My New Player Experience

[Heradite]

I have been playing through the main Final Fantasy series-every single one for the first time. I have beaten Final Fantasy I all the way through 9 and am currently working on 10.

One of my biggest questions of the series has been Final Fantasy 11 (and to some degree 14). After all it isn’t just an MMORPG (I’m not the biggest fan of the genre. World of Warcraft to me is the gold standard of the genre and even that game, I’d say is just good) but an old one. It’s getting a mobile reboot but I don’t want to play an MMORPG on my iPad.

Even though I am still playing through 10, I decided to start playing 11 on my free time. A couple days ago, downloaded and installed the game (should have waited until today). Man, getting into this game was a nightmare. For some reason, the Square Enix store wouldn’t take my credit card so I went through Paypal but I had to wait for this multibillion dollar company to verify the purchase for some reason.

Once it was verified (took like 15 minutes?), I installed the game which brought back good memories of when installers would take up the whole screen. But then...PlayOnline. It really wasn’t clear what I had to do to get my account up and running because there’s no real guide. The SquareEnix manual took me to a link that is now dead, I had no idea what PlayOnline ID was. Eventually I figured I had to go to the account site SquareEnix has, put in my activation code, and then tell the client all this. Why even though I bought the game directly from Square, they didn’t automatically put in the activation code for me and just tell me the information I needed is beyond me.

So I finally logged in to get some kind of portal I didn’t care about. I clicked “Play” and of course the game updates. Luckily it didn’t take 7 hours to update as it initially told me but 3 hours. No idea why it didn’t update before the sign-in drama. AND THEN after the update, after struggling to sign-in, I clicked play...and it told me I didn’t have Content ID or some nonsense. So naturally I slammed my head on the desk (metaphorically) and eventually figured out I needed to subscribe first. WHY NOT JUST TELL ME THAT OR WHEN I WAS CREATING THE PLAYONLINE ID EARLIER SQUARE!???

Anyways, once I get in….I couldn’t figure out a way to make the screen go full-screen as the setting to change the aspect ratio didn’t do anything. (?)

But my goal was to play the main story and the expansion stories and any big side quest along the way then move on. I’m not sure yet if that goal will be met. For one thing, the gameplay is weird? I’m not sure I like how dependent it is on the keyboard to navigate through battle menus and clicking +/- to go the menu is just odd. Even for an old game, the gameplay is pretty hard to adjust to. Also the user interface is not pretty.

Then I was struck with how large the city (Bastok) I was in...and how empty and lifeless it looked. Maybe in the heyday when the city was full of players, it was vibrant and exciting. But traveling large amount of vast spaces while most of the NPCs stand there like creeps, it didn’t feel immersive. Some of the NPCs do move in the city...so slowly, you’d think someone cast Slow on them. Compare this to the previous entries where even when the NPCs stood still, the cities were laid out and they were placed in such a way that the world still came life...and a lot of the NPCs moved at a decent speed!

Okay, fine. The maps are too big, the world didn’t feel real, and the gameplay is bad. The starting guide is helpful so I got some sense of what to do but even then...I’m still having to figure stuff out on my own. I think modern-day MMORPGs may hand hold too much but I actually appreciate a game telling me how it works and giving me SOME idea of what’s going on and such and the tutorial (even with the guide’s help) here just doesn’t do a good job.

Anyways, I decided it was a smart idea to go and start killing level one bees right outside Bastok. Only to die. Because I didn’t realize the game didn’t equip my starting weapon for some reason. Okay. Really? Soon I did kill some stuff and even started getting Trust. Which is nice because I’m anti-social. And I have started doing the story missions.

Man. After the first game, every Final Fantasy game up to his one has exciting beginnings. Heck, even the first one had you go rescue a Princess! The second one you have to run away from a battle and then prove your worth to the rebellion by undergoing a dangerous mission! The third one...well I kinda forgot but early on there was a scary ghost town and crystals giving you a destiny! The fourth one, you accidentally destroy a whole village! The fifth one I also kinda forget but I think there was a crash site you investigate/survive? The sixth one has Terra leading a charge on a town before waking up with amnesia. The seventh one you are literally bombing a reactor. The eighth one you are going to a cave to prove your worth and get a fire demon to help you. The ninth one you kidnap a princess!

In this one, I have to...walk a lot to deliver a report from one guy to another. Walking across lifeless boring maps is why I didn’t stick with KOTOR. But I did it. The second mission...was going to the wilderness so I could stand on a geiser so some test could go from blue to red. For some reason. Oh wow guys. Yeah very exciting way to begin a story. Not.

Now I’m kinda stuck because I’ve been asked to get the heads, arms, legs, and torso of some creatures. Ignoring how dark this is (like seriously, the guy who asked me should get charged with a war crime...and I guess me too for carrying it out), I went to the mines and after an hour...they didn’t drop. Not a single one of them dropped. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

So I quit to get a smoothie. I’ll probably die when I log-in unless I can get my trusts in to help or my level 15 red mage can handle whatever monster is spawned there.

I managed to beat Final Fantasy 9 despite despising how the battles are paced on the Steam version of the game (they are either sooo slow each random encounter takes forever or I turn on the speed boost and they go by too fast for me to know what’s going on). I’ve farmed for stuff in Final Fantasy IV. I can get the grind and I can live past bad gameplay for good story. But right now?

The gameplay is bad, the grind (and farming) seems to be too extreme, and the story is so far just bland MMORPG questing.

[Sirmarki]

So, basically, this is a massive rant that nobody on these forums is going to associate with, because we all play the game and enjoy it.

[Melondra]

Currently surver shut-downs are needed to get the games population back up and the economy back up to par.dont need this many servers when he population is only 700 players per server. A Server can hold around 7,000 players would recomened condense the population to get the economy back up to par.

[Sirmarki]

Currently surver shut-downs are needed to get the games population back up and the economy back up to par.dont need this many servers when he population is only 700 players per server. A Server can hold around 7,000 players would recomened condense the population to get the economy back up to par.

Asura currently has 3400 players online, at time of writing this.

I would hate to imagine what 7000 players would be like on a server, probably very unplayable.

[Melondra]

o really going to have to do a transfer Phoenix is down to around 400- 720 players its in very bad shape

[Alhanelem]

Currently surver shut-downs are needed to get the games population back up and the economy back up to par.dont need this many servers when he population is only 700 players per server. A Server can hold around 7,000 players would recomened condense the population to get the economy back up to par.
As i've said in other threads, 100% disagree.

Asura is congested. We don't want every server to be like Asura, where ambuscade and whatever content is featured by a campaign to have waiting times that don't exist on other servers. I'm completely okay with the quietness of my current server. It still has many people I know on it and I can still get stuff done.

No server has ever had 7000 concurrent users so I don't know where you're getting the ideas about that.

[Stompa]

The gameplay is bad, the grind (and farming) seems to be too extreme, and the story is so far just bland MMORPG questing.

FFXI is a well-crafted, structured, stratified, hierarchical, aspirational Role-Playing / Strategy Arcade Game.

The word aspirational is key, for beginners. A New Adventurer is ignored by most NPCs, ignored by all heroes. A New Adventurer is basically a serf, a common farm-hand. A knave!

New adventurers have no money, no fame, no nice equipment, and no power [power which is graded by levels, such as job / magic skill / weapon skill levels etc].

As you complete the mundane low level quests and mundane low level missions, and level up in jobs, and in fame, the quests become more interesting, the missions more exciting and cinematic.

But everyone starts out with the boring mundane stuff. This is aspirational, because you aspire to have high level jobs, powerful weapons, heroic fame.

In the beginning of the game, nearly two decades ago, this common farm-hand / serf status lasted a lot longer, and it really did take ages to become famous and powerful. Today in 2019, it is much faster to climb the hierarchy, and enjoy the more exciting and cinematic missions and equipment.

FFXI is truly massive, and Vana'diel is a vast and beautiful world.

FFXI is highly customisable. You need to experiment with the CONFIG.

When you experiment with window-styles, you may find that Window 8 is a green/blue deep colour, which is imho nicer than the stripey New-Load colour.

You can experiment also, playing FFXI without locking the camera over-the-shoulder during battles, so that you can zoom out, look down from high above, and spin the battle-field around to suit your preferred perspective. It feels much more free to me when I play <That way.>


I think, for me at least, FFXI is a lifestyle, it is a way of life. It is like a long-term hobby. It is measured in decades, not days. After fifteen years of playing, I am still learning new tricks and tweaks that improve my gaming experience.

So, the secret to being a New Player, is to remember that it is a Role Playing Game, and your new character is not a King or a Hero, it is a common person, who has dreams and aspirations.

By playing FFXI, you are building your RPG character, it becomes a more real and solid character, it develops as a person, it learns favourite jobs, favourite weaponskills, favourite crafts, favourite areas, favourite NPCs and Heroes.

When you first start out, you don't know what your favourite things will be, and you can only discover these favourite things, by adventuring, and experiencing the joy and wonder of Vana'diel.
:)

[Pixela]

o really going to have to do a transfer Phoenix is down to around 400- 720 players its in very bad shape

You need to understand that very much like a small village compared to a large town, the players on those smaller servers like it that way and so Square know not to do merges.

The smaller servers function on the mindset that you join a shell and do content with friends, if you want a big server you swap to Asura (move to a large town) where the population is 2.5 to 3.5k.

[BST]

I would call "bad shape" at 1 to 50 online, 300 to 1000 is perfectly fine. Server merges only destroy communities, was it really worth losing all the players from the last merge?
While i have a character on Asura, i rarely play it, because the community there is what i call overcrowded. If you find your current world too sleepy you can always transfer, don't force everyone else to move.


Also, you have to remember that PlayOnline used to be the one-stop-shop for everything, you could use it to play Tetra Master, you used to pay for your sub through it, you used POL mail to receive all your SE announcements, and more importantly it was the way to setup your account and manage it. Now its been stripped of just about everything, creating two required management systems, making the game such a mess to administer. :eek:

[BobbinT]

Well... answering to OP...

1st issue, I think OP might be selecting less populated server, hence why he saw dead cities. On popular server like Asura, or Bahamut which I still reside, every town still very lively, although most players would hang out are on latest cities, which is Adoulin, kinda like how majority of FF14 players hang out @ Kugane.

Next... for most reason, I could agree with him. By today's standard, FF11 account registration are much cumbersome while in comparison with FF14, the other MMO, reason is that FF11 has to go through 2 layers of registration, POL & mogstation while FF14 only requires mogstation.

And POL, sadly, are kinda shadow of it's former glory. Like what @BST said, back in early 2000, ppl use that as another platform of socializing. And do consider this though, FF11 was multi-platform games, so consoles like PS2 & XBOX360 does gain some benefit from features in POL. However, I see little reason after console support has ceased. There's also the fact that patching still uses similar speed as dial-up, which was really great back in FF11 early days, but took longer for today's standard.


As for guides itself, while FF14 has you being basically pointed out where to go & what to do since their ingame guide are really plentiful & markers everywhere on map. Even skills has quite clear instruction as how to do combos & stuff. FF11 on the other hand, really relies of personal memorization, & thus unfortunately heavily relies on outside wiki/guides for many who finds it hard to track down stuff, not to mention there's practically no guidelines as where to go or what to do. And sad to say, FF11 game mechanic are not really friendly for newbie & it really took time to master them.

Despite as that, FF11 still has something better than FF14 does...

For one, their content. It's true by now that FF14 already has huge content that will kept players busy, but even so with FF11. And I can say this, FF11 has amongst the best storyline compared to other mainline series. In fact, I would say that FF11 are one of my top fave as part of FF series. Each expansion has their own independent, but strong storylines. It might not really appeal to newcomers since we all had to deal with mundane task at beginning, but that only because we do need to train ourselves for upcoming challenges.

Another thing is how content still kinda forces player to socialize, as in grouping for content challenge. Even main quest has part of it where you can't really solo unless you either wait till you get really powered or ask help from player generosity. Every time I went back between each return campaign, I always found the game still bustling with social activities. Shouts in town never cease, even doing alliances were kind of necessary when challenging harder content, where in FF14, alliance so far only meant for casual raid content (yes, even for BA despite how challenging it is).

BTW, this return campaign, I finally just finished Voidwatch story content, thanks to helps from fellow LS buddies, and with this, I think I have finally finished all worthy-lengthy story content that I know, unless I'm missing something. But I'm still going to come back on next return campaign, or maybe a day when I actually resub this game again.
And this is just my personal opinion, but I don't really like the episodic story format FF14 uses between expansions, making the game a huge-continuous story that still didn't reach it's true conclusion, while FF11 has each expansion focuses on their internal struggle & their own conclusions. Plus, how each XI's expansion introduces plethora of Vana'diel heroes, while FF14 felt like recycling them on each expansion.

And another thing: relic weapons in FF11 are really powerful, and they still do carries to current content. Sadly, FF14 has them quite butchered, even to the point where relics in current 4.0 content are only comparable to FF11's augment weapons, and they will expire their usefulness whenever new expansion arrives. On the other hand, FF11 did have way too many powerful weapon per job & they has their own specialization against certain situation, sometimes a player has to carry like entire wardrobe for just a single job to maximize their output, while FF14 thankfully kinda summarize them so that players can only focus to just one.

So yes, in the end, FF11 are not the kind of game where one would expect soloing the entire time would be fine. Grouping are heavily emphasizes in this game, unlike FF14 where majority lets ppl solo stuff unless for hardcore content. Eureka, for one, did try doing content FF11-style where ppl did get forced to group up, but sadly still less social than FF11. And given the age FF11 has, I can't really blame new players having really hard time immersing themselves within this world, but those who did persist going through this, I guarantee that FF11 still delivers one of their best. ;)


Also, just a small reminder that one can't compare FF11 to WoW standard since this game was based on Everquest days, and so... very distinct MMO-style.

[Melondra]

I agree with you on almost all points except one. Final Fantasy XI online has a very real life economic system that requires player to make that economy fruit-full. Everything in Final Fantasy XI revolves around the economy in one way or the other. The problem with the current situation with the exception of the 3 heavly populated servers is there is no economy. You cannot fill a town with say 300 people when the town was made for say 70,000. You do that and the town wont function. Market trade is a must in this game. If you remove that this game wont function. Do you know why they added the trust system? They did it because the population is to low on most survers to get anything done. The current economy of Final Fantasy XI is at a standstill, gill must move to make the system work and right now is down to a crawl and because of that the game is 10X more difficult then what it was. What needs to happen is all scroll's for all jobs need to be NPC'ed for 90% less then what the players asking price is. What ever the population shrinks by, allthe NPC's should of been adjusted to reflect that. If you loose 60% of the ecnomy then all shops should have there selling prices reduced by 60% to prevent the gill from deflateing. Also would .ecomened placing a Hard Cap on the AH based off of player population. People will say we don't want that, ihate to say this but to bad ,they need to do whats best for the server not the individual player. A server merge is highly recommended.

[Jile]

I'd hate to see a server with 7,000 players - what a nightmare for anyone wanting JP or to farm without competition for everything.

I started on Phoenix and my characters will die with Phoenix if it goes down. XI doesn't need server shutdowns, it needs a new expansion (perhaps the surprise they are working on?) and marketing said new expansion.

[BST]

They have stated that a new expansion isn't out of the question, but probably unlikely.

[JKap_Goat]

Hello OP, I've been playing the ffxi game for about 8 months now and the adventure is fun, I enjoy the tough world of vanadiel but what I do not like about this game is that, the story doesn't make sense, I've been jumping from one expansion to another, I wish FFXI storyline was much more streamlined like how FFXIV story is , so it can make sense. Rhapsodies of Vanadiel is suppose to bring all the expansions together but it does a horrible job for new players becuase you can't progress until you complete some missions from other expansions, like Chains of Promitha for example. So you don't know what the hell is going on.

the UI is terrible and very unfriendly to new players, so I understand where you are coming from.

The game doesn't tell you how to chainskills attacks so you have to look it up somewhere .

Some missions are nearly impossible to do by yourself becuase some monsters are level 99 and has true sight so sometime you need to call someone to help. And the missions don't make sense to me, It took me a day and a half to complete one mission because I was very confused. The game doesn't do a good job with missions or helping out new players.

I wish this game had a friendly UI ( kinda like FFXIV hotbars) and can tell you what to do instead of being fustrated. I like a good story and it's too bad ffxi has all these problems, I might as well wait for the Mobile edition, also FFXIV has a good story and the expansion is coming up. So if ffxi doesn't work for you, you can check out that mmo. But the story isn't finished yet.

[Zehira]

Hello OP, I've been playing the ffxi game for about 8 months now and the adventure is fun, I enjoy the tough world of vanadiel but what I do not like about this game is that, the story doesn't make sense, I've been jumping from one expansion to another, I wish FFXI storyline was much more streamlined like how FFXIV story is , so it can make sense. Rhapsodies of Vanadiel is suppose to bring all the expansions together but it does a horrible job for new players becuase you can't progress until you complete some missions from other expansions, like Chains of Promitha for example. So you don't know what the hell is going on.

the UI is terrible and very unfriendly to new players, so I understand where you are coming from.

The game doesn't tell you how to chainskills attacks so you have to look it up somewhere .

Some missions are nearly impossible to do by yourself becuase some monsters are level 99 and has true sight so sometime you need to call someone to help. And the missions don't make sense to me, It took me a day and a half to complete one mission because I was very confused. The game doesn't do a good job with missions or helping out new players.

I wish this game had a friendly UI ( kinda like FFXIV hotbars) and can tell you what to do instead of being fustrated. I like a good story and it's too bad ffxi has all these problems, I might as well wait for the Mobile edition, also FFXIV has a good story and the expansion is coming up. So if ffxi doesn't work for you, you can check out that mmo. But the story isn't finished yet.

We know FFXIV's storyline is basically Game of Thrones. Ending of every expansion tells you there is more to come. We like the way FFXI is so we can enjoy the game that has multiple endings.

[JKap_Goat]

Yeah because your old players who been playing this game since the dawn of time, new players like myself don't know what the hell is going on

[BST]

What ever happened to that new UI they used to talk about a few years a go, wasn't it added to the Test server. Although i like the simple UI and menu's, and i can't stand WoW type hand-holding quest markers and stuff, but it would be nice if they refined some quests hints, sometimes you are forced to check online because the descriptions are vague.

[Sirmarki]

Yeah because your old players who been playing this game since the dawn of time, new players like myself don't know what the hell is going on

There are multiple guides online detailing missions and how to progress through them. It really isn't difficult.

[JKap_Goat]

There are multiple guides online detailing missions and how to progress through them. It really isn't difficult.


To a new player, yes it is.

[Zehira]

To a new player, yes it is.

Only hard if the UI doesn't tell you where to go. If you have played Eureka in FF14 you will know what this game is all about. Having the modern UI/Duty Finder is what makes the community more anti-social. I wouldn't want FFXI to follow that mistake.

[BobbinT]

Having the modern UI/Duty Finder is what makes the community more anti-social. I wouldn't want FFXI to follow that mistake.


cough... trusts... cough... lol

[Zehira]

cough... trusts... cough... lol

I was on Bahamut before. JP and EN players don't mix well.

FFXIV players will experience the new trust system in the next expansion. Should be interesting.

[Sirmarki]

To a new player, yes it is.

We were all new once. Us "old players" made it through, and times where A LOT tougher then.

[Alhanelem]

cough... trusts... cough... lolThe part of the duty finder that makes it antisocial is not being able to continue to do things with the same party. automatic matching would be fine if you could easily continue playing with people that you had a good time with.

[JKap_Goat]

Only hard if the UI doesn't tell you where to go. If you have played Eureka in FF14 you will know what this game is all about. Having the modern UI/Duty Finder is what makes the community more anti-social. I wouldn't want FFXI to follow that mistake.

I mean on FFXIV I'm not antisocial, I have made lots of friends and in multiple hunt Linkshells, and with the World Visit system, I have visited and talk to even more people.

Your going to have those people who don't talk in Duty finder, sometimes I don't even talk and that's fine, as a AST/WHM main, as long as you don't stand in AoEs and can manage hate ,use your defensive cooldowns as tank , your good. At least in FFXIV duty finder, you can still talk to people ( was doing aurum vale yesterday night and had a conversation with new people playing the game)

To be fair, in FFXI , I am more lonely than since everyone is 99 and I've just been playing with trusts and grinding my way to 99, I played Euerka and I have gotten my AST,RDM and WHM relics done.

I can't really even associate with some people because I have no idea what they are doing or what item is anything in game so I just remain quiet.

I grind for a little and get bored, then log out.

[JKap_Goat]

Plus Viera, I'm very very happy I'm going to be a Viera,I wish for males though

[Zehira]

I mean on FFXIV I'm not antisocial, I have made lots of friends and in multiple hunt Linkshells, and with the World Visit system, I have visited and talk to even more people.

Your going to have those people who don't talk in Duty finder, sometimes I don't even talk and that's fine, as a AST/WHM main, as long as you don't stand in AoEs and can manage hate ,use your defensive cooldowns as tank , your good. At least in FFXIV duty finder, you can still talk to people ( was doing aurum vale yesterday night and had a conversation with new people playing the game)

To be fair, in FFXI , I am more lonely than since everyone is 99 and I've just been playing with trusts and grinding my way to 99, I played Euerka and I have gotten my AST,RDM and WHM relics done.

I can't really even associate with some people because I have no idea what they are doing or what item is anything in game so I just remain quiet.

I grind for a little and get bored, then log out.

I wish we could go back to the 75 cap era but I have to say this won't happen. FFXI is ruined greatly when it tried to follow FFXIV. Today, 90% of the old content can be done by soloing with trusts while Lvl 99 players focus on upgrading their gears and selling runs.

I don't mind if SE could remake this game from the scratch and continue to develop this great Vana'diel. I mean Hiromichi Tanaka is gone and we have the new producer and director who are doing a great job so far.

In the other words, would be great if we take our FFXI dev team back that Yoshi took over. The last major update was in 2015.

[Alhanelem]

Plus Viera, I'm very very happy I'm going to be a Viera,I wish for males thoughI wish people would stop projecting human sexuality and gender logic onto fantasy races. They are made up fantasy beings, they can be designed however they want. And that's why you get several to choose from. If you don't like the design of one, there's others available. When FFXIV originally cmae out, they shoehorned a female gender into the roegadyn (the galka spiritual successor) and... almost nobody uses it. That was sure some dev time well spent.

Personally I'm thankful that keeping to the lore of the Viera enabled them to create a more beastly type of race, something I've been wishing for for ages. I play a human in real life, I actually want to avoid them in fantasy games where I can.

[Zehira]

That was sure some dev time well spent.

True, so true. I fear if FFXI was remade then this community would end up like FFXIV's.

We are already perma-banned from FFXIV's offical forums not so long after FFXIV:ARR released.

(Couldn't put "political correctness" reasons on here even if you knew Facebook dramas then it is the same thing over there)

[Seriha]

I wish we could go back to the 75 cap era but I have to say this won't happen. FFXI is ruined greatly when it tried to follow FFXIV. Today, 90% of the old content can be done by soloing with trusts while Lvl 99 players focus on upgrading their gears and selling runs.
It wasn't any different at the 75 cap, though. The endgamers were busy camping HNMs/Sky/whatever and not really caring to the sufferings of newbies/casuals back in the day. It was a lot worse when CoP had the level caps. People were also selling drops from said HNMs or things like Salvage gear.


End of the day, FFXI suffered from a lot of what we could simply call busywork. All the stuff we can bemoan people are doing with trusts nowadays was content people largely didn't want to help with unless they needed it done themselves. If you didn't have the right jobs available or didn't play at the right time of day, the process just arbitrarily got that much more difficult. This could've been a problem solved by better appending rewards to helping, but something like helping people get through the Promy's really wasn't worth the 3k total EXP or whatever the game eventually wound up giving to repeaters. And it's a problem I'd assert extends to even more current content like high-tier battlefields or other activities to help get someone's feet wet in endgame. Soloing Yorcia gear certainly isn't enough, and Sparks stuff is definitely worse than that.


XI would presently benefit handily from implementing some cross-server/matchmaking tech. Not everyone wants to be on Asura, but at the same time, there's no real good way to find like-minded players other than shouting/yelling and hoping for the best.

[Zehira]

XI would presently benefit handily from implementing some cross-server/matchmaking tech. Not everyone wants to be on Asura, but at the same time, there's no real good way to find like-minded players other than shouting/yelling and hoping for the best.

If you want that kind of tech you should go play FF14 instead. XI would do better without it even though Asura and any server with a large amount of JP players don't need that. They already implemented more teleports everywhere in Vana'diel for us to teleport to help players quickly. We run our own community and do events on our discord for our members to check it out. You know our community is very friendly unlike whoever thinks and says about Asura. The dev team should be taking the real feedback from between two and not the minority since we are not living through Tanaka era anymore. Just saying.

[Alhanelem]

If you want that kind of tech you should go play FF14 instead. XI would do better without it even though Asura and any server with a large amount of JP players don't need that. They already implemented more teleports everywhere in Vana'diel for us to teleport to help players quickly. We run our own community and do events on our discord for our members to check it out. You know our community is very friendly unlike whoever thinks and says about Asura. The dev team should be taking the real feedback from between two and not the minority since we are not living through Tanaka era anymore. Just saying.
I disagree. While things are somewhat easier than they once were with /yell, something that will quickly bring players together would be a boon to FFXI, as long as it just makes the parties beforehand so you can change something before entry (unlike how it works in FFXIV). Then you just have your party and you can do whatever with it, and can continue to do multiple things with that same group if you want, which is the core flaw of the duty finder system where you're stuck with who you get and if you liked the people you played with there's no easy way to do more with the same party.

Technically we've had the "autogroup" feature forever, but it is literally never used because it is unintuitive, only works within an area, and doesn't let you specify what you intend to do. And telling people to "go play FFXIV" for wanting a convenient method of grouping is rather a jerky thing to say, for lack of better words. After all, it has little to do with the gameplay itself and maybe they like FFXI's gameplay even if they like some of the supporting systems that were developed in FFXIV. I'm subbed to both and love both for different reasons.

[Zehira]

I disagree. While things are somewhat easier than they once were with /yell, something that will quickly bring players together would be a boon to FFXI, as long as it just makes the parties beforehand so you can change something before entry (unlike how it works in FFXIV). Then you just have your party and you can do whatever with it, and can continue to do multiple things with that same group if you want, which is the core flaw of the duty finder system where you're stuck with who you get and if you liked the people you played with there's no easy way to do more with the same party.

Technically we've had the "autogroup" feature forever, but it is literally never used because it is unintuitive, only works within an area, and doesn't let you specify what you intend to do. And telling people to "go play FFXIV" for wanting a convenient method of grouping is rather a jerky thing to say, for lack of better words. After all, it has little to do with the gameplay itself and maybe they like FFXI's gameplay even if they like some of the supporting systems that were developed in FFXIV. I'm subbed to both and love both for different reasons.

Let's be honest, you mentioned "continue with the same group/party" which sounds like a feedback from the minority. While in Asura, we do different stuff with different people time to time. I have more than two linkshells (would be nice if SE gives us more slots to equip more linkshells so you can talk to different people depending on your moods) and we are running one of the largest linkshells which has more than 40 active players during that time. Therefore, I'd suggest a party finder instead of the duty finder. I don't see how the duty finder/cross-server would work for FFXI based on gear stats. We work our best for the members to get better gears as possible and what we can do to improve them. That's a real community we are running instead of what the machine can do for the community like FFXIV.

Even if SE really is going to remake FFXI from the scratch and make it more like FFXIV then they would just have both games merged instead. <<< The majority of FFXI vets who quit don't want it to happen.

Not to mention that FFXI already has instanced battle areas.

[Alhanelem]

Let's be honest, you mentioned "continue with the same group/party" which sounds like a feedback from the minority.What's this supposed to mean? I don't think I'm in a minority when I say that I'd like to do more things with friendly people or those who were otherwise good to play with. You make it sound like the very idea of meeting somebody you like enough to do more than one thing with is some kind of wild and crazy fantasy. Now, I don't have data on that I admit, but it really doesn't seem out of the realm of normalness.

You keep using "majority" and "minority" without any actual data. Best that you stop using those words before you make more of a fool out of yourself unless you go collect some data ffirst, or at least state it clearly as an opinion or hypothesis, rather than suggesting it to be factual.




Not to mention that FFXI already has instanced battle areas. In most cases, they're only "instanced" in the loosest form of the word, where there are simply a set number of cloned battle areas within a zone (why the game calls them "layer areas") and if they're all occupied, you have to wait, whereas real instances don't have a set limit for any specific content (rather just a technical limit for total number of instances for all content that the server can handle at once)

But I'm not even specifically discussing instances or instanced content. I'm just talking about opening a window with a list of contents that you can pick from and be paired with people who want to do the same thing easily. Really more like FFXIV's Party Finder rather than the Duty Finder; and then when you have a party you're satisfied with, you do the content. Right now the only worthwhile thing available to you for that in FFXI is /yell but that only reaches certain areas, and the other person or people that might be interested in what you're doing could easily be somewhere else.

[Seriha]

I'll give a pretty simple example of how expanding group finding tools would be benefit: You want to build an Almace.


We'll skip past all the early stuff and jump straight to Abyssea content. While soloing the three phases is possible now between the level cap increases/ilvl and trusts, the truth is that doing it on your own with a singular account is a painfully slow process. If you want to target the widest array of KI procs, you're further limited to pretty much WAR or NIN. 2 of the 3 phases also included timed NMs (Gukumatz and Sisyphus), and while the latter can be worked around with gold chest drops, that's still RNG and you can only hold one.


Now, the benefit of grouping here is that it would cut the required time significantly, to the point I'd probably say it'd be 90% faster getting 75 Apa horns with a legit party of 6 than doing it on your own. If your thought is, "Why would anyone want to help with that, though?" then we're more or less talking about my post's last point about people helping and self-interest. Still, it'd be nice to have the option to be actively out farming such on your own and having the group slowly build as people take interest. It would make the experience far better than just continuing to slog solo or hoping maybe you find a helper or two doing a shout/yell before leaving to the zones. Some may join up to kill time. Some may seek reciprocation/alternate drops. Others may acknowledge that, yeah, the process sucks, so a little good deed here and there won't hurt the community.


In the end, it doesn't matter if you're in the most awesomest, bestest linkshell community/discord catering to a very specific server. You're not in arm's reach of everyone. Very few are actually "like you" if this whole charitable visage isn't an act. And that's my overall point. There are and have been people who fall through the cracks, and the more that happens, the more they get mad at the game, the more likely they'll want to stop playing, and eventually telling other people to not play because of their bad experiences. Arguing against steps to alleviate that outcome will never make sense to me, and at worst, comes off as the worst form of fanboyism given the fingerpointing to XIV and how doing anything like it would be catastrophic.