June Version Update Notice (04/25/2008)

[Nyuneko]

soooooooooooooo who thinks that nin scythe thing is nyzul relic?

I think it's part of the fellowship update.

If they had a label for the update news picture, it would be like this:
[Chocobo Raising]//[Mission-related]//[Fellowship]
[Chocobo Raising] is obvious; [Mission-related] is also obvious with Cait Sith; [Fellowship] is probably the last picture, with fellowship being updated to being able to wear any Salvage set if we summon it while wearing the full set(Of course, Fellow wouldn't gain the stat bonus), and the kama is the next upgrade for fellowship katana.

[Ryko]

now one thing I don't want FFXI to become is an instanced game.

Yeah god forbid the game be any less bottlenecked.

Would asking how long SE can wait before they do shit like uh... add TOAU relic armor, do something worth a shit with WOTG or just in general stop forcefucking campaign down people's throats before people get pissed as a whole be trolling?

[Maxxthepenguin]

ITT people have different opinions about what path the game should go and think they are actually factually right

[Ryko]

ITT people have different opinions about what path the game should go and think they are actually factually right

Does riding the fence (stating nothing) with an air of superiority about it actually do any good or is it just for kicks.

[Maxxthepenguin]

ITT people have different opinions about what path the game should go and think they are actually factually right

Does riding the fence (stating nothing) with an air of superiority about it actually do any good or is it just for kicks.

Well, I would hope it would make people think that thinking that they are correct and the different opinions are wrong is, well, wrong. This isn't a case of being right or wrong.

Of course realistically, that wont happen so I'm more or less doing it for kicks.

[Talint]

Another possible solution would be something like adding more escort quests, and reset them at JP Midnight as a quest for 800-1400 EXP once a day isn't game breaking. You could also adjust the recast time on the solo ENM, or have it grant more EXP.

This, here, is the correct answer.

If you get all 5 exp scrolls in a week (Escort, Cookbook, Mammets, Spice Gals, and Chocobo), you're lucky if you get 5k out of it.

Add a few more quests/make them more frequently repeatable, and make them scale with level (8-10%, say), and suddenly you've got a way to get to 75 that doesn't take away from the EXP hamster-wheel-loving s, but allows people to explore more options than to just murder the same mob until your eyes and ears bleed.

[arus2001]

I can't really say "people like to party!" is an overwhelming majority, nor the reason why many of us even play this game. It's just a brush stroke in the proverbial big picture. As such, more worthwhile solo content shouldn't be shunned. You could best liken it to what posters may desire here, then at KI, then at Alla. You might find some overlap, but each is conveniently their own majority because the regulars in each domain are likely drawn in by something beyond the game.

On paper, what WoW offers should be the game for me. Yet, it's an eyesore and its PvP-centric nature tends breed things worse than "idiots" in FFXI who only level up solo or with PLs at their beck and call. I hate LFG and not having the essentials for even a low-man outing. Half the time it's these same people who "like to party" that demand we have 6 and crowd into an already filled camp for sub-par EXP. I could disband, sure, but I'm not getting anywhere. Nobody else learns if they're not open to suggestion, either.

When I see people say things like, "This can't work!" I see, "I can't think of a way to make this work!"

At present, a lot of the EXP scroll quests just aren't worth the effort. Sure, I could fetch 3-5k on those alone per week, but it likely means me soloing a scale in Riverne and hoping it doesn't take forever to drop, hoping nobody else is doing CN escort when I want to (on top of me gearing a job capable of soloing it), or mercifully hoping too many aren't running around the Sacrarium looking for the cookbook. Ops offering their 2.4kish a week doesn't help if I find myself with an abundance of time, but nobody to party with, either.

Campaign is nice, but it essentially caps out at at like 4800/hr if you're diligent and lucky. A more reasonable number, including zone hopping and things actually lasting would be 3k. When you're staring at 30k+ TNLs, or need X amount of merit points, the convenience suddenly becomes a thorn. LFG while doing this is never a guarantee you'll get a party. Said group is never a promise to be productive. Campaign can dry up notoriously, and seems to suck a lot when you reach the last 3 days of the week when forts might be depleted and one wave is all that's needed to end things. Hell, cmap3 being so damned behind actual happenings doesn't help, either. So, would 7k/hr, 10k if you're a god of Campaign, be a bad thing? I don't think so. A good party will still be better, always. Not just with EXP, but with seals and loot to sell.

I'll just chalk it up to there being a lot of stuff SE could do to make everyone happy, but don't for some weird reason. Could be a small dev team. Could be some whacky japanese philosophy rejecting gaijin opinion. Could be them not knowing their own game. Who knows at this point, but I don't think any reasonable idea should ever be outright rejected without some contemplation.

[Koyangi]

It's only based on a party system in the sense that normal solo is practically non-existant. The changes it would take it make the game solo friendly are minor, the only reason they haven't been made is because SE chooses not to, not because it couldn't be done or it would cause too much damage to the rest of the game. Also, most MMOs have solid solo play, So ringthree, you're very wrong about what Inactive meant. If we classify all of these games as MMOs, FFXI is lacking something that's usually common to the genre. It's as if we took out the goal posts in football, but still expected you to hit that particual point in the air. You could still play, but it's be more difficult for the kicker, wouldn't it? You can't go the 'WoW isn't FFXI' route every time someone mentions WoW in passing. Like it or not, it's the most successful MMO, so someone mentioning it as a standard shouldn't be everyone's que to break out the defensive fanboy pitchforks. If you think lacking solo play is what makes FFXI special, you might be right, but special doesn't always mean good and there are much better unique aspects of the game that really separate it from WoW et al. Solo isn't some totally foreign concept that's incongruous with FFXI, it's just a function that's inexplicably minimized. While I like Campaign, as someone said, it's only really viable for 60+ (that's when you get 100% exp/AN from your actions), so it's not really for everyone. 61-62 is the half-way point exp-wise, so that's only half your pre-merit time (though we all know, as far as exp goes, merit is all that really matters, but still.)

won the thread I say

[orson]

Yutuyu seriously you're not making any valid points. Basically every time someone suggests anything that you don't agree your response is "If you don't like it GFTO and go play another game." Not only that the only reason you say that solo = bad is because you really really really like parties and there's a slim chance that if they allowed solo play then your fun might be impacted. Your whole argument isn't based on what would improve the game but what you prefer. SE could easily add solo exp systems that aren't as good exp as parties and they would never replace parties.

Right now Campaign Ops, Fellow's, and Exp scroll quests are already there but they suck balls for the time put in vs the reward. Obviously since SE is putting more work into the Fellow they want to improve solo play (unless they're making fellows more compatible for parties.) The problem is each one of these systems are brutally limited you earn a tiny fraction of the exp that you could in a party.

You're completely avoiding the fact that FFXI's exp system as it stands completely fucks over the casual player. If I want to level Drk I have to take 5-15 min swapping gear because I may have muled my gear. Turn on seeking and look to see there is a War, Nin, and Drk seeking and that is it, so I sit there and wait (possibly go to try to solo shitty EPs for laughable exp.) Then finally after waiting an hr I get an invite and I say sorry I've only got another hr left to play the person says, "No thanks, I don't want to invite you because after the 30 minutes it takes the other fucking retards who don't have OP warps to get to camp I'll have to invite a replacement right away." Don't tell me this shit doesn't happen all the time.

The exp system is fucking terrible as it is. You're selfish little attitude is the only reason you can't see that a solo system would improve the game, most likely draw more players, and let people exp while seeking so that there would be more people wanting to spend there time seeking!

/facepalm

You just ignored like 2 pages of reasoning explaining why solo XP can't be more efficient than party XP because of game design all the while saying that anyone that didn't agree with you was biased, then doing then same exact thing yourself. That is pretty much the definition of /facepalm.

You aren't reading because I'm not saying make solo more efficient than party exp. Also no, 90% of what people have said about why solo exp shouldn't be allowed is selfish reasons that they took very little time to even think about how flawed the party system is. Anyways I'm done with this tired argument I'll keep sending my suggestions to SE and you can keep sending, "Don't alter the game at all I love it the way it is!"

[ringthree]

This thread has devolved into "I'm right, because I am right" and "No, I am right, because I am right." The party advocates are going to say that the game was designed to be played with parties, and the solo advocates are going to say the game should be solo based.

It's worthless at this point.

[ringthree]

Yutuyu seriously you're not making any valid points. Basically every time someone suggests anything that you don't agree your response is "If you don't like it GFTO and go play another game." Not only that the only reason you say that solo = bad is because you really really really like parties and there's a slim chance that if they allowed solo play then your fun might be impacted. Your whole argument isn't based on what would improve the game but what you prefer. SE could easily add solo exp systems that aren't as good exp as parties and they would never replace parties.

Right now Campaign Ops, Fellow's, and Exp scroll quests are already there but they suck balls for the time put in vs the reward. Obviously since SE is putting more work into the Fellow they want to improve solo play (unless they're making fellows more compatible for parties.) The problem is each one of these systems are brutally limited you earn a tiny fraction of the exp that you could in a party.

You're completely avoiding the fact that FFXI's exp system as it stands completely fucks over the casual player. If I want to level Drk I have to take 5-15 min swapping gear because I may have muled my gear. Turn on seeking and look to see there is a War, Nin, and Drk seeking and that is it, so I sit there and wait (possibly go to try to solo shitty EPs for laughable exp.) Then finally after waiting an hr I get an invite and I say sorry I've only got another hr left to play the person says, "No thanks, I don't want to invite you because after the 30 minutes it takes the other fucking retards who don't have OP warps to get to camp I'll have to invite a replacement right away." Don't tell me this shit doesn't happen all the time.

The exp system is fucking terrible as it is. You're selfish little attitude is the only reason you can't see that a solo system would improve the game, most likely draw more players, and let people exp while seeking so that there would be more people wanting to spend there time seeking!

/facepalm

You just ignored like 2 pages of reasoning explaining why solo XP can't be more efficient than party XP because of game design all the while saying that anyone that didn't agree with you was biased, then doing then same exact thing yourself. That is pretty much the definition of /facepalm.

You aren't reading because I'm not saying make solo more efficient than party exp.

No, you aren't reading because I agreed with that at least THREE TIMES on this very page.

Edit: Well... fuck, last very page. LOL

[Kenji]

Can anyone give me an argument against solo content? It already exists in the game, only that for exp it's weak compare to gaining money and completing quests.

I did, and it hasn't been responded to. Therefore, I'm apt to believe no one can argue against it.

What makes this game work, is that you're *forced* to party for good xp. If you enhance solo xp content too much, beyond what you can get with Campaign, you start to reduce the amount of jobs seeking for xp. This hurts the people who want to group up for xp.

ie, everyone else in the game.

And if the forced partying aspect is killed, then FFXI is killed. Those of us who love the forced partying aspect, have no other game to go to. What we're left with, is another WoW clone.

We don't want WoW. We don't want RO. WE don't want EQ.

You have a choice. If you want more solo content, there are a ton of MMO's out there for you. Go play them. It's a valid point, because we don't have anything else to play.

[Kyreth]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I do try to educate newer players when I party with them, but I am playing a game, not a job that I have to train my newer colleague everytime I join a group. And I do put my own parties together now and then(let's not talk/argue/debate about how each of us play, right? No point really.), but the choice are far and between these days, which is also one of the other problem with forced party play: We need certain jobs to progress in the game. And it's an increasingly apparent problem in FFXI's game design.

Truth be told, unless all jobs are made soloable (in which case, solo becomes the exp method of choice, anathema to FFXI's party system), certain job types are needed to progress. Always. In every MMORPG. Where problems with this materialize are when those job types aren't introduced together. We got Scholar. We got Dancer. We did NOT get Viking- S-E couldn't put together a good "tank" concept, though they tried for WoTG.

As for why you have to educate players? Because the ability exists to effectively skip this for those people who choose to powerlevel players. This means the things a player should have been learning at 12th aren't taught, nor at 20th, or 30th, or 40th...compounding into a ball of ignorance that rolls up to your party and thinks it knows "how to play" begins and ends with "Dude, where's the PL?". This needs to die. Like, die last year or maybe in 2003 dead.

When we make the party system about as dumb to progress with as a Maple Story battle, the problem begins. Now, requiring jobs that interested parties automatically level past, and one of them (tanks, which are only filled by PLD and NIN at most significant levels) having a very limited pool to select from....that's another problem. The ability to self levelcap at Moogles needs to be introduced to the game, similar to the Sol/Luna caps. Allow a player to cap at divisions of 5, give them experience points (and exp loss) based on the difference between actual level and capped level, just like a Promy area.

Voila. The party system now gains an immensely larger number of options for filling in spaces, as a friendly player can downlevel to fit in a party that he'd normally overwhelm, then uncap when and if the situation allows...and still gains a modest amount of experience points. Parties wouldn't automatically stagnate half-formed because the only healer is 3 levels too high, or the only tank is a L40 in a pack of L32's. Gear would still be an issue, but if there were constant reasons to keep gear, folks would be more inclined to keep NQ armor sets in storage for such occasions. Side benefit: More folks with stuff for those CoP level capped missions!

[ronin sparthos]

Truth be told, unless all jobs are made soloable (in which case, solo becomes the exp method of choice, anathema to FFXI's party system), certain job types are needed to progress. Always. In every MMORPG. Where problems with this materialize are when those job types aren't introduced together. We got Scholar. We got Dancer. We did NOT get Viking- S-E couldn't put together a good "tank" concept, though they tried for WoTG.

Dancer - effective TPburn-esque healer/DD
Scholar - effective middle-ground between WHM, BLM and RDM.

The reason SE couldnt put together another tank is because the 3 tank jobs we have in the game already cover every aspect of tanking that would be possible. You have blinking and evading from a Ninja and you have tanking through magic with a Paladin. Theres nothing that SE could put in the game at this point that would trump these - we HAVE viking already and its called a Warrior.

We all know why WAR isnt a great tank, we all probably know what needs to be done to make WAR desirable one day as a standalone tank/DD like it should be - but the fact that people mention viking like was something revolutionary when WAR is the very embodiment of Viking. All the game needs is a JSE set with horns on a helm for WAR and furcoats - voila.

As for why you have to educate players? Because the ability exists to effectively skip this for those people who choose to powerlevel players. This means the things a player should have been learning at 12th aren't taught, nor at 20th, or 30th, or 40th...compounding into a ball of ignorance that rolls up to your party and thinks it knows "how to play" begins and ends with "Dude, where's the PL?". This needs to die. Like, die last year or maybe in 2003 dead.

Im a firm believer that standard parties 10-50 are rich with much learning if you choose to seek out the knowledge and if you choose to ignore it thats your choice as well. PL'ing was always out there, it serves its purpose but even with one you can learn some basics in a party. Any new player who doesnt read forums or actively participate could learn much from observation in a typical party - post 50 this all comes crashing down due the party mechanics of ToAU but even in ToAU there are things to learn off others. Idiots will always spring up, but FFXI is one of the few MMOs that gives you a fighting chance pre-endgame to learn the fundamentals you'll need eventually for the endgame.

The ability to self levelcap at Moogles needs to be introduced to the game, similar to the Sol/Luna caps. Allow a player to cap at divisions of 5, give them experience points (and exp loss) based on the difference between actual level and capped level, just like a Promy area

This is an idea thats been tossed around before, the ability to cap yourself once your 75 for the purpose of EXPing in certain areas but frankly it'd cause alot of ripple effects across levels and it wouldnt be too long before someone found and exploit and everyone and their mother capped to a certain level and raked up EXP ignoring even more camps than we do today. It'd solve one issue but create another.

[Rocl]

I don't why there is twelve pages about this small blurb, but I'm assuming it's because you are retarded.

With that in mind, I'm locking this thread. Please try to fix FFXI when you design MMORPGs.