To those who played FF11...

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Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

To those who played FF11...

What in FF11 do you think that FF14 didn't do better?

Thanks.

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FYI -

FFXI is coming back, a full remake with all previous content and new content is imminent, will be however mobile.

Looks very pretty.

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Originally Posted by SionDurant

will be however mobile..

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Into the trash it goes

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...14/249/a6d.png

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

this is not a good thing, this is a bad thing. imagine if you can only do 1 full timer of Savage every 3 days. imagine if once you get a token from Byakko EX you can't kill it again for another 24 hours. imagine if once you complete Rabanastre whether you got loot or not you can't queue again for another 24 hours.

gating events behind completely artificial and arbitrary timers doesn't mean it has longer lasting content.

yes, XI does have more types of content, but some of the older content lasted a lot longer than it should only because players couldn't farm it as much as their playtime allowed.

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Lockouts on FFXI were barely noticeable due to the sheer amount of content, and all of it was relevant at the same time, for years. That's another one of the huge differences between XI and XIV. In XIV, once you've got your weekly stuff, there's nothing to do that's relevant.

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

this is not a good thing, this is a bad thing. imagine if you can only do 1 full timer of Savage every 3 days. imagine if once you get a token from Byakko EX you can't kill it again for another 24 hours. imagine if once you complete Rabanastre whether you got loot or not you can't queue again for another 24 hours.

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This just show how little content XIV has. XI did this and none had a problem with it because thre were a lot more stuff to do and a lot more gear to get that just 2 pieces per slot.

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Originally Posted by Mokkabron

Give me some proof big guy.

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...640#post583640

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Originally Posted by Justuas

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...640#post583640

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Thanks. You are a good boy

Too many things are better, but most of them have been mentioned by everyone else.
The top things that I really miss are:

- True Support classes. My favorite class type to play in MMOs and single player games is support. Not healer. Support. I want to be able to control the flow of battle through buffs and debuffs and I find myself feeling more proud from seeing my party do better because of those buffs than actual things like healing numbers and DPS. If the Dev team were able to increase the party size to 5, adjust some core aspects of the battle system and add a straight up support role with all the classes I love in it (a real Bard, Geomancer, Corsair, Dancer, etc) I'd drop healer and DPS for it in an instant.

- Healers being healers and not getting yelled at for it. Healers having real buff skills to support the se. Healers actually having to focus on doing their job because the boss fights were actually difficult. Healers not getting yelled at to spam holy or banish because they "weren't doing enough". Real challenging content that required healers to be healers. I miss that.

- Exploration value. FFXI did not have instanced dungeons. EXPing was a grind in a location against enemies several levels above your own for an extended amount of time. Because there was no queue connected to other servers, players were required to shout for parties or put up their seek icon to get one. EXP parties required more communication and set ups. Players had to travel to their farm spots and know how to get to places without running into too many enemies. On top of that, event LSs had to actually travel to their event areas and not just queue up to savage from a random ass city somewhere. All areas were thoroughly used and explored almost constantly. On top of that, many dungeons had secret paths and short cuts that lead to hidden areas of fields such as Crawler's Nest leading to the secret lake which happens to be the spawn location of the Hyper Notorious level 60 Monster, Simurgh whom you all know as "Simurgh's Strider" in Eureka.

- The ability to solo. At first this didn't exist but after a while, soloing became something easy for most jobs in the game to do in case someone didn't want to party up with other people for a dedicated long amount of time.

- Subjobs. The SJ system is basically the old version of our role action/cross class system in FFXIV except there are no limitations on the skills you can use. If you were level 99 you could use all skills up to level 49 of your subjob with some potency exceptions (BRD and COR being 2 of them. Cards were half potency and songs without an instrument were crap).

- Blue Mage.

- World map activities that gave benefits to the players if they were completed over time.

- Dungeon level variety. Almost every dungeon in FFXI had a series of levels that would increase as you progressed deeper into the content. For example, King Ranperre's Tomb has the appearance of a level 5 low level dungeon that you can access early in the game. However if you explore too much you will eventually run into level 30+ enemies. Then level 60+ enemies. If you make it to the deepest reaches of the dungeon, you will literally run into an actual dragon as well as an army of level 75+ Goblins. Very few dungeons were locked to a certain level of enemies. And many you EXp'd in at a lower level you could return to at a higher level to get more EXP.

and last but not least

- The Wings of the Goddess Expansion Pack. This bonus content allowed the player character to travel to Vana d'iel 20 years in the past during a major conflict known as the Crystal War. This expansion pack allowed the player to see areas in a way they've never seen them before. Places that were in ruins in current day now lively as a bustling fortress. Beastmen strongholds that are weakened and walled off now extremely dangerous with beastmen activity. It's my favorite EXP pack personally as it also brought my two favorite flexible classes, Scholar and Dancer. I constantly hope that we'll get a similar time travel mechanic in FFXIV where we travel to the past before the Calamity and see how the world looked back then as well as seeing currently older characters as young warriors or even children.

More swordplay on Red Mage, at least on my end anyway.

XI did community & open world better.

Community
Kinda hard to say 1+1=2 for this topic because results vary but by (archaic) design the game had you work with people on your server you really started to get a sense of community like you would in a city or neighborhood. Inconvenient, archaic, bad design, took hours, punishing mechanics and systems all of these things yes, but for these reasons and others you worked closer with the people around you.

Open World
This is what I don't care for in XIV. Gorgeous open worlds you can just mount right through it with no sense of danger or adventuring. In many aspects XI was just a more challenging game and sometimes the bad kind of challenge but XI's open world dangers was the right kind of challenge.

There's more things XIV does right though, which is why I play it. :)

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Originally Posted by RedAffinity

XI did community & open world better.

Community
Kinda hard to say 1+1=2 for this topic because results vary but by (archaic) design the game had you work with people on your server you really started to get a sense of community like you would in a city or neighborhood. Inconvenient, archaic, bad design, took hours, punishing mechanics and systems all of these things yes, but for these reasons and others you worked closer with the people around you.

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XI's community was strong, since you had no choice to branch out from your server. I would say DF definitely hurt XIV in that regard. So much of your time can be spent running various instances with random players that you will never meet again. Most of them can't even bother to say hello at the start of an instance. People treat you like an NPC as they will most likely never see or talk to you again.

Now, they are making baby steps towards making it better (cross-world PF, LS, /tells, etc), but it's still lacking. I don't know about everyone else, but for me personally, there is someone great about just being able to "hang out" with your friends in game. Whether it be idling around in town, or at someone's house, or cruising around together doing little things in game.

GW2, which now has a mega-server, used to do cross-world guesting which would allow you to temporarily visit your friend's server to play with them. I think this could do quite a lot for the XIV community as a whole. Whether it be hanging out with people you met through DF, or maybe visiting friends who moved off your server, or those who can't even get onto your server in the first place (Balmung troubles).

As long as everything is instanced and put behind the Duty Finder, a solid community isn't gonna exist. Most of the game outside of instances is aimed towards soloing.

Some people complain about FFXI not having a DF of sorts, but that is something I wouldn't change for the world.

I think FFXI did a lot of things better than XIV. I think a lot of it had to do with the structure of the game and couldn't work the way XIV is setup. The horizontal progression, major differences between jobs, actual danger in the world, forcing players to group, Not as much hand holding, unlocking jobs was a challenge and felt more special, traveling was better imo, xi felt more of an open world with mystery while XIV is starting to feel more of a hub type world, with all the jumping to instances and such.

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Originally Posted by Tanathya

As long as everything is instanced and put behind the Duty Finder, a solid community isn't gonna exist. Most of the game outside of instances is aimed towards soloing.

Some people complain about FFXI not having a DF of sorts, but that is something I wouldn't change for the world.

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completely agree, Duty Finder kills the "world" feel in MMOs. While it nice to instantly have people to do things I think I'd rather have it the old way.

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Originally Posted by Tanathya

As long as everything is instanced and put behind the Duty Finder, a solid community isn't gonna exist. Most of the game outside of instances is aimed towards soloing.

Some people complain about FFXI not having a DF of sorts, but that is something I wouldn't change for the world.

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Even if they made FFXI-2, I don’t think I would want a DF added. A proper PF could be a blessing however.

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Originally Posted by Mhiro

True Support classes. My favorite class type to play in MMOs and single player games is support. Not healer. Support. I want to be able to control the flow of battle through buffs and debuffs and I find myself feeling more proud from seeing my party do better because of those buffs than actual things like healing numbers and DPS. If the Dev team were able to increase the party size to 5, adjust some core aspects of the battle system and add a straight up support role with all the classes I love in it (a real Bard, Geomancer, Corsair, Dancer, etc) I'd drop healer and DPS for it in an instant.

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I miss this, would love to see a support role lol ^

- Conquest

A real meaning to the grand companies as there just.. Existing as glorified crafting hubs lol(Unless your just RPing I guess) Compared to XI, you actually cared about your allegiance and people were very proud of it. Would love to see them get there own stories (like XI did) or something meaningful at this point(Along with the fact that in 3 months [Aug.], it'll be 5 years since release and STILL no max ranking lol)

- More unique battle animations between the races

Auto attack, skill usage, spell casting, ranged attacks and more were a lot more varied for all the races (even male/female), its so stagnant in XIV

- No Identity Crisis

XI didn't need to gut a job to make things easier (looking at you WHM) while also sacrificing unique animations

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As long as everything is instanced and put behind the Duty Finder, a solid community isn't gonna exist. Most of the game outside of instances is aimed towards soloing.

Some people complain about FFXI not having a DF of sorts, but that is something I wouldn't change for the world.

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Agreed. More like it made people lazy. Why go out to explore and experience the hrs, days, weeks, months, years even of the world the devs spent creating Eorzea when you can just pull up a chair, have seat and exp all content right there on the spot.

While I enjoyed the larger-feeling "dangerous" world, the sense of community, and Summoner much more in FFXI, there were caveats to those that are why I ended up bouncing off the game before making it half way to level cap on any given job.

The reason the world was "dangerous" was because you were required to party for the majority of your time logged into the game. As a result, what job and subjob combination you played and how you played them was based entirely on the preference of the community, leaving some jobs in the dust altogether.

While I agree some people sat around LFG forever because they couldn't be bothered to actively start their own party; statistically, there was always going to be players left sitting at the zoneline waiting in a real-time, non-automated "queue" if they were playing a job/role that the zone had more of than the others at the moment, or if composition of the stragglers overall wasn't enough to make a successful party.

I agree with the reply that FFXI and FFXIV aren't truly comparable as a whole:

FFXI's designed really catered to people who had the time and the desire to eat, breathe, and sleep a single MMORPG as their sole means of entertainment for months/years at a time. As a result, the game's world had more depth, was more involved, simply leveling up let alone unlocking new jobs and completing quests all felt like real accomplishments. But if you didn't have the time, or you were someone who liked switching between a variety of games, you'd quickly find yourself left behind and constantly trying to find a new group of players to connect with each time you came back.

FFXIV's progress, in comparison, feels like it has far less impact because it's possible to solo most of it, and finding a party has been simplified into the duty finder system. Because it's far less challenging to actually find a group to play with, each step is far less memorable, but at the same time it makes the game far more accessible to people who aren't looking to devote their heart and soul into a single game.

to those who play ffxi please don't bring ffxi ideal in the game let ffxiv stand on it own, this was common remind for us who face 2.0

Unskippable cutscenes xD.

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Originally Posted by Savagelf

to those who play ffxi please don't bring ffxi ideal in the game let ffxiv stand on it own, this was common remind for us who face 2.0

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I would love to see this game stand on its own. Seriously, that has been a dislike of mine with XIV since ARR.

Standing on its own also requires it to stop copying all the other FF games like it does too.

I just wish Summoner was a real summoner..it's turning into one with the bahamut summoning but it's missing so many other summons. What's worse is that we can now summon primals like nothing in the new Ruby tower.

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Originally Posted by Savagelf

to those who play ffxi please don't bring ffxi ideal in the game let ffxiv stand on it own, this was common remind for us who face 2.0

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This game never stood on its own, it's a continuous fan-service lobby with barely any identity. The game's got a good base to shine, but it isn't trying to build itself off that base, but rather move around it and making sure it doesn't stray away, and the result is a stale content cycle where you can pretty much predict what they're gonna add, with different QoL adjustments here and there. Even more so, they've been adding less dungeons than before, and considering that's the most populated type of content, that's not so good of an idea. They get massively lost when they try something new (looking at you, Diadems), and then go back to their safe zone.

FFXI presented a more immersive world, with inconveniences such as having to wait for the right day or time to do things, large areas and difficulty in traveling long distances, and areas that are dangerous and full of deadly enemies. NPCs had their own schedules which did not always suit the player (it doesn't matter how much you need that Iron Ore; by golly, if it's Watersday, we're taking the day off, dammit!). Stats of all kinds mattered to every player, often in surprising ways, such as Vitality's contribution to healing spells; gearing up was a balance, and not simply a matter of max out stat X to win. By comparison, FFXIV is theme park, lots of colorful attractions but no real danger, NPCs bend over backwards to be of service to you, and everyone worships you like you're some kind of Christ figure (even your enemies, much of the time). Stats are a joke, and could easily be removed altogether.

By the same token, FFXIV is a better GAME. It's more fun to play, because these inconveniences have been curbed. The complication has been boiled away, leaving much less between you and the gameplay.

I don't think I'll ever truly feel like part of the world like I did in FFXI, however. Playing FFXIV is more like watching a movie than playing a role.

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Originally Posted by Seig345

The reason the world was "dangerous" was because you were required to party for the majority of your time logged into the game. As a result, what job and subjob combination you played and how you played them was based entirely on the preference of the community, leaving some jobs in the dust altogether.

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I have not played XI because my parents were strict with the internet when I was a kid, but this is a problem I faced in GW2 a bit (but that game let you do the vast majority by yourself).
The reason why I quote that part is - way before I even knew what these comics were about, the creator of the (then) famous "video game cats" had a sub-comic called "Adventure Log" going on, basically having one "episode" with the problem you mention:

https://i.imgur.com/bque1Ae.jpg

I miss how Bard and Ranger where 2 different jobs.. If someone already said this well I had to say it for myself. ff11 Bard was my favorite support job oh and Redmage too. I agree with a lot what was already said about world community danger story etc. Loved all the little details like missing airship rides see people shouting nooooo!!! Granted I don't have the time to ever play a game like that now. When I look back at the world ffxi Vana'dial it was so alive and grand. Forgot to say I liked how the questing system was you really had to work hard to unlock a quest even small quest could turn out to be very deep and meaningful side quest.

Side note I would want my Opo-opo crown, Lilac-corsage, and Opaline dress set back..just saying

Oh god so much.. all if it listed here but when i get gear here im like "Thats cool" or "yay glamour". When I got my RDM af2 hat i /cried/. like..not only wearing it was epic the gears appreciation and use didnt just go away. I can log on today and still sell my blm boots for over 10 mil and this is YEARS later. IT was hard sure, but you took so much more appreciation for it

Lots of things, as already been very well said.

I miss the dangerous world, the TRUE sense of adventure and discovery. I miss the transportation (airships, boat, kraken, pirates!) so good. I miss grouping to level, and watching as high level groups would pass us lowbies, on to the deeper parts of a castle or something I was in, where I was only on the outer steps or just inside. I got to think "That will be ME someday!" and someday, it was.

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Originally Posted by Seig345

FFXI's designed really catered to people who had the time and the desire to eat, breathe, and sleep a single MMORPG as their sole means of entertainment for months/years at a time. As a result, the game's world had more depth, was more involved, simply leveling up let alone unlocking new jobs and completing quests all felt like real accomplishments. But if you didn't have the time, or you were someone who liked switching between a variety of games, you'd quickly find yourself left behind and constantly trying to find a new group of players to connect with each time you came back.

FFXIV's progress, in comparison, feels like it has far less impact because it's possible to solo most of it, and finding a party has been simplified into the duty finder system. Because it's far less challenging to actually find a group to play with, each step is far less memorable, but at the same time it makes the game far more accessible to people who aren't looking to devote their heart and soul into a single game.

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I'm actually not so sure I agree with this. Because progress was slower, and itemization was horizontal, it was quite difficult to actually be truly left behind. I know I took regular breaks from my end-game LS for months at a time, but when I popped back in, guess what? They were doing the same runs as before - just with different people needing the loot. I always found it quite easy to slip back into things, particularly since FFXI offered far more flexible group sizes.

In contrast, FFXIV's rigid construction of end-game content and rapid pace of itemization make breaks quite difficult. If I quit FFXIV for six months, I'm going to (a) lose my house; (b) no longer be sufficiently geared for Savage / Ultimate content; (c) no longer be familiar with the mechanics in the current batch of Trials and Raids; and (d) likely find my spot filled by someone else if I happened to be part of a static group. That's a pretty stiff penalty for taking a break, much stiffer than anything I can recall in FFXI.

I'd also point out that FFXIV's progress is less memorable for a variety of reasons. Part of that is the solo'ability, and simplified grouping, but the game is overall just too convenient for its own good. The impact of travel conveniences alone is mind-boggling: for virtually no money whatsoever, you can get to literally any point of the world within five minutes. That is insane - and it reduces the scope of Eorzea in a way that never happened with Vana'diel. Then there's the meaningless and trivially easy gear repairs; the easy availability of Gil; the incredibly solid gear gifted to you simply for progressing in the MSQ; the smooth as silk path to 70 wherein you don't have to grind for XP at all - just complete quests. Even crafting, which is an area of FFXIV I well and truly love, is too easy: I can HQ any recipe below 65ish with virtually no effort and no HQ ingredients, and all but a handful of ingredients are trivially easy to acquire, in bulk, within a few days.

All that convenience has a cost.

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Originally Posted by Tanathya

This game never stood on its own, it's a continuous fan-service lobby with barely any identity. The game's got a good base to shine, but it isn't trying to build itself off that base, but rather move around it and making sure it doesn't stray away, and the result is a stale content cycle where you can pretty much predict what they're gonna add, with different QoL adjustments here and there. Even more so, they've been adding less dungeons than before, and considering that's the most populated type of content, that's not so good of an idea. They get massively lost when they try something new (looking at you, Diadems), and then go back to their safe zone.

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Very very much this. I mean, FFXIV event kept the same races, roughly the same city-state theming, dozens of the same models (many of which continue to be introduced today, like Antlions in Stormblood)... it never stood on its own. I will say that XIV 1.0 had its own identity, but it was a bad one.

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Originally Posted by MrKusakabe

I have not played XI because my parents were strict with the internet when I was a kid, but this is a problem I faced in GW2 a bit (but that game let you do the vast majority by yourself).
The reason why I quote that part is - way before I even knew what these comics were about, the creator of the (then) famous "video game cats" had a sub-comic called "Adventure Log" going on, basically having one "episode" with the problem you mention:

https://i.imgur.com/bque1Ae.jpg

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Most jobs could be used in parties, especially the thf. In 2006 every balanced group (typical SC->MB party) wanted a THF for enmity management and to skillchain.

The only jobs that used to have trouble finding groups were BST and PUP. So I m afraid your comic isn't really relevant. What made grouping difficult is that before level sync every member of the group had to be close in level.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

Most jobs could be used in parties, especially the thf. In 2006 every balanced group (typical SC->MB party) wanted a THF for enmity management and to skillchain.

The only jobs that used to have trouble finding groups were BST and PUP. So I m afraid your comic isn't really relevant. What made grouping difficult is that before level sync every member of the group had to be close in level.

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As much as I'd love to have nothing bad to say about XI, I very much relate to that comic.

I started XI in 2006, and my first job was a Monk. I was too late for the KRT party craze, and I remember many, many times where I'd be flagged for 2-3 hours without a single invite. I did not like making my own parties as I was never good with finding camps/knowing the right mobs, so wait I did. Took me over a year to get my MNK to 75.

At some point I had started a 2nd character on another account, and I opted for a WHM. Party invites were so damn fast, and I would get blind invites even when I wasn't flagged up.

yea Loved Final Fantasy XI Was on the Titan Server before the merge,then it became Phoenix. Charter was Arise Lvl 70 Whm. Was mostly around two other players, Muun-Shadow and Drizzle-Dudden So if you were ever on titan before the merge you know who these people were and you knew me also very well, did a lot of tele-Taxi in Jueno also.

I never played 11 and from the sounds of things, I'm glad I didn't. The more you talk about the things you like about 11, the more I want to avoid it.

I've already dealt with all that stuff in the many, many other mmos I've played in the past and have no interest in doing it again.

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

As much as I'd love to have nothing bad to say about XI, I very much relate to that comic.

I started XI in 2006, and my first job was a Monk. I was too late for the KRT party craze, and I remember many, many times where I'd be flagged for 2-3 hours without a single invite. I did not like making my own parties as I was never good with finding camps/knowing the right mobs, so wait I did. Took me over a year to get my MNK to 75.

At some point I had started a 2nd character on another account, and I opted for a WHM. Party invites were so damn fast, and I would get blind invites even when I wasn't flagged up.

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Well as I said the issue was more that people needed to be in a narrow level range. I remember too waiting 2 hours for a party even though I was playing a job in demand, just because there weren't that many parties in that range out there.

As for MNK it used to be good but was nerfed at some point, and ever since it has been in a bad shape. Even today MNK is one of the very few jobs in FFXI you can't really do anything useful with (even PUP or BST were vastly improved).

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

*snip*

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It also boiled down to people LFG for a role and SC element synergy. Most of the complaints about long wait times to make a party were from ppl playing DPS jobs. While on a tank or healer I would generally get an invite within 5 minutes after putting LFG flag up. I would have to go anon just to stop the /tells asking me to party when I was RDM or BRD because they'd pester me without my flag up.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

It also boiled down to people LFG for a role and SC element synergy. Most of the complaints about long wait times to make a party were from ppl playing DPS jobs. While on a tank or healer I would generally get an invite within 5 minutes after putting LFG flag up. I would have to go anon just to stop the /tells asking me to party when I was RDM or BRD because they'd pester me without my flag up.

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This!

I played RDM, WHM and BRD originally. I did not have many issues getting parties. I also got pestered to party too, they got annoying sometimes. It’s no different than every other game. Tanks, healers and support characters will be in short supply while DD characters are a dime a dozen.

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Originally Posted by Savagelf

to those who play ffxi please don't bring ffxi ideal in the game let ffxiv stand on it own, this was common remind for us who face 2.0

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How is ff14 standing on it's own when it's just copying world of warcraft?

I wanted to add that FFXI players are super good.

My cousin played longer the macro thing players had to do back then like timing freeze for burst on weapon skill links for darkness or light to remember all the skills which burst off of and swaps for everything was insane.

That stuff to me is amazing how people did that as a community to work together and use timing and to remember everything like that that was apart of the team work aspect of FFXI

Variety of end game content and horizontal progression.

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Originally Posted by Adeacia

I never played 11 and from the sounds of things, I'm glad I didn't. The more you talk about the things you like about 11, the more I want to avoid it.

I've already dealt with all that stuff in the many, many other mmos I've played in the past and have no interest in doing it again.

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I actually want to play ffxi more from reading this thread. That's just me though.

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

I actually want to play ffxi more from reading this thread. That's just me though.

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These threads tend to make me resub whenever they pop up :X If people started posting music links, it would probably be all over for me. lol

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

These threads tend to make me resub whenever they pop up :X If people started posting music links, it would probably be all over for me. lol

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Here you go!!

https://youtu.be/De2yLOOs4pE

Bonus track:

https://youtu.be/yVYhcXmXSB0