It pains me to say it, but FFXI has actually improved.

[Chenghiz]

It would be really cool if they spent some time making the newbie experience not suck total ass. Mark quests or direct me to them somehow, have a con system for quests, give me some fucking direction when I spawn and see the opening cutscene and ask myself what the hell I'm supposed to do. Let me see something other than rabbits and bats, and for fuck's sake fix the interface. Every time I start playing it feels like I'm fighting the UI.

Basically the same complaints everyone has I guess. It's hard to enjoy this game when WoW is better in every regard that matters to a starting player.

[Hoax]

Except WoW's world is boring, its classes are boring and leveling is WoW is boring if you've been playing these games as long and as much as I have?

For real they both suck, WoW just makes me feel like its going faster.   I'm amazed that at a "mature" site I hear so much fucking crying about both the linear shittastic design principals that have become the norm AND the fact that nobody is holding our dicks while we take a piss...

This isn't directed at you Chenghiz, just something that has been bugging me for awhile.  It just seems like such a have cake and eat it whine that I have to read too often.

I don't remember that much about FFXI but I distinctly remember the signet giving guys pretty much telling you what to do next, the quest chains being hard as balls at times but leading you from zone to zone and the ui being pretty average fare.  The big issue was it had too much console-style menu stuff going on, because it was obviously designed with a controler in mind at times.

*controller?  For real?  that looks retarded to me, god I'm tired.

[Chenghiz]

Even if FFXI's classes are interesting (and the job system is one of the super major reason I wanted to play) and the world is super awesome (In terms of graphic quality it really pales in comparison to WoW), that doesn't matter at all if I have to endure a bunch of mindless shit getting there. WoW's classes are diverse enough for me, and I'd contest that they are really not that boring at all, but that's a matter of subjectivity. (What makes a class boring, anyway?) If I wanted a world that was engaging and deep (again, WoW's world isn't that boring) I'd play any number of the single player RPGs that do a much better job of storytelling, anyway.

After the opening bit I'm told to talk to someone in a location. There's no record that I can find in my UI of whose name that is, and no marker on the map to help me find him/her. I find NPCs at the location I think I remember the guy mentioning but none of them are the right one. For a directed quest experience this is dogshit, and so is the UI. Why couldn't they put a PC interface on the PC version? I could probably design a better UI in a week or two, and in a world where we have people who do nothing but research usability and design interfaces it's pathetic. And again, it's not like it just released. It'll have its fourth expansion out soon. I even set up my USB-adapted Dualshock to use with it, and it still played like shit.

As for linearity, it's clearly possible to have both a directed experience and allow for freeform player activity. In a roleplaying-y sense I don't mind having to talk to a ton of unmarked NPCs to see who has quests. But when I finally find some and then find out that I can't do them until later because I'm too low level, but only after I try to do them and lose XP dying like an idiot... that's just shitty and not fun.

[Falconeer]

Definitely controller driven. Back in the days I even bought a very cheap adapter to play it with the PS2 controller, and it suddenly became more fun.
Until the mandatory group cockblock, which was bad because for the most part I couldn't find one, nor a guild fitting my low expectations.

P.S: Never had any problem with finding my way in MMOs, plus colour me jaded but I love to explore such worlds without too much tutoring. I can use exhaustive tooltips but that's basically it. Asking around and sharing knowledge is part of the fun.

[Margalis]

The "quest log" stuff in FFXI is very poor, it can be easy to forget what to do, what part of the quest you are on, etc. And the quests give really shitty rewards that are totally out of line with the work required. It's really not a quest-driven game, the only reason to do quests is for a couple key ones (spell-related mostly, like the teleports and drain/aspir) and to raise fame, but there are easy shortcuts to raising fame.

[grunk]

Fortunately I've never met anyone as deficient as grunk while playing, hopefully he's a bizarre fluke.  Although I've heard people murmur darkly about FFXI's version of endgame guilds, so apparently some of the 'I'm washing my armor with your tears' players are infesting the highest levels of the game.

Weird thing is, FFXI has instanced boss fights, but for some reason they stuck a whole pile of bosses outside of instances and in the normal game world, where they're subject to pissing matches like EQ's raid bosses were.  Apparently some players feel compelled to camp these monsters and be dicks about it to other players.

I guess i am kinda late here, and yeah im sorry for flaming you without reading your whole reply...

What you refer to are what we ffxi end gamers call, "Kings". Kings drop ABJ items (E Body) and epic weapons such as ridell. I dont do kings anymore, because they are exactly what you said (a pissing contest were the team with the most claim bots win)... but certain jobs have gear in other places, for example why on earth would a mage want Dalmatica when they can get a morgans robe from salvage? A lot of ABJ can now drops in Einjar (hope i am spelling that correctly, to lazy to check) and then you got stuff like Aries body which for me (A DRK) blows E Body away... also i wouldnt use the other purple items over Homams legs,hands and feet (haste > all) so i have no reason at all to venture into Dragons Array (cause i got a kraken club and a bah scythe so i i dont need a ridell). So i can i get my main armor from limbus and salvage, i can get my other stuff from sea and my back piece from dynamis (gah, if i could find a shell that does dream lands)...

bottom line is, i dont camp jack shit.

[grunk]

Fishing:
I found both the original and the new (anti-bot-measures-included) fishing to be pretty tedious.
It was decent money when people were buying moat carp by the boatload or during the various rusty cap madness bits.
Used to be a popular thing to bot.


Gardening:
Grow plants in pots in your moghouse.  Feed them crystals.  Get various results.
This used to be extremely good money.  A couple friends of mine had many alt characters just to have the max 10 pots per character for growing tree cuttings into saplings.  Saplings were used to grow trees to get high end crafting components.

- Q

By far the best implementations of fishing and gardening ever.  Oh Noes!  It's watersday, so sorry need to run back to moghouse and harvest.  Can I get a warp please?  I'll brb.

huh? you think thats bad? try telling your RL friends that you cant go clubbin on saturday because your expect a full moon for your ore harvest... and then you get nuttin but crap in your pots... (the sappling rate having a failure rate, along with the ore loto methods is why i dont garden no more)

[grunk]

The bitch to FFXI is the high cost of getting started in most money-making ventures.  I looked first at mining.  200 gil per pick, picks seem to break about 1/3 of the time when mining, and I dug up primarily iron ore.  Iron ore is a non-stacking item, to make it stackable you need Blacksmithing at level 20 to smelt them into ingots.  I spent about 7000 gil to raise Blacksmithing to 7, then ran out of gil and crystals.  At the rate things were going, it looked like it would run me another 20-25k to get Blacksmithing to 20 to be able to refine and sell the iron ingots.

The other thing I was finding in the mine was silver ore, and that's a whole different deal with Goldsmithing 20 to make ingots.

Once I actually get those crafting skills, a stack of iron ingots seems to go for a tasty 35,000 gil, and silver ingots for 25,000.  Very good money for someone who's never had more than 20k in his pocket.

The fishing is dirt cheap to do, but sloooooow at giving any sort of return.  Moat Carp go for 2,000 a stack, but it takes at least half an hour to get a stack of the things.

I have around 45 beastman seals now, so once I hit 40 I'll be able to give that fight a whirl and pray for a lucky drop.

doing ENM's and getting a cloud evokers is a big money maker, then you donate it to a oryuu pop and you will get all of the non rare/ex items he drops (can make a good mil off that).

The econ tho, is so dry that now the best thing is actually farming quest repeatables or just stuff you NPC... there is a certain Quadarv that drops a maul... you can fill up on and sell... if your a good DD you can probably make ? 30k an hour?

Thats the biggest problem with ffxi atm, making gil is not possible... the whole econ is broken, the crafting system is broken... its all fucked up. SE needs to blow up crafting as we know it and make it more like Vanguards crafting system. Add new items into the game that people will need... do something because i just cant even bare myself farming at 30k an hour...

[LK]

Never thought I'd hear someone say that a game needed to be more like Vanguard.

[Margalis]

The economy is not that bad, making gil is hard but so is spending it. Making gil used to be easier, but then again things cost 5-20x as much.

Crafting certainly has problems in that the finite demand for many items is close to exhaustion and the perishable goods have heavy competition.

I think the biggest problem now is that many end-game activities take money and the cost has not adjusted to match overall deflation. The prices on NPC end-game items and activities needs to come down to be in line with the changing value of currency.

[grunk]

The economy is not that bad, making gil is hard but so is spending it. Making gil used to be easier, but then again things cost 5-20x as much.

Crafting certainly has problems in that the finite demand for many items is close to exhaustion and the perishable goods have heavy competition.

I think the biggest problem now is that many end-game activities take money and the cost has not adjusted to match overall deflation. The prices on NPC end-game items and activities needs to come down to be in line with the changing value of currency.

The crafting system in FFXI has been broken since day one. I have been an artisan level crafter in every mmo i have ever played but FFXI which i have now played as long as EQLive.... When i make something I am in the red by 80% of every synth, thats broken. IMO EQ2 and Vanguard have the two best crafting systems among the fantasy mmo scope. SE needs to add more items, create more farming grounds...

a RR2 neck piece costs 40k? a limbus run 30k ... some bison steak, another 10k a pop, aside for making my own corrupt sky or dynamis shell (lol, a conversation for another thread) how on earth is a nucka suppose to get hes game on!?

My beef is i love crafting but i can't. Only way to make real money is to garden but here is the problem "EVERYONE IS DOING IT".

The idea that the econ is now normal, thats not true. the first run of inflation (on Remora and valefor), the sniper ring went up to 250K. at the height of inflation on my server, the sniper was around 600k... granted when it was 600k i made a lot of gil... now the sniper is around 300k... so in reality this shit is not "normal", it never was... What we are seeing, is the healing from over 2+ years of fish botters, that the fish botters (rusty caps) ruined this econ to the point where people dont even know wtf "normal" is... So SE did what they wanted, in trying to bleed money out of the game, but there initial vision of gil being something hard to obtain is broken when we are very much still, in an inflation period... of course the idea is that this will sort itself out... on its own (something that SE is known for doing lol) but imo, im not exactly excited about the current system and imo, it should be changed.

I think a merc mission system (like agent missions in EvE) would be a good idea for gil making. and the crafting changes (just blow it up) would be a start... how the fuck am i going to pay 4 mil for aries body lol when i finally get the pieces... i could make the gil if i grinded/farmed it... but would i rather bleed my eyes, or play Call of Duty 4 lol??? i think im going to play my new xbox games TYVM.


p.s.

if you havent already get the new windower, i run it at max resolution and the game looks AMAZING (best looking mmo on the market)

[Kitsune]

I got my summoner to level 22, and over the last three days I fought and beat the six avatars in the solo fights to make them my bitches.  Those were easily the most stressful, challenging, and exhilarating fights I've had in the game, every victory was a moment of pride for me.  That being said, the summoner job aims repeated punches squarely at your balls, and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone without a high-level job.  Making it through the first 20 levels with no avatars but Carbuncle quite frankly sucks, hard.  Your little pokemon avatar has a whopping two powers at that level: an attack that does mediocre damage and a heal that heals mediocre health.  He's useful for pulling monsters and distracting any adds that spawn next to the party in the middle of a fight, but not much else.  So, in short, a low-level summoner without the other avatars has almost nothing to offer a party, and it's basically an act of charity to be invited into a party.  I had white mage as a support job, of course, so I was spending my time healing instead of actually using the avatar just to make myself vaguely useful.

But now, at long last, I have seven avatars at my disposal, and the new ones have a fair bit more oomph to their powers than Carbuncle does, so I'm looking forward to having much a much less pathetic role in the parties I join.  [PROTIP: Parties still want the summoners just to heal.  These parties will be sad when a summoner joins and actually summons anything, but that's their tough shit because I worked my ass off for those avatars.]

[Margalis]

Even with all the avatars Summoner is pretty useless at low levels. The job is not really designed very well, at the lower levels the damage spells are not cost-effective and the buffs in general cost way too much for their utility. For example Ice Spikes, which covers everyone but is only useful for the tank yet costs a ton.

In general it is a lot of healing. Tail Whip and Burning Punch are the first two avatar attacks actually worth using, and Aerial Armor with non-ninjas is the only buff worth using for a while.

I solo'd my way to 27 or so. (Worms in Karraloaka tunnel)

[Kitsune]

I had my first exposure to skillchains this weekend, at least as an active participant.  While I was leveling as a white mage I was only in one party that actually skillchained, and that was in forty-two levels.  As a summoner, however, I had every level one and two skillchain at my disposal along with every element, so when I started up a party in Qufim I figured it was high time to get things kicked off.  It took a minute of polling the party samurai to find out what their best weapon skills were, and some consulting with a chart, but once we had the plan down things started rolling smoothly, with the two samurai doing an ice/water skillchain and me following with a magic burst from Shiva's ice magic.  We were getting off a skillchain/MB on nearly every fight, things were dropping like flies, everyone was happy.

Eventually one of the samurai had to go and was replaced by a ninja, who sadly wasn't nearly as on the ball with her weapon skills.  We were still managing to do the skillchains, but it was only once every 3-4 fights at that point.  To be fair to the ninja, the samurai were clearly set up for quick TP gain; some of the holdup was the simple fact of her taking longer to reach 100%, but the samurai had macros set up with party tells and delay timers for their weapon skills and were well-prepared for skillchaining.  I have to say, it made the party combat much more entertaining, and it was very satisfying to have my avatar nuke the crap out of a monster with the extra burst damage.  I also preferred it to EQII's 'match the arbitrary icon' skillchain system; we picked a set series of attacks and spells that would work best for the sitation and just had to stick with the plan.

[KyanMehwulfe]

What's the word on the new Campaign feature?

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/update/ff11us/20071120jegm22/detail.html

It seems pretty interesting. I'm cautious, however, based on its use of various terms or descriptions. The campaign-ops; the supply chains or reinforcements; the tactical assessments. How are these things in practice (or more importantly, how literal are they)? What sort of player voting does the assessment entail? How dynamic is the territory control, the taking of keeps by monsters, etc? Is it mostly just grinding with just nice decoration and buzzwords or does it really offer a decent new PvE 'war effort' of sorts?

Also, I notice you get no XP/items with the main Campaign--what about the campaign-ops? It mentioned that they work as low as Lv10, and that intrigued me as a possible new way to level up from scratch (why else start offering it at Lv10). The expansion is basically Vana'diel's classic lands in the past during this way, right? Does it offer Lv1-70 content?

[Kitsune]

At the moment, Campaign is frankly balls.  You can fight at level 10 and get rewards, but in order to actually get to the past and survive for more than ten seconds you need to be in the higher levels.  Once you reach the past, you have to go on foot through several zones of level 60+ monsters to reach a city and sign up with one of the nations' armies.  (If you do go back to the past, be sure to go through EVERY time portal you see; the only way to use a portal from the present is to have used it in the past.)  So once you've waded through zones of instant death and opened the portals in some zones, you can use the portals to pop back in time and fight during the Crystal War.  The zones by the cities (Sarutabaruta, Gustaberg, Ronfaure) are mostly level 15-ish monsters, so they're more or less safe for low-level characters, except for the level 60+ beastmen randomly wandering around.

Once you get involved in a campaign battle, you get experience and tickets that can be exchanged for items.  Only problem being that the items suck.  Hard.  After looking over each and every one, there wasn't a single one that I actually wanted.  Perhaps in the future the items will be improved, or there will be some crafting recipes to make upgraded versions, but as it stands right now, they aren't worth it at all.

If you don't care about crappy rewards, the campaign fights themselves can be fun, like Besieged on a much bigger scale.

[Margalis]

I like campaign. Unlocking the maws is a pain in the ass, but once done they provide another handy travel option with your home-city teleporters.

Campaign itself is basically a series of smaller besieged happening 24/7. On my server we took all the territory from the beastmen almost immediately and have not lost any land since then. I imagine that similar to Besieged they will make it harder over time, doesn't make sense to make it difficult right out of the gate.

I'm not really sure what the deal is with the stuff like the voting and missions. The missions give you some crap XP (like 100-200) and some Allied Notes. I did one assessment and got a higher rank. To get a higher rank I'm not sure if you need to do missions, fight in battles or both. Some of the missions have tangible effects on the world, like increasing the resources at a stronghold or hurting an enemy fortification. It is also very random which missions are available, maybe it depends on your nation's current strategies.

I don't really understand the strategies at all. It's too new at this point.

Basically you warp to a battlefield, fight some monsters, get some XP and notes, repeat. If you can melee you get pretty decent XP, if you can only hang back and heal you don't. So it's isn't appropriate for level 10.

It is pretty fun if you have a couple of hours or are looking for group. The XP rater of return is much better than Beseiged. At this point it's more of a fun thing than a hardcore XP thing but you can get pretty good XP if you can melee without dying constantly. (60+)
---

In other news, yesterday I beat the Shadow Lord. Yay. One nice thing about this game, it does have cool plot, music, cutscenes, etc. It kind of made me sad a little.

[geldonyetich2]

I pretty much killed this game for myself with Summoners.  I don't have a high-level job, I think my highest is a 30 Red Mage, and basically burned my entire fortune on the solo avatar fights.  I think I recovered 3 or 4 of them before a chain of yaguto drink burning failures caused me to throw my hands up in despair.  I'm not sure if those avatar fights have become any easier since then or not.

One of these days I'd like to return to FFXI, but I get the feeling it'll be hard on the long returning player.  (Besides, it sucks time to an irrational degree... but then, so do most MMORPGs.)

[Velorath]

(Besides, it sucks time to an irrational degree... but then, so do most MMORPGs.)

And God knows you don't have a seemingly inexhaustible amount of free time on your hands or anything.

[Kitsune]

The solo avatar fights hinge a lot on your species.  Taru have the worst time of it; their low HP is crippling when it's pretty inevitable that the avatar will whack you a few times during the fight.  Other folks don't have much of an issue.  As long as you're not a Taru and walk in with a boiled crayfish (+30% defense), some buffs put on you by a sympathetic higher-level mage, a hi-potion or two, some mulsum, and a yagudo drink, and you fight the avatar on the day that it's weak to, the fight should go okay.  Having macros set up for everything is a ++good idea, too.  My G15 keyboard is a huge help for fighting with my summoner; I can summon any avatar and use any bloodpact with the press of a button.

[grunk]

the greatest version of FFXIV was CoP. once the cap was increased and that texas abortion of an expansion treasures,
the moment you remove player interdependence you loose what makes mmorpgs great experiences. i was one of those players that worked hes ass off to get through CoP, it took many hours and many favors called in for the final fight (i had to have that ring).......

THE FUCKING IDEA. THAT SOME SPED, GETTING OFF FROM A HARD DAYS WORK OF COLLECTING GLASS,  CAN NOW SOLO THAT.... MAKES MY FUCKING SKIN CRAWL.

[Sky]

the greatest version of FFXIV was CoP. once the cap was increased and that texas abortion of an expansion treasures,
the moment you remove player interdependence you loose what makes mmorpgs great experiences. i was one of those players that worked hes ass off to get through CoP, it took many hours and many favors called in for the final fight (i had to have that ring).......

THE FUCKING IDEA. THAT SOME SPED, GETTING OFF FROM A HARD DAYS WORK OF COLLECTING GLASS,  CAN NOW SOLO THAT.... MAKES MY FUCKING SKIN CRAWL.

I polish my armor with your tears.

[01101010]

I polish my armor with your tears.

Some sympathy here. This man is obviously having a stroke.

[Cyrrex]

A necro of a post 14 years dead, and I am instantly entertained.

[grunk]

the greatest version of FFXIV was CoP. once the cap was increased and that texas abortion of an expansion treasures,
the moment you remove player interdependence you loose what makes mmorpgs great experiences. i was one of those players that worked hes ass off to get through CoP, it took many hours and many favors called in for the final fight (i had to have that ring).......

THE FUCKING IDEA. THAT SOME SPED, GETTING OFF FROM A HARD DAYS WORK OF COLLECTING GLASS,  CAN NOW SOLO THAT.... MAKES MY FUCKING SKIN CRAWL.

I polish my armor with your tears.

your breath, smells of piss and shit.

[Rendakor]

Pretty sure he means FFXI, not XIV; right thread, just wrong number mentioned in the post. None of the XIV expansions have CoP as an acronym.

[01101010]

Pretty sure he means FFXI, not XIV; right thread, just wrong number mentioned in the post. None of the XIV expansions have CoP as an acronym.

Hence why I assumed he had a stroke. CoP is Chains of Promathia which was about the point I left FFXI - along with Treasures of Aht Urhgan in FFXI. I thought autocorrect but tried reading the rest and then noticed the poster.

[grunk]

you know wtf i am talkin bout!