I think I'm finished; a new player's final thoughts

[OKOA]

Yes it doesn't give AN but the OP said he didn't go back to WotG zones is because after dying to a lv 50 mob he never went back. Then after some more prodding he said it was more so because he couldn't find a place to xp. Does it have fov or gov? No but you can get regen and refresh when you get sigil. Also if the city you are allied with has the pixies they give a reduced xp loss from death you can add to your sigil. One of the huge complaints many new players have is there is no real gear at lower levels. Meanwhile they probably never bothered to even unlock WotG areas and thus cant get gear for mid 50 or late 60. If the equipment you can get from CP isn't to your liking or if you are not from that city and thus can't buy an item because it is that city only. Also how else are people to think of a person who complains they didn't know what this or that was because they didn't ask the people online what certain things are or what they mean? You have to use your brain in this game. If you don't ask things in game an only rely on wikis then yes people are going to call you an idiot. After all it doesn't take hopefully too long to know not to be facing a cocatrice or a lizy when they're about to petrify you.

As for soul plates the cameras in game are like the ones that were first made in RL. They used to use plates that would help copy the image the camera was aimed at. Some people didn't like cameras and felt they would steal your soul.

What is the basis for your argument?

The books give Regen, Refresh, Reraise, Haste, and a potent food effect...all of this in addition to an extremely generous bonus to xp/hr rate along with incremental hourly gil infusions.

Why would anyone ever level in WoTG? You go there for campaign, missioning, and perhaps the opportunity to shore up a few pieces of gear.

A level 60 cannot gear themselves up with AN gear in any meaningful way. I did some campaign at 70 to get the AN for my trusts. All I did was follow a JP around and heal him. I got about 2,000 AN per battle. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, and the fact that anyone on this forum WOULD shows me what a delusional troll they are.

I did it out of desperation to experience the game the way it was "meant to be played," rather that just trading in a copper voucher and calling it a day. Stupid move.

And a few mins on wiki(FFXI has many sites that are free and well maintained and they pop up with the first 5 google results) would tell you right away and the only people doing it are people finishing mystics and by and large is dead content with little to no reason for new players to touch.

I think the real point here is that no one ever gives any indication of how we should "just know" that this is dead content. Where on the wiki does it state...oh, don't even bother.

How was Crevox supposed to know whether or not WoTG was dead content? After all, he zoned in and got insta-gibbed?

Seriously, had he zoned into Rolanberry [S] he would have been greeted by level 33 non-aggro mobs. But instead, he probably popped in Batallia, and got mauled by a level 50-something tiger or goblin.

I think it's hilarious that every new player in this game is supposed to just intuitively assume that they will need Sneak and Invisible to travel ANYWHERE meaningful, because if for one signle second they stop pretending they are Solid effing Snake they will immediately be punished.

When I first found out that the basis for accomplishing much in this game was to simply cloak up and run past it invisible I was sorely disappointed.

Remember that one great Final Fantasy where instead of fighting to the death, you just hid from everything?

Yeah...I don't either.

[AppropriateName5786]

And a few mins on wiki(FFXI has many sites that are free and well maintained and they pop up with the first 5 google results) would tell you right away and the only people doing it are people finishing mystics and by and large is dead content with little to no reason for new players to touch. Wiki and the rest of the info is out there and it was SE intentions at the start of of the game to push sites like wiki instead of having it explained in game or for players to ask each other and share the information between our selves. Though SE biggest mistake was to open these forums with out a suggestion area and a general help area and enforced it.

Well-maintained wikis? I am speechless. And googling a wiki and knowing what to look for/where to find it is very different. Getting a new player to google everything they don't understand about ffxi is akin to asking someone who doesn't know Italian to translate a paragraph from English to Italian using google translate. The result is mediocre at best, and an incomprehensible mess at worst.

As an experiment, I went to bluegartr wiki and typed "ZNM" in the search box. The top 5 results I got were Gyroscopic Gear, Gyroscopic Gear, Proto-Ultima, Donggu, FFXI Version Update History. How useful!

And the rest of your paragraph is nonsensical. FFXI having no official windowed mode and being on PlayStation 2 = SE pushing sites like wiki? Forcing players to break ToS and data mine everything because no one knows what does what = having players share information? Furthermore, from which crevice did you pull out "SE's intentions?"

by and large is dead content with little to no reason for new players to touch

You unwittingly argued for the OP. You think ZNMs are dead, the OP implies that CoP/RoZ/WotG/ToAU are dead by not wanting to do them. Neither can be proven wrong. Whether or not content is dead is subjective, but content road blocks that screw new players is an objective reality in this game.

edit: because I may have misrepresented OP's views regarding expansions

[OKOA]

You unwittingly argued for the OP.

Glad I'm not the only one who saw the irony...

[Lithera]

Let's see what all you can get with sigil active regen and refresh xp loss down extended meal duration. No loss of tp and an increase of hp recovered while resting. You can quickly go into town and get reraise scrolls. Chain xp bonuses xp from campaign which as we all know helps to break up from only killing pink birds/ladybugs. Oh and you can get crystals even if the beastmen control a zone. Also when you are camping a certain rabbit nm out at the fort it cuts down on the boredom while waiting for it to repop. Because gear that is probably cheaper in the end run then the stuff you can buy with gil is so hard to do if you don't want to be looking like a level ten at 50+. Every five RL days you can get a higher medal if you got enough AN. You didn't do any campaign ops to help get your AN during your following if said guy to get your trust npc? If not then yes it is going to take a longer time. Can do seven ops a RL day each with an increase of AN and xp the higher in rank you go. It was the SoA of its time. How do you get bylad? You do reives you do campaign ops er I mean coalition assignments skirmish ect.

Gov and Fov only get their bigger bangs for you buck if you stay in the zone and don't switch pages because you out leveled the page. Leave gussen mines, oops all your bonuses from completing pages goes away. In small bits yes gov and fov probably will out do a part level synced or not sans either. The op said he couldn't find a place to xp in the past I posted that he could have if he asked someone. That is my point, he could have xped there with his friends but he easily gave up after he died to something and didn't go back. Also no other area has unconditional monsters that will cure you or raise you like the present does. Since you only get pixies in the present if enough people are releasing them at the pond.

[Lithera]

SE said it years ago in a dev response to something that they wanted the player base to use their brains to figure out how things work or to use the wiki if they couldn't omg ask people who have every new thing done right after a patch has come out on their server.

[Ravenmore]

Well-maintained wikis? I am speechless. And googling a wiki and knowing what to look for/where to find it is very different. Getting a new player to google everything they don't understand about ffxi is akin to asking someone who doesn't know Italian to translate a paragraph from English to Italian using google translate. The result is mediocre at best, and an incomprehensible mess at worst.

As an experiment, I went to bluegartr wiki and typed "ZNM" in the search box. The top 5 results I got were Gyroscopic Gear, Gyroscopic Gear, Proto-Ultima, Donggu, FFXI Version Update History. How useful!

And the rest of your paragraph is nonsensical. FFXI having no official windowed mode and being on PlayStation 2 = SE pushing sites like wiki? Forcing players to break ToS and data mine everything because no one knows what does what = having players share information? Furthermore, from which crevice did you pull out "SE's intentions?"



You unwittingly argued for the OP. You think ZNMs are dead, the OP implies that CoP/RoZ/WotG/ToAU are dead by not wanting to do them. Neither can be proven wrong. Whether or not content is dead is subjective, but content road blocks that screw new players is an objective reality in this game.

edit: because I may have misrepresented OP's views regarding expansions

Here is what I got in 2 secs of googling by going typing in ffxi wiki then on the wiki putting in znm, http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Sp...1&ns4=1&ns14=1. Search for ffxi wiki and ffxiclopedia is the first one that pops up which has more information then BG's wiki and in my opinion a better search system as well. What the OP is mad at is he wanted to jump right into endgame and not go though the story and he expected after a month to be at the same level of those that have been playing for years. I find it lazy they can't even be bother to do simple research and can't even understand a wiki.

The great thing about story over battle content is that it is never outdated as battle content like ZNM is so I in fact didn't argued for the OP.

[detlef]

FFXI has never been friendly to anybody who does not have Wiki access. There is not enough information available in-game. You HAVE to be able to know where and how to find things on the internet in order get things done.

Seriously, how would you know how to make a Sea gorget/obi? Get Evoker's Ring? Use the Paintbrush of Souls? Is it some new revelation that the game is hard to play without online resources?

[AppropriateName5786]

FFXI has never been friendly to anybody who does not have Wiki access. There is not enough information available in-game. You HAVE to be able to know where and how to find things on the internet in order get things done.

Seriously, how would you know how to make a Sea gorget/obi? Get Evoker's Ring? Use the Paintbrush of Souls? Is it some new revelation that the game is hard to play without online resources?

Defeatist attitudes never got anyone anywhere. The praise for the NPC Trust system and Sparks of Eminence is almost unanimous, and many other good changes are happening in future patches from what I can tell. Pets are finally getting boosts to dps, and dnc and run will probably see more utility after February's update. This game does not improve like it should because of comments such as yours.

For instance, the recent and announced pet changes could have happened a long time ago, but they didn't because of the backwards community. You'll probably see many posts in the smn forums (even within the last few months) where some players argue that smn is "completely fine" and should stay the way it is. They would use all kinds of faulty logic to argue that "avatar melee attack is fine, perp cost should stay, BP cooldown shouldn't go lower than 45 sec," and the stupidity goes on and on. Now, melee attacks and BP do more damage, and with the 119 sachet from AA fights, BP delay can reach 40 sec. Thank goodness the devs (finally) realized that the design was bad and made these changes, which proved those stubborn smns wrong as well.

[detlef]

Defeatist attitudes never got anyone anywhere. The praise for the NPC Trust system and Sparks of Eminence is almost unanimous, and many other good changes are happening in future patches from what I can tell. Pets are finally getting boosts to dps, and dnc and run will probably see more utility after February's update. This game does not improve like it should because of comments such as yours.

For instance, the recent and announced pet changes could have happened a long time ago, but they didn't because of the backwards community. You'll probably see many posts in the smn forums (even within the last few months) where some players argue that smn is "completely fine" and should stay the way it is. They would use all kinds of faulty logic to argue that "avatar melee attack is fine, perp cost should stay, BP cooldown shouldn't go lower than 45 sec," and the stupidity goes on and on. Now, melee attacks and BP do more damage, and with the 119 sachet from AA fights, BP delay can reach 40 sec. Thank goodness the devs (finally) realized that the design was bad and made these changes, which proved those stubborn smns wrong as well.

All those things you mentioned are good changes that don't seem to have anything to do with this discussion.

So... what's to be done about the lack of direction in-game? Something like 14's quest system seems far too difficult to implement in 11. Honestly the easiest way to deal with the issue would be to add links to the various online resources in the server message that pops up when you log in. If you can think of something better that can actually be implemented before 2016, I'm all ears.

[Olor]

The missions can be left alone, as can the quests. What I'd like to see happen is removing them as a roadblock from unrelated content. Examples - I can't progress in voidwatch because I can't go to sky - they could easily allow me to warp there from the voidwatch NPC (as warped to Mount Zhayolm without ever first going to the zone) - but instead they made it so gilgamesh won't give me the CS to upgrade my abyssite even though I did the work. That design decision meant I got locked out of that content while it was being done.

Ditto to the upgraded AF requiring sea. Why do that?

As to people who have finished the missions who support this kind of inane roadblocking - I don't get you. It doesn't take anything away from you to allow folks like me to do COMPLETELY UNRELATED content without soloing a month of cut scenes.

I'm fine with dynamis progression etc. (though again, remove COP requirements) - or anything requiring an "adventurers certificate" - I'm not opposed to all road blocking but not when it is ridiculous.