To those who played FF11...

To those who played FF11...

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

Thanks.

What comes to my mind right of the bat are these.

A sense of danger of the world.
Uniqueness of the races.
Communication with other people.

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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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To me, they're not even comparable to begin with, as in FFXI > FFXIV. But hardly comparable, both literally and figuratively.

If trying it for a bit 2 ish years ago counts...

* Sheer class diversity, and they play so differently (but like, only a very small number were considered eligible for endgame content)
* Really feeling like you're out in the world, away from civilization and exploring
* Level sync
* Ability to play as a variety of monsters.
----Also really funny when newbies follow you, trying to figure out why they can't kill you. Doing little dances with them, etc.
----And I really liked making amusing names with the monster naming system.

Variety of endgame content. There was so much to do that lock-outs were barely noticeable, and the gear you earned from each stayed relevant longer which made not just the gear but the content feel like it was much more worth the effort you were required to put into it. It wasn’t just a couple cool glamour pieces today and old news tomorrow. Of course there’s a down-side to it taking years to earn a single item, but I do think that content stuck with you a lot longer in xi.

Also, challenge and sense of danger in quest lines. To this day, Chains of Promathia is my all-time favorite questline, and the promy fights at the beginning were especially memorable for the spookiness of those zones. There’s nowhere in this game that’s managed to duplicate that feel. They were challenging enough that you really had a sense of accomplishment when you completed a quest. I have to say that i’ve actually enjoyed the msq and expansion storylines from xiv more, but xi’s questlines, and it’s world in general just made you feel like danger could be lurking around every corner.

And lastly - summoner. Done so much better in xi that it nearly hurts. The job just felt epic. The avatars (not these little egi things) were epic, and so were the fights to obtain them. The abilities you got with each avatar were epic. Carby was epic without being available in multiple colors. Astral flow was maybe a little too epic... then again so was my hotbar with all those avatar abilities and spells... Either way, it wasn’t much for endgame, but it was great for soloing and was a blast to play.

Both games have their ups and downs though. I don’t think either one is any better than the other, just that there are things I liked about both. Gearing up on xi for instance would have been much more fun if there had been a glamour system even similar to what we have in xiv, even with all its problems.

-Diversity to the end-game content. Yes, all MMOs are going to make you grind, but they at least mixed it up well and gave you a ton of options for how you wanted to gear yourself.
-Far easier and diverse glamour system
-Content made you group up with others from your own server, felt like a closer community
-Job diversity / subjobs
-Proper support jobs!
-World felt more real with the day affecting your elemental damages, certain mobs only coming out at night, Beastman kidnapping NPCs and then having to rescue them, NPC shops having open/closed hours (granted this one could also be annoying..lol)
-Combat. While it seems insanely slow by today's standard, you work together with your party members. Setting up Skill chains and magic bursts. It's not all just mindless rotations.
-Horizontal progression
-Boss fights not repeating the same pattern over and over
-Mobs having different methods of aggro. Some were sight, some were sound

That's just my list for starters :) I'm sure others will come and add some other bits as well.

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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.

---

Everything except graphics. I like the look of XIV better, that’s about it.

Server side events example would be hall of the gods where your Linkshell would work together to down major gods
Community coming together to defeat things without getting mad and kicking people out, FFXI players were the best patient never got angry took the time to help out even if they already done it they had a couple of bad apples but very rare.

longevity to make content that last long and making side content to have tons of things to do and you would finish one thing but have like several other stuff to do that would take forever but at least you had something to do even if you wanted to take a break from that activity.

Letting people choose how they wanted to set up their character nobody was ever the same people had their own weapons and swaps and chose how to use them no person was always the same had their own way of doing things.

Structure seem's even FFXI running on 56k servers beats out FFXIV since ffxiv has been problems from 1.0 with the dx errors to the new arr 90002 errors.

Nm's special weapons or gear dropped fun going up against others and a source of gil but of course RMT ruined that but before they ruined it, it was pretty good.

burn circle fights.

tons of things put it that way.

But FFXIV is still growing give it time and I am sure it will fix since ffxi got years under its belt.

I won't mention what everyone else said but I wanna put specific note to
- job diversity (no make shift clones)
- gear validity (gear would last alot longer making you feel like your hard work for something great and not just a glamour)

you know the community thing is on the people the play the game, not the how the game is made =p

The content was more varied, when a new expansion came out it didn't always feel like doing the exact same things with a different coat of paint.
And you could bring more varied groups to most content, so it made sense to have a big LS.

Jobs felt unique and diverse. And they had a lot more depth to them. And they weren't tied to a single weapon type.
There were lots of fun event weapons, and XIV will never have that.

Honestly, I miss the danger you feel when exploring the world/environments. Back in 1.0 there were only certain areas you could reach if you did some sneaking but even though it was a test your ground sort of feel. Things which I love from other games like Xenoblade Chronicles - a sense that some bad ass enemy is going to pounce on your face and you wouldn't know until you had to traverse said area. I'm not asking for like a whole map of higher level monsters but more of a oh to get to this area you might have to sneak past this group of high-level monsters. Something like that. I hope you get my meaning...

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

you know the community thing is on the people the play the game, not the how the game is made =p

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this is not true. XI forced community on people.

first, the gameplay was really slow, there's tons of time to type in party and linkshell during combat. there's nothing else to do when resting for MP besides making small talk.

second, the game was impossible to do things by yourself and there was no duty finder. you had to network with people, help them accomplish goals that didn't benefit you so that you can ask them to help you in case you needed people in the future.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

you know the community thing is on the people the play the game, not the how the game is made =p

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I think is both. FFXI force you to work in a group and was very hard to even level solo, except with very few jobs at least before the books and trust. So people were more close together and if someone was a very bad player your name will be remember and people would notice and stop parting with you. Thats what i think, in part, brought the community together there. In FFXIV you can be an ass and with the cross-server party finder is very difficult to remember that person and can also kick them and almost never see him/her again so people dont really care how other perceive them.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

Jobs felt unique and diverse. And they had a lot more depth to them. And they weren't tied to a single weapon type.
There were lots of fun event weapons, and XIV will never have that.

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Penta thrust SAMs were awsome

I would say FF11 felt way more like a multiplayer RPG. You needed to team up with other players and strategize in order to tackle almost all of the challenges in FF11. In FF14 you just queue into duty finder and roflstomp your way through everything with very little strategy involved.

The one thing in FF14 that felt like the old MMOs was coil of bahamut, and they nixed that very quickly by adding the LFR-style raid mode.

I stopped playing XI around the release of ToAU, so everything that has happened afterwards I am mostly unaware of such as the use of Trust NPCs. I also have to admit FFXI and myself did not part on good terms, so I have remained salty all these years. I'll try to remain non-biased though.

FFXI is anold MMO and SE's first for this franchise. A lot of what we see in XIV is a result of the mistakes they learned from. There are TONs of things that I remember from that game that would not bold well with the standards of today's gamers. However, I can still remember some things that I do feel FFXI did better.

Social interactions between players were more commonplace

Music in the outside zones were absolutely amazing. I believe most were composed by Nobuo so no surprise there.

Dungeons were not linear, and VERY dangerous. Usually only the BCNM circles located deep within the dungeon was instanced for the boss fight.

Promyvions. Nothing else needs to be said if you experienced these.

The summoner job. You don't summon an egi, you summon the damn primal and command them using many of the same attacks they use against you when you try to acquire them.

That's about all I got for now.

Teamwork... while there is some synergy with buffs and the like, for the most part performance is very self oriented. There was nothing like the feeling in FFXI, playing a Samurai especially, of nailing a couple of skill chains with your team followed by a well-time ancient magic burst.

I started FFXI a few expansions in, but I loved how you didn't get baby sat for everything you did. You needed to interact with people which I guess some could say would be a downfall. But in my opinion it made the community that much more awesome. FFXIV has a awesome community but I'm sure a few of us have ran into bad apples here and there. FFXI also felt like a actual WORLD you were discovering and felt like every zone was alive. I guess the most important thing was the Jobs. Before Abbysea you had to grind your job up. If you was a mage you had to grind for your spells or if you was a ranger you had to buy or craft your arrows. If you were good at your job you were well known. People looked up to you and you were respected.

Real support classes

exploration was better in 11.

stuff like the magi gate or the weight plates made the world a more fantasy place compared to 14.

the zone design in general was better and more unique in 11. 14 has a lot of similar designs and half of the zones aren't fully used.

Like many players have said, the world felt dangerous, I'm reminded of when I first started playing, my mother got me into the game when the level cap was 75, and she, like the game, did not hold my hand, she said that if I wanted to team up with her, I had to get to San d'Oria...from my starting city of Bastok.

Needless to say, she was quite surprised to find me there after I had sneaked through everything in between at just level 8, lol

Reading through a lot of these replies... I agree with pretty much all of them. But the two points I'd like to reaffirm are:


- "Variety of endgame content." This is probably the most important for me. There were more than "just a couple" current activities you could do for your 75* job(s) that, as pointed out, the lockouts on them didn't really limit your endgame options since pretty much all of them felt relevant, diverse and worth doing. You might even have had different linkshells for different events thus more people to interact with. As opposed to here where it mostly just feels like: "okay, new bunch of boss fights! All the new better stuff is here now, so you can stop doing the similar thing from 2 months ago that you no longer need stuff from! But you only get one or two things a week! See you in another 2 months!"

- Gear longevity. This goes hand-in-hand with the above point. If I got/bought something in XI (near or at endgame), I was happy with it because (due to the extreme horizontal progression) I knew I would get a lot of use out of it... For like, say, other endgame content. Whereas in XIV the extreme vertical progression doesn't make gear feel like an accomplishment at all (and I understand that's where they decided to go) because either something of equal strength will come along in about a month and a half or so and take half of the effort, or something better will already be released. So... glamour turns into the true endgame and if I don't like how something looks, I won't bother.


It was a different time and I do agree many ideas and types of content would not work today, but honestly, there are a lot of good concepts that the devs don't have to totally emulate but should consider basing some new content off of.

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Originally Posted by Embercrisp

I started FFXI a few expansions in, but I loved how you didn't get baby sat for everything you did.

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And this sums it up. It's what people who complain about FFXI point out, basically.

End-Game Content variety...

Enemy Grinding Choice, so I was leveling a lowbee job and I just wanted to play with it and level up, I didn't want to enter a DNG or Palace of the Dead, and nobody is doing FATEs, I exhausted all the quests already, I just want to kill some enemies and level up!

FFXIV has this thing called: Palace of the Dead, which reminds me of Nyzul Isle, a fun little end-game activity in FFXI

-FFXIV could easily convert that into an End Game activity, perhaps have a lock out like in FFXI, where you could do 3 runs, per I believe 3 days? I forgot what the time gate was.


-Eureka reminds me of Dynamis, especially since its linked to Relic.


They could easily add this content and again have its special Time Gate, Dynamis on release was what, 4 days before you could do it again?


All I'm saying is, FFXI had so many end game activities to do I remember having a Limbus LS (AF+1) (Ultima / Omega parts for what? Unique GEAR), a Dynamis LS, a Sky LS, of course, eventually we had HNMLSes.

Now, the only thing I can see with this is just the design FFXIV has with gear, there's a BIS piece that generally Savage stuff, then below that Tomestones? Then Eureka gear.

• So a way they could slice it is dividing End Game Gear into activities, so Head and Feet drop off this End Game Activity, has a time gate.
  
• Hands and Legs drop of this end game activity
  
• Body piece drops of this End Game Activity
  
• Weapon drops off this End Game Activity
  
• Then have the Hard Core Savage stuff

Idk, I'm no gamer designer, I just enjoy doing things and being productive when I play an MMO, and some of the end game stuff I just can't get into, like Savage Raids, I did enjoy Eureka though!

In XIV pretty much everyone wears the same gear because the gear system is so simple-minded. That's not the case in XI which I like.

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Originally Posted by Myrhn

Uniqueness of the races.
Communication with other people.

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I really think this right here sums it up. Races... In XIV.. they really DONT feel unique from one another.. in XI.. Each race and city they lived in.. seemed to have a certain style to them.
We "used" to see some differences in ARR quests with Lalafels. But come SB... not really.

Communication, yea.. a server was a home. People knew who to look for, band up with to get something done.

I miss seeing the player bazaars too. It helped encourage to be in a social area.

I miss "proper" spells too.. Comon.. Summoners.. dont even really summon much of anything... White Mages... we "stone" people... comon.. where is my Banish and Dia light based spells...

I love the graphics of XIV, but I miss the lore, the music, and quite a few other things of XI.. wish they would just give us a city from XI to visit.. that would keep many of us happy I think.

Eureka

It was suppose to be the XI experience but they didnt even get close.

Also XI gave us new content every new update. XIV has been using the same content since 2.0

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Originally Posted by Justuas

In XIV pretty much everyone wears the same gear because the gear system is so simple-minded. That's not the case in XI which I like.

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Only time I see people walking around in the same gear, is when something new is released in the cash shop. Seriously I don't know where this comes from. I'm not sure how XI is now, but when I played it you had very specific sets of gear and little to chose from. The glamour system did not exist, and many endgame items could be acquired before actually getting there because of the way that system worked. Again, I don't know how it works now, but as I remember it, it was vastly inferior to XIV as far as choices and diversity amongst players go.

If you're griping because you see 3-4 peeps with the same body piece you just acquired, I can understand how that might pluck a nose hair. But that doesn't have to do with the system being simple-minded, it has to do with 3-4 peeps liking the same body piece you do. They will still very likely glam the other pieces of their gear differently than you, and thus they are not a mirror copy of your avatar.

Pet jobs.
World building.
Endgame up until the last level cap raise.

I still spend more time in XI on a monthly basis than XIV.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Only time I see people walking around in the same gear, is when something new is released in the cash shop. Seriously I don't know where this comes from. I'm not sure how XI is now, but when I played it you had very specific sets of gear and little to chose from. The glamour system did not exist, and many endgame items could be acquired before actually getting there because of the way that system worked. Again, I don't know how it works now, but as I remember it, it was vastly inferior to XIV as far as choices and diversity amongst players go.

If you're griping because you see 3-4 peeps with the same body piece you just acquired, I can understand how that might pluck a nose hair. But that doesn't have to do with the system being simple-minded, it has to do with 3-4 peeps liking the same body piece you do. They will still very likely glam the other pieces of their gear differently than you, and thus they are not a mirror copy of your avatar.

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I think they meant with the same actual gear, not the glamour. Gearing is so linear in XIV. For top ilvls, you either raid, do tome gear, or craft. XI's gear system was far more involved, gear swapping for skills/spells/WSs. It was rare that people would have identical gear.

I really wish XIV has situational gear like MDT/PDT/EVA and stuff like that. Mostly because it would give us more stuff to get than the BiS.

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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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You mean besides making this game way too easy? Soooo many things sooo little time.

Being there is no xp penalty people are not as focus and people think play half ass.

For now the closest thing it has come to is Eureka, which in a way is still pretty easy just too many people can't use common sense and think it's too hard -.-;. Even with nerfs. I would like to see things like Moogle trials for elemental weps or even powering up relics. Kind of like adding a bonus or hidden bonus like the old relics from FFXI had. Example I use to love DRK and DRG hidden stats. Critical and Shocks were pretty nice. PLD Shield bash was always fun.

More strategic and complex in regards to systems and gameplay. Example in FFXI combat you had to account for monster type, elemental resistances, and even specific damage resistances to blunt, slashing, piercing, or physical vs magic. There were also behavior quirks with some monsters such as bomb type mobs immediately using self destruct if you cast a spell on them twice that matched the element of the current day. Crafting was influenced by factors such as in game day of the week and compass facing direction.

Equipment had far greater variety in regards to stats or bonuses on them. Gear in FFXI could have on hit bonus effects like elemental damage, status effects, or HP drain, add traits from other jobs, strike multiple times, etc... Variety also created multiple viable builds for each job where as FFXIV just has a single BIS build for each one based that doesn't really change usually until ilvls increase with an update

FFXI also generally made people play smarter. The ones that didn't learn were typically the ones complaining about difficulty and often saying things like it taking forever to lvl up in the game and many of the other various cookie cutter complaints seen just about since the game's launch in 2002. The game had mechanics or features that would punish playing badly or making poor decisions. However I feel this was a good thing as in FFXI there was far less issues of incompetent players getting into end game content even with PUGs when I would sponsor free dynamis runs every week.

I also enjoyed making one of my LS leaders de-level on a regular basis because they would never get an exp buffer when at cap... >.>

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Originally Posted by PatronasCharm

-Eureka reminds me of Dynamis, especially since its linked to Relic.


They could easily add this content and again have its special Time Gate, Dynamis on release was what, 4 days before you could do it again?

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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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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Crafting was influenced by factors such as in game day of the week and compass facing direction.

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This was proven false by the dev team. Time to let it go.

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Originally Posted by Justuas

This was proven false by the dev team. Time to let it go.

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Give me some proof big guy.

Vana'diel is a living world, you can see Airships come and go while outside cities, you can see boats dock and leave. Eorzea everything is instanced you get on an airship screen darkens then next thing you know you're at your destination. You EXPERIENCE Airship and boat trips when you use them in XI.

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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.

---

- the battle system and class design (that is terrible in FFXIV),
- the story that is a snorefest in FFXIV
- SMN

Story with big groups or alliance was a lot of fun. Communication, using guides to get there and so on. Felt like a true journey, rather than being on train rails and just follow it.
Communcation was better.
SMN isn't SMN.
Real support class
More rare rewards.