New or Returning Players Discussion 2: SoA Homeless Veterans Edition

[Damane]

Few questions from a returning player. Left at the release of SoA.

I see ilevel 119 weapons have enormous amounts of magic accuracy on them. Do they now completely replace Magian Elemental Staves for landing debuffs?

I'm under the impression much of the older content, like Salvage is ridiculously easy to farm with new ilevel gear. Would my boxed character be able to solo these zones for money with minimum effort with entry level ilevel gear? It's a mage only character, R/E BRD, WHM, RDM, BLM, SMN. Would I be able to gear one of these jobs to that effort, or would it be best to level MNK or THF from scratch for this purpose?

ilvl 119 have magic accuracy on them to simulate the bridge of 20 lvls gained, so yes they replace all your magian elemental staves for landing debuffs, because anything remotely hard will otherwise resist your debuffs (not like they land anyway on AA very difficult or last long in AA difficult). Pls check each weapon type and weapon initself have different values of M.acc., as in staves and clubs "usually" have higher m.acc then lets say a scythe or so.

your RDM should have no problem clearing salvage with ilvl gear and a decent ilvl sword equiped (eminent sword would be enough). I would recommend THF tough, because of TH, unless you want to go RDM/THF, which is possible.

[crux]

Oh muh god! I'm a returning (?) player!

So I haven't been following FFXI much in the last year. Has or does it look like FFXI will ever return to its horizontal progression model? Are there a plethora of events to do like in the yonder years? I've been playing FFXIV lately and though I enjoy it here and there, it seems like it's doomed to repeat the oh-so-common model of invalidating one hamster wheel with another hamster wheel. I miss the old days of FFXI where, doing years of Dynamis be damned, there was a ton of different events to grind and lowman and enjoy. Will FFXI ever return to that, whether by retooling old events like they did with Dynamis, Salvage, Nyzul, Einherjar, et al, or by widening the scope of events as tiers rise? Or is it doomed to follow the typical event Y replacing event X model so prevalent in most MMOs?

I reinstalled FFXI thinking I'd like to come back and tool around since I heard they made some basic gear to get new or returning players into Adoulin, but I'm going to put away my rose colored glasses if that just means grinding the same few events and bosses ad nauseum.

[Twilight Sky]

FFXI still makes recently released gear immediately obsolete with a new gear batch with updates, yeah. That's not changing, and it's kind of historic. Hell you can blame SE for starting that trend .

As for events, seems like they slowed down and are adding hard modes to BCs.

And you can choose to do the old content that you listed. They aren't "be damned" or rather "mandatory" in any sense anymore, and you don't need an alliance for Dynamis.

The grind as far as leveling up is concerned, is nearly non existent.

[Karizo]

FFXI still makes recently released gear immediately obsolete with a new gear batch with updates, yeah. That's not changing, and it's kind of historic. Hell you can blame SE for starting that trend .

As for events, seems like they slowed down and are adding hard modes to BCs.

And you can choose to do the old content that you listed. They aren't "be damned" or rather "mandatory" in any sense anymore, and you don't need an alliance for Dynamis.

The grind as far as leveling up is concerned, is nearly non existent.

lol there's no way SE started the trend. remember how long byakko's haidate remained relevant?

should blame blizzard for starting the trend =P

[Kohan]

lol there's no way SE started the trend. remember how long byakko's haidate remained relevant?

should blame blizzard for starting the trend =P

Or EQ, which is where the DKP system came from, or pen-and-paper RPGs, which every MMORPG is based on.

[Siatdiat]

I have been checking up on things here regarding status off ffxi for awhile, ever since I was disappointed with initial release of SoA. Seems like recently there is tons of updates in the forum on the game, and seems like people are much more active and excited about the game again.

Trying to decide if its worth returning to the game, mostly based on whether the community has gotten less toxic than it was when I last played. I have characters on Odin but willing to hop for active groups/servers in general.

[Draylo]

The community is still the same really, but the game is fun. People seem to be very pessimistic and bitchy these days.

[Kohan]

Though the FFXI community will never compare in bitchiness to that of practically any other MMO.

[nekura]

Though the FFXI community will never compare in bitchiness to that of practically any other MMO.

I shudder to imagine how things would've been if we had official forums during the height of the game's popularity.

[Hitou]

As awful as that sounds things might have gotten fixed a lot faster if there was some direct way to offer insight and/or whine at the devs from the start. I mean it took something like 3 years before they added chocobo's to the telepoints besides dem/mea/holla and maybe 5 years before adding nomad moogles to selbina/mhaura. I don't remember the exact dates.

There's several factors that went in to the recent quality of life adjustments such as the producer changing and the general age of this game, but I believe part of it was the official forums. As dumb as most posts there tend to be it seems like the only place they really check for player opinion on things.

[Kalasin]

Also thinking about coming back. I tried out FF14, that lost my interest once I hit the cap pretty fast though. I had and still have a fun time on Tera, but it has pretty much no content right now and the next big update is quite a bit away. The fact that we as a guild are taking a break from the game doesn't help either. I do not have my FFXI characters anymore, however.

I left about a month or two before SoA came out, and I read about all the changes to already existing stuff, and it looks rather nice for someone who likes playing in small groups for the most part. I haven't really read into any of the SoA stuff, since that would be quite a bit away for someone starting from scratch again, correct? Would it be easy for someone who has experienced all the content up to but not including SoA to catch up on a new account? Fairly sure the fun would be there as I wouldn't be playing alone, just seeing if it's easy to catch up or not.

[Malithar]

I haven't personally lvled back up from scratch since all of the changes, but I've read that Trust NPCs perform very well at lower lvls. Combine that with RoE and FoV/GoV, I'd imagine it's not that bad at all.

I'd imagine the biggest annoyance would be gearing out jobs that have useful gear from outdated content, unless you have some help for that as well. Once you get to 99 though, you can gear to an adequate level through RoE 117 gear. That'll get you geared enough to participate in SKCBCs, Skirmish, and some Delve if the group is up to snuff. Some of the WKR (if you can find groups doing them, they're not that common anymore on Bahamut as far as I've seen) gear is very good filler as well.

You mention not playing alone once you're at cap. Is that to say you have a server picked out? Some servers are quite desolate anymore, though (speaking from Bahamut) some still have enough of a population at differing times to fill groups fairly easily. With such a need for tales to upgrade AF and relic, and presumably Empy armor at some point, SKCNMs fill fairly easily, and with Delve, Skirmish, and AAs/mission BCs all dropping 119 gear, it's not too hard to fill groups. Just make sure to choose a server that's populated, if you don't already have one picked with other returning players.

[nekura]

As awful as that sounds things might have gotten fixed a lot faster if there was some direct way to offer insight and/or whine at the devs from the start. I mean it took something like 3 years before they added chocobo's to the telepoints besides dem/mea/holla and maybe 5 years before adding nomad moogles to selbina/mhaura. I don't remember the exact dates.

There's several factors that went in to the recent quality of life adjustments such as the producer changing and the general age of this game, but I believe part of it was the official forums. As dumb as most posts there tend to be it seems like the only place they really check for player opinion on things.

This is very true. I should clarify that I was talking specifically about the effects of community bitchiness, though.

[Kalasin]

I haven't personally lvled back up from scratch since all of the changes, but I've read that Trust NPCs perform very well at lower lvls. Combine that with RoE and FoV/GoV, I'd imagine it's not that bad at all.

I'd imagine the biggest annoyance would be gearing out jobs that have useful gear from outdated content, unless you have some help for that as well. Once you get to 99 though, you can gear to an adequate level through RoE 117 gear. That'll get you geared enough to participate in SKCBCs, Skirmish, and some Delve if the group is up to snuff. Some of the WKR (if you can find groups doing them, they're not that common anymore on Bahamut as far as I've seen) gear is very good filler as well.

You mention not playing alone once you're at cap. Is that to say you have a server picked out? Some servers are quite desolate anymore, though (speaking from Bahamut) some still have enough of a population at differing times to fill groups fairly easily. With such a need for tales to upgrade AF and relic, and presumably Empy armor at some point, SKCNMs fill fairly easily, and with Delve, Skirmish, and AAs/mission BCs all dropping 119 gear, it's not too hard to fill groups. Just make sure to choose a server that's populated, if you don't already have one picked with other returning players.

Thanks for the reply, this is kind of what I was looking for. Doesn't seem too bad then I guess. I don't have a server picked yet, but I'll be starting to play with a friend or a few is what I meant. Which servers still have a rather 'high' population?

[Damane]

Thanks for the reply, this is kind of what I was looking for. Doesn't seem too bad then I guess. I don't have a server picked yet, but I'll be starting to play with a friend or a few is what I meant. Which servers still have a rather 'high' population?

bahamut odin and phoenix I believe, http://www.ffxiah.com/database
just sort it via active and you see how many active players there are

[Kalasin]

bahamut odin and phoenix I believe, http://www.ffxiah.com/database
just sort it via active and you see how many active players there are

While I know this exists, it's hard to believe that a server actually still has 10k people 'actively' playing. I remember that list being horribly wrong in the past, I was looking for something in the lines of, how many people are online a day average(I remember seeing a thread on ffxiah about this from a few months ago, wondering how it changed, eg. '1100 at all times of the day' or so).

[Priran]

While I know this exists, it's hard to believe that a server actually still has 10k people 'actively' playing. I remember that list being horribly wrong in the past, I was looking for something in the lines of, how many people are online a day average(I remember seeing a thread on ffxiah about this from a few months ago, wondering how it changed, eg. '1100 at all times of the day' or so).

it's obviously got problems (like listing over 1,000 active characters on servers that got merged years ago) but those 3 are definitely the most active. logged on characters is above 1000 for NA and JP primetime, but not EU

[Damane]

While I know this exists, it's hard to believe that a server actually still has 10k people 'actively' playing. I remember that list being horribly wrong in the past, I was looking for something in the lines of, how many people are online a day average(I remember seeing a thread on ffxiah about this from a few months ago, wondering how it changed, eg. '1100 at all times of the day' or so).

not saying its accurate, but it gives a pritty good idea on which servers are more populated then others.

[Kalasin]

it's obviously got problems (like listing over 1,000 active characters on servers that got merged years ago) but those 3 are definitely the most active. logged on characters is above 1000 for NA and JP primetime, but not EU

Alright, thanks then~

[Psion]

I can testify that phoenix, at least, is fairly populated. My ls never has issues with getting randoms for events done, though granted, we joke that half the server is in our ls. (an exaggeration, but we do have issues occasionally with a full ls list and a couple unable to get into ls lol.)

Even without ls help though, i generally don't have issues finding people for content, unless it's really old stuff like assaults. I still manage to put a party together within 20 minutes or so, despite how old it is.