Let's look back at all the FFXI content blunders

[Calintzpso]

Only god dam thing the Circuit is currently good for is when I want to bring my mules together to transfer shit loads of my jobs gear at once, or I need to trade non D box stuff between mules/linkshell members. Screw having to run them to jeuno.

Bonus, can buy Bonanza marbles there too.

Now if only they would let me pay 200 gil to exit where I dam please from it(so long as I've been there once before on that character) then SE would have a BETTER use for that zone. And remove the TAX on bazaars damit!

[Zirael]

Gardening, anyone...?

[Gun-it]

its ok guys if u tele when the :XX time digits ingame are even you get tele'd to kirin

Why don't more people know this?

[Loziel]

pankration and chocobo racing could have been a lot better if they weren't RNG-based uncontrollable crapshoots. Pankration in particular, I initially enjoyed a lot. surprisingly however, having to turn in 100 plates for a half-decent innate skill and then the mob still being shit because it uses retarded TP moves and doesn't listen to anything you say gets old pretty quickly

Does anyone else remember reading about that guy who figured out the 'system' for chocobo racing and made million and millions of Gil through the betting system. I think he got a slap on the wrists and a patch happened not long after to change the way it generated race results.

Edit: it seems that Kaisha above me does. failure to read

[drwaffles]

Does anyone else remember reading about that guy who figured out the 'system' for chocobo racing and made million and millions of Gil through the betting system. I think he got a slap on the wrists and a patch happened not long after to change the way it generated race results.

Edit: it seems that Kaisha above me does. failure to read

Pretty sure that guy got banned, didn't he?

[Byrthnoth]

Naw, he was smart about it and informed SE (wrote and sent a report) without transferring all the gil to his main. We're lucky he figured it out before RMT, who would have totally crashed the economy within the time it took SE to respond.

As thanks, SE changed the system after that and banned his mule. No formal thanks or acknowledgement or anything, just a banned mule. Typical customer relations for SE. It's apparently still possible to do better than 50%, but it's no longer entirely deterministic. Not worth the bother, basically.

Oh yeah, and later he was Salvage banned.

[Obsidian]

Indeed. I know of a guy that went like 0/60 one night and just said "fuck it" and logged off.

I remember one night I spent three hours trying to get there. The linkshell finished all their pops but I refused to leave until I made it to that fucking room.

[Sho]

I remember one night I spent three hours trying to get there. The linkshell finished all their pops but I refused to leave until I made it to that fucking room.

Good times, good times. Sounds like one of my run ins with the porter, so I can empathize, lol.

[Cursed]

/dancing. Might not qualify as content, but not all these posts have been on topic. So I'm surprised no one else has fumed about /dance1-4.
I remember tanking Byakko when Richardd busted out /dance3 on his elvaan thf, macro'd of course to "what what in the butt" /ems
I want my moon walk and pelvic thrust. None of this skipping ABBA shit.

[Holly Short]

Read over this...

I haven't played in ffxi in a long time, but as someone who was in a very heavy ZNM linkshell.. I don't think Pankration was that bad. We used to do it pretty often, some of us anyway. Prep your monster, give it the right traits, and let it win currency for you. IIRC it was the currency that let you buy cameras and stuff, right? Been awhile.

It just wasn't anything major, but it had its benefits. The currency may not have been expensive, but saving money is always nice.

Edit: Things I thought were lame.

Ballista - Mostly cause you couldn't change gear, never got that.

Eco Warrior - Did this a lot in 04, but it was always a mess..

[Cymmina]

Ballista - Mostly cause you couldn't change gear, never got that.

If you blink, people lose you as a target. Unfortunately, not everyone uses blinkmenot.

[Rasantath]

curelock
more of a game mechanic blunder than a content blunder

[Airenn]

I think it would be a shorter thread to put what content was done right.

True.


Done Right:


Abyssea


Possibly WoE cause I get to leech off other people and make moolah.

[Corrderio]

Another thing that felt like a blunder were Strange Apparatuses. While some rewards could have been good at initial release, the main issue was how all rune weapons required MP to use, something a majority of the jobs that would wield them didn't have without gear/merits. Then another was how SE gave us no information in game at all about the password for "Doctor" status.

[Malacite]

I could name a lot of things but...

#1) Dynamis. It was really cool waaaay back in 2003 (or was it 04? been so long...) when they put out that first trailer for it and it looked so exciting... and then reality set in. Arguably the worst time sink they've ever implemented, on top of shitty drop rates and hugely expensive with Relic Weapons being the big prize. I pray that SE has the good sense with 14 to keep any "relic" level items difficulty in line with how they've handled Empyreans so far. Challenging, but not so ridiculously expensive/difficult as to take 6 months or more to obtain.

#2) Zilart. The plot was OK at best and the jobs were great (SMN is still struggling to really become a great job but at least it's playable now) along with all the cool new areas... but oh lord the endgame. Between Sky & Kings, it's a tough call to say which is worse (compared to Dynamis). I suppose Dynamis actually falls under Zilart endgame since it's a requirement, but I felt Dyna deserves it's own category. The fact that Zilart's endgame gear remained the best in the game for over 6 years is a testament to the old Dev Team's retarded design/philosophy. While it was a noble idea, trying to keep gear relevant rather than trashing it for new stuff with each update the way WoW does, ultimately it just ended up frustrating people. Add to this the relentless botting and it was just a recipe for disaster. Anyone miss 1 hour+ Kirins or farming Diorites? I sure as shit don't. And fuck Ridill

#3) Mythic Weapons. I would have rated this higher than Dynamis if I didn't hold such a deep hatred of that event, but this was a colossal fuck up and the devs even had the audacity to lie to our faces proclaiming at vanafest that they would be easier to obtain and on the same level as relics. Right SE, because spamming the shit out of virtually all of ToAU end game, including getting a Pandemonium Warden popset, was just oh so much easier than grinding Beaucidine for currency and whacking a couple of annoying NMs.

#4) H.E.L.M - Yeah this and crafting used to be my absolute favorite thing in XI, until RMT ruined it by forcing SE to impose nerf after nerf. I don't think anyone even seriously mines or logs anymore apart from newbies and people with level 100 crafts. To SE's credit, at least they got it right in XIV.

[Klaatu]

I'll play devil's advocate here and say this, SE can't update everything at once and focus on releasing new content people constantly clamoring for. We get things when we get them. Granted, not always when we want them or when they "should" be released, but nonetheless we do get them. For many people here patience is not a virtue and they demand their content here and now. From my stand point the only thing that makes any given content a failure is when one content's progress is dependent on participation in another. (i.e. doing assaults to get access to salvage or Pankration to get Zeni)

A sign of a truly successful activity is when it can hold it's own. I also understand that the driving force behind many of SE Dev's decisions is the need to keep this game perpetuating profit for the company, but forcing "adventurers" to waste time on a useless and failed content in order to progress elsewhere is petty. They should focus on creating content that is self sustaining and involved. If it's starting to lose it's appeal, add something to improve it, rather than creating new one.

[Karbuncle]

Adventuring Fellow and Chocobo Hot&Cold kinda disappoint me now.

Adventuring Fellow because they're still capped at level 70, with us on the verge of 90, SE seems to all but not give a fuck about raising Adventuring fellows with us. I hate when SE releases something and then literally completely ignores and forgets about it. How hard would it be to program a shitty quest to raise our NPCs cap to 75-80-85? IDK

Chocobo Hot and Cold games are fun, But they should really spread the Hot and Cold maps to ToAU areas, with better rewards too... Its like they completely forgot about this when they forgot about Chocobo Raising.

all in all, I'm content with a lot of 'Content blunders' listed here, But i really really wish they'd at least raise Adventuring Fellow's level to ~85-90, They don't even have to make a big deal out of it. One line of text in the update notes would be fine with me "Adventuring Fellows level cap can now be increases to 85 through quests!" or something.

[Cursed]

To win the thread, I will say FFXI's biggest blunder is the lack of a skip cut scene option for 90% of shit.
Do you know why no one gives a shit about WoE? its not because people can show up randomly during your run and fuck it up. No! its because you have to see the damn CS everytime you want to enter.

[Apelila]

curelock
more of a game mechanic blunder than a content blunder

How about the patch that fixed curelock for mobs but not for players? Nothing has ever made me rage as hard as that in an update.

Also my contribution. I can't edit it cuz some retard necro'ed it, maybe one day I'll get around to doing something with it.

[Nephlite]

I always thought it strange that, like so many people have mentioned before, that the gear scaling was so terrible over the entire course of the game. Homam as the key gear for a couple of jobs for what? 6 years? That's one huge content failure for SE in my book.

Also, changing certain NM drops to combat RMT selling (i.e. Punisher) and doing nothing to help the drop ratio (1/130 on okotes before patch and 0/144 after). KS99's felt so weak before they added one-of-a-kind drops to them (in terms of drops, not difficulty), but the overall usefulness of everything other than money drops is pretty lame. They could have easily pooled kings abjurations to their respective KS99 (or even drops like Ridill, D.Ring, etc.) and just made more unique gear for Odin.