Running out of leveling content.

[bungiefan]

You don't have to have a melee job to do that.

My BLM seems too squishy to survive, and spells get interrupted too easily in some fights. A melee will have more HP to take hits and better armor. I had to have a friend come out on DRG to handle the Hinge Oils for Windurst Mission 7-1. I can't solo Purple The New Black on a mage either. Some fights are not soloable without being a melee.

[Zaknafein]

My BLM seems too squishy to survive, and spells get interrupted too easily in some fights. A melee will have more HP to take hits and better armor. I had to have a friend come out on DRG to handle the Hinge Oils for Windurst Mission 7-1. I can't solo Purple The New Black on a mage either. Some fights are not soloable without being a melee.

If you were on Bahamut I would help you ^^

[Tagrineth]

The Abyssean system has killed most of the game. Too many people don't know how to play their jobs right because of the immense exp able to be gained in a matter of hours. Most gear has lost a lot of its value. Sitting in an alliance doing nothing for thousands upon thousands of exp is ridiculous... What has happened to my FFXI lol...

Er.. people didn't know how to play their jobs right before Abyssea too. Good gear constantly lost value before abyssea too. People still deadweighted their way through exp before abyssea. None of this is new to the game.

[Zaknafein]

Nope nothing new. Just multiplied several factors over the noob invasion that astral burn spawned~

[azjazo]

Sorry, I always see this kind of topics where people complan that its "to easy" to level, dunno maybe it is, its certanly faster but Im stuck with a bunch of jobs in the low levels of 20-40 and find it not hard but not easy to level either, its good, certanly is a very far cry from the days of looking for party for hours then leveling for a couple more hours just to leven a couple of levels, but... dunno you guys really want to go back there? stop seeing ewverything with your nostalgia googles ppl...

sure you can call the old ways more "rewarding" but dunno theres always challege if you want to look for it, maybe now its not hard to level one job, but go get the maat cap, sure its not like getting it "back in the day" but it will keep your grinding needs ocupyed and let us all casuals have or fun leveling like you leveled in the grinding ages taking the same amount of time, and if you feel cheated that some people have a job leveled that took you ages to level yourself, nobody is stoping you to level all 20 jobs to 99 if that makes you feel better and rewarded...

I leveled SMN "the hard way" took me a couple of years cuz It was the first one I leveled, I didnt had another job to help me farm, and had to do all the limit breaks, fight the avatars 1 on 1, and of course the boring days of being a second hand healer in parties before 70 and had to solo bombs and stuff so lonely forever alone etc for some levels.

I had my fun, it made me a very good SMN but Im not saying other people should do all the stuff I did to be good SMNs. I give advice to my fellow ls SMNs, and recived advice from others back in the day.

Im getting off topic so, take this open letter as it is, and keep the current non-grinding leveling system, people that says that you can level a job in a day, takes into consideration you have all the money, gear, power levels, and TIME to do so, and those people should not be taken as a norm, the norm now is taht it still takes you time, you have to still have some challenge gearing up, getting a pt, and most of time theres no PL, and I dont know you, but I dont play for more that 2-3 hours at a time, more than that I feel dirty, and i dont play everyday of the week, so, yeah, I am glad I can still aspire to level another job taht wont take me 2 years now.

[Akujima]

The difference is WoW planned for people like you. You get bits and peices of story as you level. In FFXI, the story is something you do after you level (as you don't get muhc/any EXP while doing it).

And that's why WoW is a more successful MMO. It forces you to go on an adventure, and gives you incentives for doing so. SE should take a lesson.

[Septimus]

Er.. people didn't know how to play their jobs right before Abyssea too. Good gear constantly lost value before abyssea too. People still deadweighted their way through exp before abyssea. None of this is new to the game.

This. Seriously, this.

Terrible players are nothing new. We had terrible players at level 75 back before CoP when a great XP party was 5k per hour. (Not including RNG burns which were just being started back then.) Most of them were clever and leveled jobs that were needed at the time- WHM, RDM, BRD, PLD, BLM. But there were plenty of terrible players who were smart enough to gimp their way to 75 my making their own parties.

There is such a nostalgia filter effect going on in these forums. No one seems to remember back when 5k per hour XP was "OMG AWESOME!" XP. No one seems to remember when you could exit from Dynamis with 5 pieces of relic armor even though you killed everything non-stop for three and a half hours because the drop rate was just that terrible. No one seems to remember what a pain it was to sit in a tree for years to see a dragon spawn purple 90% of the time. No one seems to remember wasting hours farming items to make enfeebling medications for luck-based missions where you would still loose gobs of XP and required specific job set ups. Those of us who played that FFXI don't seem to be quite as nostalgic and see Abyssea as a pretty good deal.

[Greatguardian]

Not this crap again.

1) No, SE is not and has not been "Planning to get rid of FFXI". MMOs that survive their first few years don't just up and die unless the company itself is pretty much dead. Ultima Online and Everquest are both older than FFXI and still running. Everquest 2 is only slightly younger than FFXI and still runs as well. And yes, Everquest and Everquest 2 run simultaneously despite both being MMOs made by the same company. People don't just cut off the well-performing first volume when they start up the second. MMOs live as long as their companies are still existent and making some form of profit. FFXI has more than enough subs to meet these criteria.

I'm sorry that I don't recognize anyone's "Internet Common Sense Business Degree", but that's how it is. Just because the game was losing players, and our Dev staff has been reduced, does not mean the parent company has any plans at all to discontinue service.

2) Get the hell out with that Skill vs Time crap. No one cares. It's been said more than enough on these forums and has absolutely nothing at all to do with the amount of "Leveling content" in FFXI. Note that I still use quotes around that term because, as far as I'm concerned, there really isn't "EXP content" in FFXI aside from Quests/Missions with EXP rewards (Campaign, Campaign/Dominion Ops, Besieged, Scroll Quests, FoV, GoV, etc). Killing trash monsters in a group of 6 for hours is not content.

3) When even people here agree that they treat EXP as content because they are unable to get people together to do real content, how the hell would it make any sense whatsoever to start adding arbitrary level caps to old content again? The entire point of raising the level cap on them was to make them more accessible to the people who were unable to do it before. Does that translate into "Easier" to a skilled, or well-connected player? Damn straight. But what sort of skilled or well-connected player hasn't had Einherjar, Dynamis, Limbus, Sea, Sky, Mission lines, and potentially even Salvage done for ages now? Why does this matter to you if it's easier? If you really want to create an artificial challenge for yourself, you can manually level sync down to someone with a level 75 character in those events.

To those that have posted about being unable to do missions, I highly, highly suggest just trying to do them if you can. You would be surprised how much you can accomplish on your own now. Even if you're a squishy Blm. Try different things, see what works best. Honestly, it can be a lot of fun. And of course, if you run into someone else who needs the same mission, or just someone who doesn't mind helping out, that's just a nice bonus.

People in FFXI, and in life really, are always, always, always more ready and willing to help someone who is already putting in a conscious and visible effort. If you ask someone out of the blue if they want to help kill Shadow Lord, you may get lucky and get a yes, but more often than not people are just going to be silent and/or say that they're busy, even if (especially if) they're not. But if you start climbing Castle Z and fighting the Shadow Lord by yourself, and keep a positive attitude ("/l D'oh! Almost had him that time! Bloody Shadow Lord stole my knickers and threw my dingie on the barbie!"), people will not only be more likely to help out if asked, but may even offer to help on their own.

[Zanoza]

Honestly, I have to agree with some of what has been said here.

No person should be able to leech a job from 30-90 in as little as 2 days, it is ridiculous and takes away a lot of content from the overall gameplay the player ought to be experiencing. People don't know how to propetrly utilize their jobs and often I've seen Lv. 90 BLMs without all of their yellow proc spells because clearly they though Abyssea burning was a good idea, but couldn't afford so many spells all at once.

There should be a hightened level restriction on entry, such as 75. It would create much more balance to the game.

Indeed SE killed the ablility to "Learn" a job and its role in a pt either EG or regular pt cause of the low lvl limit to get in. i can see if a person already knows how to play the job and have the required skill lvls caped already from another job, but ive seen BLU's and WHM's that couldnt handle normal pt/solo tasks because of the Ease of lvling.

[Akujima]

If you feel you have to get 600 exp per kill and 50+ levels per party then maybe you shouldn't be playing an MMO.

The thread should have stopped at this line.