Thank you for making both the grind and rewards of the Job Point system so terrible.

[Afania]

People don't want to live their entire life on a game anymore.

This is false.

I know plenty of ppl live their entire life on WoW, FFXIV ARR, LOL, D3, <insert your online game title here>, to a point to be jobless at age 30+. Players not wanting to live their entire life on a game isn't FFXI issue.

[Olor]

This is false.

I know plenty of ppl live their entire life on WoW, FFXIV ARR, LOL, D3, <insert your online game title here>, to a point to be jobless at age 30+. Players not wanting to live their entire life on a game isn't FFXI issue.

Well whether you know "plenty" of those people or not, they are a very very very tiny insignificant minority of people who can't alone support any game.

[Lithera]

Because XI never had a story that even got national attention about an LS trying to beat a certain NM when it was still new 18+ hrs straight. I have read posts on this forums and heard of others while in game having quit because of the grind the game put on you back in the 75 cap days. Shit I know of a few relationships that have ended because of playing XI too much. So to say that it never happens or didn't is just fooling yourself. Heck I know people who would play this at work. Done a few time consuming events with those same at work people. One of the complaints I would read on here or see in shouts or during parties was about how hard the grind was.

[bungiefanNA]

http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff11

Having a game that takes hundreds of hours to be able to function with other people that have been playing longer than you is a bad thing. MMO addiction is a big problem. It's nice for FFXI to be more accessible without taking hours to form a party and get to camp, so you can play for a reasonable amount of time and still make progress, like an offline RPG. My free time has shortened as I got older, and I never really had much back when I was 19 when the game came out, though I've stayed subscribed. It took me 8 years under the original XP system to get my first job to 75, with my subjob at 40 (BLM and WHM respectively). Being able to pick up a new job and make progress on it has been a godsend, and I'm finally able to complete the missions I could never get a static group to hold together for for more than 3 missions in a row (people would quit, or their LS would bump them ahead of us and they wouldn't come back for the static). MMOs can't be like EQ1 with a huge grind anymore. Society is more aware of them, and ones that require players to play for 8 hour sessions and eat up all the free time of a player will get bad press. I was already aware of the problem before FFXI, when it was called EverCrack, and lost a friend to it and another to early WoW that way.

Everything isn't instant, but you don't have to waste time idling while trying to get the perfect group and having a long travel time to some place. There are so many events, they wanted people to be able to do them quickly, and the census said people weren't doing a lot of events.

[Kaeviathan]

I went and farmed 5 job points today. After that, i went and used them. Considering how long it is to get 30,000 capability points, I thought upgrades were gonna be 1>1>1>1>etc. But I was wrong. It increases by 1 (1>2>3>...) It is frustrating that it takes too much work. I don't see myself getting these upgrades for a lot of jobs I have in the future. It's a waste of time.

I want some of these upgrades badly!!! But I'm not willing to spend too much unnecessary hours for this.

If no changes are to be done for this, then heres to hoping that the new job ability upgrades be just as useless as some we have presently.

[Afania]

Well whether you know "plenty" of those people or not, they are a very very very tiny insignificant minority of people who can't alone support any game.

It doesn't matter, you made it sound like it's FFXI issue, I'm just telling you this is not. Don't blame FFXI for having players play longer than 2hr a day.

[Afania]

http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff11

Having a game that takes hundreds of hours to be able to function with other people that have been playing longer than you is a bad thing. MMO addiction is a big problem. It's nice for FFXI to be more accessible without taking hours to form a party and get to camp, so you can play for a reasonable amount of time and still make progress, like an offline RPG. My free time has shortened as I got older, and I never really had much back when I was 19 when the game came out, though I've stayed subscribed. It took me 8 years under the original XP system to get my first job to 75, with my subjob at 40 (BLM and WHM respectively). Being able to pick up a new job and make progress on it has been a godsend, and I'm finally able to complete the missions I could never get a static group to hold together for for more than 3 missions in a row (people would quit, or their LS would bump them ahead of us and they wouldn't come back for the static). MMOs can't be like EQ1 with a huge grind anymore. Society is more aware of them, and ones that require players to play for 8 hour sessions and eat up all the free time of a player will get bad press. I was already aware of the problem before FFXI, when it was called EverCrack, and lost a friend to it and another to early WoW that way.

Everything isn't instant, but you don't have to waste time idling while trying to get the perfect group and having a long travel time to some place. There are so many events, they wanted people to be able to do them quickly, and the census said people weren't doing a lot of events.

I don't really agree with you. First of all, MMO addiction is a big problem because MMO dev(Blizzard, I'm looking at you) hire psychology experts to implement designs to make players play their game longer, so players don't play for 3 months and quit, leaving empty servers. MMO also functions differently from single player game, so that's kinda necessary for them. Whether you like their approach or not, you can't make a MMO and have every player play like a single player game for 3 months and quit. I know everyone would want to play on and off, quit anytime, play when they have time, but the question is can dev make a living with such model?

2nd, MMO can be played like an offline RPG is the wrong direction for MMO, because you can just play offline RPG for better experience.

Offline RPG has better graphics, better story, you can play anytime you want, stop anytime you want, and generally 10x more fun than playing MMORPG solo. I've tried to play games like FFXI, GW2, SWTOR and WoW like an offline RPG before, the experience is terrible. You just kill mobs and that's it.

I'm not asking MMO to be a huge grind, but I'm asking MMO to be different from offline RPG. And I'm well aware that MMORPG is just 10x more time consuming than offline RPG. It's just the nature of MMO(I've never play ANY PC MMO that's less time consuming than single player RPG, barring mobile MMO), you can't have players play for 1 month and quit, and have empty servers. I don't believe a MMO played like single player RPG can function properly, until a title successfully keep players around by offering single player experience.

Personally, I think "being time consuming" and "can't be played like single player game" is just the nature of MMO. If I don't have time, I won't touch MMORPG at all, I'd stay far, far away from any of them. I find some recent MMO that tried to be less time consuming ended up having worse playing experience than single player RPG. I don't really understand the reason behind wanting a MMORPG to be playable like a single player game, and still insist not to play single player game instead.

[bungiefanNA]

I do like being able to play with other people, but cutting down the grind so that finding the other people doesn't take forever is what I appreciate. I meant I like it being on the level of being able to jump in like a single-player game and actually make progress, rather than logging in and not actually being able to participate in the event I had wanted until 3-4 hours have passed because of waiting for people to travel and waiting for people that fill the roles to respond to tells, like it was before Abyssea. It's nice having something I can play for 1-2 hours at a time and still make noticable progress. Not having to go without sleep to get something done is great. The addictions I saw were because you had to play for long periods for meaningful progress, and the changes now are a good step away from that, though job points are a step backward with how they are implemented.

[predatory]

I do like being able to play with other people, but cutting down the grind so that finding the other people doesn't take forever is what I appreciate. I meant I like it being on the level of being able to jump in like a single-player game and actually make progress, rather than logging in and not actually being able to participate in the event I had wanted until 3-4 hours have passed because of waiting for people to travel and waiting for people that fill the roles to respond to tells, like it was before Abyssea. It's nice having something I can play for 1-2 hours at a time and still make noticable progress. Not having to go without sleep to get something done is great. The addictions I saw were because you had to play for long periods for meaningful progress, and the changes now are a good step away from that, though job points are a step backward with how they are implemented.

What about doing things you do have time to If they take away everything that takes time to do, or time to set up for people who don't allow themselves time to play, (yes I did say allow yourself time to play, because people make their own choices about what to do with their time), there will be nothing to do for those of us who genuinely enjoy playing the game. If you're of the mindset that everything has to be doable quickly, then you've missed the point of playing an mmo. these are games you Can't win, they're designed for long term enjoyment, and if you don't like playing the game enough to mak time to do things, then you should find a new game or genre of game to play. Maybe minecraft or FFXIV are more to your tastes?

[Puck]

What about doing things you do have time to If they take away everything that takes time to do, or time to set up for people who don't allow themselves time to play, (yes I did say allow yourself time to play, because people make their own choices about what to do with their time), there will be nothing to do for those of us who genuinely enjoy playing the game. If you're of the mindset that everything has to be doable quickly, then you've missed the point of playing an mmo. these are games you Can't win, they're designed for long term enjoyment, and if you don't like playing the game enough to mak time to do things, then you should find a new game or genre of game to play. Maybe minecraft or FFXIV are more to your tastes?

You realize you sound like a total dick, right?

And obviously you haven't spent much time with those two games you invoked intending to insult your fellow FFXI subscriber (one of the few people keeping this game alive so you can play it, remember). Minecraft and FFXIV are also games you can't win, and there's veritable SHITLOADS of content that anyone can play 24 hours a day.

There's no difference in terms of commitment, and playing those games doesn't make you any "less of a gamer" than playing FFXI. The fact that FFXI REQUIRES more grindy content makes it in no way better. There will NEVER be a dearth of content in this game. But the amount of content that absolutely CANNOT be accomplished in a few hours is unacceptable by today's standards. The average age of gamers keeps going up. Most of us have jobs, families of our own with kids, etc.. We can't sit around all day waiting to get a group just to make a small bit of progress.

How does making the game more convenient for everybody detract from your "genuine enjoyment" of the game? Do you derive pleasure from endless grinds, roadblocks, and content that requires large, restrictive groups? FFXI can't do that anymore with the few players left. Not that all that garbage was ever enjoyable in the first place.

If FFXI is going to survive, it won't be through long-term grinds. People NEED to feel like they've accomplished something in the few hours they have to play. If they don't, they'll quit, and move on to a game that doesn't waste their time. And when enough of them quit, down goes the ship. Make no mistake, FFXI isn't guaranteed to live forever, especially with Square-Enix's streak of bad business decisions. FFXI has been heading in the right direction thanks to Matsui, and the last thing we need is to fall back into a Tanaka-style sadomasochistic relationship between the players and the devs.