Reasons Why FFXI is Declining

[scaevola]

that's a whole lot of words that have nothing to do with how people were apparently okay enough with abyssea leveling to keep playing until a time that MYSTERIOUSLY CORRELATES to the release of a bad expansion and a good sequel

EDIT: granted, a lot of people left when the previous expansion, they felt, invalidated the work they had put in to date, but a lot MORE people stuck around because that expansion, abyssea, was for its part very good

[FrankReynolds]

that's a whole lot of words that have nothing to do with how people were apparently okay enough with abyssea leveling to keep playing until a time that MYSTERIOUSLY CORRELATES to the release of a bad expansion and a good sequel

EDIT: granted, a lot of people left when the previous expansion, they felt, invalidated the work they had put in to date, but a lot MORE people stuck around because that expansion, abyssea, was for its part very good

I know right? Both of those posts rambled on about problems that had nothing to do with abyssea...

[Daemon]

that's a whole lot of words that have nothing to do with how people were apparently okay enough with abyssea leveling to keep playing until a time that MYSTERIOUSLY CORRELATES to the release of a bad expansion and a good sequel

EDIT: granted, a lot of people left when the previous expansion, they felt, invalidated the work they had put in to date, but a lot MORE people stuck around because that expansion, abyssea, was for its part very good

Because Ive already explained it before in other posts.

Its not a simple answer that you can just sum up in 1 sentence.

A sequel has to follow the storyline of the original book. Any reader who doesn't read the original won't understand what the sequel is about and how it relates to the entire story.

1 mistake in the sequel can throw off the entire story of both the book and the sequel.

Then again if a writer is not finished giving you the entire story and only releases segments of it then the reader has to patiently wait for the writer to release the rest of the parts to complete the entire sequel.

Again 1 mistake can confuse the reader and even give you a reason to skip parts of the story. At this point in order to keep you interested the writer has to spoil you with certain things you want to hear even if it has to deviate from the story for the moment.

A magician performing tricks has to draw your attention to a specific thing instantly allowing him to complete his trick in secret behind the scene. If your attention is focused on him he cannot trick you.

Game development has similar tricks.

When a mistake is made its like a comedian who mapped out a show has to spend time trying to cover up his mistakes and make it look like it was part of his act.

Which adds more work and extends the show to be longer than expected.

[FrankReynolds]

Yeah, but when a seal says blue, monsters under the bed meow and then you have to build a better ocean or the people will cut their snozzberries into tiny pieces and fly away on toothbrushes made of gold.

[Slaxx]

Yeah, but when a seal says blue, monsters under the bed meow and then you have to build a better ocean or the people will cut their snozzberries into tiny pieces and fly away on toothbrushes made of gold.

Cab I get a copy of your Daemon to English dictionary? It might help make some sort of sense and possibly explain the relevance of what he's talking about.

[Daemon]

Abbysea was full of repeatable events made for 18 man alliances or lower. There are several quests and missions that cannot be done quickly. Between having to wait for stones to replinish to traveling to several maps to reach each maw, you had many things to do spread across a bigger area of the game than SoA.

The main point you are not understanding and seeing?

The difference is you cannot compare other expansions with Soa. To compare ToAu and SoA is like comparing the salary of an entry level job to a CEO.

Level difference changes the content.

The higher level you reach, the more content and detail is required to keep you interested. Which takes alot more time because of the speed of how players can race through content.

Obviously at this point of the game players are speeding through faster than content being put out. In order to stall, they will have to add more repeatable tasks and events with daily limits.

Look at Starcraft for example. The reason people spam the game over and over is because its your typical repeat from ground zero to max in a short amount of time giving you a quicker feeling of progress and instant gratification.

FFXI just takes longer to progress and gives players a load of feelings of failure because the game is made for you to be dependent on others and make friends and get them to work with you as a team to get anywhere.

[Kuvo]

Im gonna say it.... I miss the old grind days of leveling. Ya it sucked as a leveling stand point but so much more things made that way of leveling awesome imo. First of all you got to see and explore the world,you got to meet new people and u had to communicate. I loved that you had to understand your role and work together. I miss leveling in the dunes teaching new players how to do low level skillchains then timing the correct nuke for a strong MB. I miss creating cool party macros for AM spells and have the DDs time the SC correctly. All that is gone from this game. The adventure, exploring, meeting new friends, and just plain fun. This is all my opinion but I do miss it. Nothing is fun for me by leveling in a week to 99, getting delve gear that breaks all game content and the only thing to do really is to get the best gear in the game and do nothing with it besides look pretty.

[Slaxx]

Why can you not compare ToAU and SoA? They are both expansions to THE SAME MMO. We aren't comparing WotLK to CoP or some other such complete nonsense. The level caps for each of those expansions is different of course but both expansions were designed with endgame (75 or 99) players in mind.

The way SE has gone about presenting that new content has changed radically in the 6 (? 7?) years since ToAU was released but isn't that what a comparison is? You look at 2 different but similar things and point out the similarities and differences between them. I'm not sure you understand what a comparison is. This comparison wouldn't be apples and oranges, it would be 2 different kinds of apples.

PS. Stones and abyssea time haven't been an issue since a few weeks after the first 3 zones were released. That's about how long it took for people to start figuring out how to get time consistently and once you can do that how many stones you have isn't really a limiting factor. How long after the first zones were released was the abyssea teleport NPC? If it was right away (and I honestly don't remember for sure, but I think it was) then you weren't travelling any farther than Lower Jeuno to get to the maw you needed and then you can pop around inside abyssea zones from point to point (takes about 20-25 minutes of running around to get them all). And all the abyssea zones were familiar to us already.

And wasn't one of your (completely erroneous) arguments that you didn't need to do new content to be able to pontificate on it? So now its "Level difference changes the content". Have you seen the error of your ways or are you just inconsistent?

[scaevola]

Why can't I compare SoA with Abyssea/Voidwatch/various 2.0 events? I have never heard a satisfactory explanation as to why Abyssea et. al. is not an expansion.

In any case, SoA is not terrible as FFXI expansions go, taken individually. It's right in the middle in terms of quality; not as good as ToAU (though this is maybe unfair because it's better than ToAU was at the 6 month mark, pre-Nyzul, pre-Salvage) or Abyssea, better than WotG, WAY better than RoZ or CoP. I think the argument you're doing an extraordinarily bad job of making is that SoA's mediocrity matters more than previous expansions, since we can no longer fall back on old content to keep ourselves occupied. It supplants, not supplements, and while this isn't a bad thing for an MMO expansion to do (WoW in particular consistently does it very well; they aren't expansions so much as sequels and they give the Azeroth a sense of forward motion), FFXI is just straight up not good enough at releasing crunchy content quickly enough to sustain itself in this model. From what I've seen, this opinion is pretty standard among players right now. I don't know if I could offer an alternative; I certainly don't want to go back to killing Kirin again. I'm sure I'd have more to say if I played Everquest.

None of this, however, has ANYTHING to do with leveling, by which I mean the process by which players gain experience points through the most efficient means available. We all think the game is way too thin right now but that's absolutely a result of SoA, not the MMO vestigial organ of XP.

[Daemon]

Because level difference effects the overall speed of progression toward the content in question.

Look at the level range of ToAu VS SoA and the overall power of the entire community progressing with the content.

If you are level 30-50 instances are quicker (similar to instant gratification of achieving goals easier) but more time consuming to past through it compared to being ilvl 120 and doing content related to that level range.


In the course of 6 months the speed at which DEVs have added content to SoA in reality is the same speed adding general content but difference is at level 99-ilvl 120 the content requires more detail and a lot more work compared to level range 30-50.

You expect the DEV team to put out more than what they can right now because at your level range you are speeding past the content faster.