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

[Malamasala]

I find it funny when people say brews make abyssea too easy then say things like this.

I think some mobs were made to be brewed/atmaed, old FFXI is not, so no

Best part is that atma and brews are optional, so only people who LIKE them use them. Unless they are hypocrites.

[Soundwave]

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

Nirvana =X and yes hello twin!

[Rambus]

Nirvana =X and yes hello twin!

thought about getting that

[Zero-Hour]

First off, I am a new player. My wife and I started playing about December 2009. We mainly play as a duo, and rarely party with others. We held off playing FFXI for a very long time mainly because we did not believe that square could actually translate a Final Fantasy to online and have it actually be Final Fantasy. To a large extent this is true, the story line is very thin, and because of the weeks of grinding between segments to attain the levels required to complete them the story all but gets lost along the way.

For us the main drawback is the absolute requirement to party with absolute strangers to get things done. This is probably what stopped us playing for so long. We did not want our experience of the game to depend upon others, after playing Final Fantasy 1-10 off-line, solo.

Many will say that FFXI is a Party Only game and we accept the limitations that our play style imposes.

The game is not without some merits though.

With recent updates, like the removal of level caps on certain battles/areas we have been able to progress in the game far further that would have been possible before. Things like "Chains of Promethia" would have been completely impossible for us before.

Many players review recent updates from the perspective of long term players who have long time been everywhere and done everything. For us newcommers, we will not have 7+ years to build up our experience, as it is unlikely the game will last that long, so any alterations square have done to make things more accessable are good from our point of view.

One announced update we are very excited about is the increase of the Adventuring fellows to level 85 and the higher time/monster limits. The NPCs have already enabled us to complete missions far beyond what 2 could achieve and we anticipate more inaccessable content unlocked.

The recent FOV update along with increased XP outside of Abyssea has been most welcome too. For those for which Abyssea is not an option this has made a world of difference. I would welcome further improvements to this area too, like areas for 80+ as Cape Terrigan get a little crowded.

I guess for many long time players who have a great linkshell with many long time friends, will find it hard to understand how newer players get on. We have a linkshell, with very good people in, however they have all known each other for a very long time, and us as newcomers cannot really contribute on the same level. So much of our game is unexplored and we cannot expect anyone to spend hours, days, months helping us through missions they all did years ago.

90% of endgame is missed out on for us, and probably always will be, as others have said, Limbus, Dynamis, Nyzul Isle etc are dead because Abyssea has taken over pretty much completely. While further improvements might be forthcoming, I doubt they will re-vitalise those areas to anything like what they once were.

As far as Abyssea is concerned, we have tried it, but found little of value there. The whole system is designed for full alliances to actually gain any xp benefit, so no use there, and the items gained are all aimed at endgame, of which we have had little experience, and probably never will.


One thing I definately have no time for is the complete luck based system that a lot of FFXI works on. The random popping of NMs and the random nature of the drops. I find no fun in waiting hours or even days for a spawn, only to luck out on the drop, even worse, finally get the pop, only to have someone else appear from nowhere and claim the NM, especially if I have spent hours killing placeholders. For those of us that have consistently bad luck this makes the process even worse.


Sorry for the long post which might seems quite negative. Far from it really, for us the game has a great deal to offer, and recent updates, and hopefuly those soon to come will make more of the existing game possible. As far as Abyssea is concerned though, this will make no difference in either direction to us.

[Karbuncle]

I know this is too easy.

But if you hate doing things with other people, why play an MMO? I just find it particularly odd "Playing with other people" would be a huge gripe in a genre like MMO >.>

Edit: Other than that, i enjoyed the read Very thought out.

[Seriha]

People are both an MMO's greatest strength and weakness. Personality clashes, schedule conflicts, play styles... all contribute to the experience and, while maybe fun for one person, could be utter hell for another. Such is mainly why I tend to favor systems that promote fair access without all the time sink, but that can run opposite of the "hardcore" mindset of those wanting challenge or some sense of accomplishment. Things like crappy drop rates make people want to tackle content with as few bodies as possible so there are less mouths to feed when stuff does show up. On the other end, if things were generous enough, people would have no reason to not take others. Sure, some will be dicks and still try to sell things in this scenario, but as long as these people can't have a monopoly, a potential buyer always has a choice to accept an offer.

[Forevergogo]

I like the changes that ffxi has made since the leap past 75...
big pluses:
Traveling takes less time than it ever did these days.
Leveling up and meriting is faster than ever, thank god.
Acquiring gear is easier than it used to be.
Friendlier people and lots of shout groups for abyssea.
Enjoyable content and areas, faster-paced battles and action.
Atmas giving us new heights of power and prestige.

But there are still areas that are frustrating and I still feel work could be done
My 11 most wishful dream changes and development in FF11.....

1) Revisiting old 'events' and tuning them to have rewards for endgame players
ex: add more loot to the pool, maybe even upgrades for emperion/magian stuff. What is the reward for helping someone kill an avatar these days? 5k gil? 10k? People pay that much for a teleport when they're desperate. Make it worth the time it takes to get out there and kill the damn thing.. same for all those mid-range events and things. :/

2) Soloability of All Missions. There are still people, like me, who haven't finished missions... like, most of them.
the missions and quests make this game what it is- give it a Huge Story~! But a lot of times it takes 2 people to trade keys at the same time, or it takes at least 6 people to kill x-mob(s), etc. I'd like to see it take 1 person to get to where they need to go, fight what they need to fight, and leave learning a bit more of the amazing tale of vana'diel! Easy fix: No level cap for any of it, change some of the keys/doors rules, and give us some buffs equatable to the ones we can get in Abyssea between cruor buffs and atmas and maybe even brews in difficult missions. Make it so that it could be a guaranteed win if you had support, but an actual possible challenge to solo. Oh, and I agree with earlier sentiments on reviewing cutscenes. These could easily be filed away with some NPCs in various cities, just a "Remember When..." and you select from a long but organized list of cut scenes from the different expansions and story lines. Like a sub-section to all your completed missions and quests, to relive the moments.

3) Black Magic (Lower the price?) All black mages out there have either quested and farmed hoping for a very rare drop for ages for various scrolls, or spent Millions on their spell list. Yes, Millions. Check the price of sleepga II on your server, and tell me if you haven't quested it yet, and why. Maybe some of these spells could be dropped in abyssea chests? Or added as drops in other events. A number of the tier IV nukes are far more expensive than the tier V! ..Mostly cause you need them to stagger mobs in abyssea. True also for some ninja magic *cough UTSUSEMI cough* and white magic *cough Teleports and Recalls cough* ..Yeah. Let's lower the price by adding some new ways to find these scrolls.

4) Auction House. Fees? These need to go. They are a HUGE reason people npc something, it npcs for 6~k gil, auctions for 7~k.... after fees... it just really almost isn't worth it. 7 item limit? ...7 item limit??? .... SEVEN ITEM LIMIT?! Well great, now people will only want to auction what sells fast and what sells for high prices. All that crap that sells at a slow pace, or for a mid-range price... usually sits in the bottom of some bag until a cloudy day when you actually have room to put it up for auction. Let's raise 7 to.... 20? I that asking too much? Fine... 10? I think I read that a future update plans on linking the auction houses? That *could* work... if you paid for a few 'mules'.

5) Skilling Up. I didn't 'leech' to 90 in abyssea. I worked my butt off to get to 75 on all three jobs I have. And still half of my skills are left in the dirt. White Mage parry... yeah, try to skill that up. Bard nearly capped my evasion pulling in merit parties all the time, but even between a 90 White Mage and 90 Black Mage... some of my magic skills are so far behind in developing. Enfeebling Magic, Divine Magic, Healing Magic, Enhancing Magic-- and my biggest irk with it is when a BLU or SMN is like "u mad, bro?" with their SINGLE magic skill to skill up. Can something be done to give faster and consistent skill ups? Maybe a status effect under signet or something that increases the likelihood of skill up, cause it is pretty bad when you're 100 points under cap, and haven't gotten more than +.4 total in an hour's worth of attempted skilling up. I'd like to see more +.5 than anything when I'm really far away from the cap, and more of the +.1 when I'm closer to the cap...

6) Year-Round Mog Bonanza.
Make it a monthly thing. It is a HUGE gil-sink for this now-booming economy, and players LOVE to gamble. change up the rewards, throw some 'your-choice of emperion upgrade seal / coin / etc' in there for bottom 3 wins, put some unique rewards like colored chocobos, some 'your-choice of AF2' in there for like the level 2-3 wins. It would definitely be a gil-sink for players to pour money into each month hoping for a big and valuable prize. Maybe a cool top prize could be a bigger mog-house (well, room anyways) with built in cabinets for +50 storage right off the bat!

7) Effect Durations. "RR wore" is a common gripe. It lasts a while, but eventually- and usually you don't notice until you're dead, it "wore" Can there be a duration increase to many of the buffs? It was so frustrating trying to keep a chain 100+ going as the sole puller in a merit party back in the day, AND trying to keep two songs up, on a group of melees And a healer. Two minute songs? Puhlease... Can we have a minimum of five minutes? Bar-spells would be used more often if they lasted a good three minutes or more.. I think a lot of 'buffs' need to be examined and have their durations increased.. Enspells, Protect/Shell, Regen/Refresh, Bar-everything, smn's avatar provided buffs... etc.

8) Level-Sync 100% of your negative, usually almost none of your positive. Yeah, we worked to be 90 and get the gear we have, don't take the full -30hp and only give me +6mp out of the +75mp on my item! Don't ignore the haste%+ completely and still give me 100% of the -evasion! I'd like to see bonuses reflected more adequately when level synced. Say your twilight mail (I know, right? ) that you worked your butt off for in LS events and stuff actually rocked socks in level sync! Like at level 20 sync you might expect it to have +7~ accuracy, +4~ all stats, +1 mp/tick refresh. So yeah, please leave a bare minimum of an effect active when level synced, we worked to get past that level and into that gear.. we're syncing down low again to spend time with someone- at least let us show off a bit...

9) Augmenting (FoV)- FoV is a great way to take an old item and give it a make over! Problem is.. it can be anywhere from super amazing awesome, to "omg what have I done to this 300k item... I ruined it!!". Can we at the very MINIMUM be allowed to re-augment an item? Completely wipe it clean when you trade it *again* and hope to see a better and more useful augment. What players could only dream of, is a chance to select what sort of augment you would like, perhaps it could be done in stages- like you trade your original item, slay the beast, and select +1str -1int as an augment. Then you do it the next day and choose +1str -1int again, totaling it to +2str -2int. Of course this would have to have a limit, like perhaps 1 augment total for lowbie beasts, and up to 7 or 8 augments for the very high level beasts.

10) Merit System. The merit system is perhaps one of the most unique systems in MMOs to diversify the end-game crowd, and provide your lower level jobs with bonuses that your higher level job(s) earned for them. I'd like to see it tweaked though... maybe change some of the group 2 job specific merits, or increase their effect so they're used again... make the group 1 job specific merits more effective.. maybe add some new job specific merits under a third tier, to augment job abilities and traits. Maybe add some new ideas under the merit system, how about +auto-Regen, +auto-Refresh, +Attack, +Defense +Accuracy +Evasion ? How about +Job Traits ? Wouldn't it be neat to play as a monk with Zanshin merited to Zanshin II? Or a Blue Mage with Fast Cast merited to Fast Cast III? Or hell, dare I say any job with Treasure Hunter merited? Naturally, I don't think traits should stack, and there would have to be a limit- and things like merited fast cast might make you great as whm, and screw your timed nukes on blm all up... But it would be fun to merit some of the traits I enjoy. Anyways. Merit points are a dime a dozen nowadays, and I think its time to give the system a little overhaul- why not a category for +Elemental resistance? a group for +_Status_ resistance? I'd like to meet a taru named Caffeine who had 5/5 +Sleep Resistance merited! :P It'd be something to throw points into at the end of the day. Maybe when all is said and done and your last available slot for merit points is full, or if you're sick of tweaking your character, you could trade merit points in for some kind of reward.

[Forevergogo]

super long reply... just got longer.
request #11... :-P

11) Crafting / Farming Plants in Pots. First, I'd like to be able to check on my plants and pots from afar, in my mog rent-a-room in jeuno, or maybe even on the field. Or at least direct my useless moogle "Feed it ___ crystals after ___ hours, don't smoke your cigars next to them, and for chris-sakes- HARVEST THEM WHEN THEY GLOW- don't let them wither!" Secondly, crafting needs a makeover... I like the system from Ultima Online where you get requests to fill an order, in FFXI it should be within your skill range and up to you to gather the materials, make the items, and deliver them to the NPC. The reward could be simple, a guaranteed skill increase of +.1 to +.5 (depending on the difficulty of the order) experience and or gil and or larger guild point rewards would be nice too This would help early crafters who have a hard time finding a niche in a market that is pretty well carved out or abandoned due to a lack of low level players looking for these practically forgotten items. Not to mention everyone has the HQ or bust attitude towards equipment

[Meyi]

But if you hate doing things with other people, why play an MMO? I just find it particularly odd "Playing with other people" would be a huge gripe in a genre like MMO >.>

1. I love FFXI's storylines!
2. I love the world of Vana'diel.
3. I enjoy communicating with people while I play a game.

Ever since I've gotten a great LS I've begun to enjoy parties and bigger NMs. But, not everyone plays FFXI simply because it's a MMO. And even then, some people want to play with close friends, family, or loved ones, and not necessarily strangers.

[MarkovChain]

Prior to 2010 Level cap increase -Endgame for Casual/Elite player base: You have Dynamis, Limbus, Nyzul Isle
These events imo were the standard mostly for the more Casual base. They were perfectly aimed at being convienant enough for casual base but challenging enough as well.

Casual player Base gameplay: Garrisons, Beseiged, Campaign, Notorious Monsters,

Elite player base gameplay: Salvage, Sea, High Notorious Monsters,

The Good: The game provided a lot of hefty time/effort for equip that kept even the most casual player dedicated. There was ALWAYS something to do and somewhere to explore. It was anything but boring. Team work was of the biggest priority. It enouraged us to work together in groups and helped establish our Linkshell/group as our own!

The bad: Many people with less playtime could not devote the time/effort needed to consistantly attempt more elite content, this seemed a bit unfair to them. A lot of casual player quit or deactivated their accounts because they couldn't devote time to achieving some of the more higher quaslity gear or taking part in more elite content. Some of the more hefty endgame content was so time consuming or hard, many people resorted to cheating. Salvage drop rates/ HNM spawning. It also was the source of so much drama. Many people resorted to stealing, buying gil and just overall cheating and stepping on another person toes to get what they wanted.

I find it normal that casual players can't get the best gear. At least, they could have almost the best gear as generally, "elite" endgame content provided only marginal gains. You can for instance compare the mini-extension final rewards to salvage gear or salvage gear to Nyzul gear, or even sky.

FAST FORWARD to 2010:
Both Casual gameplay and casual/elite endgame events were considerred worthless at this point. Although it didn't require much more effort/team work, the rewards seemed diminishing, too easy or irrelevant.

Nope, they where considered worthless in december with full AF3+2.

FFXI as a whole atm: Abyssea. Since you can enter Abyssea at lvl 30, most people casual and elite, exp until that point then build an experience point party/alliance and head out. Its pretty easy to get any job lv.90. Abyssea holds gears that are so out of this world amazing, gears obtained through HNMs, Dynamis, Nyzul Isle, Salvage, Sky,Sea, seem almost deserted. They plan to release augments through the amazing trial of magians for those gears though to satisfy those who spent so much time obtaining gear through such methods. Most people don't seem to optimistic that the augments will make it worth it again, to make those events worthwhile on a consistant basis.

This is the typical opinion of "pro abyssea" players that IMO are just recent players that spend time leveling right before abyssea without getting involved in endgame and then when abyssea cam out, they dicovered it.

First, not many old endgamers will do exp parties in abyssea because there is no real point in leveling extra jobs. The game is so unbalance that you require at most 2 DD jobs, 2 mages jobs. More precisely, ninja monk whm are basically the best jobs. Why would you level drg/pup/dnc/ w/e really since those jobs are so much better. Guess what ? Abyssea did not change that, except for nin, because at least mnk and whm were already most wanted jobs for endgame before abyssea. MNK could take anything meleable without TP spamming (unlike SAM/WAR WAR/SAM DD/SAM) while being easily on par and even better in some cases than 2 handed DDs. WHM has always been the best healer in the game and ranked top job in the census since forever.

The good: The game now benefits all players on a universal level. Many people are very content and happy . It doesn't require large amounts of time or effort for the absolute best. In fact, in its current state, you can obtain an ultimate weapon in a weeks earth time. Almost all content can be done with 3-4 people. Team work is not nessicary but player base is more friendly it seems. If you noticed there is much less drama on BG and the player base seems more kind. You can do anything on your own time without having to worry about the next guy. Even things like Pandemonium Warden, Rani and Absolute Virtue can be consistantly and easily taken down via SHOUTS!

"it doesn't require a lot of effort to be abosulutely the best"

I'm sorry you are completely wrong. Do you have the best gear ? Honest question. The best gear right now is full AF3+2 with level 90 empyreal weapon, epona's ring plus various marginal upgrades. I'm sorry to tell you it's pretty hardcore. Getting a level 90 weapon requires you to kill ~ 100 Boss types Nms, all of them requiring lesser NM's KI to be poped, and all of them requiring a team to defeat. Getting a full AF3+2 set is not possible solo, it also requires a team and if you want to proc green, it requires specific jobs so a decent size party.

So it does require a lot of effort to achieve this. About as much as a full salvage set I would say, the difference being mainly that you can enter anytime. But as far as dedicated game hours it's the same.

Look, in my old group it took us ~6 months to get a full set like usukane in salvage, running 4x aweek. That is 1 hours of assault, 1 hours of waiting time for gathering and 7 hours per week of salvage : 9H/ week for 26 week is 208 hours.
I have the level 85 vere and this what It cost me : 6 pops were gathered in two game sessions of 6 hours (and not : 6 hours of abyssea I insist cos I know some idiot will jumb at my throat), so 12 hours. 1/3 of the chloris put only 1 bud so that's 10 buds for 10 hours, or 50 chloris buds for 50 hours. Magianing the base mantis took forever camping the NMs, that's about 50 hours. Ulhuadshi is about 4 hours for 6 pops and with the 1/3 of 1 drop rule, that's 10 drops in 4 hours so 20 hours for 50 drops. From personnal exprerience, gathering a pop from dragua takes 15 minutes including running around etc plus 15 minutes kill so 30 minutes per kill, and with the 1/3 rule you need 45 kills to achieve 75 scales, or another 23 hours.

In total a level 90 empyreal weapon cost you (at least) 93 hours of work

I didn't farm AF3 yet but there are a lot of NMs to kill, a lot of seals. I'd say 5 hours per peice or 25 hours total eyeballing.

time for the absolute best, as you said : 118 hours

Seeing as the 208 hours of salvage grants you one set for yourself as well as plenty of pieces for others, while the 118 hours of abyssea gives only an empyreal for yourself, I'd say it's extremely hardcore.


"Almost all content can be done with 3-4 people"

I tend to read a lot of people thinking this was not not the case before abyssea. I think you guyz wasted to much time doing dynamis thinking you were doing something useful. Limbus/salvage/Nyzul/assault/sea/sky/hnm/znm could all be done with 3-4 people. Nothing changed. Nothing. Ever since I stopped dynamis in 2006 I did most of my endgame in groups of smaller length than 6-8. A lot was done duo. Everything I can think of range from duoing all salvage NMs, bosses, wierd BCNMS like X's knife, most interesting KSNMs, trioing Nyzul at 75, duoing limbus zones, duoing tier IV pop sets for znms then 6-manning them. The only exception would be Einherjar but this has to be the most casual event in a sense as it required you to run at a fixed time 2x30 minutes a week as opposed to the kind of hardcore event which is dynamis for 2x 3H30 per week.

The good: The game now benefits all players on a universal level. Many people are very content and happy .

By many you probably think you and your team.

It doesn't require large amounts of time or effort for the absolute best. In fact, in its current state, you can obtain an ultimate weapon in a weeks earth time.

No way. facepalm. How many of the posters of this forum have full AF3+2 + level 90 empyreal weapon. Not many of the noobs from BG have this. If something takes a week how come there are not many level 90 weapons yet, considering we are 5 months after the relese of heroes ?

99 Cap: Once the cap is raised, events and such will be built around that if they already are not in place beforehand. Are you satisfied with endgame primarily aimed at the casual base? Do you want more variety of casual endgame events BESIDES Abyssea? Do you want more content that is aimed at low level events, Such as Garrison etc? Do you want more elite content that will include rare drop rates, long spawn windows or a hefty amount of time and patience? Do you want more elite content that does NOT require hefty amount of time/patience/player skill/long spawn windows?

I want 6-man events like nyzul/assault/salvage. Preferably that don't require a static to be efficient. No more abyssea. I'm tiried of the grind and to have to camp my 15' respawn NM against 2-3 others systematically.


What I don't like in abyssea :

* having to counter camp others or being yourself countercamped. Make everything popable already, it's artificially increasing your pain. There are still cc problem for pops NMs, especially at peek times, but it's not as much of a problem.

* too much running around, too much jeuno lag.

* the general grind that go with it. At least for salvage/nyzul you had the time attack aspect which was quite exciting.

For the next event I would like this time attack aspect but preferably with no limited entry requirements like abyssea. My ideal would be 2 hours salvage style instance zones, not extendable that you could try over and over. You get the difficult aspect but not the cockblocking aspect.