Reasons Why FFXI is Declining

[geekgirl101]

I totally agree with you Camiie. I love playing RDM but there's almost no use for RDMs. It was my favourite job pre-Aby and I was gutted when I was told its only usefulness was for FC parties. Then when the hype for skirmish/delve started everyone wanted COR or BRD only. It's disheartening when all the jobs I've worked hard on are being shunned in favor of specialized jobs that only have 1 good use.

[fernando]

I have one reason,and that is i have payed for this game,had to reinstall,and still cant play!!! 10 years and SE just makes it as hard as ever to play the game...just sayin.

[Kuvo]

Please SE merge the servers.... less then 300ppl on bismark for over 6 hours today when it used to be well over 1k. I have an idea... why don't we all switch servers on our own? we pick 4 servers list them here and everyone just moves on their own. sure it will cost some money to do so and SE would love us for the extra cash flow but we will have populated servers again and maybe they will actually do something useful to support XI with the new found cash..... what am I saying, no they wont.

[vienne]

Totally agree with you, they need to build endgame events around a more flexible alliance-build. They also need to patch the pre-SoA magians/RME's/af3+2s etc. so that people can use their stuff that they worked hard the last 3+ years to build. The fact that your lvl 99 magian weapons can't hit mobs at all in SoA, or your af3+2 that is full of very useful job-specific bonuses, is useless in SoA, has led to everyone using only SoA gear, which is dumb (and very boring when everyone gears the same stuff) and makes a lot of people feel their efforts in building armor & weaps that are lvl 90-99 were completely wasted efforts. If you are a lvl 99 job, why should you not be able to use your lvl 99 magian weapon or your af3+2 set in events, which is either lvl 99 only a few lvls lower than 99.

this^ I came back after 8 months only to hear that my hard worked magian gear is worthless, I think lots of people would say screw this

[nyheen]

As has been said before, most people will take the path of least resistance and the quickest option. But that doesn't mean the quickest easiest option is good for the player or the survival of the game itself. I still lvl up in Aydeewa sometimes, but its hard to find other ppl who even know where it is.
Also you neglect to mention new players, players who never did any of the oldworld partying, join FFXI and you say to them choose between "get lvl 30-99 in one single day, while asleep, in dom ops, or work really hard for a year in lots of challenging fast-paced & effort-based battles allover Vanadiel, to get those same levels" and those new players are going to go with the first option.
Its the fact that in the old game we only had the option of legit partying, which made us do it, and while doing it we got good at the game mechanics and made friends etc. And perhaps more importantly, we stayed subscribed to FFXI billing for years because that is how long it took us to achieve things. Now you can get all jobs 99 while AFK, in a month, and uber SoA gear in a few weeks that is 100x > anything else in Vanadiel, you have a lot of new players who have only been in game for a few months and feel they 'beat' the game and don't know why they should bother with any content. That problem did not exist when you had to build levels, skills, and weaps/gear VERY SLOWLY, those were the 2k/server days and people were logging in to complete their longterm goals. Today is 400 people on my server, and the reason for that is they have no goals left, they outgrew the possibilities offered by Vanadiel in just a month. In the old game we played for over five years and still didn't finish all the jobs and gear we had set our sights on.
Analogy : if you give some kids the keys to the Sweet Shop and tell them to have everything right now, don't expect to see them coming back next week to buy sweets from you, because they've already got all the sweets they need. Deferred and gradual gratification = longtime returning customers.

^
this. That Pretty Much Sums It Up. the reason why FFXI is declining

[Rustic]

this^ I came back after 8 months only to hear that my hard worked magian gear is worthless, I think lots of people would say screw this

It's hardly worthless, but I'd laugh at you if you went to current endgame in it.

The problem lies in when people fail to realize that gear isn't forever. People don't wander around in Kirin's Osode anymore and expect to be uberpowerful in Abyssea, any more than now people in Magian gear are uber in Adoulin.

Despite our level counters not going past 99, in effect we're becoming L100+ in Adoulin, or L110+ with Skirmish/Delve gear. That's what Adoulin is right now. "Levels" 100-119, with more to come. Magian gear isn't worthless, but it's effectively "newbie gear" for Adoulin- good newbie gear, but it's what you wear expecting to graduate to Bayld, Skirmish, then Delve equipment.

I've had plenty of folks coming back in at this point. When they realize that they don't have to carry twenty different bits of armor because sidegrades are essentially kaput, it's generally a JOYFUL response, not a "screw this I quit". Entitlement syndrome just gets you bad players who didn't want to adapt and used "buuuut new gear!" as an excuse. I was frickin' seeing that back in ToAU when folks were whining about getting a Yigit set!

[Anjou]

As my first 'official' post of 'knowledge' (Because in the arena of knowledge, I fight unarmed) since my week -ban- for Spiderman goodness...I will say this.


Until ToM gets meshed into SoA content, shelf your magian gear, it's not gonna help you in SoA, it will not help you in SoA, and until something happens, it will never help you. This time you spend whining you could be using it to get new gear, and you'll see why people prefer the new stuff over magian equipment.

I won't stoop to telling you to quit, but more or less to get in gear otherwise it'll drive you bonkers and you'll end up quitting out of frustration. The reason FFXI is truly declining is the huge wedge in our community, the elitists and everyone who thinks differently than they do. This whole "I am king Sh*t of F**k mountain, WHY WOULD YOU F**K WITH ME!?" mentality is a cancer in FFXI, and you can always keep your equipment if you have too much sentimental value to it. I personally wouldn't dream of tossing my old Koenig armor for my PLD, although it's horrendously outdated and I obtained most of it from Nidhogg/King Behemoth and one in Einherjar, I won't ever throw it away because I worked for it. Sometimes if I wanna be a head turner I'll wear my gear in town, I get good comments from people who know what the armor is, and right now to really become a turner, I'm getting Amir armor.

Is it effective for my spare time? Maybe not, but hey it's fun to do than sit on FFXIAH or this forum talking about not wanting to throw my stuff away. Bite the bullet, life isn't always fair everyone, I had to recently toss my Isador due to inventory issues, and that thing was like my prized possession when I got it.

[vienne]

I've had plenty of folks coming back in at this point. When they realize that they don't have to carry twenty different bits of armor because sidegrades are essentially kaput, it's generally a JOYFUL response, not a "screw this I quit". Entitlement syndrome just gets you bad players who didn't want to adapt and used "buuuut new gear!"

Its this situation, I dont play much, glad to squeeze in 5 hours a week of normal playing (thats when i'm not trying to combine grinding a job while i'm ironing thats a different story) but a huge chunk of my already limited playtime
went into making the magian trial staves for my blm and also the cure one for whm. Now yesterday I was asking around about the current needed gear opposed to the gear I have atm. Only to be told that the better staves are those that drop from some SoA content, the ones for blm.
Its very overwhelming to see that most of your gear isnt needed anymore, I worked hard for a long time to get my gear since i do everything slower then most. Having to start from scratch almost all over again isnt exactly motivating... SE could have been more subtle in the change from pre SoA <-> post SoA gear.
I guess atleast now i know what to do the comming months till next update.

[Anjou]

Replying to both of the previous two posts.
Number one. Kirin's Osode was lvl 75. It was a single drop. I got mine in like under an hour. Thats less than 60 minutes work. Magian 99s are lvl 99, not lvl 75. And they take weeks-->months depending on your available game time.
Number two. When SE announced the lvl cap was rising from 95-99, they also had an interview saying [to paraphrase] ; "We had always intended to raise the cap to 99, ever since the beginning of the game. And we have always intended this to be the final cap."
So people went out and built lvl 99 magians, RME's and woepath empys, assuming that the finished 99 weapon would be a decent weapon to use in future events. On account of SE saying the cap wasn't rising above 99 ever. We all accepted that our magians and WOE-empys were not as powerful as RME's. But we also felt that our magians/woe-paths were perfectly good weapons which we were proud of, and in some cases took over a year of farming single drops in WOE to build one 99 weapon.
Then SE bring SoA. And while everyone expected the new expansion to have the most powerful gear in the game, nobody expected the SCORCHED EARTH policy that came along with SoA. Of making everything preceding it, including lvl 99 magian/WOE weaps, completely worthless. And don't kid yourself, they are worthless. I have died in SoA because my magian99 weapon couldnt hit the mob so I couldnt get tp for cures and died. This despite having capped skills and merits and a lvl99 weap that took like 6 months to build. I returned to the same mob with a bayld conquest-ponts lolweapon and it died superfast. Travesty. This is scorched earth policy. And what really ***** me off is that SE added SoA conquest-points (bayld) weapons that can be farmed in 20 minutes and are 2x as powerful as the lvl99 magians and woepaths we've got.
To all of you who are joking and saying "oh just stop crying, quit the game, you can't deal with change, w/e blah blah blah" ; infact you are blaming the playerbase for what is a HUGE mistake by SE development dept. It is not the players fault, "for being too weak to adapt" <etc. insert bs here>, please I am 40 years old and been a gamer for 32 years, I don't get busted up over games, but I'm old and smart enough to see that SE ballsed this SoA gear system up. Can't you see thats its an insult to RME owners that a bayld conquest points weapon is far more powerful than their RME/magian/woepath. How is that such a big difficult thing for you to grasp.
If somebody is lvl99 and spent ages building a lvl99 weapon, for the developer to turn around and say ;
"oh well, we're adding lvl 120 weapons, which is technically impossible for a lvl 99 person to equip, and we forgot to mention this 3 years ago when we announced the lvlcap would never go over 99, and that your woepath lvl99 which we made you flux in and out of Xarcabard[s] and battle endless woe bosses, over 1000x, to get......well that weapon is now less powerful than a conquest points weapon."
You should actually stop and think about the effort people put into magians, RME's and woepaths, stop and think before you post this nonsense about kirin osode's and other single-drop one-hour sky run junk. This is about *time invested* and *level 99* items, which got scorched by SE for no reason and against all sanity.

Things happen, and the problem here is that most people are accepting the change for what it is. Crying constantly won't do anything sadly, I wish it would because then the stuff that is never seen anymore would at least make a comeback. ffs the Amir armor set had some -great- looks to it in terms of appearance, stats-wise meh but come on. 20k assault points for each piece? That's a big whoop de do to some people, but others will appreciate it.

I'm not sure what you were fighting when you died to not hitting, but as a 99 BLU with an Isador and Tyrfing, and even then I was dishing some decent looking damage on melee attacks.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Why is FFXI declining?

• The cap on experience gained is now higher for players who have equipment with item levels displayed equipped.

Because the developers still think this is a relevant thing.