Enough is enough

[Rezeak]

I don't think FFXI is hard in anyway or really has ever been.

The hardest fight for me, outside of AV, was the omega CoP fight when you were capped.

As for grinding, in my opinion when implemented well it's an awsome thing, for example old nyzle isle climbing the higher you got the more you wanted to play or abyssea or VW clears the more you grinded the stronger you got.

My issue is stuff like New Nyzle and Meebles.

With New nyzle you can either do it or you can't and even though i got 15/15 in like 2 months, it saddens me that i couldn't help out some of my friends because he/she may not have the geared job or getting the other 4 took too long considering the likly hood of failing. If people could of taken 2-10 runs to get a peice 100% of the time (excluding wipes or not exiting in time) I would of enjoyed it more.

Then with meeble i just wanted to play it not wait 20 hours a day to play 10 mins /sigh.

[Arcon]

This was also when FFXI was much newer than it is right now and the MMORPG market was much smaller than it is right now. Correlation does not always imply causation.

It does, however, indicate causation. That is why the people claiming Abyssea was bad for the growth of FFXI have much more of an argument to back up that statement than the ones claiming the opposite. In fact, I can't think of a solid argument at all for the opposite claim.

[Yinnyth]

It does, however, indicate causation. That is why the people claiming Abyssea was bad for the growth of FFXI have much more of an argument to back up that statement than the ones claiming the opposite. In fact, I can't think of a solid argument at all for the opposite claim.

Many people think abyssea was the greatest thing to ever happen to the game. It put everyone on the fast track to the top. People believe that this increased the popularity of the game.

The problem that arises from this is that the struggle to reach the top is what keeps a large portion of players playing. Most people prefer trying to get to the top than trying to stay at the top. In addition to this, the people who enjoy trying to stay at the top often don't appreciate when everyone else has the same badge of honor they have (empyrean armor and weapons severely closed the equipment gap between hardcore and casual players).

Since we don't have the metrics to prove which point of view is correct, it remains up to the individual to decide whether Aby was good or bad for FFXI's health. Did Aby increase the number of players because people enjoyed the massive boost in power, or did Aby decrease the number of players because people got bored after they consumed everything Aby had to offer?

[Jaall]

Abyssea kept players playing through the 75-99 cap. You all heard and saw many players leave because they were going to lose all their beloved 75 gear and the grind to 99 was enough to put any player off considering the time it took to get from 70-75. Abyssea made the exp fast and getting to 99 fairly painless at the cost of less fun. The point for Abyssea that I can see was to save people quitting because all their effort was wasted. FFXI didn't lose everyone, or even close to everyone because of this so I can happily say it succeeded in its goals if that was the case.

Also being able to join at lvl 30 allows newer players to get to the fun part of the game which is the endgame. FFXI now very much relies on it's endgame for enjoyment and strategy, and always has. I've heard of and known of many people who got to lvl 30 and couldn't stand doing more grinding to get to 75. Not every player is hardcore and can't play every hour of every day, so a party that takes a few hours to set up is most of some peoples play time. Abyssea is instant on most occasions. It has definitely brought more players to the game, not as many as any other game because it is old, bad graphics and simply is not appealing to most people, but as a recommendation I could easily sell this new FFXI whereas I have had a hard time selling the old FFXI - mainly due to the grind involved. It would usually go something like this "Yea you should totally get this game, it's fantastic - There's Sky where you fight guards, which then let you fight the games gods themselves! Theres even blah blah blah.... But.... you have to spend 6-12 months grinding your character up for hours everyday!". They'd usually just respond "**** that!!". So Abyssea was a good move and imo has very much saved FFXI as much as it could. It has changed the mechanics of the game but that is the only way it could survive. Adapt to survive and all that.

[Arcon]

Many people think abyssea was the greatest thing to ever happen to the game. It put everyone on the fast track to the top. People believe that this increased the popularity of the game.

That's precisely what I meant. No evidence to support that statement, just dubious and unsupported quantifications like "many think" or "most prefer" and things like that. And I don't blame people for that, because that's all that can be said, because we simply don't have accurate data for that argument. We can't even say for certain how many players we lost or gained, because we don't have data on that either. All we do have is second-hand data like the FFXIAH player database, and the passive indicators about servers being merged along with averaged online numbers gained by "/sea all", all of which point towards a significant player loss slightly before, during and after the Abyssea era. Everything else is guesswork or confirmation bias.

[Alhanelem]

It does, however, indicate causation. That is why the people claiming Abyssea was bad for the growth of FFXI have much more of an argument to back up that statement than the ones claiming the opposite. In fact, I can't think of a solid argument at all for the opposite claim.

This is a load of crap. MMOs always plateau and then shrink over time. FFXI had been on a population decline since long before abyssea came out. It is extremely flawed to argue that abyssea *caused* it. Affected it, perhaps. Not caused.

FFXI had more players in the "hardcore grindy era" because FFXI was newer at the time. There is no other reason. Not everyone plays an MMO forever- many people hop from one to another whenever they get bored. Hell, I hopped to WoW for a while, hit max level, got bored, came back here later.

The only way in which Abyssea was truly bad for the growth of the game is it left people who play the game for no reason other than to grind XP (I don't understand why anyone plays an MMO only to grind and not experience the storyline/environment/content/etc) with not much to do a lot sooner than it would have otherwise.

People quit the game for a variety of reasons as time goes on. It's massively presumptuous of anyone to think they know a primary/sole cause.

[Arcon]

This is a load of crap. [..] It is extremely flawed to argue that abyssea *caused* it. Affected it, perhaps. Not caused.

Which is exactly why I didn't say that?

[Alhanelem]

Which is exactly why I didn't say that?

You said "It does, however, indicate causation," which indicates to me that's what you think and that you support that notion, even though you didn't explicitly state it. If this isn't what you think, then why did you make the quoted statement?

[Arcon]

You said "It does, however, indicate causation," which indicates to me that's what you think and that you support that notion, even though you didn't explicitly state it. If this isn't what you think, then why did you make the quoted statement?

I do very well think that and absolutely support that notion, but that is entirely irrelevant to what I said. If two trends are similar, it always indicates a correlation. That does not mean they actually do correlate, but that the signs for a correlation are there. That's what the word indication means. And even if it did cause it, I never claimed that it was the sole or primary reason, as you accused me of, because that would be retarded. I can think of a very large list of reasons why playing FFXI is stupid and why people should quit. Abyssea isn't even in the top 10.

The signs for what people opposing the idea say, however, are not there. There are no signs whatsoever that Abyssea "saved" FFXI. There are no subscription number reports supporting that. The early forum posts at the time are not supporting that. The current concurrent online numbers are not supporting that. All the people who favor that idea can really say is how it affected them and their friends. And that's a subjective opinion.

[Jaall]

You know an arguments silly when you have to start defining correlation and indication lol.