Reasons Why FFXI is Declining

[Demon6324236]

Can you learn things about your job in XP parties which will be used in EG? Yes, anyone would be a fool to deny it outright. However, most things that can be learned like this should be able to be picked up fairly quickly in my opinion. Nothing, and I mean nothing at all, should take anyone the amount of time it used to take to get from 1 to 75, for a person to learn, understand, and develop the necessary skill to perform something you can learn about your job. No matter where you put it to use, it should never take that long to learn it, or get good at it.

I think if you were active the full time, 1 --> 99 in 3 days would be fine, so long as the person has to participate in the party and do their part. If they had to, then things would be easy to learn in that time frame, skill ups could be accelerated to accommodate that speed of leveling, and all would be fine. The parts you learn are not things that take a super long amount of time to learn, maybe for you to become skillful at, depending on what you are talking about, but not ever something you take that long to actually learn.

That's my take on this argument at least.

[Arcon]

Levelling was part of the game, the act of partying was a fun bonding experience. It was frequently exciting and hilarious.

Your opinion. A valid opinion, but an opinion nonetheless. I have no problems with you enjoying it at all, I never did. I have a few friends who like it, for whatever reason. What I do have a problem with is you stating that leveling was a huge, important part of the game and that that's the reason why the game is declining now.

I'm also calling you on the lie you made a few posts back, which I let you go on it so we could agree to disagree and move on, but you are clearly bent on having a fight so you can have one. There wasn't "a dozen" in the old game as you lied and claimed. TOAU had at least 20 camps alone. Even Mamook had five good spots for xp parties. There were hundreds of xp camps in Vanadiel for lvl 15-75, but you lied and said "there wasnt hundreds there was only about a dozen xp camps in the whole game pre Aby" <paraphrased bcoz I can't be bothered cutpasting your blatant lie>.

Sure, you can call the different locations in Mamook fighting the same 3 mobs different camps, just like you can call the different locations around the Sand Sweepers all different camps. Generally one zone has two to five different locations for camps. They might be in a different location, but they're the same mobs, same tactics, same scenery (again, Mamook is a good example of that). Sometimes lower level mobs are on one map, higher level mobs on another, but the same version of those (see colibris and crabs in all kinds of zones). Whatever. The camps weren't my problem with it, but they were definitely not a selling point either. Maybe more so than Abyssea, but that's hardly an argument, since Abyssea's camps sucked balls.

Re; lack of new content is why the game is failing. That is pure BS. People kept their FFXI accounts active even when they had to work 2 years for a single Raja's Ring, the old game offered far less gear/endgame content, and yet people kept logging in and playing it. Because it was a challenge, and involved long term effort.

That's not true. The old game offered roughly the same endgame content there is now. They added new battlefields, but they can be breezed through quickly, and that is the key difference. In the sheer amount of battlefields, sure there's more. But in the amount of time you can invest into endgame, it actually got reduced significantly, even despite the additions, because old content is so easy to complete and new content is so quick to finish.

And because XPing was a fun party experience, it was exciting and you could shine for a few hours on your best job.

You couldn't. EXP never gave you the chance to shine, because there was no situation where you could. Without challenging mobs you can't exceed. I can brag about solo tanking HNMs. I can't brag about a 1k weapon skill in an EXP party. What situation is there possibly where you can shine? That one time where you survived a double link?

Xping wasnt boring filler. I can say without a hesitation that soloing 75 lvls of Bst in 2004/early 2005, was the most nerve-wracking excitement life/death surviving-on-your-wits experience I've had in FFXI totally. It is way beyond any big endgame NM with thousands of teeth. Solo Bst was an adrenaline rush in 2004~. You could die all the time. It was incredibly exciting and rewarding. And it was entirely effort-based oldgame XP.

Despite the absolutely ridiculous claim that it was "beyond any big endgame NM with thousands of teeth", I'll let this slide because it was a solo effort. Those are generally much more than regular EXP parties, both in terms of required skill and relevance to endgame content. That is not what I mean by EXP party. I solo'd both Black Mage and Scholar on pets, so I know what that entails, and I also know that EXP parties don't compare at all to it. Which brings me back to ridiculous:

Xp parties too. Excitement. Crawler's Nest basement, "secret room". The puller leaves the hidden wall and goes to find a fly in the big room. The party waits in the secret room, resting MP. What will come through the secret door? One fly? Five flies? Two flies and an exoray? Can we survive? Excitement. Novelty. Each pull could bring a new dynamic situation that required teamwork and sometimes luck just to survive. Thats a bonding friendship-making experience, and a TEST OF SKILLS.

Cute that you think that. If you consider that a test of skill, you probably didn't even stand a chance in Dynamis.

You won't see any of that in your monocamp doll ops 'sleep for 69 lvls' new game.

Stop bringing that argument please. You don't need to convince me that Abyssea EXP is lame. I know. Abyssea EXP sucks balls. It's horribly boring and unproductive. The difference between us is, that I think the same thing about regular EXP. However, in Abyssea it only takes a few days instead of months. A few days of boring repetitive content beats months of boring repetitive content. Even more so if you can afk in the meantime and do something fun instead. That's how I see it. I know you disagree, and again, that's fine.

Acron I don't know where or when you started playing but almost everything you listed is absolutely wrong in pre ToAU xp parties. You must have never leveled on lizards or scorpions, or exorays, or any number of mobs that used status effects and links against you, and we certainly did learn mob positioning, and back then sc coupled with mb were a big part of endgame.

I didn't play much back then, and it may have been different, but not by much. Simply because mobs that can successfully prepare you for endgame do not exist outside of endgame. Sure, a scorpion can paralyze. A lizard can petrify. And that's all they can do. You may learn what those status effects are and how to cure them, big whoop. You don't need a several months long repetitive course to learn that, one look at the wiki page is enough. And you still won't know what to do when your entire alliance is hit by all of them at once. It may have been more of a challenge back then, and if it was, it might have also been more fun back then. But after that, it wasn't. And post-ToAU was the longest period of the game's life and that was a time during which the game was thriving.

[Afania]

Can you learn things about your job in XP parties which will be used in EG? Yes, anyone would be a fool to deny it outright. However, most things that can be learned like this should be able to be picked up fairly quickly in my opinion. Nothing, and I mean nothing at all, should take anyone the amount of time it used to take to get from 1 to 75, for a person to learn, understand, and develop the necessary skill to perform something you can learn about your job. No matter where you put it to use, it should never take that long to learn it, or get good at it.

I think if you were active the full time, 1 --> 99 in 3 days would be fine, so long as the person has to participate in the party and do their part. If they had to, then things would be easy to learn in that time frame, skill ups could be accelerated to accommodate that speed of leveling, and all would be fine. The parts you learn are not things that take a super long amount of time to learn, maybe for you to become skillful at, depending on what you are talking about, but not ever something you take that long to actually learn.

That's my take on this argument at least.

EXP pt serves more purpose than "learn your job" though. It's more like a way to social and have a feel of "A long journey to endgame". You can make a RPG hitting cap in 1 day, then when you're finally at max level it won't feel the same....some gaming experience needs time to develop, like how a film needs to be 3 hours long instead of 30 min, and novel needs 1000 pages to tell a proper story. Only issue in XI is, this game has job change system, so some ppl may lv 2nd or 3rd job and has to go through that all over again.