FFXI vs FFXIV Difficulty

[Sagagemini]

i lol'ed at they guy who said that Ifrit Battle is harder than any FFXI fight.
Obviously that'

[Malbeth]

Ahh the old group vs solo debate. This same thread is going on in every mmo forum and blog out there and probably will until the end of time. I understand the OP's take on things but as the majority of the replies on this thread can attest, most people don't want forced grouping in an mmo. I for one am very thankful for this. To balance out the new solo-friendly gameplay trend, developers offer rewards that are gated by group-only content. A solo player can't get that reward. That's just the way it is.

I know that's a little off topic but that's essentially what a XI vs. XIV argument boils down to. The whole group vs solo, risk vs reward, blah blah mostly comes down to how much time you have to dedicate to playing a game.

Not all of us can waste hours and hours a day playing a game. I like having a choice as to whether I group or not. And as someone that can only play an hour or so a day, I dont' see myself reaching the cap, let alone unlocking a class or getting AF gear anytime soon. So yeah I think the pacing in FFXIV is just right. Especially if you like to level DoH or DoL and take time to smell the flowers along the way.

[Exekutor]

I want content. Sure being able to have level 99 in the far future would be nice, but worthless without content like Primal-Fights, HNMs, Quests, Besieged for example. SE is implementing more and more content now, and thats what the game really needs. I see no reason to raise the lvl cap in the near future. And thinking about the difficulty in FFXI and FFXIV: When the lvl cap of FFXI was raised to 80, 85... 99, there were always some nerds who needed few weeks to achieve the new maximum level. So there will be always ppl who get everything to the max. That has nothing to do with difficulty, just with the amount of time you need. Iam studying and dont have as much time as in the past when i went to school. I dont have the time to play FFXI any longer. FFXIV is more casual-friendly, and thats one reason why i play it. FFXI and FFXIV are different games for different customers. If one of them pleases u, the other one doesnt, why not stick to the one you like? I dont know where the problem is...

[Arthane]

The ease of the game is why I actually play this instead of XI. I got tired of having to find groups for everything past lvl 10 lol

[Neekzz]

I dont know how many of you still play XI but you are comparing XIV to the XI of the past.
You can have a 99 in no time at all now. Most players do Grounds of valor till LV30 then hop right into abyssea 18 man XP parties doing pages, helping the party open boxes & go from 30-60 in a few hours. It took me 5 years to level and gear 6 classes. After abyssea I did 4 more jobs all while keeping the 6 I had up to par with the new LV caps.
I can honestly say I like it better. more ppl with more classes makes it easy to mix it up when building parties and I get to play more classes I enjoy, getting alot less "Can you come BLM Neek? were short a few BLMs."

My point is somewhere over the years of running XI someone must have decided XPing new classes shouldn't take a year and keep new players from seeing all the other great stuff the game has to offer. There are alot other ways to keep people busy.

[Andrien]

*OP random stuff*

Don't be naive, I can get one job to Lv99 in a day or two in FFXI.

[Noblewar]

There is a difference between Time Sink and Difficulty.

FFXI leveling was a time sink when in a good group. Everyone knows that if you had a bad tank or healer that the difficulty got a lot harder. In FFXIV you don't need a tank and as long as your healer knows how to target and press cure, you're set. If one of your DD or Tank died in FFXI the fight got a lot harder because there was the risk of your healer running out of mana even if they had some sort of refresh on them. This is the difficulty I'm talking about that very few are understanding. People didn't want to not level in XI because of a long grind, if fighting one monster or two was a joke like it is here, a lot more people would of grind all their jobs to 75 pre ToAU. If monsters were harder people would think more about weather they wanted to solo or party and PL'ing wouldn't be as effective.

People who believe that the game only exist at capped level, tell me, when have you ever played a single player game, where all you did was killed monsters till you capped abilities and spells so that you can actually start doing the "fun" stuff? Its that mentality that ruins MMO's. To say that there isn't enough mid content in the game is WAAAAY off. Even if there was more mid content than end game, these people wouldn't do it because they don't believe anything is "fun" unless its end game.

[Lux_Rayna]

FFXI in a year most people only had one or two jobs capped with maybe one craft capped and sub craft to sixty.

FFXIV in a year people have all jobs and crafts capped.

I hate to do this but you are comparing an incomplete game, which will be scrapped, to FFXI...which had been out as a complete game for a year with an expansion before it ever came to the US.

Basically wait until 2.0, which is the complete game, before making any comparisons...at least a year into 2.0 to be fair. Difficulty cannot be balanced in a game "under development", which is what FFXIV is.

[Noblewar]

I hate to do this but you are comparing an incomplete game, which will be scrapped, to FFXI...which had been out as a complete game for a year with an expansion before it ever came to the US.

Basically wait until 2.0, which is the complete game, before making any comparisons...at least a year into 2.0 to be fair. Difficulty cannot be balanced in a game "under development", which is what FFXIV is.

Sorry but anyone saying its not fair to compare a complete game to an incomplete game is really an invalid point. Unless the game was free (which it wasnt) by free I mean completely free (meaning everyone got the money they spent on the disc/key) its fair to compare the RELEASED version to "enter comparison here" version.

I can argue that SE wouldn't release an incomplete game, so that means the game was complete! Its one thing to release and incomplete game to releasing a "completed" game with a broken engine. Of course I'm not trying to get all technical smart ass on people but I try to view all things from all angles and as a gamer if this difficulty doesn't change, people will most likely not stick around like they have in FFXI.

[Lux_Rayna]

Sorry but anyone saying its not fair to compare a complete game to an incomplete game is really an invalid point. Unless the game was free (which it wasnt) by free I mean completely free (meaning everyone got the money they spent on the disc/key) its fair to compare the RELEASED version to "enter comparison here" version.

I can argue that SE wouldn't release an incomplete game, so that means the game was complete! Its one thing to release and incomplete game to releasing a "completed" game with a broken engine. Of course I'm not trying to get all technical smart ass on people but I try to view all things from all angles and as a gamer if this difficulty doesn't change, people will most likely not stick around like they have in FFXI.

Lol its an invalid point because its inconvenient for you? Not an argument.

SE acknowledged it was an incomplete game by cancelling payments and letting ppl pay free for an entire year. And you want to compare THAT to FFXI? As I said, its not a fair comparison. The only reason we are paying for it now is because they can't afford to fix it otherwise. Why would they be making FFXIV 2.0, and scrapping this one, if this was a complete game as you are trying to hypothetically argue? FFXIV 2.0 is a new game, this is like a bridge into it. As I said, comparing a complete game to an incomplete game is not a fair comparison. Its just not. If you insist on making it, fine, but anyone with an ounce of logic can see the error in your comparison.

Thats like trying to compare the taste of ripe bananas in Jamaica to some not yet ripened bananas in, idk, California. Yeah you can conclude that Jamaica's bananas are better, but its not a fair comparison. You didn't even give California's bananas a chance to mature and ripen yet. You're comparing the faculties of a full-grown adult to those of a child. Seriously.