FFXI Thinning Out?

[Araius]

Lack of update and/or care from SE made me reinstall WoW against my will Damn you SE feeding my WoW addiction. Campaign is/was fun, but I don't care enough about it to grind it for hours. I just log on, do a few to get enough for my new medal, and log off now :/ Needs moar storyline. Only thing I came back to FFXI for in the first place, and now that I got rank 10 Sandy and almost done with ToAU, I'm losing interest again.

[ringthree]

But I still enjoy the game. I have awesome people playing with me the game, so no reason for me to quit yet.

As much as we hate the problems with the game, isn't knowing the problems and limitations of what you do a great gauge of the maturity of the player base? The grass is not greener on the other side of the street and all MMO's have problems, we just pick the one where the problems do not bother us as much as the benefits, and one where the people we associate justify many levels of hardship more than we already have.

[Alisha]

my feeling is that if like me you depend on pickup pt's to gain exp and level new jobs then ffxi is definately dying. i have about 3 or 4 jobs stranded in the 50's. perhaps they need to start giving a lot of jobs abilities before 37 that are worth having to stimulate more leveling of lower jobs. my sole 75 job is monk and i sometimes wonder just how much that short set i had from 60-66 actually helped.

[Lucavi]

The first thing that came to mind on your idea, was the last ZM fight when you break the exo-plates then fight the main boss. It seems like a semi fun idea if done right. I think you have an interesting suggestion.

I was on Wow wiki and I read up on a fight that involves dismantling multiple parts of the fight over a course of time and I loved it. WoW will definitely be my new home until the next gen MMO comes out, because regardless of its problems, the events and abilities implemented into the system feels far "newer" than FFXI. FFXI characters feel stiff if they aren't friggin NPCs, who get all the nice moves, but only in cutscenes (think ToAU CSes -- brilliant, but where is OUR ability to move like that?). In WoW, its the other way around, with the PLAYER feeling fluids and the NPCs feeling stiffer, which I love.

FFXI is old in the sense that they refuse to become new. That's the only real reason behind it -- the game has had plenty of opportunities to steamline itself into something that resembles the newer age of MMOs -- players with plenty of motions and choices, players with voices and the ability to jump, swim, and interact with the scenery around them -- FUCKING FOOD THAT YOU CAN AT THE VERY LEAST SEE YOURSELF EATING/DRINKING -- the list goes on and on.

It took SE over 4 years to introduce a broken windowed mode; that basically sums up everything. Anything you could ever want for the game will take 4 years or more to be implemented. I'd been begging for a 2-handed adjustment ever since I saw the disparity between damage at level 30, 4 years ago; I received it this past August -- that's sad.

Once I saw how pathetic the expansion was, when I had such amazingly high hopes for it (Hydra Corps anyone? They were the first group in this game I actually felt a sense of tragedy for, and they're still not in the expansion -- not even a fucking hint!), but again, the lack of content and lack of informing the playerbase what is in store for the future -- its the same old thing, and apparently more and more people are starting to agree, abet begrudgingly.

My revolution continues! Someday I will build my own MMO, and it will be neither "easybutton" nor "omg 3% droprate on everything good!".

[neochaos]

Well, the way FFXI is designed I don't think really ALLOWS it to become like newer mmos. SE tried to hard to keep the primary RPG elements in the game and didn't help the MMO factor as much. And yeah, for some god awful reason, SE is really, REALLY slow at doing adjustments in this game. People can try and back them up all they want, but games like WoW succeed because the things people want they get in a reasonable amount of time. I cant begin to fathom why it took a whole fucking 4 years for SE to add a broke ass version of windower to FFXI, or why they even bothered at all, but yeah. Chances are if SE makes another MMO, i'm straying away from it. They make some kick ass RPGs no doubt, but in the online world, they fail hard.

[Rags]

The first thing that came to mind on your idea, was the last ZM fight when you break the exo-plates then fight the main boss. It seems like a semi fun idea if done right. I think you have an interesting suggestion.

I was on Wow wiki and I read up on a fight that involves dismantling multiple parts of the fight over a course of time and I loved it. WoW will definitely be my new home until the next gen MMO comes out, because regardless of its problems, the events and abilities implemented into the system feels far "newer" than FFXI. FFXI characters feel stiff if they aren't friggin NPCs, who get all the nice moves, but only in cutscenes (think ToAU CSes -- brilliant, but where is OUR ability to move like that?). In WoW, its the other way around, with the PLAYER feeling fluids and the NPCs feeling stiffer, which I love.

FFXI is old in the sense that they refuse to become new. That's the only real reason behind it -- the game has had plenty of opportunities to steamline itself into something that resembles the newer age of MMOs -- players with plenty of motions and choices, players with voices and the ability to jump, swim, and interact with the scenery around them -- FUCKING FOOD THAT YOU CAN AT THE VERY LEAST SEE YOURSELF EATING/DRINKING -- the list goes on and on.

It took SE over 4 years to introduce a broken windowed mode; that basically sums up everything. Anything you could ever want for the game will take 4 years or more to be implemented. I'd been begging for a 2-handed adjustment ever since I saw the disparity between damage at level 30, 4 years ago; I received it this past August -- that's sad.

Once I saw how pathetic the expansion was, when I had such amazingly high hopes for it (Hydra Corps anyone? They were the first group in this game I actually felt a sense of tragedy for, and they're still not in the expansion -- not even a fucking hint!), but again, the lack of content and lack of informing the playerbase what is in store for the future -- its the same old thing, and apparently more and more people are starting to agree, abet begrudgingly.

My revolution continues! Someday I will build my own MMO, and it will be neither "easybutton" nor "omg 3% droprate on everything good!".

Well you act like you never expected any of this. But what can you expect out of a game that was designed for a console and not a PC. I mean everything we bitch about and everything we'd like to see can't really happen if they still wish to hang on to the Ps2. WoW doesn't have to worry about a 8 year old system. They can just add things that works the PC harder and tell everybody either upgrade or tough shit.

Second why even bother with a windowed mode when most your player base is on the console. This is probably most influenced by the Japanese. Since this game took them 2 more years from release to even offer it to the JPN player base for the PC.

As for there stupidly long delays for fixes. Well they are just morons.

[neochaos]

We came to the conclusions they were morons are the "still holding on to an 8 yr old system" part. But yes that is a point I did heavily overlook, although that in no way affects my opinions about FFXI, it does give a justified reason for the shittiness now. Seeing as the ps2 will never evolve, and god only knows if not by now then soon the ps2 will be maxed out on FFXI, we can all safely assume that FFXI will not really evolve much further than it has now.




But if games like WoW, for instance, can say "get a better PC or tough shit", how come SE can't say, "get a PC u ps2 failure, or gtfo"? D:

[Sesshoumaru]

any one check out that mmo AION?

it looks sick.

and SE fails as others have stated.

Its not the PS2 limitations. Its the take 4 fucking years to get off their lazy ass and do shit limitations. I mean come on!
Also Se is totally inept at the whole reward as your go thing. until you prgress to the end of most thing you see like 0 turnout. I mean hey its cool and all PM was a bitch and you got a decent ring out of it but shit how about some love from start to finish say a nice reward as you progress 25% you get a cool earring 50% through a nice back item 75% a cool head item 100% complete a kick ass ring. make the misisons hard I kinda like it that way, but make it worth doing them also.

Kinda like AF it damn near one of the best feeling in the whole FFXI experience to level a job and get the nice AF from 52-60. Every level you actually have something to spurr you on. if SE gave me 6 extremely hard O/U type fights for Wotg but after each once I got a cool item I wouldn't complain.

[Hyan]

Who cares what they did in the past, if they're doing just fine now >_>; (except in the case of einherjar, although if you get to Odin the drops are pretty good actually. I just wish the system didn't fail..)

lolCoP, but it gave us rewards by unlocking new areas where you can pop NM's which drop good stuff...(=swift belt, soboro sukehiro, voyager sallet).. It's not as good as giving the rewards by just doing missions but I don't think it's that bad either. At the end of CoP you get rewarded with access to sea, limbus, ws gorgets, and later cop earrings (+ tavnazian and cop rings). Anyway, CoP sucked for the most part but that's past and ToAU did better ^^

[Araius]

But if games like WoW, for instance, can say "get a better PC or tough shit", how come SE can't say, "get a PC u ps2 failure, or gtfo"? D:

Because SE's primary player base is Japanese, the vast majority of which are console gamers, not PC. And the majority of those console players are on PS2, I believe (based on the 360's sales over there compared to PS2/PS3). So they'd be alienating a huge chunk of their primary customers if they did that.

This might be a grossly rash generalization, but I get the feeling that so many of the JP players are such SE fanboys that they tend not to complain about crap like we do, hence SE's apathy, lack of urgency, etc. when it comes to updates and fixes. I remember something back when ToAU was coming out (or maybe it was WotG..but well before its release) where a Japanese fan site made a remark along the lines of "Gee, it'd be nice for CoP to get finished and have these things work better, but we're so excited about the new expansion that we don't care really! Yay! " Made me want to throw up.

I'm not just saying "omg its all the jp's fault", I'm just stating what seems to be differing attitudes when it comes to the feedback we give SE. If it were the other way around, if we were the fanbois and the JP's were the ones giving actual feedback, I believe we'd see more dedication to fixing shit that's broken. But that might not be the case, and we'll probably never know either way.

[Rags]

I tend to agree I think the Japan player base is just fine with whatever S.E puts out and calls Final Fantasy. I had a f riend who used to read their web sites and they never really did much complaining until RMT got involved then that was most of their crying for the most part. WEll other then how we suck and were holding all the mobs for NA time. Another thing thats funny when you think about it most of the hacks and cheats were created by the Japanese.

I am not happy with the expansion. This one seemed really rushed to me. An for whats its worth does not have much content. Not to mention its been out since Nov and there has not been one update or patch release notes. Something they did all last expansion. As it stand now I wouldn't be surprised if the next update was the second week of march. That will put us at 4 months.

[Octavious]

iirc one of the topics about the Valentines Day thread stated that the update for WOTG would not be till February/March now. Which I can honestly say will probably not come till March as SE is late on...well...90% of everything they release. D:

As far as happy with the expansion? It was semi dissappointing to have it on Day 1 for my 360, and 4 days later on PC, only to be able to do...2 missions? I remember the release of CoP had everything up to the Mammet BC with the first patch yea? I did everything up to Minotaur and was pumped. With WOTG it feels like "YAY CaitSith, OMG everyone is at war! ..Wait why can't I enter Jeuno? Where's the chocobos??? /sigh"

I enjoy Campaign, but even the current Campaign ops/Campaign Battles are beginning to seem more monotonous then some of the assaults I spam for points. @.@

[Araius]

I think the thing is, since most JP gamers are console rather than PC, the majority of them have no other recourse as far as MMO's are concerned. Especially since SE is so huge over there, they probably wouldn't leave no matter what. So there's not much point in SE fixing what's broken if the JP's aren't going to quit anyways. Hell most of them have been playing longer than us anyways and are still at it.

[Octavious]

I see what your saying. I remember wanting to import some previous FF titles as they always used to take forever to get to the US. Yea I know forever isn't 10months but it feels rough QQ.

An old friend from a LS is studying abroad in Japan, and posted pictures of some drink with FFVII characters on it called 'potion' lol. It was the best gimmick product i've ever seen...and I wanted one heh >.>

[neochaos]

JPs tend to like all that roleplaying stuff, which, while there ARE plenty enough NA's that for some reason love to death roleplaying and being anime fanboys/girls, I can safely assume that most of the hardcore FFXI players dont play it to "roleplay" >.> (this doesn't include cybering for the lolpeople out there). So what we have here is a multi-national game, produced in one country, and caters mainly to that one country.


*sigh*, when people make justifiable claims as to why SE does such stupid shit, it makes me realize I only hate this game more. SE should just stick to what it's best at, RPGs. If they are truly making another MMO, god I can only hope they go about that one in a totally different manner.

[Lucavi]

god I can only hope they go about that one in a totally different manner.

You mean not making it for an already eight-year old console, releasing it multi-nationally, yet with the objective of only putting out content that will cater to the home nation of where it was created?

Yeah, I don't see SE doing that anytime soon. Sorry.

[Lordender]

SE could of handled this game a lot better over the years than they did. I really think they made a great game otherwise I wouldn't be playing it still. I look at FFXI as a learning experience for SE because when word got out that SE was making a MMO everyone became skeptical at how they would make the jump from console single player to MMO status.

In the future SE needs to learn how to listen/communicate with all their customers better, get a much better GM system in place that will produce much more positive results from GM calls and be much more aggressive about game changes rather than waiting years to address issues.

[Rags]

Really if S.E early on had dropped the console, added a few more ways to exp and stayed ontop of certain issues. They would be giving WoW all they could handle.

I can understand not dropping the console. But whats their excuse for not opening up a few more doors to obtain average exp early on or fixing the countless problems when they were brought about. This right there would have kept more people involved in FFXI and brought new people in without them staring at a screen for 4 hours trying to land a party/make a party.

[Kyreth]

Thing is, I think the average gaming company tends to listen to the majority- and weight that bias towards their own nationality.

The question we should ask as to "Why aren't changes done like we want" is:

Do the JP players have the same issues with the game? What are their major issues with gameplay?

I know we're ignored relative to that group of players- because the playerbase that is most easily understood by the devs gets the cookies. That is, despite having a significant number of players in the system, we're effectively a smaller group by bias. Nothing like "USA ARE PIGS", but simply a Sundi-ish "wut?" because the social links JP player to JP devs have doesn't exist between NA player to JP devs.

Relaunch FFXI as a PS3/Xbox/PC game as FFXI-2 or FFXI International Edition (since it's become that since it's old JP/US days) with updated stats/graphics/lack of lolPS2limitations and it'd stand up to the modern MMORPG market just fine. Allow character transfers to the updated coding/servers and allow FFXI to gracefully die in bed, as the new version takes over from the old and expanded content can be done with the improved baseline systems. "LOL, PS3 limitations" won't happen for another 4-5 years easy.

Otherwise, FFXI stands along with most older MMORPG's as a aging system with it's diehard playerbase that will slowly wither away as it's been doing, but since it's so cheap when you're not developing full-bore new content/coding/servers/etc...S-E will keep it around. PC's will pretty much be able to run this forever, even after PS2's and Xboxes are relics themselves. Development will be from C-grade interns and minor programmers low on the S-E totem pole, a "safe project" the new kids can't break too badly.

TL-DR: JP devs will never understand us as well as they do their own countrymen. FFXI will never be WoW as is, with a devoted, A-team group pumping new content into it simply due to it's age, unless it was rebuilt from "scratch".

[neochaos]

Part of what I meant when I said "go about it a different way" was, everytime a great idea gets put out, etc, the devs or whoever complain that "it would be too hard to code" or something along those lines. I claim total ignorance to anything involving programming, don't know shit about it. But if there IS a way to make an MMO that CAN have changes implemented without it being "too difficult", they should try that. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say the answer to my aformented question is "dont have it on a dead console", lol.

I like the idea SE had for FFXI to be on consoles AND PCs, to cater to both ends of the player spectrum. Unfortunately, as far as MMOs go, PCs are ever changing, evolving. Newer graphics cards will be made, larger memory, etc. Consoles don't really "evolve", not on that sort of scale anyways. Outside of the technical difficulties encountered with the game, gameplay is another issue altogether SE should change should they make another MMO.

I've played WoW for about a month now, and one of the biggest differences I've seen between it and FFXI, is that WoW is so much more like a game than FF is. You can solo all the way to 70 in that game in a relative amount of time, and the only time you need others' help is for instances, and other rarely occuring missions. Depending on ur job in FF, soloing can start to become difficult as early as level 5. Having FF gameplay so heavily dependant on other players makes the game incredibly tedious.

The other issue I dislike about FF as it stands, needless time consumption. Biggest case and point: early AU missions/post 8-4 CoP missions. All that bullshit where you have to wait till the next JP midnight, etc. Very annoying.

If FFXI isn't thinning out right this moment, I can assure you it will in the coming months, before the end of the year. A big chunk of the playerbase that started at or within 6 months of NA release have left this game, be it for another MMO, being banned, or having their accts comprimised somehow. As time goes on, the strong playerbase now will get bored of FFXI (that is of course unless SE rectifies this, hopefully). I don't wanna see a game I've spent 4 years thus far playing to die, but it's not like SE is on the ball to prevent this (Please check the lack of any notion for an update since lolWotG was released), so yeah.