Why was it so much less popular and less successful than Final Fantasy XIV?
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Final Fantasy XI
Why was it so much less popular and less successful than Final Fantasy XIV?
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Because it had atrocious gameplay
>has actual RPG gameplay
>/vrpg/cucks hate it
like clockwork
Boring grinding game where the seeming influx of choice and customization is immediately bogged down by the fact you WILL have to play with people, and those people will happily ostracize you if you don't browse a wiki and play by the meta.
>has actual RPG gameplay
Killing birds and crabs to level up an imaginary number 500+ hours irl isn't *good* RPG gameplay. The moment to moment emergent factors exclusive to only RPGs is what makes an RPG good.
I always thought it was a bit of lazy design that the players were stuck fighting such lame enemies all the way to 75. As you level up higher you should have mechanics or design to encourage the players to fight more fearsome enemies.
Because these games are designed to pad as much time as possible. The people talking about how "hardcore" FFXI is are just coping; it's intended to be played at a level best suited for fat white girls with lots of free time.
>Grind parties were there to facilitate the real experience of MMOs, which was bonding with your friends while in a virtual fantasy world.
We're talking about RPGs and my idea of RPG isn't slaughtering a billion wild animals to make numbers go up.
>Because these games are designed to pad as much time as possible.
That has nothing to do with designing the enemies so that players are conditioned to fight crabs, goblins, and crawlers for 75 levels. You should fight crabs and crawlers and worms at low levels. Then move on to birds, pugils, and such. The odd Goblin. Then start fighting more beastmen and some tigers and things. Some of the coolest EXP parties I ever had were fighting Wyverns. It's just cooler to fight something that actually looks like it would take a party of people to fight.
Granted, some of it is memory limitations. It's a shame the game was anchored to the PS2.
+
>Granted, some of it is memory limitations. It's a shame the game was anchored to the PS2.
To be fair to what is now a part of CBU III & I: XI & XII were both technical marvels in their own right.
I don't mind the spread of enemies when I look at what's there in the dungeons and the other higher level areas but there's always that suspension of disbelief you need to have with RPGs and MMOs. You've got these gigapoweredup top of their food chain style motherfrickers who were in the first zones showing up in zones/4 expansions later but could rape the big bad of an earlier expansion or boss.
Crawlers nest is a good example of an area that thing can work well in, there's still tension since they're tough enemies and I can suspend my disbelief for something like that even though they use the same models.
Tough to suspend your belief or not be jaded at recoloured enemies, I had it happen to me in XIV where mob & zone design backfired in endwalke's final zone, right as you get off the ship at the end of the universe, this serious moment built up, the end of the tale is coming and they're playing it seriously. I walk 200 yalms and I see a recoloured dragon recycled straight from ARR or HW and my suspension of disbelief breaks and I'm laughing that the thing they led with was a recoloured mob.
It's hard to prepare yourself for a chief symptom of MMOitis development striking in a way like that, but the weird thing looking back is that there were unique enemy types they could have used that were new, just...they're in the second part of the zone.
>The people talking about how "hardcore" FFXI is are just coping
You're right about that, because the only people talking how "hardcore" FFXI is are whiners tbh. They're the only ones left talking about that shit unironically unless it's horizonbabs and horizonbabs only shill their server outside of their safe space.
For XI in general: It's not even a case of hardcore or gitting gud, it's engaging with game systems. Even players who start on retail and use trusts are still mostly doing that.
>my idea of
Nobody asked
>Killing birds and crabs to level up an imaginary number 500+ hours irl isn't *good* RPG gameplay.
You missed the point. Grind parties were there to facilitate the real experience of MMOs, which was bonding with your friends while in a virtual fantasy world. You don't get that experience from retail WoW clones.
What are you talking about? It was one of the most popular MMOs around at the time, hitting similra numbers that EQ did a few years before, and maintained a large player base even after WoW's release.
Comparatively, it wasn't. MMORPGs were simply way way smaller back then. It was a Japanese take on EQ1 + made playable for consoles.
Huh? FFXI was very popular in Japan, a market that World of Warcraft never managed to break into. FFXI singlehandedly kept Square afloat during Yoichi Wada's tenure throughout the 2000s and early 2010s.
As for why FFXI wasn't very popular in the West, it had a delayed release and by the time it did release, WoW was on the horizon and the prerelease hype for WoW was humongous due to the Blizzard name and hype from WC3, one of the biggest PC games of all time. An ad for WoW was tucked away in the WC3 launcher so everyone knew it was coming, and WoW looked better than any other MMO. So a lot of people held off of on playing FF11, and when WoW did come out a lot of Western FF11 players jumped ship to WoW because that's what their friends were playing. Naturally Square's next attempt at breaking into the Western MMO market was to make a WoW clone, which only had a brief blip of popularity in 2020 after a long string of PR blows to Blizzard and the release of the worst expansion ever, but then the WoW refugees went back.
>WoW looked better than any other MMO
I've always thought it was ugly as shit.
Anyway, FFXI was less popular because is heyday was just before the internet was fully populated by normies. It was before social media besides MySpace. FFXI came out in 2002 and had peaked and started to decline by 2008. FFXI is just from a previous era. Too bad because it has much better design than FFIXV and way better aesthetics and lore.
It came out when games were still made for nerds and not for facebook moms or twitter alphabets
Exactly. A shame though, because I wish FFXI fanart was as prolific as FFXIV fanart. Its races and their armor and clothing designs were much better.
This but it doesn't mention the fact that the vast majority of people playing MMORPGs today were never compatible with an EQ clone. I know someone that quit FFXI because when I was there to heal for him he was essentially sat around like a homeless in the Valkrum dunes waiting for a party. On top of the game being a massive time sink that filtered casuals and normalgays it was also more expensive, WoW whatever you might think of it cornered the market because it had mass appeal. MMORPGs were niche before that.
>essentially sat around like a homeless in the Valkrum dunes waiting for a party.
I didn't get too far in FFXI but that is a memory that sticks with me the most.
>sat around like a homeless in the Valkrum dunes waiting for a party
I never had this problem. I used /sea to search for other players within my level range who had their looking for party flag turned on and invited them and formed my own groups. Be proactive and take your destiny into your own hands rather than waiting for someone to scoop you up.
>>sat around like a homeless in the Valkrum dunes waiting for a party
I never said it was a problem. I liked 'sitting on the beach' and immersing myself in the shitty scenery while I did homework. Obviously, this is before I touched grass.
>This thing that was widely acknowledged to the point where it was referenced even in popular at the media wasn't a problem and totally didn't happen
Unironically people like you are also the reason MMORPGs were casualized, you're a cultist.
It wasn't though, it kept Square alive for 10+ years.
It's also the most RPG out of any MMO ever made, the amount of details the game has is fricking insane.
Also easily also the best story content in MMOs, can't really say "best story in FF" since after CoP they're mostly self-contained, but overall it's up there.
it came out earlier
video games were a lot less popular back then, relatively it had similar market share
I didn't have a home computer, much less the internet, back in...when? 2002? Maybe it worked in Japan where they had internet cafes.
Unsurprisingly XIV's player base now includes rural residents. And the fact that you could play through the base content before subscribing helps too. Also 2020 happened.
FF14 was almost shut down. Look up the original launch, they had to remake the game to avoid embarrassment since it was so awful.
Anyways MMOs were a niche genre back then even counting the fact video games were less popular. The genre only blew up when they casualized the genre a lot.
>FF14 was almost shut down. Look up the original launch, they had to remake the game to avoid embarrassment since it was so awful.
Not only did it have the 1.0 launch.
ARR & HW had their own issues and they didn't hit their stride until Stormblood where they were still being kept alive by XI and decided to play it safe afterwards.
I like XI's combat compared to XIV but that's because of how absurdly limited XIV is and how uninspired their mechanics are. Every expansion has one or two battle gimmicks you'll see repeated right through to endgame and you'll be standing in a spot watching them play out until the day you die of boredom.
XIV might be interesting enough with it's static rotations and stand in spot gameplay if there was depth in other areas like builds or gearing or doing the hallway 2 packs a wall, 2 packs a wall copy pasted dungeons with something other than a tank, healer and 2 DPS.
It's just so dull, I never have to think about anything.
its kind of pointless to compare them because xiv isn't even an mmorpg
come now, anon. those end game raids ain't gonna raid themselves.
There are only two raids in the game, eureka and ivalice. The raids are fricking incredible, I wish we had more than two.
The Trail bosses are cool but ever since coil its been nothing but trials for 8 man content.
I just started playing XI and I'm having a blast so far. I now see where a lot of XIV's inspiration comes from.
I preferred the ARR & HW days tbհ. Stormbabs and Shadowbabs don't understand the good old days.
14 is really split by its playerbase. Square is trying to give the people what they want but they have too many audiances now. Its like FF12/13. Both times they gave the playerbases what they want but not when they wanted it. I agree about uninspired mechanics and dungeons being lame. The best content in FF14 was delbrum reginane savage, the ivalice 48 man at the end of the WW1 inspired zone. Matsuno a god. I wish the whole game was like foray zones.
>Matsuno a god. I wish the whole game was like foray zones.
Same, I really hope we get more of that in Dawntrail.
Didn't see the JP fanfest? All the key stuff that's going to be in the game was shown. Forays were briefly mentioned as a possibility, which in FFXIV terms, means that it won't be in the first half of the expansion and possibly won't be in the expansion at all. In realistic terms if we do get it then it won't be like Eureka since the Devs want to be as safe as possible so we're likely to get a copy and paste job of Bozja at best and absolutely nothing at worst because the team often lies.
FFXIV as it is now is what it will always be. A social MMO first and foremost meant to facilitate being a more interactive chatroom with the same ctrl+c ctrl+v gameplay features tacked on to appease the portion of the playerbase that likes the incredibly trite "move out of the bad circles and sometimes run to your spot" rotational gameplay that are its raids.
>the incredibly trite "move out of the bad circles and sometimes run to your spot" rotational gameplay.
Give them credit where it's due. There will possibly be one or two new styles of a mechanic for questing& battle or something picked up from a previous raid tier that will be used EVERYWHERE in dawntrail.
Stormblood loved the shooty zoomy minigame so much they kept using it in ShB, Shadowbringers liked shooty lasers from Alex, a new quest type where you'd stand in a spot in first person and talk to a character in an gruelling slow unskippable manner. It also loved the concept of bosses walking back to the centre of an arena to cast an AOE attack.
Endwalker took that spirit and and added a zoomy dash mechanic in and so bosses go to the side of the arena then do a little pattern and you stand in place waiting to resolve mechanic instead!
They reintroduced the concept of wall bosses with giant hitboxes so everyone had uptime and placed a greater emphasis on row based mechanics where you stand in place.
Endwalker also had a stealth mechanic they loved too where AOEs and puddles would fire a bit faster than old expansions to keep things spicy, so all babil runs without a RDM or SMN would end with the healer playing above 100ms getting obliterated for 20 minutes on a wall boss who has a row based mechanic.
On the questing side we saw a return to the stand in first person quests but it wasn't oversaturated. We got the new AIDS FOLLOW THIS NPC SLOWLY quests which can frick off and die and uno reverse quest where an NPC follows you around and you stand in a glowy circle instead! very brave!
>FFXIV as it is now is what it will always be.
You're right. It'll remain almost exactly the same because of copypasting. New dungeons will be the same, new DD will be PotD reskinned with a tacked on gimmick. Mechanics will largely be nothing new.
The more you play the less you're wowed or forced to think and engage with the game.
also afaik from my fever dream watching that presentation, forays are confirmed, whereas previously Yoshida had talked about them only in interviews as a possibility.
He'd made a big speech about players missing the content.
Easy to see why, the elemental system, separate levelling, the big raids and actions were refreshing along with actually social gameplay.
It'll probably be Bozja 2 because they'll play it safe but I'd want them to try and produce something fresh that they don't do in their other copy pastes. Not just swapping out the constantly spawning FATEs for only lottery based FATEs & NMs (but also please do that, it was what made Eureka so fun and social).
Feel exactly the same way, WoWfugees I would say are the biggest issue since they've completely supplanted the original audience much in the same after World MH just isn't the same or even imageboards 2010 onwards.
I think thats fine, blizard really shit the bed and needs to start over with a bunch of 11 people at the head. The future of the mmo is horizontal progresion or no progression. I could see slower gameplay like 11's being the first big hit in the VR era.
i miss ff11/early 14 combat i think it was unique and felt like FF instead of just being WoW. i also miss the social focus of 11. modern 14 feels like a single player game even when you get into raids and shit. i was a "tank" in a raid where i had no clue what was going on. just get sorted into a group and i guess i got carried? but i dont know. its just avoiding shit in the ground. its boring.
and i think the Toontown combat system was interesting too. a way to do that kind of jrpg combat with 4 homies in a row but in an MMO context is cool.
the slow paced combat is really comfy but the metagame is dogass. We need a romhack server that makes most job subjob combos viable. I had fun playing on eden with fresh eyes and exploiting stuff old heads didn't consider
What makes them "homies" exactly?
Is FF11 retail viable or do I just go for a private server?
do you JUST want the story? play retail. it's unrecognizable from retail across the years and solo-friendly. any private server you to will have its own clique and shit, but that's kinda what the game was like. definitely not easy to play.
Retail if you want to play the game.
Private server if you want to play in a box full of schizos, cliques etc. ran by morons. You'll get to level 35 with 100 hours played and quit.
>100 hours to 35
Get a load of this speedrunner.
Is there a way to play this as a single player game yet? I'd like to play through it once but I'm not about to make an SE account, buy a subscription, or waste a year of my life just to do so. You know a version of the game without all the MMO bullshit where you have to kill 10,000 mobs to level up or kill the same thing 1,000 times to get that rare drop. You know all the shit just designed to make you waste as much time as possible so they can get your subscription money.
>Is there a way to play this as a single player game yet?
Not really, no. Private servers aren't aiming for that but rather to re-create the game as it was. This means a grindy game where you need other players to get out of starter zones.
You can play through all of the story content 100% solo in a month pretty easily. Zero grinding or gearing or grouping involved. Whether that's worth the $12 or whatever is up to you.
If you are interested in doing so, following a guide is pretty much mandatory to navigate through the quirks of it being a cryptic 20 year old console MMO. I recommend this one: https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Quickstart_1-119_Guide
>Q: Toon? Guild?
>A: We don't use those mentally defective terms here. It is a Character and a Linkshell.
I just might read this further.
Note that this guide is literally just for leveling and gearing as quickly as possible without caring about the story at all
If you want the story, just do the expansions in order and follow this for Rhapsodies of Vana'diel.
Don't you want to do up to 2-13 for the final Trust slot?
Catseye was kinda that, it has trust magic that lets you solo most of the story content, you don't have to pay a sub, it had increased rates so you didn't grind as much. They've been rolling back a lot of their QoL changes to make it more like retail. I did the whole story and then killed most of the HNMs in a month but stuck around for almost 2 years anyway because I liked the group I was rolling with.
Wait what did they roll back? That what was the whole point of their server, I'd probably never play there now.
Lots of shit, basically anything that was more QoL than retail. I think they just want to be retail-like now except with a 75-cap.
Is there a post about it somewhere? Man that sucks, there's no reason to really start a character there now.
Thanks for warning me, every private server does this ladder pulling bullshit now.
They post their updates on their discord.
It started with the stocker bot, used to be every NQ/non-NM item had 3 copies stocked by the bot and every 3 hours it'd restock, they just got rid of it entirely.
After stocker bot they nerfed augments pretty hard, you'd trade Abjurations to an NPC for tatters then you'd trade the tatters along with an item for an augment, it'd take hundreds of rolls to get a perfect augment which was a big money sink for endgame players. People who had spent millions of gil and hundreds of hours rerolling for perfect augments suddenly discovered their BiS Armada Mufflers with +6% haste augment now only had 3% haste and were worse than Dusk Golves +1's 4% haste. "No refunds" ~spicy
Dynamis used to have no lockout, you could just re-enter as often as you liked, now you have to wait, oh and dyanmis NMs could (rarely) double drop hundos since each hundo was rolled individually now they're a slotted drop, small change but it reduced the rate you can amass dyna currency by 1/3rd.
Thiss also coincided with the change to the free item, used to be as a reward for Rank 10 and getting 100 in a craft you got to select a free item, could be anything Dring, Kclub, Mythic, Relic, Aramada Haub ect, now they've got a list and the best you can get is a stage 4 relic and a catseye can't get the completed relic/mythic anymore, or Kclub, they removed anything saleable from the list.
EXP rates and RoE got nerfed, also they don't let people do alliance EXP parties anymore, is not horizon slow, but its like 1/4th the rate you used to level. Also you can't power level anymore since if someone of a higher level heals you or touches the mob you get zero exp.
Weapon skills were next on the chopping block, they dramatically reduced the damage they put out.
Then they made it so !chef no longer worked outside of towns, so you can't buy/sell items to the NPC from anywhere now.
Also now the server is full of chinese botters who took over the endgame scene, good luck out claiming 40 chinese bots.
>see FFXI thread
>uncontrollable urge to resub
frick you OP
Play on Horizon.
I soloed to Dunes a couple months ago, saw it was dead, tried for a few hours to get a party going for sub job items, couldn't, and haven't logged in since.
go back
It wasn't though. It was extremely popular. It wasn't until Endwalker that FFXIV overtook it.
This is not true at all.
I'll let you guess what the previous one was
>coping ERPer
It's technically true. It was the highest grossing Final Fantasy game until XIV overtook it, although the latter made that money in a shorter amount of time.
>although the latter made that money in a shorter amount of time.
It also kept earning and kept XIV afloat long enough for Yoshida to scrap an entire game and subsidise development for three expansions. It has vastly lower operational costs in comparison to XIV and it still subsidises XIV to this day.
Something strange that hardcore XIV players who hate XI forget, is that it's still a sub game and its value for money is extremely low compared to XIV.
For comparisons sake: The cost of 1 character slot with no options is the same as the basic (cheap) sub option in XIV which gives 8 slots per data centre and has wiggle room for 2 retainer slots.
XI makes additional money off of selling additional storage & characters. Since development has died down, it's a solid money maker as long as the servers are up.
XIV's additional storage options can be soft "exploited", since they're account wide and not per character you can mule with them easily. If you play 1 character, you can have 7 other characters available with their full inventory space for storage and 2 retainers. If you have increased your sub to match XI's then you have an additional 2 retainers per character at the cost of roughly 2-3h investment to get to the MSQ trip point to create a retainer.
That's generous compared to XI but XIV makes bank off of other "added value" systems such as being a digital landlord for players who own houses due to autodemo limits of 30 & 45 days. The cash shop sells an insane amount of fantasias to change appeance, level skips and cash shop exclusive mounts & items as well as most of the past event items.
XIV's reliance on the cash shop has allowed it to pull ahead for now and will keep it profitable enough in the future. Enough to support new data centres in every region, a new DC in OCE and a cloud DC just to solve player housing issues? Materia and Dynamis are already ghost towns, how will they fare in the future when the game wants to turn a profit on a cash shop?
It played a not insignificant role in keeping the company afloat during the doldrums of the seventh console generation.
Currently playing through the Abyssea content. Omg, the whole thing revolves around random drops. Of course I'm way overpowered and shredding through mobs, it's still taking me days to farm the keytimes to spawn the "story" bosses for each area.
It's not worth it. Why am I torturing myself?
No one plays Abyssea for the story. Even the GBF crossover event had more story than the actual FF11 expansion. If you want story, go to Adoulin next. Don't be a perv to Arciela and good things will happen to you. She has a hidden affection meter depending upon your dialogue choices and it affects the difficulty of quests later on.
I've already done Adoulin. And Rapsodies.
Abyssia is all I have left.
Well...I've been stuck on part 7 of Voracious Resurgence. But I think I have to grind Master Level to solo it.
Ah, then you're pretty much done then. Read the GBF x FFXI crossover event on Youtube, as it is a sequel to Abyssea, though you don't need to have finished FFXI's Abyssea story to get it.
>actually playing any of the story past Wings
I shiggy diggy
Adoulin is fricking great, what are you on about?
Because it was an EQ rippff instead of a WoW ripoff.
Unfortunately, neither Sakaguchi nor Ishii or Tanaka were in possession of a time machine or crystal ball and thus could only be inspired by that which existed at that time.
Impressive that Mark Kern possessed one and only used it to make an MMO, instead of the usual killing baby hitler or fricking his grandmother in her prime.
Did he release Em8er yet? That mech MMO of his has been in development for years. At this rate a new Xenoblade X or that new asian Mecha Break game will come out first.
More games could use skillchains/magic bursts. I'm disappointed no other FF game ever used that system again.
I'm disappointed that as a tactic it becomes outdated and obsolete in FFXI after a while. A shame because I found it really fun too.
GW2 did have an elemental combo system, ie one person can lay down a wall of fire, and then another player can shoot projectiles through that wall of fire and they will become fire projectiles. Or one player can lay down a whirlpool of water, and then another player can swing their hammer down on that whirlpool of water to deal an AoE heal. Good idea but the devs never built upon it and it remains mostly forgotten by the playerbase since the effects are so minor. Genshin did more with the idea with the elemental reactions but they're only a two-step process.
I want a single player Elder Scrolls like-game set in Vana'diel.
Crimson Shroud and FFVVD, and to a much lesser extent crono cross. Tactics Ogre LUCT/OV kind of has skillchains too but i dont find it effective enough to matter
jesus fricking christ what is this
A single screenshot that has been posted for years with zero followup. It's a teasing troll image.
bait
Looks like the gigas in Qufim Island
FFXI Siege
>want to resub
>remember LS is dead
>difficult to make a group
>game is filled with bots and mercs
And now you know, OP
I always thought I had a shitty internet connection
I was talking about this in the xiv general just a couple of hours ago
UI and Controls are designed like from hell, like some old ultima level of shit.
Also, and this might be a skill issue, but years ago when i tried that game there is NO indicator for which npc give which quest and all quests are unlocked from the get go.
So as a new player without sifting through wikis and stuff you have no idea of the intended quest order and which side quests or story stuff belongs to what if you want it to do it in order
Not an enjoyable experience for me
It was made in and for a different time, when players were expected to figure things out and work together to help others through it instead of queuing up for their silent 10 minute dungeon daily chores
>Anon says game has shitty ui and controls
>Anon says game is confusing because years of piled on expansion make it difficult to navigate a coherent story as a newplayer without external help
>"BACK THEN YOU NEEDED TO GROUP UP!!"
Schizo moment
There is no indicator for that AFAIK
Thats not what he talked about, are you a bot?
>but years ago when i tried that game there is NO indicator for which npc give which quest
That's right, no giant arrow pointing to the next objective and no checklist on the side of the screen telling you exactly where to go and what to do in what order.
Also, you gorilla Black folk need to quit speedreading and learn what context is.
Thats not either what he said anon
holy you are unironically moronic
Ohnononono
Anon, he asked there is no indication which npcs begins which storyline of which expansion.
WoW, which has all the quest markers you are mad about has the same problem. Do you have dyslexia or are you just a "BACK THEN IT WAS HARDER AIIIIIIIIE" bot that people make fun off?
here we have a xi homie forgetting to take his brain medicine
>UI and Controls are designed like from hell
Yet they're robust and well thought out.
It may be from a different era and have less active windowing than a title like XIV or WoW but those games have their own host of UI issues. XIV especially has some controller issues.
>Also, and this might be a skill issue, but years ago when i tried that game there is NO indicator for which npc give which quest and all quests are unlocked from the get go.
LMAOOOO
Yesterday I was binge speedrunning heavensward on a free trial alt with a plugin to skip & advance dialogue/cutscenes. I spent most of my time looking at a quest marker and my sprint button to press it on cooldown. Even without the plugin to skip text, I would never have to read or know what I was doing to progress a quest or story.
>XIV especially has some controller issues.
cool but im playing on keyboard and not on controller like an ape
>IESLB
ok
>Yesterday I was binge speedrunning heavensward on a free trial alt with a plugin to skip & advance dialogue/cutscenes. I spent most of my time looking at a quest marker and my sprint button to press it on cooldown. Even without the plugin to skip text, I would never have to read or know what I was doing to progress a quest or story.
Are you the same anon that embarrassed himself? Thats not what he said? Are you just guy reading your own headcanon just say XIV bad?
No. I'm someone who is speedskipping HW.
I know what the anon said and I also know that I ignored the second half of the complaint andthat I did not address the starting NPCs signposting the player.
I felt it wasn't required since it's the first thing the game does when you create a character, directs you to an NPC who gives you directions when you ask them a question. They show you how to navigate the map and mark their location too and there's a further tutorial given before starting the nation missions.
>The problem is that all the quests are unlocked and they have no indicator each.
That's not a problem. You can play it like an RPG if you wish
>The issue is that you have no way to tell in which way to approach it from a narrative perspective as a new player without obsessively going through a guide or having a wiki open all the time which is a shit experience.
I talked to the starting NPC and got on my way starting the nation missions. I talked to other NPCs in the zones to start my quests too and I looked at the quest log if I got stuck.
>It wasn't like that back in the day; up through ToAU expansion content was more seamlessly integrated while also being segregated.
Since it's related to this, this anon addresses it for you but also:
This is more the problem with retail atm, areas are jam packed full of NPCs and systems. That contributes to the need for guides to understand.
>but i was not even complaining about that.
I was aware. I was only commenting on the first half of your complaint. I addressed the related first half above too.
And as for the second.
>As you obsessively brought up XIV, that would be like if i start in ul'dah, quest a little bit, talked to an NPC that just standing around, and started Endwalker before finishing the 2.0 story and no idea i did that.
The key difference there being that XIV is linear and extremely signposted. That's why XIV was used as an example: it serves as a stark contrast.
hf anon
>I felt it wasn't required since it's the first thing the game does when you create a character, directs you to an NPC who gives you directions when you ask them a question. They show you how to navigate the map and mark their location too and there's a further tutorial given before starting the nation missions.
Are you just larping or trying to talk shit about things you dont know about? you will start the rhapsodies as a new player very early and earlier then every expansion, because he is right and there is no proper segreation and indicators, and thats not the only one, just the most intrusive
No oner anon doesnt want to play i wouldnt want to play with morons either kek
Engine limitation, you can't hide NPCs from some players. The game clearly delineates what is new and old content if you pay attention to what the NPC says.
You are talking about an entirely different thing or you missed your quote spectacularly.
Feel free to continue on with your life as if it never happened, you scrub.
>Are you just larping or trying to talk shit about things you dont know about? you will start the rhapsodies as a new player very early and earlier then every expansion, because he is right and there is no proper segreation and indicators, and thats not the only one, just the most intrusive
>No oner anon doesnt want to play i wouldnt want to play with morons either kek
That's true, but you should keep in mind this is Retail FFXI you are talking about which I don't know why you'd play. FFXI at its core, that is when the game was good and worth playing and well designed, was the Release to the end of the ToAU era. In those days no Expansions were intrusive at all. You could visit areas from Zliart, Promathia, ect at the start, and would gradually unlock others as you did non-intrusive quests or got higher Nation Rank. CoP would tease you during the climb to Rank 5, right around the time you'd be the right level to do Promvyion and unlock more of CoP. Mind you, all of CoP was level-capped with the cap gradually rising, so you could not rush it as a new player. Zilart didn't start until you reached Rank 6, which was basically the end of the vanilla storyline.
Modern FFXI IS a mess in terms of Rhapsodies and Abyseea shoving themselves in your face. Now that said, quests ARE segregated in the journal. Each Expansion has its own page so you'll know whether any given quest is a story quest for an expansion.
I always forget Zilart was an expansion since it came with the game from the start here and just expanded the world seamlessly. That's how all expansions should work. I find it hard imagining Vana'diel without Zilart zones and additions. What every expansion should have been, seamlessly added zones with a couple new jobs that just slot into the world and don't seem out of place at all.
CoP had a couple zones that you could just wander into like Carpenters' Landing but for the most part cordoned itself off and required CoP story progress to enter its areas, it also neglected to add any new jobs.
Treasures is just like its own area disconnected from Vana'diel entirely, you have to take a boat over there, but it added some new jobs, and this is kinda how the rest of the expansions function from this point on, Wings and Seekers both work like this.
Yeah, I agree. Part of me wishes it was possible to do a true "Vanilla" server that gradually unlocks each expansion. I'd love to play with people where the level cap is 50 and even Zilart isn't in the game yet. Just the base line jobs and areas and quests/missions. It'd be hard if not impossible to defeat the Shadow Lord at 50, I imagine. Still though, imagining forming an Alliance to fight your way through Xarcabard and Castle Zvahl?
Not that I'd do it. I'm not the same person anymore and can't play FFXI, but I still miss it all the same sometimes. In trying out Retail in 2020 I really hated how Rhapsodies and Abyseea were injected into the game. I understand that some of it seems to be convenience... but those Atomos maws everywhere just frick up the landscape. Not to mention I hate the concept of Abyseea. I hate mutli-verse shit 99% of the time. It worked with Dynamis only because Dynamis felt like not a true alternate reality; more like a nightmare that wasn't fully real. Otherwise the events, characters, and everything are pointless.
I really miss that experience when I was 15 going on 16. The world felt huge and immersive. I recall wondering outside Bastok for the first time killing some birds/worms and then I see this big hulking turtle thing in the distance. NOPED and ran back to the gate. That first scary trip to Dangruf or to the crag in Konschtat. The epic journey to Jeuno for the first time.
Horizon was like that for a bit, before the unlocking of the more convenient Outpost Warps. I remember rarely ever using those in the old days. They must have been less convenient because I recall walking or riding a chocobo to get anywhere, maybe with a Crag warp.
Zilart did new areas best. CoP gated a little bit too much. I think that Tavnazia should have been a bit easier to access. I left just before ToAU came out, but it probably should have added at least a handful of areas on the main continent or something.
Horizon was really quaint for that experience. I really recommend trying ERA though. Doing Salvage and Nyzul Isle replicates the very experience you're looking for, of crushing dungeons and beating bosses. Few servers have all the TOAU stuff working.
>multiboxing allowed
>increased EXP rates and rewards overall
>all crafts to 100 on one character
>all sorts of other bullshit
No I don't think I will
>multiboxing allowed
Good, the game is a slog singlebox.
FFXIV might be more your thing then
I prefer XI, thanks.
as opposed to people using 5 trusts?
The dark and treacherous experience of heading to shadow lord in an MMO will be forgotten to time. The dire and nightmarish hellscape of navigating salvage can be done again and it can be similar.
>as opposed to people using 5 trusts?
As opposed to 5 people who you can talk to and build a friendship with.
Nobody does that anymore. Personally, if I were friendlier and knew the right people I'd have a lot of fun getting five friends and playing through the story and roleplaying. :3
You'll never get the true original authentic FFXI experience. Even if you did perfectly recreated a server from back then most of the people playing would already know all the tricks.
Horizon absolutely butchered what actual era was. Some real amateur hour mistakes because the original balance team was an absolute clown fest of private server schizoids who thought themselves good at the game when the majority of them liked playing on Wings (notoriously broken and horrendous pDIF calculations). Anyone who actually cared about Era has played on Eden, but the problem with Eden is that dual boxing is legitimately unfun way to play FFXI. It turns into a "use one character to EXP, one character to farm" and you trap yourself into burning yourself out. If you didn't run two characters you straight up were poor, bad, or inefficient, usually all 3.
They played favorites with their favorite jobs and cheated to get to level cap and use exploits to get rich. No transparency. I don't know why it is nobody who runs a server can be honest.
That said, it made me dream about how the game might be if a team with the real tools and knowledge tried to rebalance it. For a while at least, Dark Knight Absorb spells were broken. They would completely drain a Mob's VIT and so boost the whole partie's damage and nerf the damage done to the tank. I think it is fun to imagine intentionally reworking DRK to work that way; a debuffer & stunner who can close light/dark skill chains for big damage but has lower DoT over all; rather it boosts the DOT of other classes.
At the same time DRK is actively one of the strongest classes in the game even without a relic but most p-server morons think that if it's not #1 DPS it's automatically garbage. (It's still top 3 when played correctly).
Ask anyone who's lowmanned gods what they think of DRK, automatically the most liked DD.
I remember in my day it was sub-par for Merits. Everyone wanted WAR/NIN or any other class that could excel with NIN. Grab a BRD and go crazy. Peak for me was 60 through to 71 or so doing Skill Chains with DRK/THF. Had fun re-living that on Retail for a bit with Trusts.
Sounds like you're only considering CoP. When the ratio on 2handers was 0.5 scaling, it made dual wielding and one-handers the go-to due to multi hit weapon skills. However, even with 0.5 instead of .75 (came late ToAU) SAM/RNG with a Soboro + Yoichi or Shigeto Bow +1 was by far the strongest meriting job bar none, especially in any sort of piercing meta.
People also forget that there was a brief period where we had 1.0 scaling on two-handers that SE had to walk back to .75 because HNMs were instantly exploding.
>Sounds like you're only considering CoP. When the ratio on 2handers was 0.5 scaling, it made dual wielding and one-handers
Yeah, I played from NA release until just about a month before ToAU came out.
I genuinely think that any server with multiboxing is not worth playing and Horizon is the best out of all available singlebox servers.
FF ERA while a multibox server has an entire endgame LS dedicated to single box users and has done 18 man Absolute Virtues and Pandemonium Wardens and so on. That's 18 humans, not toons, real people.
>toons
We don't use mentally deficient terms like that here. Frick off back to XIV or WoW.
Pretty sure Toon is a term that goes back further than even FFXI. I knew a woman in FFXI who occasionally used that term.
it does, toon came from realm online.
is being absolutely moronic.
It's a line from the BGwiki's quickstart guide.
It's written by a redditor named spicyryan who hates horizon, made his own drama subreddit and posts here on /vm/ and either AH/BGforums too.
They also hate Asura too iirc.
He also runs Catseye now, he shills it ever chance he gets while shitting on Horizon. Which is bigger and more successful than his server will ever be.
Its funny because everyone hates spicy at catseye, homosexual comes in licking ass and taking the developer's side on everything, pisses off the whole community then they made him lead developer and its like his project now.
the devs on ERA are chill and not spicy, frick off from spicy, he's been a toxic piece of shit butthole player for 15 years, literally. Never worth being around.
Responsible people are the worst.
who is responsible in this scenario?
The guy running the foremost XI wiki and one of the largest XI private servers of course.
This would require accountability and no one who talks like this
>Hey, the first real question.
in a self written FAQ has any sense of responsibility. They lack self awareness.
Ah, fair. I played with spicyryan way back on pandemonium, which later merged with asura. He was hands down the most annoying player I had ever met and I feel sorry for anyone who has had to deal with him.
I had no idea he was involved in this server. Ill make sure to shit talk spicyryan and his server even more. He really was awful, but anyone whose read anything his posted can figure that out.
moronchama, the problem is that all the quests are unlocked and they have no indicator each.
I know this triggered your fight and flight syndrome and how much you hate yellow markers, but i was not even complaining about that.
The issue is that you have no way to tell in which way to approach it from a narrative perspective as a new player without obsessively going through a guide or having a wiki open all the time which is a shit experience.
As you obsessively brought up XIV, that would be like if i start in ul'dah, quest a little bit, talked to an NPC that just standing around, and started Endwalker before finishing the 2.0 story and no idea i did that.
It is exactly like wow in that regard and absolute garbage. No matter how dialogue/quest markers and whatever you hate is changing that, thats not related to that
I agree, on Retail the expansion content in FFXI is really overwhelming and intrusive. It wasn't like that back in the day; up through ToAU expansion content was more seamlessly integrated while also being segregated.
>Yet they're robust and well thought out.
Yes thats why no videogame ever used it, ever
They cant just grasp tanakas and your genius
lol
I don't want to live in a world that appreciates Yoshida's genius when it comes to confirm prompts
The XI controls are robust and well thought out for a controller though. It's a shame they abandoned the project to produce an updated interface, looked great for M&KB users.
>Yet they're robust and well thought out.
No, they're designed by morons.
>Hey anon, you got any Toreador's Rings left?
>Let me check
>CTRL+F Tore oh right this game wasn't designed by sensible people, it was designed by morons
>Visually scroll through and check my inventory which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog satchel which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog sack which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog case which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog locker which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog wardrobe which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog wardrobe 2 which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog wardrobe 3 which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog wardrobe 4 which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog wardrobe 5 which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog wardrobe 6 which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog wardrobe 7 which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Visually scroll through and check my mog wardrobe 8 which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
>Sorry guess I don't have any
>30 minutes later remember about mog safe and mog safe2 exist, rush back to my mog house
>oh here it is, item 37/80 in mog safe 2
>Cool, thanks anon, do you also have a Merman's Gorget left?
>Let me check
>CTRL+F Merm oh right this game wasn't designed by sensible people, it was designed by morons
>Visually scroll through and check my inventory which is a basic b***h list, didn't see it
and so on
There's a reason everyone used third party addons and plugins, the game's UI was absolute dogshit.
Filtered. Go back to XIV.
Because it originally required a lot of work to play. If you could get through the initial two days worth of installing updates, you had to also group up with people to level in the game. XIV is theme park slop.
>ywn be a middle schooler playing through Chains of Promathia after school all evening with your linkshell
It dropped its 75 content like a ton of bricks once 80+ was added. People grinded Dyna, sky, limbus, an ToAU content for years. Then they made a lot of gear and goals obsolete. They did not have a strong plan with going beyond the 75 cap.
That said, there's 75 cap servers, like FF ERA that maintain this content well.
>FF ERA
I thought everyone said to go to horizon?
Horizon is still consistently over 2k players during peak hours and over 900 at all times so if you actually want people to play with then yes go to Horizon.
What if I don't care if people are there or not?
Then play retail or self-host a solo server
Horizon is 1x xp and has a huge list of changes from retail. Many of them attempts to "rebalance" the game and other changes. They don't allow a lot of add-ons that even retail 11 could do. Not to mention, not all content is open yet.
FF ERA has nearly all the level 75 content available. It is 4xp with large amounts of quality of life changes, there are no job "rebalance" changes. Some custom gear. People work towards relics weapons, mythic weapons, all sorts of gear and content is available. Low pop, but a solid server to join. I don't think there's a 75 cap server that has mythics besides FF ERA.
Basically, you want the slow grind kick you in the teeth MMO experience, go to horizon. You want to do endgame and run that content, do FF ERA.
>Horizon is 1x xp and has a huge list of changes from retail.
1x the new formula for it, sure. It's not classic XP though, that's for sure.
it very much aims to replicate the retail xp of a slow grind, it's not like a 4x xp server at all.
regardless, being able to use add-ons replicates the retail experience because you could use windower to play FF11 on retail.
I've played it, and it is not using the original EXP formula.
OK, how much xp do you get per kill? Cause I played horizon as well and getting about 200 for IT is what I remember
Catseye has mythic weapons? Do they have salvage and einherjar?
IT EXP might be largely the same but later on in FFXI's life the EXP for EP and DC mobs was buffed and I'm pretty sure Horizon carries that over.
This does not answer the question. If they don't have salvage and einherjar they have custom work arounds for said content.
The server is full of custom shit, so probably.
yea, ERA has retail accurate salvage and scaled back einherjar. Odin works. It has limited custom changes to acquire get and do content, it's a much more accurate retail endgame experience.
Retail never allowed addons. Retail never even allowed Windower. People just did it anyways.
>I don't think there's a 75 cap server that has mythics besides FF ERA.
Catseye
I started playing the game in 2020 when I was 19 years old and the UI was only confusing for the first few hours, everything else far outweighed the cons.
In short, skill issue.
Even just one random overworld encounter was more "fulfilling" than anything involving other players I encountered in XIV during my 2000 hours I've played that game. Something as minor as asking what they're doing, getting invited to their group for some free loot, and going on with your day afterwards.
I don't even play this game for the MMO-ness per se, I mainly picked it up because it was one of the last mainline FFs I hadn't played and it more than delivered in that aspect too, the world is the most cohesive and well-developed, the graphics and artstyle are fricking gorgeous save for like a few skyboxes from the vanilla regions that are a bit too pixelated. The story is just fine for vanilla to RotZ but after that it gets really, really good.
So young. I wish you could have experienced FFXI at its prime. I still have great nostalgia for it.
I really fricking hate xieveBlack folk now and I'm planning on heading back to XI. New PC so I don't even remember the mods I was using but can someone pill me on the QoL stuff? I know there was Windower vs Ashita, but does XI have a proper HD mod yet?
XI has had proper HD mods for ages
>does XI have a proper HD mod yet
Not really.
>I know there was Windower vs Ashita,
Ashita's coming along nicely now. V4 is getting better and better, more mods have come around for it too.
Unless you get yourself a nice modlist of github repos to check, you're gonna have to go into their discord to add other ones though. Overall, if you don't mind doing the .ini config and setting it up, it's surpassing windower slowly but surely.
Ashita 4 also comes with a decent amount of shit already too, the other plugins in discord are more of the UI style stuff and windower ports.
I really dislike the ashenbubs stuff, boomers going mad for bad scaling. It looks good in some areas, but others it's just eye cancer.
Vanilla with point filtering through DGvoodoo looks pretty good and amazing on a CRT but still has some pain points.
>and for those reasons it's also a great game. I don't play it anymore but I wish I had the time and energy to play it again, but even to this day it sucks the life out of you. They made tons of changes over the years to make the game more accessible but it is still one massive grind once you get to the endgame.
It has that outside of endgame too, if I want to hop onto to play XI for a bit, I'm setting aside a couple of hours so I get everything done, or I'm recording it on OBS to quickly check where the frick I was when I come back.
>I don't even play this game for the MMO-ness per se, I mainly picked it up because it was one of the last mainline FFs I hadn't played and it more than delivered in that aspect too,
Very comf.
Like you, I came over late after the experience of partying up and farming stuff socially in XIV's Eureka/Bozja to find that aspect of the game had kinda died out for retail but stayed for the world, the battle system and the progression.
If I had been able to buy and sub to this game in 2004 or 2005, my life would have taken a very different turn.
because it requires encyclopediac knowledge to git gud.
because it requires multiple third party plugins.
because you have to either write your own scripts for gearswap or edit / modify someone elses for all player actions.
because it doesn't hold your hand AT ALL, it is a product of its time. If you want to do a quest, you are going to have to look up a guide especially as a new player as there's no waypoints or any other bullshit in modern games.
and for those reasons it's also a great game. I don't play it anymore but I wish I had the time and energy to play it again, but even to this day it sucks the life out of you. They made tons of changes over the years to make the game more accessible but it is still one massive grind once you get to the endgame.
>he plays retail
is dark knight/warrior an okay solo class?
I DONT WANT TO HEAL YOU CANT MAKE ME A FRICKING CONJURER
Just summon apururu to heal you.
yeah but i don't need to go conjurer right? like damn every guide is telling me to do it but FRICK YOU HEALING I AINT NO b***h
I wanna be a cool DRK/WAR too bro.
Instead I'm a stinky WAR/WHM because I dont want to splurge on oil, powder and deodorant.
because you morons don't realize that FFXI had to crawl so FFXIV could walk.
Plenty people were still on dial-up in '04 (international release), and WoW came out that fall.
I got the original XIV on release date and it was bad. Really bad.
Oh jeeze this thread reminds me I want to play this again. I would love to be a RDM or a PUP again. Jeeze.
I never got the appeal of PUP
It was fun. You get your very own little guy and can flex your role as needed. At least once I did a party as Pup/WHM with the healer bot and main healed. It was neat.
imagine having no d ring
>99
>dring
They seriously never made a better ring?
they've made gear that's made d ring obsolete because it gives so much -dmg
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Sakpata%27s_Armor_Set
thiccccccccc thighs
What drives someone to play retail?
Having a job, friends, and money, you wouldn't get it.
Easy ability to tour through all of FF11's content (art, music, zones, quests, etc) in a timely manner, whereas private servers are usually time consuming to prog through and don't go past Promathia content, and if it does then there are heavy content cuts like no besieged, no campaign, etc.
Ability to play Geomancer and Runefencer, since no private server goes up to Adoulin at all.
It's an MMO with an active endgame playerbase that has a charming aesthetic no other MMO with an active playerbase provides.
Certainty that your hard effort will not be in vain as the servers will probably not shut down in the foreseeable future, given that it takes pennies for a company to keep the lights on for an old MMO like GW1 or FF11, and FF11 is part of Square's flagship franchise. Whereas private servers are ephemeral and tend to last only a few years before dying due to the devs no longer having unlimited free time in their life or mod drama, botting, etc.
>Ability to play Geomancer and Runefencer, since no private server
Im more afraid retail will close than some private servers. A low ceiling of content makes me comfortable on private servers too, it becomes about horizontal progression, which makes it feel more like a traditional FF game over an MMO
I can't decide if I prefer playing with or without scanline shaders
4:3 is a must though.