Is this a "mainline" Final Fantasy game? Mainly I'm wondering if it's worth playing for the story and world, because I don't really give a shit about the MMO elements. I'm asking because it's on sale right now and apparently it doesn't go on sale too often.
but have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMO..?
Sakaguchi believe it is but Wada and the management in late 90/early 00s think it is
>With that said, Mr. Sakaguchi and I did talk about how if we made an MMORPG, it ought to be based on FF. Then when we were deciding whether to call it “FF Online” or release it as a numbered entry in the series, Mr. Sakaguchi adamantly believed it should be released as a numbered entry.
>He insisted that a game with a name like “FF World” would be viewed as a spin-off rather than a main entry in the FF series, which led to a debate between him and management.
It isn't*
>Is this a "mainline" Final Fantasy game
Not creatively, no.
What's not explained here is WHY they didn't want players thinking it was a spin-off. Sakaguchi absolutely correct from a business and marketing perspective. MMORPGs at the time had enormous potential to make massive amounts of ongoing profit with subscriptions and network effects. Sakaguchi was correct and if the game had been named "FF Online" or "FF World" it would have been viewed as a spin-off and would not have attracted as large an audience.
Viewed creatively, it absolutely is a spin-off and it's not reasonable to suggest otherwise. The difference is that it's an extremely expensive, high-stakes spin-off with a huge profit potential. So it has mainline flagship brand prestige.
maybe you could call it a spin-on instead of a spin-off.
>Sakaguchi was correct and if the game had been named "FF Online" or "FF World" it would have been viewed as a spin-off and would not have attracted as large an audience.
Megaman Battle Network has one of the biggest sales in the megaman franchise and is a rpg spin off.
And why Final Fantasy Tactics isn't FF8 then? It would have attracted more audience
>And why Final Fantasy Tactics isn't FF8 then? It would have attracted more audience
Not worth it.
You missed the part where I explain that MMORPGs showed unprecedented potential for massive profit. Enormous dump trucks full of subscription money were driving past Square headquarters every day on their way to Sony, owners of Everquest. Square looked at EQ and said "we can do this, we should get a piece of that action."
FFT was not worth staking the full mainline brand. It was the next spiritual iteration of Matsuno's Tactics Ogre series, which showed a lot of promise and was probably well-liked by executives at Square. But it was not dump trucks full of subscription money.
>And why Final Fantasy Tactics isn't FF8 then?
Because it didn't have marketable 3D models
>The difference is that it's an extremely expensive, high-stakes spin-off with a huge profit potential. So it has mainline flagship brand prestige.
Well, that and the fact that it was the last FF with most of Squaresoft's old guard together at once before they went their separate ways. The last Final Fantasy with Koichi Ishii, Akihiko Matsui, Masato Kato, Hiromichi Tanaka, etc. all working together on the same title. I don't think its even remotely as cynical of a cashgrab as you imply, personal feelings on the game's debatable quality itself aside, they genuinely thought they were onto something special here.
>I don't think its even remotely as cynical of a cashgrab as you imply
I never called the whole thing a cynical cashgrab. I'm ONLY talking about the part where it's given number "XI" in the mainline flagship franchise.
> personal feelings on the game's debatable quality itself aside
I think FFXI is/was a very well made MMORPG. They took the Everquest formula and nailed it, delivering a game that was overall more polished with bits of innovation including an well-implemented addictive version of the "job system" and more of the storytelling that JRPG fans expect. I'm not claiming there was no passion or desire to make a high-quality game.
But it was still, essentially, an Everquest clone. It was not an evolution of the Final Fantasy formula it was something very different, no matter what team they had working on it.
>Mainly I'm wondering if it's worth playing for the story
No. It's like Guild Wars 1. The writing is good and much better than the games that came after, but the story just isn't presented in a digestible way for modern gamers. There is no voice acting and the dialog happens in a tiny textbox that covers the bottom half of the screen. You can acquire npc party members so you can go through the story solo. Like Guild Wars, the recommended optimal way to play the game now is to do the story out of order so you can acquire powers and utilities ASAP, so you're going to get a bifurcated story experience. There are some legit good story moments tucked in there but overall you're going to have a better time playing singleplayer JRPGs like Suikoden. If you've played through all of the good JRPGs and you're starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel like FF11, then sure I guess you could try it, but perhaps your time might be better spent looking into anime or manga.
FF11 certainly has a more interesting world than FF14.
I 100% suggest trying the game out. If you don't really want to play, there are plenty of private servers. But if you do play you will still find a super active community that will usualy have 2~3 people that can help you with harder content, or leveling stuff. Join a linkshell, and you should be more than set.
I went ahead and bought it, downloading now. I figure for $10 it's worth it to try something interesting and unusual even for a few hours even if I don't play it for ages or anything.
I briefly played FF11 on PS2 a decade ago, curious about coming back to dip my toes in again. If I buy FF11 through Steam, can I still access my old character? Or do I have to buy through the Square Enix store? Do I still have to deal with the PlayOnline bullshit either way?
I played it for a month when it was on sale for $5 back in 2010. From my understanding, I don't think PlayOnline was ever replaced. Kind of sounds like the core systems of FFXI are surprisingly fragile and the lack of remaining PS2 devkits makes it seemingly impossible to overhaul the game significantly enough to fix something like that. I do believe that you can restore your PlayOnline account, but you will need to know your account name and password. I don't believe that you can do a "forgot password" sort of deal. I have heard horror stories over the decades about trying to re-instate deactivated PlayOnline accounts. That said, take all of this with a grain of salt.
As you might expect from a 20 year old MMO, the official servers are almost ghost towns from what I've heard. I think that there has been more activity lately as part of the lead up to the 20th anniversary, but the prevailing opinion of the game is that it is now more of a museum piece. No longer in its prime, the game does not have the same nature as it did in the 00s. On the other hand, the changes that make solo play possible with a robust Trust support system means that it is now quite easy to explore the world and complete the story. While I never did get far, I did look up cutscene compilations a decade ago, and I will say that the game has some of the series best story lines. I was really impressed with Chains of Promathia's plot.
How long would it take to go through the story?
Good question. I've seen recent threads over the last year or two throw out an estimate of 1-2 months with some notable caveats. First off, you will still want to use guides on solo play and Trusts to optimize your time. There is the mildly awkward issue that story difficulty is not "linear". The second expansion (Chains of Promathia) was impossibly hardcore shit at launch and remained the ceiling even as the third and arguably forth expansions came out. Some guides may have you hopscotching across storylines due to the unnatural difficulty curve. The good news to this is that XI's story is not entirely linear, unlike XIV. XIV, even from its troubled start, knew that it would be around for a decade plus, because XI had. XI was not composed with such confidence. The first expansion is a direct continuation of the launch campaign (if offline, the two kind of work as a Disc 1 and Disc 2 to a base XI story). CoP is essentially XI-2. The next three expansions are gaiden games and don't really take into effect the events of the main story line. The final wrap up from 2015 is a grand finale that ties everything up with a nice bow, and there is a coda being currently released since 2020 as part of the lead up to the 20th anniversary. From my understanding, it's pretty easy going once you've got your feet wet, though the end of the firth expansion and the grand finale may require some actual co-op to tackle. Due to the endgame difficulty at that point, it may be hard to complete the final stretch, though hopefully someone else can clear that up.
ToAU and WotG also retroactively flesh out and explain certain events from the base game that weren’t immediately obvious if you weren’t a turbo nerd who connected the plot threads together.
Like the Dark Divinity and what not.
Might be more obvious if you’re marathoning the stories though, versus there being potentially weeks or months between your bouts of progress when it was all current.
This was a helpful and interesting albeit depressing post. When no longer phonegayging I will be posting breasts in your honor.
It saddens me that we can't periodically make these old games playable as originally intended by some convergence of activity - college courses, a convention, some sort of alliance among guilds. (Hey everybody, it's EverQuest 2 month!) It's probably impossible. I'm in a very large multi-game guild with hundreds of active members, and I can't even get 6 people to discuss the possibility of touring these old games together. These are the same people who let the record stores and the malt shops die, the dance halls and church socials and everything else. They watch Black Mirror and get excited about the future.
FFXI is one of if not the best final fantasy game. It just has so much to offer, I think everyone should give it a try but be warned it can be very time consuming. Here's a good place to start:
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Quickstart_1-119_Guide
Steam just sells keys and gives you an outdated installer. All account management is done through SE. No matter what you wanna download the installer from SE since it's more up to date which means less time updating. If you're recovering an account then you don't need to buy anything. You can probably contact support if you have your original registration codes in those boxes to recover your account.
Tartarus are based.
I just started playing after getting the ultimate collection on sale.
I rolled on Asura. How fricked am I?
>Picking the most crowded server in the game
Very.
You will be fine. The market isn't all that fricked at the moment.
here
If anyone's on Asura and has a LS I can join that'd be great. I like having an active chat to vibe with even when I'm doing solo stuff.
No. It doesn't play like one.
Is it recommended to try many different jobs, or just stick with one main and one sub all the way up to endgame?
Like I chose thief as my starter for example, should I play through the whole game as this and then at some point choose a sub, or is there any particular reason I would want to switch to a different main? Other than simply wanting a change of pace.
Finishing the story, unlocking zones, and other stuff opens up the best fast leveling opportunities, so you should take one job to 99 doing that and then pick up a subjob.
That being said if you know what you want then just go ahead and pick one up when you can and start leveling it on the side.
If you want to do endgame content you’ll want to branch out and have several jobs of different roles available to help increase your flexibility and fill different roles.
THF is good for working on stories due to Treasure Hunter making it easier to get any drops you’ll need for story quests since many of them aren’t guaranteed.
Is this true? How the frick are the midgets the most popular race, and how are the catgirls that low?
Because XI was a game where your race's stats mattered a whole fricking lot, with drastic differences in your total HP, MP and other stats based on your race.
That isn't to say you couldn't succeed in a given job/role by being an "off' race, but it was going to take more gear, more investment to hit the same levels as people in the more optimal race, and you might not ever be able to be as good.
Because Tarus are fricking adorable
I would play a Taru if I was 100% sure that I would only ever want to play casters. It would rustle my autism too badly to play a Taru melee DD or tank.
It's for that reason I kinda prefer games where you have to make a new character for every class rather than being able to switch between them all on the same character. In games where the latter is the case I end up making the most bog-standard human because I want something that's still going to fit no matter whatever class I'm playing at the moment.
>I would play a Taru if I was 100% sure that I would only ever want to play casters. It would rustle my autism too badly to play a Taru melee DD or tank.
Taru paladins are awesome
Funny enough the server I'm on is like 42% Galka
Is there still an active LS of players from here on Phoenix or elsewhere?
Most of my static play group quit due to real-life issues and I'm looking for some people to play with again. I'm on the dead server of Cerberus, and it's almost impossible to find anyone here that isn't already near maxed out with their own set static groups.
Which time zone are you in?
The Phoenix LS seems to be mostly active during NA afternoon and evening, and Asia/Oceania afternoon and evening.
I'm mostly on during NA evenings and nights, but it can be a little more flexible than that.
Are there some different LSes on other servers as well?
I don't believe so besides Asura maybe.
Or at least not that I've seen mentioned much anyway, might be different if we were on a livelier board.
It's a Final Fantasy game with a unique number in the title, that means it's a mainline title, because it's in the main line
I'm currently addicted and can't stop playing. I think base game and RoZ were pretty anemic in teams of story, but CoP and ToAU have been pretty fun so far.
just play ff14, no one plays this outdated shit anymore