current 1/300 should keep players busy while we spend a year making something new.) Sorry, its sometimes hard to tell who is posting about godmode vs not godmode and overhaul vs not overhaul.

[Shipp]

I don't think players are trying to be nasty or snide telling you to play on the test server. Its almost what your looking for. Ill state this now so I don't get accused of being in the " bring back 2005" or w/e you call them crowd. I'm all for adjusting drop rates, tweaking jobs, lowering huge Aoe to non targets from high tier NM's, and other positive changes.

On the other hand, what did you expect at 99? Did you think it was going to be like FFX where you can take characters fully around the grid, get their ultimate weapon, give them some form of auto-haste, and have an unstoppable killing machine that hits for 99,999 and is only hindered by the more gimmicky mobs in the arena?

If you and other players are that concerned about being unstoppable and seeing huge red numbers, you should advocate for a MMM maze/rune combo that grants a perma-brew effect while in said maze and caps your non-gear haste %. Make it all huge monsters that hit for crap and have huge hp pools. Auto-cap magic crit. rate. Make armor that only works in these "broken" mazes with stats like Str+100,Dex+100 Eva+100, crit. rate +50,Subtle blow +50, haste +25.999%( or hell uncap gear haste in there), on one slot . I know you continue to say you don't want godmode , but outside of Aby or other areas designed for that, what you propose would basically be. There is nothing wrong with this type of play in a controlled environment (like Aby). Or ask SE to rescale everything so you see big numbers if that's what you like (ie. 5k ws becomes 50k, same effect on target as 5k tho).

I 100% agree with this, and would have no objection to this type of godmoding, so long as it's limited like Abyssea is.

[Shipp]

Aquilla thinks that SE needs to break the game because pussyfooting pisses people off without making anyone happy. I've never heard anyone tell me 'Wow, I'm really happy that heavy metals only drop off VW and I won't finish my Empy weapon this year. Altana knows that if I did, I'd up an' quit the game right off.' or 'Wow, I'm so glad Arise is going to be super-rare. If this was something we could buy off a npc, I'd up and quit. Five minute weakness is sacred'.

Aquilla's also been playing the game since before CoP came out. Aquilla thinks talking in third person's pretty effing weird, so that ends now. Faffy *was* a joke at lv. 75. Faffy was killed by 6-man parties at lv75. Even if that particular NM with its spike flail and breathiness was somewhat unique, killing it every day for months would make even the biggest idiots in vana'diel experts.
Faf/Nidhogg was not done on a regular basis prior to ToAU as a 6 man group. I did the endgame circuit, was in the first NA/EU LS to down Dynamis Lord, one of the first NAs in sea, etc. I know what went on, and I'm sorry, but the zone typically had more than 100 people in it at spawn times. COULD it have been 6-manned back then? Probably, but it wasn't done since it was heavily camped, would have taken forever, and linkshells brought as many people as they could to claim. If you pulled them from behind, you got a spike flail which wiped everyone. Maybe you never fought HQ kings, I don't know, but it was common practice to bring a lot of people in case Nid popped.



Low drop rates are not a challenge. SE needs to understand this. I'm sorry that we gotta disagree on this taru, because I like summoners a lot, but they aren't. Perhaps taru needs to train Shiva to fetch him coffees in the morning. It'd make him a whole lot more personable and less likely to run off to the forums tryin' to argue for the sake of arguing.

Yes, we need to disagree when I just wrote prior to your post:

That doesn't mean I'm 100% happy with everything. That doesn't mean I don't think drop rates should be increased. That doesn't mean I don't think certain fights should be tweaked. It means that allowing us to godmode around Vana'diel is not the answer.

This is why I might be coming across as rude to you. Nearly every post of mine you have responded to, you haven't even read. It gets a tiny bit irritating when you keep making crap up, claiming we need the game broken, claiming a lot of people agree with you, claiming you disagree with me, and then turn around and parrot the exact same thing you are supposedly disagreeing with me about. I'm sorry, I might come across as an ass, but you're coming across as an airhead.

Also, I could change my job to BLM, RDM, WHM, BLU, SCH, etc. Take your pick, just picked SMN because it is the job that I have as my avatar picture on other forums.



Waiting for a NM to spawn for 3 hours also isn't a challenge -- but thankfully SE hasn't decided to go back to that particular mode of 'hard'.

Never said it was, and I'm glad we're not waiting 3 hours on windows anymore.



I also never said I want godmode. If you think getting stats+50 on end-game gear is godmode, you've been whipped pretty darn hard by SE.

If you don't think 50 stats makes a difference, you shouldn't even be complaining about endgame, because it's quite obvious you have no clue about the game.




I came to this realization fairly recently, actually. See, I zone into Aby, get all the wonderful aby buffs, and I can go around the zone killing regular mobs relatively quickly, tanking NMs for my friends, and man, it was fun. I zone out of aby, and lv99 is the same as lv75 -- I don't feel any more powerful. I don't do any more damage. Aby proved that SE's old gear progression was downright silly. Get cheap lv74 int+4 rings on blm -- save up for snow rings -- no difference. int+2 is a pointless increase. Aby proved that all those HQ items which went for millions of gils while giving an extra acc+1 or acc+2 were stupid. People who insisted on stopping leveling at 60 to get that hauby or that SH or that elemental torque were also, by extension, pretty damn silly. People who leveled in full AF to cap did just as well.

Incorrect, especially on the INT for BLM. INT directly affects damage. The formula is not hard to find. There is a soft cap where diminishing returns start after so much INT is obtained, but you're not going to reach that outside of Aby buffs.

And no, people in full AF did not do the same amount of damage and whatnot as people who wore what endgame shells dictated. Again, you're coming across as an airhead when these formulas have been around for years and are no mystery to the majority of players. Kind of making me doubt your claim that you played prior to CoP, but then that was already iffy with your hypothetical passed off as reality involving 6-manning Fafnir.




Now I'm supposed to pretend that str+8 and haste+4% are 'these stats are nuts'? Seriously? That little quote in itself proves how far out of touch SE is with any notion of 'fun'.

They make a difference.



I've also said a lot of times, and constipatetaru up there has ignored, that I do want lost content be made relevant and fun. There is nothing fun about most of the content currently in the game. Nobody wants to do content for 0 reward. That's been proven over and over again. People would, probably, do all sorts of stuff if they could get something decent out of it.

And like I've said several times, and you have ignored, several of us don't have this obsessive yearning for the game to change ON THE LEVEL that you want it to. It's a game, if you aren't having fun, quit after you voice your opinion. I didn't obsessively whine about WoW when I quit. I canceled, came back to XI, and have been having a blast ever since. Not all of us have as many issues as you do with the game. Some of us actually enjoy the game, which you are finding NO joy in, as your post states. Imagine that, different tastes.



Crafting has also been a joke for most of this game's lifespan -- it's 'low-drop rate' difficult, not 'hard', because it'll take you a stupid amount of a rare ingredient to level up at higher levels, and when you get that coveted lv100 you got nothing. Not even a T-shirt that says 'I leveled clothcraft to 100'.

Guess what, it's not required either. Yes, I agree that crafting should be changed somewhat, but that's mostly to do with the fact that a lot of crafts are pretty much useless at this point for making any respectable income. At least compared to the choco blinker trade.



Yeah, the game needs breaking, not tweaking. It's not anger that sinks a game - it's apathy. It's the feeling, upon seeing the latest update, that nothing in there excites you. Nothing in there makes you go 'oh, wow, I want to go play that.' or 'wow, I want that piece of gear.'

And not all of us feel the way you do. That is the thing you don't seem to understand. You want all of us who are somewhat satisfied with the game to bend to you and people who feel the same as you. You don't know where the majority is. You don't know whether the majority of people are sick of the game or whether they are content. You're trying to sit here high and mighty pretending you know why people are quitting, when you're overlooking the most obvious fact that the game is dated and is quite quaint in this MMO market. If you want a next-gen style MMO where you are over-powered and never have to play with another person, you go right ahead and sub up to any other current MMO. Some of us still like the dying breed of old-school style MMOs where grouping is still the main method to get things done, but with tweaks (yes tweaks, not game-breaking changes) so we can get stuff done in a timely manner, but still keep the old-school style fights, grouping, and basically experience.



Seasonal content has also been a joke for a very long time. Every once in a blue moon they come up with a new furnishing. That part is cool. However, to date, I have never heard anyone tell me 'Wow, I'm so glad Mumor is back this year. I love to cheer a pretend-celebrity on.'

I've never cared about seasonal content since about the second year I played XI. Before then, it was more of a compulsion that I felt I HAD to do it. Now I just don't care, and barely ever did it in WoW, either.



Over the years, I've seen lots of people go. I've seen people leave because a new MMO came out. I've seen a taru leave after three years of clothcraft lv 99. I've seen people leave because they've spent a week's worth of playtime trying to get an xp party on their lv65 drk. I've seen people leave because they couldn't beat ma'at.

Guess what, since I came back in January, I have seen 6 people return who are loving it. Anecdotal evidence. You're chock full.



I've also seen people leave because they just up and got bored. They didn't tell me 'I'm so powerful now. I kill everything.' They usually didn't say anything.


Yeah, I left WoW for that same reason, except I did say, "I feel overpowered and there is no challenge, raids are faceroll, instances are faceroll, and it is boring."



So what do we, as players, say? 'Crafting is supposed to be 'hard'. You can't expect to finish it in a month. Go spam ENMs for Galateia/farm money.' 'Make your own parties! Be nice to people! Get the best gear you can and you'll level up eventually!.' and 'Ma'at is supposed to be hard. Farm money! Get more potions! Update your gear!'.

What? I soloed Maat on both RDM and SMN yesterday in the span of 10 minutes. Total. You're a 99 and you're saying Maat is hard? One pred claw for 1k and about 10 seconds of melee wiped him out on SMN. Two thunder IVs and a blizzard IV wiped him out on RDM. Maybe I just misread that or something, but if you're having problems with Maat at 99, perhaps you should look into how stats affect your character since you think +50 is just not much difference at all.



'Go quit the game then and play WoW.'

Honestly, WoW sounds like the perfect game for you. Not because it's a bad game, or that stuff is crappy there. Just that exactly what you're asking for can be found in WoW. Inflated numbers, doing 100k+ DPS, shinies with +500 stats, etc.



And then, it gets awful lonely. How many people are still clinging onto the game only 'because of friends?'. What then? If this game isn't fun to play -- and I don't seem to be the only one who thinks that it isn't -- is the answer to go tweaking, or to put some actual innovation into the damn game? Something other than 'Hay guys, I took these HNMs that you used to fight and tossed them all into this new zone. Also, you get nothing new as a reward. Enjoy.'

Of course you're not the only one holding that opinion. I'm not the only one who thinks WoW got crazy stupid back in Nov/Dec, but I don't insinuate that the majority of people hold that same opinion. That is the problem, you are insinuating that, and you have 0% evidence for that aside from a couple people on this forum (which has the reputation of being filled with whiners and doomsday spouters) agreeing with you. Big shock there.



I think FF series has potential. A whole lot of potential. Despite SE trying to smother. I think that it'll take very little to make this game shine again. Unfortunately, it has to come from a place of courage -- not a place of 'gawd, if we make them too strong, they'll kill everything and quit!'

Now, I'm told 'Go play on the test server and godmode.' Jeez. Joking aside, it's a bit sad that people are told that. It is obvious that players want to be made more powerful, that the game needs to be more fun, faster, more engaging. If that wasn't the case, you wouldn't have this undercurrent of 'Go play on the test server.' and 'All you need is perma-Embrava.'
I feel powerful enough, so please stop trying to talk for everyone. I also take care in trying to keep my gear up to par, at the very least, something you don't seem to like doing since you think people in AF armor perform the same as someone in decked out gear with more stats. Perhaps that is your problem.

[Aquilla]

I think I'm seeing two different conversations in this thread. I chose this quote because it sorta addresses both. I'm all for "breaking the game" but to be exact more like "breaking the game mold"

Zinato nailed it! Thank you!

That's exactly what I am saying. And if people think this game is fine the way it is, that's okay too. They're allowed to make threads and posts and overlong responses. I don't think anyone in this thread was nasty or snide o.o; I'm a bit shocked that people would get that emotional about it, tbh.

Hey, to each his own. SE is still making games and making this game. I think that they can do a lot better than they are doing.

[FrankReynolds]

(which has the reputation of being filled with whiners and doomsday spouters) agreeing with you. Big shock there.

Really? your better than the whole forum now?



I also take care in trying to keep my gear up to par, at the very least, something you don't seem to like doing since you think people in AF armor perform the same as someone in decked out gear with more stats. Perhaps that is your problem.

I'm just going to pick this one out of several other obvious misconceptions that you drew from his / her post.

They were pointing out that pimping out your gear between level ??? and 75 is fairly pointless because even if you rock the worst gear, you will still reach 75 just as fast as pimped out guy. They were not trying to say that AF is good enough.

This conversation is really off topic, and you are arguing points that weren't even made.

[Anapingofness]

Really? your better than the whole forum now?




I'm just going to pick this one out of several other obvious misconceptions that you drew from his / her post.

They were pointing out that pimping out your gear between level ??? and 75 is fairly pointless because even if you rock the worst gear, you will still reach 75 just as fast as pimped out guy. They were not trying to say that AF is good enough.

This conversation is really off topic, and you are arguing points that weren't even made.

Very well put Frank and Zinato.

To Shipp: Buddy, I need you to read. Rather, skill up your reading comprehension or something.

Firstly, if you think that +50 of a stat is "godmode" I don't know what games you've been playing but it sure as hell isn't WoW and itsn't FFXI because in neither game is +50 of a stat a condition of "godmode".

Secondly, it is absolutely ridiculous that my stats have only received very marginal increases from lvl 75 to 99. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻) !!

Which leads me to my third point. Str+8 and Haste+4% is *not* amazing for a end game piece for lvl 99. Endgame gear at 75 gave more stats than that and that's not saying much. Str+8/Haste+4% at lvl 99 should make you go (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻) !

Those stats in my opinion are better suited for lvl 30-40, not lvl 99.

P.S. Also, my e-penis is SO much bigger than your e-penis... but I didn't take five pages to say that.

[Duelle]

I said look at sub numbers since Blizzard made them easyUnless I missed those reports, or you somehow work for Blizzard and know something on the inside, the last quarterly report they released with the info on subscription drops accounted to prior 3.3, AKA raid finder, the Hour of Twilight dungeons and The Fall of Deathwing. That's the one where they lost around 300K~ subs. As I said, dungeon tuning, changes to classes and PvP are to blame.

After Blizzard nerfed the hell out of Cata dungeons and raids, have you kept up with subs? They're still dropping.A lot of people came back with 3.3. Problem is a good number also left when Old Republic launched. I'd know, as most of my guild left for TOR and still haven't returned (so much for the TORtanic meme).

Going to Aquilla's point for this thread, I think some emphasis should be placed on fixing/retuning/redesigning some of the older events and systems. Probably the thing I dislike most about the FFXI developers ("balance" notwithstanding) is that they don't sit down and say "boy did we screw that up. Let's try to do some redesigning/remaking/whatever sometime down the road". I don't mean just evoliths, but garrison, eco-warrior, expeditionary forces, chocobo raising (land transportation in general), pankration, conquest as a whole and so on. A lot of them are either badly designed, incomplete, cling to relevancy due to one or two items, or have to be turned into requirements for endgame events to not look like wastes of development time.

[Zumi]

Blizzard is trying to get people to come back to play their game are giving a free level 80 character along with an upgrade to cataclysm regardless of how many expansions they have on their account. Needless to say the current players weren't too happy and wanted their own free level 80 character.

[Shipp]

Really? your better than the whole forum now?


Never said I'm better than the whole forum, I'm just stating what seems to be the opinion from nearly every other forum. Maybe you only check this one, I don't know. I've read what I described on more than one other forum, and numerous times at that. OP even made a comment about the type of reputation this place has.





I'm just going to pick this one out of several other obvious misconceptions that you drew from his / her post.

They were pointing out that pimping out your gear between level ??? and 75 is fairly pointless because even if you rock the worst gear, you will still reach 75 just as fast as pimped out guy. They were not trying to say that AF is good enough.

This conversation is really off topic, and you are arguing points that weren't even made.
Except you wouldn't reach it just as fast, because you wouldn't have been invited as fast as someone who had pimped out gear. Also, I'm pretty sure this comment states AF was good enough to get to 75 in.


Get cheap lv74 int+4 rings on blm -- save up for snow rings -- no difference. int+2 is a pointless increase. Aby proved that all those HQ items which went for millions of gils while giving an extra acc+1 or acc+2 were stupid. People who insisted on stopping leveling at 60 to get that hauby or that SH or that elemental torque were also, by extension, pretty damn silly. People who leveled in full AF to cap did just as well.

People who pimped their gear were silly. People who got things like Scorp Harness were silly. People who wore Snow rings were silly. People who level in AF did just as well.

Except that's not the case, never has been, nor will it ever be.

[saevel]

Blizzard is trying to get people to come back to play their game are giving a free level 80 character along with an upgrade to cataclysm regardless of how many expansions they have on their account. Needless to say the current players weren't too happy and wanted their own free level 80 character.

The problem with many MMO's is that as they age so does their population and content level. A player joining FFXI right now has so much stuff they need to do before they can join the rest of the game that it's daunting and highly discouraging. They have over a years worth of work (Zilart / CoP / ToAU / Nation Quests / Dyna wins / Genkai / ect..) before their able to do what we do right now. WoW is no different, a new player would have to grind up their toon and do tons of quests and faction farming just to be somewhat acceptable for raid groups. Again that is very daunting to new players, or even older players returning and starting new. SE's idea is to make all old content easy to do and just let XP flow like a flood (Abyssea / GoV), WoW's was to give out a level 80 char to new players.

[Chocobits]

I really wanna beat the "boxed expansion set" drum here.

I remember the OMGWTFBBQSAUCE reaction to the snippets of info about CoP as it was being released. Until the tedium of the missions kicked in, there was nothing that wasn't win about the CoP expansion when it came out. Exploring Attohwa as a nubby dubby and getting 1 shot unexpectedly was magical.

And then ToAU. ToAU had freaking BIPEDAL DINOSAUR MOBS! And they hopped up and down and cast killer black magic and just.. DAMN! And chigoes man! Freaking invisible, pint sized DEATH!

And then WoTG with the cavernous maws! Just walking by those things before the update, you knew it was no DeLorean man! Those things were gonna EAT you and shit you out in the past! And they actually included the Sandworm "Zone Eaters" from FFXI and you got sucked in for a mini event! Freaking-A!

I wanna feel the MAGIC again. Reminiscing about the old expansions when they came out, it's like that GF whose name escapes you but how that first time together friggin' ROCKED and now you wish you could remember her name, because thinking about her brings a smile to your face. We need a new whatername to fondly remember years from now!

[Shipp]

The problem with many MMO's is that as they age so does their population and content level. A player joining FFXI right now has so much stuff they need to do before they can join the rest of the game that it's daunting and highly discouraging. They have over a years worth of work (Zilart / CoP / ToAU / Nation Quests / Dyna wins / Genkai / ect..) before their able to do what we do right now. WoW is no different, a new player would have to grind up their toon and do tons of quests and faction farming just to be somewhat acceptable for raid groups. Again that is very daunting to new players, or even older players returning and starting new. SE's idea is to make all old content easy to do and just let XP flow like a flood (Abyssea / GoV), WoW's was to give out a level 80 char to new players.

Zilart, CoP, and ToAU can be largely be soloed at 99. I've helped a few people with Limit Breaks since I've been back, and I've seen other people helping newer players, or returning players, as well. You don't have to finish Nation quests, only do enough to start the other expansion missions. Same for Zilart/CoP. You don't have to finish them, and just about all of them prior to sky/sea can be soloed. I did the bulk of ToAU when I got back within 2 weeks, and got Alex and Odin. Dyna wins I agree with though, as I'm glad I had them cleared years ago prior to this neo Dynamis.

All that said, it's a lot more difficult to start XI than WoW. The grind to 85 in WoW is about the same as the original grind to 60 in Vanilla. They've buffed XP gained for each previous expansion. Also, you don't have to do attunements in WoW any longer (haven't for years) and the old raid content is only run anymore for fun, mounts, random recipes, and transmog sets. A new player can get to 85 within a few weeks in WoW at a casual pace and basically jump right into endgame. If they PvP, they can convert Honor to points for PvE gear and just buy better stuff than running the normal instances. They can get enough gear that way to get into the Well of Eternity heroics, gear up, and then join the herd in the raid finder. As far as rep, there are really only two reputations in Cata that you need to build up for raiding, and for casters that's Hyjal and Deepholm. Once you build Hyjal rep once, you can just mail the enchants to another toon you make since they're BoA.

I think giving out a level 80 is a bit cheap. Regardless of whether you key in Abyssea (which you won't be doing until you already have a job that you leveled in GoV parties) or find a leech spot in a FC group, you at least spent the time, even if you just AFK'd and went to work or something in a FC burn. Giving out an 80 not only cheapens the experience, but it also nullifies the work that went into redesigning 1-60. Sure people will level alts, but it still seems like a desperate move, in my opinion.

[Anapingofness]

I'd like to point out that it has *always* been more difficult to start in FFXI than WoW.

For one, FFXI never, and I mean never actually had a starting tutorial. Back when I started you got shown a cs of your home nation that introduced you and bam, that was it. You had to figure out everything else on your own. To be perfectly honest, not much has changed since. Even now with the half-assed starting guide a player first starting out in FFXI will have unnecessary trouble.

That was never the case in WoW. Once your character is created you see your little cs and a little box pops up on the screen telling you how to play. Ten to fifteen minutes later you know how to play WoW.

This may not seem important to you or me (aka people familiar/comfortable with playing w/ a keyboard) but to casual players or console players whom have never experienced playing via keyboard it was an important step. Blizzard turned a rather intimidating aspect of interface (aka using a keyboard) into something very simple to do.

[Aquilla]

Chocobits, you're right. Capturing that 'omg, this is new and exciting' feeling would be amazing. I would love to see more new areas added to the game. I can't argue against that.

However, they also need to actually go back -- and much like Duelle said, revamp the old stuff. SE has spent a very long time just letting content die. For example: they add evoliths. Playerbase hates it/laughs at it. They do nothing. Much like Zinato said, they do need to be a lot better about progression in general -- gear progression, game progression. More of a feeling of accomplishment when you DO upgrade your gear, not like 'omg, yay! I have a snow ring, and before I had a diamond ring! My damage..er... didn't really increase but...I sure feel more ubar.'

FrankReynolds made a point about how, in a MMO, teamwork is good, but shouldn't be an absolute requirement for everything.

They need to up the drop rates on a whole lot of stuff. Low drop rates =/= challenge. Shipp made that point rather eloquently.

That's just a few names from this thread. This forum is made up of people who have some great ideas about this game. Granted, it's got a few nuts, also, but that's okay too. Nuts are a nice snack. Back in my OP, i made that exact point: there are a lot of great ideas being tossed out onto the forums. SE has opened up this channel of communication. And, I can't say that they didn't listen -- they have made a few tweaks here and there. They've also barreled forward, stubborn-mule-like, down channels that seem pointless.

Yes, saevel is right when he says that starting out in XI now would face a newbie with a mountain of content. Shipp is also right in that most of that content is useless. XI, as I said, is a monument to abandoned content/mission lines/etc. Some of these have great stories -- some of the quest lines, with their cut scenes and good characters -- should be made more relevant. XI has unique gameplay, and it should preserve that. It should also work to make it so much better than it is.

I think that this game, to borrow another phrase from the thread, needs to break the mold a bit. It needs to stop pretending like people are going to go back to 2004, and everything will be new again. It needs to remake itself into something new. It's more than doable -- and many people smarter than me have given great ideas as to how that can be done.

What SE can't afford to do, imho, is cling to status quo like a piece of gum clings to the bottom of a shoe. The game needs a rebirth, a re-imagining, and it needs to do so with a focus on fun and a focus on community. SE has recognized, with the creation of these forums, that the community exists -- they also need to provide ways for that community to exist in game.

Revamp the linkshells. Revamp the LFG system. Revamp the dead content and bring it to life, SE.

[FrankReynolds]

Never said I'm better than the whole forum, I'm just stating what seems to be the opinion from nearly every other forum. Maybe you only check this one, I don't know. I've read what I described on more than one other forum, and numerous times at that. OP even made a comment about the type of reputation this place has.

Take note that the people writing that stuff on other forums are the same people reading and posting on this forum and realize that that argument is pointless.



Except you wouldn't reach it just as fast, because you wouldn't have been invited as fast as someone who had pimped out gear. Also, I'm pretty sure this comment states AF was good enough to get to 75 in.

AF was good enough to get to 75 in. The unfortunate fact is that waiting around town for that perfect geared guy to pop up his flag slows down xp more than just going with the mediocre guy in most cases because back at 75 cap, odds were that the perfect geared guy wasn't ever going to show.

This completely ignores the fact that the whole argument was obviously meant to make a fairly obvious (not to be taken literally ) point that you are either purposely or accidentally missing (either way it doesn't look good for you).



People who pimped their gear were silly. People who got things like Scorp Harness were silly. People who wore Snow rings were silly. People who level in AF did just as well.

Except that's not the case, never has been, nor will it ever be.

No they didn't do just as well. They did well enough to get to 75 fairly quickly where they could work on gear that would actually last them for longer than 1 event / exp party.

[Shipp]

Take note that the people writing that stuff on other forums are the same people reading and posting on this forum and realize that that argument is pointless.


Not really, no. Also, it wasn't an argument, it was a statement. Please don't confuse the two.





AF was good enough to get to 75 in. The unfortunate fact is that waiting around town for that perfect geared guy to pop up his flag slows down xp more than just going with the mediocre guy in most cases because back at 75 cap, odds were that the perfect geared guy wasn't ever going to show.

Except the exact words were that things like INT+2 stats did -NOTHING-. Also, most people wore better gear than AF, at least back on Unicorn. Most people stopped, camped NMs, made money, and bought stuff like SH and Hauby. So it was more like, "Either pick that THF that has no SH and is wearing full AF, or pick one of the other DDs who could actually hit the mob more than 50% of the time." Also, you seem to be forgetting that if nobody was in the seeking range, people often asked friends, LS members, or even other people they had partied with previously that they knew had good gear to come. Just because people didn't have a seek flag up didn't mean they wouldn't come party, especially when DDs got lucky to not only NOT have to wait for hours, but they didn't even have to seek in the first place.



This completely ignores the fact that the whole argument was obviously meant to make a fairly obvious (not to be taken literally ) point that you are either purposely or accidentally missing (either way it doesn't look good for you).

Except it was meant to be taken literally, because she specifically gave very detailed examples. You just know what she said is wrong, just like I do, and you insist on arguing instead of removing your head from your rear and acknowledging that I'm not the idiot you seem to think I am. Also, remember when you completely took one of my posts out of context and claimed I was some elitist gear whore, and it was even pointed out that you missed the point and that's not how my post read at all? I do.



No they didn't do just as well. They did well enough to get to 75 fairly quickly where they could work on gear that would actually last them for longer than 1 event / exp party.

And:

People who leveled in full AF to cap did just as well.

But that wasn't literally right? They did just as well, but not literally? I never said they didn't do well enough to get to 75. I said they didn't do just as well. I said they typically did not get to 75 as fast, since reputation actually mattered back then. Doesn't mean Joe Blow couldn't nub it up as a naked DRG/WHM and get from 1-75 in the span of a month, it means it wasn't the norm, and implying that they got parties just as quick back then is just arguing for the sake of arguing.

If you're going to keep responding to my post addressing someone else, and then agreeing with me WHILE trying to argue that I'm wrong, then insist that I'm the one who doesn't look good... See, you are so full of contradictions it causes a run-on sentence.

[Anapingofness]

Except you're missing the point Shipp - repeatedly... I'm really not sure how this keeps happening to you.

+2 of *any* stat is such a marginal increase that you cannot even tell the difference without a parser. For that matter, so is +4 of a stat. It's only when we hit the double digits that you may be able to tell something without a parser. +10 of a stat isn't much but at least you can see the result a bit better than if it were a +2.

However, even +10 of a stat is a marginal increase but it is one people would be more willing to accept.

That being said, yeah, having an SH or a Hauby did enhance your play back in the day but I've seen plenty of people go up to 75 without them. They weren't pieces of gear that made or broke the game and it is only after we've experienced Abyssea that we can see that so clearly.

Therefore amount of time people spent worrying about +1's of gear is kind of silly. The fact that they worried so about marginal increase is even sillier. +10 ACC or +12ACC, or for that matter +5ACC.... Nobody without a parser will be able to tell the difference. Which is the real tragedy.

[saevel]

Rare / expensive +1 gear is exactly that, rare and expensive. It's the Gucci of digital possessions and used for the exact same reason.

[Shipp]

Except you're missing the point Shipp - repeatedly... I'm really not sure how this keeps happening to you.

+2 of *any* stat is such a marginal increase that you cannot even tell the difference without a parser. For that matter, so is +4 of a stat. It's only when we hit the double digits that you may be able to tell something without a parser. +10 of a stat isn't much but at least you can see the result a bit better than if it were a +2.

No. Go on BLM, nuke something. Put on snow rings and nuke it with the same spell. You WILL see a difference, and that is exactly my point. I'm not missing anything. I'm being argued with by people who apparently have no clue what they're talking about, yet they're all patting each other on the back as if they're right.



However, even +10 of a stat is a marginal increase but it is one people would be more willing to accept.

Most people don't tend to just upgrade one item. It's a cumulative affect. Sure, if I was only adding snow rings without other INT gear, it wouldn't affect me too much. I can understand people in full AF feeling as though just a snow ring won't do much. If they actually upgraded all of their gear accordingly, it would. Even so, you will actually see a difference in damage if you buy the snow rings. Not by some huge amount, but you still DO see the increase.



That being said, yeah, having an SH or a Hauby did enhance your play back in the day but I've seen plenty of people go up to 75 without them. They weren't pieces of gear that made or broke the game and it is only after we've experienced Abyssea that we can see that so clearly.

Therefore amount of time people spent worrying about +1's of gear is kind of silly. The fact that they worried so about marginal increase is even sillier. +10 ACC or +12ACC, or for that matter +5ACC.... Nobody without a parser will be able to tell the difference. Which is the real tragedy.
However, the original statement was that AF did JUST AS WELL as all of that gear. Marginal or not (it was not as marginal in the 60's and you seem to think it was) AF did not perform just as well since AF tends to be horrible for a lot of jobs, with usually 2 or 3 pieces that actually have useful stats for how that job operates in a party setting.

[Anapingofness]

Your post just proves that you keep missing the point Shipp. I refuse to get into a battle of numbers with you, which is what you seem to want.

Yes, you are right in the sense that it is very much so a cumulative effect. One snow ring won't do much for you... which is what I said, mind you. Two snow rings won't do it either, but if you do upgrade everything else so that it adds up to +30, +50, etc INT yeah. Then you do see a difference- also something that has been said over and over in this thread.

That part has never been debated so why are you debating it now? What is being debated (well one of the things being debated) is the fact that gear, especially end game gear is giving you such marginal increases that you have to rely on that cumulative effect. Moreover, that cumulative effect isn't that great either but at least it's something. Would it hurt the game if we could equip +50 INT rings, no, it really wouldn't.

But then we get into another problem, gear slots and space. Which I really don't want to touch right now.

[Aquilla]

Rare / expensive +1 gear is exactly that, rare and expensive. It's the Gucci of digital possessions and used for the exact same reason.

hey, I like that. I would actually really like to have fashion gear (not what you're saying, I get it.) I also have no problem with some gear being pretty damn rare. That's okay!

However, what I am saying is that endgame rewards should be better than non-endgame rewards. A lot better. If it takes me 3 nukes to kill a mob, going from, let's say, +50 int to +52 int will not make it 2 nukes to kill that same mob. To be even more pedantic: if a mob has exactly enough HP for my nuke to take away about 33-34% of its hp, me adding a total of +2 int to my set up, no matter how awesome it is, will not make my nuke do +50% of its hp. Because 2 additional int will not make a visible difference. Therefore, adding an endgame reward that is +8 str +8 agi haste+4% is not *Awesome*. It's not shitty, but it's not awesome. It's apathy-inducing.

However, that's not the point of my thread, or of my argument. I don't care if they add +50 int rings or if they make that +2 actually mean something.

The point of my thread, and my argument, is stated in the OP. Here it is, restated: This game needs to change. It needs to change a lot, drastically, and it needs to revise some of its mechanism. It needs to look at the systems that it depends on, the functional systems like linkshell and lfg. It needs to look at the sea of dead content. It needs to look at a real, viable way to attract new players.

A ton of people, on this very forums, have some great ideas as to how SE can do just that. I would like to see SE looking at some of those -- and I would like to see SE show that they are actually considering changing some things.

For example: they added chocobo racing to an overwhelmingly 'meh' reaction, including quite a few 'boo'. So they tweaked it. They added npcs that wander around and place bets. They added those fugly shirts. They never considered revamping the event because not a lot of people enjoy watching a cut scene of racing chickens.

Now, mind you, the shirts weren't bad. Heck, the choco-digging shirt is an example of a reward that is actually good, as it, actually, increases what you can do by a percentage more than 1.

But it's still not a fun event. It's still dead content, although I'm sure there's a handful of people who do it. It's still not something that I can show to a person and say 'hey, come play this mini-game. It's fun.'

If you could actually race your bird, would it scare away the people who have ground their way through cutscenes and cutscenes? Maybe. I say we try it, and see what happens.

Break the game, SE. Stop being afraid, and be innovative. Make this a game where there is fun to be had, and not just grinding for miniscule rewards. Bring back the spirit of exploration and storytelling.

That is my point.

[FrankReynolds]

No. Go on BLM, nuke something. Put on snow rings and nuke it with the same spell. You WILL see a difference, and that is exactly my point. I'm not missing anything. I'm being argued with by people who apparently have no clue what they're talking about, yet they're all patting each other on the back as if they're right.


Most people don't tend to just upgrade one item. It's a cumulative affect. Sure, if I was only adding snow rings without other INT gear, it wouldn't affect me too much. I can understand people in full AF feeling as though just a snow ring won't do much. If they actually upgraded all of their gear accordingly, it would. Even so, you will actually see a difference in damage if you buy the snow rings. Not by some huge amount, but you still DO see the increase.


However, the original statement was that AF did JUST AS WELL as all of that gear. Marginal or not (it was not as marginal in the 60's and you seem to think it was) AF did not perform just as well since AF tends to be horrible for a lot of jobs, with usually 2 or 3 pieces that actually have useful stats for how that job operates in a party setting.

lit·er·al/ˈlitərəl/
Adjective:
Taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or allegory.

gen·er·al·i·za·tion/ˌjenərəliˈzāSHən/
Noun:
A general statement or concept obtained by inference from specific cases.
The action of generalizing: "+2 of *any* stat is such a marginal increase that you cannot even tell the difference without a parser".


For future reference, any time someone doesn't show their math and or formulas, you should probably assume they are generalizing.

And yes. When you call everyone on this forum "whiners and doomsday spouters" (whatever the heck that is), you are by extension making the argument that nothing we (or you for that matter, seeing as you post here too) say should be taken seriously. You have now officially argued that you are not arguing, which is super high quality trolling, and I applaude you.

[Zinato]

Break the game, SE. Stop being afraid, and be innovative. Make this a game where there is fun to be had, and not just grinding for miniscule rewards. Bring back the spirit of exploration and storytelling.

On a slightly pesimistic note, I'm fairly sure that's what FFXIV was ment to do, Overhaul the graphic and mechanics of XI into something new so that XI could just fade away. Granted to be fair unlike this thread they chose to take those changes but, into the opposite direction. (AH -1, Mob lvl variance +20, etc.)

It's strange so many people are against the game being like WoW. Yes, a clone of WoW wouldn't be anything unique so a direct copy is out of the question. But, can anyone deny that some of the mechanics such as gear progression, raid style and so on aren't partially responsible for making WoW THEE most populated game, even though its nearly as old as XI? WoW as of Dec 2011 reported over 10m subscribers, let me put that into perspective FFXI in 2009 shortly before the server merger reported for the first time 2m subscribers. Since then it has dramatically dropped as evident from x2 server mergers. November 23, 2004 was WoW's launch, North America got PC FFXI October 28, 2003 that's a difference of little over a year. Numbers don't lie WoW did something right, and from a directly business stand point, which is better 10m subscribers but less "unique" or barely 2m?

Oh and I wanted to point out in case I repeated something, I haven't read any posts by or about Shipp. They all seem to be post -> reply to every line of post -> reply to each reply. So if I missed something in those posts I apologize.

Short version: XIV tried to be the fresh XI, look where that got it. (Pro tip: listen to the buyers)
WoW has x5 the subscribers of what FFXI had at its peak despite being only a year younger, they are doing something right.

[Aquilla]

Zinato, you make a good, if dangerous point. Honestly, I am not an expert on WoW, but I did give it a shot for a bit, and yes, some of those mechanics I did like. For example, the tutorial was nicely done. The game was very good at explaining where it wants you to go and what to do. And, WoW did have mini-games. I particularly enjoyed the plants vs. zombies minigame and I enjoyed this.. thing where you go shoot at dragons with your dragon.. I don't remember the name for it, it was a repeatable quest. The point is, you get a dragon and you shoot down other dragons. That was kinna fun. Mainly, though, WoW tried to appeal to as many players as possible. The game struck me as something that the developers truly had fun putting together. There was much humor in it, for example, and a lot of fun.

I never got into WoW terribly -- mainly cuz I can't be paying for two MMOs, and I didn't like the community at all -- but yeah, you're right.

In fact, a ton of their proposed changes to XIV seem to be the stuff that WoW has. not that WoW has monopoly on stuff like dungeon finder...but yeah. XIV was too unique in certain aspects (We won't have any classes!) and not unique enough in other aspects (copy-paste terrain, copy-paste races from XI with a different backstory, so it made no sense) but that's neither here nor there.

FFXI's major problem has been -- and remains -- is that it's damn hard to get into. It's unfriendly to new players. It takes too many hoops to start playing it, and that probably turned a ton of people off. They never took a long, hard look at their shortcomings. They never said 'Yeah, the LFG system has sucked for years. Let's go change it.' In fact, they seem downright unwilling to make major changes like that.

That's mainly where I want innovation. I dont' care if they take my ideas, or not. I'm not a game developer. But I would like to see that someone at SE is looking at this game critically and saying 'Here's something new to this game, something we didn't have. Here's events which are designed to be enjoyed by a lot of people. Here's how we plan to attract new people. ' Instead...hell, I've no clue what they're doing instead. Spinning their wheels in the mud, it seems, creatively.

[Duelle]

And, WoW did have mini-games. I particularly enjoyed the plants vs. zombies minigame and I enjoyed this.. thing where you go shoot at dragons with your dragon.. I don't remember the name for it, it was a repeatable quest.Probably Defending Wyrmrest Temple.

There was much humor in it, for example, and a lot of fun.The pop culture references and the fact the game in certain aspects never took itself seriously is why it was a lot easier to digest. I mean, we have an NPC in Shattrath that's called Haris Pilton who has a dog named Tinkerbell that sells a 24 slot bag called Portable Hole. We used to have a Battlemaster called Adam Eternum going on about how he found a magical loincloth (and some guy coming after him for stealing his "Gray Skull") and has a battle tiger and a short sidekick that's there for comic relief. The PETA parody known as DEHTA. Characters like Lunk, Mylune, Linken (and his Sword of Mastery). Recurring characters like Harrison Jones, and the immortal Captain Placeholder.

They never took a long, hard look at their shortcomings. They never said 'Yeah, the LFG system has sucked for years. Let's go change it.' In fact, they seem downright unwilling to make major changes like that.Indeed. I don't know if it's due to staff or budget limitations or just downright stubbornness, but a lot of aspects of the game do need to be looked over, fixed where possible or redesigned when all else fails.

[Aquilla]

yes! exactly!

This game needs a breath of fresh air. Yet, I don't see that. The last few updates that they gave us were either minor nerfs (certain empy weapons, Dipper yulu) in the name of balance, or grinds (1500 heavy metals, for one). no lightheartedness. No innovation. Just.. nothing. Yeah, i've mentioned it a few times -- but the straw that made me make the original post was the 'These stats are nuts!!!' on the red body piece from legion. Dear heavens, why was that exciting?

There is funny things in this game. Certain story-lines are funny. Missions are funny. Finding 300k in the library in windurst is funny. Heck, clicking on the dyna-CoP cutscene is funny..but recently, none of that has made it down the pipeline. the only minigames are the seasonal events, and Mumor's starting to make me see red.

More creativity, SE! Hire some new peeps, or something. College students tend to be pretty creative, and they'll work for peanuts.