Future of FFXI and your approvals/disapprovals to the development team

[Runespider]

brews are the what ruinned abyssea.

They made a fun area and then went overboard and made it too easy, 3 atmas and cheap brews ruined any challenge in Aby. Rani should of never been killed to the extent it has been and Shinryu gear is as common as Aurore/teal etc

If I had of been in charge of Abyssea I would of made 2 versions, one as it is and another where you can't use as many/any atmas and brews don't work there. Then put better gear in the more difficult Aby area, including +3/+4, everyones happy.

[Leonlionheart]

I like Abyssea because gear accrues rather than appears.
That is to say that rather than OMFG HOLY FFFFFFF N BODY DROPPED. LS Leader: "LOL MINE",
We now get "Oh look 1 item that drops in 3's that you need 6 of to get the thing you need, Well X and Y both need it so they can lot it out until they have 6!"

Each NM seems to offer something to several players, barring maybe Rani, Raja, Pankotrator, and Isgebind (NMs that only drop gear instead of +2 items) and most Visions Empyrean Weapon NM's (I.E. Glavoid, Carabosse, Briareus, which all drop complete trash for gear, and Empyrean Weapon materials). Even if you're just there helping, Heroes areas drop Trophies which can be used to obtain several niche pieces like Cure potency bodies for whm or haste legs for drg, and many other varieties of gear.

I personally hope they continue with rewarding material that benefits nearly all players rather than the few that have the resources to get the high end crap.

Respectively hardcore players can go the extra mile and get Empyrean weapons with the help of a few friends. Even if it doesn't take the time you would see to maybe get that N body to drop, or to build a relic, the level of difficulty is about the same and can be very competitive on populated servers.

On Asura you can see up to 6 shells camping Glavoid KI NMs at primetime, making claim- though only 10 minutes apart- quite annoying.

TL;DR: I hope SE continues this 'rewards everyone' type of material going. It's quite, well, rewarding.

Edit: Brews ruined it.

[Rambus]

*comfort* I have an unfinished Mythic and really can't find people to complete these quest etc. Its sucky...

that is because they have no appel, people for the most part are "what is in it for me?" and that only happens in abyssea so people do not do much contant outside of abyssea.

what mythic? and hi taru twin!

how did brews ruin it? if you cannot get help on something you can brew it,, getting apademak's horns or doing 75-80 emp items , hard to get random people to help on such things. if you want to go that route I say atma ruined it more then brews, makes lazy player. i ask bard for ballad and he is like you do not have milkin? I did not know it was requred to have atma to gain exp. I did not know people had "you are suppose to have atma so i do not have to do my job" concept

[Sparthos]

Brews are overall too accessible and undercut every challenge within Abyssea. If SE did something like this at the 99 cap when other things were available to do, that'd have gone over better than what we have now - Brew Fantasy XI.

Abyssea went downhill after Scars. Things got way too easy and the playerbase responded with AFK alliances where individuals hug the Dominion Tactician for EXP and zonewide light bonuses which take any strategy out of building/maintaining lights.

You have to ask yourself what the point of making Rani so difficult was if SEs intention was to make her a gatekeeper to Shinryu. In addition, whats the point of Shinryu being so difficult if you can simply just brew him down too? It's all fun the first or second time you do it but like any game where the cheat codes are on, it gets dull fast.

Oh and unlike offline RPGs, you cant turn the cheat codes off when you finally decide to do things legit.

[Neofire]

I like Abyssea because gear accrues rather than appears.
That is to say that rather than OMFG HOLY FFFFFFF N BODY DROPPED. LS Leader: "LOL MINE",
We now get "Oh look 1 item that drops in 3's that you need 6 of to get the thing you need, Well X and Y both need it so they can lot it out until they have 6!"

Each NM seems to offer something to several players, barring maybe Rani, Raja, Pankotrator, and Isgebind (NMs that only drop gear instead of +2 items) and most Visions Empyrean Weapon NM's (I.E. Glavoid, Carabosse, Briareus, which all drop complete trash for gear, and Empyrean Weapon materials). Even if you're just there helping, Heroes areas drop Trophies which can be used to obtain several niche pieces like Cure potency bodies for whm or haste legs for drg, and many other varieties of gear.

I personally hope they continue with rewarding material that benefits nearly all players rather than the few that have the resources to get the high end crap.

Respectively hardcore players can go the extra mile and get Empyrean weapons with the help of a few friends. Even if it doesn't take the time you would see to maybe get that N body to drop, or to build a relic, the level of difficulty is about the same and can be very competitive on populated servers.

On Asura you can see up to 6 shells camping Glavoid KI NMs at primetime, making claim- though only 10 minutes apart- quite annoying.

TL;DR: I hope SE continues this 'rewards everyone' type of material going. It's quite, well, rewarding.

Edit: Brews ruined it.

I agree with you dude, other then this post and one other, all I've seen people do is cry about how they cant monopoly NMs pretty much and it seems to piss people off when other people get the same good gear they have which makes me sick to my stomack when I see people act like that. I too hope SE continue with things similar to abyssea to give all types of players the same choice to get gear and weapons as people with big ls's. Noone should have camp against people who want to cheat to get gear or make gil, and before abyssea that's all ff11 was who was going to get banned this week for cheating. which i know it still happens but it isn't nowhere near as rampant before the changes SE did with abyssea.

[Sparthos]

I agree with you dude, other then this post and one other, all I've seen people do is cry about how they cant monopoly NMs pretty much and it seems to piss people off when other people get the same good gear they have which makes me sick to my stomack when I see people act like that. I too hope SE continue with things similar to abyssea to give all types of players the same choice to get gear and weapons as people with big ls's. Noone should have camp against people who want to cheat to get gear or make gil, and before abyssea that's all ff11 was who was going to get banned this week for cheating. which i know it still happens but it isn't nowhere near as rampant before the changes SE did with abyssea.

So Nyzul Isle was rampant cheating and botting?
So Salvage was rampant cheating and botting?
So VNMs were rampant cheating and botting?
So TOTM were rampant cheating and botting?
So Campaign Ops were rampant cheating and botting?
So Einherjar had rampant cheating and botting?
So Assault had rampant cheating and botting?
So MMM had rampant cheating and botting?

No ones saying that Abyssea did do an amazing job at making things more accessible to players but the entire game has been left a smoldering pile of ash in the process. You talk about how Abyssea solved the problems of cheating and botting yet stuff like Gukumatz frequently gets claimed on sight, people are APradaring VNMs and overall nothing has really changed on the cheating/botting front except the chokepoint of HNMs is gone.

It never will change unless everything in XI was instanced.

[Neofire]

Brews are overall too accessible and undercut every challenge within Abyssea. If SE did something like this at the 99 cap when other things were available to do, that'd have gone over better than what we have now - Brew Fantasy XI.

Abyssea went downhill after Scars. Things got way too easy and the playerbase responded with AFK alliances where individuals hug the Dominion Tactician for EXP and zonewide light bonuses which take any strategy out of building/maintaining lights.

You have to ask yourself what the point of making Rani so difficult was if SEs intention was to make her a gatekeeper to Shinryu. In addition, whats the point of Shinryu being so difficult if you can simply just brew him down too? It's all fun the first or second time you do it but like any game where the cheat codes are on, it gets dull fast.

Oh and unlike offline RPGs, you cant turn the cheat codes off when you finally decide to do things legit.

Don't be so ignorant, SE made brews cheaper because not everybody has a huge ls's to throw at bosses like rani and even with brews rani is still tricky. You sound like your mad that the same NM u killed normally someone else just brewed. I will tell to everyone if u dont want to use the brew don't, but don't post on here crying about it saying it ruined your experience in abyssea when its your choice to use it or not.

[Neofire]

So Nyzul Isle was rampant cheating and botting?
So Salvage was rampant cheating and botting?
So VNMs were rampant cheating and botting?
So TOTM were rampant cheating and botting?
So Campaign Ops were rampant cheating and botting?
So Einherjar had rampant cheating and botting?
So Assault had rampant cheating and botting?
So MMM had rampant cheating and botting?

No ones saying that Abyssea did do an amazing job at making things more accessible to players but the entire game has been left a smoldering pile of ash in the process. You talk about how Abyssea solved the problems of cheating and botting yet stuff like Gukumatz frequently gets claimed on sight, people are APradaring VNMs and overall nothing has really changed on the cheating/botting front except the chokepoint of HNMs is gone.

It never will change unless everything in XI was instanced.

Yea there was some form of cheating in those endgame events from item duplication to people staying in them longer then it wax possible, once I get home I will post every case of people getting banned for this. Hell do you really think SE was mass banned for no reason do you? Come on

[Anewie]

Thanks for the replies guys. Keep them coming and please DO NOT TURN THIS THREAD into anti abyssea or anti HNM thread. Simply state your opinion on the current state of the game, your hopes for the future and your disaprovals. Theres no need to flame. Not everyone who camped HNMs was a botting cheating monopolizer and not everyone is happy just doing abyssea and casual content.

Respect other peoples opinions. Theres no right or wrong side!

[Sparthos]

Don't be so ignorant, SE made brews cheaper because not everybody has a huge ls's to throw at bosses like rani and even with brews rani is still tricky. You sound like your mad that the same NM u killed normally someone else just brewed. I will tell to everyone if u dont want to use the brew don't, but don't post on here crying about it saying it ruined your experience in abyssea when its your choice to use it or not.

Except you can shout a group to defeat Rani and actually have a challenge to look forward to. If you don't have a large LS, that's what the shouting is for and it's been increasingly successful for many. "But I won't be able to defeat Rani for sure!" you say? Oh, that's a what a challenge is called.

Rani ain't Promyvion. Shes only guarding the way to Shinryu - the "ultimate" boss of the expansion.

Im not "mad" moreso accepting that the future of this game is doomed when all you have to do is pop an item, spam a WS macro and have nearly 0% chance of losing. This is a lesson I learned way back in '97 where using cheat codes (brew is as close to a cheat code as this game gets) is fun for but only for a while and then shortly thereafter, the fun is replaced by boredom and then abandonment of the game.

You can continue to delude yourself into believing that 200k brews have done nothing to FFXI and i'll continue to realize that too much of a good thing is bad. There are no more challenges left in XI for the "little-guy" (read: new players/old players/upcoming players) to look forward to. Instead the game has been morphed into a brewfest, a leechfest and a game completely detached from its former self.

The new systems in the May patch may change the current course of the game but as it stands, the choices made during Heroes of Abyssea have had an overall negative impact on the game itself. Abyssea as a whole had some solid good choices but only a fool chooses to ignore the horrible choices.