FFXI. The first time I heard about this title was during my EQ days where my guild itself was burning out. I have heard some of the members were playing FFXI, a great hit MMORPG Title released in JP. While I was a big FF series fan, I took my time and researched about this game. What hit me most were:
1. Incredible grafics
2. Mission (firsst game I saw which has a storyline based quest)
3. Job change when ever you want to what ever you want.
I bought a copy from japan (since I am JP and all), the first impresion was big. All the good graphics, astonishing characters and lots of starting quest with good rewards. First couple of missions also was challenging. Met a couple of friend, introduction of Linkshells, Skill chains and so on. While the Dunes were also crowded at that time (pre NA release) it was not as bad as the dunes now days. Everything looked great.
After 1.5 years. Now I am sitting here in windrust, with my friend about how he viewed FFXI. He started 3 month after the NA release. He was also in EQ with me in the same guild, different jobs but there. Although I still find alot of new things I want to try out, I have also found what has changed in a bad way.
1. Gil farming. Like wise there were some good source of gil farming when I have started. But many profitable gil farming has been nerfed, shattered by Square Enix, but the gil requirement increased. Hence gil farming become more difficult, more extence. This requires time. Time which some people just don't have enough. Tradeskill, fishing, farming mobs which drops gil, item even NMs requires Time.
2. Increase of mobs difficulty, also nerfing players. Where to begin.
- The orcs 1.5years ago had about half of the hp they have now.
- The skeletons AoE like blind, drain never dealt as killing damage as they do now. In fact, 1.5years ago exping in Fei-Yin, Eledime necropolis was popular.
- The nerf of multi hit WS and their TP. This killed alot of high and effective party such as Drk, mnk and other players with multi hit ws.
- The nerf of utusemi. Although it was a powerfull tool I agree, you must understand some mobs were designed to be so hard that without utusemi you couldn't win. The good example is the Dynamis lord in Dynamis Xalcabard. His attacks 70% of them consists of powerfull aoes, without utusemi it was near impossible to beat him.
- The nerf of warrior agressor. Prior to this nerf, warrior agressor was 25"%" increase in accuracy and 25"%" decrese in evation. Now its 25 fixed number.
- The nerf of SA. 1.5 years ago, SA dealt crit to all the hits in a multi hit ws. Which means Mnks were king of damage dealers with SA raging fists. Although this was not a bad nerf, well kills another good damage source for fast exp.
3. Hard progression in missions. The introduction of Promathia missions has really killed alot of people interested in missions including myself. Remember the 3 nation missions and Zilart missions. Althouth there were some level stricting aspect, it was not as hard as the Promathia missions. You didn't need vast amount of medicins, with low level armor to function. Also, missions never took like 4hours to complete 1 particular part. (promivon). I have a feeling that instead of people enjoying the missions by doing it, now I have a sence of "I want to get over with this crap". The enjoy place will become just this. To get through asap. Also asking help is not as easy as other missions. It requires the helper to get ready as well as the others for no particular benefit.
4. Exping. The introduction of lifting the max exp earned may be nice in paper. But for the high levels its near impossible to achieve. We are talking to have to kill mobs which are 15levels higher to get those 300+ exp. Around low level may be possible but around 50+ it becomes hard unless certain conditions were met. I will discuss about this certain conditions in the next part. So lifting exp is pretty much minuscule effect amoung most of the high level people.
5. Exping part2. Some jobs has way too much advantage compared another. Take rangers for example. They are the king of damage in physical sence. Although they use high expence this leads problem to the competitor of the same element. Which are the dragoons. Due to the vast requirement of the Blm Rdm Brd and whm, summoner job is also left behind since their offer to the PT are not as "Effective" and "Big" as the 4 mage jobs. Hence balance is pretty much shifted to the favour of specific jobs while the ones who are left behind will have no choice but to become leader inviting people or simply switch.
6. Subjob system. Although it is a very nice idea for customisation in jobs, the fact remains that there are certain subs that is actually "required" and "forced" in Party situation. This game is a "Party" based game with cooperation from each other. What does this mean? By playing amoung others you have to think about being effective to you "AND" the party. Thus your "Individualism" and "Freedome" of customising your main character is gone. "Effectiveness" is what seeked in a party which leads to "Effective" subjobs.
7. Based on above fact. Since this game is a "Party" game, soloing possibilities are pretty moot. Which means the only time that you can do your "INDIVIDUALISM" and "Freedome" of doing what ever you want will lead to practically no where. Beast are pretty much the only job which can solo anything (although limited), but will require resources that usually nets other party exp. This will push the beast to move to camp where no one actually levels up. (not always true but 1.5 years ago this was a common etiquette) Followed by the none existant of non-full PT exping. Will go into this afterwards.
8. High difficulty and low reward. New ideas were put into the game such as Garrison, Ballista, Dynamiss. But how many people actually enjoy these?
- Garrison, was very entertaining at start. But the high level ones were so hard to complete, not many people actually bothers doing them. Not to mention that it takes 1 week to try doing again.
- Ballista was not always the PvP everyone seeked. I won't touch into this since I never did one myself so I cannot comment much.
- Dynamis. People who enjoy does have fun times. But this requires mostly to be in a big LS to fully enjoy without much fuss in it. Or be in a friend list of a such large LS. Reward is usually a couple of pieces of AF2, relic weapons which needs insane amount of cash to upgrade. Exp loss which will pop your eyes out. Might be fun to do if it was not every 3 days and with a fee of 1million gil.
7. Exping part3. Competition on mobs become more common these days. The lack of hunting grounds and lack of mobs, competing of rival parties for those needed high amount of experience. The source of this will be followed afterwards. Like stated before, the requirement of full PTs will take more advantage compared to the low people PT such as a party of 3~4 due to the sole fact that lack of hunting grounds. Why is this? People hate exping against Anticans, who fights bombs appart from beasts? Who want to fight a Dark stalker type? Or ghost (Pre Ramp tomb)? So many mobs has so insane resist or melee, magic mitigation that limits your hunting grounds. How about promathia areas? Will require to do missions.
8. Over crowded, over populated servers. The more I think, Square Enix should have splitted the servers between JP NA and EU. Reason was not only communication difficulty, the language preference. But over populated servers, the squished hunting grounds, the competition of NM, HNMs, The competition of crafters. The server just has way too many people to support the entire world's users. If not split, they should have made the world choseable instead of usign this silly idea of random world selector. Those who wish to play with JP could do so. Those who wish to play with NA only could do so.
9. Greed of Crafters, Fish botters. This is related to above section aswell somehow, I will explain. The FFXI economy were built amoung the crafters, NM hunters, HNM hunters of JP. There are always high end crafters who are benefiting most without letting a chance to the new crafters. I take an example. I am a pretty high cloth crafter (hitted 70 yesterday). I check the ingredients needed for the items I want to make. They are never on stock. The vast majority of the high end ingredient were bought by certain individuals. Which you guessed its the high end crafters. Bad thing is these ingredients are usually dropped from places where farmers are located. (WARNING this is not for all crafting)
Now lets follow for fish botters. It is clear, that those people who wears fishing gears with Lu shang and Sinking/Minow are usually bots. If not semi bots. You can find them alot in Saruta, South Gusta, Port Windrust. Botting surely gets on my nerve. I don't know if the amount of people in the area over all affects the fishing rate, I myself experienced alot. My friend gets alot of "Couldn't catch anything" as a 45 fisher in saruta. Which is the place where he can gain skills. He got 50, I repeat 50 continuous "Didn't catch anything" in a row. He was so frustrated about this. And this was happening since the arrival of saruta fishing.
How do I know they are botters? Well for starters, if people continue fishing after they fished a monster... and never bothered to fight it. Its pretty clear.
10. The BCNMs. This was a blast, instanced battlefield with 6 people or 4 or 3. This is what some casual people afford some good items or cash source. For some. But the new implementation of BC99. Its actually 3 HNM packed in 1 BCNM with 18 people. Their difficulty is so high and the reward is so low that nearly no one is doing this BCs. Should this be the future BCNMs I would be pretty pissed. My pld friend was so excited about this BC but due to the difficulty "And" the unavailability of getting the "abjuration" has drove him away from this.
So far these are the "Problems" I think FFXI currently have. Why I continue playing? In any mmorpg there are improvement every patch. Or sort of. As well as possible solution, and of course the one I call in EQ "Stealth NERF" aswell. I always try to have faith "One day, there will be time that things will turn to the better". I want to try out all jobs. I want to know all the story that missions offers to me. I want to have the joy of making my armor I wanted so much with my own hands. Such goals are currently in me. Its a bit sad that the game mechanics asks me to have alot of people, patience, and level to achieve them.
I like FFXI as a game. It has potential but the way the game is evolving, I see way too much things that prevents a "normal" or "casual" player to achieve. I categorise myself to be sort of "hard core" player even if I have a 10hour daily job. But this game has too many of this in terms of EQ I say "Cockblocks" designed by the Company to make the player stay longer in the game which is sad. As a final note, I would like to share what many JPs feel about this game. They are pretty much agreeing on what I am saying. They rate ths game "A good graphics, sound and storiline but has too many faulty mechancis, timesink, that will drive players away from the game". In another word, the negative part are overwhelming the good part of the game which they rated this game a score of 39/100.
Here is the link of the source (JP SITE):
http://kyoichi.mods.jp/ps2/soft/mmorpg/ff11/index.html
For people who are playing in a Big LS in already built in HNMLS might have a different view. But compared to the over all population of the FFXI servers, the HNM dedicated LS are a minor. What I want from this game is more choice to the casuals, less timesink to an extent, revising of current job balance without nerfing them nor making the mob harder. Promathia expantion was thought to be for casuals and low levels. Only to realise its for skilled hard core players whith intence difficulty. I mean, do you think a fresh started level 30 person could do well in Promivon? I don't think so.
P.S. The purpose of this post was if there were anyone feeling the same way as I am, or has a totally different view about the game which actually I can rethink what I feel for FFXI.
1. Incredible grafics
2. Mission (firsst game I saw which has a storyline based quest)
3. Job change when ever you want to what ever you want.
I bought a copy from japan (since I am JP and all), the first impresion was big. All the good graphics, astonishing characters and lots of starting quest with good rewards. First couple of missions also was challenging. Met a couple of friend, introduction of Linkshells, Skill chains and so on. While the Dunes were also crowded at that time (pre NA release) it was not as bad as the dunes now days. Everything looked great.
After 1.5 years. Now I am sitting here in windrust, with my friend about how he viewed FFXI. He started 3 month after the NA release. He was also in EQ with me in the same guild, different jobs but there. Although I still find alot of new things I want to try out, I have also found what has changed in a bad way.
1. Gil farming. Like wise there were some good source of gil farming when I have started. But many profitable gil farming has been nerfed, shattered by Square Enix, but the gil requirement increased. Hence gil farming become more difficult, more extence. This requires time. Time which some people just don't have enough. Tradeskill, fishing, farming mobs which drops gil, item even NMs requires Time.
2. Increase of mobs difficulty, also nerfing players. Where to begin.
- The orcs 1.5years ago had about half of the hp they have now.
- The skeletons AoE like blind, drain never dealt as killing damage as they do now. In fact, 1.5years ago exping in Fei-Yin, Eledime necropolis was popular.
- The nerf of multi hit WS and their TP. This killed alot of high and effective party such as Drk, mnk and other players with multi hit ws.
- The nerf of utusemi. Although it was a powerfull tool I agree, you must understand some mobs were designed to be so hard that without utusemi you couldn't win. The good example is the Dynamis lord in Dynamis Xalcabard. His attacks 70% of them consists of powerfull aoes, without utusemi it was near impossible to beat him.
- The nerf of warrior agressor. Prior to this nerf, warrior agressor was 25"%" increase in accuracy and 25"%" decrese in evation. Now its 25 fixed number.
- The nerf of SA. 1.5 years ago, SA dealt crit to all the hits in a multi hit ws. Which means Mnks were king of damage dealers with SA raging fists. Although this was not a bad nerf, well kills another good damage source for fast exp.
3. Hard progression in missions. The introduction of Promathia missions has really killed alot of people interested in missions including myself. Remember the 3 nation missions and Zilart missions. Althouth there were some level stricting aspect, it was not as hard as the Promathia missions. You didn't need vast amount of medicins, with low level armor to function. Also, missions never took like 4hours to complete 1 particular part. (promivon). I have a feeling that instead of people enjoying the missions by doing it, now I have a sence of "I want to get over with this crap". The enjoy place will become just this. To get through asap. Also asking help is not as easy as other missions. It requires the helper to get ready as well as the others for no particular benefit.
4. Exping. The introduction of lifting the max exp earned may be nice in paper. But for the high levels its near impossible to achieve. We are talking to have to kill mobs which are 15levels higher to get those 300+ exp. Around low level may be possible but around 50+ it becomes hard unless certain conditions were met. I will discuss about this certain conditions in the next part. So lifting exp is pretty much minuscule effect amoung most of the high level people.
5. Exping part2. Some jobs has way too much advantage compared another. Take rangers for example. They are the king of damage in physical sence. Although they use high expence this leads problem to the competitor of the same element. Which are the dragoons. Due to the vast requirement of the Blm Rdm Brd and whm, summoner job is also left behind since their offer to the PT are not as "Effective" and "Big" as the 4 mage jobs. Hence balance is pretty much shifted to the favour of specific jobs while the ones who are left behind will have no choice but to become leader inviting people or simply switch.
6. Subjob system. Although it is a very nice idea for customisation in jobs, the fact remains that there are certain subs that is actually "required" and "forced" in Party situation. This game is a "Party" based game with cooperation from each other. What does this mean? By playing amoung others you have to think about being effective to you "AND" the party. Thus your "Individualism" and "Freedome" of customising your main character is gone. "Effectiveness" is what seeked in a party which leads to "Effective" subjobs.
7. Based on above fact. Since this game is a "Party" game, soloing possibilities are pretty moot. Which means the only time that you can do your "INDIVIDUALISM" and "Freedome" of doing what ever you want will lead to practically no where. Beast are pretty much the only job which can solo anything (although limited), but will require resources that usually nets other party exp. This will push the beast to move to camp where no one actually levels up. (not always true but 1.5 years ago this was a common etiquette) Followed by the none existant of non-full PT exping. Will go into this afterwards.
8. High difficulty and low reward. New ideas were put into the game such as Garrison, Ballista, Dynamiss. But how many people actually enjoy these?
- Garrison, was very entertaining at start. But the high level ones were so hard to complete, not many people actually bothers doing them. Not to mention that it takes 1 week to try doing again.
- Ballista was not always the PvP everyone seeked. I won't touch into this since I never did one myself so I cannot comment much.
- Dynamis. People who enjoy does have fun times. But this requires mostly to be in a big LS to fully enjoy without much fuss in it. Or be in a friend list of a such large LS. Reward is usually a couple of pieces of AF2, relic weapons which needs insane amount of cash to upgrade. Exp loss which will pop your eyes out. Might be fun to do if it was not every 3 days and with a fee of 1million gil.
7. Exping part3. Competition on mobs become more common these days. The lack of hunting grounds and lack of mobs, competing of rival parties for those needed high amount of experience. The source of this will be followed afterwards. Like stated before, the requirement of full PTs will take more advantage compared to the low people PT such as a party of 3~4 due to the sole fact that lack of hunting grounds. Why is this? People hate exping against Anticans, who fights bombs appart from beasts? Who want to fight a Dark stalker type? Or ghost (Pre Ramp tomb)? So many mobs has so insane resist or melee, magic mitigation that limits your hunting grounds. How about promathia areas? Will require to do missions.
8. Over crowded, over populated servers. The more I think, Square Enix should have splitted the servers between JP NA and EU. Reason was not only communication difficulty, the language preference. But over populated servers, the squished hunting grounds, the competition of NM, HNMs, The competition of crafters. The server just has way too many people to support the entire world's users. If not split, they should have made the world choseable instead of usign this silly idea of random world selector. Those who wish to play with JP could do so. Those who wish to play with NA only could do so.
9. Greed of Crafters, Fish botters. This is related to above section aswell somehow, I will explain. The FFXI economy were built amoung the crafters, NM hunters, HNM hunters of JP. There are always high end crafters who are benefiting most without letting a chance to the new crafters. I take an example. I am a pretty high cloth crafter (hitted 70 yesterday). I check the ingredients needed for the items I want to make. They are never on stock. The vast majority of the high end ingredient were bought by certain individuals. Which you guessed its the high end crafters. Bad thing is these ingredients are usually dropped from places where farmers are located. (WARNING this is not for all crafting)
Now lets follow for fish botters. It is clear, that those people who wears fishing gears with Lu shang and Sinking/Minow are usually bots. If not semi bots. You can find them alot in Saruta, South Gusta, Port Windrust. Botting surely gets on my nerve. I don't know if the amount of people in the area over all affects the fishing rate, I myself experienced alot. My friend gets alot of "Couldn't catch anything" as a 45 fisher in saruta. Which is the place where he can gain skills. He got 50, I repeat 50 continuous "Didn't catch anything" in a row. He was so frustrated about this. And this was happening since the arrival of saruta fishing.
How do I know they are botters? Well for starters, if people continue fishing after they fished a monster... and never bothered to fight it. Its pretty clear.
10. The BCNMs. This was a blast, instanced battlefield with 6 people or 4 or 3. This is what some casual people afford some good items or cash source. For some. But the new implementation of BC99. Its actually 3 HNM packed in 1 BCNM with 18 people. Their difficulty is so high and the reward is so low that nearly no one is doing this BCs. Should this be the future BCNMs I would be pretty pissed. My pld friend was so excited about this BC but due to the difficulty "And" the unavailability of getting the "abjuration" has drove him away from this.
So far these are the "Problems" I think FFXI currently have. Why I continue playing? In any mmorpg there are improvement every patch. Or sort of. As well as possible solution, and of course the one I call in EQ "Stealth NERF" aswell. I always try to have faith "One day, there will be time that things will turn to the better". I want to try out all jobs. I want to know all the story that missions offers to me. I want to have the joy of making my armor I wanted so much with my own hands. Such goals are currently in me. Its a bit sad that the game mechanics asks me to have alot of people, patience, and level to achieve them.
I like FFXI as a game. It has potential but the way the game is evolving, I see way too much things that prevents a "normal" or "casual" player to achieve. I categorise myself to be sort of "hard core" player even if I have a 10hour daily job. But this game has too many of this in terms of EQ I say "Cockblocks" designed by the Company to make the player stay longer in the game which is sad. As a final note, I would like to share what many JPs feel about this game. They are pretty much agreeing on what I am saying. They rate ths game "A good graphics, sound and storiline but has too many faulty mechancis, timesink, that will drive players away from the game". In another word, the negative part are overwhelming the good part of the game which they rated this game a score of 39/100.
Here is the link of the source (JP SITE):
http://kyoichi.mods.jp/ps2/soft/mmorpg/ff11/index.html
For people who are playing in a Big LS in already built in HNMLS might have a different view. But compared to the over all population of the FFXI servers, the HNM dedicated LS are a minor. What I want from this game is more choice to the casuals, less timesink to an extent, revising of current job balance without nerfing them nor making the mob harder. Promathia expantion was thought to be for casuals and low levels. Only to realise its for skilled hard core players whith intence difficulty. I mean, do you think a fresh started level 30 person could do well in Promivon? I don't think so.
P.S. The purpose of this post was if there were anyone feeling the same way as I am, or has a totally different view about the game which actually I can rethink what I feel for FFXI.
it sucks, and since you cant solo there is no real other choice since i cant gain the exp my self
. Promyvion missions are a pain and yes ppl just want to quickly finish this shit and move to the next mission. Totally no fun at all. Tried Holla 6 times and failed all 6 times miserably not to mention gathering 12 ppl is not easy. I've never did dynamis, never will as i don't see the point in it. Alot of ppl will say you go there for your AF set2 and that's the only reason. lol 
