Congratulations on your level??

[ManaKing]

The option to burn jobs has always been there, it's just a lot easier now. Skilling is still skilling and I know plenty of people that don't require it for the new jobs because they already had capped skills on other jobs. They still need gear and to learn what makes the new jobs good.

It's not like people are done with the expansion already. In fact there is still a lot to do and significantly more incoming by patches. This is probably the most pleasant expansion release I can remember because I still have things outside of adoulin to do, not to mention new things I want because of adoulin, and Adoulin is very low time requirements to get the basics done for you to be able to enjoy it.

[Candi]

Prepare to be nitpicked to death.
1. San d'Oria, not San'Doria.
2. Day 1 did not have question mark icons, those were released much later. Same update they released mentors, I believe. A dark day for us all.
3. It might be because you play on a different server, but starter gear was never called RSE on Fenrir. RSE was wonder clomps and what-not. Later on, those things you got from BCNMs, but even those rarely got called RSE.



4. The game has always been a race to the top. I can't say this enough. Jeuno was prestigious because many players still hadn't made it that far. Just like how Borealis is prestigious because many people still don't have it. The race to the top still exists. Your interactions with players still exist. Grinding exp or grinding gear, it's the same. Nostalgia has a way of distorting things.

Thank you English teacher.. Your ability to prove that I misspelled justifies your "nitpicking", lol~ And I'm guessing from your attempt to further make me look stupid, you must have started on the PC version which was released before the PS2 version on which I started where question marks and mentors were immediate. So you have a few months on me... That doesn't change the fact, though, that when you start the game you have on level 1 Race Specific Equipment- otherwise known as RSE (on server Quetzalcoatl as least)

This game has never been a race to the top- for me. I alwasy try to avoid that. Sorry it is for you. And since the obvious insult in this thread has been accusing nostalgia as my problem, well so be it. Standing in an XP party is still ridiculous to me and no matter how many times I'm referred to as "old" "nostalgic" or any other insult you can think of to discredit my FFXI knowledge- its still ridiculous to ME. That is my opinion and I think I am allowed to have one but I guess the verdict is still out on that.

If you actually read what I have written- I am not complaining about not having anything to do and I do not disagree that the game is more fun at 99- because it is. What I said, again, is that there is no sense of accomplishment in standing in an XP party... SE should have just given everyone level 99 on everything or make every mob "too weak" so that you can finally have real fun, right?

I'm done now because even I feel like I'm complaining just because and that wasn't the intent... Don't even know why I posted it at all. Anyway- happy Easter and fun adventures in the new expansion!

[Jaall]

Candi I think the point is, or at least my point is, that the feeling of accomplishment has moved from exp'ing to endgame and was a necessary move by SE to encourage newer players to join. The game was becoming very scarce with the need to merge servers and most of the reason they were losing players and never gaining any was because people would join the game and give up at lvl 20. By making it easier to lvl they increased the player base which in turn increased the majorities happiness because you didn't have to lfp for hours and hours, standing around doing nothing, which I think we can all agree wasn't fun in the slightest. No, exp'ing is no longer an achievement but it's still slightly satisfying knowing that you have a job at 99 and you can go out and experience all the fun of endgame providing you've taken the time to gear up properly and skill the job, which if you're a good player will do. Satisfaction is only what you make of it and some of the new endgame has some very satisfying rewards, like clearing NNI floor 100.

I had 8 jobs at lvl 75 "back in the day" which was a fair amount for a casual player, but I don't consider any of that levelling as much of an achievement as getting a Hagun for example, or going 1/20 on CoP 6-4. Levelling was just a small part of the satisfaction gained from the game and yea I do feel Abyssea lost the satisfaction but that was mainly due to it being so easy and nothing to do with EXP. Now though, the new expansion seems to be bringing back that satisfaction with harder content and content which looks to be like the old days, so I would highly recommend waiting on your opinion and trying to move away from exp'ing as you "reason for playing" as such and more focus on events you can duo/trio. Make a few friends, gear up and work towards higher content and you'll find that nostalgic social aspect once again, but just in a different manner to exp'ing.

[Horadrim]

Candi I think the point is, or at least my point is, that the feeling of accomplishment has moved from exp'ing to endgame and was a necessary move by SE to encourage newer players to join. The game was becoming very scarce with the need to merge servers and most of the reason they were losing players and never gaining any was because people would join the game and give up at lvl 20. By making it easier to lvl they increased the player base which in turn increased the majorities happiness because you didn't have to lfp for hours and hours, standing around doing nothing, which I think we can all agree wasn't fun in the slightest. No, exp'ing is no longer an achievement but it's still slightly satisfying knowing that you have a job at 99 and you can go out and experience all the fun of endgame providing you've taken the time to gear up properly and skill the job, which if you're a good player will do. Satisfaction is only what you make of it and some of the new endgame has some very satisfying rewards, like clearing NNI floor 100.

I had 8 jobs at lvl 75 "back in the day" which was a fair amount for a casual player, but I don't consider any of that levelling as much of an achievement as getting a Hagun for example, or going 1/20 on CoP 6-4. Levelling was just a small part of the satisfaction gained from the game and yea I do feel Abyssea lost the satisfaction but that was mainly due to it being so easy and nothing to do with EXP. Now though, the new expansion seems to be bringing back that satisfaction with harder content and content which looks to be like the old days, so I would highly recommend waiting on your opinion and trying to move away from exp'ing as you "reason for playing" as such and more focus on events you can duo/trio. Make a few friends, gear up and work towards higher content and you'll find that nostalgic social aspect once again, but just in a different manner to exp'ing.

The sense of accomplishment with FFXI was always in endgame. Once you got a single job to 75, every other one felt like a chore and the only rewards were in the fact that more jobs = more likely you'll get into an EndGame LS and get good gear out of it... And frankly, having just redone CoP this weekend -- there was nothing great about finishing those missions after dying a billion times. It took me all weekend WITH THE ABILITY TO TELEPORT AROUND THE WORLD. I still remember how annoying it was to get a full team of people together to do missions only to wipe and half of them leave after 4 hours of work. Sure, if they let you teleport back to the fight losing would have been ok, but honestly, going "1/20" when it takes 3 hours to get to the fight itself was NEVER appetizing, and frankly I recall at least one of my times quitting the game being after a week of suffering to finish missions, being able to do nothing fun for the grind, and ending the week going "Did I really just wast over 30 hours and have nothing to show for it?"

Nostalgia is a disease...

Honestly though, the game is dying off because its bad or for any other nefarious reason -- its just old. And people who aren't tied down by nostalgia eventually move on to newer things. If GW2 was enjoyable to me (its kind of meh) I'd be playing that instead. When FFXIV gets running full steam ,I'll likely move to that.

[Jaall]

I completely agree with you Horadrim, CoP was just an example of satisfaction, more that it was over and you never had to do it again! The same tbh goes for levelling although that satisfaction was short-lived when you joined a HNM shell and they needed you on another job so it started all again. Real satisfaction would be getting a claim on say Fafnir/Nidhogg and winning the fight. The rewards are just a bonus to the satisfaction you got, although even back then half the population did it for the rewards only, especially further after the release. As time goes on you do events over and over and the more you do them the more it becomes about material possession rather than satisfaction, same goes for everything even outside the game. And yea I agree it's dying cause it's old but the issue SE have is the players who played from the start are the vast majority of players still playing, because they can't get anyone else to join - hence Abyssea was made to make the game more appealing. The majority of MMO players in the world don't play to level up, they play for the content at endgame so they had to appeal to the majority. Never said it worked just that was obviously their business plan.

[saevel]

I did GoV until 52 then just leached the rest of the way.

Why? Because

Being an active 99 DRK/WAR/BLU/SAM and semi-active RDM/PLD the following skills were capped on their respective jobs
Great Sword
Great Axe
Sword
Axe
Evasion
Enhancing Magic
Divine Magic
Parry @373

I have the following merits
8/8 Great Sword
8/8 Great Axe
8/8 Sword
8/8 Great Katana
8/8 Enhancing Magic
8/8 Blue Magic
8/8 Elemental Magic
15/15 Hit Points
12/12 STR
12/12 DEX

Along with all the normal General stuff.

I have all the required 99 gear sets, Thaumas, Toci, Athos, Epona and all that jaz.

So going from 53~99 doing old slow XP would give me absolutely nothing, nada zip zilch. RUN came practically prepacked for 99 play for myself and I know I'm not the only one.

Plus people should be happy, those who get the the top first are the ones doing the testing and posting on bgwiki all the formulas and how to enhance all the abilities. They've paved a road that everyone else can now use as a guide stone for tweaking their builds. Instead of having hundreds of ignorant RUN's running around with no idea which end of the Great Sword goes where.

[Elrim]

I don't understand why they wouldn't make a classic or progression server. There are people who clearly want it and people who don't want to hear those same people complaining about how the game changed. Win win.

[saevel]

I don't understand why they wouldn't make a classic or progression server. There are people who clearly want it and people who don't want to hear those same people complaining about how the game changed. Win win.

Win / lose.

Those who want it know full well that they are very few in number nor are they the best of players. Putting them together on their own server would just create a ghost server where nothing gets done. The great part is they would be gone from the regular servers and we could all continue on without their incessant hypocritical b1tching. The sh!tty part is they would quickly realize how lonely / fail their new server is and move back to pester us all over again.

[RalphTheGalka]

I don't understand why they wouldn't make a classic or progression server. There are people who clearly want it and people who don't want to hear those same people complaining about how the game changed. Win win.

Because such a server would require thousands of people, and a lack of people is what prompted most of these changes in the first place.

You can't have traditional xp parties when there's only 4 people looking for group, and that's the situation the game was in well before level sync and abyssea were added to the game. You need a lot of people playing at all level ranges at all times, and that's just not something you're going to find on an old game like this.

And that's not even taking into account all of the crafters, fishermen, HELM, etc. that are required to make an economy work.

[Elrim]

I understand this. There are many old games with progression server or classic servers that use old school parties to group and level. One problem pre-books and pre-abyssea is that you had 20+ servers trying to pull it off with dwindling demand whereas classic lovers are requesting one consolidated server. It can and has been done on other older games; there is a large enough community looking for this kind of gameplay.