To: Mr Akihiko Matsui

[Demon6324236]

And yet I fail to see where the previous system constrained this choice. Two jobs is a gross exaggeration.

What's the problem with only having 2 jobs leveled? Is that a sin? Or do we have to have cap level across the board in a numerical value to feel important?

Come again? I only responded as you said 2 jobs yourself. The point is that you can now experience all jobs where as before you were limited to however many jobs you could stand to go back through and level. I am sure I speak for many people when I say that going back to level 1 and going to alot of the same places again on each job, didn't sound exactly fun. Now you can take all jobs to 99 within a much smaller amount of time, so you can play as all jobs and have fun with them, but when playing like before, you would take months to get jobs to 75. If it took months for players to get to 75 now, you would see everyone with an average of 2~5 jobs at best I think, depending on choices that can leave you out of things still, and you will never experience those other jobs you have yet to play because you don't want to level them up through the painful grind that you already had to do.

[Eyeballed]

Your sense is that everyone should be forced to level the way they used to have to. This became flawed the moment you admitted that you couldn't find people on your server who were willing to do that with you. It showed that people do not agree with you as much as you may think, and even if they did, you could still level the way you choose.

You don't understand that all your doing is making yourself look like a selfish ass because you are wanting to force everyone to play your way. In the end of the day we are not forcing anyone to play our way, its an option, one that most people are more than happy to choose instead. You said you cant make a party, but truth is, parties used to always take a long time to make, if you couldn't make one you could try to solo, its not impossible, its still available. You have choices, but what you want is to take away choices from people, and make them do it your way, that is not the voice of someone making sense, rather it is of someone talking selfishly and out of spite.

What I'm saying is that there was an actual playerbase, a fairly large number of people, that enjoyed this game the way it used to be. Those of you that remain are just a small percentage of that. It only makes sense that anyone that would support me is long gone.

[Eyeballed]

Come again? I only responded as you said 2 jobs yourself. The point is that you can now experience all jobs where as before you were limited to however many jobs you could stand to go back through and level. I am sure I speak for many people when I say that going back to level 1 and going to alot of the same places again on each job, didn't sound exactly fun. Now you can take all jobs to 99 within a much smaller amount of time, so you can play as all jobs and have fun with them, but when playing like before, you would take months to get jobs to 75. If it took months for players to get to 75 now, you would see everyone with an average of 2~5 jobs at best I think, depending on choices that can leave you out of things still, and you will never experience those other jobs you have yet to play because you don't want to level them up through the painful grind that you already had to do.

Yeah, I was actually talking to the other guy on the 2 jobs bit. What I don't get is, how you guys must find it acceptable to bookburn up to what, 55? And then you surely have to go manually raise your skills, right? What's the point in that?

[Demon6324236]

What I'm saying is that there was an actual playerbase, a fairly large number of people, that enjoyed this game the way it used to be. Those of you that remain are just a small percentage of that. It only makes sense that anyone that would support me is long gone.

Why change the game to fit those who are no longer here rather than form it for those who are? In my opinion it makes little sense to build a game for a group of players while no longer play said game, but at the same time harm players who currently play said game by forcing them into something they do not want. Its somewhat like if for some reason they all of a sudden said Halo 4 will have no controller access, it is Kinect now, and Kinect only. People all over the world who love Halo would rage, while people who like Kinect and casual gaming gimmicks would rejoice. The people who already play Halo and love it are basically losing their game to a bunch of people who don't play it or not nearly in the same numbers.

Yeah, I was actually talking to the other guy on the 2 jobs bit. What I don't get is, how you guys must find it acceptable to bookburn up to what, 55? And then you surely have to go manually raise your skills, right? What's the point in that?

You get higher levels, you get access to all the features of a job, the job abilities, the traits, the pets, the functions of the jobs in general, it lets you learn the true use for the jobs and how to play it.

People will often fight with that, but as a RDM I can assure you, there was a time when RDM was a mage in a party, they healed, they hasted, and they kept MP up. Once you actually hit endgame it wasn't much the same, sure that was called for time to time, but most of the time I ever did any endgame with my RDM the main job I had was to use Chainspell and spam Stun, even today I do that for ADL, while few groups take me to endgame for other things.

That may seem a little off topic but trust me, its not. The point most people bring on why leveling the old way was good is because you learned your job, the problem was that leveling and endgame arnt the same thing. Leveling taught you to get xp as fast as you could, endgame meant claiming, surviving, and winning, much more than speed killing for faster xp gain. The reason to skill up later after leveling is because leveling itself was boring, skilling up isn't fun mind you but you can get 1 hand weapons to level 99 cap from 100~200 in a day or 2. You can do 2-hand weapons to 99 cap in 2~4 days depending on method. We have skill up foods and gear to make this even faster. The reason to level now skill later, is because in general, its funner, or at least for me. Leveling seems tedious and repetitive, and while killing worms in Lathein isn't the funnest thing in the world, it feels nicer than leveling out in Bibiki with Dhalmels for hours did.

[Eyeballed]

Why change the game to fit those who are no longer here rather than form it for those who are? In my opinion it makes little sense to build a game for a group of players while no longer play said game, but at the same time harm players who currently play said game by forcing them into something they do not want. Its somewhat like if for some reason they all of a sudden said Halo 4 will have no controller access, it is Kinect now, and Kinect only. People all over the world who love Halo would rage, while people who like Kinect and casual gaming gimmicks would rejoice. The people who already play Halo and love it are basically losing their game to a bunch of people who don't play it or not nearly in the same numbers.You get higher levels, you get access to all the features of a job, the job abilities, the traits, the pets, the functions of the jobs in general, it lets you learn the true use for the jobs and how to play it.

People will often fight with that, but as a RDM I can assure you, there was a time when RDM was a mage in a party, they healed, they hasted, and they kept MP up. Once you actually hit endgame it wasn't much the same, sure that was called for time to time, but most of the time I ever did any endgame with my RDM the main job I had was to use Chainspell and spam Stun, even today I do that for ADL, while few groups take me to endgame for other things.

That may seem a little off topic but trust me, its not. The point most people bring on why leveling the old way was good is because you learned your job, the problem was that leveling and endgame arnt the same thing. Leveling taught you to get xp as fast as you could, endgame meant claiming, surviving, and winning, much more than speed killing for faster xp gain. The reason to skill up later after leveling is because leveling itself was boring, skilling up isn't fun mind you but you can get 1 hand weapons to level 99 cap from 100~200 in a day or 2. You can do 2-hand weapons to 99 cap in 2~4 days depending on method. We have skill up foods and gear to make this even faster. The reason to level now skill later, is because in general, its funner, or at least for me. Leveling seems tedious and repetitive, and while killing worms in Lathein isn't the funnest thing in the world, it feels nicer than leveling out in Bibiki with Dhalmels for hours did.

Regarding your first paragraph, why do that to the community that was already there in the first place? I don't understand how you justify that it's now OK that the former playerbase was screwed over with Abyssea/bookburns, but since then those fans of the former who have stuck around and are unhappy with the major changes are asking for it to reverted back to at least a semblance of its former self can basically get lost? (Sorry, a bit of a convoluted sentence).

I'm not here to argue whether or not grinding taught you anything. What I enjoyed was the grind itself. Call it what you want, but I know I wasn't the only one.

[Arcon]

How is this still going? Two opinions can't be argued rationally. It's about what people prefer. It seems the majority prefers the new way. And even if that wasn't the case, the old way is still there for the people who enjoy it. Thus the current way is objectively better, although subjectively it's up to everyone's own preference. What more needs to be said?

[TMG]

The problem I see with this whole argument here is that this current method of faster XP wasn't around before Abyssea. Nobody had a chance to say "No, I don't want to level that way!" because we hadn't tried it yet. As it turns out, it was a big hit for the majority. None of us knew XP was going to become this easy to get when they announced the level 99 cap. In fact, many of my friends quit before Abyssea came out because they WEREN'T looking forward to grinding on crabs and colibris again from 75-99. All of our previous level 75 jobs now had to be recapped off and lost their sense of achievement because there was more grinding to be done, or so we thought. Many of my friends who quit eventually came back after Abyssea was figured out and they realized it wouldn't take months to get those new levels. Sucks for the few of you who don't like to progress faster I suppose, but as it's been said, feel free to cancel your subscription and find a game that better fits your needs if you don't feel like you can enjoy this one in its current state. You don't continue to eat at a restaurant with shitty food in hopes that one day they'll hire better cooks, do you? No, you take your money elsewhere and get something that you know you can enjoy.

SE did what they had to do to keep the game alive and keep it friendly to new subscribers. People will inevitably quit for any number of reasons as time goes by, so if they aren't keeping new subscriptions, eventually the game dies. I tried getting friends into old XI, they never lasted more than two weeks tops because level grinding was boring and sucked, that was the number one complaint. Now it only takes a couple of days to get somebody caught up so they can actually PLAY the game with you.

There is so much content in this game to enjoy outside of leveling, if you want to take longer to get to it, the option is there. The same mobs and camps are still there where they always have been. I am sure you could go out and duo decent challenge mobs with a friend for roughly the same XP as you used to get in a party of 6 in the old days on very tough mobs. They've even added plenty of camps with higher level mobs outside of Abyssea to leave the option there for old school partying at the new higher level caps. The fact that nobody uses those camps to XP the way we used to should tell you something, it's not a very popular idea. SE didn't brainwash us into thinking Abyssea XP is the only XP, we just choose to use it because it's more efficient.

Yes, I miss the old days sometimes because that was all we had and you just accepted it as part of the game. That was all we knew of leveling and we dealt with it, there was no better option. Now there are options, and most of us prefer the faster one, because there's a hundred other things in the game to be doing once you reach a high enough level to participate efficiently. Sure, I enjoyed the 6 man parties of yesterday and getting 1-2 levels per party, but now I can get 10 levels in the time it used to take me to get 1, and I happen to think that's a better use of my time, as I'm sure most others do. I'm sorry that you feel like they've forced this new game on you, but the old game is still there. The players and their preferences have changed, and that's not something SE can just "fix". They're not just going to erase Abyssea and everything that came with it because they'll be left with a whole lot of pissed off customers cancelling their accounts. It's too late, the "damage" has been done, you just have to accept it the way it is now or go play something else because from a business standpoint, they cannot do what you want them to do just because it would please you.

[Demon6324236]

Regarding your first paragraph, why do that to the community that was already there in the first place? I don't understand how you justify that it's now OK that the former playerbase was screwed over with Abyssea/bookburns, but since then those fans of the former who have stuck around and are unhappy with the major changes are asking for it to reverted back to at least a semblance of its former self can basically get lost? (Sorry, a bit of a convoluted sentence).

I'm not here to argue whether or not grinding taught you anything. What I enjoyed was the grind itself. Call it what you want, but I know I wasn't the only one.

SE themselves said Abyssea was a mistake, I think the main reason for that is the same reason you are saying, because it changed the game so much and it changed the players as well. However might I remind you, two wrongs don't make a right. You know the feel of what you are asking SE to do to everyone else. You know how it feels on the other end, can you really wish that on the other players who currently play just to change it how you want?

[jake3614]

Instead of complaining about Abyssea, let's discuss the women on MMO's that use men to get desired items/quests accomplished because they are chicks and Game Boys will always fall prey to this, unless they are gay and even still sometimes, then. Now THAT is a thread worth reading with names of the females per server to whom I'd like to avoid...
I shall start:
SERVER: Alexander >>> Shiva
NAME: If it has any reference to a Cat (Meow), Crystal (Crystalheart) or something similar... Or if named Shiianna.
I'd rather these people, not because they are females( I'm sincerely ALL about personal empowerment no matter the gender or sex), but the fact they use and abuse guys to do their own research or gameplay and can "boob" their way through events....... Both the guys and gals bother me and I'd rather THEM gone than any harm people think Abyssea has ever done.

[Merton9999]

In fact, many of my friends quit before Abyssea came out because they WEREN'T looking forward to grinding on crabs and colibris again from 75-99. All of our previous level 75 jobs now had to be recapped off and lost their sense of achievement because there was more grinding to be done, or so we thought. Many of my friends who quit eventually came back after Abyssea was figured out and they realized it wouldn't take months to get those new levels.

This is an excellent point, and it fits many of the old friends I had in the game who came back for and after Abyssea. They quit because they did not want to level 24 levels the old way on multiple jobs. In fact, on forums and in game, when the level cap was announced I never once read or heard excitement about leveling again. I heard moaning about having to do it again.

@Eyeballed
Further discussing that the new way be forcibly removed for everyone poses the "flat earth" problem for me. Normally I'd hear someone out if their position differed from mine. But some stances are so off-the-wall collossally ridiculous that it's a waste of time to continue. It's like entertaining someone who's claiming the earth is flat. Or you might as well suggest everyone's car be taken away because you like the smell of horses and felt more accomplished taking longer to get to work. It's preposterous.

Some old friends immediately got into an Abyssea burn party when they came back after a break and were horrified that this wouldn't actually even be an engaging game anymore but just an AFK or button mash fest. Then after they reached 99 and started to participate in the new end game activities they saw the point. All of the teamwork, thought process and challenge that you may have gotten from old exp parties is still there, it was just moved to level 99 content. That content has cooler looking mobs, more variety in fight strategy and location, and more interesting battle design than any old leveling method ever did.

SE didn't actually take your old game away in concept. They just moved it to a different place and you're still looking in the same place for it. Now you can enjoy it fighting monsters that look like monsters instead of household pets. You can enjoy it while you not only get xp, but gil and gear at the same time instead of three separate processes. And in the switch to end game focus they made a way for you to quickly enjoy it on a variety of jobs instead of 1-5.

As far as skilling up manually, people find ways to make that enjoyable. For me, I did it while doing magian trials, which I had to do anyway from systems set up long ago. Instead of blasting through them as fast as I could I took the opportunity to multi-task and would pick the job for them where I needed skills, then pick harder mobs than the EP required for the trial. I got used to the macros for the new job, skilled up, got some xp and in many cases good drops.

Not everyone who likes AFK or fast xp is a lazy player. For me, I got bored of the game because it lost variety and interest pre-Abyssea. Getting a job to 99 fast avoids what became a very mundane and boring, unchallenging process, and lets me quickly get to the part of the game that actually does require thought and teamwork and has the variety I'm looking for.