LOYALTY MODE

[Akumu]

I would like to also add: Sitting in one of the main cities for hours(sometimes days) hoping to get a party invite until SE add a level sync feature years later...Then having more days to spend trying to level your gimp weapon skill.

lmao Loyalty Mode...

[Keith_Dragoon]

Oh and you forgot release some expansions that is so group based that you can play for 8 years and still not complete them.

[Rob_Anybody]

Oh and you forgot release some expansions that is so group based that you can play for 8 years and still not complete them.

Might also add that it wont even be possible to complete the expansion you buy up to two years after its release date. plus or minus a year depending on whether or not mini-expansions are thrown out as a distraction. :P

[Neptune]

Good call Keith..

I would like to also add: Sitting in one of the main cities for hours(sometimes days) hoping to get a party invite until SE add a level sync feature years later...Then having more days to spend trying to level your gimp weapon skill..

This is a great suggestion!

The only thing more amusing than the original post are some of the responses after.

And, Neptune, what about:

- Spending hours (and sometimes days) trying to get the party you need for a chance to lot on one of several items that everyone needs to open the subjob that you need in order to get the party that you need to level in the first place.

Good thinking!

[Preypacer]

I would like to also add: Sitting in one of the main cities for hours(sometimes days) hoping to get a party invite until SE add a level sync feature years later...Then having more days to spend trying to level your gimp weapon skill.

lmao Loyalty Mode...

To start... Yes, I got the joke in the OP and do agree with some of what he lists there as being less than great ideas or implementations of otherwise good ideas. I've had my share of "WTF were they thinking?" moments while playing XI over the years, to be sure. Most of them have been since WoTG came out and SE's been trying to retro-fit XI to be more "casual friendly".

However, other things on that list, though characterized as "bad things" were actually quite fine and consistent with the type of experience XI was designed to be. XI wasn't designed to be a "quick race to end-game" like newer MMOs have become. It was designed to be a long-term adventure through a massive and complex virtual world with tons of things going on.

It didn't sit well with people who were only interested in leveling as fast as possible and racing through the content when they had to, bypassing it completely when they could. But then, I think it's pretty clear those aren't the people XI was designed for.

When you're in a hurry, everything seems to "take too long". Many MMO players these days are forever in a hurry.

Yet, for those who approached it as an adventure, as a long-term hobby, not a short term race to the finish line... the game provides many great and memorable experiences. It's all in how you approach it. When you're not in a hurry and just enjoying the journey, how long something takes doesn't even occur to you.

Many of the things in that list could have been better implemented. Most of them, though, I think were just fine for that setting. A number of them come back more to how people approached them than the systems themselves.

Speaking of "how people approached them"...

Akumu, you illustrate one of the things in XI that drove me nuts... and (like many other perceived "flaws" in the game) it was the players' doing, not SE's.

For years, players leveled up in normal parties and gained xp/levels and skillups at the same time. This way, their skills were almost always up-to-date, or no more than one or two job levels behind. There was never a problem. People seldom ever had "gimped" skills. When you hit 75, you could be reasonably sure your skills were only equivalent of one or two job levels behind and would catch up in short time.

Level-Sync was introduced and people immediately adopted it as a way to level their jobs faster, without considering how having no skillups when capped could affect their performance later. People didn't care, because it meant "faster levels and xp" which, in their tunnel vision, is all many players seem to care about these days; "How can I level as fast as possible?".

The attitude was, "Meh... We can get the skillups in a party later on", which meant hours in Boyadha Tree or one of the tunnels skilling up on crabs.

This is one of the best examples of /facepalm worthy behavior I've ever seen by players in a MMO. In their obsession with "leveling up to cap in less time", they actually gave them self twice the work.

Had they stuck to parties in areas closer to their actual level, instead of leveling up to 75 while sync'd down to 22 in Qufim Island or elsewhere, they'd earn their levels and their skillups and they wouldn't have to go back and grind out skillups.

I actually asked people about this.. "You realize you're doing twice the work to get the same result you would if you just leveled up in normal parties, closer to or at your actual job level?" They'd agree it was pretty dumb, but "it's what people did", so they went along with it... complaining the whole way.

The scenario you describe was 100% the players' fault. They chose to use level sync in that way. It's not how they had to use it.

The problem with people (many of them anyway) is that they always immediately look for someone or something else to blame when they make poor decisions. Instead of stopping and thinking, "Hmm... you know, if we xp'd on mobs closer to our actual job level and didn't sync so far below it, we would get more skillups and would have a lot less, if any, catching up to do later". But of course, in their conceit, many people won't do this. So, instead we get "Stupid SE making us spend hours grinding our skillups to catch up with all the levels we got while sync'd down to 20 on our level 70 jobs..."

Same thing with the Dunes. If I had a nickel for every time I saw someone say "I can't believe SE made the Dunes the only place you can level up to 20", I'd have enough to pay a subscription for a year. If I had a nickel for every time they also refused to acknowledge that other options do exist and that the Dunes isn't the only place you can level to 20... I'd have enough for two years of subscriptions. Again, people making poor choices, then blaming someone/something else for the result.

Typical.