Reasons Why FFXI is Declining

[Daemon]

No, the dev team is off in the other room having a snack. They cannot create enough content to sustain a vertical progression model even for casuals, let alone hardcores. They abandoned a much more sustainable model in favor of this treadmill of fail. I have not played seriously in a month and bet I can max out my jobs again in two nights after work.

Adoulin is bad design blended with terrible ideas and dusted with a pinch of "who really cares what the players want?"

In my opinion people want the world to be more than what it already is. We are playing a game that is 11 years old. Most people have already past almost everything in it.

Playerbase is at a point where everyone has enough power to speed past new content faster than it can be put out.

You do things for people and when they lose interest in what you do for them no matter how hard you try the interest cannot be given back without some miracle and that's what I see people are expecting.

A miracle.

But at this point the ladder can only go so high. Is it worth it?

[kylani]

Take with it what you will, but ask almost anyone what was more rewarding, fulfilling, exciting and fun. Even with all the problems it once had, the old Vana'Diel, or the Vana'Diel of today.

I love your post. I've left and come back several times. I always left when I got focused/frustrated with things and forgot to just enjoy the game. When I come back, I'm always amazed at how much there is to do and how much fun the story and content are. It seems no matter how much I love it, I seem to get drawn in to the hurry and level syndrome, that starts making it feel like a job vs. a game. I've tried to avoid it this time, and still feel that pull to take shortcuts or 'grind thru the pain' vs. enjoying whatever I'm doing.

I feel for the dev team. There is such a wide range of player base, it's got to be hard, if not impossible to keep long time players satisfied and draw in new players without the new players feeling like they're facing insurmountable odds. Things that are trivial for much of the player base are painful for newer folks, and it becomes harder as there are less newer folks. Many of the storylines require a group or being over leveled to complete.

I understand why many hated COP even though I agree it was a good thing to remove the level cap, I thought the level cap was an good idea. There's nothing like doing the content with a group at the level it was meant to be done. Unfortunately, the coordination to do it was a pain to much of the player base, myself included. I hope those who completed it as it was meant to be done remember those battles and the effort as fondly as I do even if they were often incredibly frustrating. Unless a new player is fortunate enough to join with friends, they're likely to have to wait till they're capped and then solo or maybe duo/trio thru it if they're lucky.

When people used to level multiple jobs the old fashioned way, it helped new players, but now that many take the fast path, new players don't have vets re-leveling jobs to group with or learn from as much. If they manage to get to endgame, they need help in many cases learning the intricacies of their job or of a certain type of tactic, and some folks aren't very patient or willing to take some time to explain. Fortunately, there are some (hopefully many) who still enjoy the fun of the game and are patient and understanding. Those people make the game better for all they play with.

I love this game and want it to keep going forever, but I can't think of a good plan for the game that encompasses everyone. People are so different. I think the devs are trying. They may fumble along the way, but at least they did put Adoulin out. I honestly thought there would never be another full expansion for the game. It seems like they were trying to do something different, and I like to think they were trying to help newer players catch up a bit with seasoned players and just jumped the shark a bit. I thought Abyssea was horrible at the time, but now I actually enjoy it quite a bit, so who knows how this will go down the road.

I just hope many keep playing 11 and SE keeps developing for it because while I can enjoy other games for a time, there is no other game as rich and involving as FFXI to me.

[Rustic]

anyone miss these old party spots?

I don't miss the old grind. I do think that Abyssea kicked the exp system squarely (ha!) in the junk, rendering GoV/FoV nearly meaningless post-30.

What's kinda amazing is that Adoulin, I stab an Easy Prey to death in Morimar? I'm racking up 600+ limit points. If they'd given us non-KI related stuff for plasm, you'd likely see players sitting out there in parties slapping butterflies around.

Put some kind of non-exp-but-advancement system wrapped around this and you might actually see the rebirth of the 6-man group again.

[Umichi]

I love your post. I've left and come back several times. I always left when I got focused/frustrated with things and forgot to just enjoy the game. When I come back, I'm always amazed at how much there is to do and how much fun the story and content are. It seems no matter how much I love it, I seem to get drawn in to the hurry and level syndrome, that starts making it feel like a job vs. a game. I've tried to avoid it this time, and still feel that pull to take shortcuts or 'grind thru the pain' vs. enjoying whatever I'm doing.

I feel for the dev team. There is such a wide range of player base, it's got to be hard, if not impossible to keep long time players satisfied and draw in new players without the new players feeling like they're facing insurmountable odds. Things that are trivial for much of the player base are painful for newer folks, and it becomes harder as there are less newer folks. Many of the storylines require a group or being over leveled to complete.

I understand why many hated COP even though I agree it was a good thing to remove the level cap, I thought the level cap was an good idea. There's nothing like doing the content with a group at the level it was meant to be done. Unfortunately, the coordination to do it was a pain to much of the player base, myself included. I hope those who completed it as it was meant to be done remember those battles and the effort as fondly as I do even if they were often incredibly frustrating. Unless a new player is fortunate enough to join with friends, they're likely to have to wait till they're capped and then solo or maybe duo/trio thru it if they're lucky.

When people used to level multiple jobs the old fashioned way, it helped new players, but now that many take the fast path, new players don't have vets re-leveling jobs to group with or learn from as much. If they manage to get to endgame, they need help in many cases learning the intricacies of their job or of a certain type of tactic, and some folks aren't very patient or willing to take some time to explain. Fortunately, there are some (hopefully many) who still enjoy the fun of the game and are patient and understanding. Those people make the game better for all they play with.

I love this game and want it to keep going forever, but I can't think of a good plan for the game that encompasses everyone. People are so different. I think the devs are trying. They may fumble along the way, but at least they did put Adoulin out. I honestly thought there would never be another full expansion for the game. It seems like they were trying to do something different, and I like to think they were trying to help newer players catch up a bit with seasoned players and just jumped the shark a bit. I thought Abyssea was horrible at the time, but now I actually enjoy it quite a bit, so who knows how this will go down the road.

I just hope many keep playing 11 and SE keeps developing for it because while I can enjoy other games for a time, there is no other game as rich and involving as FFXI to me.

The way I see it is we are legends in vanadiel history..... we've rescued the world time and again we've pushed past our physical limits time and again over a span of 11 years... new players have it easy.. with some commen sense you can achieve great things just by playing the game... Armed with knowledge via the internet... you become pretty much invincible... but using that knowledge comes at a price because it's all built off of the community not SE

I have complaints but I don't see XI declining... more like legends are retiring and only the adventurers of this time are existent while newer generations are being continuously planted... however.. they are about 11 years behind on their training..... so don't really expect to see them in Audolin anytime soon...unless a a seasoned adventurer or a linkshell that's willing to help picks them up.

I play this game to play it as a game! It is fun and I to sometimes feel like the background stuff (leveling and going out and doing stuff to get gear over and over) sometimes makes me lose my path but I will preserver!

[Spectreman]

Shouting in jeuno for days for a single pt invite?

Camping HNMs for so many hours to be beaten by the LS with the best bot claim?

Endless frustrating Dynamis runs where you would return empty handed 90% of time because drops for certain jobs were abyssmal?

Events like Salvage where only a few would even see what was in there because it was "too hardcore" for scrubs to participate?

Years of sidegrades that more and more required us to blink each second exchanging gear, carrying almost full inventory with swaps for 2-3% of dmg improvement?



Yea right, you guys can all go to FF14. The game changed for the better. If you are rushing yourself through endgame content and find yourself bored after a month then go play another game called real life.

All hardcore freaks can't understand that there is life outside this game. Go experience that and enjoy FFXI in smaller doses. You will be amazed how awesome this game is instead of cursing how everything is easy when you got the strongest gear of the game in a month.


Though i have to agree that things like exp parties in valkrum/qufim/kazham/citadel/cn/altepa was fun and still would be today if they improved GoV exp rewards up to abyssea level.

[Llama]

Put some kind of non-exp-but-advancement system wrapped around this and you might actually see the rebirth of the 6-man group again.

I myself as well as others have mentioned this before. I think they should make all events either solo, party, or alliance, and have the same rewards, but obviously scaled difficulty/ drop rate so people don't spam solo speed runs., and make this game even more single player.

[Umichi]

Shouting in jeuno for days for a single pt invite?

Camping HNMs for so many hours to be beaten by the LS with the best bot claim?

Endless frustrating Dynamis runs where you would return empty handed 90% of time because drops for certain jobs were abyssmal?

Events like Salvage where only a few would even see what was in there because it was "too hardcore" for scrubs to participate?

Years of sidegrades that more and more required us to blink each second exchanging gear, carrying almost full inventory with swaps for 2-3% of dmg improvement?



Yea right, you guys can all go to FF14. The game changed for the better. If you are rushing yourself through endgame content and find yourself bored after a month then go play another game called real life.

All hardcore freaks can't understand that there is life outside this game. Go experience that and enjoy FFXI in smaller doses. You will be amazed how awesome this game is instead of cursing how everything is easy when you got the strongest gear of the game in a month.


Though i have to agree that things like exp parties in valkrum/qufim/kazham/citadel/cn/altepa was fun and still would be today if they improved GoV exp rewards up to abyssea level.

I believe they were referring to how much more competant the playerbase was back in the day vs now

[Afania]

Yea right, you guys can all go to FF14. The game changed for the better. If you are rushing yourself through endgame content and find yourself bored after a month then go play another game called real life.

All hardcore freaks can't understand that there is life outside this game. Go experience that and enjoy FFXI in smaller doses. You will be amazed how awesome this game is instead of cursing how everything is easy when you got the strongest gear of the game in a month.

That's not even half the issue this game is facing. This game requires connection/"buy-in" to keep players around, playing on and off simply doesn't work, and it's irrelevant to whether you have a life or not. It's more of a social game than MMORPG. Once your close friend got bored and quit, you'd got bored and quit too due to lack of ppl to play with, making it harder to do everything else. "Have something to do" is more than trying to please the hardcore, but it's also a good incentive to keep players/friends/linkshell together.

And stop playing real life card. Everyone has a life, including myself. But I only have one life, and I'd like to experience something different/more exciting than real life. My life is nothing more than wake up work wake up work, I like my "second life" after I got home, that give me a chance to meet players I never have chance to meet irl, or experience a world that I never get a chance to irl. It's my money and my time, I don't need anyone giving me lecture "go experience real life" when I have enough of it.

You don't even need to be close to hardcore to finish current game content 100 times. I've been selling stacks and stacks of airlixir +1s since it cost 1.2M a stack back in July. All the plasm add up together I can have R15 for every slot if I want to, plus capped delve boss gears. Do you think I play 8hrs a day? For past 1 month I play 5hr a week avg, and I work 9~12hr a day, sometimes even Weekend. I highly doubt you have more "real life" than me. I'm no where close to hardcore, not even close to avg player playtime, and I already finish delve content for month.

I don't mind 2%~3% of improvement, I don't mind doing an event and get nothing 9 out of 10 runs as long as I'm playing with friends and after 9 runs I got something cool. But I'm not very happy to log on to XI and see my LS all turn into ghost town and friendlist empty, due to everyone quitting after they're done with delve.

[Daemon]

Shouting in jeuno for days for a single pt invite?

Camping HNMs for so many hours to be beaten by the LS with the best bot claim?

Endless frustrating Dynamis runs where you would return empty handed 90% of time because drops for certain jobs were abyssmal?

Events like Salvage where only a few would even see what was in there because it was "too hardcore" for scrubs to participate?

Years of sidegrades that more and more required us to blink each second exchanging gear, carrying almost full inventory with swaps for 2-3% of dmg improvement?



Yea right, you guys can all go to FF14. The game changed for the better. If you are rushing yourself through endgame content and find yourself bored after a month then go play another game called real life.

All hardcore freaks can't understand that there is life outside this game. Go experience that and enjoy FFXI in smaller doses. You will be amazed how awesome this game is instead of cursing how everything is easy when you got the strongest gear of the game in a month.


Though i have to agree that things like exp parties in valkrum/qufim/kazham/citadel/cn/altepa was fun and still would be today if they improved GoV exp rewards up to abyssea level.

Pretty much everything I said in all of my replies sum up to this in 1 post lol.

[scaevola]

Worth noting that Monstrosity is basically old-school partying if you took a 6-man party and rolled it into one character.

(it's seriously a blast and I look forward to wiping the floor with the lot of you in November~)