Odd question for former XI players?

[Dzian]

In the earlier days it wasn't easier at all. it's only after years of nerfs and patches that made it easier for people to clear stuff. back in the day getting through things like divine might and some fo the bigger cop fights was a pretty big achievement cos they were real difficult to do.

another thing that made xi great for many people was the sense of reward and accomplishment that came with getting stuff done. in modern mmos everything is pretty much throw away junk the awesome weapon you get today will be crap tomorrow and in a way there's no sense of accomplishment / satisfaction in obtaining such loot or gear in modern mmos.

in ffxi though, clearing cop and getting a rajas or tamas ring was something players felt proud of for a very long time. it was the same for clearing big things like divine might and even your home nations campaign. and that sense of accomplishment / pride in getting things done doesn't really exist in modern mmos.

everything in modern mmos is throw away junk. even dreadwrym stuff from final coil. and I think that's partly why many players don't bother trying the newer harder contents cos the rewards are disposable junk that don't justify the difficulty so then players wait till the content is nerfed... it's a endless circle. where if the rewards had a longer lifespan then I think more players would be willing to try the content at its hardest.

then there's the community communites in XI felt a lot better and closer than XIV. In XI nearly you needed your friends and ls members for a lot of stuff and as such did a lot of stuff together. in newer mmos it's been built around solo play so much that I believe group play and close communities are falling apart. you don't need friends for stuff you can just jump in the duty finder and go, and that destroys a lot of the camaraderie I think. certainly seem lots of groups of players fall apart recently. once close knit fcs falling apart and being sold etc etc etc. the level of community just isn't the same as it once was

[File2ish]

As everyone else said, FFXI was much different and slower paced than XIV:ARR.

And as much as I love FFXI, it had many problems; especially with job balance issues. You could change jobs in your mog house (or rented room if not in your home city), could equip a main job and a sub job. The sub job would always be half the level of your main job assuming you have both leveled (if you leveled say Warrior and Ninja to 75, you could be a 75WAR/37NIN, or if you had a 40 Warrior and 75 ninja you'd be 40WAR/20NIN).

It was like cross class skills in XIVARR, but the subjob also added stat bonuses along with all or most of the traits and abilities. For example, I mainly played as Red Mage and Dancer. If I went 75RDM/37DNC I could have all the Dancer abilities and traits up to level 37. So along with my red mage stuff up to 75, I'd have some Dancer abilities and traits like Curing Waltz II and Resist Slow to use on Red Mage. Or if I went RDM/NIN I'd have Ninja abilities and ninja magic on my Red Mage. It was pretty sweet, but very unbalanced (RDM/NIN could solo a lot of stuff, very slowly).

Magic was also very separate than abilities. You had to use scrolls to learn magic, then you had it on a list. Had like Fire 1, 2, 3, and 4. Blizzard 1-4, Thunder 1-4, Cure 1-4, Stone 1-4, etc. Abilities would be learned as you leveled and were on a separate page. It became VERY expensive to learn certain magicks if you didn't want to go out and farm the scroll off of a NM.

You probably heard about Ninja tanks in FFXI. A NIN/WAR could tank more efficiently than a Paladin could. The Ninjutsu Spell Utsusemi:Ichi and Utsusemi:Ni gave a blink effect to the caster (like Perfect Dodge in XIV:ARR, but way better). They were the evasion tank, something the developers didn't intend to make it. But the players found out it tanked great and suddenly if you were a Ninja you may be assigned the tank role in a party. People would generally opt for a Ninja tank over a Paladin for a lot of content solely because they didn't get hit so much and dealt more damage than a Paladin could dream of doing. While Paladin could mitigate damage well and heal themselves, Ninja could just dodge everything that wasn't an AoE attack and still be a good DD (Damage Dealer, or DPS as they're called in the Holy Trinity).

And if you didn't have a good Job/Sub Job combination you would be out of luck trying to get a party. You would be generally fine if you stuck to your main job's needs. Like White Mage would often sub Black Mage for the MP boost, or sub Red Mage for Fast Cast traits. But if you went White Mage/Warrior and tried to find a party people would call you an idiot since Warrior offers no benefits to White Mage outside of physical damage (which WHM doesn't do in parties).

As for the roles of the jobs (Tank/Heals/DPS), there weren't really any named out. The jobs were just jobs that did certain things. Warriors were supposed to be tanks, but people liked them as damage dealers unless they didn't have a PLD or NIN to tank. Red Mage could do white and black magics and was decent with swords and daggers, but would be relegated to "STAY BACK AND JUST HEAL, HASTE, and REFRESH ONLY". Puppetmasters had issues getting into parties because they did less damage than Monks and the pet wasn't as useful as Beastmaster's. Dancer was a damage dealer, but also a healer and support. The party structure for content was less structured than what we have in XIV.

And in EXP parties you'd usually have a "puller". Someone with a weak magic or ranged attack would pull a mob to the group for the tank to provoke of him/her. Usually like a theif, dancer, or whatever would pull. Ranged damage dealers like Ranger would never pull, however. One shot from a Ranger's bow would usually generate as much hate as provoke lol. Made it hard for the tank to pull the mob off you before you died.

[Conradus]

So I never played XI, this is my first MMO, so I have no ide how XI worked. Ive heard a few things, like how it was a drop down menu action system; which is whynthe cool downs were so long, maybe. People can explain that is they want to but what I am really curious about is the role system. In XIV we have 3 roles Tank, DPS, and Healer, and there is no "switching" between them; ie a tank can't queue as a DPS. And from what I've heard XI had a similar system. But here is what I'm not understanding. I've seen several things that indicate roles could be switched, like Ninjas or dances tanking, summoners and red mages healing, warriors and palidins dpsing. Som can someone explain how XI's system worked? Could you choose which you you wanted to play as? Or was the game more lenient in terms of party makeup? Any info would be helpfull thank you.

FFXI did not have anything like a Duty Finder, and the party finder was very rudimentary. No roles were defined by the game; they were defined by the players and what they could make of the class abilities. The combat system and nature of the opponents encouraged a tank/dps/healer division, but it was up to the players to define those roles, along with others, like support (Bard and Red Mage functioned largely as support roles rather than performing any of the functions of the holy trinity) and pulling (Tanks rarely pulled for a variety of reasons--prime of which was you often had to pull long distances back to a safe camp where you could be sure adds wouldn't spawn; grinding mobs for XP, which is how you generally levelled, meant fighting mobs that it really took the whole party to beat. Adds were deadly. Usually someone with a good ranged ability like Thief or Ranger pulled, and would leave camp to find the next target while the current one was still being finished off, to keep the chain going. Valkurm Dunes, which you went to in your teens, was the first place you really had to fight like that, and a lot of players being slow learners earned it its horrid reputation--not uncommon to hear it called "the D00ns" in honor of the all the l337 kiddies who would get your whole party killed there).

[Catwho]

11 year XI veteran here, relic and 3-song bard.

XIV uses the "holy trinity" battle system, which is tank, healer, DPS. XI was a lot more versatile in party make up and roles were a bit more splintered.



- Puller (usually a bard or thief)
- Tank (usually a PLD or NIN, or more recently DNC or RUN)
- Healer (usually a WHM, RDM, or SMN)
- Melee DPS (MNK, SAM, etc)
- Caster DPS (vastly different role than melee DPS)
- Support (bard, sometimes SMN, corsair)

There was a lot of overlap in the roles, such as that some support roles could also damage, while others did pulling and gathering. XIV lumps pulling in with the tanks and spreads support across all roles, and makes a distinction between ranged and melee DPS, but not casters and physical ranged DPS (bards). This simplified the party structure greatly.

I was a puller bard in XI, which was a seat-of-your-pants incredibly stressful job which is why there were so few of us (and we were the most highly desired party members during the ToAU merit heydey.) Sing a song, grab a mob, sing to sleep it near the party. Repeat ad nausum for hours on end, pausing only to reapply songs to make the melee TP faster. Don't break the exp chain!

[Sapphic]

Before haste and dble/triple strike, combat is very slow in FFXI, you are basically waiting for auto attacks to generate TP each hit (you miss, no TP :P). Fast weapons like daggers werent too bad, but when you got to 2handed weapons, delay between auto attacks was insanely slow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aVApDwKt9Q

Is one handed combat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_bIkI_PcXY

2 handed combat, as you can see you can have a nap between attacks :P

[Werewolf]

Ninja tanking was my most favorite thing in Final Fantasy XI, back when Ninjas could tank and do it well; it was a nice balance of trying to keep hate with damage while using shadows efficiently enough to avoid getting hit. But in the end Paladin's complained about it and SE made it so lots of enemies either spammed AoE or had some sort of move that bypassed shadows completely making Ninja tanking a thing of the past.

In Final Fantasy XI many jobs could tank or at least solo, Red Mage used to be able solo and tank a lot of very difficult stuff if you were good enough. There was a Tartaru Red Mage that used to solo a ton of hard stuff back in the day, I forgot his name but he was very good lol

Final Fantasy XI was never the same after Abyssea

[Stanelis]

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.

Uh, we didn't play to the same FFXI. In the FFXI I played the main difference between a tank and a DPS was that a DPS was getting 1 shotted by mobs and the tank 2 shot.

like how it was a drop down menu action system;

Nobody was playing with the menu. You had macro bars in which you had to build macro for each abilities (and gear switching).

[File2ish]

Ninja tanking was my most favorite thing in Final Fantasy XI, back when Ninjas could tank and do it well; it was a nice balance of trying to keep hate with damage while using shadows efficiently enough to avoid getting hit. But in the end Paladin's complained about it and SE made it so lots of enemies either spammed AoE or had some sort of move that bypassed shadows completely making Ninja tanking a thing of the past.

Well Ninjas were never meant to be tanks, the players just found out they could abuse Utsusemi lol. The game wasn't balanced at all.

[File2ish]

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..

Kinda depended on where you were and what you were doing. I recall getting destroyed by a bunny the first time I played FFXI. And later on being unable to do certain BCNMs without a proper tank.

[Conradus]

Kinda depended on where you were and what you were doing. I recall getting destroyed by a bunny the first time I played FFXI. And later on being unable to do certain BCNMs without a proper tank.

Everybody recalls getting destroyed by a bunny the first time they played. Remember, "No matter how powerful you are, somewhere in the world there is a rabbit that can kick your ass."