Time for FFXI "Classic"?

[Draylo]

After reading 49 pages it seems only D44kpunk and Gredival know what they are talking about. Everyone else either didn't play then or spent the last 10 years butt hurt they weren't in a linkshell that could actually claim/kill, a lot of you guys were probably in linkshells that called themselves a HNM ls, but only did sky.

Laugh... sure bud

[Kanriel]

Gred is the "OK Boomer" of this thread.

[Tarage]

I too like to get up at 4 am on a work day to camp a mob I might not even get and that might not even pop for a week.

Fuck you if you like classic FFXI. Literally go flog your own ass and you won't notice the difference.

[Kanriel]

I too like to get up at 4 am on a work day to camp a mob I might not even get and that might not even pop for a week.

Fuck you if you like classic FFXI. Literally go flog your own ass and you won't notice the difference.

But it'll give you a sense of Pride and Accomplishment!

[Tarage]

But it'll give you a sense of Pride and Accomplishment!

You know what gives me a sense of Pride and Accomplishment? Buying a house because I got a job and worked and didn't get up at 4 am to try to camp a monster that might not even pop in a game made by regressing the positive changes of 17+ years...

[Kanriel]

You know what gives me a sense of Pride and Accomplishment? Buying a house because I got a job and worked and didn't get up at 4 am to try to camp a monster that might not even pop in a game made by regressing the positive changes of 17+ years...

Nah son, anyone can buy a stupid house, but only a rare few are able to outclaim a bot and get the 5% chance at a Defending Ring drop. That's what being a real winner is.

[Gredival]

I missed half of a calc final to camp the pit in 2005 before I even had an HNMLS. Was just trying to claim solo and trade the claim to a shell to lot the N. head.

[Gredival]

If you play "for the journey" or that nonsense, you don't need the best gear the enjoy the game. Don't do Kings, Wyrms, etc. Go enjoy all the other content that gives suboptimal gear.

If you play for the pixels and accept the game is the skinner box that it is, the game rewards the people who do the task and not those who have the best excuse for not playing. It's fine if you value going out to a party, drinking, hooking up, or whatever more than sitting in your room mashing Flash every 30 mins for a 30 second window. It just means you don't get a Ridill.

It's funny that for people who say I took the game too seriously that not getting the chance to have a Ridill is such a big deal. That the idea of a server where people who want that sort of thing can voluntarily engage in it is so offensive. It's almost as if the existence of people who do this invalidates the legitimacy of your accessible egalitarian version of the game where everyone gets everything.

[Kanriel]

If that's what you enjoy, have at it wherever you can find it. But you can't make a good argument that's what most people want, because you've made it clear you're an exception for your desired playstyle. Considering this thread is based around "what the players want", you have invalidated your side as being the answer to that.

[D44kpunk]

If that's what you enjoy, have at it wherever you can find it. But you can't make a good argument that's what most people want, because you've made it clear you're an exception for your desired playstyle. Considering this thread is based around "what the players want", you have invalidated your side as being the answer to that.

Stop posting.

There have been just as many people praising the 75 era as there have been shitting on it. I have no idea how you continuously pull shit out your ass and deem it as fact. You do this in every aspect of everything.

BG is not the ideal audience for this conversation. And it's still relatively 50/50

Nasomi and Eden are the largest ffxi servers by unique IP.

Get shit on.

Merry Christmas

[Patriarch]

You know what gives me a sense of Pride and Accomplishment? Buying a house because I got a job and worked and didn't get up at 4 am to try to camp a monster that might not even pop in a game made by regressing the positive changes of 17+ years...

homeowner club member here

75 cap better still better

[Spicyryan]

In XI, when I claim.

In DotA and Brood War, when I win.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

Sounds like your sense of fun in XI is warped. It isn't designed for that sort of "fun". Nor are you ever going to be a better player in XI because you reacted the fastest to start a battle. Stick to your MOBAs then and keep their logic out of XI.

[Gredival]

If that's what you enjoy, have at it wherever you can find it. But you can't make a good argument that's what most people want, because you've made it clear you're an exception for your desired playstyle. Considering this thread is based around "what the players want", you have invalidated your side as being the answer to that.

As much as I would absolutely love if the world shit on all of you and they reset all the servers back to April 2010 before Visions of Abyssea and forced you all back into the Camp or be a scrub" binary of the Tanaka age, that's not the proposition being discussed here. The idea we are discussing is having a classic server which would not replace or eliminate 99 servers; the fact that there are people who prefer 75 cap in this discussion and on private servers indicates that yes, there is an audience for it.

It also fails to answer my other thesis level claim that balance should be the primary feature of design and takes more priority than players being given what they want. Because players don't know what's good for them. Everyone wants to be the best, but not everyone can be the best. Just like how everyone thinks their child is above average when, by definition, 50% of them are not.

[Gredival]

Sounds like your sense of fun in XI is warped. It isn't designed for that sort of "fun". Nor are you ever going to be a better player in XI because you reacted the fastest to start a battle. Stick to your MOBAs then and keep their logic out of XI.

Sounds like your sense of fun is based off your mediocrity not getting in the way of you achieving everything.

Tell me, in your paradigm what makes you the better player in XI? Because you grind your instances repeatedly? How is that different from my paradigm of the best players grinding nights and hours in the pit?

My grind is harder. My grind requires more sacrifice and blood. My grind gives no chance of recovery and leaves no room for error. My grind creates social pressures that crystallize into players working together in HNMLS in order to achieve personal goals.

No where have a said that my reaction time means I claim more which is why HNMs are better; in fact the whole premise of lockout is to make claiming random.

Hierarchy is an inevitable part of life. Remember in Brave New World that an all-alpha society collapses. You need the Deltas and the Epsilons. The trick is that you don't want them resenting their existence. That is the trick in creating an MMO. Hierarchy can and should exist with a level of content only doable by the best. But you stagger and tier different levels of content for different calibers of players. Some players will never make it to 75. Some will never make it past Sky. Some will never make it past CoP Missions. Some will get booted out of double BRD XP parties for being anchors. And maybe at some point the very bottom of the totem pole checks out and goes to find another game. That's inevitable and it doesn't doom the game. That's just like how people who can't hack it in DotA or Brood War have to go play LoL and StarCraft II.

But a game in which every single player makes it to the same progression point regardless of skill and effort with no distinctions at all (precisely what Abyssea was)? That game is sure to fail. And it did. That's precisely why subscriptions cratered after Heroes of Abyssea had been out for 3~ months and literally everyone had a full set of AF3 and even the worst players finished Empyrean weapons.

[Teryu]

That sounds actually deranged. It's a video game, it should be fun. If a game is work then it fails to do what a game is designed for.

[D44kpunk]

That sounds actually deranged. It's a video game, it should be fun. If a game is work then it fails to do what a game is designed for.

You find grinding JP fun?
Leveling jobs to 99 fun?
Spamming dated easy content to farm RME? (Salv/Dyna/vw)
Spamming lillith in VE fun?

You still have grinds, they are just different. Thinking otherwise makes you deranged.

[Inactive]

My grind is harder. My grind requires more sacrifice and blood. My grind gives no chance of recovery and leaves no room for error. My grind creates social pressures that crystallize into players working together in HNMLS in order to achieve personal goals.

The way you talk makes it sounds like the peak of your life was during the 'classic' FFXI era and you're desperately want to relive a bit of those glory days. Most sane people can look back and realize standing around everyday for hours was a design flaw most of us did just because.. that's just what you did.


There were so many great things about FFXI in that time, kings and shit were not it - not sure why you're choosing that hill to die on.

[arus2001]

I'll just stick to the belief that developing content the majority can't experience for reasons outside their control as a waste of dev resources.

[Gredival]

That sounds actually deranged. It's a video game, it should be fun. If a game is work then it fails to do what a game is designed for.

As I have elaborated above already, MMOs are skinner boxes. They hijack our brains' evolutionary and instinctual gratification in the mastery of skills by making us feel pleasure in the progression of our avatars. Once you reach a level cap, the only progression available is gear.

I've isolated distinct reasons why exclusivity actually creates net better dopamine hits ("fun") than accessibility:

It is a net better dopamine fix.

1. Delayed gratification peak. Just like everyone else who said nothing has lived up to the thrill of a King claim + drop, the sweat and blood makes the gratification better. The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.

2. Competitive fix. There is also value from just the fact it's a competition. Games rely on a sense of mastery and challenge to be fun (MMOs hi-jack this circuitry with loot, which is a challenge to get and becomes associated with achieving mastery). Mastery is relative. We value the acquisition of skills and the mastery of skills, but we judge the quality of our skills and the degree of our mastery through comparisons to other. People in a cooking contest enjoy the cooking because there's an element of mastery involved by comparing how good their food is relative to others. They want to validate their mastery through recognition compared to others.

3. Abyssea style accessible grinding is not fun. Abyssea was not challenging. Relative to Kings at 75, Abyssea at 99 was much easier. Atma, temp items, cruor enhancements, made the game ridiculously easy in multiple ways. There was less reaction time requirement for healers, there was no need to have tanks or control hate or manage MP, there was no need to ever exercise crowd control, there was no gear and skill required to do meaningful damage, and if you are still somehow struggling there were Brews for zerging.

This isn't a single player game where the gameplay and story are the primary design factors keeping you enthralled. Unlike a regular game, MMOs are games meant to be played continuously and ideally never put down. The point isn't just to sell copies and rope you into a franchise. It's to keep you in THIS particular game. Pure gameplay will, inevitably, become stale. The player environment is what makes MMOs unique as a genre. Balance is the most important factor here because the game's success is predicated on creation of an ecosystem for the players to navigate.

The best entertainment is when it is so engaging that you forget it was supposed to be entertainment.

If something is so immersive, so engaging, that you can literally lose yourself in it.

It's like when a sport stops being just a game to professional athletes.

[Teryu]

You find grinding JP fun?
Leveling jobs to 99 fun?
Spamming dated easy content to farm RME? (Salv/Dyna/vw)
Spamming lillith in VE fun?

You still have grinds, they are just different. Thinking otherwise makes you deranged.

Sitting in an area for 3 hours doing nothing isn't fun either, whats your point? The fact that alk those other things involve actually playing the game at your own pace whenever you want.