Just played Final Fantasy XI

[Lilseph]

Never got to play XI but to be honest I'd probably get annoyed by a lot of things in that game because I've never played it and I'm not used to it. Or maybe I'm a casual lol

I've never played XI either. Till now. The game was on discount on the SE store (9 bucks the base game+all expansions+30 free days), now it's currently at 30 bucks. It's definitely not a game for everyone, as it might feel slow and clunky (specially if you play with KB+M, highly recommended to play it with controller), the graphics are not the greatests but the feeling is there. They buffed the experience you receive by a lot with rings, pieces of gear, the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel questline+other stuff. It's not the grind it used to be (based on what my friends told me).

I believe the game is worth it, just to have a glance of what the game was, even if they dumbed it down (Which I don't care). The game is almost soleable with your Trusts (some sort of squadron that follows you everywhere. You get a huge variety of those through quests, events, etc), so even the partying up got taken away. It's also very crowded in Asura. You see players everywhere.

I'm personally amazed by XI. I wish XIV could use some ideas from there. I also see they already stole a lot from XI. In any case, see it as a vacation if you ever want to take a break from XIV.

[Gurney]

I loved the WotG , doing all 3 story lines was fun. Bastok could of been better though :/ Though having something like that in FFIV would be nice or even something similar to Dynamis. I actually miss that lol

WotG was good but it tool them so long for SE to finish it. I would love to have Dynamis (Die-in-a-mass) zones in this game. Make it like old school Dynamis, low drop rates one wrong move and you aggro the whole zone. Having up to 72 people in there and being able to communicate and coordinate together. The other thing I would love to see but it would take to much is bring back the elemental wheel. Talk about making BLMs having to pay attention when casting. Lets see them cast Flare in Ifirit and see what happens.

[ManuelBravo]

..... I would love to have Dynamis (Die-in-a-mass) zones in this game. Make it like old school Dynamis, low drop rates one wrong move and you aggro the whole zone. Having up to 72 people in there and being able to communicate and coordinate together. The other thing I would love to see but it would take to much is bring back the elemental wheel. Talk about making BLMs having to pay attention when casting. Lets see them cast Flare in Ifirit and see what happens.

Dynamis would be great for relics actually. as for the other ideas...What and make the game challenging? perish the thought. Then people will really complain that the content is too hard :P

[Gurney]

Dynamis would be great for relics actually. as for the other ideas...What and make the game challenging? perish the thought. Then people will really complain that the content is too hard :P

Well lets put it this way. No matter how good you were or how great your gear was there was always a damn rabbit that could kill you in a heart beat.

[ManuelBravo]

Well lets put it this way. No matter how good you were or how great your gear was there was always a damn rabbit that could kill you in a heart beat.

Yeah those rabbits were a pain -.-...they were smart too they would chase you down and call for back up now that is survival of the fittest....that and they took your xp.

[AnimaAnimus]

specially if you play with KB+M

If you are playing with the mouse, that is why its clunky. Use just the kb and you will be amazed at how easy it is.

The keybinds are a lil off though as you do not use wasd to move, so either look at the keybinds and use em or just set em to be the way you like. But I would not recommend wasd as you generally use your left hand for executing macros and this is a very macro extensive game.

Right hand: movement and menus, left hand: macros

[AnimaAnimus]

I would love to have Dynamis (Die-in-a-mass) zones in this game. Make it like old school Dynamis, low drop rates one wrong move and you aggro the whole zone.

The players of XIV could not handle content like Dyna...or salvage or assault, def not sky or sea, NMs or most of the bcnms for that matter, imo anyway. Look at the way they freak out about everything. A very small and select group would be able to have fun with it and the rest would be flooding the forums screaming demands of nerfs because god forbid you make anything even a teeny tiny bit difficult. Even the minutest amount of challenge is met with a hailstorm of whining in this game, which is why everything but top tier endgame is an absolute faceroll.

[Aniond]

Im mixed. I loved XI but before they changed the game to where you can power level to using the EXP camps. I miss the days where you had to group up and grind goblins or crawlers for EXP. The game that I loved is gone, so i will say FFXIV is better now.

I missed spell bursting and chain skilling.

[Bernkastelx]

Its wrong to place the blame fully on ffxiv we just came into a generation that is use to having most of their gameplay being spoon fed to them without them having to think about anything.

[Spiriel_Basanda]

I'm just going to talk about my own feelings about XI and XIV. I'll try to keep it unbiased as I talk simply about how I see them. I'll start with XI, as it's the subject of the thread after all. This might be a little long, I'm afraid, sorry for that.

Note that just because I say something in one game's section, it doesn't mean that the other game is not like that. It's just the way that game I'm talking about is.

FFXI was my first step into the world of the MMO genre, as such I didn't know what to expect when I was getting into it, and I was incredibly impressed with it. So much so, I subbed to it three months after it's NA release, back in Oct. 2003, and am still subbed to it to this day, along with XIV at it's side. The world was incredibly, truly massive. It took me at minimum an hour to fully explore Bastok, my starting city, and talk to every NPC with glee, hungry for the lore of the game. It only got bigger as I left Bastok and went into the wilds. Stepping into the lands beyond the Konschtat Highlands was frightening beyond belief, stepping into either a dark marsh where everything wanted to kill you, into a mine full of undead, or into the desert that was Valkrum Dunes. I remember the first time I crossed La Theine Plateau. It had taken so long to cross, that at the half way point or so, I had asked my cousin who was acting as my guide if we were still in the same zone. I was fast to make friends, landing in a linkshell named AsuranBBQguild, because I went to complete a quest that involved putting sheep meat on a campfire, and there were other people there, also BBQ'ing their own sheep meat. It was silly things like that, that I remember so fondly from FFXI. The story to it, as stated by many others, is worthy of an FF title. It was captivating, and I was always hungry for the next bit of story to see what happens next. I totally didn't see the main villain of Rise of the Zilart coming from having just done the Bastok Rank Missions, for example. The combat is a lot more slow-paced then it is in FFXIV, allowing for more conversation to happen during battle. At least, it used to be, it's gotten faster now. The skillchain system was pretty neat, and I liked the idea of party composition being Tank, Healer, Support, DDx3. Support was a very interesting role to me, and while I understand it's removal/integration into DD, it kind of makes me sad that the pure Support role has fallen to the way side. As a final note, the music in FFXI was fantasic, and as stated tended to enhance the mood of the setting it was in.

FFXIV was my third step into the MMO genre, coming after FFXI and WoW respectively. This being the case, I did actually have an idea what I was getting into, as opposed to FFXI. Even with this being the case, I was also incredibly impressed by it, just not in the same way. Unlike FFXI, I wasn’t scared exploring the world, but I do NOT blame FFXIV for this fact. I blame my decade of MMO experience for this, looking at it objectively. I have no doubt in my mind that had FFXIV been my first MMO ever, and having started in Ul’dah, stepping into the seriousness of Northern Thanalan, stealthing carefully around through Zanr’ak, or the first step into Coerthas Central Highlands where the battle music changes and the NPCs want nothing to do with me, undoubtedly would’ve been pretty intimidating. The world is pretty big still, and the dungeons are amazing. I saw a comment earlier stating that FFXIV’s overworld isn’t as impressive as FFXI’s because of tiny little details, and while that might be true, FFXIV’s isn’t to be understated. For example, when you go to Central Thanalan and Southern Thanalan, did you know that you can see the Burning Wall’s corrupted cystals from Eastern Thanalan if you look up? The details are there, if you look for them. When I go through new dungeons for the first time, I always wait until everyone is gone, turn around and run back through the dungeon to look at everything. I was in awe of the sheer attention to detail the devs had when I saw the bookcases in Great Gubal Library. Friends came pretty quickly in this game to once I finally landed on Goblin. I’m afraid I don’t have any amusing stories for this one though. The story this game has is also worthy of an FF title. I won’t lie, once I got past the slow start that is the opening nation up until joining the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, I could. Not. Stop. I needed more of that MSQ, and never felt so………well, you know, the ending of ARR. I didn’t see that coming at all and the emotions it created were real. Someone said earlier that FFXI music is far more memorable then FFXIV. I don’t agree. While FFXI does indeed have great and memorable music, FFXIV has its own share of masterpieces. Great Gubal Hard is by far my favorite piece of music in this game.

At the end of the day, I appreciate both FFXI and FFXIV for what they are. Despite the fact that they are both “MMO’s” they are not trying to be the same game. I’m not going to claim one is better than the other, all I know is I have fun in both. In the end that’s all that matters.
If I had to pick one thing that one game does better than other, both ways, I liked that in FFXI gear was hard earned and lasted a really long time, owing to horizontal progression vs. vertical. My endgame linkshell eventually came view me as the best main healer and gave me the Aristocrat’s Coat, I was humbled that my LS gave me an item with a 8-10% chance to HQ(Noble’s Tunic was the NQ, Aristocrat’s was the HQ) with items worth millions in a game where gil is hard to get and used it until the game switched to vertical progression. Aristocrat’s was WHM BiS for healing, straight up. While in FFXIV you do have to put in effort to get gear, it just doesn’t have meaning to it like it did in FFXI, outside of “More stats! I do better now!” I understand that in the vertical progression system FFXIV simply can’t support it, and the closest we’ll get is the anima weapon. I felt a humongous sense of accomplishment when I finished creating the Deathlocke Lux, no doubt about that. It wasn’t quite the same though. Something I wish FFXI would do that FFXIV does, is that FFXIV’s crafting system is VASTLY superior. Like, there’s no question. I wish FFXI’s crafting was basically FFXIV’s crafting. FFXI’s crafting is really bad. Though tbf FFXI’s crafting makes HQ items worth a ton of gil, compared to FFXIV’s, where it’s easy to HQ if you know what you’re doing.

The last thing I’d like to note, is with the four gods becoming FFXIV fights(For the love of all that is good and holy, they need to put in a Kirin fight. You fought the four gods in XI to spawn Kirin.), there could potentially be a Divine Might fight in the future. If I could pick 1 thing to transfer from FFXI to FFXIV, it’d be the Divine Might fight(or RUN, I guess, but that’s besides the point)