Kylos
10-12-2013, 04:36 AM
Just a bit of background information on my history on FFXI.
Started on the Hades server back in 2004, loved the game, made tons of friends, eventually got DRK to 75 in 2005. Loved the game to death back then, couldn't stop playing it every day. Helped so many players in my social linkshell. Got strong enough to do Dynamis and eventually lead a Dynamis Linkshell. Quit doing dynamis in 2009 due to real life issues, and not because of boredom/lack of rewards after doing it for two years.
Took a long break when Abyssea came out. Hated the SMN burns, hated the easy exp, hated how easy Abyssea was with all of its atmas/abyssites and its procing system that basically told me to "eff off your dark knight is useless".
I returned a year later, most of my friends gone, but I still managed to blast through Abyssea content. Some fun was had, though I still preferred the older content.
The game was revitilized, however Level Sync had created the downward spiral that we see in today's game.
Without level sync, SMN burns would never have occured, meaning Abyssea had to be very generous with EXP. The fact that level 30s could run in there and open boxes killed old school EXP parties, meaning that people would level to the max and be expected to know their jobs inside and out.
Abyssea provided an alternative to Relic and Mythic weapons, and this made Ultimate weapons feel less important. Not only that, but killing the same NM over and over and over was highly tedious.
So Voidwatch appeared... and so did the crazy heavy metal trial. So players were getting used to having temp items and crazy buffs at their disposal. EXP became completely irrelevant and so was dieing. You could die over and over and get that EXP back in no time, so players don't need to try as hard... because yea.. dieing is just a minor inconvenience. (Thanks Twilight & Warps!)
Voidwatch showed us just how bad a drop system can be, as many players raged over the stupidly random loot system.. because SE were scared that endgame linkshells would monopolize drops like they did on HNMs.
So by this time, Dynamis and Limbus became useless as the majority of equipment became outdated aside from some situational pieces. Legion, Neo Nyzul Isle, Neo Salvage and Neo Limbus were introduced so the players had more content to do.
Just before Seekers was released, we had a lot of content that still had some relevance:-
Abyssea - Afv3, Empyreans etc.
Dynamis - AFv2+2 augmented
Salvage - To get drops for Neo
Neo Salvage - Sidegrades, some are still useful.
Neo Limbus - Sidegrades, nothing useful anymore.
Neo Nyzul Isle - Fun challenging content with nice rewards.
Legion - Fulad Zereh?
Voidwatch - Heavy Metal, Pulse cell items, other situational equipment.
Meeble Burrows - Sidegrades, fun content.
Limbus - Brutal Earring, Loq Earring etc.
Outdated content before Seekers:-
Garrison, Ballista, VNM, Campaign, ZNM, Assault, Walk of Echoes, Sky, Sea.
When Seekers came out, the game was revitilized once again, for a short time. The initial excitement to explore brand new zones was high, and fighting new monsters was also refreshing. Reives were challenging in the beginning, and quite fun with a huge amount of players there.
Skirmish never really kicked off. The game still allowed players to go into older content, and players kept making relics/mythics/empyreans.
The day before Delve was released, I finished Ragnarok to 95. I had spent so much time and effort to create my weapon. I was really happy with it, I felt a great sense of achievement. It was soon ripped away when I saw the Bereaver and Senbaak.
I couldn't imagine how those players who had multiple R/M/E on 99 felt.
Delve was so tough in the beginning. I knew it was a matter of time until players killed the NM and acquired better equipment. Everybody progressed so much... and even managed to do Wildskeepers. Skirmish 2.0 came out and basically handed equipment to players for very little effort, and now it was definite that R/M/E were completely irrelevant.
So I did all this content. Not every single day, but I did plasm runs, I set up Delve NM runs, Skirmish runs, farmed bayld on reives, and made my Corsair decent so I could do Mega Boss runs.
I killed all the Wildskeepers, I killed Muyingwa, I lead an alliance to kill Tojil, and I went to many Foret runs only to see failure on the Shark,
After doing a Hurkan one day and getting an Iron Sand... the new content left a sour taste in my mouth. It was no longer fun to grind so much bayld to retreive such a petty reward. Delve also became very repetitive after a few victories.
Delve = Challenging, very difficult without the right players, but zero replay value
Skirmish = Extremely easy, extremely rewarding, might as well just send the equipment to out Mog House and cut out the event completely.
Wildskeeper = Fun, but the loot system is a complete shambles and insulting.
Oh, so then SE releases Mog Gardens and Monstrosity! Wow... where was this back in 2004? That would have been epic back then, but with so little actual content to battle, it feels like unneccesary filler. Don't get me wrong, some players love Monstrosity, and the system is great, but it's just easy EXPing, something most of us have done to death already.
After so many years of playing this game, I have never felt that it was a waste of money. Even when I took my long break, I kept paying for my account to make sure my character wasn't deleted.
It is depressing to come online and see 400-500 players online. It is difficult to find quality players to do Delve with, because half of those players are mules or AFK, and you really need quality players to do Delve. I am tired of joining Delve runs where players cant follow instruction and everyone leaves after the first NM.
Even endgame linkshells have trouble in Delve, and are continuing to look for quality players. It is evident that there is a complete lack of content. and that content which is there, a lot of players have grinded it to death, or players like myself have no interest in repeating it.
I got Mikinaak Body, Feet and Bereaver to Rank 15. I ranked other pieces up, and also used some Verdigris stones on Cizin. I saved up gil for a Senbaak so players would take my DRK, but they always want my Corsair instead. COR/WHM is boring in delve, but I am required to play it most of the time.
The game promoted the need to level multiple jobs, but the amount of merits we can spend, and the amount of inventory space showed us otherwise. It is extremely difficult to keep track of equipment for multiple jobs. I have trouble handling 3-4 jobs at any given time, nevermind 10-20 jobs.
FFXI is boring now. Sadly I would rather play other games, old and new. I would rather play the original Final Fantasy then FFXI right now. Final Fantasy has lost the magic. It has lost it;s identity and spirit. Where did the fun go?
I might be back someday... if you guys can go back to the drawing board and produce something that is worth my time and money. I loved this game, and spent way too much time and money on it, and I have never seen the game as boring as it is right now.
I am not angry. Just incredibly frustrated. You have tried to produce quality content, but yet, it is not the quality we expect of you.
Started on the Hades server back in 2004, loved the game, made tons of friends, eventually got DRK to 75 in 2005. Loved the game to death back then, couldn't stop playing it every day. Helped so many players in my social linkshell. Got strong enough to do Dynamis and eventually lead a Dynamis Linkshell. Quit doing dynamis in 2009 due to real life issues, and not because of boredom/lack of rewards after doing it for two years.
Took a long break when Abyssea came out. Hated the SMN burns, hated the easy exp, hated how easy Abyssea was with all of its atmas/abyssites and its procing system that basically told me to "eff off your dark knight is useless".
I returned a year later, most of my friends gone, but I still managed to blast through Abyssea content. Some fun was had, though I still preferred the older content.
The game was revitilized, however Level Sync had created the downward spiral that we see in today's game.
Without level sync, SMN burns would never have occured, meaning Abyssea had to be very generous with EXP. The fact that level 30s could run in there and open boxes killed old school EXP parties, meaning that people would level to the max and be expected to know their jobs inside and out.
Abyssea provided an alternative to Relic and Mythic weapons, and this made Ultimate weapons feel less important. Not only that, but killing the same NM over and over and over was highly tedious.
So Voidwatch appeared... and so did the crazy heavy metal trial. So players were getting used to having temp items and crazy buffs at their disposal. EXP became completely irrelevant and so was dieing. You could die over and over and get that EXP back in no time, so players don't need to try as hard... because yea.. dieing is just a minor inconvenience. (Thanks Twilight & Warps!)
Voidwatch showed us just how bad a drop system can be, as many players raged over the stupidly random loot system.. because SE were scared that endgame linkshells would monopolize drops like they did on HNMs.
So by this time, Dynamis and Limbus became useless as the majority of equipment became outdated aside from some situational pieces. Legion, Neo Nyzul Isle, Neo Salvage and Neo Limbus were introduced so the players had more content to do.
Just before Seekers was released, we had a lot of content that still had some relevance:-
Abyssea - Afv3, Empyreans etc.
Dynamis - AFv2+2 augmented
Salvage - To get drops for Neo
Neo Salvage - Sidegrades, some are still useful.
Neo Limbus - Sidegrades, nothing useful anymore.
Neo Nyzul Isle - Fun challenging content with nice rewards.
Legion - Fulad Zereh?
Voidwatch - Heavy Metal, Pulse cell items, other situational equipment.
Meeble Burrows - Sidegrades, fun content.
Limbus - Brutal Earring, Loq Earring etc.
Outdated content before Seekers:-
Garrison, Ballista, VNM, Campaign, ZNM, Assault, Walk of Echoes, Sky, Sea.
When Seekers came out, the game was revitilized once again, for a short time. The initial excitement to explore brand new zones was high, and fighting new monsters was also refreshing. Reives were challenging in the beginning, and quite fun with a huge amount of players there.
Skirmish never really kicked off. The game still allowed players to go into older content, and players kept making relics/mythics/empyreans.
The day before Delve was released, I finished Ragnarok to 95. I had spent so much time and effort to create my weapon. I was really happy with it, I felt a great sense of achievement. It was soon ripped away when I saw the Bereaver and Senbaak.
I couldn't imagine how those players who had multiple R/M/E on 99 felt.
Delve was so tough in the beginning. I knew it was a matter of time until players killed the NM and acquired better equipment. Everybody progressed so much... and even managed to do Wildskeepers. Skirmish 2.0 came out and basically handed equipment to players for very little effort, and now it was definite that R/M/E were completely irrelevant.
So I did all this content. Not every single day, but I did plasm runs, I set up Delve NM runs, Skirmish runs, farmed bayld on reives, and made my Corsair decent so I could do Mega Boss runs.
I killed all the Wildskeepers, I killed Muyingwa, I lead an alliance to kill Tojil, and I went to many Foret runs only to see failure on the Shark,
After doing a Hurkan one day and getting an Iron Sand... the new content left a sour taste in my mouth. It was no longer fun to grind so much bayld to retreive such a petty reward. Delve also became very repetitive after a few victories.
Delve = Challenging, very difficult without the right players, but zero replay value
Skirmish = Extremely easy, extremely rewarding, might as well just send the equipment to out Mog House and cut out the event completely.
Wildskeeper = Fun, but the loot system is a complete shambles and insulting.
Oh, so then SE releases Mog Gardens and Monstrosity! Wow... where was this back in 2004? That would have been epic back then, but with so little actual content to battle, it feels like unneccesary filler. Don't get me wrong, some players love Monstrosity, and the system is great, but it's just easy EXPing, something most of us have done to death already.
After so many years of playing this game, I have never felt that it was a waste of money. Even when I took my long break, I kept paying for my account to make sure my character wasn't deleted.
It is depressing to come online and see 400-500 players online. It is difficult to find quality players to do Delve with, because half of those players are mules or AFK, and you really need quality players to do Delve. I am tired of joining Delve runs where players cant follow instruction and everyone leaves after the first NM.
Even endgame linkshells have trouble in Delve, and are continuing to look for quality players. It is evident that there is a complete lack of content. and that content which is there, a lot of players have grinded it to death, or players like myself have no interest in repeating it.
I got Mikinaak Body, Feet and Bereaver to Rank 15. I ranked other pieces up, and also used some Verdigris stones on Cizin. I saved up gil for a Senbaak so players would take my DRK, but they always want my Corsair instead. COR/WHM is boring in delve, but I am required to play it most of the time.
The game promoted the need to level multiple jobs, but the amount of merits we can spend, and the amount of inventory space showed us otherwise. It is extremely difficult to keep track of equipment for multiple jobs. I have trouble handling 3-4 jobs at any given time, nevermind 10-20 jobs.
FFXI is boring now. Sadly I would rather play other games, old and new. I would rather play the original Final Fantasy then FFXI right now. Final Fantasy has lost the magic. It has lost it;s identity and spirit. Where did the fun go?
I might be back someday... if you guys can go back to the drawing board and produce something that is worth my time and money. I loved this game, and spent way too much time and money on it, and I have never seen the game as boring as it is right now.
I am not angry. Just incredibly frustrated. You have tried to produce quality content, but yet, it is not the quality we expect of you.