New or Returning Players Discussion 2: SoA Homeless Veterans Edition

[Trumpy]

Are you playing a different race than before? Sometimes when I look at my taru characters screen it seems alot more zoomed in than my mithra. I dont know if its just how their size makes the zoom feel or if they customized zooms to different races. Kinda like how galka feel like they sluggishly jog when you are moving and tarus feel like they are running their lil legs off. other than that I dont think they changed the distance really.

[Hirronimus]

Been gone for 6 months now... what has changed since August last year?

[Kanriel]

Been gone for 6 months now... what has changed since August last year?

THF went from being worse than a Sindri wielding WHM to the absolute best DD in the game with a thief knife.

[Silfer]

Just a quick question since the server population thread is outdated.

But what servers are best to come back to? Ie well populated and active endgame shells etc..

Been out of the game since toau so a bit out of touch.

[Damane]

Just a quick question since the server population thread is outdated.

But what servers are best to come back to? Ie well populated and active endgame shells etc..

Been out of the game since toau so a bit out of touch.

asura phoenix bahamut odin. i think those are the most populated servers.

[Silfer]

Cheers for that, I did have Bahamut in mind.

[Silfer]

Can I ask what does endgame typically involve these days?

Back when I played it was camping kings daily, sky, sea, dynamis, salvage & einherjar was relatively new.

ToAU was the latest expansion where everyone hung out and xp/merit spam parties took place around aht urghan.

Crafting was simple, no synergy. I made a lot of money off my 100 Leathercraft.. I believe that's all changed, ie 110 cap now?? synergy? etc etc

The game seems mega confusing to me now, although I'm sure I'll get used to it all again.

[Lisotte]

Hey guys, memories of FFXI have been tugging at my heartstrings again and I've been thinking of coming back. I think the last time I tried to play was about a year ago.

My char is on Sylph and I was a dedicated PUP. And I mean dedicated, I really enjoy the gameplay of FFXI but mostly because I really enjoy playing PUP. I like gearing up and playing new and relevant content on PUP. I like soloing on PUP, and grouping up in both 6 man and 18 man groups, on PUP.

As to why I stopped playing before... there wasn't any chance in hell that you were going to get into a group to fight Tojil, as a PUP. Actually, you'd be lucky if you got into any relevant endgame stuff as PUP. The job was a dead end job, as far as the current content was concerned. But even to reach the point where you could try endgame content, whether on PUP or another job (which in my case was to gear up PUP), you needed to proceed through a TON of outdated content, and basically have a bunch of people to call on to help you out getting through some time-consuming stuff. At some point I leveled MNK to 99 because I still enjoyed punching things in any case and it seemed like MNK, RNG and SAM were practically the only DD's wanted in groups. But I didn't know hardly any people in the game any more, nearly everyone was gone, and some of my closest friends that still played I think felt betrayed because I had had to quit playing the game very suddenly before that. So I was caught up in this limbo of being stuck in the endgame about a year behind trying to progress with random people. Also probably even then my PUP was stronger than my MNK because I had a lot of PUP-specific gear, and again, getting that MNK gear meant playing a lot of stuff no one else played, both for your basic TP set, WS's sets, and situational stuff.

I have a BRD and a SCH at 99 but not only am I a hell of a lot worse at playing those jobs compared to PUP (or just punching things on MNK), but also it was hard for me to play them effectively. I know squat about xml's and I like playing the game, not editing files. Someone helped me edit a very basic thing for PUP to at least make that playable, but I was attempting to edit a much more extensive xml for BRD filled with a lot of much more situational gear that I didn't have and had no idea how it all worked. Never felt like I was playing the job right, and didn't enjoy it as much as DD'ing (but my DD capabilities sucked because my MNK was undergeared and had no good xml and my PUP was undergeared and was a PUP). Also didn't help that there never seemed to be any resources on upgrade paths for jobs for the most part, was hard to figure out what I needed that was doable for me to get.

So in a nutshell, my questions are as follows: Does PUP still suck as a real DD? What are the good DD's? Do I still have to run through a ton of really outdated content with people very generous with their time to catch up? If I, say, just mained MNK, would I be able to eventually get into most relevant content as a DD? Is figuring out gear swapping, spellcast, this new addon called gearswap, and in-game changes to how your gear sets, make this any more intuitive and easier than before? Do I still need to get through all of damn Abyssea to progress even though I need other people to help me do this now ancient content? Are mythics any easier to obtain? I always wanted to get a kenkonken because I wanted to be the best at PUP, but getting through einherjar and such seemed like a pipe-dream because you needed a static of other people also needing to get through that and other things.
Is Sylph a dead server and would I be better off transferring to a more populated server if my friends are nearly all gone? Do I need to gear up, have working spellcast xml's and such, and know how to play half a dozen jobs to catch up? Does PUP still not have a relic and still need either Vere (requiring helpful dedicated people), or the latest Delve thing (same as Vere), or KKK (same as the other 2 but also needing months of grinding?) Is making money still confusing and difficult if you don't craft? I used to make my gil from solo farming dyna on pup and later, solo farming salvage on pup.

Finally, are people helpful enough to try and get someone who was a perpetual noob at the game because he played on and off for years starting shortly before Abyssea came out, and wasn't able to stick to it for more than 4 months at a time mostly due to life issues? (fwiw that shouldn't be an issue in the future, though I do spend most of my time these days trying to improve at fighting games more than thinking about MMO's).

Thanks for any advice!

[Altnob]

Best way to farm accolades for unity?

[Rehn]

I think PUP is in a good spot. For the most part, the newest alluvion skirmish armor set is going to outperform most older i119 gear depending on your augments. There is still stigma that PUP is bad, but with access to good gear, most jobs can at least do well in most content.

You're probably not going to be taking PUP to shout group activities unless they know you, so sticking to standard jobs is safest to join (WHM BRD GEO COR or SAM WAR MNK).

I have found spellcast and its successor, gearswap, to be confusing at first but it is just coding. Many people start out basic with their code, then add more exceptions for whatever they need. You can always ask for peoples gearswap files and see how the flow and structure goes.

[fantasticdan]

I don't think warrior is any more likely to get into shout groups than pup.

Best way to farm accolades for unity?

I don't think anything comes close to cleaving a bunch of overlapping RoE objectives on high level mobs as blu.

[Rehn]

Probably dependent on servers? I got into alluvion cirdas as war for giggles weeks ago. Now the flavor of the month/patch is offensive magical users like BLM/BLU due to alluvion yorcia.

[fantasticdan]

I thought you were talking about things like delve, incursion, etc. No one should care what jobs you bring to skirmish beyond having a nuker or two for the new one.

[JeanPaul]

[A whole lot of stuff]

I have a LS on Sylph which is comprised of a LOT of people who were/are in the same boat as you are (including a few people who have started as brand new characters). We do pretty much anything, and with anyone who isn't an asshole, and we have no problem doing older content to help people through it. When I lead events, as a rule I never force people to come on a job they don't want to play. PUP has plenty of uses; the damage they contribute is not negligible. Also, a healing automaton will have faster reaction times for cures/status removal than any player will.

As for Gearswap, I'm well-versed enough to put together a template that caters to your playstyle, and I usually help friends with their stuff too. The basic concept is that it handles when you'd want to equip gear (based on the conditions you write), and does so automatically. In example, if you have "Repair potency" gear, it would know to always equip all of that when you use Repair, regardless of whether you use Repair through the menu or macro. You could also have it swap between various sets of gear, like a set for accuracy, a set for defensive purposes, etc.

Sylph isn't one of the bigger servers (I don't know figures between all of them), but it usually doesn't matter once you make some friends. The bigger servers probably have the same cool people to asshole ratio anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much.

There are a lot of ways to make money, some of which are things you can manage just fine solo. Old staples like Dynamis and Salvage are still good. Making a mythic weapon takes patience and time, but it's certainly not impossible if you keep at it. Don't let any of the new content overwhelm you, it's not like anything is going to disappear if you don't get to it right away. I could go on and on, but it's probably easier to explain and show you stuff in game than just write a big ol' brochure about it.

[Lisotte]

Cool thanks to everyone who's given advice, I'll probably come back but since I've gotten a new computer and don't have a portable hard drive or flash drive, I need to drum up the time and effort to figure out a fresh install.

Edit: So I'm currently working on that clean install, should take an eternity of course just for patches and such, and then attempt to get some addons and plugins and such working. I guess I'll focus on PUP, MNK, BRD, and there's a possibility of breaking out my terribad WAR or SCH.

I guess I'll try to work off entry-level gearswap stuff, if nothing else at least I don't have a lot of gear, compared to others. Understanding how xml's work was always my one problem with getting one that worked for me (though that was for spellcast and this gearswap thing seems to be the way to go off a fresh install these days, or that ashita thing). My other problem was getting it to work with functioning macros. Pretty easy to get my PUP or MNK set up (btw I was a PUP that knew my stuff but my MNK was pretty bad), but BRD and other casters need levels and levels of macros to work well. I don't dislike playing BRD, I just felt in the past like my xml's and macro layout wasn't efficient enough.

Hopefully there are still some helpful people in LoA, my last notable thing was joining them and playing as a terrible BRD for them in Delve 2 years ago, then about a year ago coming back and finding the LS mostly gone. At least you can chat in 2 LS's now!
JeanPaul your LS does sound really helpful, how would I get in touch?

Edit2: I had kind of wanted to stream "player returning to FFXI!" except that I can't play well without addons and such, and I feel nervous broadcasting with those addons. Should I be wary of this for this reason? Every once in a while I've looked at a FFXI stream and it was cool but I think people are nervous about streaming FFXI because everyone uses addons

[Syntex]

Cool thanks to everyone who's given advice, I'll probably come back but since I've gotten a new computer and don't have a portable hard drive or flash drive, I need to drum up the time and effort to figure out a fresh install.

Edit: So I'm currently working on that clean install, should take an eternity of course just for patches and such, and then attempt to get some addons and plugins and such working. I guess I'll focus on PUP, MNK, BRD, and there's a possibility of breaking out my terribad WAR or SCH.

I guess I'll try to work off entry-level gearswap stuff, if nothing else at least I don't have a lot of gear, compared to others. Understanding how xml's work was always my one problem with getting one that worked for me (though that was for spellcast and this gearswap thing seems to be the way to go off a fresh install these days, or that ashita thing). My other problem was getting it to work with functioning macros. Pretty easy to get my PUP or MNK set up (btw I was a PUP that knew my stuff but my MNK was pretty bad), but BRD and other casters need levels and levels of macros to work well. I don't dislike playing BRD, I just felt in the past like my xml's and macro layout wasn't efficient enough.

Hopefully there are still some helpful people in LoA, my last notable thing was joining them and playing as a terrible BRD for them in Delve 2 years ago, then about a year ago coming back and finding the LS mostly gone. At least you can chat in 2 LS's now!
JeanPaul your LS does sound really helpful, how would I get in touch?

Edit2: I had kind of wanted to stream "player returning to FFXI!" except that I can't play well without addons and such, and I feel nervous broadcasting with those addons. Should I be wary of this for this reason? Every once in a while I've looked at a FFXI stream and it was cool but I think people are nervous about streaming FFXI because everyone uses addons

SE doesn't give a shit. There were quite a few streamers who hacked and streamed while doing it. As long as you are not POS hacking or walking through walls they don't care. Most people perma flee hack everywhere.

As for install just buy it off steam it comes with everything. I did and I'm glad as installing the 10 year old discs and updating would take a week, no joke.

I played about a year ago and thought about coming back to finish my aegis but I dunno. Still kinda on the fence as I have nothing else to do right now.

[Lisotte]

SE doesn't give a shit. There were quite a few streamers who hacked and streamed while doing it. As long as you are not POS hacking or walking through walls they don't care. Most people perma flee hack everywhere.

As for install just buy it off steam it comes with everything. I did and I'm glad as installing the 10 year old discs and updating would take a week, no joke.

I played about a year ago and thought about coming back to finish my aegis but I dunno. Still kinda on the fence as I have nothing else to do right now.

Don't know if it'll be up there forever but you can download the whole game right now off the official site. I have whatever collection steam had before SoA, and had bought the one before that on disc, so I'm kind of done buying FFXI over again.

And I DO know people have gotten banned for hacking, hell one of them was a friend of mine who also happened to stream.

[Suteru]

What's up with JSE capes now? Can you max out stats pretty easily now or is it just as much a crapshoot as doing Incursion?

[Rehn]

Exactly like the (non-alluvion) skirmish stone system: throw gil at it hoping every augment you want hits the mark. Hope your pocket is deep or you are born under a lucky star.

[Lonoha]

Exactly like the (non-alluvion) skirmish stone system: throw gil at it hoping every augment you want hits the mark. Hope your pocket is deep or you are born under a lucky star.

To be fair, you can get crystals from login campaigns and accolades.

So if you're not in a hurry, just want to eventually get perfect capes, doing 10 RoE objectives with each of your alts/lvl 1 mules and then getting the Unity Communique daily and Home Point Comrades whenever it shows up will net you a steady (but slow) income of free crystals to toss at your capes.