Can anything be applied to FFXIV from FFXI's Abyssea?

[Sephr]

I think the idea of it being too difficult to do the endgame bosses would be sort of redundant in FFXIV (for now anwyay) because the max group size for the forseeable future is 8 people.

I've never played Abyssea but I heard it was the downfall to XI?

Different strokes. Some people don't enjoy it because it's so accessible and most people can access the upper tiers of content now (I don't regard this as a bad thing, Abyssea's pretty much run its course now and they're moving away from it in the future), but for a lot of people including myself, it reignited the flame under a stagnating game (pre-abyssea and since about half way through WoTG, content being released was pretty awful which was why I quit).

I think having various poppable endgame NMs spread out through the areas we have now in an Abyssea style would be fantastic, with each current zone having a final, really tough-to-beat enemy. Once you'd beaten them perhaps you could finally square off against something in Mor Dhona that was extremely challenging. It would be a great way to add content outside of dungeons that could run in parallel, with the final couple of tiers being at least as challenging as top raid bosses available.

Edit: Walk of Echoes is another good topic to bring up. We could have some battlefields similar to WoE areas, possibly accessible from the Company HQs they're adding. You could be teleported into battles and work together with anyone else who's in there to take down garlean soldiers/machines etc. Might make it actually feel like something dangerous is going on in the world.

[Xatsh]

Abysea dealt a massive blow to a majority of the community.

1) It removed a half decade of work , unlike most mmos in XI you worked for years to build a character. In 1 update every single piece of gear, including relics where negated. Those who put in the work "The hardcores" quit because it destroyed all their work. Imagine taking 3-4 yrs to get a relic and then SE releasing a more powerful weapon that can be obtained in about 5 days without much difficulty.

2) It delt a massive blow to linkshell communitys. Most people at endgame had large linkshells that done things together with the group, for many people these linkshells where more important then the drops themselves. With abysea it is actually better to do it with 4-6 people. Meaning the yrs prior of building a great linkshell came to an end in an instant. Linkshells now mean nothing.

3) Baby supper easy mode, FFXI went from a game that would take the average player 6yrs to finish to a game someone with a dedicated static could max their character in about 3 months.


All in all Abysea undid FFXI, causing around 3/5ths of the population to quit. And forcing SE to do 2 server merges in a year. Atm they are trying to revive the game with events outside abysea... but the game is still in mega easy mode.

FFXI is the easiest mmo in the genre atm... well maby slightly harder then DCU.

[MaxWinter]

"All in all Abysea undid FFXI, causing around 3/5ths of the population to quit. And forcing SE to do 2 server merges in a year. Atm they are trying to revive the game with events outside abysea... but the game is still in mega easy mode."

You see i agree with somethings here but i have a different point of view about the game , i was in no linkshell at the end of my final fantasy 11 time,went into 2 or 3 different casual shells and hated the self imposed rules of some elite shell (i understand not all where like that) so trying get any end game event done was impossible.

What they did wrong was nerf the end game items that people had worked years to get , however my view is from the start the game never should have had that long a time sink , that sort of thing is why lots people left in the first few years of final fantasy 11 , but the ones that stuck at the game where ones that wanted content like that or ones like me that wanted to do ingame missions more than endgame events, i had little disire to time sink years to get an item ingame and my view is that 14 should be accessible to all but if it ends up not being that then i hope there are parts of the game that are accesible to me and other such as the story missions that i enjoyed alot in final fantasy 11.

[Sephr]

Abysea dealt a massive blow to a majority of the community.

1) It removed a half decade of work , unlike most mmos in XI you worked for years to build a character. In 1 update every single piece of gear, including relics where negated. Those who put in the work "The hardcores" quit because it destroyed all their work. Imagine taking 3-4 yrs to get a relic and then SE releasing a more powerful weapon that can be obtained in about 5 days without much difficulty.

2) It delt a massive blow to linkshell communitys. Most people at endgame had large linkshells that done things together with the group, for many people these linkshells where more important then the drops themselves. With abysea it is actually better to do it with 4-6 people. Meaning the yrs prior of building a great linkshell came to an end in an instant. Linkshells now mean nothing.

3) Baby supper easy mode, FFXI went from a game that would take the average player 6yrs to finish to a game someone with a dedicated static could max their character in about 3 months.


All in all Abysea undid FFXI, causing around 3/5ths of the population to quit. And forcing SE to do 2 server merges in a year. Atm they are trying to revive the game with events outside abysea... but the game is still in mega easy mode.

FFXI is the easiest mmo in the genre atm... well maby slightly harder then DCU.

And you're not really thinking about Abyssea in the context of FFXIV are you? I'm talking about game systems, not how the feelings of a group of players got hurt because it turned out all the time they invested in a game was for naught. Shocker.

As I've already said, FFXIV's content is already being targetted at small groups, so the second point is redundant given the CONTEXT.

As for the third point, I believe I was already implying that they could make the NM encounters challenging quite easily, just because FFXI failed to provide challenging encounters in its attempt to become accessible, doesn't mean FFXIV would do the same.

No game should take 6 years to complete your goals, that's just completely unrealistic.

[Xatsh]

AS I said in my first post to this topic, if they take the idea of it I am fine with it if they do not screw everything up. That post you commented was just explaining how Abysea killed FFXI, whether you agree or not that is why most the people who left it did.

6yrs to finish a mmo is about right, what is not right is to finish all your goals in 3 months. It is a mmo after all a game that is not suppost to end. If a mmo is going to live people cannot beat it in 2-4 months there has to be long term goals present.

[Sephr]

It depends on the format of the game, really. If they keep adding higher tiers and new content, it's acceptable for a 4-5 month turnover (ala WoW/Rift etc's style of constantly replacing previous content). I don't really like that system because it makes all the previously made zones and challenges fairly redundant.

On the other hand, 6 years to gear up your character? That's pretty ridiculous. It all depends on the context, and just giving an unexplained '6 years' figure with no background doesn't really make sense.

EDIT: What do you mean by 'finish' an MMO? I think thats where the communication break down is. Like you said previously, you never really finish an MMO.

[Nikita]

If we learned anything from abyssea its that many players hate zones getting reskinned over and over again :P Reused zones does not = new content! Also, one thing from abyssea they applied was content that doesn't require 18 people.

[Seif]

Isn't this working currently the other way around? When I'm in Abyssea I feel like I'm playing XIV with spoon-fed content without much story nor purpose.

The good thing with all other XI expansions has been the cutscenes and storylines with their own mission structure. They're almost like a full game within a game. Aby? Not so much.

[Sephr]

Once again, I should ask you to actually read the thread. I'm talking about the mechanics of abyssea and whether any of them can be applied to FFXIV in its current form.

I'm not suggesting they should add a stupid half-assed expansion with no story or new zones to speak of, but with a bunch of interesting mechanics.

[Seif]

Once again, I should ask you to actually read the thread. I'm talking about the mechanics of abyssea and whether any of them can be applied to FFXIV in its current form.

I'm not suggesting they should add a stupid half-assed expansion with no story or new zones to speak of, but with a bunch of interesting mechanics.

I did. The whole of Abyssea is just set up like disconnected leves like pretty much everything in XIV currently. I just think the game is in dire need of more structured content than anything else right now. There's nothing in Abyssea that can't be done with a set of special NMs right now.