Raise the Minimum Requirement for entering Abyssea to Lv70 or 75

[Panthera]

Also, there is no accomplishment for leveling jobs and never was. People really need to get that through their heads. I've seen level 30 players who were better at their jobs than "Main Job", old-leveled 90s who were too dense to look up even a single shred of credible information in their 7 years of playing the game.

Why is not now, and why wasn't it then? You've just made an assertion without any supporting reasons. Just because you've used a big loud font doesn't mean you're right.

[Greatguardian]

Why is not now, and why wasn't it then? You've just made an assertion without any supporting reasons. Just because you've used a big loud font doesn't mean you're right.

Because any chimpanzee with a keyboard could always get level 75. There is nothing to be proud of, especially post-ToAU where FFXI's inept and incompetent masses blitzed through the leveling system in droves. Server firsts? The first Maat's Cap? There's some accomplishment there, but really, getting level 75 just means you have enough time on your hands and you're competent or persistent enough to hit the same 2 macros repeatedly for hours upon hours on end.

It takes more real effort and skill to get bloody AF3+1 than it does to level a job to 75 outside Abyssea. Even mediocre/crap bots can emulate party-based play, sometimes at a level higher than your average moron can manage.

[Melodicya]

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[Chaani]

I don't understand why this topic has yet again come up. Leeching existed well before Abyssea was even a glimmer in anyone's eyes. Pre-Abyssea you'd have a group of 6, more often than not, unless you were partying with friends who were essentially accountable to everyone else for their performance, you'd have the one mage who'd be spamming bio claiming they needed skill-ups while the other mage was furiously curing and out of mp, and then on the melee side you'd have 1 or 2 melees hacking away only to have the full AF (insert random melee job) using a massively under leveled and/or under skilled weapon...most of the times even the wrong weapon class missing the mob save for the accuracy floor.

I'm a few pages late, but missing 80% of the game's content because of Abyssea? What content is being missed here, the mob types? Bats in Garlaige, Colibris in East Ronfaure [s] and ultimately Wajaom Woodlands and Bhaflau Thickets? Is that the content we're talking about here? All of the missions are still for the most part intact with global level cap changes for CoP, quests are unchanged and still available to do (and certainly profitable for certain quests), BCNM fights are still there and capped as they have been (and again some are quite lucrative gil-wise), along with ENMs (another big gil-maker for some fights given martial knives), KSNMs are uncapped. So what is this 80% of the game's content that is being missed when a large part of the content that has remained unchanged is arguably quite profitable Post-Abyssea?

[Romanova]

This game is about accomplishments and feeling good about making those accomplishments.

for you

Not responding to the rest of your post because time and again you've shown your pure selfishness throughout your posts are are just arguing semantics that don't really matter. But try to get this through your head. for you it is about accomplishments. Not for everybody. Nor does it have to be for everybody just because you have pride in a video game. Nor does accomplishment have to = XP. For some it's making out only 1-3 classes and making them the best they can. Or getting a relic, or getting emp weapons, maxing out crafting. Some, just don't care about xp, and they shouldn't have to make that their "accomplishment".


And don't get me wrong, if that's what floats your boat, then more power to you I actually have no problem with you taking pride in your jobs. But when you get so bad you can't see that pride doesn't have to apply to everybody, then I take issue. Not everybody has to play the game under your way. Sticking to what SE allows is good enough for me.

[Meyi]

Sorry for the big post. I wanted to play catch up since I last posted. orz

Current EXP PTs on Lakshmi:

ERon(S): 0
Wajaom: 0
MMM: 0
Cad Mire: 0
Altepa: 1
Thickets: 0

How about Valkurm Dunes, Cape Terrigan, Valley of Sorrows, Kuftal Tunnel, The Boyahda Tree, Ro'Maeve, Ru'Aun Gardens, The Shrine of Ru'Avitau, Mount Zhayolm, Quicksand Caves, Crawler's Nest, Qufim, Bibiki Bay, Labyrinth of Onzozo, Sauromugue Champaign, Korroloka Tunnel, Lower Delkfutt's Tower, Yuhtunga Jungle, Yhoator Jungle, Garliage Citadel, Gustav Tunnel, Aydeewa Subterrane, Mamook, Maze of Shakhrami, King Ranperre's Tomb or Uleguerand Range? Did you check these zones too?

There are so many vast areas for camps that six zones doesn't provide enough information as to whether people are still exp partying or not.

Dude, im glad you've found EXP parties but the reality is that they are something in the past and made so because of rampant Abyssea leeching. For someone logging in, you'd be hard pressed to make a PT because:

A. Most people rather leech.
B. Getting a rep if someone leaves is a nightmare.
C. Old EXP was already bad if you didn't have proper resources.

This has nothing to do with tanks cause gasp, you don't need them in a meleeburn. What this has to do with is the fact that Abyssea has a superior way to level and thus people do not want to go back to horribly slow EXP.

If you're a new player this is doubly so because it means you'll be soloing a majority of the time (no keys to leech, not enough willing to pt cause of leeching) which leads to tedium, frustration and eventually quitting. You can say the same thing existed before Abyssea but at least then you knew others were suffering along side you.

You can keep saying that people aren't "trying" hard enough though.

A. I'm not sure about that. If oldschool exp parties made the same, or almost the same, amount of exp as Abyssea parties, I know I would much rather do oldschool parties.
B. So true. :< Especially as a healer or a tank.
C. It was. And it's still vastly inferior to current Abyssea exp.

While true, we don't need tanks anymore for lots of party playstyles, it was considered a necessity in the past. There were always too many damage dealers, not enough tanks, and not enough healers. I can't count how many parties took an hour or two to form only to break because we couldn't find anyone who could properly fill the last slot we needed.

I don't think new players are completely distraught when starting. I've met a few new people. If they join a decent social linkshell (I know TalesofVesperia is great for this on Bismarck), they can ask to join a party and get some cruor, or, ask linkshell if anyone would like to party the oldschool way.

To be fair, I don't think there are many new players who just happen to stumble across Final Fantasy XI in the store and decide to give it a try because it's a Final Fantasy game. Not anymore, anyway. I think it's safe to say that the majority of new people who are joining (or even returning) are doing so because they have friends on the game. These friends will help their friends catch up.

To be fair, standard exp parties were dying before the advent of Abyssea. Because of a lack of new players. Everyone was meriting. Those that weren't meriting were exping in: Qufim, Eron, Wajaom. Fast forward today. Those that aren't Abyssea leeching are exping in.. Qufim, Eron, Wajaom.

This is true.

But please, remind me again why we're against leeching? Are we against new players leeching because they can't "learn their jobs"? Are we against old players exping jobs they never plan to use? What is the argument exactly, I'm 13 guys what is this?

It's because some people don't appreciate the fact that people can zoom through the levels on a job without actually taking the time to play with it. For example, learning a job ability at level 35, but not knowing what it does when they hit level 90. Also not having the proper gear and feeling cheated out of accomplishment.

And while I can agree with the dissatisfaction of this, I think it's not fair to push morals onto other players, and in the end, I have met enough people who leveled the old way and were still gimps, and I've met enough people who leeched and were one of the best at their jobs I had met. I see nothing wrong with people wanting to get leveling out of the way and enjoy other aspects of the game. A lot of the veterans are tired of exping the old way, and after being spoiled with Abyssea xp/hr, there's no way the majority of us can go back to oldschool exp.

Abyssea is just too convenient. If the other zones became as convenient as Abyssea (replacing/killing easily/xp per hour) then I'd be happy to go back to Conquest and Imperial Standing zones.

Nobody was learning how to play their jobs before Abyssea except those that took the time to look things up on forums. The reasons being:

-Stubbornness (wanting to play a job the way you want to play it regardless of how sucky it is, melee brd go!) "It's MY 13 bucks a month!"

-Ignorance (not knowing or caring that there are better ways to do things)

-"Good" exp parties allowed people to level so fast they didn't have a chance to learn much at all, either as a player or as a character combat/magic skillwise

-Level sync denied pretty much everyone a chance to learn anything about a job 60+ because everyone spent all their time as a lvl 20, 37 or 55

-Experience points parties were NEVER a good way to teach or learn how to play a job, because the only thing exp taught was.. how to exp

True true true. However, I think you missed a couple of points. Yes, some people were stubborn or ignorant, but keep in mind that not all bizarre combinations were bad. I loved bard meleeing in Campaign -- I made the most EXP as BRD/SCH. And in one colibri merit party I was in, we had three bards -- one was pulling, one was double buffing, and one was actually meleeing with a mandau. Was pretty awesome and fun.

As for level sync that's almost as new as Abyssea. When I think oldschool parties I think oldschool, like KRT and Sky. But yes, Level sync also robbed people of learning about their job. At least in Abyssea the character isn't synced down and as soon as they get the job ability they can play with it inbetween opening chests.

And yes, experience point parties only taught how to gain exp! It was always interesting to go from the exp world to the end game world or to the solo world. I always preferred soloing and even now find it difficult to figure out strategies when partying with other people. (So frustrating when I sleepga monsters and melees decide to wake them up ><; )

So does this whole thread boil down to oldf**s crying that all their hard work leveling the "old way" (the definition of "old way" being whatever was the commonly practiced way when they were exping, which changes every couple years) were in vain because the same amount of work can be done in days vs months now?

I think that's a part of it but not the biggest idea. I think Akujima was mainly concerned about people not doing other content because they were too busy leeching in Abyssea. But I think it was failed to be realized that the faster someone hits level 90, the sooner they can partake in other content and activities.

Also that not every leech is below level 90.

If we're old-man ranting, how about the fact that Abyssea xp in general, for everyone is TOO fast. Whereas 25k/hr was a pretty dang good pt at one point, 100k/hr in Abyssea is considered a "meh" party. If they had made Abyssea cap out at 50k/hr~ we all still would have thought it was great. People would take 4-5 days of hard work and a lot more cruor to leech to 90 instead of 1-2, and people would still be complaining about the state of things, but a bit less loudly.

So in this post, we (hopefully) realize that:

-Old way sucked
-Exp parties were never a good source for "learning a job"
-People will suck at their jobs no matter how difficult you make it to level up
-People will find a way to leech or circumvent your personal ideas on how exp should be restricted
-Tougher exp does not a more educated playerbase make

All of this I agree with.

Im not against leeching.

What I am against is the fact that leeching has completely killed off any other alternative to partying. You're either soloing, getting the rare EXP party or doing leeching.

Soloing was pretty big pre-level sync too. Beastmaster and Puppetmaster and Summoner would like to say hello! Black Mage had been forced to solo or manaburn once Treasure of Aht Urgan had come around. Any job with Beastmaster sub were amazing at soloing! There's nothing wrong with soloing and it's been around since the game began; it's not an effect of Abyssea.

I posted in another thread that if SE revitalized Campaign (to be more like Bastion) as a place to level from 30-75+ that the entire problem of leeching would dissolve as that would be an ideal alternative if you couldn't acquire the resources to leech.

Then we'd be in the same position we're in now. People would either be forced to do Campaign to get decent EXP (which means they'd have to buy the Wings of the Goddess expansion if they haven't already), and people will be complaining that they can't get normal parties or are tired of Campaign.

I have zero issues with them either creating other ways to xp, or making old ways appealing enough that people do it.

I agree!

They really should bump it up to 70+ for a number of reasons:

- Most DD jobs can't even hit anything below 70, even in the Visions areas.
- You level up far too quickly, and then have a massive skill-deficit to make up for.
- You also don't learn the ins and outs of your respective jobs, and thus we wind up with a bunch of people running around at level 90 with no clue how to properly play their roles to the fullest and/or wearing garbage equipment.
- Finally, newer players will just speed through missing all the wonderful content that we used to enjoy way back when.

Counter-arguments for these points:

- Most mages can cure at all levels. Any job can sub white mage. But DDs are best helping the group by opening the many chests the bigger boys drop. Think of leeches as squires for knights, haha.
- This is true. But good news! Skill ups have been made easier!
- Gimps still existed pre-Abyssea. Just because they took a year and a half to get to 75 didn't mean they actually learned anything along the way. They just learned how to hit the engage button on the red monster brought back to them.
- What content can they not partake in anymore? Genkai are still there. Nation missions still exist. All of the storylines are capable regardless of level. If anything, speeding to 90 to do the content makes it more enjoyable.

This game is about accomplishments and feeling good about making those accomplishments. If people commonly, publically, and routinely plagarize their way through Master's and PhD's, it takes a lot away from from people who worked very hard, and I'm sorry you just can't understand that.

I wasn't aware that pride in a video game should be taken as strongly as eight, expensive years through college. But even then, if people falsified PhDs, they would not be detracting from those who got it the legitimate way; they'd be doing themselves and the world a great disservice by lying. The people who truly put in the hard work would shine above the rest.

The same works in FFXI, if you'd like to continue the comparison. People who put hard work into researching, testing, and crunching numbers will shine out above anyone who didn't put the thought into it. Hitting buttons isn't hard. Even reading FFXIclopedia isn't hard. But at least it shows a dedication and determination to learning about playstyles and in the end, shows a more "skilled" player. Whether a person took five years or five days to reach the highest level doesn't determine if they'll be skilled or not.

And in reality, taking so long to level a job to max level probably means breaks inbetween playing, which possibly means forgetting how to play the job.

[TybudX]

You've just made an assertion without any supporting reasons. Just because you've used a big loud font doesn't mean you're right.

Kind of like your entire argument is an assertion based on thinking that the SE design team was completely unaware that people would bring low level characters into Abyssea to take advantage of a completely new experience points system? That's called an opinion, and yours is based on your misplaced morals, not the realm of fact.

Want to hear a story? Too bad.

Once upon a time there were SMN burns. GMs got called so much that they apologized
to alliance leaders for interrupting them again, and admitted that sometimes they were overwhelmed with reports of people "cheating" by mass pulling mobs in a starter zone. They said that as long as no griefing was being used, there was no break from the ToS by killing mobs in this way.

Fast forward a couple years, and we have new content. This content is filled to the brim with incredibly weak mobs, mobs with almost no defense, no attack, no dangerous AoEs that could potentially kill a character with little to no HPs. The experience system doesn't work like it did in the rest of the game, the way it still does now that content has been added outside of this new content. Instead of chaining exp based on a timer, you built your chain by gaining certain lights, and killing lots and lots of the same type of mob.

Want to know what a rational, thinking human being who is unaffected by a blinding moral rage would take from this? They would think that SE saw all those people who SMN burned wanted a change. They would think that despite all the (butthurt) GM calls by (probably the same) people were an indication that there just weren't enough camps that would fit this new, player discovered way of leveling en mass. So SE specifically built a brand new mechanism into new content that would allow everybody to take advantage of faster leveling.

The Abyssea experience points system seems tailor made for exactly what people are using it for, which is fast exp from 30-90(+). There is evidence everywhere in the design of Abyssea that this is how it was meant to be used. Your 'argument' has one piece of 'evidence', and that is that SE is stupid. See the problem here?

[Akujima]

Want to know what a rational, thinking human being who is unaffected by a blinding moral rage would take from this? They would think that SE saw all those people who SMN burned wanted a change. They would think that despite all the (butthurt) GM calls by (probably the same) people were an indication that there just weren't enough camps that would fit this new, player discovered way of leveling en mass. So SE specifically built a brand new mechanism into new content that would allow everybody to take advantage of faster leveling.

The Abyssea experience points system seems tailor made for exactly what people are using it for, which is fast exp from 30-90(+). There is evidence everywhere in the design of Abyssea that this is how it was meant to be used. Your 'argument' has one piece of 'evidence', and that is that SE is stupid. See the problem here?

And the success of FFXIV proves otherwise?

Nobody is going to doubt that there hasn't been mass negative criticism towards SE's recent titles. And if they continue to to develop FFXI the way they've been developing other SE games, than we will continue to see criticism on these forums.

I played XI at NA release and was pleased with how the game was and the EXP rate at which we leveled up (not that I disagree with how they improved the rates of EXP outside of Abyssea, I just disagree with Abyssea's LvCap Requirement) I quit for 3 years in between, but I did not come back to the game because "I heard it's easy to leech and exp in XI's new expansion area, Abyssea". I came back because I heard of WotG, 2 new jobs being added and a whole new expansion being made. That was my lure.

SMN burn parties can not even be compared to how easy it is to leech in Abyssea. It's quite possible to have 70% of the alliance stand around and do absolutely nothing, while the other 30% gets paid 500k gil each to skyrocket the Lv30's to Lv90 in less than 1 day of playtime. In SMN burn, someone could mess up and wipe the entire PT. You were limited to how many SMN's you had and how many COR's you had, depending if Wild Card even reset Astral Flow or not.

All those people who did SMN burn? No, sorry. A mere fraction of the player base was doing it, not even enough to call it a minority. Most simply saw it as a way to quickly get through the early levels. As for the so called whiners who called GM's about SMN burn parties, well then... It was the whiners fault to point so much attention towards a subject that wasn't as big as people think it was.

World of Warcraft is a hugely successful MMO that doesn't allow for players to skyrocket through to endgame. And you don't hear the WoW player base come out and complain about why/how/when they can just be given a Max Lv character without any work involved.

The simple fact is SE's attempt at appealing to the NA player base of "hardcore casuals" is failing. You may call some of my posts over dramatic, but thinking that players would benefit more by becoming "ultra lazy elitists", they have over dramatized the word "casual" to the point of where it could be considered an insulting assumption to how lazy we actually are.

If implementing ridiculously simple and and lazy ways to LvUp was SE's intent to begin with, doing so may have increased the population of FFXI slightly for the time being, but it's not to be considered a smashing success as many of you make it out to be. Allowing and encouraging hardcore leeching is not the answer to keep the interests of many gamers out there, and it takes the focus away from what actually makes a good MMORPG: Fun, Dynamic and Challenging Gameplay.

[Ravenmore]

While you could do CoP mission when you hit the level cap for them it was still better to wait till you were 75 to start them. That way you could have a couple of jobs for the niche fights and you wouldn't be locked out of statics cause you didn't level up fast enough for the next fight. Still nothing stoping people from doing the story lines like other said its even easier to do them. ZM, CoP, ToAU, nation missions are all still there and thats the real content not exping. Now you might say theres no reason to fight sky gods or Sea gods anymore still doesn't mean you can't do the missions.

[Neisan_Quetz]

Need Dem Divine Might earrings.