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Wanna get ff? Dunno? Heres the deal.
Arukard
Member Posts: 3
Enough with the flames, heres the fact jack.
The game ISN'T horrible. Its not the best mmorpg, but Ive practically played them all now (including the WoW beta) and FF-11 is the only one that really grew on me, and for a number of reasons. But first ill talk about why you might no want it.
The character customization is VERY basic, and there arent allot of different options for armor styles in lower levels, which is one of my major complaints. Also the 12$ price tag only buys you one character. What? One? Yes one. Now, by far the worst problem, is how bloody long it takes you to do things, crafting in particular. I hear complaints about slow leveling, but ive gone from 13-18 in one day in a good party, so thats just people who either dont know mmorpgs are SUPPOSED to take some time, or don't get to the level required for partying which is 10.
Leveling isn't a problem, MONEY is the big issue. To make gil you need gil, and LOTS of it. Ive been playing for 3 months and because of the hugh crafting prices, sometimes you have to pick one or the other per sitting, sence crafting is so time consuming that you have to sit for a good ammount of time for any progress.
Now, seeing as how thats pretty much it for the problems, heres why you might WANT this game.
Time consuming isn't always bad. I work out of the home online, and have allot of downtime with nothing to do. FF-11 is an awesome time killer if you need somthing to take up empty hours of the day. Not everyone wants to become uber in a day.
Though the character customization is limited, the gameplay it's self really makes up for it. In a party it really 'feels' like your working with your group, sence skills need to be done at certian times to perfrom chains for extra damage, and mages need to coordinate spells accordingly. (Magic can be used in skillchains also.) Basically theres allot of 'playing' to be done when fighting in a party, you can't just agro mobs as tank and sit there, you actually have things to do.
The game is EASY to run. For pc, if you can run counter-strike, you can run this, without a real dip in graphics quality. They really make a beautiful looking game without stressing your pc capabilities, making is VERY accessable to pc gamers on a budget.
Yes, you get one character... Sucks right? Kinda. With that one character, you can switch to any job at any time, aka, if you wanna be a white mage but your a tank you don't have to re-start all over with a new character. This also goes allong with the unlockable jobs.
Two words... SUB JOB. Whats a sub job you ask? Well it's probably just the coolest thing a mmo has done in YEARS. With a sub job, you don't HAVE to party. I have a level 30 war/15 monk for parties, and a 15 white mage to sub if I wanna fight alone and not take the time to find a party. Soloing is EXTRIEMLEY accessable in this game with the sub-job ability, which is an option mmo gamers always want to have.
Finally, fans of the series will probably LOVE this game. It really has a ff feel, and along the way you will see names and places that are familiar to fanboys like me.
Well there you have it, a COMPREHENSIVE review, completly flameless. FF-11 dosen't suck, just like CoH dosen't suck, it just all depends on the experience the player wants, and if it did suck, I doubt it would have just broke the 5 million player mark.
Comments
White Mage:28 Server:Slyph
Black Mage:15 LinkShell:PlayersClub
Theif:2
White Mage:30 Server:Slyph
Black Mage:15 LinkShell:PlayersClub
Theif:2
"I'm really sick of elves, dwarves, and orcs. They can all climb into a pinto and back into a wall for all I care."
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"I'm really sick of elves, dwarves, and orcs. They can all climb into a pinto and back into a wall for all I care."
Quote: "Leveling isn't a problem, MONEY is the big issue. To make gil you need gil, and LOTS of it. Ive been playing for 3 months and because of the hugh crafting prices, sometimes you have to pick one or the other per sitting, sence crafting is so time consuming that you have to sit for a good ammount of time for any progress."
WTF YOU SMOKING! I used to play the game and money was EASY to make. Leveling is far more annoying than making money.. Here are some easy ways to make money... Go Hunt Boss Monsters that people aren't hunting.. Example: Crypt Ghoul. I made most of my money from this one. Martial parts are what he drops. Now they sell for a NICE little chunk o change. Now at that same area you can fight and get KEYS for chests in the dungeon. the chests can give you money or items that can be sold at AH for about 2-5k depending on it.
Another way is from silk hunting. bundle o silk when I was last on in march was about 10k average for a stack which if your high level can be attained quite easily.
You can also exploit NPC's. NOT CHEATING! ok, it's been so long i forgot the name of the town but the one where you go into that darn jungle around level 26-35 Yag...something that port town has an NPC who you can purchse accessory equiptment from. Mainly these stone necklace things (again sorry.. forget names played from oct-mar and quit) you can purchase from her and sell at the towns AH for 3 times the ammount. I would before loggin off for the night go there purchse enough to fill AH and sell for NICE money .. about 3-4k overnight.
Now that fixes that "problem"
My reason for quitting was once I hit level 30... my leveling got quite sluggish. by the time I got to the Crawlers Nest I was just about through.... I quit shortly after there due to long levels and Lack of others who want to explore and go hunting in different areas. I always wanted to go kill mobs in other areas where you would only find like 1-4 people in usually just traveling through.
Thanks for the info, which is a nice help.
One thing though, my main point is its a little rediculos how much money it costs to actually level up crafting skills. It can be pretty rough to up skill without loosing huge chunks of gil (I mean 500+k), and when you put that together with rising prices of armor as you level up, etc, it can be pretty hard to get and keep sufficient ammounts of money.
Lately in Phoenix it has been really easy to find good partys, and this server in general has a pretty awesome community, I havent had any problems 30+ (In fact the 30+ population is pretty dense) finding people to explore with either. The addition of the pvp has really started to get things moving a bit more, sence people have been practically begging for SOME kind of pvp in the game, and its actually pretty cool.
egg aumlet+noob=nooblet
Storage isn't unlimited though, so some do like to have mules.
According to the ffxi 2004 census japanese players have an average of 5 characters while US players have an average of 3. Or something like that.
I got futher in fallout tactics, with a solo MA guy (omg hard shit, but i got to like 8th mission), then i ever did solo in FFXI
ATTENTION ALL YOU FF XI PEOPLE!
I HAVE AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!
EQ II WILL BE THE BEST GAME EVER, AND CRUSH THE COMPETITION!
YOU'RE PUNY GAME WILL FALL, AFTER WE FINISH OFF WoS (WORLD OF SUCKING)
CONVERT TO EVERQUEST II NOW, AND YOU SHALL BE SPARED.
RESIST AND FALL FOREVER.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-EQ1 character:Grotub, shaman of the Tribunal server
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-EQ1 character:Grotub, shaman of the Tribunal server
Thats ok, he speaks the truth. And the truth shall set you free.
Laying in bed, looking up at the stars, a single thought passed through my head. Where the fuck is my roof?
-----------------Censored------------------
I wont play EQ2 ever!!!!!! if i hated EQ, ill hate its sequel
<no offense to EQ fans>
I'm sorry, but 10k, or making 3-4k overnight is peanuts
When you get higher level, and especially if you're a melee damage dealer, you're gonna need the best stuff out there to compete for groups. And that means on average 500k-1 million gil in gear. Not to mention, if you're a melee and you don't use food, people will shun you. Meat Mithkabobs for example; 5000 for a stack of 12, each lasting half an hour.
And yea if you want to craft, you're gonna have to lose a lot of money at first before you start profiting.
Leveling sucks too. I quit at lvl 55, where as a monk/warrior i was waiting on average 2-4 hours before finding a group. And don't even consider soloing past level 15, it will just be a pointless, painful grind. You'll be "raking in" about 15-30 exp a kill, with LOTS of downtime and about 5000 to your next level. Gets worse the higher level you are too.
White Mage:30 Server:Slyph
Black Mage:15 LinkShell:PlayersClub
Theif:2
White Mage:30 Server:Slyph
Black Mage:15 LinkShell:PlayersClub
Theif:2
While I haven't played FFXI since January, lately I've been thinking more and more about going back to it. It just has a certain charm about it. I've been playing free trials to test other RPGs, and, honestly, none of them catch me like FFXI. The game is just incredibly accessible. While crafting atrociously expensive, it can yield even more.
On soloing. Soloing is possible, it's just not a very viable option for anything other than a BST/WHM, though I'm sure there are a couple other combos that can solo decently. I know I had a RDM in the LS I was in that pretty much solo'd his way up to 30.
But this is a rather nicely put review of the game, I think. I've been wondering if I would end up playing WoW when it comes out. I suppose I'll just have to try it out when it goes open beta.
FF rocks, can't go around it. It just get boring a little bit quick, like AC2...
Crafting and sub-jobbing and all of it is surely cool,
But it gets boring quickly because it's most of the time just the same.
Will they ever make MMORPGS without the need of creditcards?! Geez, I don't get to play anything!!
http://www.garfield.com/comics/comics_archives_strip.html?2004-ga040701
Best comic ever =P
Ok a quick route to money making, this is from my pa who has a monk who now rakes money in.
First things first every crafter should Fish, this is the only skill that goes to 100 without effecting the other skills, only one of the other craft skills can reach 100, unless you take some other skill over 60 which will affect your main skill.
But 60 should be your aim for all the skills with the one you want mostly (recommend woodworking for lu shangs but thats me) being taken upto 100.
Start at the lowest heh hunt some crystals make a quick few k of gill so you can buy a cheap rod and some Little Worms, then go fishing in FRESHWATER you'll be pulling Moat Carp (4k per stack of 12) and Crayfish (Synth with Wind Crystal to make Peeled Crayfish which sells for about 700 a stack but levels cooking which is a bonus). If the catch gets crap in the freshwater buy a stack of Lugworms and go sea fishing, you'll catch quite a few diff things but at low lev it's mainly Sardines and Quus, sardines go for a small amount quus i dunno wtf to do with that but i think they sell for a small amount to.
The worms cost like 12 gill each so it's not expensive to get fishing started and tbh it's the best way to earn money as a low lev, after that i'll leave you to find where to fish and what to fish there's loads of resouce sites for fishing.
As for the other skills you have to look at the basic elements, Cost vs Profit, you wanna find something you can synth but can sell back to break even or even make a small profit on, there's normally something thrown in the mix there. This generally works all the way up as certain items in the skills are valuable to diff levs so they are always in demand and as a result provide you with some good loot.
Remeber breaking even is perfectly fine, your leveling the skill at least and eventually money WILL come your way
Crafting is time consuming but the Rewards outweigh the negatives by a long shot.....
Leveling, well my whm is lv 20 i leveled with 1 monk pretty much there, we went from Sarutabaruta to Tayongi to shakrami and have finally settled at Khorolakha (sp?) tunnels which are by far the quickest exp grounds for 18 - 24ish as you can change landworms and make some nice chains, i was raking 250k exp at one stage from the chains.
it's not hard you just gotta wait around for the right party, solo play is hard yes but i think thats mainly because they want the classes to work together much more, dunno why people wont team a bst, the tamer suffers the penalty not the team....
I used to have so many braincells, but forum posting has killed a-lot of them.
I used to have so many braincells, but forum posting has killed a-lot of them.
True fishing is indeed a great craft to start out with, but I do not recommending taking it as a ... main skill as such. ALL my friends fish (admitted not that many people since i've only been playing for a few weeks lol), but none of them would do it if they have some thing better to do. Fishing is for when you get bored/having trouble find parties, or generally want something that's NOT fighthing
You might not always fishing for a long time and it might seem forever before you get to higher skill levels, but in a few weeks of time you would start to realize "oh my gawd, my fishing skill is already 20+ and I've hardly done ANY fishing!"
Of course you can spend lots of time and fish as well, that would be a MUCH faster way to gain skills but you get bored and sick of it sometimes =( which is why lots of people critize the FFXI crafting system as tedious and un-newbiefriendly.
Though I do agree that everything is kinda inflated on the Auction Market, not neccessarily to godly/unaffordable rates, but it prevents you from getting advanced equipments early, or "twink" as they say in some online games.
And as someone pointed out earlier, 3-4k or even 10k per day is not cutting it for many upper level characters... Ninja, possibly THE most expensive job demands ONE MILLION to start on most servers and guess what, it takes ALOT more than two stacks of fire crystals per day to keep your ninja a good tank in parties. Rangers fall close behind with their massive arrow costs, and at higher levels when your parties expect you to use special/elemental arrows, prepare to bust your wallet.
And for soloing, the reason most people don't want BST is because while your pet does not DIRECTLY reduce the exp (i.e. it DOES NOT count in as a pt member and thus -steal- exp), if your monster's level is HIGHER than all the party members, it would count as the highest lvl member in the party. So if you enchant a bat that's lvl16 and the highest level party member is only lvl14, you WILL suffer exp loss because now the highest lvl in your party is actually lv16.
But don't worry, if you can overcome the difficulties and manage to get to ...lvl35, you can dismiss your pet. I THINK if you dismiss the pet BEFORE your enemy dies the pet lvl will not affect the pt experience.
I personally am striving to become a summoner
and thank god everyone I've played with so far seem to know that avatars have no effect on pt exp ever.
and lastly advice for any new ranged magic users (whm especially), the worms(Maze Makers or MM) at Maze of Shakhrami are probably the easiest exp from lvl10-16. The key to fight them in a pt (you HAVE to have a party) is that ALL party members MUST be ranged attackers! Tanks are NOT needed. I did it at only lv 12, 12!!! with a lvl11 whm and lv13 rdm. People laught at us, a BIG full party with mnk and war say "omg they are going to die" and it ended up that we leveled FOUR times in the short period of 3.5 hours. It was the best exp I've ever had, all you have to do is spread out so stonega would only hurt 1-2 people, and it won't do too much dmg with Barstonra, and whm have an even easier time with their magic def. bonus. The basic strategy is just debuff and then nuke with whatever spells you've got. Banish, an kinda overlooked whm spells in most pt's, works quite well. Actually when the rdm had to go afk, the other whm and I Banished a MM from 100% to about 30% health before we had to sit down. And yeah the downtime could be annoying, especially with rasp, but the exp is amazing and there's VERY LITTLE risk of dying!
...darn long post... no one's gonna read the whole thing
Yeah it can be tedious but fishing also provides stuff to level certain other craft skills which generally results in free skilling with profit to be made of synths.
My dad is currently a 64 fisherman (took some time yeah) but now as a result of leveling fishing he leveled cooking to 50odd from doing the fish, he took alchemey to 27ish and is still leveling it.
All i am saying is if your prepared to sit to do one craftskill you may aswell make fishing your first coz it will fund you nicely... think my dad makes about 50k a day, but if he hunts certain fish he can make much more than that.
Hey it's your game anyway, just saying what i found easiest
I used to have so many braincells, but forum posting has killed a-lot of them.
I used to have so many braincells, but forum posting has killed a-lot of them.