To those who loved FF11...

[Skivvy]

There's something to be said for Burn Out.

Doing the same junk day in, day out for years is not healthy for any game. There's a reason why people got bored of Sky, Sea, etc. They simply got tired of doing it. Cycling in fresh content is good.

XIV has kept the cycle of 2 endgame dungeons, 1 24-person raid, 1 new trial, 1 8-man raid for years. And then roulettes toss you into content old content you've run for ages already. The burnout indeed is real.

[Maeka]

XIV has kept the cycle of 2 endgame dungeons, 1 24-person raid, 1 new trial, 1 8-man raid for years. And then roulettes toss you into content old content you've run for ages already. The burnout indeed is real.

The Roulettes get more random as time goes on, as more and more dungeons are added. I don't mind them, because there's what again, nearly 50 dungeons the Leveling Roulette can pick from, depending on what level you Q up as?

And besides, you're not really meant to spam the roulettes endlessly. Why do you think Eureka NMs drop Mendacity now? If you want to do roulettes, do a roulette. That's fine. If you want to take a break from roulettes, you're really not missing out on much.

That's better than doing the same boring content. People say Eureka is boring and grindy.... well, obviously they never tried Sky or Sea in FFXI because that was 100x worse. Standing around waiting for an NM to pop and a lot of times, somebody else got the claim and you just wasted 1-2 hours for absolutely nothing. Maybe by the end of the week you'll have a set of pop items that you can pop a big NM and maybe, MAYBE he'll drop the thing you need. But then, he only drops one and there's up to 17 other people wanting the same thing usually.

I remember talking to RDMs who did Dynamis for YEARS, every week, and never got their AF2 hat. Some of them had been doing so from waaaaaay back when, and never got their AF2 hat before Abyssea raised the level cap and made it obsolete.

And said RDMs had been doing the same Dynamis, same area, for years.

Do you seriously think that's healthy for a game? You're seriously going to compare that to a 20 minute thing where you get 1 out of 50+ dungeons randomly?

At least in FFXIV, if there's a piece of armor I'd really like to get... and I can't get it no matter how many times I try... in a couple months, it'll be obsolete and I'll get something better instead. I'm guaranteed progress with my character over time, one way or another. In FFXI when Lv75 was the level cap, this wasn't the case. BiS remained BiS for years and if you had terrible luck, you just weren't going to progress period and such progression was so tiny that it never seemed worth it anyways.

[LineageRazor]

It's something that I've mentioned in other threads, but in my opinion while FFXIV is the better GAME, FFXI is the better WORLD.

FFXI's world seemed more alive, with NPCs and creatures that didn't always cater to a player's whims. For example, some NPC salesfolk took certain days of the week off - if you wanted something on the wrong day, you had no choice but to wait. If that airship left without you, you were out of luck; you were going to need to wait for the next one.

The world was enormous, dangerous, and complicated. Certain areas were only accessible with specific party configurations (though usually it was possible to quest for a key item that would allow solo access). Monsters were relentless, and often dangerous even if they were a lower level than you were. Getting places was an ordeal; "shortcuts" like teleport spells were rare, and even after taking those shortcuts a player generally had to hoof large distances to get to their destination.

Game mechanics were complex and interesting. Each day of the week was elementally themed, and would boost the effectiveness of its corresponding element (and nerf the effectiveness of its opposing element) - strategies for defeating certain elementally-themed monsters often included fighting them on certain days. Weather had similar effects. Stats were often multipurpose; Vitality increased your defense, but was also a component in the formula for cure potency. Agility determined one's evasion, but was also used to determine accuracy with ranged weapons. "Best in slot" was a never-ending debate, often with numerous situational answers.

Really, what it boils down do is that FFXI was a better world because it was INCONVENIENT. FFXIV pretty much hands everything to you on a silver platter. NPCs are always ready to serve. Monsters fall before you with only a few swings of the weapon. Garleans will gladly open their doors for you to enter and run amok in their base. Becoming a master of the world of FFXI was enormously satisfying, because that world did not give you an inch. In FFXIV, you were a master before you even took your first step outside the city gates.

By the same token, FFXIV is the better GAME, because it streamlines all these inconveniences. The stat system is simple, and keeps getting more simple over time. Leveling is quick and easy. There are few obstacles stopping you from getting places that you want to go. Equipment selection is sparse, and there are generally obvious answers as to what to wear. If your goal is to group up and fight tough monsters in instances, FFXIV is a great platform for it. If your goal is to challenge an entire world, FFXI is the place to be.

While I say FFXIV is the better game, there is one point on which I'd say FFXI is superior as a game: the expansion system. FFXIV's expansions are linear; the storyline picks up where the previous expansion leaves off. This is a daunting impediment for new players; either they need to slog through an ever-increasing backlog of storyline (compounded by the fact that completing it is REQUIRED to unlock most features in the game), or they need to pay an extra fee to skip it all (which is a double slap to the face; not only are they paying SE to NOT play a big chunk of the game they purchased, but they miss out on the storyline).

In FFXI, on the other hand, each expansion (beyond the first, at any rate; Rise of the Zilart DID continue the vanilla game's story, but it was the only one to do so) was its own independent story, and completely optional. These stories interweaved in many ways to flesh out the world as a whole to be sure; for example, in the vanilla game it is learned that a "dark power" turned Raogrimm into the Shadowlord, but nowhere in vanilla or Rise of the Zilart is it spelled out that that dark power was Odin. That tidbit is hinted at in Treasures of Aht Urhgan (where other empowered individuals are encountered) and confirmed in Wings of the Goddess. However, knowing that Odin empowered the Shadowlord is not necessary to enjoy any of the three expansions that assemble that particular story. The expansions can also be played in any order a player likes, or even not at all - and even better, even if you don't bother with an expansion's story quests, there's tons you can do.

[Aana]

There will never be a way to settle it because they arent the same thing. Are bananas better than oranges? They are different. Some like 1. Some like both. Some REALLY hate one or the other. Each game offered its own flavor and that flavor isnt for everyone.

I played XI for 9 years, left in 2013 because most of my friends had migrated to ARR and I followed. I recently (few weeks ago) resubbed to XI after 5 years and now playing both.

14 is great because its casual. As a significantly older person (9yr+5yr....you can do the math) I no longer have time to dive into the depths of FFXI like I used to. But 14 can be much more rewarding with much less time. Cap some tomes. Raid a few nights with your friends. GG, you are now a top tier player and can keep up with the vertical treadmill for the small price of a few hours a week and as a bonus you get all the modern marvels like good graphics, cross server communications, PF/DF for convenience, voice acting, and a game programmed to actually use your graphics card instead of processor. You also get hype. You get excited because theres another expansion coming. There are new jobs coming. There is always some exciting new hook just around the corner as it is actively developed.

XI will never have the modern polish as a a game that counts its life in decades. But you are never without content. The game is deeper. There's more to get into, and it will always have greater satisfaction because you have to put real time to achieve big things and those things LAST. No game experience has come close to my experience of undertaking and completing a Mythic weapon in FFXI. That was the most fun and satisfying time I have ever spent in a game and often think back fondly to that time. 14 feels shallow and meaningless by comparison. I made 3 relics in ARR. And now they are glamour pieces that can be made in a fraction of the time with zero combat function. Whoo? I returned to XI after 5 years and all of my 'super' weapons are still top tier weapons i can use. Investment pays off in XI, but you also have to invest a lot into XI.

The constant vertical ladder makes 14 sometimes feel like a waste of time. I could quit for a year in 14, return and within 2 days be completely back to whatever the baseline bar is. Which begs the question, why bother raiding and trying so hard to stay on top that just keeps growing, but also has an elevator that carries you 'almost' to the top before you have to take the stairs. But its casual, its shiny, its convenient, its modern which makes it great and terrible. XI is none of those things, which is also great and terrible.

14 is great if you dont suffer from the nihilism of transitory gear grinds. XI is great if you dont suffer from the archaic game play and can devote substantial time to it. But one will never 'beat' the other any more than oranges 'beat' bananas or chocolate beats vanilla. They are just flavors of entertainment. One doesnt have to win.

I have recently been getting hit with the nihilism and just Raid>Log for the last few months and poking around other games in between trying to find the cure for unsatisfying aspects of XIV. XI cures it (though readjusting to the archaic gameplay took a while) and I remember why i played it for nearly a decade to start with, but I am now struggling to find enough time to commit to it.

I like bananas and oranges. But neither all the time or mutually exclusively.

Edit: 11 does win with the races. Battle hardened Mithra>>>>>>>prissy salon hair kawaii miqote every day. I really resent the 'Human with Cat ear headband' approach they made to all the races in 14. Thats not a badass that saves the world 20 times by swinging an axe and releasing the inner beast.

[Skivvy]

The Roulettes get more random as time goes on, as more and more dungeons are added. I don't mind them, because there's what again, nearly 50 dungeons the Leveling Roulette can pick from, depending on what level you Q up as?

And besides, you're not really meant to spam the roulettes endlessly. Why do you think Eureka NMs drop Mendacity now? If you want to do roulettes, do a roulette. That's fine. If you want to take a break from roulettes, you're really not missing out on much.

That's better than doing the same boring content. People say Eureka is boring and grindy.... well, obviously they never tried Sky or Sea in FFXI because that was 100x worse. Standing around waiting for an NM to pop and a lot of times, somebody else got the claim and you just wasted 1-2 hours for absolutely nothing. Maybe by the end of the week you'll have a set of pop items that you can pop a big NM and maybe, MAYBE he'll drop the thing you need. But then, he only drops one and there's up to 17 other people wanting the same thing usually.

I remember talking to RDMs who did Dynamis for YEARS, every week, and never got their AF2 hat. Some of them had been doing so from waaaaaay back when, and never got their AF2 hat before Abyssea raised the level cap and made it obsolete.

And said RDMs had been doing the same Dynamis, same area, for years.

Do you seriously think that's healthy for a game? You're seriously going to compare that to a 20 minute thing where you get 1 out of 50+ dungeons randomly?

At least in FFXIV, if there's a piece of armor I'd really like to get... and I can't get it no matter how many times I try... in a couple months, it'll be obsolete and I'll get something better instead. I'm guaranteed progress with my character over time, one way or another. In FFXI when Lv75 was the level cap, this wasn't the case. BiS remained BiS for years and if you had terrible luck, you just weren't going to progress period and such progression was so tiny that it never seemed worth it anyways.

XI had a ton of varied end-game content to spread things around. In the days of level 75 cap, you had your assaults, Limbus, Einherjar, Abyssea items, Sky, Sea, Dynamis, ENMs, WotG events (I didn't do this much, so can't recall what they were called), Salvage, Nyzul, etc for your gearing needs. All of that was available within 5 years, which is now how old XIV ARR will be in August.


In XIV, you have Tomes, 1 set of dungeon gear, crafting (which was also an option in XI), and the latest 8/24 raid. That is it.

XIV is more about your instant gratification, which is fine if that's your thing. But it doesn't suddenly change the fact that the game is shallow due to its lack of substance and variety.

[Maeka]

XI had a ton of varied end-game content to spread things around. In the days of level 75 cap, you had your assaults, Limbus, Einherjar, Abyssea items, Sky, Sea, Dynamis, ENMs, WotG events (I didn't do this much, so can't recall what they were called), Salvage, Nyzul, etc for your gearing needs. All of that was available within 5 years, which is now how old XIV ARR will be in August.


In XIV, you have Tomes, 1 set of dungeon gear, crafting (which was also an option in XI), and the latest 8/24 raid. That is it.

XIV is more about your instant gratification, which is fine if that's your thing. But it doesn't suddenly change the fact that the game is shallow due to its lack of substance and variety.

The problem, though, was the simple fact that a lot of these systems were so similar in design, and they were still punishing and unrewarding, where you ran it week after week after week and got nothing 99.9% of the time.

And crafting was never an option in FFXI except for a very few select pieces, until the Su pieces and even then, most of those were inferior to gear you could get through other means, until Su3 came out just this past year and even then it was expensive as hell, and was STILL inferior, it's just that most people couldn't get into the endgame that dropped comparable stuff.

And again, if you didn't have an Endgame Linkshell, the game had absolutely nothing for you to do at max level because everything required a Linkshell. No Linkshell = No Need To Apply. You weren't getting anything done whatsoever.

At least in XIV you can still do Sigmascape, get into PF 24mans, etc. Better than absolutely nothing.

[Aana]

The problem, though, was the simple fact that a lot of these systems were so similar in design, and they were still punishing and unrewarding, where you ran it week after week after week and got nothing 99.9% of the time.

And crafting was never an option in FFXI except for a very few select pieces, until the Su pieces and even then, most of those were inferior to gear you could get through other means, until Su3 came out just this past year and even then it was expensive as hell, and was STILL inferior, it's just that most people couldn't get into the endgame that dropped comparable stuff.

And again, if you didn't have an Endgame Linkshell, the game had absolutely nothing for you to do at max level because everything required a Linkshell. No Linkshell = No Need To Apply. You weren't getting anything done whatsoever.

At least in XIV you can still do Sigmascape, get into PF 24mans, etc. Better than absolutely nothing.

Crafted gear in 14 isnt some end all gear either. It's junk you use for a week or two or you just ignore it entirely. Crafted gear in neither game is 'good' gear, but in XI there are at least occasional exceptions that are usable in a few sets.

Your rant is really about group events. If you dont like large organized group events and the only way you do them is through a server matchmaking service then no, you wont get very far in XI. But you are painting a focus on guild style as somehow inherently bad. The LACK of large scale guild activities is one of the more common complaints about 14. If you want to play an MMO as a single player game and hate anything related to large guild style activities then that defeats one of the defining features of MMOs. You want good story, cut scenes, graphics, gameplay, convenient travel, epic bosses and other stuff 14 has? That is all available in any offline game. The single defining point that separates MMOs from other games is the massive multiplayer part. If you dont want a part in that, fine, but dont bash a massively multiplayer game for actually being massively multiplayer.

[Vhailor]

And again, if you didn't have an Endgame Linkshell, the game had absolutely nothing for you to do at max level because everything required a Linkshell. No Linkshell = No Need To Apply. You weren't getting anything done whatsoever.

In my estimation, this is a feature, more than a bug.

The underlying problem with modern MMOs is that their convenience features - notably the Duty Finder - have shredded the depth of the game world. There's value to being forced into doing things the hard way. Needing an end-game LS meant people socialized more and learned to get along (mostly); needing to wander to the location of an event rather than hopping into an instance from anywhere in the world meant Vana'diel wasn't reduced to just scenery, the way Eorzea is. A punishing route toward Crafting contributed to market stability, particularly at the high end (and, by the way, it absolutely was an option - just not max level for most people; getting to 50-all or so was quite doable, and reaped a tidy profit as well if done properly). The 99.9% figure is also a huge exaggeration; I usually got small things every couple of weeks, and a share of the gil from things like Dynamis currency sales. What's more, while you didn't get items all the time, the items you did get remained relevant for years. Was it hard to get the RDM AF2 hat to drop? Yes - but it was worth it when it finally did.

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I'd also note that it's worth keeping in mind the key experience supposedly offered by MMOs: deep immersion into a virtual world populated largely by other people. It is literally the only thing they can offer that is not done better by small-scale multiplayer titles or single-player titles. When viewed through this lens, the problems faced by modern MMOs becomes a bit more clear. By prioritizing convenience, they've shredded the immersion and challenge and, in so doing, they've nigh eliminated the built-in mechanisms that forced players to socialize. The result is a shallow sandbox; a glorified large-scale chat room strewn about with simple activities.

This just isn't a compelling offering, in my estimation. It's fun if you happen to have friends who play, particularly IRL ones, but it creates an 'empty' sort of feeling, as least for me. The activity treadmill becomes too visible. It's just too convenient.

[Maeka]

Crafted gear in 14 isnt some end all gear either. It's junk you use for a week or two or you just ignore it entirely. Crafted gear in neither game is 'good' gear, but in XI there are at least occasional exceptions that are usable in a few sets.

Your rant is really about group events. If you dont like large organized group events and the only way you do them is through a server matchmaking service then no, you wont get very far in XI. But you are painting a focus on guild style as somehow inherently bad. The LACK of large scale guild activities is one of the more common complaints about 14. If you want to play an MMO as a single player game and hate anything related to large guild style activities then that defeats one of the defining features of MMOs. You want good story, cut scenes, graphics, gameplay, convenient travel, epic bosses and other stuff 14 has? That is all available in any offline game. The single defining point that separates MMOs from other games is the massive multiplayer part. If you dont want a part in that, fine, but dont bash a massively multiplayer game for actually being massively multiplayer.

The main problem is the simple fact that it's Guild Or Bust in FFXI. You either do a guild based thing or you do absolutely nothing.

FFXIV allows you to do BOTH.

It's not that I have anything against guild-based setups, but when they are the ONLY way of having ANY content whatsoever, THAT is what I have a problem with. They forgot the little guys when they designed XI's stuff. It's all about the serious endgamer with huge groups of people at his beck-and-call. They forgot to add content for the more casual players too, which is what XIV fixed.

[Aana]

The main problem is the simple fact that it's Guild Or Bust in FFXI. You either do a guild based thing or you do absolutely nothing.

FFXIV allows you to do BOTH.

It's not that I have anything against guild-based setups, but when they are the ONLY way of having ANY content whatsoever, THAT is what I have a problem with. They forgot the little guys when they designed XI's stuff. It's all about the serious endgamer with huge groups of people at his beck-and-call. They forgot to add content for the more casual players too, which is what XIV fixed.

Not really. Now it is relatively small groups of 6 or less people doing most events. But even back in the 75 heyday there were 'large' endgame linkshells that did everything as a group. But there were also tons of smaller ones doing specific events. I was part of a giant dyanmis group (60+), and a giant 'endgame' group that did sky, sea, hnms, etc (30+ showed for each event). But I also made a small 6 man salvage group. I was in a small limbus group (12+ showed for events). We occasionally even teamed up with other groups when turnout was low or we didnt have the manpower.

That's how I happened to play, but I know for a fact there were tons of much smaller groups that bit off chunks of content. Even my big 'General Endgame' shell would just split up the 30 people that showed and send 6 to go farm diorites in sky. 6 to go farm sea. the 10 people that needed ZNM pops would go do those. Most things in the game did not take a full alliance and there are TONS of successful small groups of friends that just did content with 6-12 people. Even dynamis and other 'big group' activities were often done by tight nit small groups and they didnt have the same giant waiting lists for thf hands and rdm hats.

You are being dramatic claiming that the only way to play was to joining a corporate mega LS. That was ONE way to get er dun. It was never a requirement to play that way now or at 75. But you did have to play with SOMEONE. You couldnt just sit in town and wait for the server to drop you into content.