FFXI needs some more new content then just delve

[Zumi]

Pretty much what FFXI has turned into is just do a bunch of delve for plasm because almost everything else is pretty obsolete. There are a couple of relevant pieces in NNI and Salvage 2 but almost everyone finished those ages ago.

Delve obsoleted most end game events.

I would suggest coming out with some new end game events soon because the game has gotten really stale with just farm delve over and over. I know several who quit because it just became a boring plasm grind.

People want to do a varity of things in the game not just 1 event.

The amount of delve you have to do for airlixers to upgrade gear is quite a lot. Once you upgrade that gear what is it good for more delve faster? A lot of people start to think whats the point.

[Makenshi]

They need to do more with skirmish. The rewards are not as good but i find it a more interesting event.

And they need to hurry with the wildskeeper reive bayld decrease.

With any luck future delve area's will be more interesting.

[Karah]

Once you upgrade that gear what is it good for more delve faster? A lot of people start to think whats the point.

++++++++++++

"but it helps you defeat all the old useless content you could already beat, just faster."

"x.x"

[Anjou]

++++++++++++

"but it helps you defeat all the old useless content you could already beat, just faster."

"x.x"

I seriously wanted to laugh at this, don't say old content is 'useless' ok?

[Cledant]

most content = useless , you're on denial. the op is 100% right. on top of that most servers are dead. linkshells became socials or disbanded.

[BST]

Pretty much what FFXI has turned into is just do a bunch of delve for plasm because almost everything else is pretty obsolete. There are a couple of relevant pieces in NNI and Salvage 2 but almost everyone finished those ages ago.

Delve obsoleted most end game events.

I would suggest coming out with some new end game events soon because the game has gotten really stale with just farm delve over and over. I know several who quit because it just became a boring plasm grind.

People want to do a varity of things in the game not just 1 event.

The amount of delve you have to do for airlixers to upgrade gear is quite a lot. Once you upgrade that gear what is it good for more delve faster? A lot of people start to think whats the point.
This is true.

This game is going backwards, and people are leaving. Why play?
The trouble with this new direction is clear, People obtain KI's and will not redo fights to help others.

Sadly, the community in this game is just bad. Lazy. I'm not saying everyone is, just there is a lot. How many people will just help others if asked?

[Demon6324236]

Sadly, the community in this game is just bad. Lazy. I'm not saying everyone is, just there is a lot. How many people will just help others if asked?Not many, and I think part of why people do this is not only because of being selfish or lazy, but also because of how the game has become. Most things are done with shout groups, if I am sitting in Jeuno waiting for a Delve shout, it would suck to miss one cause I went to help a friend with, say, Seals for a hour.

[Miku2]

I spent 3 hours tonite doing Rieve with 3 other ppl so i could get to Sih gates only to be cock blocked by a rieve . I saw in Dev Tracker that adjustments are coming to help Solo/Lowman efforts , but this should speak volumes about current state of game community . Quantum leaping gear so quickly really screws those who cant/dont play 8+ hours every day . Seekers has 3 or 4 events that a majority of the community considers complete obsolete because all they can see is what Delve has to offer . Perhaps expanding on the augements available on non-delve equipment or available rewards . It should be clear by now that the majority of the community will only do content that offers the best Pewpew items and regard the other content as a waste of time or obsolete .

[SqEnisfilledwithgeniuses]

They've already put on their special thinking helmets and broke out the crayons and construction paper to design Delve. What more do you people want?

Also, the attitude seems to be, A Realm Reborn(while another one is flushed down the toilet.)

*edit*

It also seems with each expansion they get more and more lazy. Let's review:

CoP & ZM
We got expansive new areas, Sky and Sea. BCNMs and Battlegrounds. Plenty to keep players playing.
Quests and missions that focused on teamwork and coordinated efforts.

ToAU
More large areas to explore, plenty of new quests and missions. Besieged and Assault. Against, events focused on teamwork and coordinated efforts.

WotG
Um....Hm....Uh....
Rehashed old maps re-shaded to look slightly different. Campaign battles (rehashed besieged anyone?)

Add on scenarios
Slightly amusing quest lines in the same old areas for mediocre rewards that were not on par with the effort required to obtain them.

Abyssea
Rehashed old maps re-shaded to look slightly different. Resistance battles (see besieged and campaign)

SoA
A couple new maps and a town with really unappealing music and equipment designs. Rieves (see besieged, campain, and resistance battles) and of course, the infamous delve!

Skirmish - Perhaps really the only unique thing to come out of SoA, quickly swept under the rug by Delve.

Delve - Find someone to hold a few NMs while you mindlessly beat the same monsters in the same area in the same time limit for the same amount of plasm. Fun and creative!

They get an A for effort though. A giant trainwreck.

And let's not forget the glorious mission line for SoA thus far.

"Hi. Pay me money and you can go to Adoulin!"
"Welcome to Adoulin. Go spend 30 assault tags......er...I mean Impendetures on Besieged....no wait...Campaign? No...That's not it either...Resis....Rieves! That's it, rieves. Then check back with me."
"Welcome back! Good job, now go here and talk to them."
"Hi! Wait here until 17:00."
"Welcome to the meeting! Now you're ready to participate in all the various events SoA has to......Delve? Yeah..Just head to the veil in Ceizack Battlegrounds. You can't miss it."


/endrant

[Daemon]

The issue is, FFXI when it was first released didn't give players the ability to rush level to 99 in less than half a day. You actually had to "earn" your levels and learn how to play the job. You also had to learn team work. And making friends with people was more personal than now because the people you met through exp parties were the ones you would later do quests, missions, help each other get things done and be ready to exp again the next day. You would have to spend hours a day with either the same people around your level skilling up, learning to skillchain, magic burst, Ect or new groups but the point is 6 man party was much more personal than hi & goodbye 18 man party quick rush to 99.

When Abbysea, GoV was released, it taught players to be lazy, it took away the "learn how to play the job as a team" aspect.
Because back then being a team made a difference unlike today everyone jump in gangbang stuff and kill quick without true strategy or skill.

Temp items in events today make players not depend on mages so much.

Also you actually had to utilize each jobs ability to accomplish wins. Healers had to learn how to conserve mp with heals and not cast curaga and gain hate putting the party at risk.

DD who took too much damage had to learn not to be a one man show otherwise mages would burn mp too fast putting party at risk.

You only had 6 people to choose from so players had to choose wisely.

Crafting was very useful during parties back then, mages would make melon juices for refresh.

Details such as these is what made ffxi fun.
There was no such thing as quick questing, you actually had to dedicate time with friends or others to get things done. Not run in solo by yourself at 99.

HNM was so fun back then. A reason why several LS existed but no longer today.

Sadly we are at a time where people fc their way to 99 in less than 6 hours, spoiled by Abby temp items and atmas that players no longer put effort to details such as buying food and meds. (not saying all but a good majority)

Because people level to 99 so fast, the majority of gear in AH became irrelevant.
Most people dual box characters so you are not getting 100% of a players ability but 50% controlling each character.

Familiar? Now that delve came out, a good majority of gear is now irrelevant..

The way FFXI is today compared to back then, is built to let you rush through things that you are suppose to take time and enjoy.

[Hayward]

The issue is, FFXI when it was first released didn't give players the ability to rush level to 99 in less than half a day. You actually had to "earn" your levels and learn how to play the job. You also had to learn team work. And making friends with people was more personal than now because the people you met through exp parties were the ones you would later do quests, missions, help each other get things done and be ready to exp again the next day. You would have to spend hours a day with either the same people around your level skilling up, learning to skillchain, magic burst, Ect or new groups but the point is 6 man party was much more personal than hi & goodbye 18 man party quick rush to 99.

When Abbysea, GoV was released, it taught players to be lazy, it took away the "learn how to play the job as a team" aspect.
Because back then being a team made a difference unlike today everyone jump in gangbang stuff and kill quick without true strategy or skill.

Temp items in events today make players not depend on mages so much.

Also you actually had to utilize each jobs ability to accomplish wins. Healers had to learn how to conserve mp with heals and not cast curaga and gain hate putting the party at risk.

DD who took too much damage had to learn not to be a one man show otherwise mages would burn mp too fast putting party at risk.

You only had 6 people to choose from so players had to choose wisely.

Crafting was very useful during parties back then, mages would make melon juices for refresh.

Details such as these is what made ffxi fun.
There was no such thing as quick questing, you actually had to dedicate time with friends or others to get things done. Not run in solo by yourself at 99.

HNM was so fun back then. A reason why several LS existed but no longer today.

Sadly we are at a time where people fc their way to 99 in less than 6 hours, spoiled by Abby temp items and atmas that players no longer put effort to details such as buying food and meds. (not saying all but a good majority)

Because people level to 99 so fast, the majority of gear in AH became irrelevant.
Most people dual box characters so you are not getting 100% of a players ability but 50% controlling each character.

Familiar? Now that delve came out, a good majority of gear is now irrelevant..

The way FFXI is today compared to back then, is built to let you rush through things that you are suppose to take time and enjoy.

I have to strongly disagree with some parts of this sentiment. Prior to Abyssea, a lot of people were hard-pressed to even find parties if they were leveling a non-bandwagon job or a job not given the BG seal of approval (see: BST, BLM [post-ToAU], SMN, PUP, DRG, etc.). Forget about making parties if there weren't any tanks or healers around your level and Altana help you if someone raises a stink about not having a Bard--the less said about this, the better. I'd dare to say Abyssea saved the game from a premature death due to rampant job discrimination and lazy-mindedness.

HNMs were only fun if you had the fastest bot program and knew the right behinds to kiss. HNM shells were about as close to resembling Chicago politics as any MMO could imagine. The corruption and drama in most HNMLS would rival most City Council sessions on a good day.

I will agree that the pace of leveling doesn't allow players to get to know their jobs as deeply on the road to 99 but it's misguided to lay blame at the feet of FoV and GoV. Low-level parties go much faster with these and allow less preoccupation with low-level gear. They also give players something to do while looking for a party.

[Daemon]

I have to strongly disagree with some parts of this sentiment. Prior to Abyssea, a lot of people were hard-pressed to even find parties if they were leveling a non-bandwagon job or a job not given the BG seal of approval (see: BST, BLM [post-ToAU], SMN, PUP, DRG, etc.). Forget about making parties if there weren't any tanks or healers around your level and Altana help you if someone raises a stink about not having a Bard--the less said about this, the better. I'd dare to say Abyssea saved the game from a premature death due to rampant job discrimination and lazy-mindedness.

HNMs were only fun if you had the fastest bot program and knew the right behinds to kiss. HNM shells were about as close to resembling Chicago politics as any MMO could imagine. The corruption and drama in most HNMLS would rival most City Council sessions on a good day.


I will agree that the pace of leveling doesn't allow players to get to know their jobs as deeply on the road to 99 but it's misguided to lay blame at the feet of FoV and GoV. Low-level parties go much faster with these and allow less preoccupation with low-level gear. They also give players something to do while looking for a party.

Yes I understand people had a hard time finding parties, you actually had to lead your own to succeed, but then that's why they added level sync so you could party anywhere at any level. So I still stick with my opinion that Abbysea pretty much ruined the game by only giving people a reason to stay longer than quit allowing people to rush play to the end. Temp items taught people not to depend on mages anymore, no need for refresh when u got atmas, elixirs.

Believe me, the day someone says they don't need your job, that's exactly what happened when these new changes were added. Bye bye Redmage, no more bard for refresh and 6 man parties having one of the 2 or both jobs in exp party was a must.

Back in the day you actually had to move to other maps once your level exceeded the mobs level where you were leveling at. Not just exp in 2 areas. And like I said, who needs most of the gear in ah when you can buy level 1/10/30/99 gear instead making several of the synthesis for crafts useless. And we know there's people who don't even do that, show up in Abby totally naked.

Which btw is also why everytime you go to AH wanting to buy something, most of the time it's not there.

How many people FC their way to 99? Don't even skill up or actually play the job, just learn after 99 what should have been learned throughout the lower levels.

Heck most parties today u are parting with 1 person most likely controlling 1-5 characters and probably don't even know it.

Then at 99 many people who come to ffxi new barely have a lot of friends or know alot of people willing to help so the game teaches many to level up their own dual box or level a pet job so you can solo your own stuff.

GoV taught people to start the 18 man alliance and Zerg mobs for exp pages. No more leveling in tahrongi, bubu, maze of shakarami, valkurm dunes, etc.
Even some people don't even bother leveling up in crawlers nest anymore-
Some people can level to 50 going GoV pages in just a few hours.

This is the reason Skillchain/Magic Burst low man parties were destroyed. Why even put any effort when everyone can just gangbang stuff to meet page quota for exp? No more 6 man parties where you actually learn real skills.
Again I still stick to my opinion that GoV is another reason FFXI was ruined.


From level 1-30 players are suppose to be learning the job, skilling up, mages are suppose to learn the support aspect of a low man party and everyone learns how to control hate as a team.

My point was SE made way too many things easy not only allowing people to level super fast, but breeze through missions, quests, that its hard to enjoy the game once you level all the jobs you want, speed course through all missions, and now with delve, what more of the game can u really enjoy when REM and several other content before adoulin is now pretty much irrelevant when Delve gears pretty much surpass all other stuff.

The way FFXI is now is like playing a game on a private server where there's not a lot of people so they make it way too easy so you can skip the important stuff and rush to max level just so you can participate in activities with rest of the people.

We don't actually "earn" our levels and learn our jobs anymore. We go in Zerg gangbang stuff til our level reaches 99. This type of laziness promotes even more laziness and that's why you see alot of people purposely AFK, fall asleep in hopes of leeching til someone takes notice of their afkness.

This is the first real game I've ever saw in my life that give people the ability to reach 99 in less than 6 hours. Back in the day some people took over a year just to reach 75.

There was a time when Everyone depended on each so much that you actually had to find the right party or people you click with, learn each others play style, make a ton of mistakes but you actually learned how to be better at your job and work as a team.

Now a lot of players are selfgain or self independent so no need to party with others when they can do things themselves, anyone can push a few macros and hit ws. The real fun was doing skillchain / magic burst. Here is where players learned from each other, not just your gear but the person you are skillchaining with had to have good gear for both to create a beautiful amount of dmg. It motivated people to work on their equipment/ skill up because your moment in the spotlight to show off your dmg was in exp parties. It also better prepared people to take on hard bosses.

Where as now lol it's all about 18 man party, proc and Zerg.

Who needs REM or VW gear when you can go straight to delve as a mage , earn plasms, ki and then buy yourself the most powerful items in game without gil?

[Slaxx]

There are so many things wrong with your posts I'm not even going to bother trying to explain it.

I will say you either never really played before Abyssea or you have a very severe case of rose-colored glasses.

[Daemon]

There are so many things wrong with your posts I'm not even going to bother trying to explain it.

I will say you either never really played before Abyssea or you have a very severe case of rose-colored glasses.

Tell me what's wrong with my post?

That no one could level up in sync parties?
That I'm wrong for saying people can level to 99 in less than 6 hours?

BTW I'm not against new content, just saying certain flaws like FC to 99 or joining Abby party for 6 hours is what ruined the game.

GoV would have been better if it was strict to 6 man party and not 18, then maybe people would team up beyond gusgen mines since there are limited mobs in that 1 camp.

Then maybe skillchain / magic burst would still exist.

Temp items in Abby and VW, who needs melon pie and juices anymore? And do you really see anyone say we need bard or redmage to refresh the mages??

What about crafted armors, weapons? Who needs to buy a good majority of the gear in AH anymore when you won't even stay at the req level long? I see most people wear Pearle or Pink armor.

The other day I saw a team of RMT all playing summoner all wearing Pluvialle.

I don't know about your server but on mine atleast 1 person in every VW party has a dual box character and most people don't even know it. A few weeks ago I joined a GoV party, half the members were AFK and someone was there PLing the little amount of people who were there active, then after exping 30 minutes this PL person warps 5 other people(his dualbox characters) that were in party and we had to disband.

Self gain- I wonder how many people playing delve are willing to go back and help those who are shouting in jeuno for help getting atmas, ZB wins, +2s? Level limit break? CoP missions?

Self Independent - Because people have a hard time finding people to help with quest missions, REM trials, etc.. How many people level bst and make dual box character to do it solo?

And several people I know have BST to solo most if not all of their seals, +2s
also i know alot of people who have dual box characters for soloing Relic weapon quest, Emp trials..

I just spent half a year doing VW climbs, Access to Providence watcher and less than 1 week before delve release I finally got Plenitas Virgas.

On the first day Delve was released, I got Ki, 30k plasms and bought soothsayer staff, now my Plenitas Virga is just rotting in my storage.

Again I'm not against new content, but allowing people to rush through the game and skip a great detail of things is why I said SE made the game too easy.

I see so many people talking about Skirmish and how it was released only 1 month and delve killed it.

Players abusing the system, it's flaws like these that allow people to play the game too fast and this is one of the few reasons why people get bored and want new content.

[Slaxx]

Nobody can level to 99 in 6 hours. That is complete bullshit and everyone knows it. Please claim that it's just hyperbole but the reality is from level 30 - 99 is going to take somewhere between 8 and 12 hours, at best. Add in roughly 4- 6 hours for 1 - 30 and you're looking at between 12-18 hours, of non-stop xp'ing to get to 99 from scratch. It can be done in one day if you're dedicated to getting it done or pay for a FC but 6 hours is just completely wrong.

Try being a BLM in a pre-abyssea level sync party and see how wanted you are. Or a BST. Or SMN. Or PUP. The list goes on. Level sync helped the problem of leveling "non-optimal jobs" it did not make it go away.

If you are doing GoV in Gusgen until 70 - 75 then you're doing it wrong. When I did it I proceeded to The Crawler's Nest and the Oubliette before I went to abyssea. The xp from Gusgen pages is crap once you get past 25.

Skillchain/magic burst? I see skillchains all the time in delve. Accidental yes but still happening. The reason magic bursts don't happen is because BLMs are tied to a limited MP pool that will always limit the efficiency of a party. SC/MB died a long time before Abyssea was reeleased.

Realistically how many people were using food in XP parties ever? I very rarely saw it and I'm guessing that is pretty common.

You can't wear Perle/Aurore until 78. Up until then if people want to contribute they have to wear something else, often crafted armor. Some people always showed up to experience parties in gimp gear. That hasn't changed.

Just because you say they were RMT doesn't make it so. You are making an assumption based on what you have seen, no actual proof.

There have always been PLers and people that AFK during parties. This is not new in the post abyssea era.

My linkshell has recently taken in a couple new/returning players. We mostly concentrate on Delve but they are still getting the low level content they need done.

So being self-sufficient is a problem? It seems like the solution to a problem to me.

Just because you started doing VW 18 months after it started doesn't mean everyone did. I still see the occasional groups doing climbs. Groups that are able to do them far easier now with higher level gear. If you just want the rewards you can go that route as well, you don'y need the progression to get the rewards.

There is no chance that on the first day of Delve release you got wins AND 30k plasm to get a weapon. That is a flat out lie. If you were the kind of player that was capable of that you wouldn't be here bitching about this kind of nonsense.



You also brought up earlier that people level to 99 too fast to learn how to play there jobs. This is another complete load. No job in the game plays the same in an experience party as it does in endgame. Getting to 99 is the road, not the destination.

If you are only level 55 and have never actually played to 99 to get to the real meat of the game then you don't know what you're talking about. If you do have a 99 and are posting from an alt account, quit trolling. these issues have been beaten to death and the vast majority of players have gotten over it and moved on. I suggest you do the same.

[Daemon]

Nobody can level to 99 in 6 hours. That is complete bullshit and everyone knows it. Please claim that it's just hyperbole but the reality is from level 30 - 99 is going to take somewhere between 8 and 12 hours, at best. Add in roughly 4- 6 hours for 1 - 30 and you're looking at between 12-18 hours, of non-stop xp'ing to get to 99 from scratch. It can be done in one day if you're dedicated to getting it done or pay for a FC but 6 hours is just completely wrong.

Try being a BLM in a pre-abyssea level sync party and see how wanted you are. Or a BST. Or SMN. Or PUP. The list goes on. Level sync helped the problem of leveling "non-optimal jobs" it did not make it go away.

If you are doing GoV in Gusgen until 70 - 75 then you're doing it wrong. When I did it I proceeded to The Crawler's Nest and the Oubliette before I went to abyssea. The xp from Gusgen pages is crap once you get past 25.

Skillchain/magic burst? I see skillchains all the time in delve. Accidental yes but still happening. The reason magic bursts don't happen is because BLMs are tied to a limited MP pool that will always limit the efficiency of a party. SC/MB died a long time before Abyssea was reeleased.

Realistically how many people were using food in XP parties ever? I very rarely saw it and I'm guessing that is pretty common.

You can't wear Perle/Aurore until 78. Up until then if people want to contribute they have to wear something else, often crafted armor. Some people always showed up to experience parties in gimp gear. That hasn't changed.

Just because you say they were RMT doesn't make it so. You are making an assumption based on what you have seen, no actual proof.

There have always been PLers and people that AFK during parties. This is not new in the post abyssea era.

My linkshell has recently taken in a couple new/returning players. We mostly concentrate on Delve but they are still getting the low level content they need done.

So being self-sufficient is a problem? It seems like the solution to a problem to me.

Just because you started doing VW 18 months after it started doesn't mean everyone did. I still see the occasional groups doing climbs. Groups that are able to do them far easier now with higher level gear. If you just want the rewards you can go that route as well, you don'y need the progression to get the rewards.

There is no chance that on the first day of Delve release you got wins AND 30k plasm to get a weapon. That is a flat out lie. If you were the kind of player that was capable of that you wouldn't be here bitching about this kind of nonsense.



You also brought up earlier that people level to 99 too fast to learn how to play there jobs. This is another complete load. No job in the game plays the same in an experience party as it does in endgame. Getting to 99 is the road, not the destination.

If you are only level 55 and have never actually played to 99 to get to the real meat of the game then you don't know what you're talking about. If you do have a 99 and are posting from an alt account, quit trolling. these issues have been beaten to death and the vast majority of players have gotten over it and moved on. I suggest you do the same.

Don't tell me it's complete BS about leveling to 99 in 6 hours at Abby. Once you hit 30 you can join to be the keyer. From exp from blue chests to gaining 500+ exp per kill its possible. Especially when you have BLM who can Ja spell mobs.

I never joined FC party but I've leveled several characters this way to 99 in 6 hours.

With Delve gear people are one shorting worms in Abby, faster kills, faster progress.


Well when you see people names like djffsfgyygd in a group all wearing the same exact gear, all the same job...

[Slaxx]

Bullshit. Your clear lack of understanding on how this game works pretty much invalidates any point you try to make. Troll harder.

[Daemon]

Bullshit. Your clear lack of understanding on how this game works pretty much invalidates any point you try to make. Troll harder.

Why don't u troll harder?? Obviously you don't nothing.

I don't come here to complain, I came here to answer the original post my point of view on opinion.

Now whose the one trolling??

And why did SE make adjustment to delve? Because people were defeating it too fast duh. Some parties are making 5k-9k plasms.. It's not impossible.

[Slaxx]

You enter abyssea at level 30 and get 500+ xp from your first kill? Wrong. If you knew anything about what your talking about you'd know you get NOTHING for quite some time. Once you build lights and start to get experience it will still take quite a while to get to the cap for the level you're currently at (protip: that's below 500 for a while). Sure that 1250 from blue chests is nice but they don't drop every 10 seconds.

Last week i went to abyssea to get a couple merits on a 99 job. I made 400k experience in just about 2 hours (which obviously includes leaving to dump merits). As a level 30 coming in to key/leech you won't get anywhere near that average for the first few hours you are there.

You don't know what you are talking about. At this point you just look like a fool. If you had backed down and admitted that your original statement was hyperbole then maybe we could have a conversation.

Note: you also addressed none of my other points, some of which are certainly debatable. You chose to argue against me on something that anyone who has actually tried to burn as fast as possible knows is wrong. My personal record is 48 hours from job unlock to 99. It took me another 5.5 hours to cap skills. I have every job at 99, would i play most of them, hell no. My gear is sub-par and i don't know enough about the job to play effectively, BUT, I also wouldn't have learned that in an xp party. I can read, do research, and learn.

Sorry you did address the RMT issue. You are still making an assumption. I'm not saying your assumption is baseless (or wrong for that matter) but it is still an assumption with no actual proof to back it up.

[Daemon]

You enter abyssea at level 30 and get 500+ xp from your first kill? Wrong. If you knew anything about what your talking about you'd know you get NOTHING for quite some time. Once you build lights and start to get experience it will still take quite a while to get to the cap for the level you're currently at (protip: that's below 500 for a while). Sure that 1250 from blue chests is nice but they don't drop every 10 seconds.

Last week i went to abyssea to get a couple merits on a 99 job. I made 400k experience in just about 2 hours (which obviously includes leaving to dump merits). As a level 30 coming in to key/leech you won't get anywhere near that average for the first few hours you are there.

You don't know what you are talking about. At this point you just look like a fool. If you had backed down and admitted that your original statement was hyperbole then maybe we could have a conversation.

Note: you also addressed none of my other points, some of which are certainly debatable. You chose to argue against me on something that anyone who has actually tried to burn as fast as possible knows is wrong. My personal record is 48 hours from job unlock to 99. It took me another 5.5 hours to cap skills. I have every job at 99, would i play most of them, hell no. My gear is sub-par and i don't know enough about the job to play effectively, BUT, I also wouldn't have learned that in an xp party. I can read, do research, and learn.

Sorry you did address the RMT issue. You are still making an assumption. I'm not saying your assumption is baseless (or wrong for that matter) but it is still an assumption with no actual proof to back it up.

Oh like it takes all day to raise lights-

[Daemon]

You enter abyssea at level 30 and get 500+ xp from your first kill? Wrong. If you knew anything about what your talking about you'd know you get NOTHING for quite some time. Once you build lights and start to get experience it will still take quite a while to get to the cap for the level you're currently at (protip: that's below 500 for a while). Sure that 1250 from blue chests is nice but they don't drop every 10 seconds.

Last week i went to abyssea to get a couple merits on a 99 job. I made 400k experience in just about 2 hours (which obviously includes leaving to dump merits). As a level 30 coming in to key/leech you won't get anywhere near that average for the first few hours you are there.

You don't know what you are talking about. At this point you just look like a fool. If you had backed down and admitted that your original statement was hyperbole then maybe we could have a conversation.

Note: you also addressed none of my other points, some of which are certainly debatable. You chose to argue against me on something that anyone who has actually tried to burn as fast as possible knows is wrong. My personal record is 48 hours from job unlock to 99. It took me another 5.5 hours to cap skills. I have every job at 99, would i play most of them, hell no. My gear is sub-par and i don't know enough about the job to play effectively, BUT, I also wouldn't have learned that in an xp party. I can read, do research, and learn.

Sorry you did address the RMT issue. You are still making an assumption. I'm not saying your assumption is baseless (or wrong for that matter) but it is still an assumption with no actual proof to back it up.

Oh like it takes all day to raise lights- 500+exp at max lights but that doesn't mean you can't get 1,250exp from blue chests.

What sever are you from?? Maybe that's the problem :p

[Slaxx]

Try addressing the actual points I make. I never said it takes all day to raise lights.

At a rough guess it will take somewhere between 1 and 2 hours to cap gold, and far longer to cap ebon, to maximize experience gain.

Again, address the points I am actually making, anything else makes you look even more foolish than you already do.

[Daemon]

Try addressing the actual points I make. I never said it takes all day to raise lights.

At a rough guess it will take somewhere between 1 and 2 hours to cap gold, and far longer to cap ebon, to maximize experience gain.

Again, address the points I am actually making, anything else makes you look even more foolish than you already do.

Ha I laugh at you, it maybe takes that long if everyone in the party is below 85.

Now had you several 99's there joining for the Cruor/merits/testing new weapons, ws whatever, worm camp is not hard, especially blm can ja spell several worms at a time.

Are you seriously debating that DDs with Delve weapons would take 2 hours to cap your lights? Troll harder-

[Slaxx]

You're right, worm camp is easy.

BLMs can kill several mobs at once, if they're clustered together and not massacred by the roaming DDs before the spell even gets off. Being able to "-ja spell " several mobs at once doesn't eliminate the basic limitations of respawn time either, but that's a whole different issue that I'm sure you won't (read: can't) address.

I didn't say it would take 2 hours to cap lights. I said it would take between 1 and 2 hours to cap gold. Not every chest that drops will be red, and not every red chest will be gold.



Once again you are showing a complete lack of understanding on how things actually work in the game.

Edit: Editing your posts after i respond makes you look even more pathetic.

[Daemon]

You're right, worm camp is easy.

BLMs can kill several mobs at once, if they're clustered together and not massacred by the roaming DDs before the spell even gets off. Being able to "-ja spell " several mobs at once doesn't eliminate the basic limitations of respawn time either, but that's a whole different issue that I'm sure you won't (read: can't) address.

I didn't say it would take 2 hours to cap lights. I said it would take between 1 and 2 hours to cap gold. Not every chest that drops will be red, and not every red chest will be gold.



Once again you are showing a complete lack of understanding on how things actually work in the game.

Edit: Editing your posts after i respond makes you look even more pathetic.

I'm at work right now but I'm too busy trying to respond to your negative trolling efforts instead of attending the crowd I'm spinning for right now :p

That's why the edits..

[Slaxx]

Doing a little quick research shows that it takes just under 1.9M xp to get from 30 to 99. That means for your mythical "6 hours" you would have to average 315k/hr. There is no possible way that you will enter abyssea at level 30 and manage to average 315k over a 6 hour period. The numbers just don't add up.

If I went in to abyssea at 99 and joined a party of 99s and we went on a massive killing spree for 6 hours we could probably average that. The reality is that in an abyssea experience party that is not the situation. You will have people that are level 85 (and lower) working there way up to 99. Not everyone will be a pimped out endgamer trying out there new shinies.

But again this mythical "6 hours to 99" also includes levels 1-30. Your argument is so patently false it blows my mind that you are still trying to back it up.

PS. Correcting someone spreading misinformation is not trolling, continuing to spread the misinformation is.

[Daemon]

When you enter Abby at 30 where the party is already there, has all lights capped, can cap your lights so you can start getting exp within 20-30 minutes, other keyers opening several exp chests that give 1,250 exp per box obviously there lights already capped meaning you get 1,250 exp right away 315k divided by 6 is 52k per hour. You are saying its impossible to make 52k exp per hour in Abby?

If worms give 500 exp per kill divide 52k that means the party needs to kill 104 worms per hour to achieve 52k exp goal and that's not including Exp from chests.

[Slaxx]

Again you have just exposed yourself as having no clue what you're talking about. In addition you apparently can't read.

Edit:

1.9 million experience TOTAL

315k per hour

that would be 52k every 10 minutes

These are rough numbers. The real numbers would be a shade over 315k/hr but I don't think we need to get it down to the exact digits to prove you don't know what you're talking about.

[Daemon]

Again you have just exposed yourself as having no clue what you're talking about. In addition you apparently can't read.

Why am I wasting my time, the point is people can level to 99 in 1 day-
I'm quick replying so didn't read everything you wrote-

And yes I have to edit between each record rather than start a new reply each time-

Tell us all how much exp you can get in 1 hour-
You do know that 500 is not the max exp you can get- ive gotten up to 600exp per kill.

And 0-30 doesn't take hours with exp band, level to 10 and head to gusgen mines reach 30 and head to Abby-

[Slaxx]

I never said you couldn't level to 99 in one day. In fact I pretty clearly said it could be done (I believe the time frame I gave was 12 - 18 hours). What I dispute is the nonsense that it can be done in 6 hours. Again, if you had owned up to the hyperbole of your original statement you wouldn't look like a fool now. You claimed it was possible to level from 1 - 99 in 6 hours. You were wrong. Man up, admit it and move on.

[Daemon]

I never said you couldn't level to 99 in one day. In fact I pretty clearly said it could be done (I believe the time frame I gave was 12 - 18 hours). What I dispute is the nonsense that it can be done in 6 hours. Again, if you had owned up to the hyperbole of your original statement you wouldn't look like a fool now. You claimed it was possible to level from 1 - 99 in 6 hours. You were wrong. Man up, admit it and move on.

Again before you judge, tell us how much exp per hour people can obtain??? Stop avoiding the question if you are going to debate with someone. Answer me how much exp total including every blue box chest.

And this was never about 1-99, this was about 30-99. The main point of the entire comment before you decided to troll me was the fact that allowing people to level to 99 this fast is what ruined the game.

[Slaxx]

You never asked how much xp could be obtained. I'm not avoiding anything. I said it before, editing your posts after I respond doesn't make you look right, it makes you look desperate to be right. 315k/hr to get from 30-99. That is an indisputable number (please try, I'm always up for a laugh). You never said from 30 - 99, you said to get to 99 (unless of course you've been editing your posts, I wouldn't be surprised).

To answer the question you finally asked I've worked my way up close to 250k/hr (starting from 30) in abyssea. The average tends to fluctuate a bit as people leave and new people enter, new people's lights aren't as high, xp chests dwindle for a while and then pick back up, etc. The reality is in a straight run from 30 - 99 you'll probably average between 200 and 250k per hour. Can you get more? Probably. But living in the "real world" and not some ideal fantasy where everyone else in the party is working specifically to get you to 99 as quickly as possible that's probably about as good as you're likely to get.

I'm not judging you, I'm saying you are wrong.

You are spreading blatant misinformation, I am correcting it.

I am not trolling, I'd say I have better things to do right now but I don't. If I wanted to troll you I would make outrageous claims that can't be verified, oh wait, that's what your doing.

[Daemon]

You never asked how much xp could be obtained. I'm not avoiding anything. I said it before, editing your posts after I respond doesn't make you look right, it makes you look desperate to be right. 315k/hr to get from 30-99. That is an indisputable number (please try, I'm always up for a laugh). You never said from 30 - 99, you said to get to 99 (unless of course you've been editing your posts, I wouldn't be surprised).

To answer the question you finally asked I've worked my way up close to 250k/hr (starting from 30) in abyssea. The average tends to fluctuate a bit as people leave and new people enter, new people's lights aren't as high, xp chests dwindle for a while and then pick back up, etc. The reality is in a straight run from 30 - 99 you'll probably average between 200 and 250k per hour. Can you get more? Probably. But living in the "real world" and not some ideal fantasy where everyone else in the party is working specifically to get you to 99 as quickly as possible that's probably about as good as you're likely to get.

I'm not judging you, I'm saying you are wrong.

You are spreading blatant misinformation, I am correcting it.

I am not trolling, I'd say I have better things to do right now but I don't. If I wanted to troll you I would make outrageous claims that can't be verified, oh wait, that's what your doing.

You are trolling, when I edit I didn't change any of my words, I only added stuff trying to reply to your several comments,

You went around the point to debate with me rather looking at the poin (omg i mispelled point but editing to fix it makes me pathetic) of my original comment, that abbysea ruined the game when people can level to 99 so fast, that's why I laid down other things like how gear in AH became useless.

Bid deal if I'm off by a few hours according to your average this wasn't about 6 hours 8-12 hours, point is people can reach 99 in 1 day leading to the original posts statement that SE needs to give us new content.

[Slaxx]

You did change your words. You have added things to your posts on more than one occasion to make it appear as though I am being evasive when I respond to you. You are the one hung up on leveling to 99, that was only one of many issues I addressed in my first lengthy response to you. I have continued debating that point because that was the only one you seemed willing to continue to defend.

Vast amounts of gear on the AH has always been useless. Again nothing has changed in that regard since before abyssea. Every time a new expansion (or event such as Legion, Meebles, VW etc.) is introduced some old equipment becomes obsolete as new things are introduced. Progress happens, you can move along with it or stagnate.

I will repeat myself from my original post: either you didn't play before abyssea or you are viewing the past of this game through rose-colored glasses.

Or the third option: you are deliberately being obtuse.

Edit: And once again while I am typing my post you edit and add more to the post I'm responding too. I'm going get a couple hours sleep. Maybe when I get up you'll have some intellectual consistency in your argument and not feel the need to continue to edit yourself.

[Daemon]

Again no, I didn't change my words, I corrected some of the misspellings, added more than a quick 2 line reply. Seriously you are the worst troll I've encountered-

Wasting perfectly good Forum space debating and defending myself to someone sitting on the judge throne.

[Daemon]

To answer the question you finally asked I've worked my way up close to 250k/hr (starting from 30) in abyssea. The average tends to fluctuate a bit as people leave and new people enter, new people's lights aren't as high, xp chests dwindle for a while and then pick back up, etc. The reality is in a straight run from 30 - 99 you'll probably average between 200 and 250k per hour. Can you get more? Probably. But living in the "real world"

First you say it's flat out impossible and that I'm a bull shitter. Can people get more exp? Probably was your answer. Am I really outrageously that much off from your 315k per hour goal?

Here let me ask u this, is it impossible to have a party of 14 people level 99, Sam, War, Mnk, Dark, Blm, other jobs etc 3 keyers, delve weapons and gear- and gain 300k per hour for sure?

Because I want to know for sure that the judge has a right title title me an absolute bull shitter.

(Stupid iphone autocorrect but again I'm pathetic if I delete the 2 title up above)


Warning I'm going to add more now that I got the next record up.

I'm not thinking about people leaving and exp fluctuation because the majority of parties I've lead people stayed for several hours without leaving.

[Daemon]

Let me conclude everything I was saying before getting trolled. This is not about "before abbysea, before anything, this is my opinion of the results that happened after such expansions/ new content were released.

1. It's possible to level to 99 in 1 day. Because of abyssea.
2. It's possible to earn 5-9k plasm per delve party, it's possible to get Ki from Boss in 1 day, it's possible to earn 30k plasm and yes it can all be done on the same day. Because of Adoulin.
3. Why spend several weeks due to dyna being 1 per day until JP midnight to farm relic base weapon, farm currency etc when delve weapon surpass in dmg and stats?
4. Why spend several months doing assault, salvage, einherjar, Nyzul, znm etc, farm a base weapon and unlock mythic? Ws can be unlocked if you complete floor 100 nyzul and earn 250 ws points with a samurai doing level 3 skillchains. (Irrelevant because of Delve?)
5. After Abbysea was released people did not need to depend on mages for refresh and heals due to Regen/refresh atmas, temp items. (Certain jobs like RDM were not needed as much as before the release)
6. 18 man alliance "use" to be limited to big boss events, people did not use alliances for the purpose of obtaining exp. However GoV allowed people to gain exp fast from completing pages becoming an everyday thing.
7. HNM events stopped after SE changed bosses from time spawn into trigger spawns. (Regardless of the flaw with delay in claiming boss or hacks, the event was officially killed when items were either changed to rare/ex or trigger spawn)
8. Skirmish either became irrelevant or highly unpopular after Delve was released.
9. Why spend hours farming gil, doing VW gear as first priority when you can do a day of Reives, complete 15 tags earning 1,800 bayld for every 3 tags (not including the amount you earn from reives itself) to get a decent gear set from coalition officer than spending days, weeks, months getting VW/ other gear that u can obtain later?
10. Food "still" makes a difference, it's plus extra stats added on top of your atmas, temp items, stats that you don't have when you choose not to invest gil and buy it.
(Edit: Leveling most of the job in abby, people do get use to the temp items and atma buffs therefore some people, not all, have in mind that why spend gil on food when atma/temps give enough boost in stats, dmg anyways, this is why i said earlier this promotes laziness)

Whatever amount of time it took to get things done before delve release can now be done even faster than before. Faster kills, faster play, it's really a no brainer.

Wanna troll me? Who's next?

*And yes i will go back and add things that come to mind especially when its hard to reply on the fly using a cellphone at work rather than sitting at home and having the real time to read over trolling comments and defending myself to why i stated my personal opinions in the first place and instead of starting a whole new reply thread, id rather safe space to add additional replies the to the comment ive already started. For one you don't need to flat out say someone is wrong when someone is stating an opinion on how they see things, its part of everyday communication and dont be surprised when people edit what they wrote, all journalists, writers, bloggers, whoever need to edit things to correct mispelling, however i did not go back and change any of my opinions to make it look i am right, otherwise i would have gone back and changed the comments where i made a mistake in reading the exp calculations*

[Never do i expect any person in the world to fully agree to what comments i make, and i know people will disagree regardless, but i have been playing FFXI long enough to have a decent amount of opinions, doesnt mean i dont know anything]

New content always changes the gameplay and I'm not complaining at all but changing the gameplay is one thing, making the gameplay allow people to fly through storylines, levels, missions, quests, or releasing overpowered items that make all other content worthless , irelevent or whatever you want to call it leads to posts like these where people will suggest adding even more new content.

*Imagine if players in FF14 could level to max level in 1 day or any other game? Do you not think that this kind of ability allows people to play the game too fast?*

[Spectreman]

They need to make abyssea +1/+2 much easier. They need to lessen the cost of basic bayld gear. They need to make skirmish more interesting.

When all that is done the gap between players will lessen and delve could become more entertaining without only "best possible setups" parties.

[Duelle]

3. Why spend several weeks due to dyna being 1 per day until JP midnight to farm relic base weapon, farm currency etc when delve weapon surpass in dmg and stats?Old content is old. FFXI players are among the few who can't leave old content be and instead demand the old content be made relevant. That's how we got the sad display of caving by the devs with RME. In any other game relics would have been relegated to status items that look cool. Which is okay if your progression model is designed around tiered content (which is the direction SE is trying to go with XI).

4. Why spend several months doing assault, salvage, einherjar, Nyzul, znm etc, farm a base weapon and unlock mythic? Ws can be unlocked if you complete floor 100 nyzul and earn 250 ws points with a samurai doing level 3 skillchains. (Irrelevant because of Delve?)Again, status item.

From a practical standpoint it shows how stupid design behind Mythic acquisition was.

5. After Abbysea was released people did not need to depend on mages for refresh and heals due to Regen/refresh atmas, temp items. (Certain jobs like RDM were not needed as much as before the release)RDM clinging to a shitty gimmick to justify its spot in a party was not all you crack it up to be. I looked at it as a chance to wipe the slate clean and give us a chance to go in a better direction. Then the chance was squandered when AF3 came out as it did and Tanaka returned.

6. 18 man alliance "use" to be limited to big boss events, people did not use alliances for the purpose of obtaining exp. However GoV allowed people to gain exp fast from completing pages becoming an everyday thing.Not a bad thing, as the entirety of level progression is killing crap, and the largest timesink related to that was not the amount of exp required to level, but the time wasted looking for a damn party and then getting to camp.

7. HNM events stopped after SE changed bosses from time spawn into trigger spawns. (Regardless of the flaw with delay in claiming boss or hacks, the event was officially killed when items were either changed to rare/ex or trigger spawn)Which was welcomed by more than just a few individuals. Or did you forget all the "fuck HNM, this is how all events should be".

8. Skirmish either became irrelevant or highly unpopular after Delve was released.Poor timing and poor control by the devs. I'll admit, they screwed up majorly. Then again, Adoulin's design as a whole is wanting.

9. Why spend hours farming gil, doing VW gear as first priority when you can do a day of Reives, complete 15 tags earning 1,800 bayld for every 3 tags (not including the amount you earn from reives itself) to get a decent gear set from coalition officer than spending days, weeks, months getting VW/ other gear that u can obtain later?Old content is old. Voidwatch was crap anyways, so I still say good riddance.

10. Food "still" makes a difference, it's plus extra stats added on top of your atmas, temp items, stats that you don't have when you choose not to invest gil and buy it.Considering the only way to make money in the current game is selling dynamis currency, maybe it's for the best.

New content makes old content obsolete. I still don't understand why some of you here struggle with that concept.

[Daemon]

Now that i have the proper time to re-evaluate what i skimmed over due to being busy at work (its not easy to read all of your comments when i have less than 5 minutes to figure out what song im going to play next for the crowd, then i have to spend about 30 seconds to match bpm and set loop points)

but anyways let me correctly reply to your post now that you have my full attention and do know that alot of my statements are not 100% spot on point due to the fact that there are alot of things that can change the aspect of the situations we are discussing however when i said something earlier, it was just a quick estimation from a point of view of having all gears HQ, uses HQ Food, uses Emperor Band, Has all warps, and neccessities and is a person who does not waste any time but knows how to get to places fast and accomplish things at the fastest pace possible)


Nobody can level to 99 in 6 hours. That is complete bullshit and everyone knows it. Please claim that it's just hyperbole but the reality is from level 30 - 99 is going to take somewhere between 8 and 12 hours, at best. Add in roughly 4- 6 hours for 1 - 30 and you're looking at between 12-18 hours, of non-stop xp'ing to get to 99 from scratch. It can be done in one day if you're dedicated to getting it done or pay for a FC but 6 hours is just completely wrong.

True no one can level to 99 in 6 hours starting at level 1. Possibly it could take about an hour or more or less to reach level 10 depending on what gear you are wearing, If you are an HQ freak who likes to carry around HQ gear and weapons of every level leading up to 10 or good equipment like leaping boots etc, use food + Emperor band and if you have someone to PL you or not, if you are using GoV Buffs from NPC and depending on what job and subjob you are using its hard to say how long it will take to reach level 10. There's also strategy involved when it comes to leveling fast, are you the person who moves on to harder mobs just because it gives you highest exp or do you linger around the lower exp mobs because you can gain faster exp from consistency over time from killing stuff without resting?

Edit: I love using /Cor for Corsairs Roll when Im soloing to level 15 on my own.

Likewise its hard to know how long it will take to level from 10-30 in gusgen mines depending if the player has VW warp that allow you to warp there or does the player need to get a teleport or walk, and how far it is from the persons home nation. Does the player already have the gears needed so they do not need to run back to town every few levels?

Personally i already have all vw warps, HQ gears, Weapons saved so when i need to level another new job, i dont need to waste any time trying to buy it, or waiting for it to appear in AH when its not there. When I went to gusgen mines, I carried gears up til level 30 with me so i never had to return to town to get them.

And you are correct that a person could level to 99 between 12-18 hours (And i will admit that i did not read that part, but only had the time to read the part where you said "Nobody can level to 99 in 6 hours. That is complete bullshit and everyone knows it.")

Now let me also elaborate on this and do know that I did not intend to get into such detail over leveling to 99 topic, my intention was that people can level a job to 99 too fast that other negative points come to play such as AH gear being irrelevant etc: I said Abbysea ruined FFXI when it allowed players to FC their way to 99 in 6 hours. In order to even play Abbysea, you need to be level 30 to enter, therefore my statement was not 1-99, it was 30-99.

If you enter worm camp party as a keyer at level 30, with all players already maxed lights, exp etc, that means blue boxes will be highest Tier and there is no wait time on gaining exp through chests. I said 500exp earlier because that was a quick general idea of the majority of capped exp parties from what ive seen, however, Ive also seen 600 exp per kill.

Now here is my opinion: This all depends on what type of party you are joining, is it a slow party or a fast party with good leaders who are paying attention to see if anyone is afking, or not doing their job killing, keying whatever. Do the members in your party stay the full time or do they leave?

The parties ive led, no one leaves because im on top of everyone, making sure no one afk more than 5 minutes, at the most ill let someone afk 10 minutes. Always communicating in private tells to other leaders to check on members who afk too long, telling them to invite people when someone leaves, always checking to see if new people entered with flag up making sure to write down who asked to join party next so that i can fairly invite those who waited first.

Before the SCH nerf, i always had embrava slave who could give the entire party buff, we killed so fast that we actually had to wait for worm to respawn, everyone running around searching both sides of the map.

At 600 exp per worm, an 18 man alliance would have to kill 525 worms to reach your 315k exp quota. And thats not including how much exp you earned from blue chests. Yes i understand that mobs have a respawn timer, but that doesnt play a major role in what im explaining because respawn timer starts upon death and its not worth the time to explain opinions over this, lets just keep it simple

But on a side note (And please bare with me) according to Wiki there are 22 worms at worm camp, i dont know the respawn timer however if the respawn of each worm was 5 minutes, and all 22 worms respawned every 5 minutes, that would be 12 sets of 22 worms which is a total of 264 worms times by 600 exp per kill would give you a total of 158,400 exp from mobs alone.

If the respawn time was 3 minutes per worm, then that would mean 22 worms respawning every 3 minutes in 1 hour would be 20 sets of 22 at 600 exp per kill you would gain 264,000 exp. thats also not including the amount of exp you gained from blue chests.

but we all know that its hard to make hard point calculations because you cant tell when each worm will be killed, could take over a minute, or 30 seconds etc....

The point i'm getting at, is it really impossible to earn 315k exp per hour? Even so, was i totally outrageously off about my quick calculations of leveling to 99 in 6 hours enough of a reason to be spending this much time debating over when the Exclusive main point in general was the fact that abbysea allowing people to level to 99 extremely fast ruined the game from my point of view?

I dont know much about DD to get into full detail but i will say that there are several players who can 1 shot worms, can self skillchain, can attack so fast due to haste gear, buffs, embrava ect. And now with delve weapons dmg stats is almost double that the previous weapons.

My beastmaster in abby can 1 shot worms with ruinator before delve and yet i still dont have adoulin/delve gear for bst. The reason i am bringing this up is because, it all depends on does the player have the right atmas, is using HQ food? Does the player have quests done that add +10 stats to cruor buffs? Belt/Gorget? Increase elemental WS damage gears? always have temps up?



Try being a BLM in a pre-abyssea level sync party and see how wanted you are. Or a BST. Or SMN. Or PUP. The list goes on. Level sync helped the problem of leveling "non-optimal jobs" it did not make it go away.

Ok how is this an argument? When FFXI was first released in the USA, there was no abbysea no GoV, so BLM was part of the 6 man party because spells were used to Magic burst after skillchain. The job was not unwanted back then, how would it be unwanted for level sync parties? Sometimes when WHM was impossible to get, I had to be a healer rather than nuker on BLM, yes we were required to make such sacrifices back then. If you could not find a WHM, then having RDM, BLM share healing duty was part of compromising rather than not gain any exp at all. Sometimes little exp was better than no exp.


The basic setup we had back then was 3DD, 3 mages, usually a tank, a 2nd DD, a thief, BLM, RDM, BRD or WHM. It all depends on what skillchains, ws, what level, what jobs can accomplish certain tier ws, and if the weapons used can create that skillchain.

BST was known as a solo job back then as it still known today.

You can give a million reasons not to progress and complain about not being invited or unwanted but the hard true fact is if you want something done you need to do it yourself..

I never waited hours in town to "get invited" to a party, if people didnt need the job im playing, i took the initiative to shout in town that i was making the party, i needed these specific jobs, and if it wasn't available, i compromised and had different ways to setup a group. Networking and adding several people to be your friend made a big difference, that way when you needed a job, you could ask people in ls, or on your friendslist to come play the job you needed. So this arguement to me doesnt make sense. But ok not everyone has the drive or the ability to take action and you shared your opinion, ive shared mine so we know that not everyone can do the same things as others.



If you are doing GoV in Gusgen until 70 - 75 then you're doing it wrong. When I did it I proceeded to The Crawler's Nest and the Oubliette before I went to abyssea. The xp from Gusgen pages is crap once you get past 25.

I never said anything about doing GoV until 70-75 in Gusgen mines, However ive seen a rare few people stay til about level 50, maybe because they didnt know about Crawlers nest? The point is, people can do Gusgen mines to level 30 and move straight into Abbysea. And if you read my post earlier, this wasnt even a point i made, I said that because of GoV, 6 man parties turned into 18 man alliances therefore (Skillchain/Magic burst Era was killed)

Edit: Also the fact that after GoV, most places we were use to leveling at became dead and unpopular, Who levels in Dunes anymore? Qufim island? Maze of Shakarami? Before we use to level to 10 outside of home nation, then either travel to Dunes or Tahrongi canyon depending on where your homenation was and how difficult or time consuming it was to walk to dunes, and after reaching level 18 we use to level up in Qufim island which introduced us all to Jeuno, and the ease of setting homepoint, doing chocobo quest, etc..



Skillchain/magic burst? I see skillchains all the time in delve. Accidental yes but still happening. The reason magic bursts don't happen is because BLMs are tied to a limited MP pool that will always limit the efficiency of a party. SC/MB died a long time before Abyssea was reeleased.

Seriously? And you are assuming that i never played FFXI pre Abbysea? I never said Skillchains in general dont exist, however the whole Skillchain and do a magic burst parties that we use to have was killed because of the 18 man alliance concept. (Again repeating what i said already)

How does BLM have limited pool of MP compared to before Abbysea? At 99, BLM can subjob RDM for convert+ refresh, corsair and bard which is highly invited to delve can give you refresh also.

Again valuable 101 basics that should have been learned at lower levels.... Its because SE spoiled us with the ability to do things easier is why people don't spend the time and effort today to learn the job to the fulliest to overcome basic obstacles such as these that we so learned back then when you actually had an entire level to play around with your abilites not relying on quick buffs and temps learning your limits and what you can do, learning the pace of what needs to be done. Giving players a good reason to go back and think again how they can be better at the job or role they are playing with.

Today is about 18 people, I will never change my words when i say there is no real skill in gangbanging stuff to death with big groups. Low man party requires more focus, strategy, teamwork on a much higher level than bigger groups. Today in 18 man parties most people can get by not even doing alot of work compared to a low man party accomplishing the win.

Example:
Arc Dyna Lord, Obviously 18 people can destroy it, But i would be impressed to see a 6 man party defeat than an 18 man party.

As a person who played BLM back then before abyssea, You had Summoner Subjob to give you 1 MP per tick, food skill 50+ you could make juices.
Is that a surprise? Us mages back then had to actually skillup our food and carry synthesis materials to make juices for ourselves, it was a big + in getting invites when you showed leaders of exp party that you can be a better benefit than those who were not as prepared. RDM was relied upon for refresh and has convert, can magic burst with lower tier spells, And I had RDM, WHM, BLM leveled up so in case a job was lacking, I could play the role that was needed. (Several people, not just me, did the same exact thing, leveled extra jobs in case parties didnt need the job you wanted to play)

Its not because of limited MP pool because there is more than enough gear, jobs with refresh spells, AH items, weapons such as Hvelgamir emp which can give up to 1k MP at 300TP today compared to back then.

It is however because its impossible to organize a skillchain / magic burst in an 18 man alliance when you have several other people either using ws, casting magic or lowering the hp of the mob to the point where you wont even be able to finish the skillchain or obtain magic burst bonus. And when someone tosses in a WS before the one that is organized, the skillchain will no longer work.

Skillchain / Magic Burst require Coordination, each member needs to also know how to do it within the 3 second average window.

And BLM Should be conserving MP for Magic burst if its a true Skillchain/Magic burst setup rather than waste MP nuking.

You would know that the worst BLM in a low man party was the type that sits there and nuke highest tier spells on mobs trying to be a 1 man show rather than deal light damage with lower tier spells over time so that the tanker could keep hate.


Gee, this is why i said people are missing out on the basic 101 stuff you are suppose to be learning at the lower levels.....



Realistically how many people were using food in XP parties ever? I very rarely saw it and I'm guessing that is pretty common.

Thank you for complimenting on my point, the fact that people are spoiled with Temp items, who needs food?

Now let me comment on this. A good player will use food regardless, Why? Its extra stats added that you dont have! Big deal you have temp items and atmas.. Little things add up to create greater outcomes.

Then people wonder why certain players deal massive amounts of damage compared to others >.>

Edit: Its because people rely on temp items in Abby during the majority of the leveling process to 99 that many players became accustomed to playing without food and when players show up to events outside of VW/Abbysea not using food, this can change the outcome of the battle.

Laziness is a choice, and can add up on many levels especially when you are spoiled with things such as free buffs and free temp items.

Back in the day we all carried food, in fact people would criticize if you didn't.

We never had temp items so we had to really focus on our jobs better than today, how we can conserve mp, what gear can give you faster recovery, how DDs can have higher accuracy, deal better dmg, be a better tank.

And because temp items spoiled everyone, many people stopped buying food, therefore crafters no longer felt the need to put these things up in AH anymore because they cant sell. So whats the point in having craft recipes for things people no longer need?

Im not saying "No one crafts anymore" but certain adjustments devalued the purpose of many things that use to be available or needed. Why even have those recipes anymore if there is no purpose of having it?



You can't wear Perle/Aurore until 78. Up until then if people want to contribute they have to wear something else, often crafted armor. Some people always showed up to experience parties in gimp gear. That hasn't changed.

My point wasnt about what level you can wear Perle/Aurore.

Here is my point:
Crafters who made armor and sold equipment for gil got canned when Abyssea was released. Because players could level massively fast, a good majority of gear became irrelevant.

Why invest in gear that you wont wear for long when your level will exceed past the req level to equip it if you are exping in abby? Therefore instead of buying gear that crafters made, people are buying gear that is sold at Abbysea NPC such as Perle/ Aurore.

How many people show up to abby naked? Because as a keyer, you dont need gear, your not dealing damage, you are just walking around opening boxes all day. And by the time you reach 78, you already have enough cruor to buy Perle/Aurore.

Where as:
Back in the day, you actually had to farm gil and invest in your gear, and because leveling wasn't as quick as abyssea, you actually could enjoy the gear you bought for several levels.. Some people took a week break just to farm enough gil to buy impressive gear that made a whole new difference.



Just because you say they were RMT doesn't make it so. You are making an assumption based on what you have seen, no actual proof.

True i am making an assumption but people tend to do that when you are camping a spot pretty often and notice certain details. Can i prove it? No but I can have an opinion over the matter after seeing certain things.

For one, this was WoE, a money making spot. 2, When you see more than 8 people the same exact job, in a party, wearing the same exact gear that is from abbysea and not gear that is actually invested from gil, have names that dont make any sense, and after seeing those people over several weeks with the same gears, yet you see thier names in AH selling 2mil+ items all the time, it makes you wonder if the person is in fact a RMT. Especially when they never toss you a heal, or do anything to help others other than rush in a engage fight for the fact that in WoE you need to deal massive amounts of dmg to qualify for max drops and exp.

and gee summoner, wearing pluvialle? what happend to AF? Not that pluvialle is a bad piece of gear but i can understand 1 or 2 people in the same party wearing it, but whole entire group of more than 6 people?




There have always been PLers and people that AFK during parties. This is not new in the post abyssea era.

Well PLers do not AFK in parties, they afk outside of parties... unless they have a low level job in the party that they are PLing but we all know that right?

My point was not about PLers afking in parties, the point i made earlier was the fact that Ive seen so many people Dual Box more than 1 character. Its situations like these that can cause alot of problems for others. Especially when the PLer leaves and takes almost the entire party with them..

If you joined an abby party do you think its fair for the entire alliance if 1 person has more than 3+ characters in party parked leeching exp? Ive seen someone with 6 characters, thats a whole party doing nothing while we are all working our butts off trying to exp.




My linkshell has recently taken in a couple new/returning players. We mostly concentrate on Delve but they are still getting the low level content they need done.

So being self-sufficient is a problem? It seems like the solution to a problem to me.

Returning players need gear, yes i get that. But the flaw of the system i was referring to is that people can choose to skip alot of the content now, and obtain endgame stuff without as much effort being that delve doesnt require you to wait days, or spend massive amounts of gil. Or endless amounts of quest to gain access to Delve like it is with R/E/M.

As a mage class, You can do colonization reives, earn bayld from doing Clear the way, using 3 tags, nets you 1800 bayld every 3 tags, and you hold up to 15 max at npc. You can earn even more bayld during the participation of reives by healing, enhancing, etc.. A person could earn enough bayld in 1 day to buy atleast 2-3 pieces of gear.

Orvail set has highest INT/Magic Accuracy compared to any other gear before Adoulin release, therefore having just this set alone is powerful enough for any mage to participate in Delve.

As for Gil compared to earning Bayld/Plasm, this is the issue, you actually need time to farm stuff, sell things and earn gil, where as plasm you just join and kill stuff and earn it at a faster rate than gil being that a good delve party can earn up to 5-9k plasm per run. If you play delve all day and do more than 6 runs, a person could already have enough plasm to buy a delve item if the person has ki.

Now compare that with how much time and gil it cost to buy or farm things such as 30,000 Alexandrite, Umbral Marrow, 10,000 Byne Bill, 1,500 Heavy Metal Plate?



Just because you started doing VW 18 months after it started doesn't mean everyone did. I still see the occasional groups doing climbs. Groups that are able to do them far easier now with higher level gear. If you just want the rewards you can go that route as well, you don'y need the progression to get the rewards.

I never assumed everyone has VW done to begin with, also how is this related to my argument? Sorry its already past 4am, so forgive me if I do not scroll back up to re read previous things. However:

My arguement was about the fact that it took more time to do vw, that you need to wait on stones, do VW climbs, follow the story line, and by the time you get all climbs done, and have access to PW, as a mage who obtained Plenitas Virga staff for my SCH, being that the INT was high which is good for Shattersoul. I find it disappointing that Soothsayer staff has better stats and easier to get than Plenitas Virga.

Why use Plenitas Virgas that has only 98 damage compared to Soothsayer staff that has 145 base dmg? It too has INT and with upgrades in rank you can surpass the INT of Plenitas Virga?

Just the same as people with relic, mythic, emp, who found it overwhelmingly disappointing that they had to spend several weeks, months, some "(I know this is funny) Years" and massive amounts of gil for their weapon only to be replaced with something more powerful that can be obtained in 1 day.


There is no chance that on the first day of Delve release you got wins AND 30k plasm to get a weapon. That is a flat out lie. If you were the kind of player that was capable of that you wouldn't be here bitching about this kind of nonsense.

We all heard about delve before it came out, its not hard to prep for an event on the first day of release. I just happened to be lucky to join a group of EU players who were massively well equipped and the leader of the party knew what he was doing. Following FFXIAH forums and ingame players conversations, its not hard to figure out what to do and where to go..

You say its impossible, Im telling you its not. Why? There is restriction on Delve? Only leader needed to have quest done to purchase ki to enter us in, and how many players already had that done before delve was implemented?

When I joined this EU group we didnt farm plasm, we went straight for the bosses. Everyone was able to get Ki and plasm from defeating the boss. And yes we spammed all day.. BGWiki was a big help, very quick to post information about what kis we needed, what items, etc..

Then players were complaining that the devs made Delve way too easy to obtain the overpowered gear at such a short time span, did SE not throw us an update so that we cant kill boss straight away?


You also brought up earlier that people level to 99 too fast to learn how to play there jobs. This is another complete load. No job in the game plays the same in an experience party as it does in endgame. Getting to 99 is the road, not the destination.

Am i wrong for saying that people level too fast?
Let me make this more clear in detail rather than a quick response:

There are certain people, not all that:

1. Find out they can level extremely fast from 30 to 99 in abby.
2. Can join FC party and leech their way to 99.
3. Dont know how to Skillchain, Self skillchain, Carry several different sets of gear and utilize those gears during exp parties/events.
4. Only use 1 set of gear and ws in that same gear rather than wear TP/Haste equipment and switch over to WS gear to improve thier dmg.
5. We already agreed that alot of people dont use food, so i wont even go there again...
6. Dont know how to cure a person who is slept by mobs to wake that person up.
7. Who carry -pdt gear in case its needed during a situation when there is a lack of healing power, Tanker died, or when the person such as a mage generated so much hate from a spell that the mob turned on them and DD or tanker has a hard time reclaiming hate fast enough to save that person.
8. Who doesnt cap skills and expect to participate in end game events and wonder why they cant land a spell or miss on mobs, refuses to pay the high price in skill up food and take the time to actually skill up before joining such events.

Do i really need to continue?

It's the training you learn in exp parties that effect how you play at events.
Do you really think the Army, Airforce, Navy etc will send out troops into battle without having the most thorough training of every aspect of war from survival to battle?

Heres a quick example: You are the only white mage in party healing the DD in your group, 1 person who is so self centered only wants to wear full damage dealing gear rather than observe the situation and the fact that you as the whm are losing mp way too fast on just healing that one DD leading to the result of having to pause every now and then and wait for you to recover.

Would it not make sense to sacrifice some dmg by wearing -pdt gear to take less dmg helping your healer use less MP so there is less downtime?

Ive been in this situation way to many times to count to be here now writing about this issue. It happens everyday, common sense training had you spent the time to figure this out during the lower levels of exping in low man groups.


If you are only level 55 and have never actually played to 99 to get to the real meat of the game then you don't know what you're talking about. If you do have a 99 and are posting from an alt account, quit trolling. these issues have been beaten to death and the vast majority of players have gotten over it and moved on. I suggest you do the same.

Its responses like these that doesnt deserve the attention that ive given, taking the time to go over our discussion and properly answer you back. However ill be the better person and get over it and move on just as you suggested.

Played since Day 1 of USA release, so obviously after the majority of our discussion was about how to level to 99 in 1 day is more than enough proof to tell you that I have 99 jobs.

I dont own alt accounts, I am an oldschool player, and 110% legit that doesnt take cheap shortcuts, and do things half way. I am one of the very rare few that is an HQ fanatic, always carries food, never afk more than 5 minutes, never commit to an event that i cant put my full participation and effort in, I dont have a dual box character, I dont play as a selfish selfgain person, always committed to helping others, if someone helps me, i always return the favor, I dont buy Gil online, I dont use people, Im not greedy, If camping for a rare with someone together, i always stay til that person gets what we both came for, and if the time doesnt allow us, I always offer to go back and spend the time to help them get what they wanted, I never purposely dc during any event regardless of the occassion, I never depend on other people and do my utmost to be self independant in all aspects, If i borrow gil from someone i always rush to repay what was loaned, even if i have to drop everything else and dedicate the time to repaying it back, Im not a racist, When I ask people to do a favor for me such as hold a rare item so i can obtain the other one and put it up for sale in AH, i always pay the person a reward for doing me the favor no matter if its a friend, stranger, the fact is I will make gil so why not share the wealth especially when that person was honest enough to return the item being held, when i ask someone to bring me stuff from AH, I always pay more than what they paid for as a tip for taking the time to do the favor, I am the person who sacrfice my dyna farm to run in a raise a friend who died without having Reraise up, I am also the person who during salvage did not bring a RR scroll and died wasting the persons assault points and time who did the salvage run to farm alex for mythic went to town and bought a decent amount of alex to make up for the mistake.

Edit: I know how to read when someone says X12 Qilin.

So you can continue to judge me if you want. The end.

Edit: Im pretty much done going over again what I wrote and corrected the mistakes, mispelling etc...

Apologies to Zumi for taking the original post way off topic in this drama.

[Slaxx]

You've had parties full of 99s that all stayed in Abby for hours without leaving? This seems unlikely. It seems more like you are creating a "frictionless environment" for your mathematical model, something that doesn't actually exist but is useful for getting ideal results. Unfortunately your ideal results are widely off the mark when it comes to the real world.

Yes it is possible to level to 99 in one day, I have never disputed that. I disputed your overblown claim that it could be done in 6 hours (whether you start from 1, as was implied in your initial claim, or from 30 as you later backtracked to).

Yes it is possible to get 5-9k plasm per run (more if you're really well geared and coordinated). I also agree that on the same day you could get a boss KI or even more than one. What I'm saying is that YOU didn't do that on the first day Delve went live.

I agree why spend weeks and months doing content that is between 5 and 9 years old for a prestige piece that doesn't have much prestige any more. It's time to move on from R/M/E, the fact that the developers have continued to try and make old (some of it incredibly old by the standards of an MMO) content relevant is part of the reason we have effectively one endgame event right now (look I just addressed the actual point of this thread).

In the early days of abyssea RDMs were still necessary for refresh. In the early days when people only had one or 2 atma slots, very few atma, and the ones they had weren't as powerful as what we have now Refresh was still important. As we gained access to more, and more powerful atma,as well as refresh from sub-jobs, the yes, RDM moved to the background. After literally years as the must have job for any and all events from xp to endgame this was quite a shock, but guess what? The world changes every day. It's time to move on. Today we are back in a place where RDM is once again usefull for certain fights for its high enfeebling skill, not all fights but some. It is like most other jobs, useful in some situations, not so much in others. (Protip: even before abby a lot of mages were /SCH for sublimation making Refresh obsolete already)

I'm not sure how alliances being primarily for bosses and now being for xp as well is a problem. The paradigm has shifted, in fact it shifted years ago. It's time to move on.

Not every HNM was changed to a trigger spawn, only the original kings (turtle/dragon/behemoth). The rest are still timed spawn. What killed HNM was obsoleting the vast majority of there drops. It's called progress. The fact that the drops from 7 year old content were (and are) still "best-in-slot" in certain situations to me is a problem with this game that is now finally being addressed.

I agree Skirmish was made obsolete to quickly. Part of this was the scarcity of the entry items when it was relevant and the very short period of time before Delve was released. If I had to guess I would say that Delve was meant to be released on expansion day and was delayed, that delay caused the problems we now see. If they had been released together (and Skirmish entry items been as available as they are now) the "gear progression" concept would have been a bit more clear. But this is purely speculation.

VW gear (like many pieces of gear from pre-Adoulin content) is still situationally useful. For any given job Bayld gear is going to be good in a few spots and not so good in others. The best analogy for Bayld gear would be the abyssea base sets (perle/teal/aurore), they aren't the absolute best but they can even the playing field for people that arent sporting the previously best gear. (Note: 15 tags is 4 days worth of tags not one. I agree that they can be used in one day - I've used far more than 15 in one day myself - and you can certainly earn enough bayld for multiple pieces doing various reives in one day. Just wanted to clarify that that many tags is a multiple day investment.)

Food has always made a difference. I never said it didn't. The point I was making is that in xp parties very few people (to my experience) used food. Again, you may live in this ideal "frictionless environment" where everyone is at the top of there game, eating food, etc. at all times. I play in the "real world" where some people are lazy, or forget, or just don't care.

BLM was obsolete around level 50 when the ToAU xp camps were worked out. It was obsolete even lower (30? 35?) when the WotG xp camps were discovered. I agree that sometimes RDM and BLM shared healing duty as a compromise but that doesn't make it a good idea. Little xp might be better than no xp, but sometimes not by much and the risks you take are much greater (and this is not a situation where greater risk = greater reward)

Some people are capable of organizing parties, some aren't (this may be preference or ability). Personally I am not an organizer, I've done it a few times but I am able to recognize it is not my strength. I can follow instructions, I can point out where people are coming up short, I am an excellent NCO or lieutenant, I am not a leader. Also if i joined an xp party back "in the day" and the leader was wearing trash gear (yes on occasion I am an "elitist snob") then I'd leave. If the party was organized by a completely sub-optimal job and they weren't getting the right other jobs to make it even remotely successful. then I'd leave. Even starting your own parties was no guarantee of success.

For the love of FSM why would you want to level in the Dunes? The only thing that made that place even remotely acceptable is that that's where everyone leveled from 12-18. Everything about it sucked. EVERYTHING. Qufim was nearl;y as bad but was at least acceptable. The Maze? I've been playing since NA PS2 release and I have never once xp'd there. I'm sure it's fun and all but i was (literally) always invited to other places when I had my flag up.

SC/NB is the "101 stuff" that people are missing out on at lower levels because it isn't relevant to endgame any more. I am assuming you never played pre-abyssea because so many of the things you say imply it. SC/MB was dead years before abby. I'm not sure what part about this you are missing but once ToAU came out and squishy pink birds became the target of choice those days were over.

Even with Refresh (from any source, do food and the spell stack? I'm honestly not sure) a BLM (or any mage for that matter) is limited by there MP pool. Every time a mage is on there knee the party is slowed down. That's why BLMs were sidelined long, long before abyssea. This is another reason I call into question how long you've been playing. Be honest, did you take a 5 year break and are just remembering what things used to be like? Are you the crotchety old man screaming "Get off my lawn"?

Again people not using food in an xp party predates temp items by years. It was so common in fact that seeing someone use food in an xp party was noteworthy. Using food in endgame is, of course a different story. Food can make a noticeable difference in average damage over the long term, it will not result in a massive difference in damage. That is exaggeration.

I will agree with your points about farming for gear in the pre-abby days. I personally remember farming for weeks to get the gil I needed to buy gear and spells to get my RDM (1st job) from 30 - 45. But I gave a shit about what I brought to the table. Most people don't and never did. The game has changed. Why would I bring gear to keywhore a party. If I'm doing that I'm doing it from 30 - 99, I'm not going to suddenly bust out my perle gear at 78 and pretend I can play with the big boys. In fact I've never seen anyone do that, in fact I've been offered the chance and turned it down. Not because I didn'y have gear (I did) but because I was a bit under skilled and I signed on as a keywhore, not a directly contributing member.

Do I think it's fair that 12 people are working so 6 others can leech xp? No. That's why I don't stay in those parties. If you do you have no-one to blame but yourself.

I will re-iterate my previous point - Bayld gear is the cruor gear of Adoulin.It is meant to level the playing field for those that don't have the previously best gear so they can participate in new content after investing a minimal amount of time. A lot of old gear trumps Bayld gear, it's just there to set a new par.

Why are you basing your staff of choice on its base damage? For a staff this would be its least relevant stat. If you are meleeing on SCH in any serious endgame content so you can show off your awesome Shattersoul numbers there's nothing I can do to help you (and let's be real I wasn't trying to help you anyway, I'm trying to help people who might believe what you're saying). (A couple questions for people that actually care - does the Macc/MAB on Soothsayer affect a SNMs BPs? if not I would say that just by eyeballing Plenitas is still better. If it does then Plenitas got smoked, you apparently have Soothsayer, so what exactly is your problem? Either way you've got the best between those 2. If your beef is that you spent so much time working toward Plenitas and now it's obsolete then (just like I say to everyone that bitches about R/E/M being obsolete) get over it and move on. Getting Plenitas gave you something to work toward, you got it, and then got something better. How is this a problem?)

Yes we all heard about Delve before it came out. However the Developers did not give away all the secrets to how Delve was going to be done, how the various gimmicks were to be exploited etc. I followed the thread on BG closely, I know T1-T5 wins were being reported the first day, I know that some people were getting Delve weapons the first day. I never said that was impossible. I said YOU didn't get those things accomplished on the first day, huge difference. Many of the first wins were being done in long-fight zombie style runs. That eliminates the possibility of spending hours farming plasm (the first plasm farming strategies were posted 3 days after release on BG). I repeat: I'm not saying it was impossible, I'm saying it was impossible for YOU. The kkind of player that could get a plasm weapon on day one is not the kind of player who would be here 6 weeks later pissing and moaning about this kind of bullshit.

Your final list of the failings of the player base is nothing new. There have always been bad players at the level cap (whether the cap is 75 or 99 makes no difference). There will always be bad players at the level cap (or the gear cap under the new gear progression that has been implemented). Nothing has changed, another fine example of the "rose-colored glasses" I've referenced so many times before.

Your final paragraph defending yourself is just awesome. You must be the anointed saviour of FFXI, never AFK more than 5 minutes, always brings food, etc. etc.etc. That's great. Congratulations.

PS Judges sit on benches not thrones. I am not judging you, I am pointing out where I either disagree with your opinion, or can flat out call you out on lies and exaggeration. (a final Protip: Opinions can be wrong,. Facts can directly contradict them. The idea that every opinion is sacred in its potential to be correct is a horrifying lesson modern society has tried to force on people. Sometimes people are flat out wrong no matter how much they believe they are right.)

PPS. I have no idea what x12 Qilin has to do with anything but I might have missed some sort of subtle nuance in you responses. Or you might be editing previous responses again. It can be hard to tell.

[Jaall]

The problem with FFXI in its current state is the levelling is too easy. As soon as they make levelling easy and fast they have to make up for the time people spent levelling by introducing more content, however they don't have the team working on the game that they had previously so that content doesn't get made. They've tried to modernise an old game without the staff to do so which hasn't really worked because they've made the current gameplay fit to modern standards (incredibly fast to max level) but left the players with not much to do when they're there. There are quite a lot of activities but being an old game a lot of the community has left leaving mostly only the typical dedicated players who like to get the best, which I'm not saying is a bad thing.

Also, although I do miss the old levelling days and this may seem like nostalgia but I can assure you it's not, the fact that levelling is so easy now means there is less of a community. "Back in the day" you could spend hours everyday socialising with your party, having a great laugh and joking around because levelling wasn't so pressured. Anyone could hop into a party with anyone, a huge range of players would come together and socialise and it worked well because levelling was, simply put, easy. Every single party was always different in some way, even if it was in exactly the same place killing the exact same thing.

There were obviously bad parties, where people didn't talk, did silly things wrong and wiped the party, left without warning etc etc, so I'm not saying it was fantastic, it needed improvements. Somehow though it kept the community together and it made the game feel full. Now, and this might be just the current state of MMO's in general, people like to focus solely on getting the best and don't take the time to socialise and create those memorable times, the times where even if you wipe it's not a problem because you have a laugh while doing it.

You would typically spend a month or 2 levelling 1 character to lvl 75 which filled the time nicely. Now people can get from lvl 1-99 in typically 1-3 days, depending on how motivated they are. Because of this they have to produce an extra 2 months worth of content to fill what levelling would have done. Because of the age of the game and the fact a lot of the team has been moved to FFXIV (which I don't hold anything against SE for doing as they are simply moving with the times, naturally) they cannot keep up with that amount of meaningful content without producing content that is overall pointless or that gets stale quickly.

People don't help as much in game because it is actually difficult to help people when a lot of the content is centred around being max level with decent-good gear. Helping people is more like contributing in an endgame party, which takes a lot more time and effort than help used to. For example, I would consider helping people in the past as say limit breaks, or missions when they were difficult to solo. As soon as you make the game "easy mode" people only need help with the very end content which makes it difficult to find help from people who don't necessarily need the endgame and from people who cannot participate in the content for whatever reason, be it time restraints or gear restraints.

I'm only generalising in this post and in no way mean offence to anyone. This is just my opinion on why this game has somewhat lost its way and is losing players. I for one quit the game because I found it was just getting too boring standing around doing nothing, and while that was always a case especially waiting for party invites it just seemed to get worse and worse. The community was also getting too far apart and it felt more like an "every man for himself" type attitude, and again it was always like that to an extent but never to the point it was when I quit. This game is fantastic as an old style MMORPG, and it saw a lot of success, however their attempts at keeping up with todays players needs hasn't seemed to have worked out as well as we/they would have liked.

[Slaxx]

Leveling is "too easy" because the game is incredibly top heavy. This is a natural result of being 11 years old. Getting new players to the level cap quickly is a positive not a negative. If they care they will skill up, research, and develop just like people always did. If they don't care then they'll be the same mediocre endgame players that have always been around. The pace that gets you to the cap (75 or 99) rarely effects how you play at the cap. Some people care, others don't.

Personally (and this is an opinion, don't mistake it for anything else) I have found far more socializing in the "post-abyssea alliance centered leveling". In a 6 man party when one or 2 people were chatting away that was 33% of your group that wasn't on the ball. In a GoV party or an abby alliance that percentage and there contribution is significantly lower. I (again personal experience, not meant to be taken as fact) find myself to be much more social in parties these days than I ever was in the pre-alliance days.

A very large number of people have had all jobs at 99 for a couple of years now (except of course RUN/GEO) this is not a new development. And again I don't see this as a problem personally. Leveling to 99 is the road, not the destination.

I can't really agree that a lot of the content is centered around max-level and decent - good gear. I will agree that a lot of the RELEVANT content is that way but there are still plenty of things that can be done at 99 with junk gear. Most of CoP or ZM spring to mind, as well as huge chunks of ToAU, WotG, and the various add-ons. It has always been a struggle to find people to assist with older content, when that content is 7 or 9 or more years old it gets harder. This should come as no surprise and the fact that most of that old content is solo-able by one or more jobs is a bonus. If it couldn't be done solo then some of these things would actually be impossible to complete. As it is, outside of a few specific things from the pre-Adoulin days most can be done solo. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

One thing these forums could use is more people being offensive to each other. The amount of incredibly ignorant nonsense I see posted here on a regular basis is offensive to me (personal opinion once again). This game is losing players because it is an 11 year old MMO. It is aging, and showing that age, nothing outside of a full rebuild from the ground up can change that (and I would assume - opinion again - that is not economically feasable).

I understand the point you are trying to make about standing around doing nothing and I am probably very lucky to have a LS that made a pretty smooth transition from the days of abyssea to Adoulin. The fact is there are still /SHs recruiting for various things all the time. Just because they are not for things you are interested in doesn't mean the game is dead. If you've quit the game and moved on congratulations! (and I mean this in the least offensive way possible) Why are you still posting here? This game is dead to you, move on. (and I really am trying to be inoffensive to you Jaall, you have at least made reasonable arguments)

[Jaall]

All I was really saying was in the past they filled a lot of players time with levelling. Take that away and it shines how content can so quickly become stale. I was only generalising, course there is content that is good still and can be fun, and of course the community can be fantastic still depending on who you socialise with. I was simply just saying the majority of the remaining players in an old game are the most dedicated to playing and getting gear (because of age so we agree, I just didn't clearly say it) which means the majority don't socialise as much as say before when a lot more people were running around.

That was actually my first post here in months, and I barely ever check the forums, however... I played this game for 9 years only quitting earlier in the year, so it has played a massive part in my life. I grew up with this game and it has helped me through a lot of hard times in real life so I can't help but still feel attached in some way. Also with the FFXIV beta at the weekend I just thought I'd check out how FFXI is going these days and thought I'd share my views. I believe anyone is entitled to their say on the game no matter whether they have quit or not, as long as they have played the game and especially for as long as I and many others have.

[hiko]

[[Info below is much better formatted in a table on the original post.]]

20: Delve (Boss Monsters) (Current)
17: Wildskeeper Reive (New Additions) (Next Version Update)
14: Delve NMs (Tier 2) (Current)
13: Skirmish (New Additions) (Next Version Update)
11: Delve NMs (Tier 1) (Current)
6-9: Colonization / Lair Reives (New Additions) (Next Version Update)
7: Wildskeeper Reive (Current)
6: Skirmish (Current)
1-5: Colonization/Lair Reives (Current)


skirmish part2 will be near T2 delves item
new WR will just be beaten by delve boss item that not everybody can get now

[darkhorror]

You don't need a bunch of 99 delve DD's to get 315k an hour, I joined a party yesterday and the keyer was keeping track of xp an hour. After about 30 minutes after I joined we were at 330k/hour. Delve MNK can kill worms in as little as two attack rounds. We only had a couple 99's, delve MNK, 99 SAM, and maybe 2 more, most were still leveling.

[darkhorror]

The problem is that now, we have a single event where all the good weapons come from, basically none of the other weapons are even worthwhile getting after these weapons. Same with much of the armor. They took away the need to do most other content.

The real change is the keeping of the level cap, but increasing damage purely through gear while keeping the same level. Before the increase in your level gave you a good damage increase and at the new cap there was some better gear though the previous gear was still viable. Now we are only leveling through gear, so you need the new gear or you are gimp compared to normal 99 gear( for the most part, still some lower level items that are the best ). Where before if you were to just level up you would at least have that boost, while the gear progression didn't make the previous gear crap.

[Demon6324236]

Leave my long post here too since it seems sort of relevant to the topic at hand, which would be Delve and the other content of FFXI.


Well in all honesty I am not sure this game will be around once FFXIV comes out. Yes, I know, people have been saying FFXI would die forever, but whats new? FFXIV is another game from SE, its taking resources, it appeals to the same kind of players in many ways including the Final Fantasy title itself, not to mention Squares traditional way of story telling and character development. So far as things that FF games do best, we can expect to see them in FFXIV like we did with FFXI, also, many players here have been saying they will be changing to FFXIV.

Sure, FFXI just got a new expansion, but look at its reception! Even though I myself like many things it brought, it seems like the majority of people who speak on these forums do not like it, many in fact think its destroying the game. As it has been said, Delve has become the most popular event in the game in a matter of a month since its release, and not popular like VW, but popular in the way that almost everything before it was instantly taken from being worth going after, to being a waste of time. Things like the Delve weapons or the new pieces of armor have easily surpassed our previous expectations of gear, and besides that many old pieces of content which were viewed as possibly the hardest things in the game, have become trivial. Things like Legion, where mobs were hard to kill and presented a real difficult challenge to even the best of players, have become jokes, not only were they weakened but the average damage a DD can deal as well as their average gear level in terms of things like Accuracy have been boosted to extremes.

The direction the game has gone overall has also changed, we once had gear come out which was mostly side grades, and while many people hated that, what has happened now seems to be even worse, but admittedly is what was basically asked for. People hated side grades and wanted real upgrades, the problem that was brought with this is the fact we all see those upgrades, and instantly go after those, especially when they take less overall time to get, than our old weaker gear. After all, why go out of your way to make a Relic when you can make a weapon twice as strong in only a few hours of Delve farming? Some of the gear was a bunch of clear upgrades as well, for instance the light DD legs, which are amazing, or the Mikinaak body which rivals Phorcys for many WSs at level 15 and beats Phorcys at many others at the same level. In the end, we saw just what we asked for, direct upgrades. The thing is they tried to change the direction in the way of tree progression. So we would work on, say, the Skirmish weapon for our job, like SAM, and then once we had it with some nice augments we would take on Delve, and move on to that weapon.

The problem with tree progression in this game stems from a single issue that SE has seemingly had with this game for quite some time. The lack of ability to get things right the first try. Many pieces of content are not balanced properly for the players on its first go around without some type of exploit or locking of the mob in question. Like Legion which was Stun and PD locked to stop the enemies from hurting you, yes, we won, but the point is we did it by literally removing the enemies offence from the equation. In this case, rather than making the enemies over powered for the sake of being over powered, they did it very well, they gave them each weaknesses, not in the form of procs or anything like that which we saw in the past, but more creatively. By giving every NM their own special way to fight it, like keeping Blind on a NM to not only take away its two best attacks, but also lower its evasion to levels it can be easily hit, they made each NM special and unique in the way which you had to fight. Sure, under it all it was a zerg in the end, but one which took more planning and thought to succeed at.

The problem to all of this great work in my opinion was their flawed start. As I said, SE has a hard time getting things right the first time around, in this case, as we asked for a long time they finally gave us an event without a highly restricted timer, like how Legion and NNI were, when we always complained about zerging everything. The problem existed because once we had no timer, and we could easily move back to the NM's position, it became pointless to give up a fight, why quit when you can just keep going at it till it dies? So that's what we did, we kept at it for hours and hours, killing each NM one by one figuring out the weaknesses along the way, but as we did we also got the KIs, the gear, and in the end, killed the tree. The tree was meant for us to progress along to the point where Delve would be hard, but possible to the top players, it was meant to be something no one had really beaten as of right now, only a few select shells on each server, and the Delve bosses would be long out of reach still.

Thanks to the fact we rushed ahead, this will never be realized, and another piece of content which suffered the opposite, a slow start, will be forgotten. By that I of course mean Skirmish, a piece of content which we had many problems with originally, mostly, accessibility. By the time this was fixed, Delve was released, and with it came the exact thing that made Skirmish pointless, Delve weapons, so now Delve weapons are much stronger than Skirmish weapons and Skirmish offers nothing unique worth the time to get it, even if it is much more accessible now it has so few people doing it that not many care. I myself am among those who never did it while it mattered due to lack of funds or luck, and besides that, the time has come now that I probably will never bother, after all, why would I do it when I can farm Plasm in less time and have every KI from Delve so far?





I honestly think that FFXI will die this time. Like I said originally, I know people have been saying that for a long time, but look at how things are going right now. The game has changed directions completely again, unlike Abyssea, this way is going much worse, Abyssea brought in people by giving a new fast way of leveling and making the end game, which was built on the most, more accessible. SoA, or rather, Delve on the other hand, has turned most of the games content into nothing, the same way as Abyssea did in the end, but in a much more drastic way. Abyssea made leveling irrelevant and out classed most of the gear, in those respects this did the same, but Abyssea was many different things all wrapped under a single title, it had experience point parties still, it had seals, +2s, Emps, multitudes of NMs and areas to go in, many types of mobs, and quests, as well as a story which while it was somewhat poor in quality.

So far Adoulin has given us Reives, basically killing roots and rocks or special mobs meant to be hard which people tackle with -DT ignoring attacks, Skirmish, a long lost event almost no one got to do, or ever will bother doing, and Delve, the content which outdated almost all other content. Many things we looked forward to with Adoulin have failed to come about. Our resort islands, play as a monster, a new story which would not be strung out like WotG, all 7 HNMs, and so on. If you think about it, even the HNMs have been changed in a way which to me takes all the fun out of it, like Abyssea, and WotG, our dimension is once again not good enough. So far as I understand, Delve, Skirmish, Abyssea, WotG, VW, Prov, WoE, and possibly more are all events or expansions which take place in other worlds. I would be ok with that if it did not feel like everything hard was in another dimension. When will a true challenge come back to Vana?

All in all, FFXIV promises to do what its earlier version did not, provide FF fans entertainment in MMO form, in a fun world with good story and great gameplay as well as beautiful graphics that are awe-inspiring when you first lay your eyes upon them. Many people have already claimed they will take their leave from Vana once its released, or already have in hopes that it is as big of a success as it looks like it will be, and with how FFXI has changed over the last few months, it is not looking good for the game. The only hope I think FFXI has left is in this supposed June update we are supposed to get, a large update which was to bring a ton of Adoulin related things to us, like our resort and the other areas. But the question we must ask is, are we going to be delayed again? Its over half way into the month with little info, and as much as SE loves to keep things secret, this is only hurting them more at this point. On top of everything else, will this update really help things? The damage Delve did has been done, nothing short of nerfing its rewards to fall in line or removing them from players who got them so far from the early rush when it was broken will fix these issues. Neither of these two options would go well with players either, both would throw us into a fit of rage. So what will this June update bring? Will it be worth the wait some have given or will it only prove that this game has met its end finally, and the expansion's life, as well as the games life, cut short?

[Slaxx]

If your keyer was parsing 330k/hr they had been there for hours already and the experience they were getting was not representative of what you were getting. If they came in at the same time as you and were claiming that, then they were lying. 30 minutes into an xp party a level 30 keyer would still be getting between 50 - 100 xp per kill, not 500 (a number that is impossible to reach until much higher level). Again I'm not saying these incredibly high xp/hr rates are impossible, I'm saying they are impossible for someone coming in at 30 to keywhore to reach. These xp rates are possible if you go into abyssea, cap xp and merits and stay there out of the selfless good of your own heart to help people level quickly. A scenario I'm willing to be is encountered rarely by anyone (to the point where people claiming that they find it happening consistently are liars).

There are still huge amounts of content to be done in this game. While Delve gear is awesome in many slots and unquestionably best in slot for some jobs in some slots, it is not the end-all-be-all of gear in this game. There are still pieces for every job that come from NNI, VW, Neo-Salvage, etc. etc.etc. Pretending that every event before Delve is completely invalid is a bit extreme and the people who actually research there jobs and know how to play know that.

This is merely the first endgame type of event for an entire new expansion. Does anyone really think it will be the only one? Hell it's a fairly solid assumption that there will be higher tier Delve zones that either have a new set of weapons as rewards or allow the current sets to be leveled up higher (or both, why not).

The expansion has been out for 10 weeks and since day 1 Chicken Little and his army of followers have been crying "The sky is falling". Every aspect of the expansion has been "The end of FFXI". At least that's what I see in a never ending stream here. On other forums people have for the most part instead dedicated themselves to figuring out the new systems, getting the new gear, and beating the new bosses into the ground. On these forums the vast majority of people would rather cry about how there 85 R/E/M is no longer the "best" in the game than do something about it, so now we are continuing to be tied to content that is between 3 and 9 years old. If the developers weren't continually forced to work on this kind of shit we might have more things to do in the new zones than "just Delve".

This is not a dig at resources limited by the perceived "brain drain" to FFXIV. Resources are always limited the more people bitch about old content being invalid and demanding updates to it, the less truly new content we will get.

[Daemon]

You've had parties full of 99s that all stayed in Abby for hours without leaving? This seems unlikely. It seems more like you are creating a "frictionless environment" for your mathematical model, something that doesn't actually exist but is useful for getting ideal results. Unfortunately your ideal results are widely off the mark when it comes to the real world.


Is it really that hard to believe or are you so that stubborn to the point that nothing is possible in your eyes? There are people who actually can tell the difference between a good party and a bad one, who can actually stay in one party for hours if the progress is that good.

Yes it is possible to level to 99 in one day, I have never disputed that. I disputed your overblown claim that it could be done in 6 hours (whether you start from 1, as was implied in your initial claim, or from 30 as you later backtracked to).

Initial claim that I also agreed with you on your comments, admitted that I made a quick response generalizing how fast you can reach to 99 but also stated that the point I was making in general was that leveling too fast because of abby ruined the game, rather than strip down every single small detail and blow it up so that we can sit here all day arguing over who is right and who is wrong, I said 6 hours, you said 8-12, if 8 hours im only 2 hours off from your calculation, how is this being an overblown claim? And Yes for all the people reading our argument I already said the point I was trying to make was that people having the ability to level to max level 99 extremely fast is why i believe in the things ive said

Yes it is possible to get 5-9k plasm per run (more if you're really well geared and coordinated). I also agree that on the same day you could get a boss KI or even more than one. What I'm saying is that YOU didn't do that on the first day Delve went live.

Im not the only person on the entire server to get a delve weapon on the first day, several other people got one before me, Delve is really not as hard as you make it sound, are you really that hopeless? or you just cant accept the fact that there are end game players who were prepared when the event went live.

I agree why spend weeks and months doing content that is between 5 and 9 years old for a prestige piece that doesn't have much prestige any more. It's time to move on from R/M/E, the fact that the developers have continued to try and make old (some of it incredibly old by the standards of an MMO) content relevant is part of the reason we have effectively one endgame event right now (look I just addressed the actual point of this thread).

Whether the content is incredibly old doesnt matter, its the fact that developers made certain things extremely time consuming, requires so much effort that people who decided to put in the time for it do in fact have the right to feel disappointed when something stronger, is considered the new status of "End Game" yet doesnt even require a tenth of the effort that the previous old "End game" content required. It makes you look back at the amount of time you wasted over an item you thought would be the best. If endgame content is meant to be this easy then this should have done with all other content from the start

In the early days of abyssea RDMs were still necessary for refresh. In the early days when people only had one or 2 atma slots, very few atma, and the ones they had weren't as powerful as what we have now Refresh was still important. As we gained access to more, and more powerful atma,as well as refresh from sub-jobs, the yes, RDM moved to the background. After literally years as the must have job for any and all events from xp to endgame this was quite a shock, but guess what? The world changes every day. It's time to move on. Today we are back in a place where RDM is once again usefull for certain fights for its high enfeebling skill, not all fights but some. It is like most other jobs, useful in some situations, not so much in others. (Protip: even before abby a lot of mages were /SCH for sublimation making Refresh obsolete already)

The world indeed does change everyday, I dont expect the world to stay the same that would be boring, but we are not talking about real life, we are talking about a video game where changes being made gives people like me a reason to express my opinion on why I and others feel an unbalance of things. If not one person in the world expressed their opinions, how would we ever learn from each other? How would the devs know how the fanbase feels about their decisions and make an effort to generalize the majority of what people want and fix whats made broken?

I'm not sure how alliances being primarily for bosses and now being for xp as well is a problem. The paradigm has shifted, in fact it shifted years ago. It's time to move on.

Well lets see, is really necessary to have 18 people kill 1 level 15-17 monster if the 18 people in party are level 25+? What skill do you gain from that? Quantity of Quality?

Not every HNM was changed to a trigger spawn, only the original kings (turtle/dragon/behemoth). The rest are still timed spawn. What killed HNM was obsoleting the vast majority of there drops. It's called progress. The fact that the drops from 7 year old content were (and are) still "best-in-slot" in certain situations to me is a problem with this game that is now finally being addressed.

Ok exactly why are we arguing about this in full detail? Another quick response comment i made to avoid writing a 3,000 character page which should have been taken with a grain of salt, I just said that back in the day it was fun, popular, Every event has its good and bad side, the fact that SE knew people had fun doing this event but had to change it for several reasons, flaws, RMT, Hacks, whatever else you want to throw in to waste more time and make another small detail blown up into a big drama piece. Do you see HNM LS anymore? Yes i know we are going way back to several years but these were very big and popular back then and was considered "The End Game" event, whats wrong with me commenting on history?

I agree Skirmish was made obsolete to quickly. Part of this was the scarcity of the entry items when it was relevant and the very short period of time before Delve was released. If I had to guess I would say that Delve was meant to be released on expansion day and was delayed, that delay caused the problems we now see. If they had been released together (and Skirmish entry items been as available as they are now) the "gear progression" concept would have been a bit more clear. But this is purely speculation.

Something we can finally both can agree on

VW gear (like many pieces of gear from pre-Adoulin content) is still situationally useful. For any given job Bayld gear is going to be good in a few spots and not so good in others. The best analogy for Bayld gear would be the abyssea base sets (perle/teal/aurore), they aren't the absolute best but they can even the playing field for people that arent sporting the previously best gear. (Note: 15 tags is 4 days worth of tags not one. I agree that they can be used in one day - I've used far more than 15 in one day myself - and you can certainly earn enough bayld for multiple pieces doing various reives in one day. Just wanted to clarify that that many tags is a multiple day investment.)

And im not saying VW gear is completely useless, however when you compare the 2 events, VW VS Delve, is it really fair that through limitations, quests, the amount of time we had to spend on VW event to make progress obtaining items worth the time and effort compared to how easy it is with Delve? There are people i see everyday that have given up on farming items such as Coruscanti for the fact that they killed this boss more than 2-3k times and still havent gotten a single dagger, me personally ive done qilin over 2,000 times and still never got it, yet had the opportunity to watch several other people get the dagger more than once, dedicated less time and effort, pulse it in my face, And how am I wrong to point out that this a serious flaw in how this system works? Do you think im the only person who feels this way?

Food has always made a difference. I never said it didn't. The point I was making is that in xp parties very few people (to my experience) used food. Again, you may live in this ideal "frictionless environment" where everyone is at the top of there game, eating food, etc. at all times. I play in the "real world" where some people are lazy, or forget, or just don't care.

But there was no point in making that comment to me as if what i said was wrong when the first thing i said earlier was that "temp items promoted laziness and gave people a reason not to use food", then i stated my opinions on the downside of why this was an issue. Do you really think I live in some fantasy world and not know what the real world is like? People choose to be Lazy, But there are things out there in the world that promote success, teaches people valuable skills, and before when you played in low man parties these values were much more obvious. And to some of us oldschool players we find it amusing that people are given the ability to be more powerful through the use of food yet being spoiled through quick fixes like Temp items throughout the majority of the leveling process today doesnt help teach any value other than giving players a reason not to be responsible, and please lets not take this any further, a good portion of food with decent stats does not cost a fortune to buy

BLM was obsolete around level 50 when the ToAU xp camps were worked out. It was obsolete even lower (30? 35?) when the WotG xp camps were discovered. I agree that sometimes RDM and BLM shared healing duty as a compromise but that doesn't make it a good idea. Little xp might be better than no xp, but sometimes not by much and the risks you take are much greater (and this is not a situation where greater risk = greater reward)

Yes we both have different opinions on this, You may believe its not worth the risk but to some of us who wanted to reach goals faster did it anyways and learned new aspects of survival and how to utilize different gears and play at different camps with unique party setups in situations where we had to compromise with whatever jobs we had available.

Some people are capable of organizing parties, some aren't (this may be preference or ability). Personally I am not an organizer, I've done it a few times but I am able to recognize it is not my strength. I can follow instructions, I can point out where people are coming up short, I am an excellent NCO or lieutenant, I am not a leader. Also if i joined an xp party back "in the day" and the leader was wearing trash gear (yes on occasion I am an "elitist snob") then I'd leave. If the party was organized by a completely sub-optimal job and they weren't getting the right other jobs to make it even remotely successful. then I'd leave. Even starting your own parties was no guarantee of success.

Anyone is capable of anything, I never was the type to organize parties when i first started, but as the world change, people learn to change, adapt to new changes, we all have the capacity to do whatever we put our minds to. not being able to recognize your strength doesnt mean you will never learn, thats why practice makes perfect, Im the type of person who usually doesnt pay attention where im going until im there, I too can follow directions, not always the best on every occassion. Ive been called an elitist snob on rare occassions by people who make snap judgments over misunderstanding my intentions or jump to make a conclusion of what they think i am, maybe because my english is bad sometimes i tend to say things that i have in my mind that is totally different in meaning than it came out to be.

For the love of FSM why would you want to level in the Dunes? The only thing that made that place even remotely acceptable is that that's where everyone leveled from 12-18. Everything about it sucked. EVERYTHING. Qufim was nearl;y as bad but was at least acceptable. The Maze? I've been playing since NA PS2 release and I have never once xp'd there. I'm sure it's fun and all but i was (literally) always invited to other places when I had my flag up.

The point is not about loving the dunes or any other map, the point was people were able to enjoy more than just 2-3 maps of the entire game for exping. Admit it, right now a good majority of people and again not all, tend to level up to 10 outside of home nation, then head to gusgen mines til 30 then hit abby.. Where as before all of that people actually had to go explore the entire vana world and look up mobs at certain levels and know where to exp

SC/NB is the "101 stuff" that people are missing out on at lower levels because it isn't relevant to endgame any more. I am assuming you never played pre-abyssea because so many of the things you say imply it. SC/MB was dead years before abby. I'm not sure what part about this you are missing but once ToAU came out and squishy pink birds became the target of choice those days were over.

Yes i know that, Im not stupid, I wasnt generalizing (Only before Abby) I only stated small points throughout the history of updates and expansions, never did i cover every single update because it would impossible to write every single change, cause and effect for every single update

Even with Refresh (from any source, do food and the spell stack? I'm honestly not sure) a BLM (or any mage for that matter) is limited by there MP pool. Every time a mage is on there knee the party is slowed down. That's why BLMs were sidelined long, long before abyssea. This is another reason I call into question how long you've been playing. Be honest, did you take a 5 year break and are just remembering what things used to be like? Are you the crotchety old man screaming "Get off my lawn"?

RDM Food refresh and the spell refresh does not stack up, however bard song and refresh do.

To be honest yes I did take a break after ToAu was released, I returned last year and had to start all over a brand new account being the fact that back then if you didnt pay after 3 months your account got erased. When I did return I was overwhelmed by so many of the changes that yes I do have alot of reason to state my opinions of what i remember about the old FFXI and how it use to be compared to now. Today it is easier to make gil, faster to level any job to 99, able to quest way faster than before, able to solo things on your own rather than depend on several people to finish missions, etc. I had to relearn a good portion of the game all over yet there were many things that was left the same and this is why i was able to get around the game faster than the average normal players who didnt play back in the old days when the game was much harder. And the hardcore skills learned from the old days never die, this is why i know how to play several jobs with greater understanding. You may not know me ingame because we are not on the same server, but it is very rare for me to see alot of people with the same techniques/ skills that people had several years ago than today and this is why i posted my thoughts. Not everyone will or has to agree with me, but here is a fact, if it was up to the people, im sure a good majority of the people would want the game to be even way more easier than it is now, people will never be satisfied with what they got, you can give a man a cookie but then he ask for a glass of milk too. Im not saying the entire concept of abby destroyed the game, im just saying that there are some flaws that shouldnt be there to begin with. And no MMORPG is suppose to be designed to skip through to the end unless it has a failing economy struggling to keep the playerbase interested. Because in less than half a year, I already completed all assault missions, several missions near complete end, several jobs to 99, and im also one of those players who can agree with posts like Zumi made stating that we need new content. Well New Content is a quick fix to keep people interested for how long? Rather than releasing quick fixes, why not go back and actually listen to what the player base is saying rather than ignoring us and fix whats broken and put a little more effort into balancing the game rather than leave the flaws the way they are? Make things that became totally irrelevant or useless valuable again or remove it and replace it.

No one content should be made to put all other content out of its place, It should be made to blend in with the rest of the pieces so that the entire game is a whole. And if you were really paying attention to what ive been trying to say the whole time then you would see that my intentions of sharing my opinion was about how certain flaws and updates have made the game lose alot of valuable quality

Again people not using food in an xp party predates temp items by years. It was so common in fact that seeing someone use food in an xp party was noteworthy. Using food in endgame is, of course a different story. Food can make a noticeable difference in average damage over the long term, it will not result in a massive difference in damage. That is exaggeration.

Food alone doesnt make a massive Difference in damage, however it does make a difference and its little details like these that can add up to greater outcomes, meaning, with the right gear, food, skill, strategy, knowledge you can be doing way better than an average person who just doesnt care

I will agree with your points about farming for gear in the pre-abby days. I personally remember farming for weeks to get the gil I needed to buy gear and spells to get my RDM (1st job) from 30 - 45. But I gave a shit about what I brought to the table. Most people don't and never did. The game has changed. Why would I bring gear to keywhore a party. If I'm doing that I'm doing it from 30 - 99, I'm not going to suddenly bust out my perle gear at 78 and pretend I can play with the big boys. In fact I've never seen anyone do that, in fact I've been offered the chance and turned it down. Not because I didn'y have gear (I did) but because I was a bit under skilled and I signed on as a keywhore, not a directly contributing member.

Yes how long have you been playing compared to many of the people you see on your server who hasnt played as long as you? So you have high standards? You have different knowledge, training, expectations than others, I get it. You may not care about what you bring to the table but some of us do because we are serious about how we perform in parties, You would be surprised at how many people I see dont even have or use multiple sets of gear during battle. I almost see no mages with even -pdt gear, and its really sad because we did learn this a long time ago in the old school parties, the importance of having the gear for DD and mages, Why do i need to waste 150mp to raise the DD that dies if he could have survived long enough for me to heal him rather than taking so much damage so fast that its impossible to keep him alive to begin with? Thats fail.

What about Mages? Why mage need to die if they are not smart enough to control hate and wear -pdt when mob agro? its it really that hard to make a macro for even 4 pieces of -pdt gear it only takes a quick second to switch over. Fail again...

Why on earth would any DD attack a mob who knows they cannot handle it and expect mages to be a miracle healer? Again fail... Seriously this is not even protip, its common sense....


You may not bust out your pearle armor at level 78 and think no one else would ever do and to say you've never seen it done again makes me question what kind of server are you on? Seriously? If you leveled a dagger wielding job to 99, max dagger on that 99 job, obviously when you switch over to another dagger wielding job, the skill is already capped therefore you dont need to run out and skill up enough to reach the ability of being able to deal dmg to mobs in abby at level 78..

Do I think it's fair that 12 people are working so 6 others can leech xp? No. That's why I don't stay in those parties. If you do you have no-one to blame but yourself.

Well we all know you have no control or say in the matter when you join a party and the leader is the one with the several dualbox characters. Why should i blame myself for joining a party that i had no clue what the situation was before entering to begin with? Or why should I blame myself when im not one who made it that way? We should be giving blame to irresponsible people for their mistakes, not to the people who did no wrong. This really is the problem with todays society... too much drugs? Whats going on that people cant tell the difference between common sense?

I will re-iterate my previous point - Bayld gear is the cruor gear of Adoulin.It is meant to level the playing field for those that don't have the previously best gear so they can participate in new content after investing a minimal amount of time. A lot of old gear trumps Bayld gear, it's just there to set a new par.

And there is nothing wrong with that however, again its too easy to obtain. Sadly I had to sell some of the gear I invested millions of gil into because there is just no need for it compared to the stats on adoulin gear.

Why are you basing your staff of choice on its base damage? For a staff this would be its least relevant stat. If you are meleeing on SCH in any serious endgame content so you can show off your awesome Shattersoul numbers there's nothing I can do to help you (and let's be real I wasn't trying to help you anyway, I'm trying to help people who might believe what you're saying). (A couple questions for people that actually care - does the Macc/MAB on Soothsayer affect a SNMs BPs? if not I would say that just by eyeballing Plenitas is still better. If it does then Plenitas got smoked, you apparently have Soothsayer, so what exactly is your problem? Either way you've got the best between those 2. If your beef is that you spent so much time working toward Plenitas and now it's obsolete then (just like I say to everyone that bitches about R/E/M being obsolete) get over it and move on. Getting Plenitas gave you something to work toward, you got it, and then got something better. How is this a problem?)

Fair enough, dmg on staff is for scholar yes, Shattersoul yes, However to show off at endgame events? No. For soloing yes. For abby a major plus, You can do 13k damage on Mikey at worm camp with Scholar selfskillchain, I dont know much about summoner right now as i havent played the job since ToaU expansion to give you my opinion but you can increase the INT on soothsayer to surpass Plenitas Virga and obviously it can be upgraded to have massive amounts of MAB, dmg is incredibly higher than PV. In my opinion, the only beneficial reason to use Plenitas virga is for the Haste.

My concern was why did we just waste all of our time to get what we thought was the best staff in game only to be replaced with something better that took almost no effort whatsoever to get?? Having things easy is one thing, Having it incredibly easy to the point where you feel certain things are pointless why even have it this way is another..

You may not care about REM people complaining, but i understand why they are complaining, I dunno if you have REM but once you go through what others have had to go through...

Yes we all heard about Delve before it came out. However the Developers did not give away all the secrets to how Delve was going to be done, how the various gimmicks were to be exploited etc. I followed the thread on BG closely, I know T1-T5 wins were being reported the first day, I know that some people were getting Delve weapons the first day. I never said that was impossible. I said YOU didn't get those things accomplished on the first day, huge difference. Many of the first wins were being done in long-fight zombie style runs. That eliminates the possibility of spending hours farming plasm (the first plasm farming strategies were posted 3 days after release on BG). I repeat: I'm not saying it was impossible, I'm saying it was impossible for YOU. The kkind of player that could get a plasm weapon on day one is not the kind of player who would be here 6 weeks later pissing and moaning about this kind of bullshit.

Again its responses like these that make you wanna hate someone, but ill be the better person. Why ever do you need to single me out and judge me? Im a person who can tolerate alot of things but seriously you are getting there. And why ever am i trying to be nice and respond to your negative attacks trying to agree with you, share opinions and get to know someone who just flat out is being rude, self centered and stubborn? What is it that you have against me when we dont even know each other? Are you really that much of a diva queen to throw shade at someone you just met and feel the need to read me out on points that has no necessary reason to put this amount of effort in debating over in the first place? To take all day to argue over blowing up details into a big choir of dramatic nonsense to prove some kind of point that you know how to troll people? I never came here to piss and moan about anything, Answering someones Post with an opinion is one thing, Creating a post myself and pissing and moaning about it is another... get it straight

Your final list of the failings of the player base is nothing new. There have always been bad players at the level cap (whether the cap is 75 or 99 makes no difference). There will always be bad players at the level cap (or the gear cap under the new gear progression that has been implemented). Nothing has changed, another fine example of the "rose-colored glasses" I've referenced so many times before.

Your final paragraph defending yourself is just awesome. You must be the anointed saviour of FFXI, never AFK more than 5 minutes, always brings food, etc. etc.etc. That's great. Congratulations.

Again self centered, Rude, Judgmental, Has no ability to accept the fact that there are other decent players out in the world who has manners, has consideration, Do you need a spotlight above your head to make known to the world that you know FFXI better than anyone with an opinion? And that you are far superior than anyone else who wants to participate in the free forum discussions?


PS Judges sit on benches not thrones. I am not judging you, I am pointing out where I either disagree with your opinion, or can flat out call you out on lies and exaggeration. (a final Protip: Opinions can be wrong,. Facts can directly contradict them. The idea that every opinion is sacred in its potential to be correct is a horrifying lesson modern society has tried to force on people. Sometimes people are flat out wrong no matter how much they believe they are right.)

Oh Really?

1. Your final paragraph defending yourself is just awesome. You must be the anointed saviour of FFXI (Sarcastic judgment)

2. I'm saying it was impossible for YOU. The kkind of player that could get a plasm weapon on day one is not the kind of player who would be here 6 weeks later pissing and moaning about this kind of bullshit. (Assumptional judgment that you ever so dearly try so hard to state as fact so that you can feel the need to be a superior bully?)



PPS. I have no idea what x12 Qilin has to do with anything but I might have missed some sort of subtle nuance in you responses. Or you might be editing previous responses again. It can be hard to tell.


Im tired, sorry i havent been trolled like this since highschool, if you feel the need to have the last word go ahead, I really dont care anymore, its not worth the effort... really, if you think you are destroying me, think again, you are only destroying yourself, so from now on i have no interest in feeding the fire and you can continue to be rude, bully if you want, that only shows other people what type of person you are by your actions. Im sure there are maybe some mistakes that i made in my words but dont have the energy to go back and re-read and correct what i meant to write to begin with so feel free to jump on the opportunity and point out those mistakes to everyone reading our arguments and blow it up again to make even more dramatic on stage presence so you look like the almighty knowledgeable person that you are who wont accept the fact that other people do have opinions other than your own

[Slaxx]

So you took a break from ToAU until last year. The means you missed 4 years? 5 years? of how the game developed in that time period. That's almost half the entire life of the game. You missed the entirety of the WotG era and it sounds like a vast majority of the ToAU era. This pretty much sums it up, my accusations of you wearing rose-colored glasses seem to be pretty accurate. You haven't experienced how this game has developed but you feel that you are an expert on that development. You clearly have no idea how long SC/MB has been gone because you weren't around for it.

I understand you took a strong stand and now feel that you can't back down without losing face, but it's time. You don't know what you're talking about, just admit it and walk away. Calling me a troll doesn't make me any less right, it makes you look like a sore loser.

Have i gotten rude and "judgmental"? Yeah probably. Mostly as a result of you complete ignorance of how the game has developed. You have consistently made statements about how this game was destroyed by abyssea, but most if not all of your examples are things that changed years before abyssea. You missed out on years of changes in this games, not just the 6 months of abyssea releases.

You have exposed your ignorance on the subject, I'm done here.

[Daemon]

You don't need a bunch of 99 delve DD's to get 315k an hour, I joined a party yesterday and the keyer was keeping track of xp an hour. After about 30 minutes after I joined we were at 330k/hour. Delve MNK can kill worms in as little as two attack rounds. We only had a couple 99's, delve MNK, 99 SAM, and maybe 2 more, most were still leveling.

Yet this whole time I wasted several hours debating with Slaxx about this but he refuses to take a second and be open minded of the possibility. Trying to point out that its absolutely impossible and that Im a bullshitter. Thank you Darkhorror.

[Daemon]

So you took a break from ToAU until last year. The means you missed 4 years? 5 years? of how the game developed in that time period. That's almost half the entire life of the game. You missed the entirety of the WotG era and it sounds like a vast majority of the ToAU era. This pretty much sums it up, my accusations of you wearing rose-colored glasses seem to be pretty accurate. You haven't experienced how this game has developed but you feel that you are an expert on that development. You clearly have no idea how long SC/MB has been gone because you weren't around for it.

I understand you took a strong stand and now feel that you can't back down without losing face, but it's time. You don't know what you're talking about, just admit it and walk away. Calling me a troll doesn't make me any less right, it makes you look like a sore loser.

Have i gotten rude and "judgmental"? Yeah probably. Mostly as a result of you complete ignorance of how the game has developed. You have consistently made statements about how this game was destroyed by abyssea, but most if not all of your examples are things that changed years before abyssea. You missed out on years of changes in this games, not just the 6 months of abyssea releases.

You have exposed your ignorance on the subject, I'm done here.

Actually i did quit when Wing of the Goddess expansion came out why I is said ToAu I dunno im tired right now, Seriously you have issues though, Im not being ignorant, and this isnt some race of who knows better, big deal i pointed out some historic changes with my opinion on how these changes effected the way the game is now.

There is plenty of evidence that I already stated of how certain changes gave its effects so please save it for someone that cares really, I shouldn't even have replied to you to begin with.

[Daemon]

All I was really saying was in the past they filled a lot of players time with levelling. Take that away and it shines how content can so quickly become stale. I was only generalising, course there is content that is good still and can be fun, and of course the community can be fantastic still depending on who you socialise with. I was simply just saying the majority of the remaining players in an old game are the most dedicated to playing and getting gear (because of age so we agree, I just didn't clearly say it) which means the majority don't socialise as much as say before when a lot more people were running around.

That was actually my first post here in months, and I barely ever check the forums, however... I played this game for 9 years only quitting earlier in the year, so it has played a massive part in my life. I grew up with this game and it has helped me through a lot of hard times in real life so I can't help but still feel attached in some way. Also with the FFXIV beta at the weekend I just thought I'd check out how FFXI is going these days and thought I'd share my views. I believe anyone is entitled to their say on the game no matter whether they have quit or not, as long as they have played the game and especially for as long as I and many others have.

You really sound like an awesome person, Wish you came back and got to know each other in game =)

[Quetzacoatl]

In this thread: Daemon vs Slaxx in a trolling match

[Glamdring]

they added plenty of new content, an expansion pack's worth in fact (with more to come it seems). the problem is the current boss decided the game is about gear acquisition only-fair enough, for many players it is. But his tiered system didn't work as intended as players are capable with a mixed group to skip over reive gear and skirmish gear and go straight to delve. The obvious answer will never fly-make skirmish alot harder and make delve that much harder than skirmish so you DO have to go Rieve>>Skirmish>>Delve. Problem is, I don't think there is a non-obvious answer, adding an event with gear beyond Delve just means people will skip delve too, and then be on here whining about why there isn't more to do.

My thought, add a new HNMLS system so they can go off and have their little circlejerk like they did for years-just make it unnecessary for the rest of us so we aren't killed progress-wise by the monopolization of that content. Not like HNMs were ever difficult-I beat the ones I did with PUGs after all and no study-but the competition was to get claim. well grinding NMs in Aby has thoroughly cleansed me and most of the other casuals of any desire to fight for an NM anymore so they'll be welcome to that system; the rest of us will just grind the instanced content to get end-game gear and keep playing for fun.