Rate of Leveling and the New Player Experience

[Camate]

Greetings, everyone.

There have been various concerns posted in regards to new players joining the game, which focus around their leveling experience and also the progression of the game leading up to level 99. In response to the feedback, Producer Akihiko Matsui has made the following comment.



Matsui here.

New players coming into the game that are leveling are starting from a clean state not knowing about systems such as Fields of Valor, Trust, and Records of Eminence, and it’s also likely rare that they will get involved with Abyssea while they are leveling. Naturally, they will view various aspects of the game in a different light than those of you who have been playing the game for a long time.

There is no right and wrong and we are developing the game looking at it from both perspectives.

We’ve been receiving requests to make it easier to reach level 99, but we don’t have any plans to simply reduce the amount of experience points that are required to level up.

At level 20 you are able to ride a chocobo. At level 30 you are able to acquire the advanced jobs. And then at level 60 you can obtain a full set of artifact armor. At each pivotal point you are also able to progress through missions. This type of game experience is connected to the affection towards your character and Vana’diel, and this is why I feel it’s not right to increase the pace of leveling more than it is currently.

To support new players, we’re placing a heavy emphasis on creating systems so they can play comfortably and have a new experience while they are leveling their characters.

Trust is a perfect example of this. With the implementation of the Trust system, I feel it’s become much easier to play even in conditions where it is difficult to form parties with other players at lower levels, and missions can also be undertaken solo. (We’ll be addressing Zilart missions that do not support Trust in the future.)

Moving forward we will continue to add beneficial features for new players, which will revolve around the Trust system. With that said though, I feel that the progression from level 75 to 99 is lacking in variation in comparison to the time it takes, and we will be looking into making adjustments that will make this more motivating.

Linkshells and friends are also a very important part of the community, and we will continue to work on this. Right now we are in the midst of planning the previously announced features for Linkshells (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/41383-Solo-Accomplishments-Party-Barriers-and-Enhancing-the-Community?p=503434&viewfull=1#post503434).

To make a really useful system we expect it will take a bit of time, but once we are at the stage where I can discuss this in more detail, I’ll be sure to make a post on the forums.

[Xantavia]

I'm glad to see that they are looking into more options for the 75+ leveling. As a mostly solo player, there is a decent variety of areas to level in the beginning, but in the end, I have always fallen back to abyssea when it comes to the 70's. I haven't found a place that is relatively safe where my skill-ups won't suffer due to only beating on incredibly easy mobs. About ready to do G5 on a new character and have been slightly dreading the upcoming slog of xp/merits for further advancement from a lack of camps that I know about.

[Draylo]

The biggest "feature" you need for a linkshell is content that more than 6 people can do... As of now there is practically nothing for an LS to do besides very difficult Divine Might or Delve. Both of which can get old after a while, we need more 12+ member content so that it justifies even having a true "linkshell" instead of a small low man group of 3 people and mules.

[Kraggy]

Greetings, everyone.

There have been various concerns posted in regards to new players joining the game, which focus around their leveling experience and also the progression of the game leading up to level 99. In response to the feedback, Producer Akihiko Matsui has made the following comment.
His comments about linkshells don't I think refelct reality. In a game that's so mature LSes are largely full of 99s, doing 99 content, they're usually not interested in newbies concerns till said newbies are 99 as well.

Being in an LS at 20 is a very lonely experience, believe me on another account I have one such who I started in the hope of perhaps having a better experience than my two 95s have had.

[Zarchery]

The biggest "feature" you need for a linkshell is content that more than 6 people can do... As of now there is practically nothing for an LS to do besides very difficult Divine Might or Delve. Both of which can get old after a while, we need more 12+ member content so that it justifies even having a true "linkshell" instead of a small low man group of 3 people and mules.

Dunno what you use your linkshells for, but I've always used them for 1) casual conversation and 2) pulling small groups of people for content. If you need 6 people to do content, it's a lot easier to pull 6 people from a pool of 20 or so that you already sort of know than to /yell randomly for 6 strangers.

[Draylo]

Obviously you are in a social linkshell then. What I consider it would be an end game group, like most MMO have. This game has become too low man centric lately without giving anything to people that actually enjoy larger scale events, something this game was founded on.

[Castanica]

I came back recently, here are what I saw as the biggest failings of current FFXI (so far).
FoV is something you have to know exists, as much as it pains me to say it the book should have a big ! on it (maybe a feature linked to teh newbie icon being activated) or some way to make people know what it is and that it's important. the wording inside that book should also be made more easy to understand and less hiding behind menus.
The new questing system is great but it's hidden, why? I was leveling for ages without even knowing it existed, not until I watched a YT video did I know about it. Why add something that good and hide it in a sub menu? There should be no limit on the quests you can get and they should be given automatically.

The regen and refresh features from the book should be given automatically and they should be far more potent than they are, the point is for leveling to be fun and not boring. HAving to rest half my HP back up after each fight on an EP-DC mob really should not be something we have to do, also imo DNC should be a standard job these days and not something that you have to unlock, /dnc makes the game so much more fun for dps classes.

If you are going to "wowize" FFXI then at least do it right, the quest rewards should be gear you can wear and not garbage things like useless rings and mantles.

Also I really wish this game had a social world chat channel so it doesn't feel so DEAD while leveling, also possibly a community linkshell (open to all) for people that don't have one and indeed won't be getting one since the chances of seeing another human being during leveling is near to nil. I've been leveling for about a week and I can count on 2 hands the number of people I've seen outside of Jeuno.

I don't know if this has already been added but if not then all atmas should be given to everyone that reaches 75 outright, that way they can actually enjoy Abyssea instead of being almost totally unable to get atmas anymore.

I wanna have fun with FFXI. I loved Abyssea on my main character but the thought of going through all the rigmarole of getting atmas (which is really hard for a new 75 with one job, bad gear and no contacts) etc before I can go mess around in...what is honestly a deserted zone sucks all the ideas of having fun in there out of it.

Old FFXI is dead, the new team is adding elements from WoW and they are kinda cool but they aren't being added right imo, don't be shy about it. Add that stuff in and put it in so everyone knows it is there. A new player coming in or an old one coming back is not going to want to do all the boring stuff or be forced to watch videos/guides to do basic things. People want to play this amazing game and have fun, not drudge.

I'm someone that played hardcore for about 7 years before I quit a few years back, I did everything there was to do in this game during that time. I'm back and I'm on the cusp of having fun with the game again, but the thought of all the long-drawn out things I have to do and the hiding of new additions is killing that in me.

[BlueNarciss]

XP gain is not an issue right now. The biggest issue for new players that I've found (as a new player myself) is gated content. Leveling is gated (I'm so glad I can't take part in the double xp event because they want me to unlock more levels via Limit Break quests), classes are gated (I don't want to get off work and spend all my free time doing an irrelevant quest that adds nothing to the games story just so I can see if I like it or not), even the Trust system is severely gated (it took me hours to run to different cities just to get 3 base trusts..) Make things more ACCESSIBLE, this is the biggest issue with this game. You add all of these great systems like the trust initiative and so forth, but it all takes an absurd amount of time just to get started. I want to get out and explore the world the way I want to, not be forced to run from area to area to collect some item for 3 lines of text that have nothing to do with anything. I don't mind quests, I enjoy them, but making them required for core mechanics in the game is just ridiculous. Why not change them to item rewards or something, seeing as getting armor while leveling as a new player is nigh impossible due to high auction house costs or hoping that a chest you spend 2 minutes unlocking gives you something better than an ether or potion.

If you want to make the game more new players accessible you guys really need to do more than just look at XP gains, I mean honestly..

[Draylo]

The storys for the jobs and AF lines are pretty good for some of them... Even FFXIV has quests for theirs, you are asking them to dumb it down too much.

[AppropriateName5786]

There was a very similar thread that reached 40+ pages a few months ago calling for things to be made more accessible and modern. Basically, Castanica and Bluenarciss have great ideas to make the game better and more welcoming to new players (regardless of how few there are) and old players alike. Unfortunately, there are lots of confused people on these forums who will accuse you of wanting everything handed to you and tell you that you are going to hell for dumbing down their precious game. There's also the bitter ones who will type entire essays amounting to nothing more than "we had to put up with this X or Y years ago so you have to as well!"

As an old player myself, I've been wanting to level another character for ages (since race changes aren't available), but just the thought of the mountains of gated/mundane content I'd have to redo in order to get caught up to my main is vomit-inducing. We're talking everything from the Chocobo quest, subjob quest, limit breaks, Aby Atma obtainment, VW warps, CoP, RoZ, WotG, ToAU, fame building, advanced job unlocking, Dynamis boss wins, coffer hunting for AF, etc, to getting all the WKR wins again.

Even without the need to farm for gil like an actual new player, or the need to meet new people and establish myself on my server, or the need to learn how all the arcane systems like FoV and RoE work in the game, I would never level another character because of the way old content has been handled, or not handled as it were. Changes to old content definitely need to be made, and accessibility is the key word.

[Castanica]

The storys for the jobs and AF lines are pretty good for some of them... Even FFXIV has quests for theirs, you are asking them to dumb it down too much.

Most "new players" are going to be returnees, they have seen them all before.

I've unlocked every job and taken them all (almost to 99) years ago, as a returnee with a new char I really don't wanna do all that again, or if they do at least streamline it to the minimum. run to point a, click b, click through 2 lines of text, goto point c, etc.

I like many things in FFXI but the immense time wasting is not one of them. Unlocking dancer for instance isn't just the fun story it's the immense amount of trekking around and reading guides to do it. Die on the way? back you go!

When you get home from work to put a few hours into the game you don't want to spend hours unlocking a job and have no "fun" time.

I remember reading about some changes to atma a while ago, can anyone tell me if you still unlock the atmas as you used to or has it been changed now? If you still have to unlock them all I guess I won't be getting into aby at 75.

[Castanica]

I wish the new devs would ask for feedback from actual new players and returnees, I post here knowing full well they will never read it. :(

I hated playing XIV but at least the devs took notice to the responses of their players, amazingly so.

[Olor]

Changes to old content definitely need to be made, and accessibility is the key word.

Yeah. I've gotten far enough in COP now to reforge my artifact and relic gear - but I stand by my original call to remove gates like this. I have no problem needing to finish COP to get the COP trusts and the COP rewards but it really put me behind (and discouraged me from playing) to find that I could not upgrade my gear because I hadn't finished an unrelated quest line. These kind of things need to be eliminated. There are enough rewards for doing the content without locking unrelated content behind it. (Current rewards for COP = being able to do hardmode fights, several trusts including 2 of the best ones, and the rings).

These are the things that make being a new player suck, not exp gain (although 75-99 is very crummy, especially when you're melee and no one really wants you till 80+ in abyssea). New players want to be able to play with others - and all they can do is pretty much solo for months... that sucks.

I personally think things like AF quests are fine and important, I just don't like having to ALSO do all of COP to upgrade the AF I quested for.



I remember reading about some changes to atma a while ago, can anyone tell me if you still unlock the atmas as you used to or has it been changed now? If you still have to unlock them all I guess I won't be getting into aby at 75.


They had abyssea campaigns where they gave you Atmas, I don't think that it was permanent.

I personally don't think they should just give all the atmas out, but I would like them to make the atma drop 50% without red light. Cause I'd be happy to go out pop monsters and slaughter them to help newbies get their atma, but I don't have any jobs that can proc red reliably. A player shouldn't have to level a very specific job (essentially NIN or WAR only) to get access to Atma. Just making atma a 50% drop without proc would help a lot, since then anyone could help a new player get atma, not just someone who already leveled a red proc job.

And then, once a new player had a couple atma, they could get other atma themselves if they needed to... but right now if you're not NIN or WAR your ability to get atma is pretty much nil.

[Mitruya]

I started a mule to help with gil, inventory, sparks, etc. and I have to agree, the thought of all the grinds and gates all over again is not appealing at all so he will probably stay a low-level undergeared mule.
The reduction of time between quests, the door key items, and the increased travel options have been a good start; but there is a gracious plenty of things they could streamline so you can actually play instead of going through menu hell or whatever.

Also I agree with Draylo somewhat, as scaled content for less players has killed grouping. It just leads to more job exclusivity and more casuals that don't get the clears and drops they need. People are so obsessed with greed and success that there's no incentive to carry lesser players along.

[AppropriateName5786]

Also I agree with Draylo somewhat, as scaled content for less players has killed grouping. It just leads to more job exclusivity and more casuals that don't get the clears and drops they need. People are so obsessed with greed and success that there's no incentive to carry lesser players along.

This is kind of off-topic, but he actually advocates alliance content for the sake of it being alliance content because, when you have the right circle of friends, that's the only way you get to feel special. That kind of content serves no purpose other than to pander to an inconsequential minority.

I think you agree with how job exclusivity sucks, as any sensible person would, but that stems solely from lack of job balance and has zilch to do with scaled content. If job balance were as close to perfect as theoretically possible, who would care if you did 6-man Delve with a RDM healer, GEO solo buffer, and DRG/DNC/BST/PUP as DD? What a perfect FFXI that would be, where you could always play your favorite job, and as long as a healer (WHM SCH RDM), a buffer (COR GEO BRD SMN RDM), and enough DDs were willing to go, you would have a party ready.

Right now, it's always WHM, BRD, PLD, MNK, RNG, SAM or gtfo because job balance is utterly non-existent, and every other job simply doesn't cut it for their respective roles. Hope I understood your line of thought correctly.

[Mitruya]

Yes, I agree, I may be confusing job balance and scaled content as contributing to the same problem. I was just thinking that smaller groups = less jobs that can go and still get the job done, less incentive to bring along someone for the clear or whatever, less and less shouts or events organized.
I understood part of Draylo's point to say that rewards are the same whether you take 6 or 18, so if 3 people and their mules can get the same drops why try to squeeze in 18 to fight over the same lots.

[Olor]

Mules are only usable in place of real players in serious content because of 3rd party programs. Frankly, it's part of the "not taking" people problem. The problem boils down to people being selfish though. SE shouldn't let people blatantly brag about cheating with zero consequences, it's certainly doing nothing to help the game. Yeah if the only way to get content done is to use 3rd party programs and have 2 accounts it does nothing to attract and keep new players playing. It's toxic.

No one is forcing Draylo to take mules instead of players. Frankly, I'm disgusted he can come on the official website and constantly brag about using third party tools with zero consequences. (Or "complaining" that he takes mules instead of inviting real players to parties)

I recognize that banning everyone who uses 3rd party tools at this point would annihilate the playerbase - and I know my viewpoints on them are not popular, but there needs to be some action taken so that it doesn't devolve further into "no 3rd party tools? No invite" than it already has.

I don't even blame most people who use them, when it takes 3 macros for me to cast a spell and they can cast with one button press or a specialized keystroke that does all their gear changes for them, it certainly enhances their performance so it can meet the standards that players set for each other... but I do blame SE for not sending a clearer message that once they have implemented gearsets etc they will no longer be tolerating tools that automate gearchanges outside the game.

Or they need to just link to windower from the official website and make it clear that in order to play competitively you'll need to use it. The status quo, where spellcast and other 3rd party tools that automate gear changes are officially against the rules but people feel comfortable enough breaking the rules to all but brag they are using it on the official forum... it's not sustainable. Those tools are a big part of what's dividing the playerbase.

Not everyone wants to have to write xml scripts to play this game seriously. No one should have to, since, officially, they are against the rules.

I think this is part of the balancing problem too. SE is busy scaling the game against what the "best" players can do, but I think you'd see if you looked that all those players are using 3rd party tools. So the game gets scaled against people who are running a program that automatically switches your gear for you when you reach certain HP levels or MP levels or w/e ... The rest of us have to make judgement calls and press several buttons.

While the gearsets will help even this out - it won't eliminate it completely. Even having to swap palettes and stuff is a great way to lose valuable time. People using these tools can just type a couple letters and bam! they are reacting.

[Mitruya]

Oh I agree totally.
In the Abyssea era I was frequently told, "Oh you have BST? Go solo it" or "Buy a cheap PC so you can dual-box what you need." (I play on console.) Even then no one wanted to share anything.
I could never get into NNI parties because I didn't have a speedhack.
Nowadays it's the same thing. "Oh you can go solo that content now" because no one wants to waste their time or tags, or split drops.
The forums are filled with "so-and-so endgame content is piss-easy, you suck because you can't clear it, noob"-type comments, since the players that are speeding through it have stun bots, mules, and all those fancy gear programs.
SE had to give us Trusts for leveling and quests 'cause no one wants to team up anymore.
I have no earthly idea what they were thinking to let people solo AA's and Salvage, causing enough congestion to prevent a server merge.

[Draylo]

Your signature is entirely accurate, keep gimping it up since "2011" and stop replying to my posts. The majority of your posts on these forums ask for nothing but nerfs to everything so you can complete it with your limited intelligence. You don't need third party programs to do ANYTHING in this game, its all easy. The only thing they do is make it a huge convenience and less of a chore to play, just like how you can play pressing 5 buttons to do one action but SE is now letting you just press one with the new macro system.

[Tohihroyu]

Ahh just look at the river of elitist tears flow!:rolleyes:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v53/jess55598/Bgtearsedit_zps9f7ee1df.jpg

Maybe just maybe if you played the game without your little cheats you'd learn how to properly play instead of relying on a program to swap your gear every nano second. Oh I forgot without windower and/or bots you elitists would not know how to hit a bee in north gustaberg-- I mean for gods sake every update you all scramble like flies on shit to find out what updates "broke" so it can quickly be fixed.

Bring on the "casual" friendly updates, maybe it'll drive more elitists to Q_Quit. They did a great thing by nerfing the haks to at least got rid of fishbotters (till they find some other alternative that'll take years to get nerfed)

As for some who might get pissy cause I use .dat mods

They unless you delete files (Nyzul isle lamps to cheat climbs or flies to bot claim the kings faster than the other elitists bot before the ???'s where added) do no harm, only the player see's the change and make some things in game look nicer or less plain. At worst .dat modding can cause the game to crash if too many "HQ" mods are used. I talked to a GM in the past about it, as long as it gives no advantage to you against other players (I.E. deleting the nyzul lamps and mobs surrounding HNM kings before the ???'s ) its allowed cause again only you see the changes and you alone.

And those saying 14 sucks cause "ERRMERGERD ITS LIKE WOW AND ITS CASUAL FRIENDLY!!1!!! STOP HANDING THINGS TO GIMP CASUALS IN 11 BTW!!1!!!!11!!" grow up. Or go back to fapping over the "gimps" you "pwn"

Edit: Oh look elitists already replying. You see unlike you I don't need Windower or bots to play "properly" you might as well say you play non MMO games with Action Replay & Gameshark always on so you can cheat to the top....oh wait you already do that pretty much! to get the high scores against "lol console players" and lag the shit out of them so your team wins.

[Multiabuse]

I had to start over from scratch recently, and honestly, it isn't that big of a deal. I finished all the "gates": CoP, all the limit breaks, advanced jobs I had any interest in doing, and it was the most fun I've had in awhile, even though not all of it was pure fun. The only "hard" part was trying to steal a THF testimony so I could fight Maat, and that took all of 45 minutes. I also have the perspective of someone who did these things when they were current and really frustrating, so I'm sure that factored in. I spent a lot of time looking it all up, too.

I see people asking for the removal of everything they don't like in game to "speed things up" or make it easier, but if SE took out all the drudgery (which doesn't take that long) there would literally be people whining about having nothing to do. SE wants you to enjoy their game, but player lust for new content far outweighs their resources to actually make it. And asking them to give you a mainline into that content without having to do any prerequisites at all just means you will be back on the forums asking for something to do. And from what I read daily, it will be mostly bitching and complaining with the occasional really intelligent and well-written post. Why on earth wouldn't you -want- to do CoP or WotG? Aside from the rewarded rajas ring/moonshade earrings (which are still utterly amazing), those expansions are filled with background and story and provide a lot to do in game....and you only have to do it once. It doesn't give much credence to your arguments that they need to remove gates when you haven't passed them yet.

I'm frankly stunned people are complaining about getting around these days. Several posts back someone indicated that the work to simply obtain the starting Trusts was absurd. Having to actually travel ONCE to a home point before being able to use it forever is too much to ask? I don't buy that. If you are a brand new player, you can always expect transportation to be rough until you have actually hoofed it to a new zone, in any game.

They can't make content relevant to 18 people AND 3 and have it be anything complex or interesting. True to form, new delve works better by brute forcing through the "gimmicks" and not actually abiding them. Some of us enjoy the idea of downing content that actually takes all of our combined strengths to defeat. Knowing that it would be much less of a struggle to take 3 takes that away. You get the same drops, you get the same rewards, but you don't have to share. You have trusts, you have sparks gear, you have 1 person entry requirements into almost everything, and for the latest Delve, you don't have to bring a stunner, but you still scream bloody murder anytime someone asks for large group content. Can you not celebrate your victories without attacking people who, amazingly, like to play with others? People like Mr. "Incosequential Minority" and his BPD ilk make me loathe this game more than anything SE could possibly add. So my suggestion to make this game better is to start by removing him from it.

[Stompa]

SE wouldn't be nerfing anything by making XP easier or making Aby easier for new players, for example by creating an Atma Shop where you can buy all atmas for cruor, the better the atma / stronger the NM that drops it - the more cruor you pay. <That way.> new players with no support can grind cruor boxes and save up for Apoc Atma etc.
I spent most of 2010-2012 proccing atmas etc. on my war, like every day. I saved up all atmas for Savior Atma, but still had a few quests to finish before I lost interest. Proc atmas can be hard for new players today for the simple reason that Aby is largely empty and back when I was proc atmas I wasn't soloing it usually - there was usually a party who wanted the +2s and would cure me etc., but now +2s are from login campaign so new players can't jump into those parties to get atma. So I think some sort of buy atmas for cruor option should be added.
Reason it wouldn't be gimping it to change it now, is that in all honesty new players have got a much harder ride in Aby than everyone else had in the 2011-2012 because of FC. For almost two years, people were getting level 99 while AFK in Fell Cleave parties. Literally going lvl 30-99 while asleep or while going to work etc. People farmed Maat's Caps in like a month while being AFK the whole time. And back then people sold their cruor chocobo blinkers, which paid for the FC, so it was a free ride to 99. So the previous Aby generation had a much easier time getting XP than the newcomers do - and for that reason some kind of easing of the system would only seem fair.
:cool:

[BlueNarciss]

I had to start over from scratch recently, and honestly, it isn't that big of a deal. I finished all the "gates": CoP, all the limit breaks, advanced jobs I had any interest in doing, and it was the most fun I've had in awhile, even though not all of it was pure fun. The only "hard" part was trying to steal a THF testimony so I could fight Maat, and that took all of 45 minutes. I also have the perspective of someone who did these things when they were current and really frustrating, so I'm sure that factored in. I spent a lot of time looking it all up, too.

I see people asking for the removal of everything they don't like in game to "speed things up" or make it easier, but if SE took out all the drudgery (which doesn't take that long) there would literally be people whining about having nothing to do. SE wants you to enjoy their game, but player lust for new content far outweighs their resources to actually make it. And asking them to give you a mainline into that content without having to do any prerequisites at all just means you will be back on the forums asking for something to do. And from what I read daily, it will be mostly bitching and complaining with the occasional really intelligent and well-written post. Why on earth wouldn't you -want- to do CoP or WotG? Aside from the rewarded rajas ring/moonshade earrings (which are still utterly amazing), those expansions are filled with background and story and provide a lot to do in game....and you only have to do it once. It doesn't give much credence to your arguments that they need to remove gates when you haven't passed them yet.

I'm frankly stunned people are complaining about getting around these days. Several posts back someone indicated that the work to simply obtain the starting Trusts was absurd. Having to actually travel ONCE to a home point before being able to use it forever is too much to ask? I don't buy that. If you are a brand new player, you can always expect transportation to be rough until you have actually hoofed it to a new zone, in any game.

They can't make content relevant to 18 people AND 3 and have it be anything complex or interesting. True to form, new delve works better by brute forcing through the "gimmicks" and not actually abiding them. Some of us enjoy the idea of downing content that actually takes all of our combined strengths to defeat. Knowing that it would be much less of a struggle to take 3 takes that away. You get the same drops, you get the same rewards, but you don't have to share. You have trusts, you have sparks gear, you have 1 person entry requirements into almost everything, and for the latest Delve, you don't have to bring a stunner, but you still scream bloody murder anytime someone asks for large group content. Can you not celebrate your victories without attacking people who, amazingly, like to play with others? People like Mr. "Incosequential Minority" and his BPD ilk make me loathe this game more than anything SE could possibly add. So my suggestion to make this game better is to start by removing him from it.


You sound like yet another old player saying things are getting too easy. Good for you, if you don't value your time. A lot of players that don't have 10 hours a day to do stupid crap in a game like unlock 5 year old progression content that is completely irrelevant now. If I want to go back and experience that content, that's how I want to do it. What is the point of a game based around playing and enjoying the game with multiple people if I don't theoretically get that opportunity until late game? I think you're just another mindless drone coming on here to tell everyone they have made things easy enough when we just ask for accessibility instead of making levels easier to obtain. Get out of here with that nonsense.

[Draylo]

Funny, I think the same thing of you and your lazy friends. Why don't you all join a server together so you can be miserable together and complain about how things aren't instant access so the game could be boring for you?

[Castanica]

I find it funny the people that care the most about the new player experience not being boring enough are the ones that won't even be doing it.

Many of these guys that want things kept horrible are the kind of players that enter abyssea from level 30 and just stand there while someone else levels them.

The game is near dead, the few players that come back these guys are hell bent on making them leave because the drudgery is not fun.

[Draylo]

Yet you have people clamoring for the days of old and saying this game was ruined by Abyssea because of how easy they made everything and how accessible everything is. Look at facebook comments for FFXI, youtube comments and so many places where all these complete morons spout that nonsense 24/7 about how the game is ruined because its so easy. How EASY it is to level to 99, yet you are asking for the complete opposite of what 70% of the clowns who "quit" are clamoring for. You don't know the population and what they want. You people have no idea how to run an MMO so keep spouting your nonsense as if its fact, especially you "AppropriateName5786". Alliance content is something that this game was founded on, my personal opinion that was being posted was that we need more events that incorporate MORE people, not low man groups. Low man groups are exclusive by nature, you have 3 people and mules in most cases. Alliance content, even something like WKR or VW, incorporates more jobs and more real people to play them. As I've said multiple times, there are only two alliance events left in the entire game that warrant more than 3~6 people. A lot of people are getting bored with the 6 man hard modes, if they even had interest in the first place. I'm not asking for exclusive drops at all, and I don't want the days of old back. Asking to remove lore from the game is stupid though.

[Draylo]

If they quit, why should SE listen to them anymore? Do brownie points from ex-players contribute to SE stock value now? And for every person saying Abyssea killed the game, there is another who understands that without Abyssea, FFXI most likely wouldn't still be here. Leveling to 99 is easy, but that is not even one of the roadblocks people have been discussing. Get with the program?

Actually, if you read some threads, people are asking for nerfs to the exp gain rate. That's why SE themselves released a statement saying they won't do that. It is one of the roadblocks, unless you mean this thread specifically. I was mainly referencing what the people say in those comments.

[Arbalest]

Actually, if you read some threads, people are asking for nerfs to the exp gain rate. That's why SE themselves released a statement saying they won't do that. It is one of the roadblocks, unless you mean this thread specifically. I was mainly referencing what the people say in those comments.

My LS does Delve with more than 6 people. Does that count as your long-awaited "alliance content"?

[Camiie]

Nerf XP gain? Screw that. I wish "Double XP" would become the normal rate.

[Draylo]

Sorry mistype, they are asking SE to nerf the total xp needed to reach 99.


My LS does Delve with more than 6 people. Does that count as your long-awaited "alliance content"?

Uh, no it doesn't ? Did you even ready any of the posts?

[Puck]

Nerf XP gain? Screw that. I wish "Double XP" would become the normal rate.Agreed. Or they should at least make the Double Exp Campaign a monthly thing. That way new players can always look forward to a time when they'll get a huge boost in levels. But really, yeah, it should be the norm. And skill gain rate should be doubled all-around.

As for Genkai, yes, they should remove it or make it much easier. The last thing we want is for people who're interested in the game to hit a wall and quit along the way (thereby losing their subscription and inching us one step closer to "FFXI is dieing" for real). They can still force a visit to Maat to raise the cap, but let new players spend beastman seals or geodes or whatever other junk they got while leveling to unlock the level cap. Remove the testimony requirement for players who have to fight Maat for the first time, that way they can just stroll in and challenge the fight as often as they need to. Stuff like that.

Everyone should be seriously concerned by the lack of new blood in this game. Sticking to the same old draconic bullshit we had to suffer all these years isn't healthy.

[Arbalest]

Sorry mistype, they are asking SE to nerf the total xp needed to reach 99.



Uh, no it doesn't ? Did you even ready any of the posts?

No reason to read every bit of every post when it's pretty easy to catch the gist of it; people arguing, calling eachother out, talking crap. The works.

[Xantavia]

As for Genkai, yes, they should remove it or make it much easier.
How much easier does it have to be? Sure, I have the knowledge of what to do, but I did G1-G4 without problems a few weeks ago on a new character. There are three ??? you can hit for G1 if you don't want to kill mobs for the drops. NM's for G2 don't have to be killed, and they lost aggro on me as I got near the exit to the cave. G3 is learning how to snk/inv and fumbling for a warp scroll if you aggro the NM after clicking the right spot. G4 is even faster now with HP crystal warping. Only reason I haven't fought Maat yet is because breaking it as BLU requires the stupid soulflayer to finish the AF.

As a new character, I've hit Rank 5, won the Mammet fight for CoP, gotten all staging points, completed G1-4, and gotten 4/5 BLU AF pieces. This has all been done solo with the help of trusts (of which I have the 3 starter ones, Nanaa Mihgo, and some log-in point ones), with the single exception of asking a friend to open the 3 mage gate for me. Yes, I have years of game knowledge, but the wiki can tell you 99% of what you need to know. I'm not seeing any roadblocks for new players on the road of 1-70 so far.

[Zarchery]

See, if you keep making the game easier and easier and easier to attract new players, big deal. They're low value players. People who can't deal with the game as it is now are just gonna flame out and quit after like 3 months anyway once they hit the slightest road block, because they don't have any patience. I can't believe that, as quickly as you can get to 99, people want it to be even faster.

[Demonjustin]

While your argument is valid, if we did it and got new players but got no new players without doing it then it seems like the obvious better option. No one will really stop from coming back because of these things so why not do it?

[Olor]

While your argument is valid, if we did it and got new players but got no new players without doing it then it seems like the obvious better option. No one will really stop from coming back because of these things so why not do it?

This is my thought. I totally disagree with some of the suggestions here, because they go too far, but a lot can be done to streamline things. Job unlocking quests are fine. No, really, they are fine. You don't need any of them to get to 99 and start playing with everyone. At any rate there is zero chance that SE is going to remove them or just give you a CS unlocking dancer when you leave your mog house. We might as well just drop completely not-gonna-happen requests. I do think a line needs to be drawn between "making things accessible" and "deleting the game" - getting rid of quests altogether is not a good idea. Same with AF, you can level without it for the most part (other than jobs where the level cap fight is locked till you finish, like BLU)

The way they should look at it is streamlining it as much as possible so that getting your first 99 is not a horrible chore. So reducing the amount of exp between 50 and 80 (because those levels suck), making it easier to get atmas outside of the occasional "free abyssea" campaign, (I like the suggestion of letting people buy some of them with cruor, and I still think my suggestion of making them a 50% drop rate even without red is good) and ensuring new players don't miss out on trust and records of eminence.

They also need to ensure that missions don't block unrelated gear grinding content. I'll say it 1000 times if I have to, upgrading AF straight from NQ to reforged and from relic/+2 to reforged should NOT require COP progression. That is a totally unnecessary roadblock - there are plenty of reasons to do COP (for trusts etc alone) so there really is no reason to do this. They didn't do it with relic +2 upgrades, I don't understand why they do it for reforged.

Reforging AF etc should be an easy gateway to ilevel content...

[AN ASIDE: honestly it's a shame they made NQ reforged so much lower level than sparks etc gear. A better progression (IMO) would have been sparks gear (109) ---> bayld gear (112) ---> wildskeeper gear (115) ---> NQ reforged AF/relic (117) ---> HQ relic/AF (119)

I really don't understand why they made sparks gear such a high ilevel it sort of makes everything else below it mostly obsolete... it was kind of dumb]

[Demonjustin]

The reason sparks gear was so high was likely an attempt to mitigate the whole issue of people requiring players to have 119 weapons to participate in things like Delve. By giving us easy access to 117 weapons they'd hoped the gap would be made much smaller and thus we would be more accepting of people with these weapons. It's my best guess, but it was a failed attempt because that's just not how this playerbase works.

[Arbalest]

The reason sparks gear was so high was likely an attempt to mitigate the whole issue of people requiring players to have 119 weapons to participate in things like Delve. By giving us easy access to 117 weapons they'd hoped the gap would be made much smaller and thus we would be more accepting of people with these weapons. It's my best guess, but it was a failed attempt because that's just not how this playerbase works.

The eminent weapons aren't bad; in most cases, they're pretty darn good until you get something that's a little better, like an augmented WKR weapon, or a Delve weapon.

The last time I did Tojiil, (or attempted such), my SAM came in second for DPS above the 2-3 other mnks and the RNG in the party, and I had really crappy gear plus the eminent GKT.

[Demonjustin]

I personally don't have an issue with taking good players with Eminent weapons, but overall as an attempt to fix this issue it failed because the majority of leaders just don't invite people who don't match up to the expected levels of power.

[Xantavia]

I personally don't have an issue with taking good players with Eminent weapons, but overall as an attempt to fix this issue it failed because the majority of leaders just don't invite people who don't match up to the expected levels of power.
Yup, thats a playerbase problem. You said you'll take a good player with an eminent weapon, but sadly there are those who see a good player is one who already has a strong weapon instead of the guy who is able to sqeeze out a good showing despite what their wielding.

[Demonjustin]

THe reason for that is that it's easier to look at a persons gear to determine their skill rather than how they play. For example I play RDM as a DD job and few let me do it even though I've shown in many occasions that I can use RDM and still DD just as well as others can in some instances. Going by a player's real skill is much harder and so it's hardly done. 117 gear was likely an attempt to get us to invite non-119 players but the mindset just doesn't allow for it, the attempt really only resulted in killing more of the Bayld and Plasm gear while making it insanely easy to get gear that allowed players to beat content like SKCNMs rather than having a true later/stepping stone system like they originally wanted. In the end nothing short of handing out 119 weapons would've had a chance of solving the problem and doing that would've simply ended up shifting the expected gear to an even higher level in some way, be it RME or Xhits, something would've been chosen besides weapons most likely and things wouldn't have changed. Either way, that's my best guess on why SE made RoE gear so high in the first place, and as much as I wish it worked it sadly just made things in the game more meaningless.

[Castanica]

FFXI playerbase logic:

Player A :The game is dead, where are all the players?! This is so sad, we NEED MORE PLAYERS or server merges, something! Help Square, my server is dead! So many players keep leaving!
New player : Hi, could I join your group? My gear is the best I'm able to get right now, should be more than adequate for this fight and I've read up on the strat.
Player A : No sorry your gear sucks cause I want a fast kill, also not enough experience.
New player :Well I tried FFXI, nobody lets you progress so time to move to another game I guess.

Player A :SQUARE the servers are getting worse! I can never get players to join my groups and I have to keep using my alts. DO SOMETHING THE GAME IS DYING.

New player 2:Hi, sorry to bother you but could you please help me with my limit break, it's just a short way across from you and should take no more than 5 minutes. I only ask since you don't seem to be busy right now and have been standing there for 10 minutes :/
Player A :No sorry I can't be bothered, also get gud you should be able to solo those.

Player A :Square DO SOMETHING WE NEED MORE PLAYERS, THEY KEEP LEAVING! FIX YOUR GAME!

New player 3: Hi Square, I love the game. Been playing a month now and I have some suggestions for making the game better so that I and many others will stick with it. Right now it's just not fun but the fixes are pretty easy I think. Just removal of some tedious gates and things will be so much better for me and all the other new players and returnees.
Player a :Get lost scrub, what do you know? That leveling/job unlock/missions should be longer, harder and MORE boring because I did it you have to as well.
New player 3:But this is content you will never do anyway since all your jobs are capped, so why do you care about my experience on leveling content? When you did it FFXI was a group based game, that's not the reality of it now and it's just not fun to do these things in empty zones.
Player a :Meh if you can't even do that, you're worthless as a player ANYWAY cause you won't put up with the grind at endgame, we don't need you in our game. Leave.
Player a :Hey guys I'm leveling in alt, can I bring it to leech in aby?

Player a :I wish FFXI had a good community again like it used to, what happened?!....god this gimp keeps asking to join, someone log an alt on to fill the spot.

[Olor]

true stuff

Yeah pretty much, nailed it.


117 gear was likely an attempt to get us to invite non-119 players but the mindset just doesn't allow for it, the attempt really only resulted in killing more of the Bayld and Plasm gear while making it insanely easy to get gear that allowed players to beat content like SKCNMs rather than having a true later/stepping stone system like they originally wanted.

They messed it up originally when they added skirmish and delve at the same time and allowed outside delve bosses to be held indefinitely, then went back and changed that.

Honestly they royally messed up ilevel progression... so much of the gear is so new and so useless. Like ALL the early plasm stuff is pretty much garbage now. I don't really understand why they don't do something to allow it to be upgraded to 119. And they might as well delete the NQ bayld gear - who is going to buy it? It just clutters up the menu and you have to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll to get to anything worth buying.

[Xantavia]

FFXI playerbase logic:

New player 3: Hi Square, I love the game. Been playing a month now and I have some suggestions for making the game better so that I and many others will stick with it. Right now it's just not fun but the fixes are pretty easy I think. Just removal of some tedious gates and things will be so much better for me and all the other new players and returnees.
Player a :Get lost scrub, what do you know? That leveling/job unlock/missions should be longer, harder and MORE boring because I did it you have to as well.
New player 3:But this is content you will never do anyway since all your jobs are capped, so why do you care about my experience on leveling content? When you did it FFXI was a group based game, that's not the reality of it now and it's just not fun to do these things in empty zones.
I can agree with the first 2 points you make, but I disagree with this. What you consider to not be fun, I do. What you may see as roadblocks to progress, I see as learning about the geography of the world along with the way the game works. I hear complaints that there is nothing to do in the game until you get to endgame, but then see constant requests on this board to get rid of any challenges on the way to accessing endgame. It is different playstyles and mindsets, one group cares about the journey, the other the destination.

[Olor]

I hear complaints that there is nothing to do in the game until you get to endgame

Where are these complaints? I've never seen anyone complain there is not enough STUFF that can be done before endgame. The problem is the content isn't generally worthwhile and doesn't add to progression. Contrary to what some believe most players aren't interested in content for the sake of it - it has to be content that advances the character somehow. Otherwise it's not content, it's grind.

I honestly NEVER heard anyone say there is "nothing to do in the game" till endgame. They might have been complaining "there is nothing WORTH DOING in the game till endgame" or "There is no group oriented content before endgame" and both those would be correct. Endlessly soloing outdated missions is not what most people consider fun.

The reason why people are asking for gating to be removed is cause they play MMOs to play with other people... forcing them to spend several months soloing outdated content is not fun. Look, when all you old timers did this content it was CURRENT. It was useful. It was done with groups. Was it hard? Yeah it was a challenge and it took a long time and it was important to get it done.

Now it's just a gate that keeps new players from playing with their friends and getting their gear good enough so they can play in modern content. I don't see why people don't see why people would object to being forced to solo for a month or more just to get to the point where they can play with others.

[Malithar]

The problem is the content isn't generally worthwhile and doesn't add to progression. Contrary to what some believe most players aren't interested in content for the sake of it - it has to be content that advances the character somehow. Otherwise it's not content, it's grind.

Is that not the very point of gated content? Gotta agree with Xant, it comes off as "I don't want to do that, gimme the rewards NOWZ!" They've gone back and removed nearly all (or maybe all?) of the JP midnight and conquest tally waits. From my understanding, it's far, far easier to complete these things now. HP warps, Waypoint warps, faster travel, higher character power level making it easier to get through, etc. It's fairly easy to do, yet it's an unrewarding grind that's unnecessary, says the one's who want the rewards, without the work.

[Olor]

Is that not the very point of gated content? Gotta agree with Xant, it comes off as "I don't want to do that, gimme the rewards NOWZ!" They've gone back and removed nearly all (or maybe all?) of the JP midnight and conquest tally waits. From my understanding, it's far, far easier to complete these things now. HP warps, Waypoint warps, faster travel, higher character power level making it easier to get through, etc. It's fairly easy to do, yet it's an unrewarding grind that's unnecessary, says the one's who want the rewards, without the work.

W/E I've done most of it now on this character and a lot of it on multiple other characters I lost over the years because of SE's formerly crummy payment system... it's about wanting to play with other people not do really REALLY REALLY boring stuff alone and pay a company for the privilege of doing it. Look down on it all you want, easy to say when you're done all of it - but I personally would like to see this game continue for a long time and that will never happen if the community continues to fight for this to be a game for masochists only.

Of course people want content to be rewarding. I don't see why that's seen as some kind of moral weakness. People want to make progress on their character. Grind is okay as long as it's meaningful... expecting people to mindlessly grind just to unlock the "privilege" of accessing meaningful grind... well that's not a good way to retain subs.

Funny I don't see all these posters talking about how MUST NOT MAKE GAME FUN FOR NEW PLAYERS going out of their way to help/lead people through this content - at least they wouldn't then be stuck tabbing to a wiki, bored out of their mind, frustrated and lonely...

but nope, all the lifers here, complain that a new player might like to actually play the fun part of the game, and then don't do a thing to help said new players get through the horrible horribly boring grind of going through all the gates.

When's the last time you helped a new player get atma? Or ran them up the Tor?

[Demonjustin]

People complain about the journey because now days it's often a journey made alone rather than with company. No one comes to a MMO environment to be told that only after a few weeks of doing old content that everyone else has long since completed can they finally experience a part of the content the community is currently playing and thus play with others. I understand why people want to keep things as they are somewhat but the thing is that no one is forcing you to do things the way some want to, if I want to upgrade my Artifact to 109 or 119 before I finish CoP I'd still be able to, that wouldn't change, but if I don't want to I'd be allowed that flexibility.

Every player is fully capable of giving themselves personal challenges if they so choose, I personally challenged myself to solo Briareus and Sobek before I would finish my Almace, I did the same thing with the NMs I needed for my Excalibur's trials. If these are things you truly enjoy then why must you have SE enforce them upon you rather than doing these things yourselves? Personally, I see no reason to make other players conform to one specific method, but as it is right now no matter which you prefer in the end you're stuck with getting the journey even if you're more interested in the destination you'd reach at the end of it.

[Malithar]

W/E I've done most of it now on this character and a lot of it on multiple other characters I lost over the years because of SE's formerly crummy payment system... it's about wanting to play with other people not do really REALLY REALLY boring stuff alone and pay a company for the privilege of doing it. Look down on it all you want, easy to say when you're done all of it - but I personally would like to see this game continue for a long time and that will never happen if the community continues to fight for this to be a game for masochists only.

Of course people want content to be rewarding. I don't see why that's seen as some kind of moral weakness. People want to make progress on their character. Grind is okay as long as it's meaningful... expecting people to mindlessly grind just to unlock the "privilege" of accessing meaningful grind... well that's not a good way to retain subs.

So now we're back to "I've done it before, I'm a vet, make it easier so I don't have to bother"?

RotZ blocks you from doing certain VW that may or may not be popular on your server, AA, DM, Fulcrum, and Nexus fights. It could also be knocked out in literally a few hours, there's very little involved with these missions. Storyline is butt though.

CoP blocks you from Ouryu and Tenzen, both fights that are only partial way through the missions, though Tenzen is on the farther end. You'll also need access to Al'taieu for reforged armor, but that's hardly blocking you from participating in content, you just can't upgrade the armor until you've gone that far. Admittedly, it may take a few days, maybe even a week to do those depending on play time. Storyline is at least solid here.

ToAU blocks you from Lancelord and Gessho, both about mid way through the missions. The missions were never that hard, though things like BCG and the training may be annoying and time consuming, the rest of it is mostly a breeze. Storyline is also fairly decent.

WotG, you'll be blocked out from whatever fights they're presumably adding in September, and WoE is also locked out. They can take a good bit of time, though tbh, I'd imagine it's greatly shortened now without anymore JP midnight or conquest updates. Again, fairly decent storyline, if a little disjointed and hard to follow or make sense of at times.

All of these are a one time completion. Go through once, done, you've progressed your character to the point of being able to do that content. In a few words, you've grinded reasonable content to progress, the grind was meaningful, it had purpose. From the standpoint of an MMO developer, is that really asking too much of your player base? I see the argument a lot of "I just want to play with my friends!" Then how about your friends help, ya know, just like they did back in the old days that you guys seem to slam so quickly? It's far easier, far quicker, and the rewards that everyone wants (Rajax, Moonshade, access to content, etc) are all still in place. It's progressing your character, how could you not want that? I guess this is the outlook that this generation of gamers carries with it. Skip the work, get to the rewards. Even when that "work" is far from anything of the like.

[Olor]

I want to clarify, I've never suggested unlocking hard mode fights for people that have not done the fights in storyline. I want unrelated content (such as not being allowed to do any reforging till almost finishing COP) to be removed.

And no, I wasn't arguing that I was a vet, I am saying these roadblocks inhibit fun.

[Malithar]

I want to clarify, I've never suggested unlocking hard mode fights for people that have not done the fights in storyline. I want unrelated content (such as not being allowed to do any reforging till almost finishing COP) to be removed.

Can get behind that, cause as you said, it's largely unrelated. It's just all the other things mentioned go hand in hand with completing the missions for various reasons that made me read your post as dumb it all down. The vet comment was more aimed at a line from earlier in this thread (I think?). Your comment of returning multiple times just brought it to mind. :P

[Castanica]

I think people need to understand what FFXI is for a new player, a lot don't get this because they have a linkshell and have friends in-game.

FFXI is a single player RPG from 1 till 99 that you pay a subscription for, that is what FFXI now is. You don't make friends in parties, you don't make friends in misison fights it's solo all the way.

When I initially played you had groups for everything, every zone had people in them and it was an MMO first and foremost (people used to throw linkshell invites at you and everyone was really talkative due to the nature of xp parties and everyone being happy when they had a party). Many things like missions were group based activities.

Now you're extremely lucky to find a zone with another living person in it, all missions are solo affairs because there is nobody else to do it with. The even added leveling buddies (that dissapear if you dare invite someone LOL) because there is nobody to level with.

Many things like missions that takes 2 hours due to hilarious faffing "run to zone a, talk to npc, come back to home nation, talk to npc, go back to zone a, another cut, back" was offset by the community aspect of the game. Sure it was unfriendly and boring in the past too but their was a payoff, there were group fights along the way and there were lots of people around. What worked in a community based MMO with group based fights won't work in a single player mmo like FFXI and people will bail.

I say again, FFXI is a single player MMO for almost every single new player. Given that, why should new players stick with this game when it's so unbelievably unfriendly, confusing (if you don't know wiki exists), boring and that you have to pay for? the chances of meeting another human being are almost nil.

When I started this game 8-9 years ago I didn't know to go look on websites for walkthroughs for everything, the game sure didn't tell you what to do adequately or what was available. Other players told me about things, I joined a linkshell and more people told me things or helped me.

Leveling is the hook for these games, leveling is now a single player experience and it's horrible. If the game isn't fun, isn't in any way enticing why will anyone stick with it?

[Zarchery]

While your argument is valid, if we did it and got new players but got no new players without doing it then it seems like the obvious better option. No one will really stop from coming back because of these things so why not do it?

The practical problem is that it fixes nothing in the long term. You double XP now, maybe attract a few short term players. What do you do a year from now when that XP rate becomes the new normal and people still feel like they're levelling too slowly? Remember a few months ago when they increased the movement speed? Remember how awesome that felt at first? Does anyone even notice that any more?

I keep seeing all these people who have this attitude of "I hate so many aspects of this game, can we please change them?" Like that doofus Crevox, who's average post went something like this:

"I went through the Chains of Promathia missions and it was the worst experience in all of creation! I hated hated hated hated hated it! It was like having my skin peeled off! Please get rid of this aspect of the game because I hate it so much!!!!!"

Making changes to really awful things that a big swath of the players hate, such as say the glacial levelling pace pre-Abyssea, or the insane repop time of TOAU beastman kings, makes some sense. Because that's an actual improvement to loyal customers. But trying to bend over backwards to appeal to your most demanding and difficult to satisfy customers is no way to run a business. Because you're not going to win new customers. You're going to get some temporary string of new blood for a very short time, then you'll be right back where you started and have to up the ante again.

You know, I don't like fighting games. Too fast paced and chaotic for me. The Smash Brothers series is really popular. But I don't go and, like, demand that the game be slowed down to be turn based instead of everything happen simultaneously. I actually accept that there are video games I don't like. It's an attitude some people can't accept. If this game is really so crushingly awful, don't play. It's a GAME. It's supposed to be fun.

[Puck]

I think people need to understand what FFXI is for a new player, a lot don't get this because they have a linkshell and have friends in-game.

FFXI is a single player RPG from 1 till 99 that you pay a subscription for, that is what FFXI now is. You don't make friends in parties, you don't make friends in misison fights it's solo all the way.

When I initially played you had groups for everything, every zone had people in them and it was an MMO first and foremost (people used to throw linkshell invites at you and everyone was really talkative due to the nature of xp parties and everyone being happy when they had a party). Many things like missions were group based activities.

Now you're extremely lucky to find a zone with another living person in it, all missions are solo affairs because there is nobody else to do it with. The even added leveling buddies (that dissapear if you dare invite someone LOL) because there is nobody to level with.

Many things like missions that takes 2 hours due to hilarious faffing "run to zone a, talk to npc, come back to home nation, talk to npc, go back to zone a, another cut, back" was offset by the community aspect of the game. Sure it was unfriendly and boring in the past too but their was a payoff, there were group fights along the way and there were lots of people around. What worked in a community based MMO with group based fights won't work in a single player mmo like FFXI and people will bail.

I say again, FFXI is a single player MMO for almost every single new player. Given that, why should new players stick with this game when it's so unbelievably unfriendly, confusing (if you don't know wiki exists), boring and that you have to pay for? the chances of meeting another human being are almost nil.

When I started this game 8-9 years ago I didn't know to go look on websites for walkthroughs for everything, the game sure didn't tell you what to do adequately or what was available. Other players told me about things, I joined a linkshell and more people told me things or helped me.

Leveling is the hook for these games, leveling is now a single player experience and it's horrible. If the game isn't fun, isn't in any way enticing why will anyone stick with it?So right in every way. This is the state of the game today.

Everyone arguing against simplifying and easing the shittiest parts of the game are people that already did it a long time ago who would in no way be effected by those changes. Or worse, spiteful people that struggled through it and think others should have to struggle through it, too.

99 is where the actual MMORPG starts in today's FFXI. Actually, no. Lv99 with i119 gear is when it starts. And only if you picked one of the handful of jobs people want.

Imagine being a new player, choosing a job you like, struggling solo to get all the way to 99, working hard to get some decent gear, and then you find out nobody wants to invite your job to anything. So now you get to go back and do it again. Easier the second time, but not without a bitter taste in your mouth. But hey, at least you can use your unwanted 99 job to play through all those old missions nobody wants to do with you.

These days, it's REALLY hard for brand-new players to fall in love with this game. It's a lonely journey to endgame, where the community is more restrictive than ever. It's no wonder new players don't stick around anymore.

[Ramzi]

My fondest memory in FFXI was doing the CoP missions with a static party back when it was really REALLY hard. We learned the fights together, and got through it with teamwork. What an incredible feeling to finally beat Promathia and collect our rings. A new player just wouldn't have that same experience now. People need to understand that ripping your hair out trying to find the way to the top of that dumbass mountain in Attohwa (if you can even get to the entrance past all those idiotic miasma gates) is just not appealing anymore (it never was, but in the past we had a team to do it with, for the lolz). Waiting until "japanese midnight" to continue a mission where you are trying to finish it as quick as possible to complete the storyline for access to HM battlefields is not cool. It's bad enough that the story content needs to be done in the first place since it's all so irrelevant, but to have roadblocks along the way is just frustrating and unneccessary.

I put many hundreds of hours doing various story related content in FFXI. I enjoyed most of it, and despised some of it, but I would never wish that experience on a new player with no one to help them. If ever there was a time to implement an "I win" button, it's now. The game is rapidly going downhill despite unprecedented amounts of updates and TLC being given to it (and as a veteran player, I cannot express enough thanks to the devs). But to new players, it's all for nothing if they are unable to have an enjoyable experience. More and more vets are getting bored, or frustrated with the elitism at endgame, and no new players will stick around to replace them.

Lucky for me, my attachment to this game comes and goes, and if it were to vaporize from the face of the earth it probably wouldn't bother me at all. But for some, it would be devastating, and those are the same people pushing newbies away with their self centered attitude. The elitists are only hurting themselves by wanting to keep FFXI the way it used to be.

[Mefuki]

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm glad that things have become much more reasonable in FFXI, especially for new players. I was one of those people that beat CoP while it was still hard and was actually pleased that people would get the chance to advance in the mission line when it got easier (read: more reasonable). Levelling, in hindsight, was SO ridiculous. It took me a year, literally a year to get my first 75 job. Tons of things have changed for the absolute better but there's something I don't understand that keeps getting brought up in these topics:


I don't think I'm understanding peoples definition of "gate" or "roadblock". The CoP "gate" issue is really an odd one to me. It's not like old CoP.

It's not like how leveling used to be where you COULD NOT progress without other people. Where if the correct jobs or people weren't online, you were dead in the water.

Or Legion, where you simply weren't "allowed" to join without the "correct" jobs. Where if you were only interested in playing with the "wrong" job, you were dead in the water.

JP midnights: Roadblock. Trying to get through Necropolis, Quicksand Caves, etc in old FFXI: Roadblock. Trying to buy items from shops on holidays: Roadblock. Old AU Beastman king kills: Roadblock.

Heck, even current Delve I could CONCEIVE how someone would think that even IT is a minor "roadblock" because you still need to know some people who are decently geared and know the NM's strategies etc.

There's nothing "dead in the water" or "roadblock"-y about CoP. You just have to go and do it, on your own or with others, any time you want. So, I don't see the issue. A roadblock is something that impedes your progress and there's nothing you can do about it. And that isn't really happening anymore with mission content (and most things these days), as far as I know. You may as well start complaining that FFXI is giving you incentives to play.

Also, have we really reach the point where some people are complaining about having to collect Home points. You have to do it once and it's done forever and it's SO worth doing. Why complain about having to unlock things that can be done at any time with anyone, solo or in a group of however many friends you wish? Isn't that how games are suppose to operate? By that definition of roadblock, every video game in existence is riddled with roadblocks. "I want to go to the Shine of Winter but I HAVE to collect Great Souls or have 1,000,000+ souls. Roadblock." "I want to go to Tick, Tock Clock but I HAVE to get a ton of stars. Roadblock." "I want to go into Ganon's Castle but I need 6 Medallions. Roadblock." etc.


TL;DR: I'm for removing gates and roadblocks but we need to make sure we're not confusing game progression for roadblocks.

[Demonjustin]

The practical problem is that it fixes nothing in the long term. You double XP now, maybe attract a few short term players. What do you do a year from now when that XP rate becomes the new normal and people still feel like they're levelling too slowly? Remember a few months ago when they increased the movement speed? Remember how awesome that felt at first? Does anyone even notice that any more?

I keep seeing all these people who have this attitude of "I hate so many aspects of this game, can we please change them?" Like that doofus Crevox, who's average post went something like this:

"I went through the Chains of Promathia missions and it was the worst experience in all of creation! I hated hated hated hated hated it! It was like having my skin peeled off! Please get rid of this aspect of the game because I hate it so much!!!!!"His feedback when it comes to earlier things in the game is actually far more valuable than most of us who are on these forums because he's actually a new player who was doing it all. He came here with a few friends and by the end of it was the only one left. That would seem to be the best kind of feedback you can get actually since it's an objective look at it rather than people like us who did it when it was harder and despite what we may think we are bias toward leaving it as it was due to the fact it simply doesn't hurt us and we've already done it. As for the whole idea of always asking for more, I admit that is an issue, but really the only changes they'd need to make to XP is kill the stupidly huge slope that develops at 50 and it'd be fine. Up till 50 RoE and pages make leveling quite fast and keep it going at a nice rate, once you hit 50 the slope that develops in your XP is so noticeable and so slow that it just becomes a boring drag at that point. This extends from normal jobs to Monstrosity as well and is actually why almost all of my monsters stop at level 60, the 50+ slope kills leveling being at all enjoyable to me.

Changing this slope and then adding an advanced level sync system where the party leader can select the synced level so that missions and such can be done at certain levels would be perfect and no one would be hurt nor their experiences ruined. People who want to level fast, would level fast. People who want to level slow could sync themselves to lower levels to get that very same feel, and do missions at lower levels as to make them harder and more challenging providing all of those same experiences we all had when we were forced to do them at those levels.


Making changes to really awful things that a big swath of the players hate, such as say the glacial levelling pace pre-Abyssea, or the insane repop time of TOAU beastman kings, makes some sense. Because that's an actual improvement to loyal customers. But trying to bend over backwards to appeal to your most demanding and difficult to satisfy customers is no way to run a business. Because you're not going to win new customers. You're going to get some temporary string of new blood for a very short time, then you'll be right back where you started and have to up the ante again.If that's the case then so be it, but this player base is shrinking on many servers and it's not an issue that's going to be fixed by leaving old content as it is when new players have to trek through it all before getting to where everyone else is. I'm not saying focus everything on that, I'm saying make a few small but largely meaningful tweaks to the older parts of the game and remove some of the old game prerequisites from things so that players can more easily join the game and get into it.


You know, I don't like fighting games. Too fast paced and chaotic for me. The Smash Brothers series is really popular. But I don't go and, like, demand that the game be slowed down to be turn based instead of everything happen simultaneously. I actually accept that there are video games I don't like. It's an attitude some people can't accept. If this game is really so crushingly awful, don't play. It's a GAME. It's supposed to be fun.That's a stupid argument. Oh, I don't like how something is, but rather than providing feedback and asking for things to be changed that seem to drive people away I should say nothing and just not play it at all, even if what I'd be asking for wouldn't change other people's experiences in a negative way in the long run.

[Olor]

I don't think I'm understanding peoples definition of "gate" or "roadblock". The CoP "gate" issue is really an odd one to me. It's not like old CoP.


It's a roadblock because I could upgrade my relic to +2 without finishing COP but I had to get it almost to the very end to reforge it.... why? I have no idea - it's totally arbitrary.

That's what I mean by a roadblock. Forcing someone to spend a month working on missions to do something completely ENTIRELY unrelated to said missions... is a road block.

Not allowing me to get my KI for Voidwatch Zilart T2 because I haven't gone far enough in Zilart missions is a roadblock.

Do I care that it will ruin the order of progression (supposed to unlock sky through mission vs through voidwatch) Nope. I don't. I'd rather just be able to do voidwatch than have to run through Zilart before I could do what were some of the most popular fights during the height of it.

Now of course no one even wants to do those fights. I missed out entirely because I didn't have quest progression. Bummer.

[Lithera]

@ Mefuki most of the CoP roadblock complaints and really most of the this is a roadblock complaints is the needing to actually have to do the traveling part. Along with the "Yo-Yoing" before getting to the fights. Yet look at the last chunk of SoA missions how many times did we have to go back to the library or Levil, or to the dragon before our fight? If having to travel here and there while doing a mission is a person's main complaint then they're not want to do the current story once it's finished even for the holy crap item at the end that probably will be something everyone should have that suits their main jobs the best.

The soloing the missions can be a problem for new people if they don't shout for it or nicely send someone a tell that's in the same zone as them. Yesterday had a person shout for help on the final limit break and yeah I didn't respond, but I was busy doing a quest. Did see a person tell them to go get the items with log in points, but didn't see another shout from the person asking. :/

@Demonjustin the problem with Cervox is he complained after burning himself out after two months. He partly did this because his friends just wanted to get to the destination and not want to help him to do the older content. He also didn't feel that it was ok for him or his friend to ever have to wait for all of them to be on to go do something. That actually waiting was part of the game's problem and not maybe idk on him and his friends. Sure it can be frustrating trying to get a group together to do something specialy if so many have differing available play times.

I guess I am just used to looking up things on a wiki mainly because it's what I or my husband did during events we or our group were trying for the first time. It also was the response I got a lot from the lazy or smartarses in my LSes. Or we would be looking up fights to know the info for our group because we'd be the ones the rest would look to for info. Or if someone was having trouble unlocking something or completing a quest and our memory was forgetting that one minor step.

I would still hope the devs take a look at the level sync idea on the battle content section, because that is a great thread. I'm sorry I can't remember who the guy was who started that one about wanting to be able to have optional level syncs so that they could enjoy the hardness of the fights with their extraordinary group.

[Feary]

Mules are only usable in place of real players in serious content because of 3rd party programs. Frankly, it's part of the "not taking" people problem. The problem boils down to people being selfish though. SE shouldn't let people blatantly brag about cheating with zero consequences, it's certainly doing nothing to help the game. Yeah if the only way to get content done is to use 3rd party programs and have 2 accounts it does nothing to attract and keep new players playing. It's toxic.

No one is forcing Draylo to take mules instead of players. Frankly, I'm disgusted he can come on the official website and constantly brag about using third party tools with zero consequences. (Or "complaining" that he takes mules instead of inviting real players to parties)

I recognize that banning everyone who uses 3rd party tools at this point would annihilate the playerbase - and I know my viewpoints on them are not popular, but there needs to be some action taken so that it doesn't devolve further into "no 3rd party tools? No invite" than it already has.

I don't even blame most people who use them, when it takes 3 macros for me to cast a spell and they can cast with one button press or a specialized keystroke that does all their gear changes for them, it certainly enhances their performance so it can meet the standards that players set for each other... but I do blame SE for not sending a clearer message that once they have implemented gearsets etc they will no longer be tolerating tools that automate gearchanges outside the game.

Or they need to just link to windower from the official website and make it clear that in order to play competitively you'll need to use it. The status quo, where spellcast and other 3rd party tools that automate gear changes are officially against the rules but people feel comfortable enough breaking the rules to all but brag they are using it on the official forum... it's not sustainable. Those tools are a big part of what's dividing the playerbase.

Not everyone wants to have to write xml scripts to play this game seriously. No one should have to, since, officially, they are against the rules.

I think this is part of the balancing problem too. SE is busy scaling the game against what the "best" players can do, but I think you'd see if you looked that all those players are using 3rd party tools. So the game gets scaled against people who are running a program that automatically switches your gear for you when you reach certain HP levels or MP levels or w/e ... The rest of us have to make judgement calls and press several buttons.

While the gearsets will help even this out - it won't eliminate it completely. Even having to swap palettes and stuff is a great way to lose valuable time. People using these tools can just type a couple letters and bam! they are reacting.


When i starting play the game in 2004, i had it for ps2 and pc. i dual-boxed and played alts before 3rd party tools.

i dont take kindly to these assumptions.

also mules are characters on the same account used to store items.

alts are characters you use to play with for content. as i type this im in a party with a bard who has terpender and doesnt use the new +song horn. seriously ppl just dont complain about imcompetence to feel better about themselves. you dont need 3rd party tools to switch 1 instrument. these are the example you defend with statements like that.

you use alts when you dont want to deal with the brd who cant complete a rotation or sings weak ass songs and not shouting for 3 hours to do an 6man aa fight because you missed the curve.

who the hell WANTS to level and control two players. i mean yes it nice to have. but really? i think this big part is also really lost in translation. yes they may say "haha i can do it by myself", however that shit is taxing.

so Olor get over yourself, it has nothing to do with what you have or use, its about what needs to be added.

Matsui said there is no right or wrong when it comes to type of content for new and old players. which makes the point of Draylo correct, we need more balance in the type of content available to play. 10 years there was leveling for 6 man and endgame for linkshell. it wasnt balanced. today there is endgame for 6man and leveling for solo. its taken 180. its still isnt balanced.

if it werent for these asshat elitest cheaters, i wouldnt have known better and would still be a gimp ass console player who journey would of ended back in 2005 at bibiki bay.

these players given us alot of information, skill, technique that would of never been possible to figure out.

[Feary]

just for the record. i hate botters as much as you do. i cant stand the existence of fish botting, farm botting and worm pt bots etc. anything that allow you to play away from your computer, just arent ok, they should rot in hell for it.

however, as for those who use addons that just enhancing features, i dont think there is anything wrong with it. they have morals and standards and work very hard to keep them. you may not agree with it, however i think the real problem is the player's with dipshit attitudes that has rubbed you the wrong way. it seems me like you are bitter old man, the only way you can get back at these players is by hating the game. which is in no way worth it, infact i would say imo that its irrational because of the things listed above.

as for those players who can do everything, and the play the game so well.
like matsui said and as i believe, it would be in the game best interest for s.e to accommodate both type players so stop fighting with each other.

the real problem is S.E cant do both, they have proven time and time again that they can only develop and release at a pace that is either for one or the other. ironically, they have become accustom to switching sides. slowing down the dfferent types of updates to keep the game at a steady pace. every time we get use to one side, we get hit with the other. giving us a whole new experience/spectrum and always something to strive/improve upon.

[Olor]

just for the record. i hate botters as much as you do. i cant stand the existence of fish botting, farm botting and worm pt bots etc. anything that allow you to play away from your computer, just arent ok, they should rot in hell for it.

however, as for those who use addons that just enhancing features, i dont think there is anything wrong with it. they have morals and standards and work very hard to keep them. you may not agree with it, however i think the real problem is the player's with dipshit attitudes that has rubbed you the wrong way. it seems me like you are bitter old man, the only way you can get back at these players is by hating the game. which is in no way worth it, infact i would say imo that its irrational because of the things listed above.



I don't "hate" people that use addons, a lot of them are my friends. I hate that the game is getting ruined because everyone is using addons. I swap my gears manually - it is entirely unpossible for me to compete with someone who has a script do it for them. The content ends up being tuned to the players whose gear swaps to idle sets automatically, has shortcuts for every spell that change gear automatically etc. SE tunes the content for people whose gear is always perfect because they don't have to press a button to make it happen.

Like sometimes I sing a song in my fast song gear, and when I press for my duration gear, for whatever reason, it just doesn't swap. The system is slow sometime, doesn't register the button presses. So, automatically I'm the "worse" bard because instead of having a script that automatically changes from my fast song to my duration gear, I have to press a button and sometimes it doesn't go off. I can't even react fast enough under nightengale/troub to use my fast gear because if I put it on the song insta casts and I can't get back into my duration gear. And of course, with limited lines I can't even make my sets perfect, let alone put both swaps into the same macro.



TL; DR: The way it is now though is not sustainable. The devs will never be able to appropriately tune content if a significant portion of the playerbase is performing much better than would be possible without scripts and other cheats.

[Demonjustin]

The thing people overlook is that changing gear in such a way isn't impossible within the confines of the game, rather they're making it even easier with the addition of being able to change entire sets in 1 line of a macro. You can't say that gear swapping in the way so many people are is causing the game to be impossible to balance and that without it things would be ok because even if people stuck to the vanilla game they could use gear swaps still it'd just be a much larger pain in the ass. I could personally use all of the gear swaps on RDM I do today but rather than taking 1 book and 8 lines I'd need multiple books and every line in them so I could use one 'homepage' line that I'd go back to with CRTL1 on every line and use that 'homepage' line as a way to change to each individual type of action I want to take, then use multiple lines around that to swap between fast cast and post cast gear. An example of what I mean is...

Homepage
CTRL : Healing | Enhancing | Nuking | Enfeebling | Dark Magic | Ninjutsu

Each sending me to a different book, then each book based on these things having a setup such as...

Enfeebling
CTRL : Paralyze II | Slow II | Blind II | Gravity II | Dia III | Bio III | Poison II | Silence | Addle | Dispel
ALT : Sleep | Sleep II | Break | Bind

Each of those would repeat for 5~7 lines, 2~3 gear swapping 5 pieces each and the last line of the macro taking you to the next line of macros with the middle one casting the spell and the second set of 2~3 swapping everything back to your idle set.

Yes, this method would be highly annoying, tedious, and time taking, as well as likely taking most of a player's books for only 2~3 jobs, but there are people who use vanilla on both Xbox and PS2 as well as a few on PC who already play the game this way. My best friend is a DRK who plays on Xbox because his PC is broken atm, he plays his DRK using WS sets and his macros are made in this exact way.

I don't mean to come off rude about it, but really what people do with things like Windower isn't so much a method of bypassing built in restrictions so much as making things like this more easily able to be done. If those things didn't exist fewer players would do it but there are plenty who still would go to the extents required to make the most of their gear and their abilities in this way.



tl;dr: The issue isn't how people are swapping, but the fact people are swapping at all if you look at it from that perspective. Outside programs aren't required to achieve the same level of swapping players are today, they only make it faster and easier to do.

[Olor]

I appreciate that explanation Justin. I am not very familiar with the capabilities of gearswap and spellcast programs but it was my understanding they could automatically detect latents/buffs etc and swap gear accordingly.

Like a cursory search brought up these examples of gear autochanging based on buffs (in spoiler tags for space)




How can you do something similar with in-game macros? Is there a way for the in-game macro system to detect when you have a buff and auto swap into gear precast, midcast etc? If there is a way I'd love to know it. Yeah you could manually make a separate set and press the button to equip it, but that's hardly the same thing as having a program do it for you. Especially in boss fights where there is a lot going on, having to make the choice between which buttons you're going to press does change your performance a LOT, especially given how easy it is to slip and hit the wrong macro etc.

It's unreasonable to suggest that automating things in such a way doesn't allow a player to squeeze more performance out. That's why people are using it, because they want to be the best.

This, in turn, makes the game harder to balance. Either it becomes a lot easier for the people using these tools to complete (who then complain they have nothing to do) or becomes much harder for non-using players to complete (who then complain they are shut out).

I get striving for really high performance, but I don't think it's good for the game to break the rules and use automated scripts for gear changes. That said, at this point I honestly think the best solution would be for the developers to work with/incorporate windower/spellcast/gearswap etc and encourage everyone to use it, because I don't see how they can balance the game with so many people breaking the rules... and given how widespread this use is, they'd end up banning 50-80 per cent of EU/NA playerbase if they banned people for it.

I'm trying to be balanced but this elephant needs to be addressed in order to address "new player experience"

[Demonjustin]

While I want to continue this discussion Olor I must ask you talk to me on a site such as FFXIAH about this subject through private messages. Speaking about such things here is the entire reason why I had to make this account, my support of such things is the exact reason my previous forum account was banned. While I don't blame GMs, and have had some even tell me they fully understand my point of view on the matter and would forward my thoughts to the higher ups, I understand they've a job to do and it is in it's description that they are to remove posts talking about it. While I'd like to continue to talk to you here, it's not the right place. If you message me on my Demonjustin(or Demon6324236) accounts on FFXIAH I'll be more than happy to continue it there.

[Zarchery]

That's a stupid argument. Oh, I don't like how something is, but rather than providing feedback and asking for things to be changed that seem to drive people away I should say nothing and just not play it at all, even if what I'd be asking for wouldn't change other people's experiences in a negative way in the long run.

The comment regarding fighting games was not "love it or leave it and don't give feedback on things that dissatisfy me". The point was that you don't ask for an utter overhaul to the very fundamentals of a system just because you don't like it. At some point it crosses from "I don't like these little details" to "I really hate all of this".

[Zarchery]

His feedback when it comes to earlier things in the game is actually far more valuable than most of us who are on these forums because he's actually a new player who was doing it all. He came here with a few friends and by the end of it was the only one left. That would seem to be the best kind of feedback you can get actually since it's an objective look at it rather than people like us who did it when it was harder and despite what we may think we are bias toward leaving it as it was due to the fact it simply doesn't hurt us and we've already done it.

The thing is that he was relentlessly complaining about easy content. Like I said, the bar was already considerably lowered from our old days, and he's all bent out of shape that it was still too hard. So what, we lower the bar further? Then what do we do a year later when the next Crevox comes along and is like "I wanted to reforge my artifact armor, but it took an entire hour to get all 5 original pieces! I hate this stupid roadblock! It's like Chinese Water Torture!!!!"

And it's like Lithera said, the dude ran into overdrive and burnt himself out after TWO MONTHS. Is that really what we need to rejuvenate the game? Whiny players who burn themselves out after two months and hate every minute of the experience?

[Demonjustin]

The thing is that he was relentlessly complaining about easy content. Like I said, the bar was already considerably lowered from our old days, and he's all bent out of shape that it was still too hard. So what, we lower the bar further? Then what do we do a year later when the next Crevox comes along and is like "I wanted to reforge my artifact armor, but it took an entire hour to get all 5 original pieces! I hate this stupid roadblock! It's like Chinese Water Torture!!!!"

And it's like Lithera said, the dude ran into overdrive and burnt himself out after TWO MONTHS. Is that really what we need to rejuvenate the game? Whiny players who burn themselves out after two months and hate every minute of the experience?You see this is where the mistake is made. You even just specifically said...


Like I said, the bar was already considerably lowered from our old days, and he's all bent out of shape that it was still too hard.I moved your bold a bit to cover what I'm talking about specifically. It's not hard, no one said it was hard, he even said a few times it's not a matter of difficulty but rather the very lack of it. Playing the game he was a SMN, or rather is a SMN as I've seen more of his posts around as of late and I'm happy he's back or around still at very least. Playing as a SMN you have to do multiple fame quests just to get to the point you can do the fights, so you can do fights that unlock the summonings for your avatars, normally that's already a pain but stack on top of that the whole trek to get Alexander and Odin as well and it's just a bunch of boring weak fights you have to do.

The entire reason any player would burn themselves out the way he did in two months isn't because the game wasn't necessarily for them, it's because the speed at which you can pick up and play the game is pathetic. You can compare your experience to his or any other new player's but it's nothing even close to what it was then. Saying things like "The bar was considerably lowered from our old days" just goes to show you're not thinking of the fact that in the old days, these things were spaced out and not expected of someone instantly. A SMN wasn't automatically assumed to have done all of CoP and gotten Alex/Odin, a DD wasn't assumed to have finished CoP for a Ring, a DW job wasn't assumed to have gotten Suppanomimi from DM already. These are all things we assume of people today just like PLDs have Ochain/Aegis and BRDs are 3 song, we expect these things of players by default at this point, as such new players are supposed to rise to this and achieve these things as they're starting off. If you make a brand new character, don't interact with anyone you know, do everything completely solo, and try to make it on your own without asking any favors or anything of that sort, it feels a lot harder than you'd think it is to get everything done in todays game even with all of the things they give new players we didn't have back then.

No one ever said the old fights are hard, the problem is the stupid high amount of time it takes to get them done so you can be at even the basic level everyone's expected to be at right now with missions and quests. Two months, is roughly the time it took a player to get into this game, and he burnt himself out on it because he tried to catch up within two months rather than taking even longer to get to the point of being able to play with others in events like Skirmish or Delve, where, you know, other players are. If we are to fault players for that, then we are only asking for no new players to even bother joining this game anymore.

[Lithera]

Ugh. You are ignoring the other huge reason he burnt out in those two months. He started the game with friends who just wanted to be at the finish line. So his friends put even more pressure on him to keep up with them and their goal. He did say that if he could of had the time he would have done things slower.

You might expect new people to have those things, but I don't specially if they say they're still a little new to the game or are just returning.

[Pixela]

Ugh. You are ignoring the other huge reason he burnt out in those two months. He started the game with friends who just wanted to be at the finish line. So his friends put even more pressure on him to keep up with them and their goal. He did say that if he could of had the time he would have done things slower.

You might expect new people to have those things, but I don't specially if they say they're still a little new to the game or are just returning.

When I played originally taking my time was perfectly fine, I met people during leveling parties that I became friends with. I was offered pearls, I was part of the world from level 12+. I didn't matter if I wanted to do crafting for weeks, or if I took 2 years to reach level cap, I was already part of the big mmo world of FFXI.

Fast forward to todays ffxi, if you aren't doing endgame you never meet anyone.

For new players FFXI is a lonely and almost pointless experience filled with boring tedium and road blocks, it's not even really an mmo at all until you get to cap. The game having 4 times as many servers as the population needs isn't helping either.

Leveling speed for me is fine, all the other things are not. Building fame for stupid amounts of time doing the same basic quests over and over to get things like avatar fights, huge amounts of running from one zone to another for basic cuts to do missions that.

I'd like to get sky but the running around for obscene amounts of time to do the few fun fights is off putting. Same for sea.

I want to play around in Abyssea but I'll never get atmas these days, things like that are what ruin the new player experience.

I recently finished promivions, it took me about 10 mins to climb and kill the boss each time. About 3 hours running on a chocobo between the crags.

[bungiefanNA]

The thing is, it doens't have to be such a large amount of running between the fights in CoP and Zilart. Geomagnetic Founts and homepoint warps will get you to nearly all of the zones. I did the tuns for those missions in January, and it was never much more than 10 minutes to run anywhere I needed to go from the new teleportation points. Voidwatch warps help a bit if you have done the starting cities. Running on chocobos between the crags was the slow way to reach Promyvion. There's a teleportation landing point in nearly every zone nowadays. It's a little work to unlock them, but once you do, you can go nearly everywhere from Jeuno/Adoulin in a matter of minutes.

[detlef]

How much of the game would you miss if you were stuck having only one or two "main" jobs? It's glossed over far too often, but it's a lot easier to get things done when people have many jobs leveled. If you have 6 people with a good spread of jobs, you can do almost anything. If you have 6 people and 3 of them only have PLD leveled, you're probably going to have issues.

I'm glad SE made leveling easier because it let me play many more jobs than I would have been able to otherwise. I would've been stuck with just BRD and RDM, and jobs like SCH and DRG would be things I could only read about.

A guy like Crevox kind of went against everything FFXI is. Level one job and try to use it for everything. Rather than level multiple jobs and use the best tool available for whatever needed to get done.

[Lordkyron]

I just wish we could use trust in abbysea so. We can experience that story. All you find there is worm partyes

[Calatilla]

Agreed. Or they should at least make the Double Exp Campaign a monthly thing. That way new players can always look forward to a time when they'll get a huge boost in levels. But really, yeah, it should be the norm. And skill gain rate should be doubled all-around.

As for Genkai, yes, they should remove it or make it much easier. The last thing we want is for people who're interested in the game to hit a wall and quit along the way (thereby losing their subscription and inching us one step closer to "FFXI is dieing" for real). They can still force a visit to Maat to raise the cap, but let new players spend beastman seals or geodes or whatever other junk they got while leveling to unlock the level cap. Remove the testimony requirement for players who have to fight Maat for the first time, that way they can just stroll in and challenge the fight as often as they need to. Stuff like that.

Everyone should be seriously concerned by the lack of new blood in this game. Sticking to the same old draconic bullshit we had to suffer all these years isn't healthy.

The level cap quests would be a road block if you had to do them for every job, which you don't. They don't slow down your leveling by much at all. If new players don't have the patience to do a couple of level caps on their way to 99 how do you think they'll react to endgame content. Wah I dont have 20 merits to do AA fights, please make meriting easier.

[Pixela]

The level cap quests would be a road block if you had to do them for every job, which you don't. They don't slow down your leveling by much at all. If new players don't have the patience to do a couple of level caps on their way to 99 how do you think they'll react to endgame content. Wah I dont have 20 merits to do AA fights, please make meriting easier.

Leveling has no relevance to Endgame,

A) There are players in WoW and FFXI that never did any serious endgame at all but just leveled and were part of the community. They still played for years, heck you can look at players right now and can you honestly tell me the majority of them are end-game geared? (as in not serious endgamers with all 119 gear).
B) Leveling is supposed to be the hook, once a player is addicted they will put up with far higher levels of rubbish later on. This is why you don't start by annoying people if you intend to keep them long-term.

In the past the community was a major part of what kept players around on FFXI, that is NOT the case anymore. I can speak personally that when I had problems with my AF quests, getting party invites, getting optical hat, getting missions done it was the other players and community, the living breathing world that made me put up with those annoying road blocks. There is no living breathing world anymore so it's more down to the developers making content work properly and flow well enough to keep you interested.

Also almost every single endgame player needs baby feeding, you know when almost all the endgame players started doing endgame on ffxi? When BG forums became a hub for sharing strategies. You know what would happen to endgame linkshells if the wikis and bgforums ceased to exist? You think all these endgame players would talk to every npc in the game, and try all different strategies to see if things work?

[Calatilla]

Who do you think makes these strategies? When a new event comes out people go out and try it using current strategy, if that fails they try something new until they figure it out. Also there is more than one way to beat content.

End game isn't for everyone I agree, back at 75 cap I didn't do endgame at all because standing around for hours waiting for an NM that may or may not spawn, wasn't my idea of fun. But you're making it sound like getting to 99 is a chore, if you think it's a chore now, then you obviously didn't play at 75 cap. It took me a year to get my first lv75 job back then, now you can do it in less than a week, even with the level caps to slow you down. SE even made the level caps easier to do. Leveling isn't hard, SE don't need to make it any easier.

[Damane]

How much of the game would you miss if you were stuck having only one or two "main" jobs? It's glossed over far too often, but it's a lot easier to get things done when people have many jobs leveled. If you have 6 people with a good spread of jobs, you can do almost anything. If you have 6 people and 3 of them only have PLD leveled, you're probably going to have issues.

I'm glad SE made leveling easier because it let me play many more jobs than I would have been able to otherwise. I would've been stuck with just BRD and RDM, and jobs like SCH and DRG would be things I could only read about.

A guy like Crevox kind of went against everything FFXI is. Level one job and try to use it for everything. Rather than level multiple jobs and use the best tool available for whatever needed to get done.

haveing lvld and haveing it geared are 2 total different things. it doesnt help if my sch that nukes tier 1 spells for 2k+ gets replaced by a blm that is barely scratching 400 on his t1 nukes.

[detlef]

haveing lvld and haveing it geared are 2 total different things. it doesnt help if my sch that nukes tier 1 spells for 2k+ gets replaced by a blm that is barely scratching 400 on his t1 nukes.Of course that's true but you can't gear it if you don't level it.

Obviously in a situation I described, you'd try to get people on their best jobs and the trash BLM person would hopefully have other geared jobs like BRD, COR, or something depending on what is needed. Trying to shoehorn a person into the group with one poorly geared job isn't what I was recommending.

[Camiie]

A guy like Crevox kind of went against everything FFXI is. Level one job and try to use it for everything. Rather than level multiple jobs and use the best tool available for whatever needed to get done.

I have problems with the view that jobs themselves should be situational. I understand it with gear. I understand it with abilities. I think a job should have far more value than that. Barring something like a Mythic, a job played well requires more time effort than any single piece of gear. Someone who puts forth that effort deserves better than to have their job shelved in the vast majority of relevant content.

[detlef]

Are you suggesting that every job should have a place in a 6-man PT (as an example) for every event with no exceptions? I'm not sure that's possible unless the remaining PT members make serious concessions. I mean, you can fit a SMN into any PT if you want. But if SMN doesn't make sense for the event in question, the rest of the PT is going to have to either do more damage, heal more, or provide more support in order to compensate. However, there are other times when bringing a SMN makes a great deal of sense, particularly in an alliance setting where you can fit many more jobs in.

Sometimes you really want to have a PLD for what you're doing. Sometimes you don't. If I can get away with it, I think it's preferable for a player to switch jobs rather than to switch the player out.

[urban]

to long to read. all these complaint i see in FFXIV fourm.. and now it coming to FFXI..
I left FFXIV cause it all hand me down.. everything to dam easy and no brain power needed. it got BORED QUICK, the only thing good is graphic nothing else. just go to FFXIV and stay away from FFXI please.... its easy enough already as it is...