Abyssea shouldn't be extended, honestly.

[StingRay104]

Also if you anti abyssea people want harder content, well wouldn't making really harder content in abyssea satisfy you? Almost as if expanding abyssea to include extremely challenging fights with great rewards would answer all your prayers. Nah that would potentially make you happy, can't have that now can we.

P.S. I bet the first counter point to this mentions brews.

[Panthera]

I think after 3 mini-expansions of the same thing, we're over due for something new.

What was great about pre-abyssea / level cap increases FFXI is that there were so many different things to do. Even if you weren't in love with every event, there had to be at least a few things one could do and enjoy. Getting to 75 and End Game was worth the effort. As things stand, if you aren't completely enraptaured with Abyssea, you're out of luck. The point of getting to 90 is so that you can do... what? A single alternative, i.e. Voidwatch, is far from the great variety we once had.

What I'd like to see is a balance between story and characters vs gameplay. A Crystaline Prophecy et all. had too much story, too little to do, where Abyssea is a void of any narrative rationale to go into these strange lands. Honestly, Abyssea makes me appreciate "old content" even more now then I did then.

As for the matter of redudancy of this thread, the original was framed in such a way so as to favor more abyssea, or additions to current abyssea. A more generalized, neutral question such as "What should the next expansion be?" followed by the OP's replying in a separate post, would make things more balanced. A thread title gets a bigger "oomph," so the opposition feels it has the right--as it does-- to make it's own thread, so that it's own voice can be heard with equal volume.

[Raxiaz]

Getting to 75 and experiencing end-game was totally not worth it. I didn't start to like end-game until abyssea hit. And I've been playing since before ToAU. Dynamis was the bane of my existence until they recently revamped it. Now I wouldn't mind revisiting some of the city zones, if just to collect pieces of gear I'll never wear.

One can still do all the former end-game events, too. A major thing about them that I absolutely despised was the need for an 18-man alliance or at the very least 6-man. Nowadays one can go in with 3-4 people and get things done, almost faster than a full 18 man did.

What SE needs to do is make the former end-game events relevant again. Provide trials to upgrade the pieces of equipment gained from these events. I'm desperately awaiting SE to do this, because as it stands getting a group together for Nyzul is nigh impossible.

[MarkovChain]

If you want an NM in Abyssea, you gotta farm your pops and get your business done before Visitant Status wears off. Yes, you can farm massive amounts of time with relative ease on many jobs, but it's by-and-large an ACTIVE process. Respawn windows? <No thanks.> Let me play the game.

1/ If it's easier to get drops how come you don't have stones stored at the npc ? I got 200 stones stored, full empy wpn and gear, and only started in february.

2/ Why are you all mentionning 24h windows ? You guys are out of the loop. Hnm gear was crap for the most part. 95% of the endgame could be organized at a given time. But from the look at your post as well as other whiners, you clearly did not do endgame.

bringing this amazing game into the modern world. I'm very much looking forward to their post-aby content, not because it's post-aby, but because of what they accomplished in aby.

The only way to make the game survive is to introduce variety and challenge in endgame. Abyssea is the opposite of that. The only way to bring challenge in the game is to put a time limit to reach a boss. The only way to bring variety is to introduce challenge so that people care enough to farm situationnal gear.

[Ryce]

1/ If it's easier to get drops how come you don't have stones stored at the npc ? I got 200 stones stored, full empy wpn and gear, and only started in february.

I've got plenty of stones saved myself. The point is that a bot/devoted camper cannot simply sit in the zone and wait for a pop all day every day. For the most part, you have to do something to pop the NM (not a new concept, just a good one).

2/ Why are you all mentionning 24h windows ? You guys are out of the loop. Hnm gear was crap for the most part. 95% of the endgame could be organized at a given time. But from the look at your post as well as other whiners, you clearly did not do endgame.

Personally, I didn't say anything about 24hr windows (but I realize other have). My beef is with common NMs (such as the NMs in the first stages of many weapon trials) with the 60-90 minute respawn timers. After you find, claim, and kill the NM, you are forced to stop pursuing your goal (if you didn't get the drop, etc) for 60-90 minutes. Either stop playing or go do something else (adding more wasted time traveling back and forth). Most people can be seen AFK for an hour after an NM kill. I don't like that. I'd much rather have to go farm another pop set in the area, then come back and try the NM again. At least then I feel like I've been working at it the whole time, not playing the game for 10 minutes between hour breaks.

And no, I didn't do much endgame for many of these reasons. I've been playing FFXI since it came out (in NA) and generally don't have the schedule to accommodate the long endgame runs of old. In fact, I was turned off from even trying a lot of stuff because of the abysmal drop rates and time required to get involved. I'd LOVE some really challenging fights, but that's COMPLETELY different than moderately difficult events which try your patience and free time, not your ability to play the game.

The only way to make the game survive is to introduce variety and challenge in endgame. Abyssea is the opposite of that. The only way to bring challenge in the game is to put a time limit to reach a boss. The only way to bring variety is to introduce challenge so that people care enough to farm situationnal gear.

I agree with you on time limits to reach bosses. It could also just be tougher battles, or battles which change dramatically with each attempt.

[Malamasala]

What SE needs to do is make the former end-game events relevant again.

That is the one thing they don't have to do. It is the dumbest idea I've ever read, and it makes me sad people keep repeating it.

[Ravenmore]

The people wanting a challenge in the game can make one for them selfs. No one force's you to use brews, atmas cruor buffs so find people that think the same way. I agree with GG those that whine now never did anything outside of lolsky. Good HNM fights were there for everyone T4 ZNM fights were a good challenge, KS99s were more of a challenge then ground, low manning sky, limbus, grinding your way up to JoL. All those had one thing in common they were pretty easy if you took 18 people to them, or like sky, znm, sea 18+.

[Sparthos]

The people wanting a challenge in the game can make one for them selfs. No one force's you to use brews, atmas cruor buffs so find people that think the same way. I agree with GG those that whine now never did anything outside of lolsky. Good HNM fights were there for everyone T4 ZNM fights were a good challenge, KS99s were more of a challenge then ground, low manning sky, limbus, grinding your way up to JoL. All those had one thing in common they were pretty easy if you took 18 people to them, or like sky, znm, sea 18+.

"Make your own challenge" is a terrible argument in an online game. Offline? Sure. Plenty of console games are designed to be simplistic and the only way to squeeze out a challenge involves tying one hand behind your back for the sake of amusement.

This isn't an offline game however.

The very fact that such things like brews, atmas and cruor buffs are on the table defeats any point of going without them. What are you going to get without em? The same drops as everyone else.

Perhaps if SE had rewards tied to doing something in "hardmode", you'd see more people doing such things. As it stands right now, you get nothing from fighting Rani from 100% -> 0% w/o a brew other than some personal satisfaction.

Abyssea served its purpose as being a place where people could enjoy being godlike via insane levels of buffs. It also happened to kill off half the jobs in the game and annihilate years worth of old content.

No one is asking that XI goes back to levels of tedium that such events like VNM, Salvage and Fay Augments encouraged but there is a happy medium and it isn't a place where you can 2shot everything under an invincibility drink that isnt even hard to acquire.

[StingRay104]

Actually the level cap raise killed off the old content, don't believe me, first cap to 80 before people really knew what abyssea did, Hagun dropped from its 3m price tag to 300k, now look at it, its nothing. This is what happens all that old gear that was built into the old content was centered around a lvl 75 max lvl. So now that everything is changing all that old gear is of course gonna be replaced with new and better gear, so therefore since the old content was set at lvl 75 cap who wants to do the old stuff. I'm glad they are at least making the cop reward ring scale up to lvl 99, they really need to rethink the Toau one, but ultimately this is what happens with change, believe it or not things change. It seems to me all you people are complaining about abyssea because it was the first real thing to happen with the level cap, get over it. Abyssea was a huge success and SE sees that so you can bet that things from abyssea are gonna stick. As much as I would like to see old gear get buffed up to compete with the new stuff, SE has continue to fall short in this dept, plus most of it was not even worth trying to scale up. Things are gonna change new armor and challenges await.

[thenewzero]

I understand the general feeling that Abyssea has made FFXI really easy at "endgame", and that annoys the Old Guard, but actually compare the old way of getting things done to some of the new ones:

1. Drops: I'm sorry, but the stagger system is awesome. I'm sure it causes some people frustration and could probably use some adjusting, but never before could you purposely effect your chances of getting your desired drop. Yes, there was TH (the update to that is awesome too), but that catered to exactly one job.

2. Time: Goodbye 24/7 bots. Goodbye killing placeholders every 15 minutes for 3 hours to get a ToD, then waiting another 90 minutes and starting over again. If you want an NM in Abyssea, you gotta farm your pops and get your business done before Visitant Status wears off. Yes, you can farm massive amounts of time with relative ease on many jobs, but it's by-and-large an ACTIVE process. Respawn windows? <No thanks.> Let me play the game.

3. Character Growth: Atmas are overpowered, I'll give you that, but the concept is great. "Here's a significant upgrade to your character based on an achievement". Rather than the old, "Hack away at Colibri for 5 days and you can increase a stat point by 2 (for a maximum of 5)". Perhaps atma can exist in the real world (non-aby) at a more reasonable strength and be our 99 merit equivalent.

4. Travel: Aby warps are nice. If nothing else, they accommodate the lack of outpost warp NPCs in Jeuno. VCs are great too.

5. Progress: As more of a casual player, I love the fact that I can collect items (seals, stones, etc) from reasonably accessible fights and make quantifiable progress toward the gear I want. Campaign and Assault did this too with notes/points, to an extent, but I feel like they hit a nice balance between grind and luck-of-the-draw with the current system.

I think the current dev team is doing an awesome job of bringing this amazing game into the modern world. I'm very much looking forward to their post-aby content, not because it's post-aby, but because of what they accomplished in aby.

Very much agree with Ryce on this. Aby isn't perfect, but it has brought a tangible and accessible feeling of advancement to the game, and taken the game from a passive time sink of a waiting game into a system of investing your time *actively* into whatever progression you choose.

The only areas that I feel are lacking are the exclusivity of the proc system in Aby (which is much less exclusive in Dynamis and Voidwatch), and the awkward things some of the more extreme Atma have done to game balance. If they refined the proc system to include more Jobs and reward diversity in group comps, the proc system would be great. Once we're outside of Abyssea, the issues caused by uber-Atma will largely resolve themselves.

I think a lot of people forgot that the level cap isn't done being raised yet, and that this isn't the last content we will ever see. Abyssea is not *the* endgame. It's just a stepping stone into whatever they have planned for the 99 level cap. As a stepping stone, it's worked wonderfully, allowing many players to 'catch up', and older players to hit the ground running with Jobs they may have never even considered leveling before.