Friendships and accomplishing things.

I would feel cheated, robbed, if I had the simple joyfulness associated with achieving things, taken away from me.

Every day, I hear the lonely sorrowful yells of the JobPoints Seller, as he mournfully spams the Chatbox with seedy offers to transform people into JobMasters for a sum of Gil.

I remember soloing and duoing my first two Jobmaster jobs, and it took a very long time, before all the rings and RoV bonuses etc. existed.

But I enjoyed it, because I love to play my jobs, and I felt a sense of excitement as I completed each fifty JobPoints and got closer to my Stars.

I still remember the journey, duoing with my best friend, the hard work, and the laughter too.

I think it would break my heart, if I wasn't able to have the sense of personal accomplishment, the thrill of achievement.

The same goes for RME, I farm all the items myself, or with my friends. I have a million happy memories of the adventures we had, farming those RME materials.

If I bought the materials with Gil, I would have missed out on all the memories, adventures, and sense of accomplishment.

I made so many new friends over the last seventeen years in Vana'diel, new friends I met by teaming up to accomplish things.

I think it must be an empty feeling, to just buy everything with Gil.

I also feel that new players, who may not know better, and who use Gil to buy JobMaster Status, and RME etc. are being robbed of those adventures, memories, new friendships, and sense of personal achievement.

I really would feel cheated, and robbed, if I had missed out on those experiences, missed out on the journey, by taking a short cut to the end. The journey is where all the actual important stuff is.

I could say that when my level twenty Tarutaru WHM kited a whole army of goblins to the Selbina zone line, to save the lives of my party members, it was so exciting and fun that I almost laughed myself sick afterwards.

All of those seemingly low-level and mundane moments, along the long journey, those are priceless memories.

We should cherish those accomplishments, those journey memories, and the friendships that blossomed from them.

:cool:

Well the game is very top heavy. Look at lvl, it's a means to an end. Rare does anyone congratulate on 75 like early on in the game where it could take years to get to 75.

Most people have statics, so you don't tend to meet new people anymore, since statics can do everything in house.

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Originally Posted by VoiceMemo

Well the game is very top heavy. Look at lvl, it's a means to an end. Rare does anyone congratulate on 75 like early on in the game where it could take years to get to 75.

Most people have statics, so you don't tend to meet new people anymore, since statics can do everything in house.

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Yes, statics are a logical and efficient method, especially for time-restricted events. I wouldn't criticise anybody for deploying the statics method.

My point in the post, and the thread title, was a broader and perhaps esoteric point.

Everybody has a personal unique set of reasons why they love FFXI, and obviously there is overlap and common ground.

The main reasons why I love FFXI, are in the thread title, friendships and accomplishing things.

My concern is that, in the dystopian lonely new era of Pay-To-Progress, new players are missing out on those important and enjoyable aspects of the game.

Worse still, many of them probably don't know that an earlier age even existed. They might assume that it was always <This way.> when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

I love playing FFXI in 2021, there's lots of fun things to do, so this isn't a complaint thread at all.

I just hope that new players won't feel isolated, lonely, and bored, if they are drawn into the Pay-To-Progress system. That system seems like a Meat Grinder to me. I think it is a terrible thing to happen to a player.

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Originally Posted by VoiceMemo

Well the game is very top heavy. Look at lvl, it's a means to an end. Rare does anyone congratulate on 75 like early on in the game where it could take years to get to 75.

Most people have statics, so you don't tend to meet new people anymore, since statics can do everything in house.

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That is the FFXIV excuse. Not acceptable if you ask me. The game should try better, much better, to keep original content always relevant.

Game kind of lost it's way with Raphsodies of Vana Diel and the way they try to trivialize the original (and best) game content.

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Originally Posted by Lortheron

That is the FFXIV excuse. Not acceptable if you ask me. The game should try better, much better, to keep original content always relevant.

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How would you keep original content relevant? Some of the missions are 10+ years old. Leveling is so easy now you can get from 1-99 in a matter of hours. The game is no longer the grind for leveling as it was. All the major roadblocks for REMA weapons have been removed. Anyone can obtain a REMA, just how long it takes is the difference.

well additional progression systems helped to dilute that somewhat, unless you have a very efficient group or you pay someone to do it, getting job mastery takes a fair while. And now we have new levels to gain after that.

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The game should try better, much better, to keep original content always relevant.

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Why? Any MMO, whether before FFXI or after, you are always doing earlier things to gain access to later things? Why is it so important that the things you did as a fledgling adventurer stay relevant after you become a legendary hero? The only aspect of importance to it is helping others to do the things you did before. Beyond that, why should a level 30 boss fight give rewards that are relevant to me, the destroyer of legendary Wyrms and saviour of the world?

You keep a game fresh by regularly offering new things to do, not making people do the same ones over and over and over again. Leveling offers the maximum extent of that that anyone needs.

Why does Garrison still need to be relevant? Why do lv30 BCNMs need to still be relevant? I don't understand this mentality. The game gets too stale, and too time consuming, if you're expected to regularly do all of these things often in addition to all the new things that come later. Nobody has time to do all that.

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Originally Posted by VoiceMemo

How would you keep original content relevant? Some of the missions are 10+ years old. Leveling is so easy now you can get from 1-99 in a matter of hours. The game is no longer the grind for leveling as it was. All the major roadblocks for REMA weapons have been removed. Anyone can obtain a REMA, just how long it takes is the difference.

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They can just Create abyssea zones all over again in unused Zones, it so easy to color pallete swap minus Abyssites since people hated solo abyssea, on top of that they could even add Seekers of adoulin VW, or a new Open source dungeons like garbage Citadel ETC in older maps they could tie it to new lore its so easy to accomplish that i think, and add New Nation quests maybe ILVL nation Rank 10 gear with those new / vanilla zones dungeons? Like ilvl version of the golden parry bastok hands for example stuff like that would be interesting

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Originally Posted by Kalimairo

They can just Create abyssea zones all over again in unused Zones, it so easy to color pallete swap minus Abyssites since people hated solo abyssea, on top of that they could even add Seekers of adoulin VW, or a new Open source dungeons like garbage Citadel ETC in older maps they could tie it to new lore its so easy to accomplish that i think, and add New Nation quests maybe ILVL nation Rank 10 gear with those new / vanilla zones dungeons? Like ilvl version of the golden parry bastok hands for example stuff like that would be interesting

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But this is not original content anymore, it is NEW content. Sure it reuses old zones but it would do totally different things.

Its not really new content, more like reused assets and slight changes in design. Something like Neo Nyzul Isle and Salvage II could be done to create new life into old content, its why they did that in the first place when the level cap went up. People loved that content and wanted to continue doing it so SE reused the assets, changed a few rules around and upped the stats. I would think a new Nyzul Isle ilevel would be pretty funny.

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Originally Posted by Kalimairo

They can just Create abyssea zones all over again in unused Zones, it so easy to color pallete swap minus Abyssites since people hated solo abyssea, on top of that they could even add Seekers of adoulin VW, or a new Open source dungeons like garbage Citadel ETC in older maps they could tie it to new lore its so easy to accomplish that i think, and add New Nation quests maybe ILVL nation Rank 10 gear with those new / vanilla zones dungeons? Like ilvl version of the golden parry bastok hands for example stuff like that would be interesting

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There are many interesting ways to make new and old players of different levels interact without killing the joy and challenge for either one (low, medium or high level, playing together), level syncing is one of them... also there are many ways to keep old areas full of players of different levels and old content always rewarding and relevant so that old players help new players and receive proper rewards (but then, the original content has to have the option for proper level syncing so that everyone has a challenge while doing it and don't just steamroll trough it, epic fights should remain hard and epic forever, be it doing with trustes or high level friends, no matter the level). Even FFXIV does a better job at this than FFXI : (

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Originally Posted by Immortal

Its not really new content, more like reused assets and slight changes in design. Something like Neo Nyzul Isle and Salvage II could be done to create new life into old content, its why they did that in the first place when the level cap went up. People loved that content and wanted to continue doing it so SE reused the assets, changed a few rules around and upped the stats. I would think a new Nyzul Isle ilevel would be pretty funny.

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Agreed... again: many ways to keep everything fresh and relevant so new players are not forced to go as quickly as possible to max level to have some good challenge and enjoy the game (which is a ridiculous concept to begin with), what needs to happen is new ways to incentive old players to do original content with the new players that never did it before with proper rewards for both parts and with a proper challenge either (no steamrolling). Again, even FFXIV does a better job at this front than FFXI... FFXI needs to better value all of it's original content and incentivize new players to go trough all of it (all of Rise of Zillart, Chains of Promathia, Nation Champaign, etc.), if bringing some higher level old player friends together, all the better for everyone : )

The only way to incentivize older players to do old content again would require a reward that is worth the time. But yet also it can't be spammable. It couldn't be a single piece of gear that is best in slot for everyone. IE the one that fits this bill right now is the nayame set from bumba, it benefits all players if path b is selected.

It would likely need to be something like "helper points" and there is a limit to how many you can get a month, resetting each month upon update, much like monthly deeds. And said points would be used to buy items of worth.

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Originally Posted by VoiceMemo

The only way to incentivize older players to do old content again would require a reward that is worth the time. But yet also it can't be spammable. It couldn't be a single piece of gear that is best in slot for everyone. IE the one that fits this bill right now is the nayame set from bumba, it benefits all players if path b is selected.

It would likely need to be something like "helper points" and there is a limit to how many you can get a month, resetting each month upon update, much like monthly deeds. And said points would be used to buy items of worth.

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That is actually a good idea. This game desperately needs something like that, rewards for old and new players to do original content synced together. As I said before, it's a feature every old school MMO implements one way or another, and FFXIV is somewhat of an OK example to follow in this regard (as much as I currently don't like the game too much anymore, I managed to do most of the original extremes and savages synchronized with other players just last year, and never had a problem finding groups to do original content synced on that game).

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Originally Posted by VoiceMemo

The only way to incentivize older players to do old content again would require a reward that is worth the time. But yet also it can't be spammable. It couldn't be a single piece of gear that is best in slot for everyone. IE the one that fits this bill right now is the nayame set from bumba, it benefits all players if path b is selected.

It would likely need to be something like "helper points" and there is a limit to how many you can get a month, resetting each month upon update, much like monthly deeds. And said points would be used to buy items of worth.

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Also, to add to this: many MMOs already have some sort of incentive like the ones you speak, including FFXIV.