Game is in a desperate need of challenge.

[Ecks007]

Actually bringing up XI I have a question.

Based on what I've seen people say, XI had recently (if such a word can be used) changed their play style and now it's far more casual friendly and what have you. Is this a true assessment of the game as it is now?

I quit playing long before the change, but I did play a solid 5 years (NA launch til end of '08) with minor breaks to play some other MMOs with friends but I was still on XI when not on those other MMOs.

XI has definitely changed to be extremely casual friendly. It still takes some grinding to get the best weapons in the game, but it's stupid easy compared to say, how Relic Weapons used to take years in order to obtain. Now you can get the best thing in days, you can level up to max level in days, maybe weeks at most, which is still a far cry from when it took me nearly a year to finally unlock and start leveling up the first Advanced Job I wanted to play in that game since I before I bought it (Dark Knight).

It took probably another year leveling it up to the max level (75 at the time). Getting max level was actually an achievement and people you knew in game cheered you on and congratulated you when they found out because it wasn't something you could just burn out in a few days or a few weeks even. No, it took months, several months even if you were getting powerleveled and speed leveling as fast as you could just to hit lvl 75.

I believe a great deal of players left after this change in play styles, sure they lost and then gained new players and probably have a steady baseline of players now. Nothing close to the number of players that were on during the period in which I played though, definitely.

One thing I can say about XI was that when you beat a hard boss fight it felt like a real victory and nearly every boss fight ended up being like this. Even making your way through a zone could be challenging, yet when you got to the destination with your party or alliance and completed the content everyone felt the same joy of completion and victory and 99 times out of 100 there wasn't even an actual reward (item/gear/weapon or even gil) other than that you beat it and progressed through the story. That simple thing was your reward and it was actually very rewarding. Nobody complained that they weren't handed some kind of uber weapon or armor for their troubles, we were happy to have progressed.

Sadly I doubt MMOs will ever go that way or feel that way again. Most people want instant gratification nowadays. That works for the moment, but then what after that? You're left wanting/needing to get more, more, and more without appreciating what you have or what you accomplished.

Added: Even when I was starting to get bored with XI, months before I actually quit it seemed a very difficult decision due to the time I invested in my character. I really didn't want to quit, but at the same time (due to some drama) things had happened and the game just wasn't the same for me anymore. I knew quite a lot of people that did stick with it though, some that still even play it after all the changes and expansions and updates. It's not the same game it was, not by a long shot and I at least feel it definitely went in the wrong direction when that direction was to make things a lot easier.

To be honest, if XI got updated with XIV grapics and went back to it's gameplay from 2008, I would totally hop back on it, make some new friends and enjoy the game all over again.

[TheUltimate3]

-snip-

Very detailed response. Much appreciated.

I asked because I have noticed in the past month the increase of "Add this thing from XI's glory days" when XI itself doesn't really do it anymore, at least as far as I could gather. Which led me to believe that since XI moved to more casual friendly, people want to add XI's more hardcore features to XIV.

I could very well be wrong, but that's what its starting to seem like to me.

[Doo]

people want to add XI's more hardcore features to XIV.

It's more of wanting new takes to old systems and not just copying generic mmos. I.E Skillchains.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/d212cad2d...3c3o1_1280.jpg

[Ecks007]

Very detailed response. Much appreciated.

I asked because I have noticed in the past month the increase of "Add this thing from XI's glory days" when XI itself doesn't really do it anymore, at least as far as I could gather. Which led me to believe that since XI moved to more casual friendly, people want to add XI's more hardcore features to XIV.

I could very well be wrong, but that's what its starting to seem like to me.

That is the general idea, yeah, whenever one of those threads pop up. It's typically because people do actually want that kind of challenge. Maybe not the camp X mob 100 times and still haven't gotten drop Y kind of "challenge". That I am kind of glad is done away with. But honestly, the zones in XI were alive and dangerous. You could never just go exploring without being fully prepared with the needed items to keep yourself safe from the wary eyes and ears of monsters that were more than happy to kill you if they noticed you, or without a group of your buddies willing to fight off said monsters with you. Boss fights were hard, but not impossible if you had the gear, skill and a strategy.

They also developed a genius way for different jobs to work together in a fight to combo 1 class's weaponskill with a second classes weaponskill to create a skillchain that generated added damage (and visual flare) to combat, in which even casters could participate with a well timed magic spell for even more added damage. This form of combat eventually became obsolete as the gear stats and player levels raised beyond 75 (long after I quit), but man what a system. It really was something special that hasn't even been close to replicated successfully in any other MMO. When Skillchains and Magic Bursts were the prime combination for adding extra damage on ...pretty much everything, combat was much more coordinated, no longer was it just a zerg fest for who could dish out the biggest numbers as fast and often as they could, no, dps players talked with each other chose a combo, and stuck with it until a new combination was available or a new combination was more preferable. Good times.

[File2ish]

...Much appreciated...
snip

FFXI became far easier after the final Abyssea pack came out, and they've been adding more stuff that people would call "making it casual friendly". I mean they added home point warping among even more teleporting options, movement speed increase for all players, "Trust" companions to fight alongside you (like Prishe, Zeid, and Curilla), more efficient ways of leveling rather than just killing monsters (like grounds tomes in dungeons, where each time you complete a page it increases the exp the next time you do it until a certain cap).

I think the reason they made the game easier is in part to make new and returning players feel more welcome, and because the server populations took a massive hit in the weeks and months leading up to ARR. 1.5-2k players in non prime time hours became 500 last I heard. Not sure how it is now, butI hope it's better. I want to return to the game over the summer and try to beat the rest of Aht Urghan and whatnot =p

[Huntington]

snip

*whispers* You know, I've been hearing an interesting rumor recently...They say there's a game out there called "Final Fantasy XI: A Realm Reborn" and it's available to play right now...Maybe you could find more info on the front page here? http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml
Specifically that first entry for the Collaboration Event...*stops whispering and walks off*