Reasons Why FFXI is Declining

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Originally Posted by Battletree

game needs a new fight format.. a new battle type. say like storming a castle or city ect. not some tiny area like dynamis bs. something where mobs attack you. like a real battle format. in a large well done area.. also a new graphic engine for sure.. ive tried playing 14 and its way too weak.. players are already leet in a
month one.. its a joke.

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How about an event where you defend something from invading enemies. Maybe like a tent or something.

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Originally Posted by detlef

How about an event where you defend something from invading enemies. Maybe like a tent or something.

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Ooh! Yeah! But lets make the monsters weak and the supply of them weaker.

Then we'll give it rewards that surpass harder content!

Seriously, I'd like to see some sort of explanation for why the per-battle EXP cap for level 99 players was adjusted. Are the developers unaware just how many characters are parked at 30 merit points and 9999 limit points simply because they have nothing else to spend the points on?

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Originally Posted by detlef

How about an event where you defend something from invading enemies. Maybe like a tent or something.

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I have something better. Wait 8-24h doing nothing in the same area waiting a HNM to pop and then losing claim to a bot. yea, i bet you miss that, unless you were in the LS with top claim bot. Sucker.

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Originally Posted by Spectreman

I have something better. Wait 8-24h doing nothing in the same area waiting a HNM to pop and then losing claim to a bot. yea, i bet you miss that, unless you were in the LS with top claim bot. Sucker.

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Outside of popping Honey Wine and Sweet Tea, I've probably spent less than 6 hours lifetime in the Aery. Personal attacks don't really help your argument (if you have one). Yorcia Skirmish sucks, try reading the responses to this thread over here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...r-Skirmish-2.0

Being better and more rewarding than old HNMs does not make Yorcia Skirmish a successful event.

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Originally Posted by Ziyyigo-Tipyigo

Seriously, I'd like to see some sort of explanation for why the per-battle EXP cap for level 99 players was adjusted. Are the developers unaware just how many characters are parked at 30 merit points and 9999 limit points simply because they have nothing else to spend the points on?

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As some players have been hammering on about, most likely because the mobs are lower level thanks to ilvl gear. Getting the same xp from a mob whether you are 99 or ilvl117 would be like getting the same xp whether you are 50 or 68.

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Originally Posted by Stompa

I solo'd the same mob 5 minutes later on my same WAR, without sushi. Using a bayld forefront POS conquest points gaxe. That is my complaint. That these trashy SoA mercenarys-knife type weaps can hit mobs, but lvl99 magians can't. My war solo's Itzpapalotl etc in Aby using magians. Theres nothing wrong with my War. Or my weaps. Or the food I use. Its that SoA mobs require the SKILL+ augmented weapons, and SE forgot to patch this magical airy-fairy lvl100+ SKILL+ nonsense onto existing RME/woepath/magians, but somehow SE managed to patch that onto some cheap nasty conquest-points weaps just because theyre from Ulbuka.

:p

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No. Abyssea made us forget what it was like to need acc. Pre-abyssea everyone geared for as much acc as they could get, especially on a mob that was many levels higher than themselves. The forefront weapons give ~80 acc, because they are effectively making you much higher level. Going back to fight the same mob after getting a forefront weapon is like going back to fight it after gaining another 10 levels, but you're surprised that it was easier!?

So, in [almost?] every other MMO an expansion comes along and obsoletes all the BiS gear around but FFXI shouldn't? Why should gear be made future-proof just because it took a bit of effort 'back in the day'?

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Originally Posted by Kraggy

So, in [almost?] every other MMO an expansion comes along and obsoletes all the BiS gear around but FFXI shouldn't? Why should gear be made future-proof just because it took a bit of effort 'back in the day'?

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Because before the expansion, FFXI didn't obliterate old gear. If it had been a vertical progression since the beginning I don't think anybody would be complaining. But to suddenly shift gears after 10 years leaves a bad taste in some players mouths (myself included) and makes you wonder if it is even worth it to acquire the new stuff when something better is likely to come along at the next update.

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Originally Posted by Kraggy

So, in [almost?] every other MMO an expansion comes along and obsoletes all the BiS gear around but FFXI shouldn't? Why should gear be made future-proof just because it took a bit of effort 'back in the day'?

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Because FFXI expansions (especially SoA) don't have enough content to support this model.

I hardly ever write in this forum, because of the fact that what we write mostly seems to matter squat to SE 99% of the time, which is indicated by responses not even touching the threads actual topic or the lack of responses to start with.

I however feel that I should also voice my discontent about this new Seekers expansion. In my opinion it is as much of a fail as FFXIV 1.0 if not even worse.
The marketing was horrid, inlcuding advertisement (did anyone other than actual FFXI players knew about this expansion?) and availability (You couldn't even get the damn thing until a day or two before release in Europe) as well as price/content mess up (30€ really??? For a lousy amount of new copy/paste areas, new monster models countable on one hand and the same music for the entire ulbukan continent). I know we haven't gotten all that is supposed to be released with the expansion but what we actually got wasn't even worth a dime in the beginning and all at the cost of nothing else being ever done. The new interface, which we might finally get soon was supposed to be here way sooner, things like the new avatars promised 2.5 years ago have gone so low in priority you got to ask yourself if they ever get implemented within this century.

I believe FFXI had the chance to win old players back and even gain new players with this expansion if it simply would have been handled correctly. Yet instead we got a drop in players by at least 1/2 within a mere set of weeks after the initial "oh new expansion lets check it out hights". The problem: I haven't even started talking about how bad the actual content is we got so far but, it did not only try to change how the game has worked for the past decade, which naturally will upset players content with the style of the game so far, no it also invalidated any content before itself. I ask myself: why did they waste their time and bothered to make Nyzul 2, Salvage 2, Einherjar 2 and Limbus 2? For what reason did they overhaul previous engame events, just to have them being 100% worthless a few months later because the gear they provide is crap compared to the unmotivated level 113 crap we have now.
Why was it necessary to bring out skirmish as event with superior loot but no accessability just to bring out something else a month later making skirmish useless already and why are we still stuck with this event? At least the latter is easy to answer: there is no other content in this expansion and this expansion killed any other content but itself.

As a result people don't do other things for gear anymore, cause there is no other gear that still counts and people being able to finish fracture also don't do fracture anymore because they have beaten it enough times so they don't need anything from it anymore simply because it only offers a very few rewards to start with (why does everyone nowadays look the same I wonder...).

I understand that there needs to be incentive for players to do the new content so obviously the gear needs to have perks the older gear didn't have. However, was it necessary to drastically wipe up the floor with everything else? Just take the Phorcy's Korazin, add a mere 5str to it and keep all other values the same and people would go for it, cause it would have been the best item for the slot. Just look at the stupidness of the duplus grip. 1% more DA just ONE percent and on the one hand people went crazy about it while on the other it still didn't make the pole grip a crap item.

In my opinion it cannot be that say a Samurai that has played the job for over 5 years, put effort into gearing the job and pulled awesome feats with it but has no Tsurumaru, can be beaten by a person who leeched Samurai from 1-99 got lucky on a Tsurumaru drop, got otronif for his MNK and now tries playing sam for the first time and yes, the difference between Tsurumaru and the R/E/Ms is big enough to warrant the "newb SAM" to be better. If the gear was only slightly better, this wouldln't be possible and it would still have an appeal to it (and no for anyone who comes and says "well go get Tsurumaru then", I have that stupid weapon and I am disgusted by it)

I know this is a way too long post and maybe also missing a red line going through all of it but at least it has an answer to the OPs question. Granted it is my personal answer for the question, but I am sure that while some might disagree, many will actually agree with me. There is more that I could rant about but let's give it a rest here^^

Sincerely, Leylia

One of the reasons I have continued to play this game is because of its horizontal progression. During all of my time playing there were very few times I knew 1 item was so powerful I had to have it in order to play my job effectively, most of the time, that was a RME, due to things like RME requirements during the VW Era. If I wanted a game with Vertical progression, there were many other options out there for me, but I did not. FFXI changed everything in the blink of an eye to a completely different style without any warning, which took that away, and out dated everything.

You ask why an expansion shouldn't? Why its different? RotZ, CoP, ToAU, all were made at 75, they all worked, we played for years with those, at the level 75 cap, doing things like Sea, Limbus, Sky, Dynamis, Assaults, Salvage, Einherjar, and so on. It worked because everything had a place, every event was useful to something.

The problem with what SoA did is it was poorly timed, and it was to late. Had it been done earlier in FFXI's life, not as much an issue, as other have said, it was a well established horizontal progression system in the game. The other reason is because it simply came at the worst possible time, when people would already be leaving the game, and the dev team is smaller than ever before, which means that the sudden change can push more people to quit, while the smaller dev team can not put content out fast enough to keep up with us beating it down. The killed everything old, but can hardly offer us anything new, I mean in all honesty, who can tell me you want to do Skirmish every day all day, since you did everything else Adoulin had to offer when they were implemented? I don't, even if I did, I would be done with it in no time, and it would leave nothing to do, that's why its flawed.

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

The problem with what SoA did is it was poorly timed, and it was to late. Had it been done earlier in FFXI's life, not as much an issue, as other have said, it was a well established horizontal progression system in the game.

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It never would have worked, SE has never put out content fast enough to support it. Imagine if a few months after ToAU came out, 99% of sky/sea/dynamis/limbus/hnm/enm/ksnm/etc stuff was made obsolete by assault and ISNM gear. Than that gear is later made obsolete by nyzul isle and salvage, than by einherjar, than by ZNMs. Regardless of when vertical progression was implemented, it would have always had the same result: players not having anything to do except 1 or 2 current events, that aren't enough to keep players busy/interested/subscribed on their own.

FFXI stayed alive by keeping legacy content relevant, so players had a wide array of events and goals to work on that only increased over time. Somehow the people currently in charge of the game don't understand that.

Its pretty clear especially reading that pathetic excuse for a dev response that the few people still working on the game have no idea what made this game work for so long and have no intention to fix it. Its a damned shamed because me and 3 other people just subbed this month (2 to buy new copys of the game on top of that).

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Originally Posted by Xantavia

Getting the same xp from a mob whether you are 99 or ilvl117 would be like getting the same xp whether you are 50 or 68.

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But who actually cares about EXP at 99+?

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Originally Posted by detlef

Outside of popping Honey Wine and Sweet Tea, I've probably spent less than 6 hours lifetime in the Aery. Personal attacks don't really help your argument (if you have one). Yorcia Skirmish sucks, try reading the responses to this thread over here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...r-Skirmish-2.0

Being better and more rewarding than old HNMs does not make Yorcia Skirmish a successful event.

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Sorry but all that Skirmish needs is to be made like cirdas so its fun and rewarding. HNM was a waste of life for those who wanted to have one.

In case you missed it, he wasn't defending HNMs.

Yorcia Skirmish is the most boring event that has ever been introduced into FFXI bar none. My linkshell manages to do 1-2 a night before it makes us all get tired and go to bed at ~10PM. On the upside, at least I have been sleeping a lot more lately.

Well, maybe not bar none. Yorcia's only competition might be Monstrosity, if you consider that an event, because soloing a few dozen monsters to 99 is pretty freaking boring too.

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Originally Posted by Malthar

Give Yuley his TH3 back, please. Is that possible? :-)

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Only if they give us Cait Sith at same time. :D

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Originally Posted by Spectreman

Sorry but all that Skirmish needs is to be made like cirdas so its fun and rewarding. HNM was a waste of life for those who wanted to have one.

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Oh, so all that Yorcia Skirmish needs is to be completely different from what it is. That's like saying that Legion would be great if it was like Limbus.

And no, I'm not defending HNMs. Please stop referencing a bygone era of misery that is irrelevant to today's content.

I've essentially stopped playing XI since the item level and vertical progression announcements. I found that I was spending more time stressing out about bad management decisions than I was actually enjoying the game, so I took a break (my first ever) back in July. Aside from a couple of weekend visits to see old friends, I've not been back.

It's difficult to make sense of the state of the game at this time, really. SE has always loved to ignore its playerbase and rush headlong into pointless endeavours, but never on this magnitude. It's odd because, somewhat paradoxically, I want to want to play the game, but SE is continuously challenging that as if we're all playing some sort of bizarre metagame of "how long can you tolerate playing XI", with no-one quite sure whether quitting is winning or losing.

I think the true impact of these changes on the playerbase is difficult to gauge because of XIV. People say that population has declined because of XIV, but with the supposedly coincidental timing of XIV's release and XI's sudden drop into (further) insanity, how many of those people would have quit anyway? I took a break with no intention of playing XIV, but so many of my friends went over that I followed, somewhat against my better judgement. It's quickly becoming clear that XIV is going to be vertical progression + item level based from the ground up, so I'm regretting it to some extent already, but the real point is that with the new developer direction there's nothing here for me in XI either, no matter how much I want there to be.

It's not too late for SE to salvage XI. Please, just dump the item levels and dump the vertical progression model. No one wants it. Seekers suffers to some extent from the same crippling lack of resources that plagues the rest of XI, but it's not broken beyond repair. Rip out the new rot before it takes root, and rebalance jobs properly to let people do content on jobs they enjoy. Maybe even invest some money into the game! Just do something before everyone is gone and there's nothing to come back to.

I honestly have to say anything that made FFXI an awesome game is completely gone. I remember playing in parties where you did Skillchains and timed spells to create Magic Bursts and Exp Chains and if you all were a skilled party you could really, really Exp well. Raising you’re skills took time invested in the job, something like Guard and Parry skill being capped at max level was something you could honestly be proud of. The missions were very challenging CoP, ToAU, WoTG, and don’t forget Assaults; Cpt. Rank at 75 cap was not easy. All in all, a ton of the content was needing actual teamwork and skill, Limbus, Einherjar, Dynamis, Sea, Sky, Salvage, and KSNM99 just to name a few; I could go as far as to say early Abyssea as well, upon release when there wasn’t level 99 cap.

Now you don’t level and actually play you’re job, you head Zeruhn Mines, Kuftal Tunnel or wherever and get power-leveled to 30; you then enter Abyssea and get 99; this is done in less than a day, ask most Rune Fencer’s. Then rather than hours of skill-up on Parry or Guard like it was in the old days, just grab some Atma and pull a train of mobs and have those capped in couple hours, tops. Finally solo your missions by yourself for some obsolete zone access and gear (cheer). Nothing actually takes skill and effort anymore; there’s a massive huge world and only SoA is relevant. How hard would it really be to up the level on mobs and change out the lot tables on Campaign Battle and Besieged to make the content relevant again; clearly too much.

My point with all this… There is nothing you can have on or about your character at this present date you can actually be proud of; nothing Joe-Shmoe couldn’t do in a weekend. Even Relic, Mythic, Empyrean are garbage to the new gear and system (Delve). Months to get my Faith Torque (+7 H2H) at 75 cap to have a H2H weapon have over +60 H2H Skill on it!? (derp)

It isn’t a question of getting back on track with the game, it’s already too late; I’d rather actually be playing WoW than this cheap knock-off of it - World Of Warcraft. I thought FFXIV was bad; they stole most of WoW’s default buttons and hot-keys. What other game has “!” and “?” over quest giver and turn-in’s heads? What other game has rested when not playing for a few hours while logged off in a town? FFXIV is a huge WoW rip-off for the game-play and mechanics. I’m truthfully surprised Blizzard hasn’t tried to sue.

What’s worse is destroying a once amazing game to try and make it into WoW as well; do the developers really have no ideas and suck so bad they are just coping stuff from they’re favorite game to play on the weekend – World Of Warcraft.

All these questions aside, this post doesn’t really deserve or warrant any real responses; this is probably is my last post ever anyway, I just really had to call it out as I see it, which my come off as a lot of complaining, but it’s TRUE, all of it! FFXI was in my honest opinion the best MMO ever, the moment development started raising level cap and trying to change it into something it wasn’t – World Of Warcraft. It was all down-hill; not even down hill; it was a flat out jump off a cliff!

FFXI was truly amazing and unique, now it’s just someone’s ugly cousin. My it R.I.P.; I doubt it’ll be more than two years before the mass emails get sent for having discontinued service from lack of patrons. I can only finish this post with one helpful piece of advice; pull your heads out of your asses development; vulgar or not, you, as a group, really need to hear it from someone willing to speak up.

What's really funny is that everyone b1tched and moaned about how bad the drop rates were in VW, and now again in WKR.

But, the terrible drop rates and low chance of obtaining gear kept them doing the events, just like SE (I assume) had planned.

Since Yorcia Skirmish was released, just about all gear from the first 3 WKR is completely obsolete. Most VW gear has been obsolete for a while now, and only a few people continue to do the event in a vein attempt to complete their empy before the new update to them is released.

That leaves the majority of the people doing 3 things:

1) Yumcax and Hurkan

2) Delve Boss fights - but never the bee, or so it seems on Phoenix when I'm on. >.>

3) Monstrosity - Some have made reference to it being boring, but it at least has progression. Level 1 mob to unlock another. Find the best strategies to kill as many mobs as quickly as possible. Unlock new Instincts, etc.


Yorcia skirmish does have it's good points of course:

Newly returning players aren't instantly excluded from any content that allows them to progress, because it's so easy to do the initial skirmishes to get an upgrade weapon from 99, and you collect some bayld in the process to get some bayld gear.

You don't need to be particularly well-geared to do yorcia, because it's fairly easy once you've got the hang of the map and the strategy.

Once you've done yorcia and got some gear and upgraded a weapon, you're at a point where you can go off on your own and be semi-competitive in the rest of adoulin's content.

Well I have an idea, how about instead of the constant vertical gear climb, you give us some JSE for our respective jobs? Then give us the horizontal gear progression back? You know, how about some events we have to do to become well geared? Before you guys gave us seekers we actually had JSE and could tell one job from another simply by catching a glance of the character, now all the heavy armor types look the same, as do the other armor types. Stop giving us crap content, and give us something we need for our respective jobs

I'm actually coming back to the game. I stopped playing it back when I realized someone at SE decided to change the focus/direction of XI, and turn it more into a "level quickly and then grind end-game" deal, rather than the steady-paced adventure-driven experience it had been for so long before.

Even with the launch of WoW and all the resulting "me-too" follow-ups from other developers, SE stayed the course, understood its playerbase and realized the kind of people playing FFXI were playing it because of the game it was. They maintained a loyal population for years because of that focus. They continued on with what made the game great. They had some mis-steps, of course. They implemented some systems that would fall flat, sure. But they kept the FFXI experience intact. And for that, they maintained what... ~500k players over 7 years into the game's life cycle? Few new MMOs in the last 8+ years can claim those numbers even after their first few months. The reason is, while there's been plenty of MMOs built from the WoW mold, there were very, very few similar to FFXI. And I'd go so far to say that XI was quite unique from any of them, outside of the standard features and functionality that makes a MMO a MMO.

Then, somewhere along the line, they lost that focus. They decided that, rather than stay the course and continue expanding the game as they had been, they would lean more toward the WoW side of things.. faster leveling, easier progress, more soloability, etc. etc. And it really changed the game, especially the way it was played. While many argued at the time that it was for the better, seeing where the game is now... I'm not so sure I would make that claim anymore.

Considering what they'd done with 75 levels, when they announced the increase over time to 99, I thought "wow, think of all they could do with that extra 24 levels?" I was thinking in terms of them expanding on it similarly to how they'd been with the 75 levels already in-game. What I didn't realize was that they'd trivialize those 24 levels - and the rest of the game along with it - to the degree that they did. They took everything they'd spent years creating, and all but obsolesced it in the course of a few major updates.

Now, apparently, they've gone the route of changing it to a purely vertical progression. And, no surprise, the complaints about it now are falling more in line with the complaints people have had about all those other MMOs that SE made it a point to not emulate. New gear is out-done by newer gear only a short time later, racing to the end-game, etc.

So, what has caused FFXI's decline in my opinion?

SE lost their focus, forgot what it was that made FFXI the long-lasting and awesome experience it was, and tried to hop on board with the rest of the genre. They tried to mix oil into water, and the results are self-evident.

As for me returning..
I have a few friends I know who still play, and I'm going to be taking my time. I'm not doing the race to 99 ordeal. I'm going to duo, or even solo, or perhaps get a full group together if/when it's possible, and enjoy this game as much the way I always have as I can. I know it can be done, because others I know are doing it. It's not the popular path, and I know I'm gonna be heckled for not hopping on the speed-leveling bandwagon (I was last time I played), but I don't care. This "new way" of playing FFXI holds no fascination or interest with me. It looks extremely boring, and all I'm seeing for it are a lot of seemingly disappointed players at the end of it. Why would I want to rush into that? I've got plenty more to do that I will enjoy.

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Originally Posted by Jerbob

I've essentially stopped playing XI since the item level and vertical progression announcements. I found that I was spending more time stressing out about bad management decisions than I was actually enjoying the game, so I took a break (my first ever) back in July. Aside from a couple of weekend visits to see old friends, I've not been back.

It's difficult to make sense of the state of the game at this time, really. SE has always loved to ignore its playerbase and rush headlong into pointless endeavours, but never on this magnitude. It's odd because, somewhat paradoxically, I want to want to play the game, but SE is continuously challenging that as if we're all playing some sort of bizarre metagame of "how long can you tolerate playing XI", with no-one quite sure whether quitting is winning or losing.

I think the true impact of these changes on the playerbase is difficult to gauge because of XIV. People say that population has declined because of XIV, but with the supposedly coincidental timing of XIV's release and XI's sudden drop into (further) insanity, how many of those people would have quit anyway? I took a break with no intention of playing XIV, but so many of my friends went over that I followed, somewhat against my better judgement. It's quickly becoming clear that XIV is going to be vertical progression + item level based from the ground up, so I'm regretting it to some extent already, but the real point is that with the new developer direction there's nothing here for me in XI either, no matter how much I want there to be.

It's not too late for SE to salvage XI. Please, just dump the item levels and dump the vertical progression model. No one wants it. Seekers suffers to some extent from the same crippling lack of resources that plagues the rest of XI, but it's not broken beyond repair. Rip out the new rot before it takes root, and rebalance jobs properly to let people do content on jobs they enjoy. Maybe even invest some money into the game! Just do something before everyone is gone and there's nothing to come back to.

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I wish I have 10 "Like" I can use for this post. You summerized everything I feel toward XI. XI population had been dropping before XIV launch, it's not like it's suddenly drop a ton after 8/27. That hinted SoA game direction doesn't work.

In fact it's still dropping, 1.5 months after XIV release. I still log in and check server pop, and every week it seems to get lower. Surely those who wanted to play XIV should already been gone 1.5 month ago, so where's rest of the ppl? Not everyone that cancel account because of XIV. I'm pretty sure many ppl are willing to sub both if XI is still as good as pre-item level era.

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Originally Posted by Kraggy

So, in [almost?] every other MMO an expansion comes along and obsoletes all the BiS gear around but FFXI shouldn't? Why should gear be made future-proof just because it took a bit of effort 'back in the day'?

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Because almost every other MMO following this model that's not World of Warcraft has even lower staying power than pre-Abyssea/pre-SoA FFXI. FFXI is not WoW, so it's destined to fail if they follow the same model. That's the reality.

"Modern" MMO model are bad, with avg 3~5 years of life span and go F2P after 2 years. FFXI switch to same model= killing itself period.

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Originally Posted by Spectreman

Sorry but all that Skirmish needs is to be made like cirdas so its fun and rewarding. HNM was a waste of life for those who wanted to have one.

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If you don't like HNM, don't do it and save yourself some time. Old FFXI never force anyone do HNM, you still have plenty other event to do if you don't like HNM.

There are ppl that liked HNM, just let them like it and do it, it's their life not yours.

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Originally Posted by Afania

If you don't like HNM, don't do it and save yourself some time. Old FFXI never force anyone do HNM, you still have plenty other event to do if you don't like HNM.

There are ppl that liked HNM, just let them like it and do it, it's their life not yours.

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Thats what made it great, you were never forced to do content so you could get to the next, you could pick and choose what you wanted to do because there was great gear in just about every event, the "best" piece was never secluded to one event either. For those reasons people are fond of FFXI and say how it has "so much endgame" when really it doesnt have a ton more than other stuff, it just makes all of it viable so people dont just pass through each event and never go back.

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Originally Posted by Afania

Because almost every other MMO following this model that's not World of Warcraft has even lower staying power than pre-Abyssea/pre-SoA FFXI. FFXI is not WoW, so it's destined to fail if they follow the same model. That's the reality.

"Modern" MMO model are bad, with avg 3~5 years of life span and go F2P after 2 years. FFXI switch to same model= killing itself period.

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The main difference between most other MMOs and FFXI now, is that FFXI will never go F2P.

There will be people out there who never cancel their subscriptions, and even if SE abandon all support for it, they'll keep the servers open as long as enough people are subscribing to cover the cost of powering the servers.

Linear progression isn't a bad thing, the problem is that the team working on FFXI now simply hasn't the man power to keep up with the demands it creates. It very well could give FFXI the final killing blow, I've never seen such a bad population drop before.

Why not just make the game free to play and implement various micro transactions like several other dinosaur games that were failing? There are 700 people online on my server which is the second most populated server in ffxi. 40-50% of these are afk in various places with their bazaars up.
I want what most other paying customers want, for this game to flourish and in the direction the game is currently going this game is taking a turn for the worse. In order for ffxi to flourish we need more players. The various word of mouth recruitment campaigns have done very little to populate in-game worlds and those that come back to see if ffxi has gotten any better were severely disappointed and cancelled their subscriptions a month later. The game just isn't able to compete anymore with paid subscription games like World of Warcraft(incoming flame war) so why not implement a new structure that has been tried successfully by many other online RPGs?
Everquest, Lineage 2, SWTOR, LOTRO, and many others have gone from a non-viable business model to a game that actually makes money by implementing micro transactions and doing away with the monthly fee.
Also make Abyssea 75-99 and make it and a few select jobs subscription only, that should bring in some revenue and more importantly some customers.

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Originally Posted by Teioh

Why not just make the game free to play and implement various micro transactions like several other dinosaur games that were failing? There are 700 people online on my server which is the second most populated server in ffxi. 40-50% of these are afk in various places with their bazaars up.
I want what most other paying customers want, for this game to flourish and in the direction the game is currently going this game is taking a turn for the worse. In order for ffxi to flourish we need more players. The various word of mouth recruitment campaigns have done very little to populate in-game worlds and those that come back to see if ffxi has gotten any better were severely disappointed and cancelled their subscriptions a month later. The game just isn't able to compete anymore with paid subscription games like World of Warcraft(incoming flame war) so why not implement a new structure that has been tried successfully by many other online RPGs?
Everquest, Lineage 2, SWTOR, LOTRO, and many others have gone from a non-viable business model to a game that actually makes money by implementing micro transactions and doing away with the monthly fee.
Also make Abyssea 75-99 and make it and a few select jobs subscription only, that should bring in some revenue and more importantly some customers.

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F2P model is for casual/come and go players. FFXI needs dedication, F2P isn't going to help much.

Well the item mall is here already... Yeah its a lowball mall, but still it's a mall. $12.95/mo, then keep login'in to participate. Though they do like to call it;
The Repeat Login Campaign!
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/cam...h/login04.html

f2p might not be that far fetched, seeing not many have realized that an item mall is here already...

when a game goes f2p it is dead, any moron knows that, The idea isn't to kill the game, its t get the game designers off their lazy fucking asses and get to work. They seem to think that they can ignore what the population of the game wants, and for there to be no repercussions, how about this for a repercussion, I buy 1 share of stock in the company then go to a stockholders meeting and tell them exactly why ffxi is falling flat on its face. The reason this game is failing is the dev team is weak and lazy. in Japanese terms they have no honor and should be replaced, especially the head developer. Get your shit together SE because you have lost the driving force in the game world, and that is simply imagination and ingenuity, us in the player base can only carry your lazy asses so far

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Originally Posted by Leylia

I believe FFXI had the chance to win old players back and even gain new players with this expansion if it simply would have been handled correctly. Yet instead we got a drop in players by at least 1/2 within a mere set of weeks after the initial "oh new expansion lets check it out hights". The problem: I haven't even started talking about how bad the actual content is we got so far but, it did not only try to change how the game has worked for the past decade, which naturally will upset players content with the style of the game so far, no it also invalidated any content before itself. I ask myself: why did they waste their time and bothered to make Nyzul 2, Salvage 2, Einherjar 2 and Limbus 2? For what reason did they overhaul previous engame events, just to have them being 100% worthless a few months later because the gear they provide is crap compared to the unmotivated level 113 crap we have now.
Why was it necessary to bring out skirmish as event with superior loot but no accessability just to bring out something else a month later making skirmish useless already and why are we still stuck with this event? At least the latter is easy to answer: there is no other content in this expansion and this expansion killed any other content but itself.

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Since all previous gear is obsolete, would you mind telling me what body piece MNK's use to TP in? What body SAM's use to WS in? There are several such examples in mage gear sets not to forget most Nuking + WS rings are from old content and the highest STR ammo piece is lvl88. And of course, arguably the best ring in the game is lvl70.

I am not going to argue that it hasn't allowed 1-99 burned jobs the ability to come close to veteran players but there is still so many pieces of old gear that is still relevant, just not the weapons.


Now as for the topic, the people who have defeated the hardest content before the update are completely bored with it and the rest of the playerbase doesn't want to level support jobs to beat the hard content. And you don't need emp/relic brds or even swaps to beat the new content, that has been proven.

This will just end up back at " Why should I have to level <job> to play the game? I have a perle BST that I enjoy playing with, I should be able to come that .... blah blah blah"

Anyway, I understand both sides of the argument but I personally like the new content as well as the old content.

Regards,

Kormak

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Originally Posted by Kormak

Since all previous gear is obsolete, would you mind telling me what body piece MNK's use to TP in? What body SAM's use to WS in? There are several such examples in mage gear sets not to forget most Nuking + WS rings are from old content and the highest STR ammo piece is lvl88. And of course, arguably the best ring in the game is lvl70.

I am not going to argue that it hasn't allowed 1-99 burned jobs the ability to come close to veteran players but there is still so many pieces of old gear that is still relevant, just not the weapons.


Now as for the topic, the people who have defeated the hardest content before the update are completely bored with it and the rest of the playerbase doesn't want to level support jobs to beat the hard content. And you don't need emp/relic brds or even swaps to beat the new content, that has been proven.

This will just end up back at " Why should I have to level <job> to play the game? I have a perle BST that I enjoy playing with, I should be able to come that .... blah blah blah"

Anyway, I understand both sides of the argument but I personally like the new content as well as the old content.

Regards,

Kormak

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lot of the past gear is obsolete now. sure it some that ok but what the point at this time?. with Skirmish weapons/gear alone it broken as F#$% no one going to wanna do past contents for X gear if SoA gives broken gear in hours. you can literally 1 shot almost any past content without even trying. it feels like using a gameshark code on FF7 to kill anything in the game. even if they updated R/M/E SoA already did the damage to this and sadly people been dropping out of the servers fast. 200-400 is starting to be normal:(

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Originally Posted by Teioh

Why not just make the game free to play and implement various micro transactions like several other dinosaur games that were failing? There are 700 people online on my server which is the second most populated server in ffxi. 40-50% of these are afk in various places with their bazaars up.
I want what most other paying customers want, for this game to flourish and in the direction the game is currently going this game is taking a turn for the worse. In order for ffxi to flourish we need more players. The various word of mouth recruitment campaigns have done very little to populate in-game worlds and those that come back to see if ffxi has gotten any better were severely disappointed and cancelled their subscriptions a month later. The game just isn't able to compete anymore with paid subscription games like World of Warcraft(incoming flame war) so why not implement a new structure that has been tried successfully by many other online RPGs?
Everquest, Lineage 2, SWTOR, LOTRO, and many others have gone from a non-viable business model to a game that actually makes money by implementing micro transactions and doing away with the monthly fee.
Also make Abyssea 75-99 and make it and a few select jobs subscription only, that should bring in some revenue and more importantly some customers.

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EQ, SWTOR and LoTRO still offer a subscription option. As long as they maintained a sub option (in the event of such a switch happening, which I doubt at this point... but who knows, SE has been known to go from one extreme stance to another before), I think it'd be okay.

They need to stay the hell away from NCSoft's "Truly Free (to nickel and dime you to death)" setup. It's an abomination. I used to be a huge Lineage 2 player, for several years, and loved the hell out of that game. Then they did the whole "Goddess" expansion, switched to a fully F2P/Cash Shop model. They lied through their teeth in their lead-up PR, claiming that only non-game/stat effecting items would be sold (claiming they understood how such items in a PvP setting like L2 could be disastrous). They then proceeded to start selling such items almost from day one, changing their logic from "won't happen" to "well, they're optional!" They said this full knowing that in a competitive game like that, people will spend money - lots of it - to get an advantage over their rivals. People had been buying Adena, for just that reason, for years already in that game, so they didn't even have to 'test the waters' to find out.

They knew exactly what they were doing when setting up the F2P model for that game, and "Heavy Handed" doesn't even begin to describe it. Worst P2P to F2P transition I've ever seen. It went from being a game I played and loved for years, to "get the hell off my computer" in less than a week.

They did the same thing with Aion.

I don't believe, at all, though, that FFXI needs to go F2P. What FFXI needs is some serious thought and reconsideration of the direction they've chosen to take it. Trying to go with the vertical progression approach is just not going to fly. It's been proven time and again that developers can not crank out new content fast enough to stay ahead of players. Developers repeatedly underestimate their players and think they can somehow "stay ahead". It never works. SE's model of long-term progression with a "lateral" approach, rather than "vertical", served FFXI wonderfully for years. Yes, people complained about it... but they kept playing and the game maintained a healthy population for over 7 years before any kind of a noticeable decline began, which I would contend had more to do with the game's age at that point than anything else. Even then, XI's population decline was far slower than most any other comparable MMO out there (sub-based, etc).

SE could have stayed the course, continued creating content the way they did, and I believe the game would have remained healthier and the population wouldn't have dropped as it did. Instead, they decided to hop on the "mainstream MMO" bandwagon and start changing the game to be more like others (which they'd successfully avoided doing all those years prior). As I said in my last post, they decided to mix oil into water, and the results have been self-evident.

The population is at perhaps its lowest ever, and I don't think I've ever seen so many people as disappointed and upset about the direction of the game in all my time playing it.

They can't go back to Abyssea. They already raised the cap to 99 and, other than the "faux levels" granted through gear, there's only so far they can go in that direction.

I think they need to go back to their roots, look at what they did in those past expansions that kept people engaged and loyally playing for years. One thing I can guarantee they'll find is that their focus was far more on community, on lateral progression and on giving players challenges that weren't outright grinds, but that still took time to accomplish because they were difficult to do. Make old content relevant again for its own sake.

For their part, the playerbase has to get off this gear obsession they've been on. Every other complaint I see sometimes is something to do with getting new gear. This is the product of SE trying to turn the game into a vertical-progression setup. As Stompa said perfectly earlier in the thread, the fun of playing FFXI used to be playing FFXI. SE needs to look back to their own past, see what they did right, find a way to bring it to the present, and get themselves back on the right track. They're just getting deeper and deeper into the weeds with the decisions they've been making over the last few years.

FFXI was originally envisioned as a grand adventure, not a race to "end game". They need to return to that vision.

My 2 gil, and of course, my opinion.

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Originally Posted by ScreamingInDigital

EQ, SWTOR and LoTRO still offer a subscription option. As long as they maintained a sub option (in the event of such a switch happening, which I doubt at this point... but who knows, SE has been known to go from one extreme stance to another before), I think it'd be okay.

They need to stay the hell away from NCSoft's "Truly Free (to nickel and dime you to death)" setup. It's an abomination. I used to be a huge Lineage 2 player, for several years, and loved the hell out of that game. Then they did the whole "Goddess" expansion, switched to a fully F2P/Cash Shop model. They lied through their teeth in their lead-up PR, claiming that only non-game/stat effecting items would be sold (claiming they understood how such items in a PvP setting like L2 could be disastrous). They then proceeded to start selling such items almost from day one, changing their logic from "won't happen" to "well, they're optional!" They said this full knowing that in a competitive game like that, people will spend money - lots of it - to get an advantage over their rivals. People had been buying Adena, for just that reason, for years already in that game, so they didn't even have to 'test the waters' to find out.

They knew exactly what they were doing when setting up the F2P model for that game, and "Heavy Handed" doesn't even begin to describe it. Worst P2P to F2P transition I've ever seen. It went from being a game I played and loved for years, to "get the hell off my computer" in less than a week.

They did the same thing with Aion.

I don't believe, at all, though, that FFXI needs to go F2P. What FFXI needs is some serious thought and reconsideration of the direction they've chosen to take it. Trying to go with the vertical progression approach is just not going to fly. It's been proven time and again that developers can not crank out new content fast enough to stay ahead of players. Developers repeatedly underestimate their players and think they can somehow "stay ahead". It never works. SE's model of long-term progression with a "lateral" approach, rather than "vertical", served FFXI wonderfully for years. Yes, people complained about it... but they kept playing and the game maintained a healthy population for over 7 years before any kind of a noticeable decline began, which I would contend had more to do with the game's age at that point than anything else. Even then, XI's population decline was far slower than most any other comparable MMO out there (sub-based, etc).

SE could have stayed the course, continued creating content the way they did, and I believe the game would have remained healthier and the population wouldn't have dropped as it did. Instead, they decided to hop on the "mainstream MMO" bandwagon and start changing the game to be more like others (which they'd successfully avoided doing all those years prior). As I said in my last post, they decided to mix oil into water, and the results have been self-evident.

The population is at perhaps its lowest ever, and I don't think I've ever seen so many people as disappointed and upset about the direction of the game in all my time playing it.

They can't go back to Abyssea. They already raised the cap to 99 and, other than the "faux levels" granted through gear, there's only so far they can go in that direction.

I think they need to go back to their roots, look at what they did in those past expansions that kept people engaged and loyally playing for years. One thing I can guarantee they'll find is that their focus was far more on community, on lateral progression and on giving players challenges that weren't outright grinds, but that still took time to accomplish because they were difficult to do. Make old content relevant again for its own sake.

For their part, the playerbase has to get off this gear obsession they've been on. Every other complaint I see sometimes is something to do with getting new gear. This is the product of SE trying to turn the game into a vertical-progression setup. As Stompa said perfectly earlier in the thread, the fun of playing FFXI used to be playing FFXI. SE needs to look back to their own past, see what they did right, find a way to bring it to the present, and get themselves back on the right track. They're just getting deeper and deeper into the weeds with the decisions they've been making over the last few years.

FFXI was originally envisioned as a grand adventure, not a race to "end game". They need to return to that vision.

My 2 gil, and of course, my opinion.

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And the problem with that was, they actually created nothing that I would call endgame, IMO Delve and skirmish aren't endgame. Endgame (except for hnms), always had a progression associated with it. You couldn't do dynamis until you'd attained rank 6, you couldn't do sky until you had sky access, same with jailers and limbus with sea access. There has always been a progression to be able to do endgame activities, along comes SoA and anybody can go in and do a skirmish or join a Delve group, one person completing one WKR so 17 other people can join them in a shout group is definitely not endgame.

I had really high hopes for this expansion, I mean they billed it as the first full expansion in 5 years, but what did we really get? We got Reives, WKR, Delve and Skirmish, that's the best they could come up with in their bid to keep us? Pitiful if you ask me. This is definitely not the grand adventure I was hoping for, and I feel more than a little let down at wasting the money I spent to get the expansion.

Well, I can't say I'm disappointed with FFXI. I've played this game for over four years and I'm happy with what I got and the people I've met in this game, but all good things must come to end. This game has run its course. Over 11 years great job, but let's be real the storyline is boring, PS2 graphics, and adoulin weapons are ridiculous. The era we live progresses and we need to keep up with the Jones'. Nobody is running around with beepers anymore. We all have IPhones or galaxies. Whatever floats your boat. Stop trying to patch up the game and just come out and tell us you're killing the game! I promise I won't be mad. I'll just switch to ffxiv.

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Originally Posted by predatory

And the problem with that was, they actually created nothing that I would call endgame, IMO Delve and skirmish aren't endgame. Endgame (except for hnms), always had a progression associated with it. You couldn't do dynamis until you'd attained rank 6, you couldn't do sky until you had sky access, same with jailers and limbus with sea access. There has always been a progression to be able to do endgame activities, along comes SoA and anybody can go in and do a skirmish or join a Delve group, one person completing one WKR so 17 other people can join them in a shout group is definitely not endgame.

I had really high hopes for this expansion, I mean they billed it as the first full expansion in 5 years, but what did we really get? We got Reives, WKR, Delve and Skirmish, that's the best they could come up with in their bid to keep us? Pitiful if you ask me. This is definitely not the grand adventure I was hoping for, and I feel more than a little let down at wasting the money I spent to get the expansion.

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delve is definitly endgame, haveing prequesites for sky sea etc was just retarded. ANYTHING you do at max lvl to further your gear is endgame. atm its delve and skirmish mostly because old content got irrelevant, in the november update it might be anything again with hardmode and REM updates.