The FFXI "Gyms of Vana'diel" Self Improvement Reborn!

[Bossmaru]

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/kneel Thanks much! Well there's my >Oooolllldddddd FFXI Fan art< I created a few years back and posted on DeviantArt, and Here honestly ^^; lol I don't have much other work posted anywhere else.

Oh damn! I've seen some of your art before, even have some of it favorited, nice to actually 'meet you' then! I'm a big fan of Galka but somehow they're very difficult for me to draw, so I highly admire your style for drawing them cause it's like perfect and or the best I've seen from anyone. I very much hope you'll keep up your drawing.

[kingfury]

Oh damn! I've seen some of your art before, even have some of it favorited, nice to actually 'meet you' then! I'm a big fan of Galka but somehow they're very difficult for me to draw, so I highly admire your style for drawing them cause it's like perfect and or the best I've seen from anyone. I very much hope you'll keep up your drawing.

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/bow, Very nice to meet you as well ^^/ I've also been frustrated with how others depict Galkas in illustration over the years o.o, I'm always like "wth is that?? We don't look like that " lol Thanks for the great compliments, and rest assured, I'll keep on drawing away! /salute and thanks for checkin out the thread /

[Zaknafein]

I have read thru your proposal in it's entirety twice now I still can not support it. You've put a lot of thought, and effort into your proposal, and I applaud your effort. Very few players are capable of expressing themselves nowadays. My view point on the whole abyssea thing is that while it was most certainly a breath of fresh air, it has more than it's fair share of significant downsides.

So many things in this game have lost all sense of achievement. While your opinion on skill ups is that they should be as easy as exp is nowadays, mine would be that SE has given away enough already, and further catering to this extreme casual mindset is a slippery slope. I'm all for casual players getting a chance at good gear, and being able to enjoy end game content. However this removal of time to xp a job to 90, or a need to have decent linkshells to achieve goals, and this proposal to make skill ups easier not 2 months after they just increased skill up rate is unacceptable.

We're rapidly entering a period where nothing in the game is difficult to obtain/achieve, and that makes for an incredibly boring, and Meh mindset. What people lauded as a savior from a terribly difficult game can very quickly become a double edged sword of pointlessness.

[Renato]

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Did you actually read how the possible skill up systems might work? Thanks to all the feedback from this thread, the system actually would promote education of how to hone ones skills rather than just be a fast track to capped skills. I'm not sure how you equate that to being "easy", rather than being "efficient". Skill up as is doesn't teach you much except how to /run away and zone once your HP gets to low lol(if you're a job that can't sufficiently support yourself long enough to make solo skilling worth the trouble). "Old school" ways to play this game is all fine and good if that's what floats your boat, but it shouldn't be the only option for all player-types in such a vastly rich content game such as FFXI.

Is it ones prerogative to continue to Exp in Uleguerand Range till 90? Absolutely! Is it as efficient as Abyssea? Nope. Can a player choose to play either based on how they enjoy playing/spending their time in FFXI? YES, now they can because SE wants to give us those options versus making something that takes enormous amounts of time to do have limited ways to accomplish. It's a more logical development design is all.

Playing the game over time is what makes you a skilled player, so there's nothing that can replace/outweigh that fact. No amount of skill ups will ever determine such a thing, so your worries can be put to rest. "Experience Players" are just that, Players that have experience playing the game, but it's the nature of MMORPGs that make it impossible to not run into less experienced players throughout your travels.

In my opinion, your argument is no different than the one that shuns players that pay for Relics, or con their way to get access to powerful equipment without even truly understanding how to weld such possessions. Which is a valid argument that I support btw, but if you read over the concept I'm proposing again more closely, I'm not supporting such a thing.

Thanks for your feedback /salute

I agree wholeheartedly. These are tools... (lol tool) that have the potential to teach those "noobs," you're so afraid of running accross that shot to lvl 90 via Abyssea *gasp* how to really utilize and understand their own jobs.

BTW how many times do we have to mention in this forum that "Gyms" is option only. I guess those who actually read it would already know. no one forces you to apply to any rules. there seems to be enough of you guys out there that oppose this idea as well as Abyssea that u guys should just form your own classic exp and skill up parties to gain 90 in 2 years time. Then maybe you can play the real game content, the storyline and gear hunting. Its still available to you, no one plans on taking it away.

[Rambus]

While I applaud your thought out approach here I can't support the changes you propose. This game has become too easy as it is. This will ultimately just breed more lazy players. Granted they will be capped skill retards. However they will still be retarded. Seriously tho, not trying to rain on your parade. Just more of an old school (call it masochistic if u like) type myself. Where does this sort of easy mode wave end at? I just hope they implement a new PvP system so I can stab these people on a regular basis.

I rather have exp eat up time, then skilling up. I am pretty outspoken about how easy this game becaome but trying to put "hard" on getting skill ups is bad.

I would even go as far as to remove the need to skill up, like have your skills auto cap each time you level.

I really like his ideas at lest it puts some "fun" in skilling, hey kingfury does all your games allow skill ups? even like the pvp things?

I would be intimated if I had to face Bossmaru if you could grin in game like the way she does in her sig

[Rambus]

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/kneel ^^/ And a many Thanks for the continued support to you as well Rambus! /salute
My dual-box taru has brown hear, but I'm guessing so long as he has your hairstyle he = your rival lol I'll be adding some more images to "TP/MP Bonanza" and the "Enemy Hordes" sections so I'll be using your blond haired BLU again for sure. ^^/

biggest rival is red head cuz mine is taru 2b and red is taru 2a

i actally do not mind brown but i do not like the color of the grey/blue in the game.

did you know that my taru (2b) has a different sound set then your mule ?( 6a )

but that redhead (2a) has my sounds! true taru rival!

[kingfury]

I have read thru your proposal in it's entirety twice now I still can not support it. You've put a lot of thought, and effort into your proposal, and I applaud your effort. Very few players are capable of expressing themselves nowadays. My view point on the whole abyssea thing is that while it was most certainly a breath of fresh air, it has more than it's fair share of significant downsides.
So many things in this game have lost all sense of achievement. While your opinion on skill ups is that they should be as easy as exp is nowadays, mine would be that SE has given away enough already, and further catering to this extreme casual mindset is a slippery slope. I'm all for casual players getting a chance at good gear, and being able to enjoy end game content. However this removal of time to xp a job to 90, or a need to have decent linkshells to achieve goals, and this proposal to make skill ups easier not 2 months after they just increased skill up rate is unacceptable.
We're rapidly entering a period where nothing in the game is difficult to obtain/achieve, and that makes for an incredibly boring, and Meh mindset. What people lauded as a savior from a terribly difficult game can very quickly become a double edged sword of pointlessness.

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/nod, I've read both of your responses, and I fully understand what you fear in terms of letting go the self imposed "difficulty" of old days past. Truly I do (you sound very familiar to an old mithra WHM friend of mine lol). Again, however, I have to assure you that your fears are misplaced on the matter. I've seen it a dozen times over the years, the whole rapid exp burn (even pre-Abyssea), and not knowing how to perform the job they have in the slightest.

I'll put it very plainly. Capped Combat/Magic Skills does not define an experienced and competent player in FFXI, and neither does being lvl 90 (or even when we reach 99). You have absolutely nothing to worry about in regards to exp and skill ups being made easier/faster to obtain. These things, just as equipment, and the weapons you weld, can never instantly "make" a player become "experienced" and "competent" in all aspects of their job. So you see, unless SE introduces an "Auto Player" functionality, seasoned and competent players will always take good o'l fashioned "time" to make. There's no short cut to such an achievement as that

I'm telling you, just as I told my old friend so many times before, "difficult" is a matter of opinion, not a factual game setting that you can flip on and off. Even the most ferocious monsters and NMs in FFXI can be tamed with little more than team work and tight communication... and competent players of course lol. At 1st glance, people considered such challenges as "Hard" or "Difficult", but once seasoned players got their teams on the same page, each of these monsters were toppled. Does that mean that SE made them "easy"? No. It just means, SE designed the monsters to be taken down using teamwork and planning.

Exp'ing is not hard, even if you used the grass roots methods of old. Technically, if a player chose to do so, he/she could kill easy prey mobs for weeks or months and gain every level they needed all by themselves. They aren't playing the game in "hard mode" because they choose to do so, they're just playing it the slow way, which again, is every players prerogative. It would prove only that they can kill hundreds of easy prey monsters efficiently without going insane. But there's a handful of players that feel this is the "true way" to level in terms of being the "hard way", when plainly put it's just an incredibly inefficient way to gain levels in FFXI.

In my opinion, the true challenge of playing FFXI come in when trying to push the limits of what is possible both solo and with a group of people. Feverishly testing weapon skills over and over to build the best gear set and mods. Constantly refining the most efficient way to do things. Finding new and creative ways to unconventionally play your job. Do what others say is impossible. These are the challenges of a seasoned player each time they log into FFXI, while inexperienced players struggle with things like, "why can I hit as hard as he/she can?" or "how did only 3 players take down that NM when it wiped our entire alliance?"

The same goes for the things you can obtain/achieve in this game. You could choose to never get help to progress through nation/expansion missions or quest because you fear it would make things "too easy", and still progress bit by bit. Does it mean you're doing it the hard way, or just that you're doing it the least efficient way? That's all my point boils down to.

The bottom line is no matter how "easy" or quick certain things in this game become to achieve, becoming a well-rounded and seasoned player will never come quickly. Understanding all the in's and out's of such a complex game as FFXI in just a few days would take a very special person indeed. I hope that helps clear up the debate at hand, because I'm not against what you fear, just the direction of where you're pointing your fear.

[Zaknafein]

Regardless of our differing view points it's cool to see other people that are still passionate about the game. Hell if we can get the PvP aspect in along with the skill up programs in one centralized area in each major city I, and many others will be happy. While I might come off as a grumbling old grumpy "Don't change my ffxi" or "In my day sonny we had to walk uphill to AND from school" sort, I do like new players. I always try to help them where I can. Which I believe is your goal here with the detailed proposal you've fleshed out.

[Glamdring]

Ok, I can understand the angst about making something else "easy" in the game, I really can. I'm one of the more vocal people on here about not expanding job abilities and the like to preserve balance and such. However, even SE has acknowledged that the current skill-up system is not getting the job done and they have been looking for a mechanism to correct that, particularily for those skills that are extremely hard to do. This is a viable idea that even the SE development team has expressed an interest in.

To allay concerns, I can only offer this, and it is simply my opinion:
1. Jobs were designed with a particular skill set in mind, and even hardcore elitists have great difficulty reaching those peaks due to holes in the current system, this is simply designed to allow jobs to reach their actual design.
2. the rewards for participating in this system are designed to simply be used within this system, nobody intends that you get a reward from the gym that will put someone's mythic weapon to shame.
3. I personally believe that you shouldn't be able to gain XP in the gym, only skill and gym rewards, and I think that is sort of the universal feeling.
4. To compensate you for your time away from XP, Crafting, farming, etc. you are rewarded with an increased rate of skill-up, but noone is advocating just botting your way from 0-356 in 1 day, but more like a max of say 5-6 skill in an approximately 30 minute session if you are approaching your cap; in other words, your time in the gym is still putting in your time.
5. To satisfy elitists, the gym rats (or maggots if we go with the military training version) still need to acquire spells, gear and everything else needed to be viable in their job, i.e. 354 marksmanship isn't going to do much with a light crossbow and a bronze bolt against AV.

I'm in favor of this for more than just my own benefit. I don't have to put up with guilt trips because I'm not willing to carry a level 90 noob now, I can simply send them packing, tell them to come back after they put in their time in the gym, and /blist them until they do.

Seriously, SE isn't going to do away with the ability to go 30-90 in less than a week with no idea of how to do your job at the end or no skill to get anything done even if you do! This is the complement to Abyssea. If the current playstyle is "level now, skill later" Abyssea is clearly the "level now", this gives the "skill later"-hopefully at a saner rate.

[Strife]

I see Zaknafein's point & in a way I agree that some aspects of the game have become a little to easy. I kind of miss the old school game play even though if I take off the rosy goggles of nostalgia I remember XP'n was mostly seeking for hours only to get in a party with a war, 2DD that hardly did any DD, a bst that thought pets were optional & a brd that wouldn't ballad because he was a 'melee' brd with his little knife who screamed at my rdm when I'd haste the war but not him. Then heading to some remote place that took us a hour to get to because one member or another didn't have this OP or that KI, where every mob almost wiped us & we constantly got links or bad rep-pops that did wipe us to get 2-6k an hour lol.
Yet in spite of myself I do miss those days when XP'n was an art, an adventure to test your might against the various hordes of Vana 'diel and find that sweet camp that matched your current capabilities perfectly & then later testing your new capabilities against harder foes. It was a fiery forge that usual -though with great exceptions- moulded people into decent players. Instead now we have a system needing no strategy just an alliance with half a dozen afk people, 3-4 lv30ish people, level 90 mages who say "I don't have that spell" about lv 30 spells & all the key spells you would usually employ them to cast & 3-5 actually good players who're carrying the rest of the alliance fighting mobs you could solo anyway.

However generally I still prefer the way things are now, I spent years levelling my jobs & becoming decently proficient in them. The thought of levelling them to 99 the old way with ever expanding gulfs of XP between each level was enough to make me want to quit. I'm enjoying just having fun with my jobs and exploring all the game content at the moment & I wouldn't worry Zaknafein I'm sure come 99 there will be new ways to test a players worth & those players that just levelled their jobs without bothering to take the extra effort to learn to play them will soon be weeded out & forced to learn how to play.

But enough of my nostalgic ramblings, to get back on topic the ideas here are just that, ideas on how a system to offer a challenging & FUN alternative to just constantly auto-attacking a mob for hours while also teaching those noobs that burned from 30-90+ in Abyssia how to actually play the job they've only been playing a week. I don't think King or most people here would mind if the development team put their own spin on it & made it just as challenging but not as boring/ grinding as the old school way.