Petition against Level Sync

[Dragon]

Don't think for one second you could've escaped the Ronfuare level synch parties by refusing to use the level synch option.

You are completely full of shit. I refused level sync all the time, and other people I know did also.

Once people found out about it (and similar level synch exploits) all other forms of XP vanished. Just like getting party in one of the old conquest areas together after the release of TOAU.

Maybe on your server, but of all the servers I've been to (Fairy, Sylph, Remora, Diabolos, and Phoenix), XP was just fine. Level Sync was nowhere near as abused as some here claim it to be, and most people eventually learned that Lv.Sync wasn't necessarily the best option outside of certain ranges.

I tried to take a party to Lufaise meadows for some fly action for nostalgia's sake. I want to say it was a level 70-ish group. Anyway, the Ninja couldn't get in because he hadn't touched the CoP content. We got brave and switched gears, decided to try Xarcabard for some demons. Oh God talk about a mistake. Within 6 months TOAU had done it's damage, only half the party had sneak and invis, and they were also the only ones that could perform simple tasks like following the leader and not aggroing everything in sight. Catastrophic failure doesn't even begin to describe it.

Now you're blaming Level Sync for the problems that may have possibly been at the fault of an expansion pack, and I say possibly because ToAU didn't start until you were Lv.55, which clearly gave plenty of time for people to learn about RoZ/CoP zones.

If you turned your back on conquest areas for toau zones and never looked back, and did the same thing with wotg and level synch you probably don't realize how those of us that liked the challenge of conquering the old RoZ/CoP zones felt when we'd walk through King Ranperre's tomb and not find a single party killing the insanely easy bats that lie down there. Cape Terrigan and Bibiki Bay devoid of life, no one going to East/Western Altepa because no one could be bothered to make the trek to pick up the apropriate teleport crystal. Too hard. Not worth the effort. Talking to an old friend of the good times, reminiscing about skill chains and magic bursts and hearing a TOAU baby utter the phrase, "I don't like doing SC, it's too hard." In the span of 2 patches our game was ripped from under us, gutted and turned into an empty husk of it's former self, even though the option to play the way we used to still exists to this day. Why?

Oh please. FFXI was never gutted until Abyssea.

Point blank, the vast majority of people are going to take the path of least resistance. We were even doing it before CoP and didn't even realize it. And once an easier way was found, people abandoned the more challenging routes. Sure there were some of us that pined for the glory days, and once in a while you could get a group to try something old school. But as time went by that section of the population got smaller and smaller, whether it was because we didn't like the new things and quit or because we got tired of trying to go against the grain and were forced to flow with the tide. Just try it if you don't believe me, reactivate your FFXI account or if you can't start a new one and just TRY leveling the way it was done before level synch, colibri in TOAU and Ronfuare (S), Field of Valor missions, and now Abbyssea which has even taken away ALL of that or so I've heard. You won't get passed level 10.

All that being said, Firon is probably right. The reason level synch destroyed FFXI was because from lvl 1 through 75 the xp cap was 200 a kill (before chains). Most groups up to 55-ish didn't see more than a chain 5, which was easily obtainable on worms. Which meant you could get the same XP/hr @ qufim as you could in any other zone with less risk and less travel time until you hit the TOAU areas with warps straight to the XP camps and 100+ chain counts. And once you got to the TOAU areas, it was Colibri until you were so sick of pink things just seeing the color would make you want to stab a kitten and kick a puppy. But in a game where xp/hr varies per level isntead of being unilaterally capped across the board until nearly end game it should be less of an issue. The fact that it destroyed one game doesn't mean that I think the idea can't work, though I will say I don't think it should've been so beneficial to the people synching down 20 levels.

Wow, that post turned out a LOT longer than I wanted it to.

FFXI was saved by Level Sync as it actually allowed veterans to play with newbies. ToAU actually saved FFXI by making melees more important than just mere sacrifices for the BLM bursts. WotG made the game interesting by introducing conquest and making older zones reusable. And all of these had certain level requirements (save for Lv.Sync, which still had a silent requirement), Abyssea was the only thing that didn't, and it'd have been fine if there were a high-level requirement for it.

P.S. ToAU was all about colibri? How about how pre-ToAU endgame grinding was all about... skeletons and requiring BLMs to be in every party for manabursts while melee DPS were just sacrificial meat?

[Levian]

You are completely full of shit. I refused level sync all the time, and other people I know did also.

My my, such venom and spite...clearly you and I have two widely varied opinions of the same game. Not quoting all of that, too long. But I'll start at the top and work my way down.

I refused to synch for a while, aside from a few rare occasions with shellmates. I'd say WotG is when things got extreme. Note that I specified Ronfuare synch parties, as in Ronfuare (S). I spent the majority of my FFXI playtime on Remora, among the first to migrate over when the server was put up actually, until it was recently merged with Leviathan. If you spent any time there about halfway through WotG you know as well as I do this next paragraph is spot on...

The occasional level range? This is a lovely trip down memory lane actually, the last time I played was Bard. We did worms in Qufim from 20-36, with some mandragoras in Yuhtunga Jungle intermittantly from 27-36 though I promise you that was 2 groups at best. Then it was off to Ronfuare (S) for those darling pink birdies, until 55 when you went to toau for more pink birdies until you hit 75 and merit off of yes, more pink birdies. That was IT. No Garliage citadel, Crawler's Nest, Yhoater jungle, East/West Altepa. You get the picture.

The third section you quoted there was actually intended to pin the blame for said issues on ToAU. Perhaps I should've been a little more clear, but that IS where things began to slide down that slippery slope of catering to the more casual crowd. As far as precisely when it was gutted clearly we have differing views. For me it started with ToAU and ended with Abbyssea.

I ask you this, if ToAU saved FFXI, why then did it's population spike at the release, then quickly drop back down below where it had settled prior to it's release? The same can be said for WotG. Granted they were updates and population spikes are expected. But the game continued to decline after the spikes petered out, and fell to levels below where it was before BOTH of those releases. Can you say with a straight face that you know for SURE had ToAU and WotG not come out, that the game would be dead by now?

For every player you can personally name that was brought in by one of those updates, I can name one that left. I'm not saying that the game would still be alive had nothing been done, but I'm not going to laud the updates as saviors of a dying game either. I can probably still dig up the MMO population graphs for comparison if you need me to backup this statement, but they hardly saved anything and were more like putting a comatose patient on life support.

And your last statement? I could have sworn I made it clear that SOME of us liked the old SC/MB playstyle. I liked my BLMs, and didn't find it fair that they were sitting on the sidelines, busting their @$$ to solo XP while the rest of us left them in the dust until we needed them again @ 75. Was the old way perfect? No, clearly melee DD needed some tweaking, and perhaps we needed some more options for closing Skillchains so womething other than BLM got that first seat in the party. Was the answer to obliterate the art of Skillchains in the process? I didn't, and still don't think so.

Edit: Perhaps it is unfair to say level synch destroyed the game as there were a myriad of factors involved, but it did add yet another thing that could be, and certainly was, exploited to death.

[Dragon]

My my, such venom and spite...clearly you and I have two widely varied opinions of the same game. Not quoting all of that, too long. But I'll start at the top and work my way down.

I refused to synch for a while, aside from a few rare occasions with shellmates. I'd say WotG is when things got extreme. Note that I specified Ronfuare synch parties, as in Ronfuare (S). I spent the majority of my FFXI playtime on Remora, among the first to migrate over when the server was put up actually, until it was recently merged with Leviathan. If you spent any time there about halfway through WotG you know as well as I do this next paragraph is spot on...

The occasional level range? This is a lovely trip down memory lane actually, the last time I played was Bard. We did worms in Qufim from 20-36, with some mandragoras in Yuhtunga Jungle intermittantly from 27-36 though I promise you that was 2 groups at best. Then it was off to Ronfuare (S) for those darling pink birdies, until 55 when you went to toau for more pink birdies until you hit 75 and merit off of yes, more pink birdies. That was IT. No Garliage citadel, Crawler's Nest, Yhoater jungle, East/West Altepa. You get the picture.

Well no wonder why Remora was a complete backwards server.

The third section you quoted there was actually intended to pin the blame for said issues on ToAU. Perhaps I should've been a little more clear, but that IS where things began to slide down that slippery slope of catering to the more casual crowd. As far as precisely when it was gutted clearly we have differing views. For me it started with ToAU and ended with Abbyssea.

ToAU didn't cater to the casuals or it wouldn't have had a Leveling requirement of +55, it wasn't something you could just enjoy right as you got into the game. It was about giving options to do different things.

I ask you this, if ToAU saved FFXI, why then did it's population spike at the release, then quickly drop back down below where it had settled prior to it's release? The same can be said for WotG. Granted they were updates and population spikes are expected. But the game continued to decline after the spikes petered out, and fell to levels below where it was before BOTH of those releases. Can you say with a straight face that you know for SURE had ToAU and WotG not come out, that the game would be dead by now?

The game was already experiencing population decline long before ToAU.

For every player you can personally name that was brought in by one of those updates, I can name one that left. I'm not saying that the game would still be alive had nothing been done, but I'm not going to laud the updates as saviors of a dying game either. I can probably still dig up the MMO population graphs for comparison if you need me to backup this statement, but they hardly saved anything and were more like putting a comatose patient on life support.

Graphs can be used to construe anything.

But for the record, I'm not talking about people being brought in by those expansions and their updates - I'm talking about people that were going to permanently leave with the game in the state it was pre-ToAU.

And your last statement? I could have sworn I made it clear that SOME of us liked the old SC/MB playstyle. I liked my BLMs, and didn't find it fair that they were sitting on the sidelines, busting their @$$ to solo XP while the rest of us left them in the dust until we needed them again @ 75. Was the old way perfect? No, clearly melee DD needed some tweaking, and perhaps we needed some more options for closing Skillchains so womething other than BLM got that first seat in the party. Was the answer to obliterate the art of Skillchains in the process? I didn't, and still don't think so.

No one obliterated skillchains in the process. But at least BLM was able to solo through almost anything and still was required at endgame. Not even Paladin nor Ninja had that much an advantage - it was usually possible to only require one or the other, and even then, one was simply able to use RDM/NIN or DRK tanks, but BLM? No alternative whatsoever, period. Even when Scholar came out, BLM was still the ultimate DPS. (And here, I'll give you some credit for admitting it needed some fix.)

But again, ToAU never interfered with anything between 1~55. Nearly every single place from 20 to 55 (Valkurm Dunes also, but that doesn't count because anyone that bothered getting EXP parties pre-Qufim was an idiot) still required sneak and invisible to get around properly and skillchains with magic bursts for higher EXP/HR: Qufim Island, Korroloka Tunnel, Garlaige Citadel, Crawlers' Nest, The Eldieme Necropolis, Quicksand Caves, East/West Altepa, Kuftal Tunnel, and so on.

Perhaps the problem were the Xbox 360 players that came with ToAU since the Xbox 360 player stereotype is typically a FPS fanboi that has no clue about RPG elements.