Learning experience tier list

[Qalbert]

have you seen much of/played guild wars 2, and if so, what do you think?
(not claiming it's the second coming, or some brand new revolutionary game or anything, it's not)

[Charismatic]

why have we not played anything yet together? you are the best partner in crime, man. we can make our own bismark memories

Do you have it on PC?

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

You can't actually group with your friend and explore content like it's meant to be played, as you aren't brought down to their level. Instead, they get a triple EXP bonus to compensate for your being in a party with them at their significantly lower level.

Not necessarily true. What almost everyone does is start a new toon, allowing them both to explore content and both benefit from the bonus experience. Everyone that does RAF does it more because they want to level another toon and not to lazily power level a friend up. It's not that WoW is lazier, one can even argue there's more a grind there because you can't do everything on one toon, get all the best gear for your class and anothers, and then start that class on the same toon.

Before this becomes your standard WoW vs FFXI argument, and having played both through to end game, they both have their strengths and weaknesses and it really comes down to preference of play style. There's stuff in FFXI I miss, and there's times when I'm playing WoW that stuff makes much more sense than it did in FFXI. MMOs are an imperfect science and in the end the only measure of success to be made is profit.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

And not how much more profit one makes than the other, just profit enough to keep the servers running and justify adding new content.

[Charismatic]

Seeing someone call TERA a WoW clone seems like some sorta unfunny joke...

[Greatguardian]

I did enjoy reading those posts, as there's no doubt that FFXI had a lot of things going for it quality-wise, but I haven't seen the kind of strategy you're talking about in FFXI in almost 4 years now.

Square does not know how to make an engaging boss fight that challenges players who understand their game's mechanics. Straight up. They just don't know how to do it. It's not impossible with their game mechanics and engine, most assuredly not. It's just that they don't seem to understand how to deal with smart players.

FFXI was fun, exciting, and challenging in its heyday primarily because the players were awful and didn't understand how any of the game's stats and mechanics worked. The fact that many of these mechanics were in constant flux helped things stay that way for a while (hi ranged nerf and 2h buff). Once the game's combat mechanics settled in, and the game's community sat down and reverse-engineered them, players were able to optimize their gear and strategies and everything in the game became an epic pushover. I know the kind of strategy that used to go into FFXI. I was the guy making those strategies up for my linkshell when we went to tackle newly-released content. We were one of the first groups to down a 12-man Odin that I had heard of, and that was fun as hell.

A lot of people will tell you that Abyssea was the start of "easy mode FFXI", but anyone who thinks that obviously either didn't play the game at all during 2008-2009 or just wasn't in a good enough shell to see how bad things were at the time. Between flopping WotG content and a dearth of new endgame, everything in ffxi became a matter of grinding the same old shit you've killed a thousand times before. 6 hour Kirins were ridiculous, but at least they were fun at the time. As soon as Perfect Defense came out, even Absolute Virtue became killable. Shells at both 75 and 80 were wiping the floor with him (though this wasn't really publicized till 80 as people wanted their monopolies).

Abyssea ended up the same way all content post-2008 did. It was difficult for all of a week while FFXI's powerful mechanics base tore apart the system from the inside out, and then it became true easy mode. Voidwatch? Same thing. Shit's not hard, nor even interesting. You zerg while popping invincibility potions. Invincibility potions! That's not strategy. That's not fun.

[Charismatic]

And yet some people manage to wipe... what a sad day for gaming.

[Chun Liroy]

I remember watching people used 4 brews on a single mob and still wiping (Zelus Tiara mob). Fucking hilarious, but that doesn't make ffxi any more of a cake walk.

[Chun Liroy]

I'm sure if I played wow, I would be able to discredit Tera being a clone, but I simply don't care enough nor do I want to find out ANYTHING about that piece of shit game.

[Charismatic]

I remember watching people used 4 brews on a single mob and still wiping (Zelus Tiara mob).

That is fucking pathetic. Seriously.

[Charismatic]

How does that even happen?

[Chun Liroy]

Watched 2 failed brews on Apademaks as well. FREE HORNS. It was a glorious string of events, the people fighting the Pantokrator wiped, then we took it and brewed for tiara. Brew locked onto martello, then was gonna pop some of our own, but noticed the group wiping to apademaks, stole and killed it with the brew. GLORIOUS. What was even more glorious was we watched their guy use a brew (2nd), then we stole and killed it ourselves. Boy were they furious.

[Linliel]

I am so glad I don't play that game any more

[Chun Liroy]

Tell me more about voidwatch then.

[Chun Liroy]

WoTG was cool, I especially liked the new HNMs and the style of pops and fight strategies involved. Campaign was fun and exciting in the beginning as well.

[Greatguardian]

Abyssea was awesome and I enjoyed the hell out of it while it lasted. That doesn't mean anything in FFXI has required "strategy" since 2006.

I'm not saying FFXI had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I'm just saying that your tip of the hat to FFXI's apparent strategic elements is lost on me. I could start fighting an NM, go make a sandwich, fuck my girlfriend, and look back at my screen nearly an hour later to find my character with some shiny new loot in its inventory and hardly a scratch on it. The one, maybe two fights in all of Abyssea that I had to be at the keyboard for were still pushovers with a white mage around. And Voidwatch? Invincibility potions.

FFXI endgame hasn't involved an ounce of strategy in years.

[Chun Liroy]

So I bought a new mouse... I left it in my friends room Q.Q I feel like GG will read this.

[Greatguardian]

Ouch. That sucks. I still can't believe you were playing Warrior of all things with a trackpad.

I'm sitting in the queue for live chat because my power went out and when I logged back in I was suddenly in outlaw mode with 10 hours worth of infamy and I don't know wat do. The level 60 area I was farming in has only 1 channel, and Berserker isn't exactly the fastest escape artist. I'm sitting in town till I can figure out what the fuck

[Chun Liroy]

I made it to 36 without a mouse, lol. Now I have to learn completely how to play this game again,I was just messing around in my friends room with it while watching TV and it's completely different. Once I learn how to, incoming master tank.

And lol@that glitch. How long until the infamy goes away? Do you have to die or something? Also, what does death do besides lower stamina/have to go home? do you lose Exp cuz I haven't noticed...

[Greatguardian]

Infamy decays at 1 point per 5 minutes and 1 point per mob of equal or greater level killed. I had 120, or 10 hours worth of decay, lol.

GM fixed me right up, though. It was pretty painless. I just had to run back into town for a bit because there's no way I wanted to sit around as a solo 59 Berserker in a level 60 area with 1 channel.

As for death, the only real penalty is that your crystals break. There's a chance that none will, but it's like 10% or less. You don't lose crystals in PvP at least. Only monster/trap kills break crystals.