Why was FFXI so great?

I am one of the very few players on this game, that have never properly played Final Fantasy XI. But I see so many people proclaiming how wonderful and great the game was.
So I want to know, so's I can try and compare it to FFXI, what were the best things about FFXI, and what made it so amazing? And also, why did Abyssea (if that's how you spell it) "ruin the game" as some people have said?
Please, i'm very interested to read about how great the game was.
Try not to write essays, if you can :P

I don't know, can we state why it was great before abyssea, or do we need to include abyssea? Or do you care either way.

Cause you gonna have to stop us at some point! Otherwise, we can go on forever how abyssea ruined the core of what made FFXI great, while others exclaim abyssea made it easier for newer players to play wither their higher level friends.

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Originally Posted by AlaulaTheGreat

I don't know, can we state why it was great before abyssea, or do we need to include abyssea? Or do you care either way.

Cause you gonna have to stop us at some point! Otherwise, we can go on forever how abyssea ruined the core of what made FFXI great, while others exclaim abyssea made it easier for newer players to play wither their higher level friends.

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I want to know what made the game the game that so many people loved! Whether that's before or after Abyssea is up to the person who comments!

Challenge for everything.

XI had content, both for hardcore and casual players (though the casual content took longer to come)

Hardcore: nm, endgame areas (sea/sky) with tiered steps to take and make progress, several different events that werent simple run straight through raids

casual: besieged (town invasion event with fleshed out npc general allies and enemies), campaign (always going capture the territory from beastment event), FoV (increased exp for targeting certain mobs), chest drops from normal mobs

not to mention excellent expansion storylines, RoZ CoP ToA WoG (good npcs)

Why abyssea ruined it? for years everything was geared towards 75, and a lot of "ultimate" sets that took lots of effort to get at 75, suddenly became garbage. Lots of people felt like all their time went to waste

I played FFXI for three years almost non stop and I have an opposite view. If XI was as great as some put it, it would have been a more well received game for the gaming community at large, specially the Final Fantasy fans, wich are among the most loyal fans out there. The game was only good for the stubborn gamers that put up with the nonsensical gameplay mechanics in place at that time.

I loved FFXI to death, but I see it for what it is/was.

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Originally Posted by AlaulaTheGreat

I don't know, can we state why it was great before abyssea, or do we need to include abyssea? Or do you care either way.

Cause you gonna have to stop us at some point! Otherwise, we can go on forever how abyssea ruined the core of what made FFXI great, while others exclaim abyssea made it easier for newer players to play wither their higher level friends.

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It was great to make people go to events as BRD.

Edit : For everything.

it was and it wasn't. it did a lot of things really awfully, but it also did a few things really well, and it was enough to keep a pretty loyal player base around to keep doing those things (while putting up with the bad)

Events/World: As above, tiered events, lots of Big Bosses in either roaming NM, HNM, BCNM, Einherjar, etc A sense that there are formidable foes out there and that I can still be crushed like a peanut at level 99.
(14's events aka dungeon "runs" do have their place, but i would think a lot of people would rather have battlefields or spawned NMs because its just the big fights that are meaty and interesting. The dungeons seem to be/are xp dungeons rather than event dungeons. There arent enough Big Bosses in this game. I want Gigantic HNMs roaming the countryside and Gigantic Dragons flying over Coerthas (even though I'm not really a HNM fan, their presence gives life to the world)

Levelling: Being forced to take time out because there was a new region to unlock / find tele-points (idk why but attuning to telepoints in 11 felt much more of an accomplishment than attuning to aether in 14) and quests at levels 18, 50, 55, 60 etc forcing you to join up with likeminded adventurers often traversing zones relevant to that level to complete the quests. Granted when you actually got in an xp party it was a mindless grind, but it was often the case that there was a real sense of adventure and socialising in getting to that stage.

Missions: again sense of adventure, sense of fear in going through beastmen strongholds at low levels. proper boss fights along the way (whereas the battle instances throughout 14's missions never feel like boss fights -its hard to die!)

Abyssea was the best thing to happen to FFXI in my opinion it brought life back into the game and I actually saw a lot of people that came back that quit FFXI. Why because gear you got 7 years ago still shouldn't be best in slot. Abyssea gave people a lot to do get new better gear and level up to 99. It was so unlike SE because they usually just gave us sidegrade stuff but these were actual upgrades and new AF3 sets to collect.

FFXI was like an actual Final Fantasy game. It had a sense of story and adventure from beginning to end. FFXIV and essentially every MMO I've played has replaced the adventure with 'end game content' (boring and repetetive raids for example), and the story is at times either brief boring or a combination of the two.

FFXIV has more potential than most, and that and FFXI are probably the reason I stick around. If the current types of updates were what we could expect for the next few years, I would quit in a heartbeat.

well as one that played and left xi pretty quickly i can say not very much to me. the one thing i can say it did well was have tons and tons of content that allowed people to overlook it's massive flaws. if xiv had as much content on release as xi had most of its flaws could have been overlooked just like xi's was.

i actually preferred xiv on release than i did xi as far as battle system was concerned, but with no content it got stale really quickly just killing the same mobs over and over with nothing to look forward to.

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Originally Posted by Roaran

FFXI was like an actual Final Fantasy game.

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I played FF11 for 5 years and never did it feel very Final Fantasy to me, It was a good game don't' get me wrong although it had its problems but I never got that Final Fantasy vibe from it.

Chocobo's, moogles and airships were about all there was to it, of course this game isn't much different either.

Yoshida has said in several interviews of course that he also felt this world was lacking the Final Fantasy feel and he plans to rectify that, can't wait to see what he plans for 2.0 ^^

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Originally Posted by ZanarkandAbes

Try not to write essays, if you can :P

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Nostalgia. The End.

EDIT: Agree with Jinko

Refer to this comic for a better idea of the experience.

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Originally Posted by Volsung

XI had content, both for hardcore and casual players (though the casual content took longer to come)

Hardcore: nm, endgame areas (sea/sky) with tiered steps to take and make progress, several different events that werent simple run straight through raids

casual: besieged (town invasion event with fleshed out npc general allies and enemies), campaign (always going capture the territory from beastment event), FoV (increased exp for targeting certain mobs), chest drops from normal mobs

not to mention excellent expansion storylines, RoZ CoP ToA WoG (good npcs)

Why abyssea ruined it? for years everything was geared towards 75, and a lot of "ultimate" sets that took lots of effort to get at 75, suddenly became garbage. Lots of people felt like all their time went to waste

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This is kind of on the right track.... I also would like to add that alot (not all) of the newer players burned their jobs up to high levels from level 30 in Abyssea and never learned to play them correctly. My friends from 11 that are coming to 14 now because of all of that tell me horror stories of Abyssea babies not knowing what skillchains and Magic Bursts are. In Abyssea, people got away with afking in their xp parties because nobody could tell they were even there when 2/18 people did most of the work. This was the complete opposite of old school 11 in the sense that the old days forced all people to work together or none of you could get anything done as almost nothing was done solo efficiently. Particularly on my server in the older days if you didn't know how to play your job you were booted from the party and replaced, which kind of forced people to have some idea of what they were doing, although there were exceptions.

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Abyssea babies not knowing what skillchains and Magic Bursts are.

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No that's not true. Nobody uses skillchains or magic bursts ever in the game even at end game. FFXI hardly had any new players when Abyssea came out it only had current players leveling all their jobs to 99. Well some people bought extra accounts so they could duo box all the best gear in the game but thats about it.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Nobody uses skillchains or magic bursts ever in the game even at end game.

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Another reason I'll never go back.

Mostly, FFXI had a better sense of progression and pacing, with a variety of content along the way. Every new piece of gear you received, every new form of progression you hit, felt massive and important because you would use what you obtained for your accomplishments over a long period of time. In contrast, in FFXIV, you can power level to 50 in a week, and all of the crafted gear for 1-40, all of the open world NM's that drop level 25-35 gear, the level 25 raid...is all pointless and irrelevant because you speed right by the need for them. That's my biggest hope for 2.0, that it will slow WAY, WAY down, and fill the gap from beginning to end game with meaningful content

An MMO shouldn't be exclusively about endgame, with everything before nothing more than a grind to get there. It should be about the long term journey, with the bulk of the content spread through evenly. The end should be the climax, using everything you learned and obtained to conquer. And once an expansion hits, you start again with a new journey of sorts, following the same principles. At least, that's what I believe

...I suppose that went a bit off topic, though

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Originally Posted by Holland

I played FFXI for three years almost non stop and I have an opposite view. If XI was as great as some put it, it would have been a more well received game for the gaming community at large, specially the Final Fantasy fans, wich are among the most loyal fans out there. The game was only good for the stubborn gamers that put up with the nonsensical gameplay mechanics in place at that time.

I loved FFXI to death, but I see it for what it is/was.

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This. I don't think many started realizing this until they started playing other games of the same generation and saw how stagnant in design XI is.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

Nobody uses skillchains or magic bursts ever in the game even at end game.

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This too. Skillchains were borked by latency, leading to anything more complicated than a two-step SC doing nothing. Their idea was that players would all build up the skillchain so that two melee make a level 1 skillchain, then one guy joins in and makes it lv2 and then the last guy comes in and makes it lv3. I have a feeling battle regiments were following this idea in a way.

Magic bursts are testinomy to how poorly-designed magic was in XI, when your nukers had to start casting before the skillchain even started.

Nostalgia vision engage!

After 7~8 years of mostly ontime there was a ton, and even after that time there were things I hadn't done yet.
Once upon a time there were party dynamics, and people would actually talk during xp pts, I lost hrs back pre-CoP just working skillchains/magic bursts w/ xp groups. Of course that's gone now, the mechanic is still there, and some oldschoolers still use them cause they seem to grasp that free dmg just for lining up when we WS is FREE dmg. The good for me is really too vast to list w/o a short book.

Abyssea, awesome idea, great way to bring life back to the game, not a bad way to get old players to return. Inviting new players to come into a place where they could level 1~99 in a couple days and then come out of it w/ no clue about how to play their jobs, what being skilled up meant, why it was important that they have spells/skills/gear that isn't level 22.
If they[SE] had simply not let people into abyssea before 70+ it would have been fine, did I want to grind all my jobs 1~70 the long way, not really but I did most of them anyway even though I could have been PL'd while I slept.

In it's present state it's nothing more than either
A) An unskilled pack of narrow minded non-team players arguing about who knows how to play best.
B) An elitist group that knows how to play and is going to tell you every single time you do something that's not "right"
C) Solo or dualboxing your way through what you can.

And that is why I left, my L33T15T LS annoyed me, I don't want to hear about how gimp another player is cause they're full timing thier Iga+2 Body instead of Relic. I found my own variety of elitist coming out when I played w/ people that didn't know their dicks from sticks on the ground. I got sick of dual-boxing, even for LS events I brought my dual-box to cover heals/buffs, it was a little obnoxious. Last but not least, I didn't want to spend 2000 more hrs farming gear and drops to upgrade that gear.

Sorry it turned into an essay.

Sorry again, I left out, that at it's prime it set the mark for active players, I know I know WoW passed that, but WoW did not do that over night or in it's infancy. FFXI reached the majority of the FF fanbase that could play at that time, the problem is that most of them fell off and moved on just like EQ saw, which at one point was the biggest thing going, but now people don't even give it honorable mention for the precedents it set. Hell you want to look into the "real" roots of this shit look up some MUDs, if it still is out there http://www.mudconnect.com, never forget where we came from or we're doomed to go back ^^

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Originally Posted by Jocko

That's my biggest hope for 2.0, that it will slow WAY, WAY down, and fill the gap from beginning to end game with meaningful content

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I hope people realize 2.0 will still use the same game mechanics we have in place now. Server response should improve greatly, the UI will be overhauled to something we can be proud of, content will be more accessible because of cross sever dungeon finder, etc. But the actual mechanics is what we will keep seeing. I don't think theres anything at all that will be drastically different to how we have it now. If there is, I'll be glad to know.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

No that's not true. Nobody uses skillchains or magic bursts ever in the game even at end game. FFXI hardly had any new players when Abyssea came out it only had current players leveling all their jobs to 99. Well some people bought extra accounts so they could duo box all the best gear in the game but thats about it.

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and thats why i quit the day the cap hit 80. the only thing abyssea did was give the whole game a great big "Easy Mode" Button

I loved it for the grouping content, every other mmo I played I usually joined late in it's life and I mostly soloed and soloed and soloed... But in FFXI as soon as I hit 10 I was partying. In that game you needed help and I think that is what made it so memorable for many ffxi vets, nearly everything you do made memories you would remember with your friends, ls mates, even random party members. You did need determination to get through the game, but that is why so many vets will defend it even though it's flaws, those who've played have literally spent years in the game.

Only reason I left was because the game was devolving from a tight-knit centric game to either being an elite or a noob and no inbetween. If you didn't have a relic/emp/mythic you weren't invited to the newer content and when you joined most PUG's players where either horribly gimped in skill or had no idea how to play their jobs.

I spent 6 years in that game and I enjoyed it up until abbysea when it came down to only needing a WHM MNK BLU BLM WAR and NIN for everything...

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Originally Posted by Holland

I hope people realize 2.0 will still use the same game mechanics we have in place now. Server response should improve greatly, the UI will be overhauled to something we can be proud of, content will be more accessible because of cross sever dungeon finder, etc. But the actual mechanics is what we will keep seeing. I don't think theres anything at all that will be drastically different to how we have it now. If there is, I'll be glad to know.

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Perhaps, but Yoshi-p already said that the leveling speed will be toned down in 2.0 and he also asked for our opinion on the latest poll.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Power levelling removed or restricted in some way in 2.0.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

and thats why i quit the day the cap hit 80. the only thing abyssea did was give the whole game a great big "Easy Mode" Button

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Hehe in comparison this game had one from day one :P

Some of us loved the atmosphere of the game, making friends, loved the community but had a tough time with the locked out content (having to complete certain story chains which involved group dungeons before being able to go to certain areas), and how much TIME everything required.

FFXI was a beautiful game with a strong community but was a huge time sink. That's the short of it for me. I'm in FFXIV because I want the beautiful and nice community parts but not so much the time sink issue. There was also some awesome innovation for an MMO and that's really why a lot of us were fans. Not having to create characters just to try out a class being the more prominent.

There were some GREAT things about the game, but there were some REALLY frustrating parts too. It was not perfect by any means, but it was an experience.

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Originally Posted by Jinko

Perhaps, but Yoshi-p already said that the leveling speed will be toned down in 2.0 and he also asked for our opinion on the latest poll.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Power leveling removed or restricted in some way in 2.0.

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I will agree that anything can and might be changed based on feedback. The leveling curve are just some formulas, easily adjustable. But most systems in place (The core systems) will not see a drastic change like the one that happened from April 2011 to April 2012, I think... lol...

http://i.minus.com/ivipjgE3sauda.png
This was clearly the best use of my old work.

But in all seriousness, what drew me to XI was the challenge of adventure. You had to work and plan to see new places, creatures and quests. It wasn't something where you could see everything in a day and experience most of the content within a few weeks. The level of satisfaction I got from accomplishing milestones like entering Jeuno for the first time and gaining the Chocobo license was so rewarding. It was more than just a game. It was an experience I will treasure.

I think for me what the main draw to both ff mmo's is that you can have ONE character and play all the classes/jobs....you don't have to repeat a bunch of stuff to try a new class/job....you get to KEEP your character....

that's awesome

also the worlds are well crafted, and detail....

saddly in ffxi much of that content was locked out for all but the MOST ELITIST of the bad asses, thus they had to force abbyssea on the game so there was enough ways to actually PLAY the game, since they had forced grouping for hours/months/weeks/years in the times before that to get to the level cap.

MMO's were very young and it was one of the fullest active due to the PS2 release.

All in all though, everything was just a huge pain in the ass....it's like the game was allergic to convenience.

Also, tons of hilarious ways to wipe/die/ragequit

I accidentally the alliance

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Originally Posted by Vaer

Also, tons of hilarious ways to wipe/die/ragequit

I accidentally the alliance

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*Uses Diaga instead of Dia in Dynamis and wakes avatar...."

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Originally Posted by ZanarkandAbes

I want to know what made the game the game that so many people loved! Whether that's before or after Abyssea is up to the person who comments!

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-Storylines
-Atmosphere

-The World (it felt like a real world, it was designed like a world with actual history.)

-The challenge - Yes, encounters were challenging the first time you did it, anyone who said it had no challenge lies through their teeth (fingers), because one of the hardest fights was a 60 cap fight known as One to Be Feared, especially before we had CBC Polymers to enfeeble Ultima.

-The Music - It's classic Final Fantasy.

-Community aspect - It actually made it feel like an MMO, not a single player game with an online chatroom that MMOs degraded into.

Until recently FFXI was a wonderful game because it required a lot of team work. The community prospered on this many bonds were made through tough battles and the like. Even though people don't like to admit it: Drama was a big part of end-game which only added to pride in your linkshell(guild) when you were top notch. Making bonds is what FFXI was all about. From the casual connections to the hard core end game connections: It was all worth it in the end.

Connections to other players, getting to know those players, know their skill and play style. It was super fun.

But we are talking before all the nonsense that SE has been doing with FFXI lately.

Story.

Story, and difficult missions tied with them. Challenging and memorable one-time boss fights. That's what made it feel like a real Final Fantasy to me, and sharing it online with friends is what made it special.

The short answer: It was hard.


The long answer. It was really really hard. Believe me you don't want me to type it out. We'll be here all night.

It was great because it didn't hold your hand. Games now a days treat people like babies, although people think XIV does this also, it is not half as bad as most mmos out there. You play an mmo now a days and most people have no initiative to even learn how to be good at the content they are doing, they think they should just be able to play the game in their gimp manner forever and do stuff and have fun, having fun is important, but I don't see how learning about how to play the game and needing to certain things to be good at it make it not fun, see what I'm saying?

XI also had a pretty good community, older players, mostly well mannered. You didn't "lol nub stfu, gonna pwnz your momz so hard, my dps is so 1337" that you get in a lot of other games.

You must understand though more than half of the players of XIV are XI players who wish this game was more like XI including myself, so the community in this game is better than most despite people on the forums who try to make it sound awful (they should try f2p those people are awful lol)

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Originally Posted by ZanarkandAbes

I am one of the very few players on this game, that have never properly played Final Fantasy XI. But I see so many people proclaiming how wonderful and great the game was.
So I want to know, so's I can try and compare it to FFXI, what were the best things about FFXI, and what made it so amazing? And also, why did Abyssea (if that's how you spell it) "ruin the game" as some people have said?
Please, i'm very interested to read about how great the game was.
Try not to write essays, if you can :P

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In all honesty they are just reminiscing about old times. "Back in the day..." kind of talk. Obviously since FFXI is still going they can continue playing it if they wished.

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You must understand though more than half of the players of XIV are XI players who wish this game was more like XI including myself, so the community in this game is better than most despite people on the forums who try to make it sound awful (they should try f2p those people are awful lol)

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Funny you say that, because I have yet to meet anyone on FFXIV that wasn't a FFXI player or is still playing it as well.

Best things about FFXI (compared to other MMOs) were:

*The traditional open world layout.
*Journey (many many zones with interesting things in them)
*Dangerous world (Goblins which would chase you across an entire map, Sea Horror that spawned and threatened your life on the boat ride)
*Music (but FFXIV is also great in this department)
*Horizontal endgame (unlike many other MMOs that are prone to constant cap increase, lending a sense of futility to the game).

It had many flaws though, which is why it was never the most popular MMO. However, I think many of these things I mentioned contributed to its longevity where other MMOs had a waning player base.