Odd question for former XI players?

[Zhamkyong]

Like many said above, combat was slow but also very tactical. You had to talk a lot with your party members, form strategies within the combat and such. It might sound boring, but you could have very intense fights. Also, your skills where determined because of your class and not your weapon. Each weapon had a series of "weapon skills" determined by your skill level. If you wanted to be good with your magic or weapon, you had to train with them to rise up the skill. Also, each weapon AND type of magic had his own skill.

For me worst part of the game was some of the comunity, very elitist in how you had to use your character in some circumstances. Some of them even demanded each class to use only certain skills or weapons... That, or a kick from the party.

It was very... FF style, i enjoyed it a lot ^^

EDIT: Oh! i almost forgot. You had to be very carefull with the mobs around the world. Every mob in your current level could destroy you if you where careless. In some open dungueons, you had to play hide and seek to advance. I miss those times... Now its all "Kill everything withouth thinking about the consecuences".

[Zumi]

First, FFXI is a very different game, and it was very unforgiving, and it was much slower paced. Most of your DPS came from physical melee strikes that generated TP to use on Weapon Skills. So imagine that you can only use one of your combo actions for every 10 melee strikes, and you have to rely on other party members to perform a combo (A skill chain which did extra damage and boosted the power of corresponding elemental attacks for about 3 seconds after).

Later on it was mathematically found out to be much more damage to use a weapon skill right way as soon as you got 100% tp then waiting for everyone else in the party to get tp to do a SC. The damage output from everyone weaponskilling right away outweighed any bonus damage from skill chains or magic bursts. This made combat even more simpler then it already was. Which is why blms totally fell out of favor in ToAU and had to resort to soloing puddings for their exp.

[Twilite]

The thing is in FFXI a lot of content could be done without a tank due to the fact a lot of monsters could not do enough damage to kill a non tank.

While this is true, it is a huge strain on the healers. Spamming Cure IV is no joke at all.

[Zhamkyong]

Later on it was mathematically found out to be much more damage to use a weapon skill right way as soon as you got 100% tp then waiting for everyone else in the party to get tp to do a SC. The damage output from everyone weaponskilling right away outweighed any bonus damage from skill chains or magic bursts. This made combat even more simpler then it already was. Which is why blms totally fell out of favor in ToAU and had to resort to soloing puddings for their exp.

Paladins like me got kicked in ToAU from exp partys too from the weapon skill burst parties :/

Now that i remember... Anyone could play withouth lag in the monster invasions? It was pretty crazy for me back then xD

[ThanMazus]

Later on it was mathematically found out to be much more damage to use a weapon skill right way as soon as you got 100% tp then waiting for everyone else in the party to get tp to do a SC. The damage output from everyone weaponskilling right away outweighed any bonus damage from skill chains or magic bursts. This made combat even more simpler then it already was. Which is why blms totally fell out of favor in ToAU and had to resort to soloing puddings for their exp.

Even if it wasn't always used, the existence of the skillchain system at least allowed for more "tactical" gameplay. SAMs soloing light skillchains was always fun to watch, Blue Mages soloing skillchains was interesting, etc.

[ShanaShirayuki]

I'll admit, for as highly as people talk about FFXI, that sounds really boring. And don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed some really slow combat in games, but that doesn't sound very enjoyable.....

XI was mainly based on the quality time you had with friends, the thrill of getting through tough-to-put-together boss fights such as CoP 2-5 Mammets / CoP 6-4 Ultima, and clearing raids such as Sky/Sea. That's why you see such high praise for XI, as it comes from the people who experienced all those things.

[Zumi]

While this is true, it is a huge strain on the healers. Spamming Cure IV is no joke at all.

Not really because all the melee subbed ninja mostly and just bounced between each other for almost no damage being taken. But later on people on monk found out sub war and use counterstance to counter like 90% of enemy attacks toward you.

[Lusavari]

Later on it was mathematically found out to be much more damage to use a weapon skill right way as soon as you got 100% tp then waiting for everyone else in the party to get tp to do a SC. The damage output from everyone weaponskilling right away outweighed any bonus damage from skill chains or magic bursts. This made combat even more simpler then it already was. Which is why blms totally fell out of favor in ToAU and had to resort to soloing puddings for their exp.

Oh I'm aware of that :P But I was trying to post kind of a historical over view of the game, so things got simplified or left out. I just wanted to explain the intention of the combat system. I think after 2007 everyone stopped doing Skill Chains unless you could do a Double Light or a Double Dark.

[Blood-Aki]

Not really because all the melee subbed ninja mostly and just bounced between each other for almost no damage being taken. But later on people on monk found out sub war and use counterstance to counter like 90% of enemy attacks toward you.

Expect when they actually took the hits or they ate a big damaging move. they became "MP sponges" i was one of those making sure a monk does not sub nin but it was a quite a strain on MP, on certain fights. if the mnk did not know what they were doing.

[Imakun]

To answer your question without getting lost int 13 years of XI: no, there were basically no roles like the ones we have now in XIV. Every job had its specific skills and abilities, but the sheer amount of them and flexibility of combinations thanks to the support job system made you capable of filling a much more dynamic role during a fight. XIV is far from being 'complete', in the sense that we've barely even scratched the surface when it comes to Jobs and gameplay possibilities. We're still (not even) level 60 out of at least 99, there's a lot more coming in the future. So when new things happen, new jobs are introduced and new mechanics make us go WHAT THE FFFFF.. I don't worry. We haven't see anything yet.

What I'm worried about though, are the limitations of the role triad. Hopefully Yoshi-P and the Dev Team will be able to come up with something new sooner or later, hopefully with a more diverse and less 'memorize this and then do it blindfold for the next 999 times' gameplay. Jobs like Beastmaster, Blue Bage, Red Mage and many more FF classics are really hard to shoehorn into one single role.. something will be done, I'm sure of this