75 cap content with 119 rewards ?!

[KaraKrieg]

The number one complaint about FFXI from former players is that they wish it was still like 75 cap - to the point of making illegal private servers, even, which is terrible.
A lot of players - especially long-time players - have heaps of lvl 75 gear from over the years packed away somewhere, lots on additional characters now, thanks to the ability to send more and more things by delivery box. However, there's not really any productive way to use any of it.

EverQuest (the inspiration for FFXI) added a type of instanced content at the level 80 or 85 level cap wherein you select a lvl 51 vanilla class, (iirc, only one of each class per group, like Sheol-Gaol) and do a classic dungeon crawl to the OG dragons. The rewards were current; many best in slot.

The opportunities are endless: 75 cap ballista, 75 cap versions of content from Abyssea to the present (instances which drop newer, more relevant gear), new 75 cap seal/crest battlefields, like the EQ style ones, to clear the path to, and defeat, Fafnir within the time limit. The KI from winning would let you get the Nidhogg version; and so on with all the classic HNMs... Just to think of a few.

Besides bringing in players both new and old alike, the super extra bonus feature is that these battles will be too difficult to pull off in scaled-down gear; you're going to need a good party in good 75 cap gear; this means "OLD CONTENT" that so many people entirely disregard, and sits neglected, will now be RELEVANT AGAIN! Not just relevant, but critical. This will have the extra EXTRA added benefit of spreading the population out across the servers; instead of everyone being in Ra'Kaznar, Rabao, Mhaura, Jeuno, and Adoulin, there will be people running all the old content for the best 75 gear. It would also be a good idea to spread out the spawn points or NPCs for these instances amongst many zones, for this reason. It'll not only give so much great, but sadly overlooked content some much-needed attention, exposing the new generation of players to such great content, and allowing some of us old-timers to go back and fill in what we missed, or wax nostalgic.

You could even make a 75 cap "progression" server; launch it as pre-Zilart, but with the modern QOL features, and "release" each expansion/add-on in the order they came out, but in a compressed and evenly-spaced timeframe.

There is a huge untapped market of "oh, but 75.." people that it seems imperative to tap - the influx of revenue could even potentially bolster a second resurgence, nay, a Renaissance, bringing another expansion and/or higher battle content for the bleeding-edge players. Maybe.

In any case, I'm not seeing a downside.

[Alhanelem]

The complaint from *some* former players.

I've been playing since the beginning. I felt like the level cap increase was long needed and should have happened a lot sooner- if it hadn't been 75 for so long players wouldn't have been so used to it. The cap increase itself has very little to do with the game's decline and it was much more of a content-releated issue in the days after Abyssea was complete.I've mused about this much in the past and I"m not going to go on about it. There are plenty of people like me out there too who think that FFXI's real problem was struggling to keep up with the times. Part of it was PS2 limitations, part of it was a dev team that didn't want to take risks (evident in how much FFXIV 1.0 initially stayed closer to FFXI than other MMOs coming out around that time).

There are also plenty of people who left long before the level cap change, who wouldn't share the opinion either.

As far as the content idea though... The only problem I see here is just that FFXI doesn't really do dungeons the way other games do. Dungeons are really just field areas with more structure, mechanics and features, and no mounting. I'm not against the idea of content that can serve to bridge current players with former ones, so I support the spirit of the idea, just not the execution. No special servers. These problems can be solved within the confines of the current game in my opinion. FFXI was and is not big enough to support this kind of a split in the community by having special servers with different rules.

The devs themselves have previously spoken on the idea of a "classic" server or similar idea, and they said it wasn't an option because they did not retain data from old versions of the game. That being said, the "progression" concept could be self-imposed if the expansion installers were once again available seperately and you could install each one as you desired (The game does not require you to install all the expansions, nor do you even have to install them in a particular order, which is very different from other games. None of FFXI's expansions are dependent on each other, aside from the NA release of the game being inseperably bundled with Rise of the Zilart)

FFXI already uses the records of emenince system to bridge the gap between the old progression and the new, the only problem is its basically just a reward system for doing other things rather than content in and of itself. But really, short of a monumental effort like a total remaster/relaunch nothing is going to return the game to its heyday, not even a "classic" or "progression" server.

[KaraKrieg]

The complaint from *some* former players.

I've been playing since the beginning. I felt like the level cap increase was long needed and should have happened a lot sooner- if it hadn't been 75 for so long players wouldn't have been so used to it. The cap increase itself has very little to do with the game's decline and it was much more of a content-releated issue in the days after Abyssea was complete.I've mused about this much in the past and I"m not going to go on about it. There are plenty of people like me out there too who think that FFXI's real problem was struggling to keep up with the times. Part of it was PS2 limitations, part of it was a dev team that didn't want to take risks (evident in how much FFXIV 1.0 initially stayed closer to FFXI than other MMOs coming out around that time).

There are also plenty of people who left long before the level cap change, who wouldn't share the opinion either.

As far as the content idea though... The only problem I see here is just that FFXI doesn't really do dungeons the way other games do. Dungeons are really just field areas with more structure, mechanics and features, and no mounting. I'm not against the idea of content that can serve to bridge current players with former ones, so I support the spirit of the idea, just not the execution. No special servers. These problems can be solved within the confines of the current game in my opinion. FFXI was and is not big enough to support this kind of a split in the community by having special servers with different rules.

The devs themselves have previously spoken on the idea of a "classic" server or similar idea, and they said it wasn't an option because they did not retain data from old versions of the game. That being said, the "progression" concept could be self-imposed if the expansion installers were once again available seperately and you could install each one as you desired (The game does not require you to install all the expansions, nor do you even have to install them in a particular order, which is very different from other games. None of FFXI's expansions are dependent on each other, aside from the NA release of the game being inseperably bundled with Rise of the Zilart)

FFXI already uses the records of emenince system to bridge the gap between the old progression and the new, the only problem is its basically just a reward system for doing other things rather than content in and of itself. But really, short of a monumental effort like a total remaster/relaunch nothing is going to return the game to its heyday, not even a "classic" or "progression" server.

I'm not really keen to copy the classic server either, it was just an idea; it also wouldn't *stay* 75 cap, it would progress as though the game was just released, but with today's QOL, because who really wants to walk to Jeuno and deal with airships or take months to grind to 75? also I was using the EQ dungeon crawls as an example; for us it would undoubtedly be BCNMs. Dynamis is nothing but an instanced dungeon - especially like Beaucedine Glacier. A good old fashioned dungeon crawl isn't exactly FFXI meat and potatoes, but it's not unprecedented. You wouldn't use a barely geared vanilla toon, either; the central point is to give OG players the chance to dust off their lvl 75 gear and give new/returning players a reason to go play the old content for that gear, in order to beat the new 75 cap content for new iLvL 119 BiS rewards. Even still, anyone I've talked to that left after Abyssea, left because of Abyssea. Whether it's dissatisfaction with the new content or the idea of the level cap increase itself, or Q.Q over how much work they put into so much gear that became essentially immediately obsolete; not to mention the period between SoA launch and the REM reforge process; those were some salty people. I'm not saying that everyone who quit wants lvl 75 content, but a great many of them do, and current players, too. A new server is a bad idea; as to servers, I think ultimately they need to merge them all into 3; NA, EU, and JP, and give everyone free world transfers every 3 days for 30 days to give people a chance to reshuffle. There's just no sense in a dozen ghost town servers. It's pretty much just Asura, Odin, and Bahamut with meaningful populations. The resulting increase in population density would benefit everyone, and eliminating those servers will free up valuable resources.
I'm not trying to "return FFXI to its heyday"; I know FFXI won't be SE's #1 earner like in 2012 again, not with PS2 graphics today's kids are spoiled; go play an atari! ): What I AM trying to do is bring to the devs' attention an elegant solution to a well-known problem inspired by the same game that inspired the creation of FFXI.

The new battlefields should have increasing drop rates and/or slots with increasing difficulties like the current ones - and probably should add a 75 capped version of existing ones. These will have very powerful ilvl rewards, so maybe the KIs should be purchased with banked job points from a master job (all those Job points sitting around doing nothing, why not? and more reason to grind jp is more active playtime, which is good for everyone.

I appreciate your reply and welcome your (and anyone's) ideas. Remember, the central theme is new content with new BiS-ish rewards that are 75 capped and very difficult, necessitating engagement in the mountain of old content for the gear. That's the main point, is that there's all that quite lovely content that's getting no love, because it's "obsolete" - that doesn't make it less fun, though.
Further, old "failed" content like Brenner and such could be repurposed, idk. Let me know what you think. I'd like the game to become more inclusive to everyone. Under this system, one could much more easily do a self-imposed progression kind of deal, except with nonlinear freedom. It was definitely cooler playing it with the missions as it came out; I remember when Dynamis first launched, I was like wuttttt?! That obvs won't be the case with these 75 cap treats - none of the rewards should be suddenly *required*, but should make even prime holders go "ok that's nice, I want". I try to keep ideas within reason; people have been crying for a graphics overhaul/remaster for years and it's just not going to happen; they would literally have to write the whole game over again line by line in a new system.


Gil for your thoughts?

[RichLester]

New servers will never happen now. Too much effort for SE. They already said they've lost the resource for FFXI but looking at the players survey, they may come back to do some tweaks. Regarding lvl 75 dropping lvl 119 stuff, I think SE should look at all these upgrading gear drop rates in general, eg. what they can do during the Abyssea campaign is converting all the mandies near Chloris pop in Abyssea Tahrongi into all Chloris, saving a load of time getting 50 chloris buds to upgrade empyrean weapons. Adding REM Tales 6-10 to macrocosmic orb battles during campaign. Stuff like that.

[Alhanelem]

I'm not really keen to copy the classic server either, it was just an idea; it also wouldn't *stay* 75 cap,

Neither was WoW Classic in the end, as they would end up periodically reintroducing the expansions. So it really ended up being as if WoW had just launched, except for having some of the QOL that came later.

Regardless, like I said, the developers already dismissed a special game server years ago because they didn't have copies of old versions of the game to be able to do it without essentially redeveloping the game from scratch (which, wouldn't be a bad idea but terribly expensive and likely taking years)

Anyone who really wants to play 75 cap again can already do so by simply not completing the level 80 limit break and using Level Sync to group with anyone who wants to join them, or having them do the same thing.

I'm not strictly opposed to the idea of gap-bridging content to make it easier for old returnees to get back into the game, but do we really need that? It doesn't really take very long anymore to reach 99 and RoE provides gear to get you started into item level territory.

[KaraKrieg]

New servers will never happen now. Too much effort for SE. They already said they've lost the resource for FFXI but looking at the players survey, they may come back to do some tweaks. Regarding lvl 75 dropping lvl 119 stuff, I think SE should look at all these upgrading gear drop rates in general, eg. what they can do during the Abyssea campaign is converting all the mandies near Chloris pop in Abyssea Tahrongi into all Chloris, saving a load of time getting 50 chloris buds to upgrade empyrean weapons. Adding REM Tales 6-10 to macrocosmic orb battles during campaign. Stuff like that.

That's what I mean; not new servers, consolidating the existing ones into fewer existing ones - like the opposite of new servers. Subtracting servers to storage or whatever. People have been saying this game was dead since 200X, and yet here we are.

[Alhanelem]

That's what I mean; not new servers, consolidating the existing ones into fewer existing ones

We don't really want a server merge. Many of us who are on smaller servers are there because we like the relative lack of RMT influence. And we're in linkshells and still get stuff done.

Most of the people looking for a crowd are already on Asura or Bahamut, nobody really need's SE to force them onto another server, people are where they want to be already.

[KaraKrieg]

I'm still thinking about all those people who quit because abyssea made everything they'd worked years for obsolete, and others who didn't quit but were salty about it nonetheless, and I'm dead certain it would be well received. Leave thinking up specific scenarios & content to the professionals; This is just an idea to bolster engagement, and it has such a broad potential scope, they've got scores of options.

MAKE 75 GREAT AGAIN

[Alhanelem]

I'm still thinking about all those people who quit because abyssea made everything they'd worked years for obsolete,

SE still regularly offers discounts on server transfers, it isn't hard to move to a different one if you actually want to do that.

And as far as content, there is so much to do if you're 75 and so much gear that is readily obtainable for higher levels that I really don't see how more help is needed to ease returnees back into things. That said, I do want more content as does everyone around here- but we don't need server merges and we don't need special servers.

[RichLester]

Yeah, they won't do any server mergers & I'm the same. Found a good linkshell to play the game casually. If you like the lvl75 grinding again, you may have a good few jobs to get up to lvl 99 then gear up. I just think I want lvl 75 gear/weapons that need items that takes ages to get to be made easier so us oldies can just skip up them up to lvl 99, ready for the lvl119 augments. Maybe curio moogle items we can just buy the upgrade items for empyrean weapons with gil, once we have completed Rhapsodies, for example. No harm in speeding things up a bit.