December 2022 FINAL FANTASY XI Digest

[Alhanelem]

They do need to be forced at this point, and the Devs clearly agreed.

No one needs to be "forced" to do anything at all. If you think the game is too easy, find a harder one. I know very few people who pick up a game like FFXI and think it's too easy.

Also the devs didn't "agree" with anyone, they made what they made on their own, They have noted in the past "player feedback was that bla-de-bla-deblad" with regards to some updates, so if they were actually getting feedback saying "we don't want melee to be useable in Odyssey," and made this change as a result, they would have said something about that. But I haven't seen anyone say that outside of this thread.

And again, even if you want to argue that their solution to a problem (a problem I don't personally feel existed, but YMMV) wroked, that doesn't mean it was the best one or the best way to achieve it. And in my opinion there are vastly better ways to encourage people to try different strategies than simply say flat out "we made melee jobs total garbage for this fight, so don't use them." Part of this problem is that it also rules out non-meta playstyles that in some cases can provide different ways of beating something. For instance, as a summoner, I like to use my relic and make liberal use of skillchains with my summon and magic bursts. But making melee trash and/or outright unusable kinda throws that out. Which means my approach would end up being the same as the standard approach for summoner to any other content except half the time, they don't want us to do that either.

In the past we've had mechanics like periods of damage obsorption and such that make it trickier to use certain jobs without all-but locking them out. It ends up feeling more like "You must use this team comp for this fight because we said so," without any other in-world reason for it, like this kind of monster is immune to magic or that kind of monster has AoE melee attacks. Those kind of mechanics feel more natural, rational and logical, and less arbitrary.

Anyway, the point is, you can argue that their solution worked, and maybe it does, but as far as I'm concerned, their approach is bad game design and there are better ways to achieve what they set out to do.

[Alhanelem]

Listening to my melee-playing friends saying the same things I've had to say as a summoner was a delight.

When every job is nerfed, none will be. Healing wall when?

While I certainly understand why you would say something like this: Nerfing the crap out of everything isn't any better a way to achieve balance than buffing everything. Balance means adjusting some things upward and somethings downward, that's why it's called balance.

Also healing walls have existed before, the almighty ST20 status, which is now just a special version of curse, which prevents you from recovering HP by any means. And the thing about this was it was a status the monster inflicted, not something that was in effect for the entire content. That is better game design. It's a status, you can see it and know what it does intuitively and respond appropriately and/or build a team based on that without having "do it and wonder why stuff isn't working" being the only option.

It also doesn't mean healing jobs are unusable, it only means you have to cope with the status while it's there.

[Demetric]

Hello,

Love the game been playing off and on since NA launch. Reactivated my account in hopes of job updates. Master levels are fine but that's not the same. Somewhere along the way for whatever reason plans for the 20th changed. I've looked for months. And there is no explanation as to why planes changed. Whenever the question is even brought up it gets ignored.

I'm grateful you do this digest every month. And i know you only have a fraction of the team size. Thing is the FFXI team has always kept a tight lip on the game. I've seen players ask for more active in depth communicate for years. Now its even worse. See the 20th anniversary AMA for example. There are questions you simply refuse to answer. And i can't continue justifying paying for a game that treats its player base like this.

To the players happy with the game as is, fine. You have every right to your opinion. And i wish you nothing but the best and many years of future enjoyment. Will i check back in hopes for more open communication, sure. But i'm out for now

To all the staff at FFXI, Take Care & all the best.

[Pixela]

Square Enix are not a great company anymore, the top brass have no idea what they are doing and don't understand the industry they work in.

We are dealing with a company that spent tens of millions on something like Babylon's fall or SoP, then kept paying people to work on it for a year when it had a literal handful of players. They refuse to invest even a fraction of what they spend on other complete nonsense for XI above the bare minimum, which has a guaranteed playerbase willing to spend money at the drop of a hat and an even larger group of people that would return for an expansion. They refuse to invest in a game that has a guaranteed return on the investment because they would rather gamble on other games that often flop.

So why don't the developers communicate with us more? Because they can't, they don't even know if they will be working next year becasue they are on a running year to year contract. They are as much in the dark as we are, they do the best with what they are given but they are in no way stable enough to be making plans.

The developers love this game and you should never doubt that, they would love to have all the things we ask for because this is their life's work and they are proud of it. However, they can't say or do anything but what they are allowed to do or say.

XI has been effectively pinned to the XIV jacket, we exist because we get funded as an extension of that game and all the profits XI makes goto that. I don't think anyone minds this being the case and obviously we want the game to be profitable long-term, but not spending more on the game in terms of fixing the dev problems and making expansions to make sure that is the case when they know it will pay for that investment is wrong.

[Alhanelem]

But i'm out for now

Bye

These digests are a key point of communication, beyond that, I think they lack a CM right now and that's probably why there isn't much beyond that.

Now its even worse. See the 20th anniversary AMA for example. There are questions you simply refuse to answer.

You kind of go against that feelling grateful statement when you say this and say "I'm out." And I strongly disagree with your comments about the AMA. They answered a lot of questions and answered them honestly. Frankly, they were less vague than they used to be IMO. We might not have liked all the answers but they were honest.

Square Enix are not a great company anymore,

Frankly, they were never a great company, they just had some people working for them that happened to do great things. Like right now they're still pushing NFTs when the gaming community has pretty flatly rejected them.

And i can't continue justifying paying for a game that treats its player base like this.

Treats its playerbase like what? I don't feel mistreated. I think you and some of the more vocal dissidents around here simply continue to hold unrealistic expectations of a 20+ year old game that, quite frankly, we're still lucky to have at all. I've seen other classic games from the era get run into the ground a lot harder (Warcraft III for instance), as well as others that do have more effort put in. But even at its best XI was never exactly the most popular title in the series, so frankly I'm impressed that it's still going with any kind of support at all.

XI has been effectively pinned to the XIV jacket, we exist because we get funded as an extension of that game and all the profits XI makes goto that.

Please stop pushing this false narratrive. Not even all the money FFXIV itself makes goes to FFXIV. Both games are operated by Creative Business Unit III and all the income their projects earn funds everything that they do. Not specifically FFXIV, Not specifically FFXI, Not specifically any one project. FFXIV funds everything the business unit does the same as FFXI does.
STOP BLAMING FFXIV for FFXI's state, FFXI was declining before FFXIV came out and at that time the gaming community at large already didn't care. FFXIV maybe sped it up a little bit but it started going the way it was going long before. Yoshida himself saved the game from death when they were considering pulling the plug. Every penny CBU3's projects make goes to all of its projects based on funding allocations. There is no specific funnel of FFXI monies into FFXIV or into any other specific project. THIS IS NOT HOW BUDGETING WORKS. you CANNOT identify any given dollar recieved as being sent to a specific other project.

Oh and CBU3 is working on Final Fantasy 16, so monies from all its other projects i.e. both FFXI, FFXIV, and anything else they are doing are indirectly being spent on that as well. Stop telling people they're funding FFXIV, they're funding everything Square Enix does, because that's how budgets work. They're funding Square-Enix / Creative Business Unit III, not FFXIV or any other specific project.

[Stuzey]

I think most of the frustration comes from players who care about the game, they want to see the investment it once had, but that will not happen.

Reusing old maps, old mobs, old content, will keep you going for a while, but the game starts to feel stale. That's where we are right now, I saw a lot of people come back for the 20th anniversary, but haven't stuck around.

It's a shame, as the 20th anniversary really excited the xi community, it could be a missed opportunity

But, we are we are, it's still a great game for new people or returnees, with lots of content to get caught up on, it will trundle on, as it is for many more years

[Alhanelem]

It's a shame, as the 20th anniversary really excited the xi community,

The community honestly got a little too excited about the anniversary, they expected things that were not promised or even directly hinted at. They community set themselves up for disappointment when all the team was trying to do was honor the game's history, share memories, that sort of thing.

[Pixela]

FFXI does not exist as a title anymore from a financial standpoint, it only exists as part of FF14. This is proven by every single financial report never ever mentioning ff11.

This has been the case since they changed the playonline accounts in to the square enix accounts Ff14 uses, all our money goes to ff14 and any budget it gets is from YoshiP from the FF14 budget. When I played FF14 I used the money I paid a year previously on Crysta to pay for it.

YoshiP has stated they are merged, many of the staff form ff14 work on 11 when they have time.

Xi exists as part of XIV.

[Stuzey]

yes the player base got excited and started to hope for something special for the 20th anniversary, but you can't blame them, they care, they want to see the game grow, but, it's not where the game is anymore.

You also feel the dev team want the best, they just don't get the support from SE, I don't know what the financial figures are, or how difficult it is to create new content in a 20 year old game, but they do the best they can

[Alhanelem]

FFXI does not exist as a title anymore from a financial standpoint, it only exists as part of FF14.

False. It doesn't exist as part of FF14, it exists as part of Creative Business Unit III. As does all of their other projects.

Xi exists as part of XIV.

Xi exists as part of Creative Business Unit III. It doesn't matter how many times you try to say this or how many times you blame FFXIV for FFXI's state, it's not an accurate representation of the situation, now or ever. You can keep repeating this as much as you want, I'll be there to remind people you're full of it and blinded by your hate of FFXIV.

yes the player base got excited and started to hope for something special for the 20th anniversary,

We did get something special. They created a website dedicated to the purpose which shared memories, interviews, offered a detailed history, art, and other stuff. SE never mentioned, promised, or alluded to any new game feature, mechanic, expansion, or anything else being added to the game in association with the anniversary. The playerbase let their imaginations run wild on that.

It would be different if they promised things of the sort and then didn't deliver them. But that's not what happened.