Abyssea adjustment idea

[Alkalinehoe]

I think I'll still take my car to the mechanic with 20+ years experience before the 2 week apprentice who thinks he knows it all cuz he read about it on wiki & has the keys to the shop.

anyway, this topic has gotten away from my intended discussion. & that is; FFXI zones & AH are dying, & Abyssea is the cause. SE is the fix, not the player base.

That analogy isn't really appropriate. It's more like, someone who has used an Operating system for 5 years can adjust and learn how to work with a new version quickly. The error in your analogy is assuming someone is actually learning everything from new, once you've worked with one job and learned the mechanics of the game, you'll find most, if not all, jobs work relatively the same.

Abyssea has breathed new life into the game, removing a solution to an enormous and unnecessary portion to the game is just downright selfish.

[Ruvion]

Germ, it all depends on the jobs and what you define "leeching". Leechers are the one who do absolutely nothing at all and just stand there reaping the xp benefits and contribute 0 to the alliance. If you don't like having a leecher, boot that person, most people in your alliance would probably support you anyway. Someone who does absolutely nothing to the alliance and goes AFK for 30mnts should be booted.

- Mages: especially whm, sch, rdm, brd, and cor are not quite a leecher in abby starting at lvl 50s. They can help cure and hardly will run out of mp. Cor and Brd buffs helps, especially when you have those melees with underskilled weapon or melees at 75s (they are considered a leecher on abyssea tailored for lvl 85 and up). Because you gain xp so fast, those so called leecher will contribute more faster.
- Puller: yes you can pull at lvl 55s and up, it's a bit risky and you need one of your high level melee as your voke partner so you don't get pummeled to death but it's doable. Having 2-3 pullers will help to make the xp rolls more easily. By the time you reach lvl 70s which should be around 3 hours, you pull more easier.
- Chest openers: this seems easy until you get 4-5 chest dropping at consistent rate, in which case, it become a full time job. Having a dedicated chest opener let others focus on killing the mobs. And if you can heal as chest opener, you should help out a bit.

As for learning about your job... you hardly learn much about it on normal exp party. If any at all, since you are doing the same 2-3 things over and over. There is really not much to learn about the job, you can read everything you need to know on wiki. You learn more about that particular job by doing a small party for seals farming, since everyone is accountable, and doing double duty, plus there is no safety net of an alliance. Some people learn fast, others need more time to practice. All abyssea offers is a faster way to reach lvl 90 so you can do things that actually matters, which is collecting gears, finishing missions (without having to constantly bug people to help you). There are still A TON of things to do when you reach lvl 90s.

I agree with you both to a certain extent. Yes a low level new player can provide some aid to a party but would a whm that newly acquired Cure IV know that this spell pulls alot of hate then Cure III? No, absolutely not. Luvbunny, for you to say "As for learning about your job... you hardly learn much about it on normal exp party. If any at all, since you are doing the same 2-3 things over and over.", you must have joined this game post ToAU with all the TP burns, mana burns and merit parties. For anyone that has played this game pre ToAU knows that there is ALOT more to an exp party then doing the same 2-3 moves. IE, Buffs, Debuffs, 1st voke for SATA, hate control, what to do when things get out of hand, sleeping or binding links, voking a link off the whm, using your JA that you acquire after hitting 40, what if you pull something too strong and run out of mp, etc. All these situations can come up during an event even with an experienced ls. I've seen many of the big name ls's on my server "Leviathan" run into this problem but having the "Experience" knowing how to handle it all comes from grinding out your low levels. I feel it should be mandatory in this game to do a non synced level 10 dunes party for people to truely learn how to play this game. LOL, guess I'm aging myself now and getting off topic. But I admit I was never a fan of the grind, but I only leveled the jobs that I actually wanted to play and the rest are at sub level, but I learned how to play each job correctly and will continue to do so.

[Glamdring]

Actually, if you want to make the non Abyssea zones viable what you need to do is get rid of any drops that are for synthesis materials in abyssea, i.e. no more hare meat from the bunnies, etc. Basically, all that would drop is AF3 items, pop items, Abyssea temp items (but no food) and all the gear that drops is r/ex and cannot be sold to NPCs, make people work for their gil again.

Let the flamefest begin!

[Luvbunny]

Ruvion, I played the game since 2003 so yes I know about the stuffs you have mentioned above. All the so called "inconveniences" were all fixed way before Abyssea (mpks, trailing the mobs, etc..). All the party dynamics you mentioned can still be experienced in a trio set up outside or inside Abyssea.

The game is already made way more enjoyable with ToAU, all Abyssea did was reducing the dreaded xp grind from 75-90, and as a bonus, it let everyone starting from level 30 to reap the same benefits. As it stands now, FFXI is giving players TONS of option to play the game to suit their styles. And guess what, I would guess probably over 80% of the players took the easy way out and really love Abyssea. The one who pines for "the way it used to be" are either quit the game a long time ago, got disgruntled but have no choice and bought the mini expansions, or wishing it could be back to the way it was, sadly, no one is listening to their wishes. FFXI is moving in the right direction, and the game is 10 times better than "the way it used to be". SE is finally caving in and giving what the majority of players want, and the players give SE what it wants the most, money.

Since Abyssea came out, I get to level many jobs that I wanted but just stop cold at level 50s since they were not exactly the most wanted jobs pre-abby. I enjoyed all these new jobs and learned a lot of new playstyles. I get to do a lot of endgame stuffs with a lot less people, and found the game more enjoyable than ever before. I met a lot of new people, do a lot of seal farmings with strangers, and experience the kindness of others who let me get seals because no one else wanted. I get to finish a lot of the other missions, without needing the help of 5 other people (mind you I got sea and sky finished way back in 2005). I found the game is less of a grind but more of a jump in, quickly find people to do things, and get in the fun ASAP immediately. Total pure instant gratification fun.

[Ruvion]

Luvbunny, I can see you're taking this post personally and I'm guessing that you've taken some shit from people on your sever about leeching jobs to 90. I'm happy for you that you are a veteran player that knows how to play their job and gets to enjoy all jobs at 90 now. I'm also glad that you got to experience the difficulty of this game when it was only a few years old. I also found it much more rewarding when you worked as a team to get some piece of gear that you wanted so badly for such a long time. I can say this about abyssea, because of all being able to hold 3 lunar abyssites, some kick ass atmas and using a brew, you can now easily solo, duo and trio NMs. I low man everything in abyssea and enjoy it because you don't have to deal with retards anymore. That's the only thing that SE did that made this game alot better, no longer having to deal with idiots and their retarded rules.

Anyway, back on topic, I was meerly saying that there is alot more to exping then doing the same 3 moves like you stated in a previous post. However, a NEW PLAYER that is abusing this new exp system will not reap the benefits of enjoying their newly acquired level 90 jobs quickly. It is not "Total pure instant gratification fun." Just think of this example, even for a vet player. Let's say you only leveled mage jobs because you knew in the past it was your ticket to getting into that end game ls you always wanted to join. Now that you leveled and fully merited all your mage jobs you decided that you like the idea of being able to burn a job and that a level 90 dnc do alot of things in abyssea. Keep in mind, because you only leveled mage jobs, that a mage's eva/parry/dagger skills are no where near that of a dnc. You'll now have to go waste time skilling up eva/parry/dagger skills to utilize your new level 90 job. It's not hard to figure out how the JA's work on dnc but it takes time to become good at it. I'm just saying you get the time to develop these skills as you experience the grind....... Don't forget that you will also need to level the appropriate subs for the job, /nin /sam /war and even /mnk early on. You won't be proficient in any of the skills required for these jobs either.

[Firesong]

From what I've been told, you can no longer SMN burn. I haven't tried or tested this because I don't do SMN burns, but they made it so that monsters despawn if not killed fast in a SMN burn. There for, you don't get nearly as much exp per pull as you did before. I completely agree that the min level for abyssea should be raised but I personally think it should be lv. 66 ~ 70. After lv. 66 or 70 you can be of some use with pulling or some other form. As for those that have been saying that you can learn all about a job by just playing it outside of abyssea for a few hours, I believe you are wrong. I haven't in the 6+ years playing met a person that knew as much about a job as someone that leveled it the "normal" way. Aka: SMN burning, or Abyssea key whoring up the job. For those that think raising the level cap will hurt the game, I don't think so. It will breath life back into the other zones and make players go to those zones because they can't just spam FoV to lv. 30 then key whore up the jobs. I love the idea of FoV pages but again that makes people stop pting and focus more on solo/duo/trio'ing and not playing in a group. I feel that this also lets players skip on learning how to play their jobs in a group function. This is a little off topic but I hope that SE makes it so that PLD's get a massive buff. Right now they are worthless in abyssea. They can't do the job they are ment for because its better to have a NIN, DNC, THF, or other high eva job with /NIN to tank over a low eva PLD. They don't do enough damage to compete with other DD's hate gain, provoke and flash and all the other JA's or spells can't compete with other jobs hate gain. Back on topic, forcing people to play the jobs and not just get to lv. 30 will help other zones that were dead become alive again. Also, it will help make abyssea not so crowded due to people making abyssea pt's just so they can level their SJ's to 49/50ish. I do believe that players learn jobs better when they level them normally and not just key whore them up. I've run into several PLD's that didn't even know what "Cover" was and DNC's that just figured out that they had "Healing Waltz". SMN's that didn't know what spells/moves their pets had and BLM's that hit blizzard V for 100~300 damage 8/10 times. That's just to name a few. WHM's that do Cure IV over Cure V, RDM's that get down to 0MP and wonder why they can't convert. So, for those that say it only takes a few hours, for some people that is true. Others... Not so much. Yes there are those players that plain suck... but there are also those people that don't care to learn the job and only want it leveled to have it leveled. Those that just want it leveled so they can say they have it leveled and have all the +2 AF3 for it... makes me sick. I have several jobs leveled and I leveled them all the normal way to lv. 70+. Can be done solo or low man or normal full exp pt. I've done all ways and to best learn a job in an pt/alli setting someone needs to play that job in that setting in game or they normally are full of fail.
Lv. 66 is what I would like to see for the new level minimum level needed to enter abyssea. 66 is the minimum level you can do the "maat fights" so it should be the minimum you can enter abyssea. At least that's my thoughts on it.

[Angelinn]

This argument again?

If you don't like it, don't do it. If you have a problem with people who do it, don't play with them.

I've leeched 2 of my jobs to 90, then spent hours outside of abyssea or in skillup parties learning the jobs and getting up to par. If people don't want to take the time to learn their jobs and level their skills, that's their choice and I won't hate them for it, but I won't keep them in my party.

[Alkalinehoe]

You can still do SMN burns. IDK where you heard that from.

[Kingofgeeks]

soooo many threads are made up with this exact suggestion. i wonder if SE is even considering this, or are they just keeping the entry to level 30 so that new people can experiance end game without going through the hell that we all did to get a high level character

[StingRay104]

I can see both sides of this issue quite well, I for one hate the idiotic players who can't perform the jobs they have cuz they never learned them, but I also agree that if you already know the job whats wrong with fast tracking xp. Back long before aht urghan i was lvling smn, and I learned how to play a smn and whm quite well, but i had this problem with skill ups. I would spend days summoning and unsummoning tryin to keep my smn skill up and this hindered my lvling. Eventually i gave up smn til after aht urghan and some new ways for smn to skill up and picked it up for another 10 lvls, finally i did some leeching on it to get it to 76 were it currently remains, since the skill up fix I've been tryin to get my skill to a reasonable lvl. Ultimately I'm gonna get my skills caught up and learn how utilize the job in todays world, which is what everyone needs to do, to fast track by leeching isn't a sin, but to never bother learning the job or being useless is. I have a few friends joining the game and they really want to do some endgame with me, cuz they hear all about the fun endgame stuff, and i told them all about learning the job properly so they are up to the challenge, so what would be wrong with them fast tracking to 90? Ultimately I suggest if it ain't broke don't fix it, and the problem isn't abyssea its the player base.

And thats my 2 cents.