Odd question for former XI players?

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Originally Posted by Conradus

Everybody recalls getting destroyed by a bunny the first time they played. Remember, "No matter how powerful you are, somewhere in the world there is a rabbit that can kick your ass."

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Well, what i remember is the scream of this little damned minion.

http://www.kirinhobby.com/shop/image...CS00753_01.jpg

XI didn't have a Duty Finder and people partied together for XP (6 man parties) in open world areas. There were 'dungeons' in the open world too - some were crazily terrifying if you weren't high level XD - and just getting to the place your party was at could mean dicing with death several times! The only instanced fights were the story fights really. But even then the party composition was down to the players; there was no 'you can't go in, you ain't got a tank'. Not that you would go in without a tank of course. And jobs came and went in fashion. I remember times when TP burns were a thing; poor WHMs never got a look-in because all TP burns wanted RDMs. It was very different from XIV. Don't get me wrong, I love XIV, but I miss those epic dunes parties sometimes!

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Originally Posted by File2ish

Kinda depended on where you were and what you were doing. I recall getting destroyed by a bunny the first time I played FFXI. And later on being unable to do certain BCNMs without a proper tank.

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Jaggedy eared jack says hello.

Nightmare Bunnies in Dynamis Buburu *shudder*

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Originally Posted by File2ish

Well Ninjas were never meant to be tanks, the players just found out they could abuse Utsusemi lol. The game wasn't balanced at all.

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Just like the SMN healers because of the sick MP pool SMNs had, and don't bring up balance to DRGs XD At least they changed wyvern from a 2hr ability.

But with XI you had to find the right job that you enjoyed, my fave was always DNC main. But due to SEs screwed up idea of balance, too many jobs where excluded due to FOTMS. Depending on which job you wanted to level, you could be literally waiting days shouting for an XP party. Also XP didnt scale, so it took a very long time to level up. A days worth of XP could be easily lost through dieing.

But FFXI is an acquired taste, you will either love it or outright hate it. More so if you find the right/wrong job. Albeit now it is a lot less stressful to level up than it ever was. As much of the content can be done solo with trusts.

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Originally Posted by Elladie

There were 'dungeons' in the open world too - some were crazily terrifying if you weren't high level XD - and just getting to the place your party was at could mean dicing with death several times!

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Also the dungeons themselves weren't simple "one hallway, point A to B". There were side ways, traps (Castle Oztroja had trap switches and Garlaige Citadel had the holes dropping you further down into higher level areas), and even Castle Zvahl had teleport puzzles. Basically a big zone in itself.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

But with XI you had to find the right job that you enjoyed, my fave was always DNC main. But due to SEs screwed up idea of balance, too many jobs where excluded due to FOTMS. Depending on which job you wanted to level, you could be literally waiting days shouting for an XP party. Also XP didnt scale, so it took a very long time to level up. A days worth of XP could be easily lost through dieing.

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And this here is the reason I never got past Level 10 Rogue.

Things i miss about ffxi: Community, the sense of partying with people getting to know them (reputation was a lot in there, so you see less douches), Airship and Ship calendars, as weird as it sounds I miss the sensation of "Oh crap i have only 2 min to get inside the airship, hey npc TAKE MY MONEY GOTTA RUN" and missing the airship by one step/entering the airship just in the nick of time, it made the world feel alive. Danger in the maps, i mean it was thrillin trying to sneak through places, right now mobs are so weak that the aggro was an annoyance in ffxi they where very strong and you feared aggro so it wasn't annoying. Maat battle, as far as i know people loved/hated the fight it was hard as hell a lot of preparation but it made you feel acomplished. And as another post said, the pride of having a drop which you worked for and not to drop it in the next patch.
Play online music and the sound of logging in just for nostalgia.

Things i don't miss: hours and hours of shouting for pt. the exp loss srsly after this game i really don't want exp loss. The waiting for 5 years for 1 drop of dynamis because you had very bad luck at lotting. and after this game the slow pace of fights, i mean before i could fall asleep for 3 min and see the pt going normaly nothing went bad.
PS limitations.

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Originally Posted by Waffilicious

Things i miss about ffxi:

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I just think its a shame the kept console support for so long with FFXI, or at least moved to newer consoles PS3 for example. Then they could have taken it to a new level, improved graphics, UI, new mob models, because like killing the same model rabbits and bats is so much fun :P

Now they are dropping console support they arent continuing major support, aka no more content after RoV.

Being truthful there was a helluva lot of drama among end game LSs in FFXI, a lot of favoritism among them too where a select few got the rest of the LS to "work" for them, eg farming dynamis.

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Originally Posted by ErikMynhier

Some players may no know how lucky they are thatffxiv has universal teleports... I dont know about you all but I made my fortune in the early years as a WHM port-taxi.

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Now FFXI has more ways of TPiing around than FFXIV XD

Some players may no know how lucky they are thatffxiv has universal teleports... I dont know about you all but I made my fortune in the early years as a WHM port-taxi.

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Originally Posted by Blood-Aki

I was one of those making sure a monk does not sub nin.

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The irony about Mnk/Nin is that it became a requirement for some hard mode BC's, especially the hard mode AA fights to keep shadows up so the Healer could pace their healing.

Aside from all this there was also a skill system. It was slightly RNG for leveling it up. The bad thing was around lv 20, people started to level faster than the skill ups for each level. Creating a gap that required people to go back and party fight mobs for 0 exp otherwise if your skill cap was to low, tanks and dps could not hit the target mob. Spell casters would get interrupted a lot and cures/heals were not as powerful. Also a lot of the skills crosses jobs and were not important beyond your primary or secondary weapons until Abysea came out. Then you had to have all skills on your job caped so you could weapon skill for red or blue. Mages also had to have all spells skills capped or some spells would not affect the target at all. Do not ask what Bards and Summoners had to go through to get their skills leveled. Then there was Blue Mage whose ability to learn magic was based entirely on their blue magic skill level. Pup automations had their own separate skill set. However even if target levels were met there was always the RNG to getting an actual skill up and by what amount min=0.1 ~max=0.5. This did not include crafting and fishing skills and skill ups. Although it went along a similar path.

Now to make combat even slower. We used to skill up on decent mobs; nerfed to Even Match and up at some point. ToA gave friendly npc's for healers, bards and Rdm to skill up on. The attack interval was 8 hours apart or something and lasted only for so long. Wings of the goddess had Campaign that gave walls and NPC objects to attack that gave skill ups to a lv 50 cap, didn't fight back, and was more frequent than Assault. That got nerfed some time laiter and 75% of campaign participation ended when skill ups stopped.. Then they undid that nerf last year, and its still dead.

Over all while the skill set was ok in concept, it created folks who had little tolerance for folks who didn't meet certain numbers with damage, accuracy, and/or the amount you can heal. Yes Healing magic skill gave a boost to cures, on top of reduced spell interruption, status removal, accuracy and damage of cure on undead. Even the I level sets from Adoulin had to be redone because of how entwined that weapons accuracy/damage was to the skill rating of that weapon. But what I wouldn't give to see something like the original Oatixur for Monk in FFXIV

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Originally Posted by ErikMynhier

Some players may no know how lucky they are thatffxiv has universal teleports... I dont know about you all but I made my fortune in the early years as a WHM port-taxi.

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Funnily enough that's a recent change in FFXI - home point teleporting like how aetherytes work in FFXIV (extra homepoints have been added in each city and once you've re-attuned to them, you can teleport between them for gil, just like FFXIV). But yeah, I remember doing teleport-taxi services as WHM (I didn't always charge gil either - if it looked like someone needed help, I'd gladly teleport them for free). :)

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Originally Posted by Terrini

And this here is the reason I never got past Level 10 Rogue.

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THF was pretty much always welcome in parties due to SATA and treasure hunter.

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Originally Posted by Imakun

To answer your question without getting lost int 13 years of XI: no, there were basically no roles like the ones we have now in XIV. Every job had its specific skills and abilities, but the sheer amount of them and flexibility of combinations thanks to the support job system made you capable of filling a much more dynamic role during a fight.

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Yet the players shoehorned many jobs into doing only specific things, SMN as healing, RDM as enfeebler, SCH as stunner, NIN as tank. The flexibility wasn't there because the playerbase didn't allow it. Try going as something that wasn't "accepted" by the community and see how long it took you to get a party that wasnt just more open minded and accepting friends.

Not to mention many encounters dictated what job you used. Magic resist mobs, weak to this, strong to that. You wouldn't use MNK against leeches, but you would against skeletons.

Not sure if your question was actually answered but I shall try.

Level-ing up
In xi, killing monsters was one of the only ways to get experience points for a long time - there was no quest exp. So players typically party up and kill monsters. Solo was not made possible until many many years later so a party was essential.

Exp Party
A party consisted of 6 players. A generic party would have 1 tank, 1 healer, a support and 3 damage dealers (DPS).

Generally, the party would travel to a an area with the monsters of the appropriate level and can give decent exp per kill and camp at a safe spot. Thereafter, a party member would head out, look for a monster and pull it back to the camp where the party will proceed to slaughter it for experience points, and then it gets rinsed and repeated for a few hours.

Everything takes place in the open world and there was no queuing up for dungeons etc - party-forming is done at the towns or through player search (you have the option of looking for all tanks who are between level 40 to 42, for example).

Roles and jobs
As there was no queue-ing and party formation was based on players' discretion, you could technically go with whatever jobs you fancy. Due to the shortage of certain classes at times, people also got creative with what they could do with different classes - hence the 'flexibility'.

For example, ninjas were designed to deal damage but they had a particular ninjutsu that allowed them to create shadows which was capable for absorbing attacks - players go creative with this and made ninja into a tank specialising at taking 0 damage. ANother example was summonses in its early days - summonses had a lot of mp and their summons weren't very impressive - so players made summonses equip white mage healing spells and go as healers.

However, traditional roles were still in place where jobs like paladin and warrior were designed to tank, and classes like ranger and dark knight were designed to deal damage and jobs like bard and red mage were designed to support.

Anyone can DPS?
Jobs were introduced without the development team really knowing what it was meant to do. Many jobs were given both tanking and DPS ability/utilities.

For example, Samurai was introduced and designed to tank but at the same time was given damage dealing capacity. Overtime, players decided to play it as a DPS more than a tank and the development team followed suit. Similarly, warrior was designed to be a tank but mid-game/end-game it did not have sufficient tanking qualities compared to PLD to warrant its place as the most effective tank, so players were using it as a DPS more often than not.

Furthermore, xi combat was heavily reliant on auto-attacks, which generated a resources for the player to perform a much more powerful weaponskill (think limit break system in ffxiv, except that it fills up faster) and powerful weapon skills were crucial to the damage output of the parties.

HOWEVER, they were not native to jobs but to weapons. This means that if you were a warrior using sword, you had access to sword weapon skills; if you were a warrior using axe, you had axe weapon skills. Furthermore, higher level weapon skills were arguably equally powerful. This means that even if you were a white mage, if you had access to a really powerful weaponskill, you could still dish out a respectable number.

Also, ffxi was not linear progression - there are unique items in the game that had very special qualities. For example, a weapon called kraken club allowed players to attack up to 8 times per swing, making it possible for white mage to be be quite good at dealing damage too.

Anyone can tank?
Yes and no. Tanking entails 2 elements: damage mitigation and hate management. While many classes could deal with damage mitigation, haste management might be an issue. But lets put hate management aside and think about damage mitigation, yes many non-tank classes could do it.

For example, red mage and blue mage had spells that massive increase their defences, plus they could use stoneskin - this means that they were capable of taking very little damages. Also, when things get nasty, you could run away, sleep/bind the monster and use the time to recover. Meanwhile, they could also use the ninjutsu shadow thing mentioned above to absorb damage.


Anyone can heal?
Not really. Healing was almost the exclusive domain of white mage, red mage and later on dancer (not sure about scholar).

Unconventional parties
In xi, since there was no queuing etc, people could form parties with unconventional set ups.

For example, you could form a party of 5 black magi and a bard - the bard could pull the monster to the camp, the black magi would sleep the monster, then focus fire their most power spell on the monster, then sleep it again, then focus fire on it again. In fact, players had done an entire raid with only black magi - 18 black magi (3 parties of 6) focus firing their spells at the same time and it worked.

Another example was monk party - as blunt damage was super effective on skeletons and monk fists were blunt damage, you could have a full party of monks with a healer and burn through skeletons easily.

On hindsight?
As everyone else said, it was a different game - more refined in some areas but less so in others but ffxiv is certainly more deliberated, organised and planned whereas ffxi was more spontaneous.

The jobs in XI were taken to fights more or less. Like XIV you could play everything. In XI fights had specific strategies to them and each job changed to fit the roles.

As a guild leader in XI you built your team around the fight, each one had a different optimal strategy.

Mnk such in some fights, but are godly in others.
Rngs were king in some fights, sub par in others.
Sometimes rdm or nin tanks were king, others pld.
Sometime you needed stuns sometimes you didn't.
Some fights required zerging down a mob... others would wipe you in 10secs if you tried and required a more slow drawn out strategy.

XI and XIV are almost polar opposites.

XIV the fights are scripted and all jobs are forced into a playstyle. The fights are purly based on avoiding 1shot mechanics and maintaining the required group dps to avoid dying. Typical endgame fight is 7-12mins. Typical endgame setup uses 8ppl the 8 is forced on us by game design. Typically content is relevant for 6months. Game is designed for ease of gameplay and casual playstyles.

XI the fights were pure random on how the boss reacted. You build the party based on the mob you are fighting, most endgame guild took the optimal setups to make it easier. Your strategy and how you played drastically changed based on the mobs behavior and zone/area you are fighting in. Typical endgame fight was 15mins to 1hr. Typical endgame setup used 18ppl but could be attempted and successful with less if you overgeared the content. Typically content was relevant for 6yrs. Game is designed for long amount of time investment to succeed and designed for the hardcore playstyle.


As for your job each job you had multiple roles they filled. If you were solo/party/allaince/endgame the roles of the jobs completely changed.

A few examples: Each one of these are separate party roles that were utalized in XI.

Rdm: Main Heal, Support Heal, Main Support, Main Tank, Main Enfeeble, Main Stun, Main kite
Mnk: Main Sustained Dps, Range Burst dmg dps
Smn: Main Heal, Support Heal, Main Puller, Burst Dmg dps
Thf: Main hate control, Main Puller, Utility (INcreased drop rate), main kite
Brd: Main Support, Main Crowd Control, Main Puller
Drk: Spike Dmg DPS, Main Tank, Stun
Blm: Main Crowd Control, Stun, Burst DPS
Sam: Primary Skill chain player, Burst DPS on fights were feeding tp is bad.
SCH: Main DOT dps, Main Heal, Main Nuke
and so on.

Sub jobs:
/nin increased survivability
/war increased dmg
/whm increased healing
/thf increased burst dmg, weak version of treasure hunter
/drk ability to stun minor dmg increase
/dnc increased ability to solo
/bst allowed you to solo the whole game (bst had to be = or higher level then main a hidden effect of the job)
/rdm increased spell casting and reduced cooldowns. Access to heals and minor enfeebling
/blm increase in nuke dmg and several dots
/sam increased tp generation (faster weaponskills)
/rng increased rng dmg and access to range weaponskills.
and so on.

The complexity of XI's job system is multitudes more complex then XIV's. It came from the devs in XI making the jobs and the game and saying go for it figure it out. There were so many factors that went into figuring the optimal setup for things even then your guilds gear also factored into which strategy you had to do. IF you were not geared enough for 1 strat fights were still killable utilizing a different setup/strategy. In XIV the devs are forcing us to play the game the way they designed it to be played more or less. Everything is equally good as everything else more or less in XIV the only difference is vanity. Xiv 2 things matter, your ability to dodge and your ability to pump out dps.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

THF was pretty much always welcome in parties due to SATA and treasure hunter.

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Yes but you didn't get that til 12 and no one wanted a level 10!

I may have missed it skimming through this thread, but I am surprised no one mentioned the gear system that FFXI had. The whole concept of having certain extremely under leveled pieces of gear being BiS for certain actions and having to progress via farming side grades for all of those specific actions, was one of the most unique differences between FFXI and most MMO's. You could change gear mid-combat. People would sometimes collect 10+ sets of gear for one class and either use a 3rd-party program like windower to automatically switch gear at the right moment or make an extensive macro palette and add an extra 2-3 button presses per command. (The manual macro swaps made the game feel a lot more action based, especially when you tried to do Prespell/midspell/idle gear swaps.) To keep it brief, imagine being able to start a spell in 14 on blm with full spell speed. Then swap to another set of CRIT/DET before the spell goes off and retain both the spell speed increase/crit/det buff. There were also items that would specifically enhance abilities,like traits, which you would macro in for Manawall/Fire3/Apocastasis/whatever every single time you used those abilities. It was a chore for some people and fun for others. Either way, it allowed some pieces of gear to still be retained and used long after it would have been tossed away or used for glamour fodder in another MMO.

(YAY! gotta love the 1000 character limit...........)

Ballista.

I miss it so much. I miss my SAM/RNG Soboro Sukehiro days.

Meditate > Dap Dap dap > Sidewinder > Dap dap dap > Sidewinder > Reverbation. Dead. <3

Don't forget the different stats that we got.

-Fast cast (affected casting and recast times of spells since that game didn't/doesn't have global cool downs for spells). If you were a White Mage, you'd cast cure V and right after you could cast cure IV while you wait Cure V to be available again unless you had enough Fast Cast to spam one spell. It was way more efficient and noticeable than Spell Speed in FFXIV.
-Store TP. This was essential at some point, probably still is going strong. It allows you to get more TP per auto-attack so certain hit-builds were hot so one could use Weaponskills more frequently. When I played Ranger and experience party had a Corsair with Store TP roll/buff on, I could shoot 4 times with bow and WS, rinse and repeat. Sure was fun and if the mob wasn't dead when I got enough for a 2nd WS, I'd tank.

Not to forget attack, magic attack, magic accuracy, accuracy, conserve tp, parry, shield block, evasion, magical crit. hit rate, crit. hit rate, every elemental resistance actually made huge difference when stacked enough, all status debuff resistances, piercing/blunt/slashing damage resistance, damage taken-, magic damage taken-, physical damage taken-, blood pact timer reduction (smn only), pet defense, pet damage taken-, pet accuracy, pet attack, pet ability cooldown timer reductions (mainly Beast Master), enhanced abilities, enhanced traits gear, augmented traits and abilities. And I think I'm forgetting many too!

What it comes to battle, there was no attack indicators (the red damage zones in ffxiv) at all so if you didn't know where to stand beforehand to maybe avoid it, you'd get hit. It was all pure guessing game most of the time.

End game content? Old time Dynamis took 3½ hours at "worst". One zone would take in closer to 60 people. That also meant we'd have 3 alliances of 18 people. Sometimes, depending who showed up, 1 healer had 15 people to keep alive! FUN TIMES! Especially when one MNK enemy with 2h-special ability "Hundred Fists" would slaughter a pile of players in 15 seconds before it went down.

In the end, before I quit just after the release of Seekers of Adoulin, I mainly soloed Abyssea as Beast Master or helped friends get their stuff done. I can say FFXI was a slow game compared to FFXIV, but they are very different games after all. 14 is a lot more simplified, more forgiving, a lot faster (with everything), more holding hands with the player, a lot less cryptic with quests/missions (people had to find answers from dat. files to know what the heck to do next), and prettier! But the last one is only due to FFXIV being newer game with better graphics. :)

Ps. Level Sync was a heaven's sent! One could level up to 75 (before Abyssea came and increased level cap) in lv 10-20 areas in a few days/weeks if they had outside healer mules. :3 They had to add Level Sync because otherwise it was impossible to find 6 people 1-3 levels around you to exp jobs. I think these days it's still the same leveling: Solo to lv 30, then go to Abyssea as a leech person who opens boost treasure boxes with keys to level up until they could fight the high level mobs themselves. (If they had the skills trained.)

If there's one thing that FFXI did right it was to make your characters feel powerful. You had abilities tied to long recast timers (originally 2 hours) which would allow you to use incredibly powerful skills. White Mages could heal an entire party to full HP instantly, Paladin's became invulnerable to all physical damage for 30 seconds and generated enough aggro to steal mobs from allies, Summoners could use their strongest summoning skills and so forth.

In FFXIV, instead of us feeling strong it feels more like the enemies are just weak. Even with a basic level of equipment, the overworld critters die very quickly and dungeons don't require much skill to beat. There are no combination attacks either, so jobs feel very insular compared to XI where timing and positioning meant more.

Mostly though, I do miss my summoner. For all their problems, they truly felt powerful in the right hands. Originally, their biggest problem was the long recast time on pet skills (1 minute) and though those attacks could be extremely powerful, accuracy issues and 59 seconds of low level white magic was solidifying their presence as a healer. Later though, this was separated into Wards and Rage. Wards were party buffs and other defensive skills, while Rage let you attack with damaging skills.

What many people forget, however, is that summoners were the preferred tactic for dealing with several bosses throughout the game. The Astral Flow for summoner was a devastatingly powerful area effect skill, with the caveat of it draining all your MP. This skill was the Summoner's 2hr ability, but due to it's long duration you could potentially get as many as three astral flow attacks out during this time. This meant that some bosses, such as Promyvion, which spawned a lot of smaller mobs, could be dealt with far quicker and easier than using normal tactics.

Oh, and when I say 'devastatingly powerful' I meant it. The damage was in a class of its own, easily capable of taking down as much as 30% of an entire boss' HP bar. And while the damage was lessened at higher levels it still remained a viable tactic for dealing with some of the strong opponents you would face. Although, by then you had access to stronger blood pact rage skills which would deal significant damage once per minute. Later, they would add new blood pacts including Odin's Zanetsuken and Alexander's Perfect Defense, the former being an AoE instant-kill and the latter rendering the party highly resistant to all forms of damage.

This made summoners sought after for certain content, in fact many didn't even consider it optional. They were simply too powerful not to have along for the ride. Kind of makes Ank Morn feel like the consolation prize by comparison.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

Yet the players shoehorned many jobs into doing only specific things, SMN as healing, RDM as enfeebler, SCH as stunner, NIN as tank. The flexibility wasn't there because the playerbase didn't allow it. Try going as something that wasn't "accepted" by the community and see how long it took you to get a party that wasnt just more open minded and accepting friends.

Not to mention many encounters dictated what job you used. Magic resist mobs, weak to this, strong to that. You wouldn't use MNK against leeches, but you would against skeletons.

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Too true. But enfeebling was a sideline for RDM. You were really there to keep Refresh up on all the other mages.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

If there's one thing that FFXI did right it was to make your characters feel powerful.

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How could you feel powerful when it took a full party to kill 1 rabbit/goblin/bat etc? :P

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Originally Posted by Conradus

Too true. But enfeebling was a sideline for RDM. You were really there to keep Refresh up on all the other mages.

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True about RDM, plus haste/flurry :P But I liked playing RDM as a melee with macro gear swaps for casts with DNC as sub. Made it a lot more fun for me. Refresh+aspir samba, melee TP set, casting gear to macro gearswap to. WS gear. Was a lot more fun than just back line.

But most players dictated that "you cant do that" hella annoying. Plus put SCH in the hands of a player that knows the job in and out and they were very effective at being than just a stun bot. Or just as a sub job.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

How could you feel powerful when it took a full party to kill 1 rabbit/goblin/bat etc? :P

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I felt pretty powerful at 75 killing mobs that were 80+, and parties of six people would fight for exp. Level 75 exp parties would run to zone if they caught aggro on some of the stuff I fought solo.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

How could you feel powerful when it took a full party to kill 1 rabbit/goblin/bat etc? :P

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Most of the enemies slain by parties were higher level than the adventurers. Sure, you were in a group of 6 level 50 people, but you fighting monsters which were level 60 or higher. Nothing beats the fun of landing a Freeze Magic burst as a level 50 Black Mage and wiping out 60% of a monsters HP when it's at least ten levels stronger than you!

Later on, many parties opted to fight weaker enemies in larger quantities. They were maybe 5 levels higher than the party, but you fight a huge number of them.

While many will draw comparisons to the 'Decent Challenge' mobs who'd wipe the floor with some players, many players fought far tougher mobs significantly stronger than themselves and won. Soloing notorious monsters, for example, even taking on the gods like Byakko without backup.

The job system in XI was designed so you could mix and match skills to give yourself an edge in a variety of situations. The XIV job system is locked down tighter than Fort Knox with almost no flexibility. Still, maybe they'll improve that aspect of the game as time goes by.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

How could you feel powerful when it took a full party to kill 1 rabbit/goblin/bat etc? :P

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Partly because the mobs them selves felt more powerfull. trash mobs didn't exist back then,

in modern mmos mobs are designed to be weak trash that's easy to kill. yet it still takes a dozen skills to drop one. this makes your skills feel weak and that makes you feel weak.

in xi though 1 single mob could kill your entire party which made the mobs feel more dangerous which in turn made you feel stronger for killing them.

then you had those moments where you aggroed a mob several levels higher than you and manage to smash it with your 2hours abilities. POWAHHHH!!

skills themselves had more power and weight to them as well.

Wow this is a lot to comb through, lol. But good insight into the game.

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Originally Posted by Magis

Also the dungeons themselves weren't simple "one hallway, point A to B". There were side ways, traps (Castle Oztroja had trap switches and Garlaige Citadel had the holes dropping you further down into higher level areas), and even Castle Zvahl had teleport puzzles. Basically a big zone in itself.

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I miss all of that. Sadly, there is nothing like that, or even comes close, in 14. There is no danger in 14. No excitement from exploring or "close calls". It's kind of a.. boring world :/

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Which is why blms totally fell out of favor in ToAU and had to resort to soloing puddings for their exp.

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really? I thought it was these little {bastardsword}s
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/...20070527095723

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Originally Posted by Wildsprite

really? I thought it was these little {bastardsword}s
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/...20070527095723

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Yep. It was the introduction of Colibri which were easy levelling for melees but killed weaponskills with their sapping TP ability and killed mages with their ability to reflect spells that turned levelling into just melees autoattacking.

I'm surprised no one posted this picture yet:

http://i.imgur.com/BcFD9Wm.jpg

>w>

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

I'm surprised no one posted this picture yet:

http://i.imgur.com/BcFD9Wm.jpg

>w>

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Gotta love how warp was included in the MB chart.

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

Gotta love how warp was included in the MB chart.

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To be fair, it did enhance your skill. Though I can't remember if it fell between Dark or Enhancing magic.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

Yet the players shoehorned many jobs into doing only specific things, SMN as healing, RDM as enfeebler, SCH as stunner, NIN as tank. The flexibility wasn't there because the playerbase didn't allow it. Try going as something that wasn't "accepted" by the community and see how long it took you to get a party that wasnt just more open minded and accepting friends.

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While this is certainly true to a point, SE themselves did a lot of this too with the uneven nerf bat. I'm still kind of shocked at how much they pushed back against the playerbase with certain jobs but didn't try very hard to shoehorn NIN and SAM into the roles they originally had for them (puller/dps and tank, respectively). They are still trying to undo some of the damage they did to certain jobs this way.

PLAYERS: "Oh cool RDM has some MDB and can hold hate with spells, I bet I could tank magic bosses. Also NIN/DRK tanking."
SE: "Enfeebling/Dark magic Enmity nerf."

PLAYERS: "Ok, well RDM enfeebling is high and it looks like they have quite a few of them, lets do that."
SE: "Mobs are immune to everything because eff you."

PLAYERS: "Guess I'll just heal then, I can handle it better than a WHM at this point."
SE: "Introducing SCH!"

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

Gotta love how warp was included in the MB chart.

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Oh gawd, D2'ing people just for the hell of it lol

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Originally Posted by Mimilu

I'm surprised no one posted this picture yet:

http://i.imgur.com/BcFD9Wm.jpg

>w>

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This image, and any one of the poster-sized skillchain charts. But I mean, "it did not require much in terms of thinking" :V