Why was FFXI so great?

[Eagleheart]

Where is this, where everyone is getting the idea that everything in Final Fantasy XIV is simply being handed to the players on a silver platter?

Artifact armor was never a great challenge in XI, and put bluntly, most of it was thoroughly mediocre, if not utterly useless - complaining about it being easy in XIV is to go beyond the relatively noncommittal term "Double standards", and vault squarely into the realm of hypocrisy.

The drop rates on equipment in the Vale and Cutter's Cry are a source of outcry, the rate on weapons for Ifrit and Moogle have always been complained about, and getting particularly good double or triple bonded armor is no cheap or easy task.

Just what exactly is being handed to the playerbase without any effort here? Can that question be answered definitively by someone?

[Onidemon]

Yep, not having everything handed to you in 10 minutes is your idea of masochism. You should probably look up the word.

http://kotaku.com/5036371/final-fant...-hours-to-beat

Took me whole day to just be able to ride a Chocobo and i could only rent one in those days. Same for samurai quest, it took a LVL 75 with for a whole day and lots of items to avoid detection to complete that stupid quest.
HNM with ridiculous spwan rates that forces you to camp for days on end.

Should i keep going?

[Tigercub]

http://kotaku.com/5036371/final-fant...-hours-to-beat

Took me whole day to just be able to ride a Chocobo and i could only rent one in those days. Same for samurai quest, it took a LVL 75 with for a whole day and lots of items to avoid detection to complete that stupid quest.
HNM with ridiculous spwan rates that forces you to camp for days on end.

Should i keep going? Didn't i tell you in the past that if you have no idea of what you are talking about, it's better to say nothing?

I actually liked FFXI's pace and difficulty level. I have no problem with an NM that takes 18 hours to beat or a quest that takes a whole day to finish. They're things you do on a weekend gaming binge or in the case of a quest you do it a little at a time.

Many different aspects of FFXI kept me interested enough that I didn't feel like just falling asleep during the tedious parts. Everything puts me to sleep in XIV. It's like taking half a bottle of ambien and downing a quart of rum for me. I play full zombie mode (when I can fire up enough neurons to play, since my brain tends to go dead at the thought).

But it all comes down to personal preference. I mean one person's idea of masochism is different to another's. Right now, FFXIV is my idea of masochism, though it has drastically improved. I stick around because I know it's going to get better, not because it's fun to play right now.

[Amrita]

I loved FFXI because:
1. I could be a kitty! I'm a girl irl, I also like cats. Tail & ears on a female frame is cute. =p
2. The community... I started @ PS2 release and people were really nice & helpful. I still remember that scary run to Jeuno as a low level player. I know there certainly were some major a-holes, but I have more fond memories of kind strangers & friends then memories of the jerks.
Also, despite how long it took to get some piece of gear from dynamis or limbus or whatever... I loved going because of the other players. They were just really fun to be around.
3. Content!
The stories were so great! My fave was Chains of Promathia.... and that was maybe the hardest expansion? I'm sure that is debatable. It was a wonderful challenge to have to be level capped after being used to some job at 75. Very humbling, sometimes frustrating but ... SO FUN!

Stuff that sucked:
1. losing a level after getting KO one to many times XD. I remember people getting REALLY MAD when they would die.
2. looking for party for hours ... even starting your own didn't always do the trick + it taking a few months to level up one job
3. the HNM's... that would spawn once every 48 hours or 24 hours or once a week... @_@ I remember once getting scolded for going to work because my ls needed me @ the NM. Total wtf moment lol.

Around the time of Abyssea:
They upped the cap from 75 to 99... they removed the lvl cap off of uhm... everything I think? Those sweet little parties of 6 ballooned into... I don't even know... peoples focus shifted to getting to 99 ASAP and getting all the leetest gear ASAP. For me that shift in mentality destroyed what I had loved initially about the game and I quit. It just was not fun any longer.

If only FFXIV could just find the middle ground, I would be thrilled.

I don't want stuff to take quite as long as in the heyday of ffxi, but ... gah something is just MISSING from FFXIV! It seems to promote the hurry up and get to end-game asap mentality.
I still like to enjoy "begin game" & "middle game" before shifting all focus to "end game". Sadly there really isn't much interesting content for begin & middle.

So right now my greatest joy in ffxiv is helping others with.. AF or some random nm fight or crafting & chatting with people in my social ls. ^^;

[Onidemon]

I actually liked FFXI's pace and difficulty level. I have no problem with an NM that takes 18 hours to beat or a quest that takes a whole day to finish. They're things you do on a weekend gaming binge or in the case of a quest you do it a little at a time.

Many different aspects of FFXI kept me interested enough that I didn't feel like just falling asleep during the tedious parts. Everything puts me to sleep in XIV. It's like taking half a bottle of ambien and downing a quart of rum for me. I play full zombie mode (when I can fire up enough neurons to play, since my brain tends to go dead at the thought).

But it all comes down to personal preference. I mean one person's idea of masochism is different to another's. Right now, FFXIV is my idea of masochism, though it has drastically improved. I stick around because I know it's going to get better, not because it's fun to play right now.

No insult intended but if you have nothing against 18h to beat a boss then you prove my point of XI being for masochists or you may just be a no life gamer cuz let's be honest here, if you got 18h straight to dedicate to a game, then my friend you have a problem.

[Tigercub]

No insult intended but if you have nothing against 18h to beat a boss then you prove my point of XI being for masochists or you may just be a no life gamer cuz let's be honest here, if you got 18h straight to dedicate to a game, then my friend you have a problem.

Well first, nobody ever said you have to do that fight, and most people didn't. Second, we've already established that our opinions on what is masochistic are different. Third, I do very occasionally have that much time to spend on a game. It's not something I'd ever do regularly. I work 60 to 70 hours a week but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the odd binge. But really, nice assumption, I'm sure you think I live in my parents' basement, too.

I'm not even sure why you think it's a problem that someone would spend a single free day in a month playing a game for long hours when we have kids basically being raised by their Xbox and people spending more time in WoW than reality.

[Vaer]

No insult intended but if you have nothing against 18h to beat a boss then you prove my point of XI being for masochists or you may just be a no life gamer cuz let's be honest here, if you got 18h straight to dedicate to a game, then my friend you have a problem.

You could spin that around and apply the same principle to WoW's raids, too. World Firsts, Realm Firsts they all wipe over and over on new content until they actually finish it. (Test Servers kind of ruin this but still) The ones that actually care about being the first to do things of course. This game probably has the same type of people.

Garuda will probably be the same way. You'll have people that will keep trying and trying until they beat it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not refuting that XI didn't have a masochistic undertone but you can apply your example to any game really. There will always be the niche of players who like to brag about being the best/was the first to do it/better than you mentality/dude you didn't even do that content your opinion is invalid/etc. In fact, just look at some of the sigs on this forum and that will tell you all you need to know.

[OJtheLIONKing]

You could spin that around and apply the same principle to WoW's raids, too. World Firsts, Realm Firsts they all wipe over and over on new content until they actually finish it. (Test Servers kind of ruin this but still) The ones that actually care about being the first to do things of course. This game probably has the same type of people.

Garuda will probably be the same way. You'll have people that will keep trying and trying until they beat it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not refuting that XI didn't have a masochistic undertone but you can apply your example to any game really. There will always be the niche of players who like to brag about being the best/was the first to do it/better than you mentality/dude you didn't even do that content your opinion is invalid/etc. In fact, just look at some of the sigs on this forum and that will tell you all you need to know.

That doesn't mean they don't have a problem. Also, in your example with WoW, that's a one time thing per major patch, and doesn't actually give anything besides an epeen title. Pandemonium Warden, by contrast, was an NM that dropped top tier gear and that could spawn whenever someone got to it--that means you could make it a semi-regular 18 hour timesink. Essentially, Blizzard used an ingame mechanism to acknowledge the epeen tendency of some, while SE designed a large part of their game to accommodate only obsessive players.

What really frustrated me was, at the time, some FFXI players were blaming the players for not trying a different strategy if it took so long--never mind the fact that it took them weeks, if not months to get to that point and they only had one shot, and had no way of knowing if that was the correct strat since they were the first to try it.

Let me emphasize that the majority of players I knew from my time in FFXI were great people and I still keep in touch with a few on facebook, but some players refuse to see any wrong in the game or acknowledge that there's any way to do something besides the FFXI way. You're seeing a good portion of them on this forum, and in this thread.

[Ramis]

The Game felt like you had to accoplish something. The time you spent tryign to get to 75 or finishing a quest (rank, Tower, or to get to a Boss) was worth something. The gear in the game was worth obtaining, trying to farm 4mil for you body armor, or do dynamis/lymbis bi-weekly for items to get that awesome pices of armor. It was a little harder for the casual gamer (say a couple hours a day max) to get some of the tings done.. I know toward the end of my playing it was hard for me to lvl or get a fight that i needed done becuase i was not on during peak times due to work or school. then with WoG expansion things started going down for me.. i barely scratched the surface becuase i couldn;t get on , and i would build up my ribbons and then I would have to start over do to lack of playing.. and that got frustrating. But i will tell you playing FFXI for 8 years, that the story made you care, the jobs were balanced and fun, the only thing that deturned from the Game play was PL... and jobist players, that thought you had to have a PLD, whm, RDM, and BLM X3 to do anything. Poor Drk knight.. And BST SUPER FUN!!!! (pre party lvling style).
Thats what made it fun (Great) for me..

[Tigercub]

Let me emphasize that the majority of players I knew from my time in FFXI were great people and I still keep in touch with a few on facebook, but some refuse to see any wrong in the game or acknowledge that there's any way to do something besides the FFXI way. You're seeing a good portion of them on this forum, and in this thread.

That's because some people have different opinions to you. Most people on both sides of the argument are so sure they're right. Simple fact is we just have different views. I'm sorry that I enjoy the things which you don't, and vice versa. This is probably never going to be reconciled.

Also saying that you're OK with the way FFXI did things is not the same as saying 'there's no other way to do things'. And I'd appreciate it if you'd stop implying I have "a problem" -_-