What the dealeo!

So I've been playing this game since forever and a day. I loved the old and i love the new. Abyssea, and it's friends have been out for a while now, and they're getting kind of stale truth be told. Not that i'm totally downing the abyssea dev team or anything it's great stuff the trigger system, love it (where was this during sea!?) but there has to be more to the world of vana 'diel than what we see here.

where do mithras come from? do gigas have moms and dads? Why are there only 2 continents when every other world (final fantasy and or anime) has more than 2 contintents. It pretty much boils down to one final question, why is this game so limited (in terms of exploration!)? There's so much to do in the game, but there's not much to see.

Answer. E X P A N D. now i know the first defense you'll toss up is "PS2 Limitations" and i understand however when the going gets rough, you get rid of an old console system that has reached it's limits and force people to adhere or they can simply move on with their lives. you can come out with a new expansion that is only available for PC if ppl don't like it well they can stay in abyssea twidling their thumbs trying to trigger chloris to get those last few buds for their emp h2h.

With that said. i'd like to introduce one of the new jobs for the new expansion! The long awaited (and so right for this expansion if it goes as planned) Bersker!!! I think out of all the things X-2 failed to do it did excel in one thing. which was the battle system and the one job that caught my eye, was berserker. It's a nice looking job yuna and the girls played it awesomely. now wouldn't it be cool if you could see a taru berserker!? with their pudgy little bodies and short midget legs, or a tall lanky elvaan berserker!

With that covered here's how i pictured berserker would work! first off it's a very versatile job. at the turn of a dime it can be all out DD or a decent tank with b- in h2h (claw type only) and dagger (kukri only). I know what you're thinking b- is low as crap! but wait there's more. it's 2 hour ability would be something to the effect of "Animal Instinct" or "Animal Rage" which is pretty much a "Berserked" type of Hundred Fist. you attack and attack without the ability to perform any job abilities, weapon skills, use items etc. you pretty much let your shewolf out and go to town on the mobs. This is where things become a lot more interesting... at level 10, you get your first two job abilities which are the main reason you'll love berserker and never leave home without it! I introduce to you Feral or Prowl Stance and (I couldn't think of a name worthy enough) Tank Stance. like scholar's light arts / dark arts and ninja's innin and yonin. berserker can change stances on a whim to accomodate the party.

Prowl/Feral stance is pretty much a heavy DD stance it's main weapon is h2h, and you're character is on all 4s... yes i said all 4s like an animal. being in Prowl/Feral stance brings combat skills related to that job up from b- to a- (h2h, guard, evasion). Feral/Prowl also has it's own job traits (counter, attack bonus, evasion bonus) all in low tiers of course. each stance (like sch) would also have it's own job abilities to use couple of my faves. Hunger; Grabs nearby unclaimed monster (excluding beastmen) and consumes them to restore a certain amount of HP. Amount of HP restored based on mob/player level. Too weak type monsters restoring less HP as opposed to Even match+ monsters restoring more HP. Success Rate based on AF/Relic armor + low modifier of INT. 5 minute cooldown. Another one i liked, Call of the Wild; Calls nearby unclaimed monsters to converge on claimed monster. said monsters are inflicted with a "bloodlust" status effect and quickly lose health as they attack until they die. if unsuccessful monsters will attack player instead. success rate of call based on af/relic + low INT modifier. 10 minute cooldown. another one, Mimic/Copy; readies player to copy next tp move of target and use once available (100tp is reached) 5 minute cooldown.

The other stance (which yet has a name!) would be a more humane stance standing on 2 legs as opposed to the 4 that it's counterpart has berserker in. being in this stance forces you to use dagger as a main weapon bringing said skill from b- to a- and any combat skills associated with this stance (shield, parrying). This is more of a tank job. job traits include, shield def bonus, dual wield I, def bonus, tactical parry etc. This job sheaths some of it's animal instincts and lets the more humane side out. it relies a bit more on glare/intimidation to survive. glare attacks that cause intimidation, paralyze, confusion (mob accidently hurts itself). One of my fave job abilities for this stance is Ensnare; grants player sneak/invis and cause player to lose all enmity from the mob while giving the player a 30 second (with af feet +15 seconds) chance to strike with a critical hit from behind the mob. cool down 5 minutes.

Anyways you get the idea (plus that's all i wrote down the rest of it was all in my head and i forgot it already!!) but it's clearly not perfect would love some player input! get the brainstorm going. i mean i know it's a long shot and a far away dream that'll probably never happen but it's fun to speculate :)

While I'm not sure the game is quite ready for new jobs yet (if ever), I'm sure everyone and their brother would like a new expansion eventually, even if it is something like two years off. Anyways, to answer your more answerable questions (there was a thread entirely full of just questions about lore, but I forget where it went):

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Originally Posted by omegadevil85

where do mithras come from? do gigas have moms and dads? Why are there only 2 continents when every other world (final fantasy and or anime) has more than 2 contintents. It pretty much boils down to one final question, why is this game so limited (in terms of exploration!)? There's so much to do in the game, but there's not much to see.

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Mithra come from Olzhirya, which is far to the south.

Gigas are suspected to have come from Rhazowa, far to the north. They have an empire and boats and such, and I suppose it can be assumed they reproduce. Not sure you'd want to meet their parents though, Gigas are a pain to deal with without getting to know their family already.

There are actually three continents you can set foot on in the game. Well, more like two and a half, since ToAU takes place on a different continent, but you can't travel as much of it.

Why is the game limited in exploration? My best guess would be the hard drive space that SE has been limiting themselves to as well as secret development stuff that happens - there might be paths to places we can't visit on the continents we can visit already that were clearly thought out, but not everything always goes according to plan.

I'm hoping the UI changes are a sign that they want to try future proof XI (since XIV failed to become the next SE MMO and v2 is more about saving face than a serious attempt to make a successor) and indeed release more expansions/addons, would be nice if they just came out and said it though.

I know XI playerbase are pretty loyal and even if they leave they will come back if new expansions are announced but secrecy seems silly if word of expanding the game further woudl add so much good feeling to the playerbase.

World Map This URL here shows a map of the world which could be just player speculation or could be the actual map. and i know some of the folklore the mithra and gigas they were actually rhetorical questions =P to add to that the only reason i know about the mithras is this because Naja Salaheem is princess to Kingdom of Zwhan she's related to Haja Zwhan. And i do and don't entirely agree with you. 20 jobs is a lot to choose from and they each have their own uniqeness (not a word) they bring to the game, linkshells, parties, alliances etc. but what's one more? or even two more? maybe i'm going out on a limb but i think it's a great a idea. i mean come on it's different it would definitely have players talking for a while. i also had some notes about implimenting TP usage for one stance and charges (like sch) for the other stance. but the expansion thing is needed. unlike the other expansions that (even the minis) abyssea has been played out and ppl are so burnt out on it. even voidwatch which they keep adding to. it's getting old... really old. abyssea and it's friends are getting stale quickly. I really think this game has a lot to offer, and lot of potential it's just not being brought to the light.

That Map is player drawn however far as I can tell the continents are where they should be.

I made a post regarding those areas. The names of those continents are listed in my post. As of yet no mod has replied to it and I doubt they ever will. I am going to assume that they will skip this post also. They might not but I'm not holding my breath.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...sion-question.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...l=1#post220710

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Originally Posted by Camate

I understand your feelings about the differences between FINAL FANTASY XI and FINAL FANTASY XIV. Please understand that these games are very different entities and just as it was stated before, the operational policies as well as the size of the development team are very different as well.

Just to clarify one misconception I have been noticing for a while now...

"PS2 limitations" is not a factor for adding new areas to the game and we will in fact be adding new areas in the future, so please do not worry about this.

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Who knows just when we could expect new areas to show up though. I would imagine they are trying to fix some bigger issues with the existing state of the game first. Gotta remember how long it's been capped at 75, and we got a good bit of new content designed specifically for that level cap. Just adding those 24 more levels is turning things upside down in some aspects. It isn't too far fetched to expect they would eventually add something along the same lines for people to continue to do at 99....but they'll want to fix a lot of what is potentially gamebreaking about 99 first so that people don't just race through that content like we've seen happen with Abyssea and such.

I expect another expansion in about 2015+ if we get one at all.

No new jobs, expand old job roles so each job has a niche theyre good at. Hybrid jobs need the most work since they're only good really for small-man groups(since they cover a wide variety of uses such as DD/Healer like DNC or buffer/dd like SMN). Jobs I'm talking about are of course DRK SMN DRG mostly. DNC has been taken care of nicely as in old level 75 content DNC was lolable but now DNC is actually quite powerful, BLU is also a hybrid job that's gotten a lot of work as of late.

I don't know if we'll see another full-blown expansion ever. It just doesn't seem economical to put a new box on shelves this late in the game. They could, however, continue to improve upon their DLC model and feed us mini-expansions this way.

I started a thread a while back similar to this. My suggestion was to warp us to to limited regions of these unvisited continents, and expose us to the origins of so much lore in the game. I also offered an idea for new pseudo-jobs, by releasing new gear sets with attributes and abilities that mold an existing job into something new.

I think we all understand that this game is old and that we're not likely to see the kind of growth that we saw in years past. Mini expansions can, however, feed our hunger for new zones, new story, and access to (at least samples of) the rest of Vana 'diel.

My prediction: ffxi is old and outdated, doesnt have that huge of a player base compared to other pay to play mmos and is otw out the door. why else would they gimp the entire game, not just one or two aspects of it, but the ENTIRE game, at the same time they overpower all their players? will ffxiv v2 be good enough to take its place? Hopefully, its sure on the way to becoming something good, but only time will tell.

and btw I really do hope I get to eat crow on this if they ever fix what they broke because I do love ffxi and miss playing it daily. now Im on maybe an hr or 2 a week, if that.

idk about it being on the way out the door just yet. I typically see upwards of 2600-2800 people on our server any time I check--some people thinking about coming back have been asking, so I've been hitting /sea all every now and then to check for them. That's upwards of 33k/month in revenue just from one server--not exactly chump-change if all servers are following close to the same population statitistic. At a conservative average of just 2500 active accounts per server, that comes out to over 500k in revenue per month just from FFXI base subscriptions alone--not including mules and other sales of software/merchandise. That should be a resonable enough incentive for them to continue working on improving the game. Especially with it being done with a skelton crew now in comparison it should be easy enough for them to justify continuing to support/tweak a game bringing in upwards of 500k /month in recurring revenues.

Subscriptions are also slowly going back up with people returning and new players coming in---yes, that's right....we are still getting new players to this old game. Don't forget that if and when they finally fix the snafu with the payment systems, we are likely to revive an entire sector of players that effectively got frozen out of the game simply because they were left with no way to play--a large number of players from the Oceania region (among others)simply just fell off the radar back in September because of this mess. If they bring back a viable payment method for those disenfranchised players, it will be a big jump in subscriptions right away.