Do New FFXI Players Exist and Could Anything Renew Interest?

[Plow]

i've decided after reading this to reactivate my account as well. only got bard and blm leveled but obviously its stupid easy to XP now. anyone who read this just do stuff casually? the whole reason i quit before was being tired of the BS in endgame. I wouldn't care to kill big stuff but i really dont want it running my life or trying to.

You can very very much play casually as long as you're not the "must stay on for hours until I get x number of y drop" type. I.E. if you're not going to try to finish an emp or every piece of +2 you need in a week.

[Spira]

although FFXI is a lot more accessible now than ever before, the endgame has it in vastly superior ways than the opening. low level exp has caught up some with the unlimited FoVs thing, but you'll find EXP to be so so much easier, and faster once you're in the realm of 70+.

Also, sad to say, theres a slew of content for lowbie to middlegame that hardly gets used anymore. Item drops are mostly worthless, and eq drops even moreso because people can breeze on to the next tier progression really quickly (or sync down without ever using the gear to its real potential). It's a part of the game I hope they will work towards revitalizing. I'd think something like EXP rewards from BCNMs would be a huge step in this direction. It really doesn't seem fair that every single mother and son NM in Abyssea gives sizeable EXP on death, but little of anywhere else in the game, especially at lower levels.

The game could be so much more welcoming to new players if older players had a better reason to play at lower levels. Plus some people still do need to level subs.

[crux]

The whole "low level" problem is pretty unique to FFXI, I think. Most MMOs eventually experience the problem of sparsely populated low level zones, but few MMOs require grouping at low levels, and fewer still allow job changes so that there would be a glut of low level jobs at all times. We're used to that glut, so now it seems sparse, and exacerbating the problem is that the game wasn't setup for a population without that glut of low level players banding together.

Abyssea is and will be the largest problem. I can tell you as someone who leveled three jobs the old-fashioned way (including one pre-ToAU and another solo), there's part of me that feels like I deserve the opportunity to leech, as I've done with two jobs since. My leeching, however, isn't remotely conducive to the low level population. I see no choice but to raise the level cap in Abyssea, as much as it would serve to make it harder for me personally. The only other option I see is to give a low level Abyssea-like zone, where a level 30 party can get 600+ exp. per kill. Because as long as endgame players have the choice of leveling quickly or slowly, they will choose to level quickly, new players be damned. Give a high exp. option where new players and old players alike can play together, and the issue will remedy itself.

[Raen Ryong]

Should make NMs, if killed while they're not stupidly below your level, always give a decent chunk of exp like Abyssea NMs. There's no reason I should get 40xp for Fafnir or whatever.

[nicholai]

I decided today that since every other mmo i've played has been boring after a few days, and ffxi is only 10 bucks I'd come back. After reading through this I see quite a few others have also, has anyone actually made an LS for people coming back or should i just hit the random server button and hope I land on a non shitty server to come back to?

[Tagus]

I quit like 4 months ago just to prove that I could. Every time I tried to convince myself I could just play "casually" I would get sucked back in with my LS and be grinding out 6-8 hours every night after working all day. It was still amazing fun and I had a blast... but one of the main reasons my wife divorced me was too much FFXI time. Now that I'm dating again and looking into getting serious, I decided FFXI had to go. As much as I love the game and my online friends, it's the LIFESTYLE that I didn't want anymore.

But even so, after 4 months, I am still jonesing about the game and missing it and wanting to play again... always wondering if I could manage to come back "casually". Probably not

It's funny how similar my situation is. I quit four months ago for the exact same reasons, and still think about coming back constantly. It never really goes away. I really don't want to get sucked in again though... that shit was hell when you felt obligated to do things in game that you didn't really want to be doing because of an LS or whatever. If I knew I could be casual about it I'd log in right now, but I might as well just fucking kill myself if I'm going to spend all my free time online, cause I was a miserable piece of crap irl for a while there.

It's amazing when you quit how quick you burn through other games though... 60 bucks for 20-40 hours of gameplay is killing my wallet. Who would have thought that ffxi would make sense from a financial value standpoint?

[shaddix]

Since we're talking about coming back I'll post what I am doing. I think I posted it on another thread somewhere but whatever.

I quit in October 2009 after the gardening bans. I had forty-seven gardening mules and two of the accounts got banned along with a buddy of mine who's mule account and his main account got banned, who also happened to be the shellholder. I called and was able to get my accounts back fairly quickly. He however was unable to get his main account back. I would have been next in line to run the shell but since he was my best friend in game I just quit too. A year and 4 months later I started playing rift and got bored of it fairly quickly, takes no skill blah blah etc. So I decided I want to play an FF mmo, bought two copies of 14, tried to get what remained of my XI ls to come over but instead they convinced me to come back to 11 instead. SE still appears to have the worst possible support though. Inquiring about my friend's account leads nowhere. All they say is "This account is banned, we have no further information." Wtf does that even mean they have no information.

As to the OP, I'm trying to get some friends to start playing, even offering to gift the games on steam to them. No luck so far

[Despain]

Since the whole "bringing HNMs back" spilled out a few weeks back, a few of my former linkshell mates who now play WoW were talking about coming back just because of HNMs. That would require me buying an account, however.

If they some how turned the clock back to the ending of CoP/beginning of ToAU I'd come back no questions asked...

[Darkmagi]

If you have any friends who play, you can be leveled from 1-90 and have good enough gear to get around with in a few days easily. Buying an account seems like a horrible option at this point imo.

[Plow]

Yeah... the only thing I can see enticing someone to buy an account at this point would be relic/mythic. Even an emp you can do yourself in a week if you've got like 2-3 good friends.

In terms of leveling and gear and stuff, I would assume not many people with good abyssea gear are selling their shit anyway, and if you went out and bought a really geared 75 you'd replace most stuff by 85 and virtually everything at 90. You'd be just as well off starting with a new character and starting out with full perle/aurore/teal.

[nicholai]

Anyone here on Valefor, I decided to come back and only know 1 person and hes "getting married" so he doesn't play a ton. Hit me up Nicholi.

[Katlan]

Ive thought about coming back. I always liked the missions and still need to finish wotg. How hard is it to finish wotg w/ another friend (so duo) at current cap? Reason I ask is because it was super difficulty to get help w/ those last time... either ppl hadn't progressed as far or didn't care to help.

[Darkmagi]

Should be no major problem. Some jobs can solo it even.

[bungiefan]

My BLM 90 on Ragnarok is having trouble soloing WotG. I've been stuck on Purple the New Black for months. What would be a good job to try to level to solo the rest of the missions? I've got BLM 90, WHM 57, SCH 49, SMN 37, and everything else is 30 or below.

[fantasticdan]

If you have any friends who play, you can be leveled from 1-90 and have good enough gear to get around with in a few days easily. Buying an account seems like a horrible option at this point imo.

What changed that allows you to level so fast?

[Fievel]

Abyssea

[fantasticdan]

I thought it was an endgame event? Can you just go in there at any level and get powerleveled essentially?

[bungiefan]

You can go in at level 30 and spend your time opening chests for time extensions, lights, cruor, and experience for the alliance. You can reach level 30 in a couple of days with the EXP increase and FoV boosts.

Chests in Abyssea can contain 1250 EXP, plus mobs are worth around 600 each once you get your lights and a chain bonus up (and Abyssea chains aren't timed they just require you to kill the same kind of enemy in a row like in FFXII) so you're getting something ridiculous like 100-150k EXP per hour after an hour or two in a party. That means you only have to stop to do limit break quests, unless you've already done them, and to spend your 20 merit points.

[Plow]

It was still pretty painful just getting to 30 (without smn burn) until the recent exp patch.

Now you get double exp from basically everything, and can do as many pages per day as you want (you only get exp from them after the first, no tabs or gil, but still...).

Pretty much any job can run 10k/hr with a pl very easily. It's actually pretty cool, places like Meriph and Sauromugue are actually useful again, which they hadn't been except maybe the 1 weapon camp since zilart came out pretty much.

[Eaglestrike]

I returned to the game recently. Today I finally got an invite to a group while leveling subjobs. Got into a level sync party in Qufim, of the 5 members in my group, I was the only rank 10, one guy was rank 6, two were rank 3 and one was even rank 1. Pretty sure those dudes were mostly new players.