Live Presentation Event: The Future of Final Fantasy XI (03/19/2015)

[Toth]

I am sorry, I didn't mean to turn this into a FFXIV bashing. I am just simply thrilled that FFXI continues to get new stuff to do every month that can be handled in multiple ways.

[arus2001]

It felt like much more of a slog to queue up for daily dungeons with strangers than it does to spam ambuscade for a few hours because every time would be a bunch of strangers with varying degrees of dungeon understanding silently attempting to clear the dungeon simultaneously. That is so much more frustrating and thus grindy feeling than doing ambuscade with a group of friends and wiping a few times maybe but getting better at it and doing it a little more efficiently each time. Each clear feels like a victory vs. feeling like (at best) the Duty Finder roll was in your favor that run.

Still more inclined to say XIV's rotation-centric combat system inhibits conversation more than systems like the DF. As is, one is still capable of gathering friends and doing server-specific parties, but "ain't no one got time for dat!" reflects more on the reality people tend to care more about getting their loot and progressing their character at their own pace as opposed to the range of putting up with completely inept idiots to making your new bestest friend, with the reality likely being indifference just like the countless EXP parties we all had back in the day in XI.

For those that pine more for reputations and resultant drama with lesser or more restrained cross-server options, neither really benefit actual game play and are just tertiary pros/cons depending on how one really feels about them. Especially as long as primary objectives mean getting a mob's HP to zero to collect loot.

They need to fix their communication system so that you can always send tells and give servers something to do together other than hunts.

Can't disagree with that. Though, I still wish more games would take Rift's approach to servers and let anyone go to any server at any time with a couple clicks and no fees. In XI's case, if a server like Asura is feeling congested at Ambuscade, a group could hop to a lesser populated server temporarily. Same for WKR parties, JP farming, quests/missions, and then some. Though, much as I wish for XI's infrastructure to get modernized, I figure it 99.9999999% unlikely between finances and XIV being around.

[Damane]

FFXI's content isn't long lasting because it takes a while to complete, it's like that because of low drop rates or long farming sessions. FFXIV uses other methods to extend its content (mostly gating rewards) but the concept is exactly the same.
You can't tell me that XI's content is fine because it takes you ages to drop stuff or farm enough currency to get other stuff but XIV's content is done in one day (despite the fact that you can't acquire everything it offers on patch day).
Even in its prime XI's content was cleared on patch day UNLESS they had gating implemented to prevent players from even attempting the higher floors/tiers/bosses in whatever content was released.
Can you even call the April patch an "update"? Please, let's be realistic here.
XI is not even close to what it used to be, it really hurts me seeing what they're doing with it. It's also funny how most were shitting on Abyssea but what they're releasing right now is apparently "fine" lol.

Maybe you guys should check out the update notes from a few years ago, those were proper patches done right.

In all honesty XI content was fine and supberb with RoV, everything after that "Ambuscade", "Omen" and "Master trials" were in my eyes garbage :/. I am still hopeing for another push of real engaging alliance content in 11. Atm none of the 2 games offer really new and engaging content i can enjoy, so i am playing none of the 2 games ._.. FF14 has it worse, because i feel doing content more then 2-3 times is pointless because everything gets thrown out of the window 3-6 months later anyway.
its just fucked /sigh

[Shenrien]

We could all go play WoW and enjoy our once a year content patch and suck up doing the same thing forever until the next expansion more or less.

[steellord]

In all honesty XI content was fine and supberb with RoV, everything after that "Ambuscade", "Omen" and "Master trials" were in my eyes garbage :/. I am still hopeing for another push of real engaging alliance content in 11. Atm none of the 2 games offer really new and engaging content i can enjoy, so i am playing none of the 2 games ._.. FF14 has it worse, because i feel doing content more then 2-3 times is pointless because everything gets thrown out of the window 3-6 months later anyway.
its just fucked /sigh

do many servers even have enough of a playerbase to make alliance content worth development? If SE had any intention of this, would've merged servers at least. The fact they don't tells me they don't care if people quit and it's indeed on life support until the reboot, at which point i expect updates to cease altogether or /shutdown

It's not just about comparing to 14 but even offline games (since XI's community is no longer much of an asset), if i buy barely used Horizon now that will keep me occupied for the same price as 2.5 month of 11, for just as long (since i have a job and family), and will be a brand new experience not to mention the graphics. That is XI's competition more so than the few MMO that are still sub based. That's why it's not being invested in for new content

[steellord]

FFXI's content isn't long lasting because it takes a while to complete, it's like that because of low drop rates or long farming sessions. FFXIV uses other methods to extend its content (mostly gating rewards) but the concept is exactly the same.
You can't tell me that XI's content is fine because it takes you ages to drop stuff or farm enough currency to get other stuff but XIV's content is done in one day (despite the fact that you can't acquire everything it offers on patch day).
Even in its prime XI's content was cleared on patch day UNLESS they had gating implemented to prevent players from even attempting the higher floors/tiers/bosses in whatever content was released.
Can you even call the April patch an "update"? Please, let's be realistic here.
XI is not even close to what it used to be, it really hurts me seeing what they're doing with it. It's also funny how most were shitting on Abyssea but what they're releasing right now is apparently "fine" lol.

Maybe you guys should check out the update notes from a few years ago, those were proper patches done right.

When they came out with things like limbus, even if it wasn't gated it would've taken damn longer than a day for almost every group to figure things out in all 10 zones + 2 bosses. Now eventually yeah, the gating became such a problem for 20 minute event with crap drop rate (friend's static waited over a year for homan pants) that people stopped going.

But a lot of the content, forget it. Sea took forever to learn the mechanics even though no gating, and CoP alone took my static weeks even after guides were up. It was definitely challenging and worthy of being its own game. You could argue the same to lesser extent about abyssea, SoA and RoV. Actually abyssea was probably the best with no gating and consistent drop rates and it still took weeks to do everything and cap on gear. You could maybe say the same about SoA's BCNM for reforged gear model, delve, RoV

But since this announcement hell no, there is no depth, only gating, and if you're done with ambuscade pfft

[steellord]

Does XIV really do this?!?
These same people who would throw a hissyfit over a 72 hourdynamis cooldown are now all "praise XIV" and its week long cooldowns?!

in fairness i think back in the day you'd have a hard time getting any dynamis of 50-60 members together more than twice a week. Even when i joined a static group of 8-10 that could win every zone, we had some casuals who wouldn't go for more. I thought it was balanced fine except only gilbuyer types were doing relics. I doubt very much 14 has anything like that kind of content that drags on and needs focus the whole time. Sounds like its gating problems are more like omen and ambuscade

[steellord]

Therein lies a problem for people who seek to get too attached to a singular game, as if that criteria alone justifies its quality. Gamers should be playing multiple games. Some may be one-offs. Others will have replay value, sure. Other RL obligations/finances will cut into the breadth of titles one might access, yes, but hyper-focusing isn't good for the industry or even the players.

I mean, look at the posts at least attempting to objectively compare. Such helps to find what one likes and what does not, where occasionally you'll find things you've never ever thought about, but wind up finding awesome after the fact. And yes, there are those, "What the fuck were they thinking?!" moments, too. Such is experimentation, or maybe some dev hubris.

Sub fees don't really encourage shopping around, either. Nevermind the reality that only fractions of such harvested resources go back into the product that generated them. Talks about inflation, how it's just a lunch a two, or shaming those that disagree with the system are, as per prior debates, just par for the course mental gymnastics to justify their own investment. I wrapped my last post saying both games could be better, but could is the wrong word. They should be. And I'll continue to dock points from the XI experience as long as they continue to demand their "full price" for bare minimum effort.

That to me is the essence of it, not that $13/mo is much, but nowadays everyone who gets anything done duo-tri boxes due to low playerbase and also the full price after updates have basically ceased and the future is uncertain

[steellord]

Coming back from XIV was the best decision I ever made. XIV is full of people that are exactly like the game. Dull, dreary robots that have nothing to offer.

I don't even know if I'm going back for the expansions at this point. Heavensward was everything I expected it to be, huge zones with no content in them. I still feel like current XI is more rewarding than some shit tier raid system that rewards what is essentially at some point nothing more than glamour. The entire game, and this is the inevitability, is nothing more than barbie dress up online. Your achievements mean jack shit and Yoshida said himself on more than one occasion that it's perfectly fine to just not play the game because it's designed to be played a month or two at a time at most to catch up. If you enjoy the ride, great. But if you realize it ultimately means nothing after the first time, XIV's content doesn't even last as long as XI's maintenance mode updates.

Sure glad I raided for 2 and a half years so absolutely nothing I did bar title collecting can matter. Doesn't even last 6 months before you do the whole thing over again and your achievements are all but gone. I'm glad I'm a Gillionaire. It'll be the only fucking thing I got that might last more than a few months as an achievement.

Guess I'm back home until something else interesting releases, if ever. The whole genre is going down the tube. Shame about XIV. It's a ride with no direction that people throw money at just to be pretty. Perfect for SE's pocket. Bad for people that would like to see innovation. Why change?

I still hope every day SE will realize that XI deserves more love, as more and more of the XIV flies drop off the paper. Can only charge $25 for a costume (or a mount that had content fucking designed for it) for so long, right? ..Right?

They better change, because this is why the genre is down the tubes - the whole video game industry is full of RPGs that offer a stellar solo experience with similar mechanics to games like GW2, and with PVP thrown in, and so why bother teaming up with other players? Why go thru the hassle? And then if you do want teamup, continuous action FPS games like Battlefield and sports games are the competition at this point. Hell even Dark Souls had a tolerable team up model when i was in the mood.

It's become such a fine line to create content that both requires multiplayer and doesn't make it a hassle, and then when you throw subscriptions in there...you gotta do it on a constant basis and without timesinks. There's too many alternatives to MMO now. I do think there's a place to bring back 60 person death fests like dynamis that encourage community, but it just runs into the problem of timesink via gating/drop rate vs new content. More likely, i could see solo RPGs incorporating an optional MMO event. Possibly an entirely MMO that does have an ending. I can't see any one game investing in continuous content and if that did happen, you get the complaints of obsoleting gear. It's just far more realistic in this market to create games that have an ending, without the multiplayer hassle. Unless something fundamental changes, MMOs will be seen as a blip that occurred when the internet started taking off, before the plethora of streamlined options we see now

All i know is when i logged on 11 last month and tried to do ambuscade so i could just begin to get invites in RoV, half my party dropped after 1 run and the entire party after a 2nd, forcing me to try to slog thru lower value solo runs while waiting for more PT to form....and then when they did, same thing happened. I said screw it and went back to Battlefield

[Burningthought]

It'll never happen but I wouldn't mind a server that only went up to ToAU/WoTG. That's about where I stopped "really" keeping up with the meta, even though I played up to where my gear would take me in RoV.

[Sechs]

The moment people get official "classic servers" they enjoy them for a couple of weeks and then drop the game entirely.
Sad, but true =/

[Hioki]

We could all go play WoW and enjoy our once a year content patch and suck up doing the same thing forever until the next expansion more or less.

To be fair, WoW has been doing a pretty decent job at consistent updating this past expansion. I think there is some contention on how they are handling their systems but I'm pretty certain the response has been overall positive.

[NynJa]

The moment people get official "classic servers" they enjoy them for a couple of weeks and then drop the game entirely.
Sad, but true =/

Arent there hundreds of private servers for this?

[Burningthought]

Arent there hundreds of private servers for this?

If i'm going to restart fresh on a classic server i'd prefer one with reliability and dependable service. Not to mention working features. I don't want to put in possibly 100s of hours for the random dude operating the server to get bored and flip the switch.

[BerenTebogo]

I never really got why people who wanted to come back went to a private server for any other reason than to not pay $13/month.

You don't like that the game went to lv99 and abyssea exists and what is Omen?! You want to enjoy the nostalgia of leveling to 75 the hard way? You want to do everything at 75? With very few exceptions, you can do all of this right now in game as much as you like. Don't do LBs above 75, don't go to Abyssea, etc.

Oh leveling by yourself is boring and inefficient and you want to reproduce the shocking ineptitude that all of us spent years mired in? Don't worry! Trusts are authentically bad in ways that will make you feel like you are back in Garlaige Citadel falling down holes. Sure, they'll keep you alive and you'll have a nice full EXP party, but every now and then one of them will be like "you know what would be great? I just learned this new AoE weaponskill I'm gonna try it out right here without telling you". Wow. Just like old times. I feel like it's 2007 all over again.

Want to level your RDM/NIN and gear it out in the toppest of lv75 gear to remind yourself of a time before you had to pay bills and the total sum of your worth was measured by how much you were willing to wake up at 3:30AM for Nid? Sorry, no HNM LS drama to be had, but lucky for you, you can buy pops and go pop and fight Nidhogg at 75 with your trusts all you want (we all know he was never actually hard and we were just bad, you can probably do this). Want to run around in circles for 2 hours soloing Genbu? Same thing.

Worried you won't have anyone to talk to? Join any LS you want. Pick a server that still has people you know on it (almost impossible to not happen these days unless you have no friends at all) and just join their LS. Nobody runs a "EVERY FUCKING MEMBER OF MY LINKSHELL BETTER BE IN VALKURM DUNES AT 8PM FOR DYNA OR IM KICKING THEM" LS anymore. Nobody will care.

Snark aside, absent the monthly cost, there really aren't great reasons to go to a private server if you want to play. The amount of tiered QoL stuff they added for < 99 means you can choose the level of self-imposed autistic grinding that is right for you, AND there are free downloads / free campaign periods.

[BerenTebogo]

All i know is when i logged on 11 last month and tried to do ambuscade so i could just begin to get invites in RoV, half my party dropped after 1 run and the entire party after a 2nd, forcing me to try to slog thru lower value solo runs while waiting for more PT to form....and then when they did, same thing happened. I said screw it and went back to Battlefield

Invites in RoV? Like, are you a returning player?

If you are a returning player and trying to gear up and see what's up with 119+ content then part of the issue is that Ambuscade is 110% not for you. There's the universal truth that randoms are bad, but yeah, if this applies to you that's probably part of why you had a bad time.

[fantasticdan]

Full on classic servers aside, a custom level cap/sync feature would be nice. That way you could just manually cap yourself/your party at the proper level to do legacy content, without being reliant on characters that haven't broken limit breaks.

[Mrbeansman]

Knock old exp parties all you want I be most people have 3 or 4 friends that we knew for years that they met killing colibri over and over. That being said fuck the old way of exping.

[steellord]

If i'm going to restart fresh on a classic server i'd prefer one with reliability and dependable service. Not to mention working features. I don't want to put in possibly 100s of hours for the random dude operating the server to get bored and flip the switch.

i wouldn't trust SE to not do the same either at this point

offline version is the only way to be sure, and there goes alliance content

[steellord]

Knock old exp parties all you want I be most people have 3 or 4 friends that we knew for years that they met killing colibri over and over. That being said fuck the old way of exping.

colibri killed exp for me actually. It required 0 skill and i could even go naked and leech off the rest of my PT. It killed sc/mb and sata and tanking in general, as once you got to about lv55 no one went to the old zones. Even relatively harder ToA leveling like caedarva imps and flies was only challenging for healers. ToA endgame was also mostly an unrewarding newb show, relying on gimmicks and only 3-6 players needed. Most of my friends actually disappeared at this time