New or Returning Players Discussion 2: SoA Homeless Veterans Edition

[Kanriel]

Well, for some of that stuff it's not *really* possible because the MMO community has matured. Job combos, item levels, gear combos, etc. being more "accepted" in the old day was because we didn't really know better. We hardly had a working parser and few people seemed to use it. We barely understood game mechanics compared to now, etc. These days there are so many MMO veterans they'd instantly go into figuring out best jobs for whatever content and everyone would know about it within a week.

But I do hear you in that FFXI had more of a reputation aspect back in the day and still does. The multi-job no-name change character base is a solid one in that regard.

Best I can come up with for content would be Incursion-like content. If you're not up to date on Incursion it's a dungeon with multiple bosses in it. You get the KI's from each boss and you can upgrade the item level of the dungeon, making everything a little harder. And you can do this more than 10 times. This would make it slightly less efficient for endgame players to to join on a lower KI, but they would still get something out of it.

I'm also with you on a new FF MMO that's more horizontal minded than the WoW/FFXIV style.

[windf]

Dragon Quest X is supposed to be pretty good and includes some of the devs from FFXI. It's never getting localized though so there's no chance to try it unless you're fluent enough in Japanese to both read the game and talk with other players.

I played FFXIV ARR for about 9 months and it really is designed badly for my taste, but some people like it I guess. I could write a book about every design element compared to FFXI and how it fails but I have better things to do. Suffice to say I don't see the point of a game where each update both introduces gear that is objectively better than my current gear in every way, and makes my current gear which I worked hard for easily obtainable for new players.

[arus2001]

I'm not fond of the current trends of MMOs, but at the same time, I don't want to go back to olden XI, either. There's a middle ground that can be found, but ultimately you have that unsavory mix of devs not being willing to risk it and players generally being too afraid to embrace change.

Like others, I enjoy and ultimately prefer the XI-style of everything being done on a single character, the only exception to that being crafting--which could be an easy fix. Those who prefer the alt experience could still do it, but no real hopping around and nobody knowing who you were or trying to keep certain characters a secret for whatever reason. If I wanted to nuke things into oblivion one day, I could. If I wanted to stab 'em with a sword. I could. The only real flaws I'd say XI had here were a mix of job imbalances persisting for too long and really making some unique not being embraced enough.

As for other games, I loathe how it's pretty much running instanced dungeons/raids and everything else being inconsequential. To pine back to that fear of change I mentioned, if you even assert people could quest/craft comparable gear as found in those locales, people will flip their shit under the assumption someone doesn't deserve it, they won't know how to play their job(s), nobody would do dungeons/raids anymore, or the ol' tired line of how that's not what the genre is if soloability is an option. In general, I'm pretty "Fuck off..." to allowing games, and the people who play them, to dictate my schedule. If there's something I want to do, I just want to go do it without being guilt tripped because I'm not doing something else. Don't get me wrong, I have no objection to partying with others, but I just prefer that experience to being more organic than rigid. And if that means things like Trust systems to fill in the gaps for players who aren't around, so be it. I'd even take that a step further in letting us fully customize/gear them with options to tweak their AI behavior. A good player would still likely perform better.

But yeah, the open world would need systems like enemies respawning faster if an area is particularly crowded, events like FATEs going on all the time to offer alternatives to straight grinding, crafting/gathering to not play second fiddle to dropped gear, reasonable forced pop options or bounties/conditions specific to making a mob appear when you want to fight it. Things can be lively and sociable without it being forced, and I'd posit a big part of why XIV fails there is because combat pacing is too hectic. Hard to type a joke when you have to get out of the red, after all. Could prattle on about potential world building tactics, but it'd pretty much be a novel of its own.

As for content dying, bluntly, that's okay and should honestly be expected. How fast that happens might be key, but inevitably the longer something exists, the less people "need" to do it increases. And when it stops being about personal loot, it relies more on fun and/or helping others. When that no longer happens, that's it. No need to keep forcing it. I still look to capped CoP missions as a primer of "What not to do..." even though you'll have some who will argue for it with good intentions in mind. Inevitably, things should be more about testing one's skill than patience. Some grind is okay, but not 3+ months for a single item kind or hoping a healer shows up only for the tank to bail when you finally do find one.

[Damane]

I'm not fond of the current trends of MMOs, but at the same time, I don't want to go back to olden XI, either. There's a middle ground that can be found, but ultimately you have that unsavory mix of devs not being willing to risk it and players generally being too afraid to embrace change.

Like others, I enjoy and ultimately prefer the XI-style of everything being done on a single character, the only exception to that being crafting--which could be an easy fix. Those who prefer the alt experience could still do it, but no real hopping around and nobody knowing who you were or trying to keep certain characters a secret for whatever reason. If I wanted to nuke things into oblivion one day, I could. If I wanted to stab 'em with a sword. I could. The only real flaws I'd say XI had here were a mix of job imbalances persisting for too long and really making some unique not being embraced enough.

As for other games, I loathe how it's pretty much running instanced dungeons/raids and everything else being inconsequential. To pine back to that fear of change I mentioned, if you even assert people could quest/craft comparable gear as found in those locales, people will flip their shit under the assumption someone doesn't deserve it, they won't know how to play their job(s), nobody would do dungeons/raids anymore, or the ol' tired line of how that's not what the genre is if soloability is an option. In general, I'm pretty "Fuck off..." to allowing games, and the people who play them, to dictate my schedule. If there's something I want to do, I just want to go do it without being guilt tripped because I'm not doing something else. Don't get me wrong, I have no objection to partying with others, but I just prefer that experience to being more organic than rigid. And if that means things like Trust systems to fill in the gaps for players who aren't around, so be it. I'd even take that a step further in letting us fully customize/gear them with options to tweak their AI behavior. A good player would still likely perform better.

But yeah, the open world would need systems like enemies respawning faster if an area is particularly crowded, events like FATEs going on all the time to offer alternatives to straight grinding, crafting/gathering to not play second fiddle to dropped gear, reasonable forced pop options or bounties/conditions specific to making a mob appear when you want to fight it. Things can be lively and sociable without it being forced, and I'd posit a big part of why XIV fails there is because combat pacing is too hectic. Hard to type a joke when you have to get out of the red, after all. Could prattle on about potential world building tactics, but it'd pretty much be a novel of its own.

As for content dying, bluntly, that's okay and should honestly be expected. How fast that happens might be key, but inevitably the longer something exists, the less people "need" to do it increases. And when it stops being about personal loot, it relies more on fun and/or helping others. When that no longer happens, that's it. No need to keep forcing it. I still look to capped CoP missions as a primer of "What not to do..." even though you'll have some who will argue for it with good intentions in mind. Inevitably, things should be more about testing one's skill than patience. Some grind is okay, but not 3+ months for a single item kind or hoping a healer shows up only for the tank to bail when you finally do find one.

Job imbalance is a given when you give players almost free choice over multiple gear(gearswaps etc) and Subjobs. Thats the price you will have to pay for spicy things. 14 is considered pretty balanced (mostly) at the cost of makeing the subjob/crossclass ability choices almost moot and limited and the gear stats very bland.

I think XI has NOW a good mix between new and old MMOs, its just very old. There is alot of relevant content you can do solo with trusts, but there is also alot of relevant content you have to team up. If this game would get a remake graphical/UI/QoL, a bit faster, slight changes to combat to make things more interesting and had a higher population it would be insanely good. If that ever happens pls keep "Duty Finder" the fuck away. That shit destroys every MMO.

[Aleth]

Yeah, that thread I linked pores over most of the good, bad and ugly of the various iterations of the two FF MMOs. It's a great read if you can deal with strong opinions flying everywhere.

Sadly the up-shot of it is that neither game is really at a peak. XI has had its most engaging days and XIV has yet to (and probably will not) live up to them.
Having said that, if I had linked my SE account to my POL ID soon enough I would totally have derped about in XI for the free week.

The monthly fee is a fairly large burden these games bear too. When you can buy AAA games from a couple of years ago for a few dollars or play popular competitive online games for free the opportunity cost of an ongoing fee over several months starts to look pretty mountainous. XI and XIV have been the most expensive games I've played hands-down. I don't like the idea of pay-to-win either, but there must be a payment model that would suit an open-world co-op MMO.

XI is at the extreme edge of what can be achieved with the engine & resources left to it and XIV is knee deep in "playing it safe" so that it pays off as a company investment that initially looked sour.

I still think a FF game that delivers on all fronts is possible but at this stage it's likely it'd have to be an all-new product.

[Aleth]

To pick up on the points Arus made.

I think a lot of the problems with XI time-wise and XIV meaningfulness is how the content is designed.

A lot of the time wasted in XI was in getting groups together and to the actual content. You could see why the idea of a Duty Finder appealed when getting groups for Zilart or CoP missions. Certainly more advanced group-building tools and ways to get people to content would help (without resorting to teleporting players to off-server instances). But the problem is also more than UI and UX. You also have to design the world so your content hubs aren't slogs to get to (unless remoteness is specifically required) and you have to design the content so people are willing to help others through it, even having completed it themselves (a real problem in XIV as the combat is not rewarding in and of itself).

It seems to me that a MMO should have several meaningful things a player can go do that have different tiers of time-investment. Certainly for co-op content there should be stuff starting out at around 10-minute time-brackets. Something like 10m, 20m, 40m, 1 hour...

You could almost claim XIV delivers on this with its combination of FATEs, guildhests, guildleves, dungeons and raids. But on closer inspection the meaningful part is left out. There's no real meaning to the FATEs beyond XP and relatively little player interaction. Guildhests, again are only good for some XP and feel like abandoned content and guildleves are woefully under-developed. They all kind of have that garrison from FFXI feel to them. That pretty much only leaves the dungeons and Raids as viable co-op play in the endgame.

The trick would be to have these sorts of systems kept up to par and offered as lower consecutive time-investment (but not lower skill) game-play that still meaningfully drives the players' progression forwards, both globally (gear, XP) and within the system itself.

This almost happened during the ToAU era of XI as there were so many parallel end-game systems that were all offering viable rewards simultaneously. The real problem was gathering people together and starting any of them in a timely manner. A more advanced Party-builder could probably have helped here so that filling the gaps in a roster wasn't such a draining chore.

As for solo content, I agree that there should be outlets for soloing, even if the game's major focus is co-op. I think most FFXI players experienced a tinge of the pull of the Beast-master... even if they didn't level it. I'd be wary of having AI party-members out in the over-world though, just because I'd not want to weaken the value of player co-operation. I think you could go as far as to have a FFVII-style solo battle-arena system or dungeons designed for solo exploration perhaps with a Trust-like NPC (like one of your retainers maybe, or favourite story NPCs) who you can gear up and set behaviours for. If the game had room for this amount of scope it'd be cool, but you'd have to make tough decisions about how to balance it.

I fully agree that crafted stuff needs to be relevant, but it should be tied in to other game systems so the various players have to interact somewhat, even if it's just economically.

As for the Duty Finder - a smarter semi-automated on-server party builder could have saved a lot of headaches in XI. I don't know how to feel about cross-server Duty Finder though. They do seem to kill the over-world. Ideally, if all content offers something relevant to the players (even when repeated) then you shouldn't have people struggling to find groups to pass it - This one falls on the developers to keep an eye on their own game's eco-system and adjust accordingly (they do charge a monthly fee after all). I do think focus on building the best party finder UI and UX would help tons though.

I don't agree that content should become obsolete. The game-play, story and progression should stand the test of time.

If you let new players skip the first 100 levels and 2 years of dialogue of your game because it's actually boring and dumb then you shouldn't have made a boring and dumb game. Why are you making boring and dumb games? Stop! Just because you didn't watch Trainspotting in 1996 doesn't mean if you watch it now it should be a 5-minute crib-note version. As for allowing over-gearing or removal of caps, if you didn't play Doom in 1993 but try it now "Nightmare" mode in 2016 in the same game shouldn't play like 1993's "I'm Too Young To Die". How about, if you start watching Game of Thrones from the start of season 1 but no matter what you try all you get is the latest season's "previously on Game of Thrones". Nah.

I've phrased this in a silly way, but I think it's understandable - I think content degradation isn't the answer. Either it means your old content was bad and you should feel bad or you're throwing away decent content and just wasting dev time for the heck of it. Perhaps, it even means your new content isn't good enough to appeal over the old content... which means you've messed up and should go back and design something that's actually fun.

An ideal solution would have content remain both appealing and challenging, even if it requires adjustment as the game matures and new stuff to do is added. As a system I dislike XIV's ever-rising ilvl as it seems like a content wasting machine. I'd care more if I actually liked XIV:ARR's combat though, but it's pretty unfun to begin with.

I believe that all this is achievable in an MMO though.

[arus2001]

Here's the thing, though, if you don't nerf old difficult content at all, and take things a step further and dictate level caps to preserve challenge, the people who have long since surpassed it are going to have zero interest backtracking. Workable if it's a party of 4-6? Okay. 20 people? Hell no. Trying to sprinkle vanity items into the mix isn't going to draw everyone, especially if they wound up having bad experiences when they went through it, themselves. Keep in mind, MMOers tend to fucking hate teaching people on the fly. They want efficiency in their PUGs, and that's just not gonna happen when you have 1 or 2 first-timers among a sea of rusty and/or forgetful vets.

MMOs are games that should evolve with time, and part of that process is the reality that you may miss peak seasons if you're unsubbed, can't play, or whatever. I get wanting to respect the concept of the content and man hours put into designing it, but you also gotta consider even peak clear rates (without nerfs). Those percentages tend to be pretty low, to the tune of 10-15%. And that's when people are mostly on the same page. Those numbers won't really creep upward after the fact without some sort of easement. In XI's current form, we'd probably liken that to the highest tier of Escha NMs and the bonus battles like Alexander/Odin. Case might even be made for Intense Ambuscades. I miss the census data for things like mission progress and such, as it's something unique SE did relative to other games. However, it also gave a good idea of just how the players were behaving, or perhaps couldn't.

Meanwhile, there's absolutely nothing wrong with cross-server matching. The problem arises in the inability to freely interact with people you do meet after the fact. I feel isolated servers are a dying concept, and some games seem to be picking up more of the mega-server model with channel-like systems to shift to if an area happens to be too crowded. I'd further assert one of XI's more glaring flaws at the moment, aside from needing some server merges (I know, they need to fix other shit, too, just to preempt Nynja whining he likes his server the way it is), is the fact they're still charging $18 to transfer on your own. Make it free. Put a short cooldown on it. Give people the freedom to actually find a world that works for them without breaking the bank. The current situation for any returnee basically being, "Go to Asura or you're fucked!" is.. well, fucked.

[Damona]

The current situation for any returnee basically being, "Go to Asura or you're fucked!" is.. well, fucked.

Can someone explain this one? Havent logged in like forever, kinda curious about that one.

[Rehn]

One of the most populated servers.

[Kincard]

A bunch of the English-speaking communities like Reddit decided to make Asura their non-official server, and since SE doesn't really give a shit about designing the game to fit the English-speaking playerbases' styles, over time people migrated there.

[Madeline]

I bit the bullet and went to Asura since there's literally nothing left of Carbuncle anyway.

Still lost. Item levels in my FFXI make my head hurt. I've got little grip on anything and even the programs people use are different, if only slightly. (ashita) Exploration is gone, crystal ports are the meta, which also took away.. but I still find myself liking the game.

I don't know how to gear up anymore, though. Any suggestions or guides out there these days? I was looking at playing BLM for my tiny returning group, but haven't the foggiest what to even equip anymore. I know people want 119 gear..but where I come from, it was all about the elemental staves/magian trials/abyssea/voidwatch. I'm from the past in every possible way it feels like. The game feels like it's using a totally dififerent system.

[Gokulo]

A good place to start is always the sticky topic on the job forum at ffxiah. These are usually updated decently and you'll find some information about gear and stuff

[CDF]

Here is a guide to get some placeholders (do not augment): https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Fresh_99/...119_Gear_Guide

Assuming you can do the content, Ambuscade would have the best "starting" mage nuking gear (Jhakri NQ and HQ) that has some longevity until you can get Merlinic with good augments (as getting good augments to surpass the macc and MAB values on Jhakri might take a while).

[bungiefan]

Can someone explain this one? Havent logged in like forever, kinda curious about that one.

Reddit got a big group of people and started a pair of linkshells that they invited tons of people to. The server has the largest English-speaking linkshell in the game now, and Odin has that for JP players. It creates an incentive to transfer to the server to find people to do events with, and has the effect of draining other servers of their population, because people either quit or transfer. The main linkshell is often at 64-person capacity, with overflow into the second shell, and only sackholders are allowed to have both equipped at once, to relay messages between the shells.

A bunch of spinoff shells have happened as well, but it draws people into the server regardless.

I bit the bullet and went to Asura since there's literally nothing left of Carbuncle anyway.

Still lost. Item levels in my FFXI make my head hurt. I've got little grip on anything and even the programs people use are different, if only slightly. (ashita) Exploration is gone, crystal ports are the meta, which also took away.. but I still find myself liking the game.

I don't know how to gear up anymore, though. Any suggestions or guides out there these days? I was looking at playing BLM for my tiny returning group, but haven't the foggiest what to even equip anymore. I know people want 119 gear..but where I come from, it was all about the elemental staves/magian trials/abyssea/voidwatch. I'm from the past in every possible way it feels like. The game feels like it's using a totally dififerent system.

The Intermediate Tutorial objectives for RoE will give you coupons for a full set of level 119 equipment. You then get better equipment from Ambuscade or Reisenjima.

Stream was pretty fun. I dunno though, FFXI has changed a heck of a lot, maybe too much to resub. FFXIV hasn't changed nearly enough (and is unlikely to).

At this point I'm starting to wonder whether SE will make a third MMO...

They've made more than 3 already. Dragon Quest X is their most recent. They also did Front Mission Online on PS2 and PC back around 2004-2006. I think Fantasy Earth was also originally developed by them, and was definitely in PlayOnline Viewer's Japanese game list, with Dirge of Cerberus Online. FE moved to GamePot afterward for awhile, and actually got a brief American release that I recall.

Wakfu and Dofus are also run by SquareEnix for North America, according to their sites.

[Whitney]

Hi all!
Considering a return...

It was a long run with XI. A long, long run. I started in 2003 and played on through the level 99 cap raise. Didn't get a whole lot further than that other than getting 99 with some jobs (bst, war, cor, pld, and I forget what else) and some of the "free" armor you can earn. Last I remember, there was a very painful battle against a giant asshole of a tree with wipe after wipe after wipe - and I never did get that blasted great axe!

Not sure why - I think I got too busy with other things in life - but my subscription ran out and I never renewed. That was about 3 years ago now.

Now I'm considering a return, if only to properly say goodbye to the game that took up 10 years of my life. I played XIV a bit (Ukko Latt) - it was alright but it just didn't hold my interest. I've no interest in other MMO's these days - life is far too busy to any longer do the all-nighters where I'd slog through some mission or questline for 10 hours or camp this or that NM. Those days, I'm afraid, are behind me.

And so I ponder a return and I wonder if there's anything left that even resembles the XI I knew. Even by the time I left, there were few names remaining on Lakshmi which were familiar, and it was becoming the desert I am sure it is now. Is there any means left of obtaining any reasonably respectable gear for war, bst, cor, smn, pld, etc, with what I'm sure is a very limited number of remaining players to work together with? I don't expect I'd ever be able to get the best gear - not at this point - but that wouldn't be the point. The point would be to have some fun and take some screenshots for posterity and know I did all I could within Vanadiel.

I'm first playing XV and I will be in China and Europe (getting married on the island of Santorini, Greece, then traveling to several parts of Europe and then back to China to meet more inlaws) until February - but after that point, is there even anything left? AnyONE left?

Hope all my fellow players have been well. How have your lives been since XI? Me, I'm a geologist working for the state government's department of environmental quality these days. Finishing up my book when I have a chance (dinosaurs, neanderthals, and cross-dimensional creatures are involved), and have spent time going around the world with my fiancee. A digital adventure, it seems, was replaced by a real world one. But XI will always be a source of fond memories. Even if I wasn't terribly good at it in all of its nuance - at least it was a great time and met a lot of great people.

[Kanriel]

XI and XIV have been the most expensive games I've played hands-down. I don't like the idea of pay-to-win either, but there must be a payment model that would suit an open-world co-op MMO.

I've probably spent more on Final Fantasy Record Keeper than FFXI already, which is probably pretty sad. But the new p2w models in gaming encourage absolutely absurd spending that far outclasses a steady subscription like in FFXI. Seeing how all the new games are modeled in pay structure I yearn for the days I can pay $13/month and know I have everything unlocked and don't need to spend more money (additional wardrobes as an exception).

[windf]

So I kind of want to start over with a new character, but I'm not really ready to delete my old one just yet. Would it be possible to just pay the fee for a new character and leave my original character deactivated, or would I have to pay for them both since my old character is the one tied to my Content ID?

[Buffy]

Your first character is the fee, your second is 1.00. Doesn't matter which slot you have active.

[Twilight Sky]

12,928 files. 7hr 39min. Hell yea baby.

[Trumpy]

actually i think each character cost a dollar now.. so u activate for 11.99 or 12.99 whatever it is then the +1 dollar for whatever character you pick.