I keep dying on limit break 3 (60-65 cap)

[Afania]

There's an awful lot of threads like this from new players. SE needs to do something about it. They should make alternate routes through the limit break quests, like exchanging Beastmen or Kindred seals instead of having to do the quest. Or other items that are easy for new players to farm.

And what about when all these new guys get to Maat? Fighting mobs that drop testimonies will be tough for them even with Trust NPCs helping. And the actual fight will be a big hurdle since there's a shortage of decent gear on AH for a reasonable price. Also, new players are unlikely to have capped skill, even if they soloed all the way to 70, since mobs give way more Exp than they used to. So yeah, it'll be tougher for them than it was for us.

Getting LB done as a noob was part of the fun for me when I finished mine, the process of dying over and over, then eventually LS/friend came and help ;D. Trade seals for KI is boring as hell lol.

[Zarchery]

There's an awful lot of threads like this from new players. SE needs to do something about it. They should make alternate routes through the limit break quests, like exchanging Beastmen or Kindred seals instead of having to do the quest. Or other items that are easy for new players to farm.

And what about when all these new guys get to Maat? Fighting mobs that drop testimonies will be tough for them even with Trust NPCs helping. And the actual fight will be a big hurdle since there's a shortage of decent gear on AH for a reasonable price. Also, new players are unlikely to have capped skill, even if they soloed all the way to 70, since mobs give way more Exp than they used to. So yeah, it'll be tougher for them than it was for us.

I don't see the problem. I did limit break 3, solo, back in 2005. The challenges haven't changed since then. Declining server population is irrelevant since I did it solo like I said.

The Maat fight is probably easier now that one testimony gives you three tries, plus the mobs that drop testimonies are so much easier that even a poorly geared level 99 player can blast through them quickly. New players probably have it slightly better than we did.

[Puck]

You guys are looking at it from the perspective of players with a lot of knowledge. You know where to find everything, how to gear any job, and effective strategies to overcome many of the game's obstacles. You had plenty of time to learn all that back then when leveling was so incredibly slow.

Back then there was plenty to do with other players when the level cap was 75. For years after the cap was raised to 75, about half the population still hovered in the mid levels. So even if you weren't 75, there were still plenty of people to team up with you, help you out, or to relate their experiences with you. Now that isn't the case. A majority of the population is 99, and new players starting from scratch with zero knowledge of the game have a lot of homework to do if they want to catch up and be able to participate in the activities 99% of their server is doing.

A brand new player can easily hit 50 in a week, well before the free trial runs out. How much did you know about FFXI after just your first week? Not much, and you didn't have to. Chances are you were just barely getting to the Dunes by then. So expecting new players to figure everything out and pore over scores of wiki pages in their first week is unreasonable. It's overwhelming for most of them (see the other threads saying exactly that).

The fact that new players are even attempting to play this dinosaur is a miracle. These old hurdles just aren't healthy at this stage in the game's life. You can't tell them to just man up and slog through it solo. If they can't figure it out, or can't find anyone to help, they just won't subscribe. And that's one less person to help keep FFXI afloat.

[Zarchery]

See, I didn't know much when I was a new player either. I used the Internet, and back then the knowledgebase wasn't as broad as it is now.

[Demonjustin]

Yeah guys, rather than making the game more accessible we should just leave everything as it is so that new players have to go through a bunch of crap we didn't want to do at the time either, I mean, I did it, why can't they!?

If you do not see the sarcasm, you are sad...

[Zarchery]

Yeah guys, rather than making the game more accessible we should just leave everything as it is so that new players have to go through a bunch of crap we didn't want to do at the time either, I mean, I did it, why can't they!?

If you do not see the sarcasm, you are sad...

It's more like "if it aint broke, don't fix it". The limit break quests don't make the game any less accessible than it did in 2005. Ok fine, so we get rid of the big long journey for limit break 3 to make the game accessible. What next? Eliminate experience points so that a new player doesn't have to wait an entire month to get to the level cap? Make all the equipment NPC buyable so that a new player can have anything with just a little gil? Make every monster drop gil so that a new player doesn't have to put any thought or creativity into accruing money? If you fix one thing that isn't broken, in the name of accessibility, just because a few people are having trouble with it, where does it end?

[Demonjustin]

It's more like "if it aint broke, don't fix it". The limit break quests don't make the game any less accessible than it did in 2005. Ok fine, so we get rid of the big long journey for limit break 3 to make the game accessible. What next? Eliminate experience points so that a new player doesn't have to wait an entire month to get to the level cap?

I support keeping double XP in place forever and making it the new standard.

Make all the equipment NPC buyable so that a new player can have anything with just a little gil?

Actually you can get some fairly good gear from boxes that drop extremely commonly now, just by killing things in field zones. Its not exactly the same, but getting gear is very quick for new players now that you basically farm it out in the field as you level.

Make every monster drop gil so that a new player doesn't have to put any thought or creativity into accruing money?

Going off of what I just said, you can NPC all of the extra gear you get(and store in your Mog Case) for quite a bit of gil, which can accrue your fortune you will need later on, as well as to buy spells or other certain things you can not easily get while leveling.

If you fix one thing that isn't broken, in the name of accessibility, just because a few people are having trouble with it, where does it end?

It ends wherever it becomes a fun accessible game where people can come, jump in, start to play, learn how to play from the game itself rather than having to look through 3 wikis/forums to learn it, and then in a short period of time experience the game with others after having learnt the basics. Thats where it ends. This character was made for two reasons, to help me make the RDM Guide I have been slowly building for FFXIAH.com so that I can see the game through the eyes of an up and coming RDM more easily, and secondly to see the game from the eyes of a new player in general.

Looking through the eyes of a new player but with the knowledge of an experienced player I can easily say that they need to make some changes still but have changed a lot recently to fix it up a bit. If they made some more changes to speed it up, explain more things, and enhance the fun of it with some more interesting things such as NPCs talking in party chat with random quirky things that go with their unique personalities, it could add more to keep people interested or increase their fun. Its just a matter of changing things, and if people keep trying to stop them from changing it and trying to get them to leave it as it is, this game will only get smaller, because keeping it as it is will not get more players!

We have seen multiple threads pop up here in the last week or two about people coming to the game getting stuck at CoP, or Limit Breaks, because you need more people or they do not know how to get by them, think of how many people weren't willing to go out of their way to do that and just dropped it. We need new players, and opening up this game is a much better idea than leaving it as it is and just hoping they stick it out through the annoying vagueness of the lower levels where no one is just to get somewhere in the game to begin with.

[Elphy]

It's not about SE making the game more accessible its about the community closing off to any new and/or returning players. The problem is "back in the day" we had ls and friends in-game that we met while leveling and running through the missions. Now newcomers have problems finding a ls or anyone who will give them any attn., answer a simple question or spend 5 minutes opening 3 mage gate much less taking an hr to run them through like ppl used to.

The information is out there and more detailed than it was back then and many of the quests and missions and what not we solo'd just as easily. BUT we had a community willing to help. SE hasn't changed a thing, we have. So before you go all out scolding SE and telling them to change things. I think you need to look at yourself and those around you to see who really is the one who needs to change something.

[Demonjustin]

I am not naive enough to believe that I am able nor that I have the time to actually assist every new player that comes into the game, changing how I do things will not fix it, and even if I could do this, it would not fix things completely. Since the stance of anti-change seems to be content with leaving things just how they are I will end up FCing XP for people who will not spend a few weeks leveling, I will end up giving gil to players who are unable to make money enough to afford spells or gear, I will end up doing their limit breaks for them and robbing them of any sort of experience.

You have two real choices here, either you can expect players to spend their time holding new player's hand, or you can have the game explain things and hold a players hand so that they can get just as far. To me, build the game to help people, a new player needs help either way, why are we going to rely on the player base to do it when the game can just have simple changes done to it to make it easier to access and last forever, for everyone, rather than just hoping a player picks the up and helps them.

[Elphy]

I am not naive enough to believe that I am able nor that I have the time to actually assist every new player that comes into the game, changing how I do things will not fix it, and even if I could do this, it would not fix things completely. Since the stance of anti-change seems to be content with leaving things just how they are I will end up FCing XP for people who will not spend a few weeks leveling, I will end up giving gil to players who are unable to make money enough to afford spells or gear, I will end up doing their limit breaks for them and robbing them of any sort of experience.

You have two real choices here, either you can expect players to spend their time holding new player's hand, or you can have the game explain things and hold a players hand so that they can get just as far. To me, build the game to help people, a new player needs help either way, why are we going to rely on the player base to do it when the game can just have simple changes done to it to make it easier to access and last forever, for everyone, rather than just hoping a player picks the up and helps them.

Thank you for making my point for me