Implement Weekend "Double Everything" Bonus Please :D

[Aysha]

I don't see why campaigns are "bad" for the game?

C'mon, Capacity Points are boring as all crap. I don't think anybody actually enjoys old-style XP parties (only this time, it's CP). Same song and dance, pull mob, skillchain+magic burst until it dies, rinse, repeat. Only now instead of IT++ we are fighting IT++++ and you need ridiculous endgame armor for some of them.

It's the same old thing over and over and over and over and over and over, and the 2100JP grind makes old Lv75 look like child's play and I remember those days of getting 100-200 per kill and needing 75,000 IIRC for Lv74->75. That's 375-750 kills.

To get 2100JP, even at 15k CP per kill, you're looking at 4,200 kills. Well, ok, slightly less because you get Capacity Bonuses along the way, but still. It's more than 2,000. Easy. It's just simply not fun, and unlike levelups, you don't get easily-seen bonuses, and the gifts while nice, most of them don't make a noticeable impact on your character that you can notice by eyeballing the chat window (you'd need a parser to notice until you stack several of them together and compare yourself to someone who doesn't have said bonuses).

Crafting Campaigns allow players to do a little Lv71+ catchup (there's enough 110 players around that everybody and their brother is 110 in their chosen craft), I don't really see the harm in this because now we're getting KIs from the Escutcheons (which are a much more terrible grind than original 1-100 craft was before all the changes) that are *REQUIRED* to make certain items now.

They add more grind on top of more grind and they wonder why new players are finding it hard to swallow. And then, we got the veterans who are not making things any better by saying things like "Campaigns are bad for the game". What they REALLY mean is "Campaigns allow people to get to where I was with less effort than I put in and I don't like it."

I leveled to Lv75 once, and it doesn't bother me that people can blow to 75 in a weekend. In fact, I did 75->78 with a 2-person party right after the Abyssea addons were released. We used Emperor Bands (when they were 3,000 max) and the Field Manual at Valley of Sorrows. We would spend 2, 3, 4 hours half falling asleep doing 40-50 a kill before all the XP buffs, it took weeks to get that far. We eventually quit because the grind was just too much, too boring. We came back to the game a bit later when the grind was lessened, but we quit again because XP was just too slow and this was right after Capacity Points were introduced and we saw the atrocious grind (Lv95-100 mobs were only giving 50CP per kill and you needed 30k for ONE job point!? lol).

Then they did the whole RoV thing, and we came back after hearing about mounts and all the RoV stuff. And now we're playing again, but only because the grind was lessened. But even after all the buffs, Grind is still Grind, and it hasn't gotten any more enjoyable. There's just less of it and you get your rewards a little quicker, especially during Campaigns.

Getting 25k+ off of Apex Raptors sure beats getting 8k. Getting a Job Point every other kill is way better than getting a Job Point every 4th kill, especially when you need so stinking many of them to get anywhere.

I'm not becoming a better player by killing the same stupid thing thousands of times. Killing the same thing 1,000 times vs 10 times doesn't change anything, it doesn't get stronger or harder. It does, however, test my patience and my sleep apnea. There have been times I've actually fallen asleep at the keyboard because it is so boring and repetitive.

This is not how to entice newer players (or returning players) to come to this game when there are other MMOs that are 50x more engaging (game play-wise) than FFXI is.

So can you guys please stop flying the "Campaigns are bad for the game" banner? I couldn't disagree more. Campaigns make stuff possible for the people who lack endgame linkshells, and SE knows it. It's just they got too many people in endgame linkshells whining that casual players are getting some of their rewards "too easily", even if a lot of these rewards aren't even worth all that much in the end run. A 110 crafter without an Escutcheon is nigh-useless. A 2100 JP Master is nigh-useless without actual equipment (the Su2 weapons aren't even that great and are expensive and hard to find on my server anyways).

So what's the big deal about allowing the little guy to get a leg up?