FFXIV Random Speculation/Question thread II: Let's Speculate the Speculations

[King Zuca]

When you mention campaign, are you trying to say that people work together in that event? Its great that you can get some xp from it solo on jobs that are hard to get merits on and in short spurts, but who really enjoys it? Its merely a means to an end. I mean, I leveled my materia to ridiculous degrees in ff7 to beat emerald and ruby but did I enjoy grinding in the underwater sub? Not by a long shot.



I'm not sure what camaraderie you mean.

If you want to go back in time to the early days of ffxi, then you mean standing around jeuno putting a party together to go to some shitty place like Labyrinth of Onzozo or Cape Terrigan. Best case scenario, you are making the party, and putting together good jobs to make the right skillchain for the right magic burst. Usually this was based on what the BLMs highest nuke was that was effective against the mobs you were fighting. If the melee couldnt open or close the right skillchain, you would need a replacement. Sorry guy, continue seeking! Nice to meet you! Lets be friends!

Or you could have been seeking. You get invited to a party with no BLM oh noes! You were doomed to killing approximately 10 mobs and hour and rarley get past chain 2 if that. Everyone would either be in an irritable mood about slow xp and wasting time, or they would be a horrible player who was just glad they werent getting kicked.

Fast forward a few years, DW war was gods gift to parties. People who managed to get 1 job to 75 somehow but were horrible would take things that worked at 75 for merits at try make them work from the dunes on. Go to dunes on 15drg/7mnk (hi2u boost instead of voke!) sam/brd (throw out a song for att buff to other dds) or drk/whm (some extra cures in mostly shitty parties, and get derided for not using the proper sub for your job. I saw many a war/nin at level 13 trying to tank with 1 axe and no shield. "Itll be all good dog, ill have 2 axes soon!" Im willing to bet alot of players here did the same dumb shit I am describing and someone will tell me Im stupid for saying sam should sub brd at level 15 vs war.

Today, most players try like hell to only xp with friends if at all possible. The average party has actually gotten worse I believe than they were in 2004. I soloed 90% of thf to 65. Ive soloed rdm sub from 37-45 and pld from 1-45. Good players have the common sense to solo successfully, that leaves all the idiots to be seeking for parties. Anyone I know still playing leveling new jobs or subs is going to do it with only friends leveling jobs and friends willing to level sync down for good lower level camps (qufim, ronfraure birds).

I guess if by camaraderie then you mean the cliques that formed around the players with common sense wading through a sea of morons, trying to level up jobs without losing their sanity. And then the shout in jeuno/wg cliques that formed by all the shitty players who only xped with each other, thought ffxi was a hard game, and even today feel like they have achieved something by leveling a popular job to 75 even though they are horrible at it.

sounds to me like your time in FFXI for the most part sucked. im talking about the camaraderie that was possible in FFXI. i for one was in a number of very good linkshells during my 4 years of playing. and i had friends that would play too. of course you are going to get shitty parties and encounter idiots along the way, that doesnt mean camaraderie didnt exist. im not sayin it was perfect, i was tryin to keep my sentences short. but it was good, and at the least a step in the right direction. all that other shit you were sayin just sounds like complaints to me.

if you were ever in a good linkshell, there is no way anyone can tell me with a straight face that they didnt feel a sense of brotherhood with their fellow LS mates. if you didnt, your LS probably sucked.

[Jinko]

if you were ever in a good linkshell, there is no way anyone can tell me with a straight face that they didnt feel a sense of brotherhood with their fellow LS mates. if you didnt, your LS probably sucked.

This isn't really anything unique to FF11 though, if you play with people long enough and enjoy doing so you will get that same feeling in any game.

I think forced party play is both a good and bad thing in FF11 for obvious reason.

I am the sort of person who is quite happy to solo through to level cap and then group up for end content, thats not to say I don't like party play I just find it more hassle than its worth much of the time, especially in FF11.

[Zeno]

Where's the speculation? O_O

[Zeno]

Re; Guildleve Rewards

An old Dengeki report mentioned Guildleves can reward skill levels.

Ah, I like this idea. I wouldn't mind getting rewarded with skill exp. Maybe certain GL's can focus strictly on rewarding specific type of skill levels.

[Siatdiat]

sounds to me like your time in FFXI for the most part sucked. im talking about the camaraderie that was possible in FFXI. i for one was in a number of very good linkshells during my 4 years of playing. and i had friends that would play too. of course you are going to get shitty parties and encounter idiots along the way, that doesnt mean camaraderie didnt exist. im not sayin it was perfect, i was tryin to keep my sentences short. but it was good, and at the least a step in the right direction. all that other shit you were sayin just sounds like complaints to me.

if you were ever in a good linkshell, there is no way anyone can tell me with a straight face that they didnt feel a sense of brotherhood with their fellow LS mates. if you didnt, your LS probably sucked.

Yeah my ls was pretty bad at ffxi

Anyway, If you have the ability to comprehend what you read, you would see that I said people formed cliques. Yeah, I had alot of great friends and some I thought friends who never really were because hell, you dont really have to give a shit about people you meet online right? In the long run the best friends I had in ffxi I was never actually in an ls with, recently been playing casual old man style with people I knew since I didnt have a sub job and having a great time. FFXI isnt that great of a game, but its fun to spend time "doing stuff" online with cool people, regardless. I guess its technically a fancy chat room for me, but whatever. However, I dont think the millions of people who have started and quickly ended their FFXI experience ever felt that. Its definitely an mmo dinosaur in that if you dont start early, you come in late when everyone has done everything for the most part and noone feels like doing missions/content they have done a million times for people they didnt really come up in the game with. If there was a constant new player transfusion in enough abundance that they could help each other, maybe that would be different, but new players are too few and far between. People tire of expalining what they view as simple game mechanics over and over again.

[Reiryuu]

I have a question for those of you who have done crafting...

How resource intensive is crafting?

For example, in games like WoW, you need maybe 2 ores to refine to 1 ingot then you need to have X ingots to make 1 piece of gear.

In FFXI, IIRC, you needed 4 ore to create 1 ingot and several ingots to a piece. But unlike WoW, WAR, and other games currently out there, you had to mine a point and the ore you got was completely random-- not to mention the pickaxes breaking and getting pebbles and crap too. It made goldsmithing and blacksmithing rather frustrating or expensive no matter which path you took to get your materials.

Has this changed any in FFXIV and if so, how?

[Loaar]

Ah, I like this idea. I wouldn't mind getting rewarded with skill exp. Maybe certain GL's can focus strictly on rewarding specific type of skill levels.

I assumed that this meant you would skillup (your weapon/tool levels) while completing guildleves since they would be roughly aimed at your current level of advancement rather than "rewarding" you at the end.

For example, if your looking to raise your sword skill from 6-7, you would need to find mobs that are high enough, killing lower level mobs probably won't give you any skill points. Doing a guildleve where the recommended level was DoW 5+ would provide mobs that would definitely give you mobs that would let you skill up, thus removing the need to manually go hunting for mobs in the right level range.

Crafting/gathering would be the same. Mining a low level point would likely not give you skill points, but doing a leve that is appropriate to your skill level would direct you to mining points that would skill you up.

[Siatdiat]

I have a question for those of you who have done crafting...

How resource intensive is crafting?

For example, in games like WoW, you need maybe 2 ores to refine to 1 ingot then you need to have X ingots to make 1 piece of gear.

In FFXI, IIRC, you needed 4 ore to create 1 ingot and several ingots to a piece. But unlike WoW, WAR, and other games currently out there, you had to mine a point and the ore you got was completely random-- not to mention the pickaxes breaking and getting pebbles and crap too. It made goldsmithing and blacksmithing rather frustrating or expensive no matter which path you took to get your materials.

Has this changed any in FFXIV and if so, how?

I hate reading rude posts in response to posts like yours so I'm gonna be nice. Earlier in this thread it has come up a few times, if you read the thread you will see some informative posts from people participating in the alpha, but its alpha so we dont know "alot" about it yet. Reading up on it will be easier than me trying to put all the posted info into one simple post.

[King Zuca]

This isn't really anything unique to FF11 though, if you play with people long enough and enjoy doing so you will get that same feeling in any game.

I think forced party play is both a good and bad thing in FF11 for obvious reason.

I am the sort of person who is quite happy to solo through to level cap and then group up for end content, thats not to say I don't like party play I just find it more hassle than its worth much of the time, especially in FF11.

obviously it is not unique to FFXI, but its one of the only MMO's i have played, so i can't speak on a game i have never played

if soloing was possible to do in a reasonable timeframe in ffxi i would have done it too. i leveled melee jobs, the everyone-and-their-mother-played melee jobs, so i deffinitely know about the shitty aspects of party play in ffxi and by no means am calling it perfect lol. im just bringing it up so as to better speculate on how FFXIV can improve on this.

maybe they could implement places to level for any size party. for instance, can't find 6 ppl to go kill raptor parties? grab 1 person and go to a place suitable for 2 man parties. i think something like that would help alleviate the wait time for those who want to party, without forcing them to have to wait for the right classes to pop up.

i dont think it would be a great idea to make it so that you can solo all the way to endgame, because then when you get to endgame and you start participating in large-scale battles, you wont have a clue whats going on or how to work well with other classes for the most part(ever done a pick-up raid in WoW? then you know what i mean lol). i for one think endgame should be an area of the game for pro and dedicated players.

i like what they are doing with guildleves, and i wonder how great the differences in rewards is when completing them with more people. it should be a considerable difference, so as to encourage, not force group play. i speculate that that is the key to this games success.

[Lucavi]

I guess if by camaraderie then you mean the cliques that formed around the players with common sense wading through a sea of morons, trying to level up jobs without losing their sanity.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what many people mean. Nostalgia is one hell of a powerful drug, and it can affect us all. The reality of what was back then is neither as rosy as some make it, nor as dismal as others make it. It's somewhere in-between: an often-frustrating, flawed, but ultimately fun experience that really was what each individual made of it.

There was the bad, like the War/nin and Rng/nin elitism, but there was also the good, like the Christmas tree beta fight, but even then, good and bad are subjective. Some people though botting, and the associated drama, was a good thing. Others thought large-scale group fights, like Besieged, were the worst thing to happen to the game.

It is what it is, I guess.

[Loaar]

So far there is no reason to assume you will need to group up to exp in the same manner as FFXI.

People in the alpha has leveled as high as 15-18 pretty much solo and in a fairly short space of time (relative to FFXI) considering the few tests, the mob/lag/crashing issues etc.

From my experiences so far, grouping is about rewards, not exp.

[Lucavi]

I hope there will be mob trains in FFXIV. Some old-school concepts should never die.

[King Zuca]

I hope there will be mob trains in FFXIV. Some old-school concepts should never die.

wow. i honestly must say, some of the most fun and entertaining moments for me in ffxi were the insane mob trains people would bring to some zones. very few things were funnier then watching 20 goblins lay waste to everyone in the dunes to and from wherever they were chained from. classic.

[Siatdiat]

obviously it is not unique to FFXI, but its one of the only MMO's i have played, so i can't speak on a game i have never played

if soloing was possible to do in a reasonable timeframe in ffxi i would have done it too. i leveled melee jobs, the everyone-and-their-mother-played melee jobs, so i deffinitely know about the shitty aspects of party play in ffxi and by no means am calling it perfect lol. im just bringing it up so as to better speculate on how FFXIV can improve on this.

maybe they could implement places to level for any size party. for instance, can't find 6 ppl to go kill raptor parties? grab 1 person and go to a place suitable for 2 man parties. i think something like that would help alleviate the wait time for those who want to party, without forcing them to have to wait for the right classes to pop up.

i dont think it would be a great idea to make it so that you can solo all the way to endgame, because then when you get to endgame and you start participating in large-scale battles, you wont have a clue whats going on or how to work well with other classes for the most part(ever done a pick-up raid in WoW? then you know what i mean lol). i for one think endgame should be an area of the game for pro and dedicated players.

i like what they are doing with guildleves, and i wonder how great the differences in rewards is when completing them with more people. it should be a considerable difference, so as to encourage, not force group play. i speculate that that is the key to this games success.

I dont want you to think I have some personal beef with you, opinions are like assholes, etc. I agree about guildleves. I think leveling solo or in group should be comparable, and be enjoyable. Guildleves gives the option of xping solo and getting smaller rewards, but for those willing to put the time into grouping up for them, you will get bigger rewards for your time. Xp is just as fast, but you will be able to make more gil or get better gear from rewards in harder, larger group guildleves. Also, guildleves lend themselves to a better group making interface, hopefully they will not drop the ball with that. No matter what though the game needs to be enjoyable or its not going to prosper.

P.S. No achievements or trophys or any of that bullshit please. And please god no gear score bullshit either. My friend was telling me in wow he has to put all his "higher score" gear on to get invites, then switch to better options for his current role in the group. To clarify, he has to put on mixed gear for dps or tanking, then switch to all dps or all tanking gear to fulfill his role successfully. People dont check the gear, they just look at the score. Imagine someone inviting a warrior with askar body over hq haub b/c its higher level?

[Jinko]

wow. i honestly must say, some of the most fun and entertaining moments for me in ffxi were the insane mob trains people would bring to some zones. very few things were funnier then watching 20 goblins lay waste to everyone in the dunes to and from wherever they were chained from. classic.

I for sure don't want that, having a mob chase you for miles is no fun in 11 and would be even worse in a world with no actual zones.

Hopefully mobs will be on leashes.

It only takes one person to ruin your fun in those kind of situations.

[Reiryuu]

I hate reading rude posts in response to posts like yours so I'm gonna be nice. Earlier in this thread it has come up a few times, if you read the thread you will see some informative posts from people participating in the alpha, but its alpha so we dont know "alot" about it yet. Reading up on it will be easier than me trying to put all the posted info into one simple post.

Ack, did I miss that? Been following the thread pretty closely and I know they talked about crafting-- the process but I don't remember anything about mentioning the resource cost itself... will go back and look.

[King Zuca]

I dont want you to think I have some personal beef with you, opinions are like assholes, etc. I agree about guildleves. I think leveling solo or in group should be comparable, and be enjoyable. Guildleves gives the option of xping solo and getting smaller rewards, but for those willing to put the time into grouping up for them, you will get bigger rewards for your time. Xp is just as fast, but you will be able to make more gil or get better gear from rewards in harder, larger group guildleves. Also, guildleves lend themselves to a better group making interface, hopefully they will not drop the ball with that. No matter what though the game needs to be enjoyable or its not going to prosper.

P.S. No achievements or trophys or any of that bullshit please. And please god no gear score bullshit either. My friend was telling me in wow he has to put all his "higher score" gear on to get invites, then switch to better options for his current role in the group. To clarify, he has to put on mixed gear for dps or tanking, then switch to all dps or all tanking gear to fulfill his role successfully. People dont check the gear, they just look at the score. Imagine someone inviting a warrior with askar body over hq haub b/c its higher level?

nah we good pimp. and yea that score bs is seriously retarded. cant agree with you on trophies though, im a junkie for those lol. ooooo shinyyy!

[Siatdiat]

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what many people mean. Nostalgia is one hell of a powerful drug, and it can affect us all. The reality of what was back then is neither as rosy as some make it, nor as dismal as others make it. It's somewhere in-between: an often-frustrating, flawed, but ultimately fun experience that really was what each individual made of it.

There was the bad, like the War/nin and Rng/nin elitism, but there was also the good, like the Christmas tree beta fight, but even then, good and bad are subjective. Some people though botting, and the associated drama, was a good thing. Others thought large-scale group fights, like Besieged, were the worst thing to happen to the game.

It is what it is, I guess.

I saw the BG nidhogg video in my 60s as a blm in spring of 2004. All the shit I did after that was just a means to an end, I wanted to kill epic shit and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to play with some great players and accomplish alot early on in ffxi. I would have slogged through even shittier content and annoyances to do all of that over again. Pretty much the shit I loved back then stopped with COP wyrms. After that there was no valuable encounters. All these new hnms come out and are beaten in days. COP wyrms had a nice difficulty curve for the time. It was cool killing DL and vrtra before the JP on my server. Who killed krabkatoa first? Who really cares? Well maybe someone cares, but I dont know why.

[Loaar]

Ack, did I miss that? Been following the thread pretty closely and I know they talked about crafting-- the process but I don't remember anything about mentioning the resource cost itself... will go back and look.

Pretty sure you didn't miss it. There is nothing about the amount of resources used in crafting that I've seen so far. Maybe Siatdiat would be so kind as to be more specific about where he saw said info?

I think leveling solo or in group should be comparable, and be enjoyable. Guildleves gives the option of xping solo and getting smaller rewards, but for those willing to put the time into grouping up for them, you will get bigger rewards for your time. Xp is just as fast, but you will be able to make more gil or get better gear from rewards in harder, larger group guildleves. Also, guildleves lend themselves to a better group making interface, hopefully they will not drop the ball with that. No matter what though the game needs to be enjoyable or its not going to prosper.

100% agree with you on this one.

[Hyan]

I dont want you to think I have some personal beef with you, opinions are like assholes, etc. I agree about guildleves. I think leveling solo or in group should be comparable, and be enjoyable. Guildleves gives the option of xping solo and getting smaller rewards, but for those willing to put the time into grouping up for them, you will get bigger rewards for your time. Xp is just as fast, but you will be able to make more gil or get better gear from rewards in harder, larger group guildleves. Also, guildleves lend themselves to a better group making interface, hopefully they will not drop the ball with that. No matter what though the game needs to be enjoyable or its not going to prosper.

While I agree with you, I truly hope they won't make gil or gear so mundane that the incentive to group disappears. If gil is so easy to get, and higher level solo leves reward you with same (or better) gear than what you could currently get with 6-15 people, players will just solo few ranks more and then solo the easy leve with comparable rewards than try to group up and get the "better" low level armor at the right rank.

At some point the exp required would increase so much that wouldn't be viable anymore, but it would be sad to see grouping take a backseat for the first 40-50 ranks.