Originally Posted by
Nattack
After a lengthy post I made about how the old ways of bst were more fun, I auto-logged out and lost all that.
So I will give a skimmed down version,
way back when a FFXI Representative - sometime in 04/05, had posted on Alla asking for information on how to improve the game. Asking Alla for this information was clearly a bad Idea, as almost every post had said "Nerf beastmaster" in some shape or form - because we MIGHT be dangerous. This brought about the invention of Mob Depop, a virtuous by design, but ultimately gamechanging downgrade for beastmaster - I might add that it was poorly executed, as the way we played bst involving bringing some mobs from one side of a zone to the other, and using leave to make it quickly heal so we could get some decent solo/party exp. I had dropped my line in, and insisted that instead of the monster depopping, we could make the monster go docile until it reaches its leash zone.
This also killed MPK, which I may be alone on this, but I found it to be lots of fun (not that I am admitting to have done it. maybe. kinda, sorta) it was loads of fun at serket, cassie. etc, to drag a great deal of monsters to your opposing parties fight, in our case it was usually RMT who stole monsters (literally steal, as if I recall, there was a bug or exploit way back when in which you could claim an NM from people in an alliance. I recall this happening at Serket).
beyond that, our AF3 has all this CHR on it, but we have little opportunity to use it, by the time we actually can use it there is no reason to charm things - it may be slightly useful in a few past zones, im thinking the northlands. I'm hoping updates in the future will be more pet-job friendly, introducing new pets for us to charm, NM's for us to fight, perhaps in new or revamped areas. A pattern I've been seeing in the last few expansions (WoTG and on).
I know, or at least hypothesized that most areas weren't exactly designed for beastmaster, as usually mob level ranges are far too unreliable for solo in the FFXI/RoZ zones. It seems that, however, FFXI Team since CoP has been afraid of beastmaster and pet job potential, as beastmaster was ultimately useless in places like Sea, most of Sky, and especially Salvage. Salvage itself had gear for all jobs, but became far too elitest to allow any other jobs but a select few inside.
I don't exactly mind levelling other jobs, but I don't feel that any event should exclude any certain job by design. It's just too hard to take certain jobs inside salvage (old, i havent done salvage since 09) and still be effective. There was nothing charmable in Sea, Limbus, and only flamingos in Sky. When your only job was BST back then, it's kind of a bummer to be constantly overlooked.
now, that's a rant from 04-09, now we have abyssea, but It's still not quite right. Now we're dead simple WAR's with a pet. It's almost as straight forward as MNK party wise.
I enjoyed soloing on bst, it was challenging and tons of fun. And while I can still do it, sort of, I cant make use of all those old macros, and 5 years of gathering BST AF1+1 gear that I worked so hard for. Given how solo and duo friendly the game is these days for jobs that arent pet jobs, we all deserve our spoils. It's not like BST solo was ever easy, after all.
I guess what I want is some new zones with FFXI's mechanics preserved from middle2004. with tough, unforgiving, but highly rewarding nm's. mobs that don't despawn that we can carry across the zone, aggro, being hit from AoE from out of party hecticness that I so crave from the old days.
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