Just played Final Fantasy XI

[SilverObi]

What's funny is most of the "new" content being added to XI is just scaled up versions of old events that meet the current player power level and require a sizable time investment again. But it has better tuning for smaller groups if one so desires to low-man the stuff. Most of my time spent in XI anymore is just fiddling around with jobs I never finished leveling or working on a weapon in spare time solo since Siren became almost a ghost town compared to Asura

[Dzian]

Only being fun for a small minority of players doesn't make a game better. It's only better for those players. That's the fundamental disconnect with all the FFXI love.

I kind of disagree with that. FFXI had a much more consistant player base. sitting around 500k for a good number of years till abyssea fawked it all up.

XIV's playerbase comes and goes and some of those census things you see have had numbers right down at 240k players. XIV's big problem is retaining players. over 10 millions sales and yet the active playerbase is just under 400k or so from the last census thing.

is it really a better game if so many people apparently drop it so quickly?

XI had no where near that number of sales yet managed to retain a steady 500k players rather consistently (which is higher than most of xivs censuses). until abbyssea messed things up.

XI Had better content participation as well. something like 3/4 of the playerbase were doing COP raids and stuff if you look at vanadiel censuses. and yet here raiding participation is vastly lower...

it would seem them that xi was fun for a greater portion of players than xiv. if you compare subs and sales.
just a thought

[Talraen]

I still say the disconnect is with the people who whine about difficulty. SE could easily make casual-midcore-hardcore tier content but so many ppl scream about how they cannot do hardcore content because they are casual and since they pay a sub all content should cater to them and them alone.

Ppl need to realize that tiered content is a good thing and that it is technically accessible to all ppl but they don't want to have to put in time to anything. Savage is an ok step in the right direction but they took away the exclusive story, unique weapons and prizes that came with it. All you get is a bigger number and for many that doesn't make it worthwhile. If you are going to work harder for something you need to be rewarded for it.

FFXI was perfectly accessible to even casual players if they put even a remote amount of effort into what they could. We had ppl in our ls that could only play once a week and they still did dyna, salvage, sky, etc because they bothered to learn "this spell does this so I should cast it now" instead of screaming about "my sub/my way" and expecting SE to change it for them. Sure it took them longer than us to get stuff, but that just made it more worthwhile in the end.

The same ppl cry about elitism but with their stance on "I shouldn't have to git gud or try, everything needs to be made for me, me me me me me" they are the most elite of them all.

For context, I am not one of the people who whines about the difficulty of top-tier content. I also don't do top-tier content. Not because I am not good enough, but because I have no interest in playing a game on a schedule and practicing like a job. I dabbled in that back in the Coil days, and I hated it.

However, I absolutely do think that all content should be accessible to all people, given a reasonable level of effort. And to be absolutely clear, all extreme primals, savage, original coil, etc. take more than this standard I'm referring to. Making a normal version of Alexander (not coincidentally, my favorite content in FFXIV to date) was an inspired move. Putting Neo-Exdeath behind Savage was a step in the wrong direction. It's not actually in any way story-relevant to FFXIV, so I'm not overly annoyed about it, but I don't like it.

I'm here for the content, not a challenge. There was a ton of content in FFXI I couldn't experience until they introduced Trusts, because I never had a stable group of friends who were both good enough at the game to do content with, and also didn't require me to treat the game like a job to play with them. I don't have any interest in a game that requires that. If you want to get together with your friends, get good at content, and prove your worth, that's all well and good. I wouldn't care if the best gear was locked behind the hardest content. But I do want access to all of the story content, without having to do that. And I don't apologize for it. When I finally finished Coil (turns 2 and 3 of which I didn't do until Heavensward), I was really upset that such a great story was locked behind content I hated doing when it was current. Who does that serve?

Any players who actually want to clear savage content by just casting Blizzard III are obviously wrong, but that argument is mostly a straw man. People like me, who just don't like difficult content, are much more common. Some of us are even "good enough" to do said content if we were willing to. We're not. But we still bought the game, and we still want the actual story content. Fortunately, Square Enix has already learned their lesson on that. I'm only responding to make sure they don't forget. :P

[Skivvy]

DPS in this game might wait 30-hr.. but DD as they were called in FFXI's prime days, could wait up to a month before getting a pt.

I think there may be some sliiiight stretching here to the time frames DPS in XIV are definitely not waiting 30 hours to do content, and XI was not a month. I think most DD from XI probably have stories where they had been flagged for a few hours and never got an invite, but I've never heard a month.

With that said, it definitely sucked waiting even a few hours to never get an invite and then have to log off. The trust system addition was definitely a good change, although I do miss the conversations you could have during parties. Met a lot of awesome people back then.

[Talraen]

I kind of disagree with that. FFXI had a much more consistant player base. sitting around 500k for a good number of years till abyssea fawked it all up.

XIV's playerbase comes and goes and some of those census things you see have had numbers right down at 240k players. XIV's big problem is retaining players. over 10 millions sales and yet the active playerbase is just under 400k or so from the last census thing.

is it really a better game if so many people apparently drop it so quickly?

XI had no where near that number of sales yet managed to retain a steady 500k players rather consistently. until abbyssea messed things up.

XI Had better content participation as well. something like 3/4 of the playerbase were doing COP raids and stuff if you look at vanadiel censuses. and yet here raiding participation is vastly lower...

it would seem them that xi was fun for a greater portion of players than xiv. if you compare subs and sales.
just a though

The "active characters" in the FFXIV census means people who've completed the level 65 Stormblood dungeon. The 500k number for FFXI means everyone who logged in. And while it's not at all a fair comparison, if you based FFXI's active player numbers on who was halfway through the latest expansion and had completed everything before that, the number would have been far lower. I'd love to see you quote me stats where 3/4 of the population was doing CoP raids, because LOL no. When CoP was current, a minority of people even got past the first Promyvion. People pleaded for years for them to uncap CoP instances because they were too hard, and there was a huge rush to finally complete them when they did so, years later.

In short, FFXIV is currently more popular than FFXI ever was. Looking at raiding participation is inherently silly because the whole point of FFXIV's design is to be more broadly appealing. I liked FFXI and I never raided in any capacity aside from a few trips to Dynamis. I spent most of my time begging for parties to either level or do content (or tele-whoring).

My whole point here is that you're assuming everyone playing FFXI had the same experience you did. That's what survivorship bias is. I can assure you, they did not. I know because, since FFXI gave you little or no incentive to replay content you'd already done (and thus little incentive to help new players that you weren't bringing up to date to raid with), I spent a whole lot of time doing that content with players who also had never done it before.

I think there may be some sliiiight stretching here to the time frames DPS in XIV are definitely not waiting 30 hours to do content, and XI was not a month. I think most DD from XI probably have stories where they had been flagged for a few hours and never got an invite, but I've never heard a month.

A month is an exaggeration, but looking for party for hours without an invite as a DD was very much the norm for many classes, not a rarity. God forbid you tried to level DRG before they changed the two-hour, or BLM on Colibri levels. Hell, getting a THF to level 15 took weeks since you couldn't solo anything worth enough EXP to matter and no one wanted you in a party without Sneak Attack. Classes would be completely shut out during certain level ranges, which prior to Level Sync meant you basically had to level with friends to progress at all.

[SilverObi]

You may be taking your own experiences to be representative of other servers just like you're telling Dzian not to. At least if I'm reading what you typed right. Nobody with any amount of playtime will say XI was all good or all bad or that the community was made of altruistic angels. On Siren it was common to see CoP clear parties and statics (I went through about 3 of them myself for others). XIV is more broadly appealing which is where I feel like it threw out the baby with the bathwater in the transition from 1.0. So many good systems thrown away for streamlining. Which is FINE, they needed a solid base to build up from but it often feels like they don't want to build up at all in terms of complexity or difficulty.

Wasn't it only recently that XIV's profits finally surpassed XI's? That's actually quite a feat considering how much of a head start the prior game had. So obviously they know what they're doing to encourage sales and after-purchase profits. No one can deny that XIV appeals to a broader demographic because the two games were vastly different. I myself would just be happy if they took some systems from XI or 1.0 and updated them for XIV's ecosystem.

[Draginhikari]

Quote

I would disagree on some points, mostly due that looking at the Census numbers alone can paint kind of a deceiving picture alone.

Mostly that the consistency in XI is less to do with any aspect of quality of the game and more to do with the very forced nature of FFXI gameplay style which forced the need to go constantly in order to progress. It was kind of a possessive game in that regards. In addition, the content was constantly performed because as you progressed through XI there wasn't THAT much content released at any given time so individual participation was also higher because there were not that many options and the long time between content releases played into that as well. Now a days due to the years of the content stacking up it looks vaster then it actually was at the time. MMORPGs like XI work by getting players so devoted to it that leaving becomes that much harder to do and such keeps a core consistent audience as a result.

The other point is that XI was a MMORPG that was sort of a product of its time. The reason why MMORPGs like XI aren't made anymore is that it’s really not considered acceptable to waste people's time through the methods FFXI primarily used. Today a game released in the style of FFXI would likely be panned because of the unfair and extremely unbalanced difficulty. This kind of reflects on my view on XI then compared to now. Back then, I had a lot of time to waste on the extremely slow and tedious progression and I loved it. These days I simply do not, so I would find a game like FFXI undesirable at this stage of my life. Frankly, the ability the ability for people to walk away for periods of time and still be able to progress on XIV is strength not particular a weakness in that regards, sometimes it's more important to allow a player to walk away from your game from time to time. Fact is FFXI and XIV appeal to very different audience with entirely different needs, which is why I find comparing the two kind of weird in general.

[Dzian]

I'd love to see you quote me stats where 3/4 of the population was doing CoP raids, because LOL no. When CoP was current, a minority of people even got past the first Promyvion. People pleaded for years for them to uncap CoP instances because they were too hard, and there was a huge rush to finally complete them when they did so, years later.

Official Vanadiel Census
looking at this you can 40% of the player base upto or beyond "emptiness bleeds" with roughly another 30% of the playerbase scattered along at various points before that.

While those figures only represent people who have started those missions and not cleared them it does still show a significant chunk of the playerbase was doing cop. and if you look at "the last verse" almost 25% of players had cleared it entirely.

this census is also the 2009 one so the figures represented are before abyssea came and the leve lcaps were removed. so COP particiapation was actually quite high when you look at it.

note however i'm not saying my numbers are 100% accurate because SE simply isn't as open with information as it once was for one reason or another.

[Talraen]

Official Vanadiel Census
looking at this you can 40% of the player base upto or beyond "emptiness bleeds" with roughly another 30% of the playerbase scattered along at various points before that.

While those figures only represent people who have started those missions and not cleared them it does still show a significant chunk of the playerbase was doing cop. and if you look at "the last verse" almost 25% of players had cleared it entirely.

this census is also the 2009 one so the figures represented are before abyssea came and the leve lcaps were removed. so COP particiapation was actually quite high when you look at it.

note however i'm not saying my numbers are 100% accurate because SE simply isn't as open with information as it once was for one reason or another.

I think this data actually proves my point. This data is from 2008 and 2009, and Chains of Promathia came out in 2004. There are already two subsequent expansions out by this point. So, four years after release, what looks to be just under 50% of players have completed the first three Promyvions. It's true that many players who got past that point go all the way, but that's just how FFXI works: you either had a static and did everything, or you didn't and you could barely progress at all. (Just look at the bar graphs; most of the graphs in the middle are virtually unchanged, but about as many players as got past the first mission in 2009 finished all of them.)

With the caveat that I don't think these numbers are actually accurate, but they're all that we have, let's compare to how the FFXIV census works. Again, "active player" means someone who finished the level 65 dungeon. That's halfway through the latest expansion. Around 25%, generously, of players are halfway through WotG according to this data. But WotG is really new, so let's look at ToAU instead - there, it's maybe 40% in 2009 and closer to 30% in 2008. Even CoP in 2009 is basically 50/50 for who's at least halfway through. By the FFXIV metric of "active players" those would reduce FFXI's 500k to 125k, 200k, or 250k, respectively. All of which are well below the 525k listed on the FFXIV census. FFXIV is still clearly the more popular game by a wide margin.

You may be taking your own experiences to be representative of other servers just like you're telling Dzian not to. At least if I'm reading what you typed right. Nobody with any amount of playtime will say XI was all good or all bad or that the community was made of altruistic angels. On Siren it was common to see CoP clear parties and statics (I went through about 3 of them myself for others). XIV is more broadly appealing which is where I feel like it threw out the baby with the bathwater in the transition from 1.0. So many good systems thrown away for streamlining. Which is FINE, they needed a solid base to build up from but it often feels like they don't want to build up at all in terms of complexity or difficulty.

Wasn't it only recently that XIV's profits finally surpassed XI's? That's actually quite a feat considering how much of a head start the prior game had. So obviously they know what they're doing to encourage sales and after-purchase profits. No one can deny that XIV appeals to a broader demographic because the two games were vastly different. I myself would just be happy if they took some systems from XI or 1.0 and updated them for XIV's ecosystem.

To clarify, I'm not saying that my experience is the norm or even that common in FFXI. What I am pointing out is that nostalgia threads like this are usually populated only by people who played and loved FFXI, and ignores the experiences of the many, many people who did not have that experience. I'm saying that our experiences both exist. And that's the flaw with FFXI, and the reason they didn't make FFXIV like it.

The problem with taking FFXI's systems and updating them for FFXIV is that some of those systems are inherent to the reason FFXI had more limited appeal than FFXIV. For instance, open-world bosses. Look at how much trouble Hunts cause, and just imagine that combined with week-long spawns and maybe an FFXI-style claim system. Hunts are the updated version of open world bosses, yet people still constantly clamor for them. But hey, if it makes you feel better, the upcoming chocobo saddlebags are a very FFXI-style inventory expansion.

[Skivvy]

The problem with taking FFXI's systems and updating them for FFXIV is that some of those systems are inherent to the reason FFXI had more limited appeal than FFXIV. For instance, open-world bosses. Look at how much trouble Hunts cause, and just imagine that combined with week-long spawns and maybe an FFXI-style claim system. Hunts are the updated version of open world bosses, yet people still constantly clamor for them. But hey, if it makes you feel better, the upcoming chocobo saddlebags are a very FFXI-style inventory expansion.

Hunts have drama because a lot of people feel that they are entitled to get a kill, even though the system is first come, first serve. I would say the fault lies with the players and not the event itself. The current Hunt thread from the other day was quite amusing.