Quote Originally Posted by Nvr View Post
I have never heard anyone complain about not being able to spend levels 55-75 killing the same damn birds, and I have never heard people complain that they can't wait durring a 3 hour window for an NM they need to kill with 4+ other groups of people wanting and needing the same thing. Anyone who complains about the changes to FFXI, which make it way more accecable to people, are either people that botted and did not have to worry about HNM claims, or are simply looking for something to complain about. If people want the old FFXi back, they can print out a picture of a Colibri, tape it to their wall, and stare at it for 3 hours. Keep in mind, these mindless xp camps were very often overcamped.

Are things easier to get in FFXI now? For sure.
But the reasons it was more difficult in the past are reasons that should not exist in games really. 7 day respawn timers with 5% droprates for the whole server to share. I really find it hard to believe that "A lot of player" miss that. Going by a % of FFXI players that dislike the changes to FFXI, I am sure it is a very small % of people that are just upset because they spent years doing mindless camping etc to get their gear and are now upset that people are getting better things easier. And I don't really care if those people are upset.
I'm going to make two completely separate responses to this.

First of all, I camped Aspidochelone once in like 2005 and decided it wasn't for me. Yet I think FFXI has been nothing but utter shit since they started raising the cap and doing nothing but Abyssea add-ons. It's not for any of the endgame stuff, but for the fact that there really is no point to any of it anymore. There are no new areas, just thrown-together rehashes of old ones. There are no interesting storylines, just a couple cutscenes after massive amounts of endgame content. They reduced the amount of grinding to do, but ironically now the only thing to do in the game at all is grind because they haven't added a new story or area in years. To top it off, they didn't even know how to solve a problem they created with magian trials, so things that would aggro at 75 still do so at 90 and you consequently can't even explore old areas with impunity. They added a bunch of levels, abilities, and equipment, and nothing to do with any of it.

As for the idea that no one could possibly want such low drop rates and ridiculous camping times all you need to know is: scarcity = accomplishment. Like I said, it wasn't for me, but that doesn't mean it wasn't for some people. The only thing really wrong with it is the way people bring bots into the equation. If that could be eliminated, the rest would be fine, because there are people who are willing to sit through it for a chance at rare loot not just anyone could get. And if they want to, let them, especially seeing as open world NMs are one of the easiest things to implement in any MMO. If you don't like low drop rates, then that's fine too; there should be other options for your style, like instanced dungeons.