FFXI VS. other MMOs

[Kanjitai]

I have played FFXI for a long time. Since PS2 release. I have also played other MMOs. I have noticed how a lot of players think FFXI is still the best and everything else is bad. I wanted to start a thread to discuss this. My opinion of late is that FFXI is too time consuming.

I don't mind it being hard but an example of how long it can take to do something is this: I spent 8 hours last night trying to cap my sword skill on my 73 RDM and went from 202 to 235 in 8 hours. One of my first thoughts was: I could have done more in WoW then I did in FFXI. I'm not saying that WoW is better. I'm just sharing what poped into my mind. Again I want this thread to discuss not flame so let's all try to stay mature.

I have also played other MMOs like Aion, Rift, Asda Story. I have noticed that almost every MMO now supports casual play. FFXI has become a lot better then those old days but I have a hard time beleaving that the devs haven't taken notice and tried to make FFXI a little more accessable. These are just my thoughts on the matter.

[Andylynn]

I have played FFXI for a long time. Since PS2 release. I have also played other MMOs. I have noticed how a lot of players think FFXI is still the best and everything else is bad. I wanted to start a thread to discuss this. My opinion of late is that FFXI is too time consuming.

I don't mind it being hard but an example of how long it can take to do something is this: I spent 8 hours last night trying to cap my sword skill on my 73 RDM and went from 202 to 235 in 8 hours. One of my first thoughts was: I could have done more in WoW then I did in FFXI. I'm not saying that WoW is better. I'm just sharing what poped into my mind. Again I want this thread to discuss not flame so let's all try to stay mature.

I have also played other MMOs like Aion, Rift, Asda Story. I have noticed that almost every MMO now supports casual play. FFXI has become a lot better then those old days but I have a hard time beleaving that the devs haven't taken notice and tried to make FFXI a little more accessable. These are just my thoughts on the matter.

FFXI has always been time consuming, most MMOs have had this mind set of requiring substancial time investment in order to become 'great.' As of late, MMOs have been shifting towards the market trends, if you notice, people have less and less time to play games, especially ones that cost money in the hard times of the US's economic issues. Throw in the fact that the market for MMOs in the P2P world isnt entirely growing, but the casual market is, you will see lots and lots of a walk towards that direction. FFXI is significantly less time consuming than a lot of MMOs out, and is one of the few that offers a fair play, rather than free to play play to win mentality. My reason for it being one of my favorite MMOs is because I do not have to work ridiculously in game only to become second rate to someone who bought their way to the top, and that, when you think about it, is just plain awesome.

[Jalonis]

If it took you 8 hours to get that much skill you were doing something wrong.

[Rambus]

Skill up is too time consuming yes.

leveling is too fast now, before I guess it depends who you ask. I did like the slow leveling because people actally did things at lower levels.

like the explore conquest thing (forget name) garssion, that 20 cap thing where you enter the local cave/ mine to pop NM ( like the windy one was Maze of Shakhrami.

The past slow leveling also made skilling up a bit less relvenet ( most main skills where caped before you leveled)

I only played WoW so i can say pro and con vs that.

FFXI > WoW:

better community
Takes more skill to play... before abyssea (my option)
friend list/offline messing (same FFXIV did not keep that)
Appeal to people with a lot of time

WoW > FFXI
better customer service (ingame GMs have more power to fix things)
better commutation between dev team and players ( though as you can see SE is trying to change this)
Cross server content
No blinking when you gear change(shocked FFXIV still has it)
Seemless zones ( FFXIV did a poor job to mimic that)
"raids" for lower levels, they start as low as level 15 ish (cant remember)
Appeal to casual, abyssea changed that a bit but you need long sitdowns for EXP ( I have poor experience to quote this because I do not know how FoV is like now)

[Dijana]

How the heck did it take you 8 hours for that little gain Oo Maybe needed higher/lower lvl mobs?

On topic though. Most mmos these days, particularly the F2P ones are all very straight forward and boring. Exp is gained from quests which are generally 'go here and talk to this npc' or 'kill x amount of this type of monster'. And most tend to have only the very basic job types- fighter healer mage and rogue.

I dont think ffxi is particularly time consuming, the changes have made it much more accessable to just go in and do what you want then leave. However what I dont like is that the game is really just restricted to 10 areas now. The 9 abyssea zones and port jeuno as a gathering place. Thats...basically all the game feels like right now

[Rambus]

My guess is that they tried on mobs too high level/ to low level and or try do it while trying to level in abyssea where mobs die too fast

[Kagato]

Honestly, no other MMO has held my attention as long as FFXI has. Right now, the only other games that I find almost as appealing are DC Universe and Final Fantasy XIV, but only because DC Universe is very unique and FFXIV is slowly turning into a real FFXI successor...just not yet.

Also, Guild Wars 2 is shaping up to be something amazing and I'm definitely willing to give it a look. However, as far as overall content, reward, community and gameplay, I find FFXI to be the best MMO out there for me. Games like WoW just don't do it for me and Aion was great at first, only to quickly turn into just another WoW with wings.

The problem with MMOs is that there aren't many who try to do something different. FFXI, WoW and Guild Wars stand out because they all offered something different that the other games did not have. ALmost everything else was a clone of another game. Now, DC Universe tries to be different by having you feel like a true superhero right from the start and taking on powerful villains early on, full flight or movement ability, and action-based fighting instead of mashing macros.

Guild Wars 2 is trying to make the entire world more lifelike while still making your character seem like a real hero and not just a suped up exterminator hunting rats at level 1. Have any of you seen footage of the first mission in that game? Awesome!

[Kanjitai]

If it took you 8 hours to get that much skill you were doing something wrong.

This is also something that I have noticed with the FFXI community of late. Jalonis's reply to my thread feels like an insult. I have never really been active on forums. I was active on FFXIV's Forums when I was selected as a tester. I moved to eorzeapedia's forums after. In the test forum and the player run I've noticed people just attacking each other. it's the same with FFXI.

[Vold]

This is also something that I have noticed with the FFXI community of late. Jalonis's reply to my thread feels like an insult. I have never really been active on forums. I was active on FFXIV's Forums when I was selected as a tester. I moved to eorzeapedia's forums after. In the test forum and the player run I've noticed people just attacking each other. it's the same with FFXI.
Insult? Attacking you? Hardly. If you took 8 hours to get so little skill then you were doing something very wrong. It's called helping. It should never ever ever take you 8 hours to go from 202 to 235 on sword if done correctly. Is your point valid about time sink? Sure. But you didn't do it correctly so it makes it a little less valid. I could do 202 - 235 sword in at least half the time you did, probably in 2 hours if not less. Targets very much matter. To me it was clear you were either killing something not high enough or something too high for your sword skill, or you were plain afk too much. At 202 you should be in the general area of vollbow or in the tree. Kuftal crabs or rabbits/lizards Cape. Around 220 you do crabs and raptors Cape. Sorta kinda can just skip to crabs and not bother with rabbits/lizards. Around 230 you do Cockatrice. Or you can skip all of that and go to tree. Bottom line skill up on things that fit your weapon skill. If it helps remember back in the day where you were at when you hit 175 skill and got that new magical multi hit WS during PT, go to that area and skill up then jump to the next camp after that, assuming you can remember it.

Or go by this: 200 skill = low-mid 60s. 230 skill = mid-high 60s. 250 = high 60s - low 70s. 270+ was mid-high 70s. All of that has probably been lowered with the change to DC cons to cap weapon skills. I notice that in cape stuff takes your skills a lot further than before. Just don't try to take a level 0 dagger and try to skill it on DC stuff. You're begging for trouble. Skills go by infinitely faster when you kill the appropriate targets for your weapon skill.

As for beyond 270 I typically just go to coast and kill the birds there for 280-300ish or whatever then do the rest in Abyssea as skills go a bit faster on tough+ cons.

[Kanjitai]

thank you for the advice you gave me Vold. I don't think Jalonis was attacking me. I just said it felt that way. I was taught to use I messages by my teacher of letting people know how I feel without coming across as mean or nasty. Please forgive me if I offended and thank you Vold for the skill up advice.

[lowkey]

FFXI is my favorite because it was my first (well aside from Neverwinter Nights way back in the day), and was the one I cut my teeth on. I measure every other MMO by it, and probably always will. I wouldn't say everything else is bad, just that nothing else appeals to me as FFXI still does, at the moment.

[Malamasala]

I hate to say it, but FFXI is probably the worst MMO in existence. Many, and I do mean many, other MMO have bountyful amounts of armors, while FFXI has always been "one option only". I've played UO, where you just kill monsters and find new weapons and armor. I've played Aion, where you just kill monsters and find armor and weapons. I've played WoW, where you kill monsters and find armor and weapons. FFXI seem to be the only one where you can't find decent armors, but have to go buy the single armor worth using from AH, or quest it. No options given.

Of course that is if you think a game is about getting items. If you are playing this game and daily killing Hydra for the fight, then I can accept FFXI possibly being a good game.

And if anyone wonders why I'm still playing, it is probably 25% me liking avatars (not available in other games), 25% my friends I've gotten, 25% the time I've invested already and 25% waiting on seeing when SE will make this MMO into something playable. (Abyssea did a fine job. I'd call FFXI in beta stage now, almost ready for a release)

[lowkey]

FFXI seem to be the only one where you can't find decent armors, but have to go buy the single armor worth using from AH, or quest it.

AH gear sucks, and has sucked for quiet some time. Quests generally give crap rewards, much of which you could buy from the AH or vendors. The very best gear comes from drops from NMs, HNMs, etc.

[Toren]

I really don't think making powerful gear drop from mobs is a good idea. I agree that Abyssea was nice and one of my favorite expansions (CoP was my favorite.) Making this game easier has had negative impacts on the game some which SE is correcting at the moment.

FFXI is in its own class. It's always been for people who work hard to achieve what they have I've spoken about this on various pages but the FFXI players experience now is way easier then it ever was and this is slowly making similar in difficultly to other MMORPG's.

For instance even Al'Taieu and Limbus was a privilege to earn that took weeks~months to obtain now it can be obtained in 2 days.

Salvage sets and Relics required months~years to complete and now there is some alternatives that are even better then them that can be obtained within weeks.

Leveling is also easier now then it was years ago its possible to max a job within 2-3 days as to where it originally took 1~3+ months to people who dedicated at least 4+ hours a day and where capable of finding *good* parties.

On other notes there was frustration of losing tons of exp to people who zoned monsters and accidentally MPK'd other exp parties, or dying many times in difficult CoP missions many times over with huge exp and even gil loss in some cases. The fact Raise only restored 25% of the exp lost from dying back then (if my memory serves correctly) also made it much harder.

NM's and HNM's also take less amounts of time now there's few if any fights that ever last over a hour anymore.

While these buffs and nerfs have made FFXI enjoyable for many people but it has also taken away from what made FFXI what it was.

Edit: While I'm not against all of the changes I'm just stating facts.

[Kailea_Nagisa]

I hate to say it, but FFXI is probably the worst MMO in existence. Many, and I do mean many, other MMO have bountyful amounts of armors, while FFXI has always been "one option only". I've played UO, where you just kill monsters and find new weapons and armor. I've played Aion, where you just kill monsters and find armor and weapons. I've played WoW, where you kill monsters and find armor and weapons. FFXI seem to be the only one where you can't find decent armors, but have to go buy the single armor worth using from AH, or quest it. No options given.



Where do you think that armor from the AH comes from? You have to earn it, not just kill some random monster. An MMORPG does not need butt loads of armor to be good, it needs a good selection of quality armor, and that is what FFXI has.

[HFX7686]

I like the inventory lists in FFXI. I have played other MMOs and those bags always irritate me. I like the lists better.

[kiren]

I would say the greatest weakness of ffXi v. others has nothing to do with the game itself but with the registration process/customer service aspect of the game. Let's face it SE and PlayOnline have the same customer service philosophy of a soviet bureaucrat. It was more difficult to get a account going for may wife than it was to buy a house. Now they figured registration maintenance needs to be done same time as billing cycle on the weekend. Checking forums there are lots of peeps who can't play due to some tech problem but no one at SE to talk to. Other games make registration process much easier. I am atonished frankly how game gets any new players given how hard SE and PlalyOnline make it to give them your money.

[Chiren]

The registration process definitely stinks. Far and away the worst registration process. Even to post on these forums we have to register twice, our FFXI account, or SE account, then go to account management and link the two together.... pretty unnecessary. And there's no intuitive link to the forums from playonline website, or from POL viewer.

Still, I think its undeniable that FFXI has some weird sort of staying power that many other MMOs lack. The story is the best of any MMO, and probably the best of many single player games too. And no other race is as endearing as tarutaru. ^^

[Kanjitai]

I just like to see Final Fantasy XI a little more streamlined. In other games you can quest and get experience, gear, money. In 11 for the most part you do these separately.

[Rambus]

I like the inventory lists in FFXI. I have played other MMOs and those bags always irritate me. I like the lists better.

huh?

If FFXI was WoW inventory I could easy bank each job bag and take it out ( FFXI would need a lot more bags/slots since wow is only 3 roles at max per chr)

it would take like 3 seconds to job change if FFXI was bag not list, list is annoying it takes too long to look and find gear for job change.

[HFX7686]

huh?

If FFXI was WoW inventory I could easy bank each job bag and take it out ( FFXI would need a lot more bags/slots since wow is only 3 roles at max per chr)

it would take like 3 seconds to job change if FFXI was bag not list, list is annoying it takes too long to look and find gear for job change.

Really? I find the lists easier to use because I just auto-sort it and I know where everything falls automatically.

I suppose that an inventory for each job would be interesting but I tend to use many pieces on multiple jobs, such as all my staves for my mage jobs or back when we had the 75 cap, a couple of choice pieces like Byakko's haidate, peacock amulet, and swift belt for my melee jobs.

But perhaps the bag inventory style would work for others.