The truth is we need a remastered XI or a follow up

[Naraku_Diabolos]

Xi is still there. I don't know why we need a new XI when the game is still up and running. I never got past the Dunes in XI because I couldn't keep a leveling party for more than a couple hours and no one in my LS wanted to go back to suffering in that place. It left a terrible impression of the game. After two weeks of struggling to get any kind of party together only for them to fall apart shortly after I just gave up and never looked back.

You can now solo with Trust NPCs like in XIV, and they scale with your job levels. I was soloing in Qufim with Gilgamesh and other NPCs and fights don’t last long anymore.

[Vyrerus]

I don't think I could trust them to remake/remaster XI faithfully. In order to update a lot of it, they'd have to rebuild the entire thing from the ground up, and the inevitably means that they will change something "small" which will ripple into changing other "small" things until at last the ripple spreads so far that it's different enough that it's not XI anymore.

Plus if they remaster it, will it still include Trusts and the like? It largely relies on Trusts these days, especially considering its old and grizzled playerbase are fairly insular for multiple reasons.

Even old players returning aren't welcomed into groups with open arms, patience, and understanding. There's a lot of, "Oh, we can play together after you catch up using Trusts." Or a lot of, "You should be able to handle that by yourself."

The old, old style of XI is something of a novelty, with people clamoring for it if they can get it for free (private servers), but not a lot of retail minded folks wanting it back.

Plus they'd have to deal with modern care about botting, a lot of old players bot the shit out of shit and use LUAs. It'd kind of be a nightmare.

[Ath192]

I don't think I could trust them to remake/remaster XI faithfully. In order to update a lot of it, they'd have to rebuild the entire thing from the ground up, and the inevitably means that they will change something "small" which will ripple into changing other "small" things until at last the ripple spreads so far that it's different enough that it's not XI anymore.

Plus if they remaster it, will it still include Trusts and the like? It largely relies on Trusts these days, especially considering its old and grizzled playerbase are fairly insular for multiple reasons.

Even old players returning aren't welcomed into groups with open arms, patience, and understanding. There's a lot of, "Oh, we can play together after you catch up using Trusts." Or a lot of, "You should be able to handle that by yourself."

The old, old style of XI is something of a novelty, with people clamoring for it if they can get it for free (private servers), but not a lot of retail minded folks wanting it back.

Plus they'd have to deal with modern care about botting, a lot of old players bot the shit out of shit and use LUAs. It'd kind of be a nightmare.

It's possible. But I'm mostly talking about a clean slate here. in other words, idk what would happen to XI in particular but like the VII remake this would be a new game. No character ports.

Here is what I think the great lie is:

The biggest lie is that the system and play style of old MMOs is something people don't want anymore. Imo there hasn't been a good game with the old style released in recent times to prove this though because anyone is too scared to release it. What I don't get is this: why are people scared to release something that has succeeded before?

People who enjoy fighting games aren't clamoring for a change to get rid of the complex combos and specials their characters do, likewise people who play strategy games had to ask Bill gates to re-release AOE 2 because they didn't want innovation in the style of gameplay, they wanted an update to the existing style. Seeing as AOE 2 was the pinnacle of RTS games what people wanted wasn't for the changes that followed after and killed the RTS genre.

So likewise, I believe the fans of old progression style MMOs are still out there.

[Vyrerus]

It's possible. But I'm mostly talking about a clean slate here.

There's definitely people who want to play the old style, but I'm not sure there's a sizable enough amount of people to support the necessary financial strain.

FFXI came off the cusp of Final Fantasy's huge success with 7, 8, 9, and 10. Along with their other games. Its development was spurred on by the creative team's vision, and it was something that was developed largely prior to Square's merger with Enix.

At the time, MMOs were nearly brand new, and in spite of Final Fantasy's popularity, FFXI was actually met with a lot of scorn by fans of the series. Its enormous price tag and unintuitive setup and systems drove a lot of people who had the balls to try it away.

Even in its golden era(for active player accounts) it never broke 3million subs iirc. And its zenith only lasted a couple of years. With its level 75 plateau lasting for 6.5 years, this came to be the game for many of its players, and when they inevitably raised the level cap to 80, that also drove many people to unsubscribe. Though it is true that its development costs were eventually outweighed completely, and it was Square Enix's lifeline for finances for the better part of the last decade.

So just like Final Fantasy as a whole, it has a largely fragmented perception of what it is, what it's about, and how it should be.

To bring it to modern graphics with better menus and less jank would require a rebuild. It would also require not letting people who've played it all this time down with regards to their decades of progress. Of course, that would immediately destroy game balance, so letting old salts have everything they have now in the new version while fair for them would be unfair for all new players and its Auction House system. So you couldn't feasibly do that. Which means the old base for XI would likely not pick up Nu XI.

FFVII remake happened because FFVII was very very popular worldwide, putting the series on everyone's radar. It holds a lot of nostalgia and a lot of childhoods and a lot of, "My first RPG" for many folks. FFXI is some people's first MMORPG, but it has a substantially smaller draw. FFVII is easy money, easy cow to milk. It has fan boys that will eat anything labeled FFVII. FFXI is pretty much its polar opposite. Fan boys that would die for XI and more XI, but only if it's, "The right kind of XI."

[Atelier-Bagur]

I want a remaster, although still keep the relatively colorful cartoon aesthetic (rather than the half-anime, half-realism we have with FFXIV), have a shared sub and to bring FFXI into modern consoles.

[dspguy]

Sounds good on the surface, but let's be a little realistic about this.

FFXI pre 2010 was a different era game (for better or for worse). You couldn't really level solo. You had to compete for camps. Leveling was a real grind. Certain job abilities/spells completely changed how a job was played. Raiding required dozens of players. Drops were few and far between and had to be shared across the entire raid.

FFXI post 2010 (after Aybssea) removed the need for large parties in most cases. Drops changed to enemies dropping "tokens" sort of like what we have today. Raiding no longer required large groups (maybe 8-12). Level became easy (pages). It was common to see level 99 players with absolutely no idea how to play their job (not that different from today).

The problem with FFXI pre-2010 was that it just wouldn't fly in today's world. No one wants to spend 15-20 minutes just to get to an exp camp or a raid zone. No one wants to farm spawn items for enemies that MIGHT drop something that has to be rolled on across 24+ different players. The list goes on and on.

Back in 2010-ish when I played FFXIV 1.0, I was hoping for something more like FFXI 2.0. Graphic update, maybe some QoL changes, etc. But it wound up being a dumpster fire. FFXIV is a casual game and frankly, I think many of the players that honed their skills on early MMOs like EQ1 and FFXI aren't ready to go back to those kinds of grinds.

[Jeeqbit]

Yes, FF11 needed a revamp a very long time ago to make it into a modern MMORPG but it didn't get it, it still hasn't got it and there doesn't seem to be any plans for it either.

I tried to play it and I just couldn't. No hotbars, combat speed many times slower than FFXIV, no quest markers, it's designed for a controller and difficult to work on a keyboard/mouse, moving with the map out and opening the map was difficult for me. I couldn't exit the start city for hours because the controls were so poor that I couldn't navigate out of it. It makes you appreciate the little things in FFXIV that you don't think about like being able to press M to see where you are going with a faded map and MSQ markers.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Supposedly they're working on an offline version of FFXI they can release before taking the game's online servers offline due to it being a numerical main line title in the franchise series.

IMO I'd rather they go with making a brand new MMO keeping FFXI's original design philosophy intact with as much or more mechanical details including all the small hidden ones people don't find without experimenting.

[Vyrerus]

Supposedly they're working on an offline version of FFXI they can release before taking the game's online servers offline due to it being a numerical main line title in the franchise series.

IMO I'd rather they go with making a brand new MMO keeping FFXI's original design philosophy intact with as much or more mechanical details including all the small hidden ones people don't find without experimenting.

I don't know. A lot of the philosophies get circumvented by data miners and spreadsheet enthusiasts. Goes up on BG-Wiki or FFXIclopedia, or other sites in days of yore. You try to figure stuff out yourself? Lost for hours. Look it up from the data miners who figure it out by botting/reverse engineering the game etc. Smoothish sailing. Find something they didn't maybe, somehow? Ridiculed/told you're wrong/you're just eyeballin' it etc. All hail the sacred spreadsheet!

An offline version sounds interesting. I'd love to see how they balance it.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I don't know. A lot of the philosophies get circumvented by data miners and spreadsheet enthusiasts. Goes up on BG-Wiki or FFXIclopedia, or other sites in days of yore. You try to figure stuff out yourself? Lost for hours. Look it up from the data miners who figure it out by botting/reverse engineering the game etc. Smoothish sailing. Find something they didn't maybe, somehow? Ridiculed/told you're wrong/you're just eyeballin' it etc. All hail the sacred spreadsheet!

An offline version sounds interesting. I'd love to see how they balance it.

IMO an offline version of FFXI would probably have changes similar to that offline DQX they released though in the case of DQX they seem to have done that more as a gateway to players to get caught up for the online version as it has an option after completing it to basically turn your character into an online account at which point you can begin buying the later expansions as the offline version only included I think like the first 6 years of content.

As for FFXI's design philosophy. I was talking more about it's design having intentional difficulty and a lack of handholding for the purpose of actually getting people to interact with others in game as actual people as opposed to FFXIV's heavy handholding, heavy instancing, and non existent requirement of knowing how anything in the game works to progress to the point you can start jumping into people's endgame activities resulting in large amounts of players viewing everyone else as an NPC. It also didn't shoehorn players nearly as much into having to do the MSQ just to access content as much of it had alternate methods of access that admittedly were more tedious or difficult in many cases than just doing the story.

Nah, not against the idea. Just intimately familiar with XI's playerbase over the years as well as its design. As fun as it is, you're always fighting against some other person's perception of what's a good job combo, good group comp, and what's "meaningful" content. And when I say fighting against, I mean a lot of the time you can't get into groups unless you make your own, or you play a job you don't want to play.

It's been a huge problem for the game's entire lifespan. There's supremely useful jobs for buffing and support like White Mage and Bard(or Corsair and Geomancer). They're borderline required for high end fights. However, everyone wants to be a Dark Knight, Samurai, Warrior, or Monk (and in the current era a BLU or a RDM). And a lot of the battles require those support jobs to basically stand still only using their buffing moves/cures on cooldown and nothing else (though I think the most recent, recent content is only 6 man, so it has everyone have to get in on meleeing/dpsing).

As much as I love FFXI, its blessing and its curse has always been how unbalanced it is and how its players play with this imbalance. It is the most meta gaming you will ever see/read, with passionate guide makers only finally putting in transitional gearsets instead of only the pinnacle BIS goals in their guides in very recent years. Most folks who've never given up playing it have always held the mindset, "What's the absolute best gear I can get? Ok, everything below that is transitional garbage, and I shouldn't even bother with half of it."

Trust me, if a new XI comes out, and it's 99% accurate to XI whether it's current or old XI, almost every newbie who tries it will say it's too hard and cumbersome of a grind, while any old salts that pick it up will adopt the mindset of domination.

The lack of the "everyone needs to be able to do everything the same" is one of FFXI's strong points IMO. It's that kind of environment that encourages people to actually think a bit. It's fuel for the build crafters trying to optimize their playstyle. I had multiple gear sets for every job that were assembled for taking that job through different content or soloing. BLU took it further with spell sets since certain combinations or sets unlocked passive traits. However one thing I did stress to friends back in the day when were thinking about playing it is that if you plan to be stupid and lazy in the game, you're going to have a bad time.