FFXI's Abyssea

I've read a few posts from players that state "Abyssea ruined FFXI", and I was wondering...

What does that mean? What happened? I didn't play the game very much, and not until after all the expansions.

Elitists trying to suck the fun out of everything.

I found Abyssea to be a great thing. Farming for stuff was fun, though admittedly much easier than previous content.

I think people bitch mostly about how absolutely easy it made leveling up. It's ridiculous that people claim this destroyed anything.

This depends on what you consider "ruined", in my eyes this is how Abyssea ruined XI:

-No one parties level 10-75 anymore, as in outside of Gusgen/Crawler's Nest/Sandy Basement alliance parties, once you hit 30 you either pay a warrior(or Dark Knight, or Blue Mage) to burn you to level 99, barring cap quest completions.

-It handed out pretty much the best gear in the game for your jobs that takes little to no work to obtain. While it's good to not have to spend a LOT of time on it, it really killed the feel of acquiring AF for your job.

-It made exping faster than any MMO out to date. You can open 9 - 20 chests for 1250 exp each and level at least 3 times in the span of 15 minutes.

-It added the ability to warp around the entire world, with Voidwatching filling in the auto warp gaps. There's nothing instantly wrong with this but it takes out pretty much the need for exploring as if you join post-abyssea, there's a good chance you'll never experience the FFXI most of us (who actually played it) know and love.

Aside that, it did introduce the Stagger system, which lets you boost drop rates on Items/Gear to near 100% drop, which some of the people who hate others obtaining things says is a bad system because "bads" or "casual" people shouldn't be able to get good gear in their eyes.

For 7 years FFXI was a certain way. This way mainly favored a certain subset of people. Abyssea drastically changed this formula. Thus, many of the people who became accustomed to this 7 year long way of playing rage quit.

Abyssea made the game casual and easy mode, which is why all the old school sadistic FF11 players hated it.

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Originally Posted by Answa

Elitists trying to suck the fun out of everything.

I found Abyssea to be a great thing. Farming for stuff was fun, though admittedly much easier than previous content.

I think people bitch mostly about how absolutely easy it made leveling up. It's ridiculous that people claim this destroyed anything.

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Before Abyssa~ everyone was going to each area as normal to level up, seeing the whole game
After Abyssa~ After you reached 30 you can get to 75 in 8hrs or less.. skipping 80% of the game itself

Thats how it destroyed the game "for me" and I'm not even what you call an "Elitist"

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Originally Posted by Jinko

Abyssea made the game casual and easy mode, which is why all the old school sadistic FF11 players hated it.

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Pretty much everyone hates easy Mode MMOs, even casual people lol.

Leveling was made easy as EXP wasn't based of party's average level vs mob, so you could go in at Lv30, with capped players killing stuff absurdly fast and get capped yourself in a few hours.

Abyssea brought level cap increases, gear that wasn't just "side-grades", which made "old-world" (sky, sea, znm, etc) easier to do.

Abyssea had a system to increase your own stats while inside it to great amounts, and give heavy buffs that were also outside the "sidegrade" nature FFXI had. Allowing higher content to be much lower manned.

Also an item that was basically God-Mode in Abyssea.

Didn't ruin FFXI, just made it low-man friendlier. Well, it did ruin the need for 18-man events and HNMs people so dearly loved.

- Level cap raise. Cap was 75 for many, many years and all content was based on 75 for those years. Alienated most if not all the veteran players.
- Faceroll exp alliances. (just like FFXIV parties)
- New player level 30 afk leeches -> 75++
- 95% of mobs are the same, faceroll get seal/trophy get gear repeat
- along with this, watering down of everything, CoP soloable, dynamis completely changed, etc.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

Pretty much everyone hates easy Mode MMOs, even casual people lol.

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Well I agree that there is a line that shouldn't be crossed, its all about moderation really, FF11 went from one extreme to the other in a matter of patches and one expansion.

Like Fated said it was too much of a shock too fast.

FWIW this game is treading on dangerous ground with power-levelling and SE don't seem to care.

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Originally Posted by Jinko

FWIW this game is treading on dangerous ground with power-levelling and SE don't seem to care.

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I agree. I'm really worried at how easy it can be to level up. But honestly... at the moment there isn't much world to miss out on, even if you shot right to 50 with minimal exploration. If I find a part of the Shroud with strong monsters that I can't enter, it doesn't matter. It's just more forest corridors. There won't be anything in there except monsters to kill.

I didn't play XI much, and while I do regret that, I stopped because it was too damned lonely. The game is hard for a new player, and there simply weren't any people around I could party or level with. But I did notice that the zones were interesting in that they had THINGS in them. It wasn't just a road from one camp to another... there were ruins and caves and rivers and mountains.

I can't even begin to imagine the disappointment XI veterans must feel when comparing these games... But I do have a little bit of faith for 2.0. I just have the feeling that maybe SE has finally gotten a handle on the situation and is doing a 'restart' of Eorzea to make it right.

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Originally Posted by Zelkelion

I've read a few posts from players that state "Abyssea ruined FFXI", and I was wondering...

What does that mean? What happened? I didn't play the game very much, and not until after all the expansions.

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I'm going to first say something that's extremely important - I was happy about the general direction during ToAU/WotG and the first 3 addon packs and though I had played since the NA-PS2 release in March 2004, I didn't even get my first 75 until I actually started to focus on getting it in Fall/Winter of '06 with my White Mage (and that itself was only because I wanted to return to my DRG which was 56~57 since pre-ToAU days).

Hell I probably wouldn't have minded any of the changes Abyssea brought if it just had a Minimum Lv.75 Restriction to it - I do know this though, I tried to come back twice, but both times were just "bleh" to me, which may have well been just because of the extremes they took. Thanks to the others above for the examples.

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Originally Posted by Answa

Elitists trying to suck the fun out of everything.

I found Abyssea to be a great thing. Farming for stuff was fun, though admittedly much easier than previous content.

I think people bitch mostly about how absolutely easy it made leveling up. It's ridiculous that people claim this destroyed anything.

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It ruined the game, per say, because for the ones of us who played FFXI in its prime, everything took work. Everything took time. You couldn't get to max level in a week, it took normally several months. There was a feeling of achievement.

Back then, some content was difficult, with the level cap being at 75. Abbyssea allowed the players who didn't want to put the time into FFXI when it was time consuming, come in and level up in days. It allowed new players to come in and experience the game in easy-mode, after the greater majority of veterans left the game.

I wouldn't say it ruined the game, as most of us who enjoyed it in it's prime had left by then. Abbyssea just let the people who want easy MMO's and like being spoon fed enjoy the game.

I sincerely hope that in the years to come FFXIV strays away from easy mode and requires it's playerbase to invest time and work before they are able to reap the rewards of endgame content.

I understand that the current generation of gamers enjoy easy mode, and having things handed to them.. but MMO's are made to be time-consuming, and require work to get to the upper-tier content.

ramble ramble, this will fall upon deaf ears

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Originally Posted by ThePatriarch

It ruined the game, per say, because for the ones of us who played FFXI in its prime, everything took work. Everything took time. You couldn't get to max level in a week, it took normally several months. There was a feeling of achievement.

Back then, some content was difficult, with the level cap being at 75. Abbyssea allowed the players who didn't want to put the time into FFXI when it was time consuming, come in and level up in days. It allowed new players to come in and experience the game in easy-mode, after the greater majority of veterans left the game.

I wouldn't say it ruined the game, as most of us who enjoyed it in it's prime had left by then. Abbyssea just let the people who want easy MMO's and like being spoon fed enjoy the game.

I sincerely hope that in the years to come FFXIV strays away from easy mode and requires it's playerbase to invest time and work before they are able to reap the rewards of endgame content.

I understand that the current generation of gamers enjoy easy mode, and having things handed to them.. but MMO's are made to be time-consuming, and require work to get to the upper-tier content.

ramble ramble, this will fall upon deaf ears

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Actually, I completely understand. They did that to WoW. And I quit.

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Originally Posted by Starlord

Before Abyssa~ everyone was going to each area as normal to level up, seeing the whole game
After Abyssa~ After you reached 30 you can get to 75 in 8hrs or less.. skipping 80% of the game itself

Thats how it destroyed the game "for me" and I'm not even what you call an "Elitist"

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When Abyssea came out, I had already gotten ~4 jobs to 75. Once it came out, I still leveled up the old-fashined way until ~70 and Abyssead until the cap. There were always people willing to go out and party normally, in my experience.

It didn't destroy anything.

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Originally Posted by Answa

It didn't destroy anything.

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You are right, it didn't.

It merely introduced new players to an extremelly easy way of getting to max levels without putting in the work that the older playerbase had to.

The game is dying, and Abbyssea was a kickstart to get people to hop back on board.

Albeit the game feels like playing on super-easy mode in comparison to what it was like many moons ago.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for your comments! Just as a friendly reminder, we ask that you please focus your discussions on FINAL FANTASY XIV. There is a forum to discuss FINAL FANTASY XI, which can be found at http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/forum.php

Thank you for understanding. The thread will now be closed.

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