FFXI R/M/E Thoughts:

[Shaiera]

It’s hard to have one definitive solution; most likely the reason Dev. has been taking so long to have just that; a solution. Here’s how I feel about it - players that have chosen to do the more difficult challenges should have the better rewards for the effort. It’s true no one said you must do these challenges and it was, in fact, their choice to do them; no one forced them too. It should be obvious the reason they did make that choice is because they chose to not just take on a tough challenge but they chose to go all out for the best the game did have to offer. If you’re not willing to go the extra mile, you will end up with less, that’s how it works in real-life with most things, why should lazy people just be handed things; better things?

FFXI was released in 2002; from that time until 2010, 8 years - almost a decade; there were tough challenging items to go for. I remember it took me a couple months of doing Sea with my linkshell to get my Faith Torque; it took me months to achieve Black Belt via HNM camping and an occasional KSNM 99. That is the kind of game this was for almost a decade. There were many gear alternatives; I didn’t need Black Belt or Faith Torque, I wanted them; not only for their awesomeness but for the stature that came with it. A person can admit it or not, but I know when I saw other players, which were few, with those things, I really wanted to get there too, I could have settled for nearly gear equivalents and I would have still been a great player. Given the two options, I chose to push myself and try to reach what they had achieved; I knew many that were not up to that kind of a challenge, and I never looked down on them, we both made our own choices, simple is that. I think anyone that says you’re not a real Monk unless you have Black Belt should be punched in the face and called an idiot. None the less, I was proud that I did earn and achieve my Black Belt and I was happy to help others to do the same.

For the majority of this game’s years, those items were top notch, just as two examples. I even did the hours of raising my Guard Skill anyone who has soloed to cap Guard Skill can agree with me that it, at the time, was not an easy thing to do, and it took a lot of time. Even leveling to level 75 was something to be proud of on a job in my opinion, compared to a lot of games.

Here is Present Game:

- Get to level 30 and afk in Abyssea to reach level 99. Leveling to 99 is just a formality; it’s like giving someone a hand-shake. It’s nothing to be proud of when you can get to level to 99 in less than a day.

- 90% of most of the gear is dated and obsolete via old content. Faith Torque +7 H2H is garbage to a weapon that has 60+ on it, same with a Guard Torque with +7 Guard, what is that to a +60 or higher on a weapon? I’ll answer that, it’s garbage!

- There is a huge Magian Trial chart of people have dumped hours into for other weapons that are obsolete; I don’t mean R/M/E I mean good alternatives at the time before SoA.

- Parry and Guard were reworked, it is no longer taking weeks of long solo to cap the skill it can be done in a single day with two Atma and a train of Mandragora pummeling you for a couple hours. That time invested in a job showed a difference between an occasional Monk-player to someone who dedicated to the job.

So in summary, yea the population has taken a huge nose-dive, taking nearly 8 years of achievements away from players is a huge slap to the face; it’s not an astonishing breakthrough on why player-base is declining. So presently I feel I can’t really be that proud of my Guard being capped or the fact that all my items are dated; those that aren’t are much easier to get than when I did it, like Black Belt for example.

My Relic is literally the last thing I can be proud of, and I do feel it should still be top-notch, even if by only +4 DMG when these weapons their adding are getting bonuses well over 100.

So that’s my long-winded answer; we veteran players have had so much lost and taken away to make FFXI super easy for the new players. Most players just left and said the hell with it, but those of us still here that have dealt with all of the fallout have turned the other cheek on a lot of it, but R/M/E is where I think that line needs be drawn, how much more achievement should just be handed to the players that wine, “Hey I’m new and I want that!”.

DEV. KEEP R/M/E!!!
Give us something to reach and strive towards, at least one thing we can still be proud to have achieved~!