FFXI's Abyssea

[Zelkelion]

I've read a few posts from players that state "Abyssea ruined FFXI", and I was wondering...

What does that mean? What happened? I didn't play the game very much, and not until after all the expansions.

[Answa]

Elitists trying to suck the fun out of everything.

I found Abyssea to be a great thing. Farming for stuff was fun, though admittedly much easier than previous content.

I think people bitch mostly about how absolutely easy it made leveling up. It's ridiculous that people claim this destroyed anything.

[Elexia]

This depends on what you consider "ruined", in my eyes this is how Abyssea ruined XI:

-No one parties level 10-75 anymore, as in outside of Gusgen/Crawler's Nest/Sandy Basement alliance parties, once you hit 30 you either pay a warrior(or Dark Knight, or Blue Mage) to burn you to level 99, barring cap quest completions.

-It handed out pretty much the best gear in the game for your jobs that takes little to no work to obtain. While it's good to not have to spend a LOT of time on it, it really killed the feel of acquiring AF for your job.

-It made exping faster than any MMO out to date. You can open 9 - 20 chests for 1250 exp each and level at least 3 times in the span of 15 minutes.

-It added the ability to warp around the entire world, with Voidwatching filling in the auto warp gaps. There's nothing instantly wrong with this but it takes out pretty much the need for exploring as if you join post-abyssea, there's a good chance you'll never experience the FFXI most of us (who actually played it) know and love.

Aside that, it did introduce the Stagger system, which lets you boost drop rates on Items/Gear to near 100% drop, which some of the people who hate others obtaining things says is a bad system because "bads" or "casual" people shouldn't be able to get good gear in their eyes.

[Fated]

For 7 years FFXI was a certain way. This way mainly favored a certain subset of people. Abyssea drastically changed this formula. Thus, many of the people who became accustomed to this 7 year long way of playing rage quit.

[Jinko]

Abyssea made the game casual and easy mode, which is why all the old school sadistic FF11 players hated it.

[Starlord]

Elitists trying to suck the fun out of everything.

I found Abyssea to be a great thing. Farming for stuff was fun, though admittedly much easier than previous content.

I think people bitch mostly about how absolutely easy it made leveling up. It's ridiculous that people claim this destroyed anything.

Before Abyssa~ everyone was going to each area as normal to level up, seeing the whole game
After Abyssa~ After you reached 30 you can get to 75 in 8hrs or less.. skipping 80% of the game itself

Thats how it destroyed the game "for me" and I'm not even what you call an "Elitist"

[Elexia]

Abyssea made the game casual and easy mode, which is why all the old school sadistic FF11 players hated it.

Pretty much everyone hates easy Mode MMOs, even casual people lol.

[Koryu]

Leveling was made easy as EXP wasn't based of party's average level vs mob, so you could go in at Lv30, with capped players killing stuff absurdly fast and get capped yourself in a few hours.

Abyssea brought level cap increases, gear that wasn't just "side-grades", which made "old-world" (sky, sea, znm, etc) easier to do.

Abyssea had a system to increase your own stats while inside it to great amounts, and give heavy buffs that were also outside the "sidegrade" nature FFXI had. Allowing higher content to be much lower manned.

Also an item that was basically God-Mode in Abyssea.

Didn't ruin FFXI, just made it low-man friendlier. Well, it did ruin the need for 18-man events and HNMs people so dearly loved.

[Vaer]

- Level cap raise. Cap was 75 for many, many years and all content was based on 75 for those years. Alienated most if not all the veteran players.
- Faceroll exp alliances. (just like FFXIV parties)
- New player level 30 afk leeches -> 75++
- 95% of mobs are the same, faceroll get seal/trophy get gear repeat
- along with this, watering down of everything, CoP soloable, dynamis completely changed, etc.

[Jinko]

Pretty much everyone hates easy Mode MMOs, even casual people lol.

Well I agree that there is a line that shouldn't be crossed, its all about moderation really, FF11 went from one extreme to the other in a matter of patches and one expansion.

Like Fated said it was too much of a shock too fast.

FWIW this game is treading on dangerous ground with power-levelling and SE don't seem to care.