The Decline of FFXI: Forums, Gameplay and Nostalgia

[Akujima]

I have to say you shouldn't generalize people like that.

You caught me while still overlooking my post, and I realized this fact and edited that part out.

I do however have to ask what you consider when you talk about difficulty, because when it comes to FFXI, difficulty is often mixed up with tedium. For example, Old-School CoP was more tedious than difficult. Camping Charybdis (since this came up) was more tedious than difficult. Killing Absolute Virtue was way more difficult than tedious.

I had replied to Mevi earlier in this thread about something similar.

And that is, it's been replaced with a different "kind" of tedium. Now instead of the tediousness being based on "luck of the draw" (which in my eyes doesn't really consist of being tedious, unless you're dead set on constantly camping that particular NM over and over again.) instead has been replaced with the tediousness of repetitive grind.

Repetitive grind is a major issue nowadays, and that can be discussed forever. Simply put, alot of people are tired of this style of MMO, and FFXI (Pre-Endgame 75) offered a different approach to this. But SE seemed to have jumped on the WoW bandwagon and brought in "the casual grind".

Yes you are right when mentioning battles like AV or other certain NM's. Difficulty is something that requires you to figure out through planning, strategy and teamwork, how to defeat a particular enemy. How well the co-ordination of your PT/Alliance is, how few mistakes you can make in order to defeat that enemy, determines it's difficulty.

CoP was difficult, because it had many of these battles. The level cap on certain fights, required you think EVEN more about how to defeat an enemy without all those super powered abilities at 75. My assumption of how people thought CoP was tedious, is the many cut scenes required to progress (because most of these people just skipped through and didn't watch the storyline anyways).

All that being said. What they should have done (or still have a chance to implement) is to take their own path, and find a balance between the oldschool XI AND the casual players demands, instead of wiping out one style of play in favor of the other.