Odd question for former XI players?

[Shuon]

Not sure if your question was actually answered but I shall try.

Level-ing up
In xi, killing monsters was one of the only ways to get experience points for a long time - there was no quest exp. So players typically party up and kill monsters. Solo was not made possible until many many years later so a party was essential.

Exp Party
A party consisted of 6 players. A generic party would have 1 tank, 1 healer, a support and 3 damage dealers (DPS).

Generally, the party would travel to a an area with the monsters of the appropriate level and can give decent exp per kill and camp at a safe spot. Thereafter, a party member would head out, look for a monster and pull it back to the camp where the party will proceed to slaughter it for experience points, and then it gets rinsed and repeated for a few hours.

Everything takes place in the open world and there was no queuing up for dungeons etc - party-forming is done at the towns or through player search (you have the option of looking for all tanks who are between level 40 to 42, for example).

Roles and jobs
As there was no queue-ing and party formation was based on players' discretion, you could technically go with whatever jobs you fancy. Due to the shortage of certain classes at times, people also got creative with what they could do with different classes - hence the 'flexibility'.

For example, ninjas were designed to deal damage but they had a particular ninjutsu that allowed them to create shadows which was capable for absorbing attacks - players go creative with this and made ninja into a tank specialising at taking 0 damage. ANother example was summonses in its early days - summonses had a lot of mp and their summons weren't very impressive - so players made summonses equip white mage healing spells and go as healers.

However, traditional roles were still in place where jobs like paladin and warrior were designed to tank, and classes like ranger and dark knight were designed to deal damage and jobs like bard and red mage were designed to support.

Anyone can DPS?
Jobs were introduced without the development team really knowing what it was meant to do. Many jobs were given both tanking and DPS ability/utilities.

For example, Samurai was introduced and designed to tank but at the same time was given damage dealing capacity. Overtime, players decided to play it as a DPS more than a tank and the development team followed suit. Similarly, warrior was designed to be a tank but mid-game/end-game it did not have sufficient tanking qualities compared to PLD to warrant its place as the most effective tank, so players were using it as a DPS more often than not.

Furthermore, xi combat was heavily reliant on auto-attacks, which generated a resources for the player to perform a much more powerful weaponskill (think limit break system in ffxiv, except that it fills up faster) and powerful weapon skills were crucial to the damage output of the parties.

HOWEVER, they were not native to jobs but to weapons. This means that if you were a warrior using sword, you had access to sword weapon skills; if you were a warrior using axe, you had axe weapon skills. Furthermore, higher level weapon skills were arguably equally powerful. This means that even if you were a white mage, if you had access to a really powerful weaponskill, you could still dish out a respectable number.

Also, ffxi was not linear progression - there are unique items in the game that had very special qualities. For example, a weapon called kraken club allowed players to attack up to 8 times per swing, making it possible for white mage to be be quite good at dealing damage too.

Anyone can tank?
Yes and no. Tanking entails 2 elements: damage mitigation and hate management. While many classes could deal with damage mitigation, haste management might be an issue. But lets put hate management aside and think about damage mitigation, yes many non-tank classes could do it.

For example, red mage and blue mage had spells that massive increase their defences, plus they could use stoneskin - this means that they were capable of taking very little damages. Also, when things get nasty, you could run away, sleep/bind the monster and use the time to recover. Meanwhile, they could also use the ninjutsu shadow thing mentioned above to absorb damage.


Anyone can heal?
Not really. Healing was almost the exclusive domain of white mage, red mage and later on dancer (not sure about scholar).

Unconventional parties
In xi, since there was no queuing etc, people could form parties with unconventional set ups.

For example, you could form a party of 5 black magi and a bard - the bard could pull the monster to the camp, the black magi would sleep the monster, then focus fire their most power spell on the monster, then sleep it again, then focus fire on it again. In fact, players had done an entire raid with only black magi - 18 black magi (3 parties of 6) focus firing their spells at the same time and it worked.

Another example was monk party - as blunt damage was super effective on skeletons and monk fists were blunt damage, you could have a full party of monks with a healer and burn through skeletons easily.

On hindsight?
As everyone else said, it was a different game - more refined in some areas but less so in others but ffxiv is certainly more deliberated, organised and planned whereas ffxi was more spontaneous.

[Xatsh]

The jobs in XI were taken to fights more or less. Like XIV you could play everything. In XI fights had specific strategies to them and each job changed to fit the roles.

As a guild leader in XI you built your team around the fight, each one had a different optimal strategy.

Mnk such in some fights, but are godly in others.
Rngs were king in some fights, sub par in others.
Sometimes rdm or nin tanks were king, others pld.
Sometime you needed stuns sometimes you didn't.
Some fights required zerging down a mob... others would wipe you in 10secs if you tried and required a more slow drawn out strategy.

XI and XIV are almost polar opposites.

XIV the fights are scripted and all jobs are forced into a playstyle. The fights are purly based on avoiding 1shot mechanics and maintaining the required group dps to avoid dying. Typical endgame fight is 7-12mins. Typical endgame setup uses 8ppl the 8 is forced on us by game design. Typically content is relevant for 6months. Game is designed for ease of gameplay and casual playstyles.

XI the fights were pure random on how the boss reacted. You build the party based on the mob you are fighting, most endgame guild took the optimal setups to make it easier. Your strategy and how you played drastically changed based on the mobs behavior and zone/area you are fighting in. Typical endgame fight was 15mins to 1hr. Typical endgame setup used 18ppl but could be attempted and successful with less if you overgeared the content. Typically content was relevant for 6yrs. Game is designed for long amount of time investment to succeed and designed for the hardcore playstyle.


As for your job each job you had multiple roles they filled. If you were solo/party/allaince/endgame the roles of the jobs completely changed.

A few examples: Each one of these are separate party roles that were utalized in XI.

Rdm: Main Heal, Support Heal, Main Support, Main Tank, Main Enfeeble, Main Stun, Main kite
Mnk: Main Sustained Dps, Range Burst dmg dps
Smn: Main Heal, Support Heal, Main Puller, Burst Dmg dps
Thf: Main hate control, Main Puller, Utility (INcreased drop rate), main kite
Brd: Main Support, Main Crowd Control, Main Puller
Drk: Spike Dmg DPS, Main Tank, Stun
Blm: Main Crowd Control, Stun, Burst DPS
Sam: Primary Skill chain player, Burst DPS on fights were feeding tp is bad.
SCH: Main DOT dps, Main Heal, Main Nuke
and so on.

Sub jobs:
/nin increased survivability
/war increased dmg
/whm increased healing
/thf increased burst dmg, weak version of treasure hunter
/drk ability to stun minor dmg increase
/dnc increased ability to solo
/bst allowed you to solo the whole game (bst had to be = or higher level then main a hidden effect of the job)
/rdm increased spell casting and reduced cooldowns. Access to heals and minor enfeebling
/blm increase in nuke dmg and several dots
/sam increased tp generation (faster weaponskills)
/rng increased rng dmg and access to range weaponskills.
and so on.

The complexity of XI's job system is multitudes more complex then XIV's. It came from the devs in XI making the jobs and the game and saying go for it figure it out. There were so many factors that went into figuring the optimal setup for things even then your guilds gear also factored into which strategy you had to do. IF you were not geared enough for 1 strat fights were still killable utilizing a different setup/strategy. In XIV the devs are forcing us to play the game the way they designed it to be played more or less. Everything is equally good as everything else more or less in XIV the only difference is vanity. Xiv 2 things matter, your ability to dodge and your ability to pump out dps.

[Kinshou]

I may have missed it skimming through this thread, but I am surprised no one mentioned the gear system that FFXI had. The whole concept of having certain extremely under leveled pieces of gear being BiS for certain actions and having to progress via farming side grades for all of those specific actions, was one of the most unique differences between FFXI and most MMO's. You could change gear mid-combat. People would sometimes collect 10+ sets of gear for one class and either use a 3rd-party program like windower to automatically switch gear at the right moment or make an extensive macro palette and add an extra 2-3 button presses per command. (The manual macro swaps made the game feel a lot more action based, especially when you tried to do Prespell/midspell/idle gear swaps.) To keep it brief, imagine being able to start a spell in 14 on blm with full spell speed. Then swap to another set of CRIT/DET before the spell goes off and retain both the spell speed increase/crit/det buff. There were also items that would specifically enhance abilities,like traits, which you would macro in for Manawall/Fire3/Apocastasis/whatever every single time you used those abilities. It was a chore for some people and fun for others. Either way, it allowed some pieces of gear to still be retained and used long after it would have been tossed away or used for glamour fodder in another MMO.

(YAY! gotta love the 1000 character limit...........)

[Lorielle]

Ballista.

I miss it so much. I miss my SAM/RNG Soboro Sukehiro days.

Meditate > Dap Dap dap > Sidewinder > Dap dap dap > Sidewinder > Reverbation. Dead. <3

[Highwilds]

Don't forget the different stats that we got.

-Fast cast (affected casting and recast times of spells since that game didn't/doesn't have global cool downs for spells). If you were a White Mage, you'd cast cure V and right after you could cast cure IV while you wait Cure V to be available again unless you had enough Fast Cast to spam one spell. It was way more efficient and noticeable than Spell Speed in FFXIV.
-Store TP. This was essential at some point, probably still is going strong. It allows you to get more TP per auto-attack so certain hit-builds were hot so one could use Weaponskills more frequently. When I played Ranger and experience party had a Corsair with Store TP roll/buff on, I could shoot 4 times with bow and WS, rinse and repeat. Sure was fun and if the mob wasn't dead when I got enough for a 2nd WS, I'd tank.

Not to forget attack, magic attack, magic accuracy, accuracy, conserve tp, parry, shield block, evasion, magical crit. hit rate, crit. hit rate, every elemental resistance actually made huge difference when stacked enough, all status debuff resistances, piercing/blunt/slashing damage resistance, damage taken-, magic damage taken-, physical damage taken-, blood pact timer reduction (smn only), pet defense, pet damage taken-, pet accuracy, pet attack, pet ability cooldown timer reductions (mainly Beast Master), enhanced abilities, enhanced traits gear, augmented traits and abilities. And I think I'm forgetting many too!

What it comes to battle, there was no attack indicators (the red damage zones in ffxiv) at all so if you didn't know where to stand beforehand to maybe avoid it, you'd get hit. It was all pure guessing game most of the time.

End game content? Old time Dynamis took 3½ hours at "worst". One zone would take in closer to 60 people. That also meant we'd have 3 alliances of 18 people. Sometimes, depending who showed up, 1 healer had 15 people to keep alive! FUN TIMES! Especially when one MNK enemy with 2h-special ability "Hundred Fists" would slaughter a pile of players in 15 seconds before it went down.

In the end, before I quit just after the release of Seekers of Adoulin, I mainly soloed Abyssea as Beast Master or helped friends get their stuff done. I can say FFXI was a slow game compared to FFXIV, but they are very different games after all. 14 is a lot more simplified, more forgiving, a lot faster (with everything), more holding hands with the player, a lot less cryptic with quests/missions (people had to find answers from dat. files to know what the heck to do next), and prettier! But the last one is only due to FFXIV being newer game with better graphics.

Ps. Level Sync was a heaven's sent! One could level up to 75 (before Abyssea came and increased level cap) in lv 10-20 areas in a few days/weeks if they had outside healer mules. :3 They had to add Level Sync because otherwise it was impossible to find 6 people 1-3 levels around you to exp jobs. I think these days it's still the same leveling: Solo to lv 30, then go to Abyssea as a leech person who opens boost treasure boxes with keys to level up until they could fight the high level mobs themselves. (If they had the skills trained.)

[Lemuria]

If there's one thing that FFXI did right it was to make your characters feel powerful. You had abilities tied to long recast timers (originally 2 hours) which would allow you to use incredibly powerful skills. White Mages could heal an entire party to full HP instantly, Paladin's became invulnerable to all physical damage for 30 seconds and generated enough aggro to steal mobs from allies, Summoners could use their strongest summoning skills and so forth.

In FFXIV, instead of us feeling strong it feels more like the enemies are just weak. Even with a basic level of equipment, the overworld critters die very quickly and dungeons don't require much skill to beat. There are no combination attacks either, so jobs feel very insular compared to XI where timing and positioning meant more.

Mostly though, I do miss my summoner. For all their problems, they truly felt powerful in the right hands. Originally, their biggest problem was the long recast time on pet skills (1 minute) and though those attacks could be extremely powerful, accuracy issues and 59 seconds of low level white magic was solidifying their presence as a healer. Later though, this was separated into Wards and Rage. Wards were party buffs and other defensive skills, while Rage let you attack with damaging skills.

What many people forget, however, is that summoners were the preferred tactic for dealing with several bosses throughout the game. The Astral Flow for summoner was a devastatingly powerful area effect skill, with the caveat of it draining all your MP. This skill was the Summoner's 2hr ability, but due to it's long duration you could potentially get as many as three astral flow attacks out during this time. This meant that some bosses, such as Promyvion, which spawned a lot of smaller mobs, could be dealt with far quicker and easier than using normal tactics.

Oh, and when I say 'devastatingly powerful' I meant it. The damage was in a class of its own, easily capable of taking down as much as 30% of an entire boss' HP bar. And while the damage was lessened at higher levels it still remained a viable tactic for dealing with some of the strong opponents you would face. Although, by then you had access to stronger blood pact rage skills which would deal significant damage once per minute. Later, they would add new blood pacts including Odin's Zanetsuken and Alexander's Perfect Defense, the former being an AoE instant-kill and the latter rendering the party highly resistant to all forms of damage.

This made summoners sought after for certain content, in fact many didn't even consider it optional. They were simply too powerful not to have along for the ride. Kind of makes Ank Morn feel like the consolation prize by comparison.

[Sapphic]

If there's one thing that FFXI did right it was to make your characters feel powerful.

How could you feel powerful when it took a full party to kill 1 rabbit/goblin/bat etc? :P

[StouterTaru]

How could you feel powerful when it took a full party to kill 1 rabbit/goblin/bat etc? :P

I felt pretty powerful at 75 killing mobs that were 80+, and parties of six people would fight for exp. Level 75 exp parties would run to zone if they caught aggro on some of the stuff I fought solo.

[Lemuria]

How could you feel powerful when it took a full party to kill 1 rabbit/goblin/bat etc? :P

Most of the enemies slain by parties were higher level than the adventurers. Sure, you were in a group of 6 level 50 people, but you fighting monsters which were level 60 or higher. Nothing beats the fun of landing a Freeze Magic burst as a level 50 Black Mage and wiping out 60% of a monsters HP when it's at least ten levels stronger than you!

Later on, many parties opted to fight weaker enemies in larger quantities. They were maybe 5 levels higher than the party, but you fight a huge number of them.

While many will draw comparisons to the 'Decent Challenge' mobs who'd wipe the floor with some players, many players fought far tougher mobs significantly stronger than themselves and won. Soloing notorious monsters, for example, even taking on the gods like Byakko without backup.

The job system in XI was designed so you could mix and match skills to give yourself an edge in a variety of situations. The XIV job system is locked down tighter than Fort Knox with almost no flexibility. Still, maybe they'll improve that aspect of the game as time goes by.

[Dzian]

How could you feel powerful when it took a full party to kill 1 rabbit/goblin/bat etc? :P

Partly because the mobs them selves felt more powerfull. trash mobs didn't exist back then,

in modern mmos mobs are designed to be weak trash that's easy to kill. yet it still takes a dozen skills to drop one. this makes your skills feel weak and that makes you feel weak.

in xi though 1 single mob could kill your entire party which made the mobs feel more dangerous which in turn made you feel stronger for killing them.

then you had those moments where you aggroed a mob several levels higher than you and manage to smash it with your 2hours abilities. POWAHHHH!!

skills themselves had more power and weight to them as well.