My review of the game

RawR_I_KeelU

Well i played FFXI for almost 2 years. I would like to say that the game was fun while it lasted. 

When i first started i found alot of nice people. I thought for once that i was finaly in a game where people helped  you out,  and were not immature all the time. 

Well as i hit Lv60 on my first job i started to notice some of the.. how should i put it, "Nastyness" of the game. I learned that alot of the players were VERY selfish. MANY players were only wanting the "best" of players, and had no respect for what they had or used. 

I've also done alot of "End game" (Things you do when you have Lv75 Jobs) and i noticed that players will scam you ALOT. I was one of the less fortunate and was scammed from 3! (Count it, 3!) End game linkshells, and i had enough. 

Some Linkshells will use you, and then find ways to kick you so they can get what they want. I am very disapointed in this, and it pushed me away from the game. 

The playing style of alot of players in the game were very different from mine causing me to quit. People have an over obsession in one thing, and you'll find about 90 people all do it. There is no Uniqueness in this game, let alone people trying new things. 

I could make a huge rant about the problems in the game, but i think i should say some of the positive things too.

The way the game is made, it's more slow paced in some things. It's not like your average MMORPG where you spam your skills. This one you actualy have to hit a few times to use a Skill. 

I HIGHLY enjoyed the missions and quests there were in the game. This is one of my favorite things to look for, is doing these boss fights that you may not be able to solo, while enjoying a story line. 

Another great thing about the game was being able to play 20 different classes on ONE character. This saved the trouble of having to make 20 different characters so you could be a different job. There was one problem with it. People always ordered you around to go as "This or That". It WAS very frustrating, especialy in end game. I never really leveled many jobs because of this, because i wanted to make sure if someone did ask me to change, i wanted to be on a job i enjoyed. Not the same one every day because it "Get's the job done faster". Nobody was happy with just "Getting the job done". It took the fun out of it, because they take a game so seriously it's pathetic. From what i learned, MANY players did not play this game to just have fun. 

I liked the game alot, but when it came down to the players. I never knew i could be a game with that many selfish, disrespectful, judgemental, (and alot of the other words) players in one game. 

   

Lowdos

When I played, I found the community very prickly (uptight, if you will).

I hope the majority of FFXIV community will have learnt to lighten up a bit, by the time it rolls out.

RawR_I_KeelU

The players treat the game too much like real life. Everyone takes it so seriously that it's just plain pathetic.

It often caused problems, and big arguements, in game, and on the game's wiki forum.

Satimasu

I would say it's the same in a lot of MMO's in general. People just want to get things done as fast as they possibly can and use those methods to do that. I've never really done endgame except for Dynamis and that was pretty laid back for the most part for me. People are too uptight and take things too seriously. But they're all over, not just in this game.

No matter how laid back and lighthearted a game is going to be, there will always be those kind of people unfortunately...

ic0n67

You played on Asura didn't you?

Yes what you said is very true. The game is great but there are some people who are only looking out for number 1 and FFX I is about looking out for the many over the one. If you found a group of people who understood that you had a much better time. I personally have been screwed by more that 3 endgame shells; Which is why I stopped applying to new ones.

I never really cared about getting all the high end gear. They enjoyment of the game and the pride of completing the tasks were more important than having a hard to get item. In 3+ years of doing sky most of the time I ended up with 1 pair of Z-mitts and cursed haidate. Didn't want anything else, didn't ask for anything else. Anything else I ever picked up with the garbage that no one else wanted (which in retrospect was the reason I got the haidate in the first place: "dude, if no one is gonna lot on them I'm gonna take up, k?").

I truly know what it is to take it up the ass for people and not getting anything in return. There were times I was doing things with "friends" almost everynight, but it was whatever they wanted to do. When it came time for me to ask for something for me (which I only did when I couldn't do it myself ... like my last piece of AF gear.) and all of a sudden it wasn't cool to do things together anymore ... until it was time for them to want something from me. Loyalty above all.

I never really had problems with groups and such. I don't know if I am just a good player or by playing since 2003 that people just knew my name. Don't know. I have PUP to 75 so I KNOW what it is like to have people not want exact jobs for partying. There are really too many jobs in FFXI (and not enough tanks) and not enough balance between the DDs. Really you need each job to do similar amounts of damage but have them play differently or have each mob be weak against certain things but have it so you have the variety to level off differnt things at the same levels. Once Aht Urgan came out it was toucans (Colibri) and dragonflys (Puks) for such a long time and there are certainly jobs that are better against them then others. You need an alternative to those mobs that other jobs are better at killing.

RawR_I_KeelU

One thing that really got to me was acceptance. I had put my opinions on alot of things. Probaly the worst reply i got to them was "This has been tested before and is WRONG"

I had posted on the forums too. I tried giving my advice, and posting my opinions on things, and out of all the forums i've posted in. I have never been more offended. I was actualy banned from the forums for posting my opinions, and giving my advice. I was continuasly accused of being a troll for that, and the other players would use my opinions, make me look like the retard, and cause drama. I mean i can take some criticism. But the way it was given to me was way out of hand. The forum mods there really did not do their job very well.

As for the game. The players are very impatient. Alot of the time, no matter how good your reason was, if you were late, they'd go on without you. The game is extreemly dependant on others for alot of things. It's Square Enix's way of supporting team work. To be honest i think they over did it.

The players really tend to think they know everything. I can understand if people tend to listen to the players who played the game longer more. That's just natural, but not everyone realizes that because they played longer, doesn't mean they know everything on something.

I liked to give people my opinions on things alot. When i got Samurai to 75, I REALLY looked into the job. I looked at alot of the different playing styles for samurai. I looked up skillchains, played around with FFXI calculator, and i looked into all of samurai's abilities. Alot of people did not like the way i played Samurai. Everyone said i sucked at the job because of the way i play it. Yet when it came to comparing damage. (Yeah i have parsers for proof) I Outparsed ALOT of other Samurais. Some with the "Elite" gear, others without the "Elite" gear. there are some players who i could not beat with the same gear as mine. It's all on how someone plays the job, not their gear.

I liked the game, but I just could not deal with the stress i had from it. In this game the word "Respect" doesn't even exist.

 

EDIT: I was on Hades

PassingBy

The thing that only really bothered me (besides getting money..) with this game was the outrageous prices of some of the items on the AH's. I can't remember as far back as when the game first came out, but I DO remember what they were like a couple of years ago. They were priced WAY, WAY too high due to people using fishing bots, and buying and selling money in-game,and out. Togive you an example, I was a warrior around lvl 20 or so at the time, looking ahead of time for equipment that you could buy. The server I was on at the time had chainmail,just the body, at like 25k, no kidding, 25k. The leather armour was around 5k for the body, the beetle was like 10k or so, i didn't expect it to jump to 25k all of a sudden. So, I was stuck finding out how to get 25k JUST for the body piece. That's when I found out about fishing which yilded good profit, so they said, on moat carp at the lower lvls. I look at insect bait, 1200 for a stack.. it even hit 2000 atone point in time. I was just barely making any profit, since moat carp sold for just a bit more. That's when I found out about a repeatable quest whic, thank god I was in windy for, yieled much greater profit withno cost to me, at all. Kill Crawlers for Crawler Calculus', trade 3 in for 600, which equates to 2400 for each stack. In addition, I got Silk Thread on the side which was selling for a whopping 15-20k at the time. Eventually I got enough money for the armor and weapons; however, it tookme days of endless farming to get just that much. In searchof yetmore repeatable wuests,a friend told me about a mithra that will take yagudo necklaces, can't remember how much I got from that quest though. He also told me I can build my fame for the ninja quest by doing that, so I was killing two birds with one stone at the time.

Now.. this is what made me quit. I was just knocking on the door of reaching the level for my hauby (Haubergeon). Looked at the price and I my jaw dropped to the floor when I saw the price for the very first time, ever. 1.5-2M for that single piece of armor, I juststared at that number for 5 minutes while thinking about how I could possibly get that much money. First I found that crystals sold at a good rate, tho they were evenhigh at the moment, the cheapest I could find on there at the time was a water cluster I believe. It was going for about 1k a stack, and it was the easiestone for me to get in the fastest amount of time. Went to the marshlands, and farmed water clusters for weeks (a couple of hours a day). I killed gobbies on the side since I was war/thf at the time.Kill 10, I get around 600. Eventually, I reach the 200krange only to spend it on muchstuff that I needed for my current lvl: A new G.Axe, a new ring, ninja tools for when I went war/nin, and food. I ended up with 50k left. Desperate, I kinda of "tailed" a friend of mine to one of his farming places which happened to be a place i could go to as well. Killed lions or whatever for the teeth and sold them to a vendor for about 1k each. I then started going there when he wasn't around, but it wastaking far too long, parties that needed a ninja would crop up, so I needed to buy new equip for it before there were no more party's around my lvl. Between buying food for my ninja and my war,and buying ninja tools I kept staying downaround 10k. I finally got tired of doing the same thing over,and over, and over, and over, and over.. for more than a month so I stopped playing because I didn't want to farm for long periods of time anymore.

SE took care of alot of the bots and money sellers,but the economy in the game was so.. wacked on certain items, other than that I loved playing the game, especially when SE came out with an update that allowed high lvl players to play with low lvl players without gimping the exp. That was quite possibly one of the most important updates SE ever released for the game.

CDCosta

FFXI was great from Launch  until 3-4 years in. Then RMT screwed shit up.

 

And some servers had shitty communities for some reason.

k11keeper

A lot of the thing you guys have been talking about are very true. From my experience though for every messed up complete BS kind of thing that happened to me there were many many more good things that happened. I played the game for a really long time too and I am actually going to start back up here this week. (downloading the mIllion updates as we speak).

I think sometimes, as with most things in life, we tend to concentrate on the bad. Like I remember I joined a group to do a KSNM and all 6 of us were supposed to get orbs. Well as you know KSNM orbs are kind of a pain in the butt to get right? Can't remember which one it was but if I had been doing this with my LS and someone needed something from it we would just let them have it as long as they bought the seals. Everyone else would get to keep all ofher items and split the profits among eachother.

Well when you do this with a pickup group that can be kind of scetch right? Who wants to rely on someone they just met to make sure they get their fare share. So what we decided is for the battle with your orb you get to keep everything. This works kind of like scratch tickets because it's kind of luch of the draw. You might get the big spendy item it drops or you might get crap but either way stuff from KSNMs are normally worth something. Well not if this happens. So we get through the first 3 rounds right now problem got some decent drops and everyone was happy. Well 4th round comes around right and it's my turn to lot well then the 1st  and 3rd guy decide they have to leave. So I spent all those seals on my orb and helped those guys get junk and I get nothing. Not to mention the 6th guy was a friend of mine that I recruited so I feel like a jerk because he waisted his seals too.

It's funny how I can remember that so specifically right? Even for years when I ran into that 1st and 3rd guy I would tell people what a jerk they were. Well i haven't played for almost 3 years now but i bet I'd remember them if I saw them.

I have to admit though for everyon moment like that I had 10 moments of someone going out of their way to help me with even the most remedial tasked though that you need help with. Like people that helped me get my G1 items or AF equipment the first go around. A tons of other things like that. So with all the this negativety flowing about. Maybe we can stop look back and think about that kind of stuff even though it's so easy to rant and remember the bad moments. Now if those bad moments outweighed the good ones in your ffxi experience I have to say I am sorry for you and I wish I had met you so you could have joined my LS and enjoyed FFXI the way it can be enjoyed.

Tymoris

Personally I can't say I had any special bad experiences with players. (Garuda server)

The worst I have been in, was when people took the whole thing too seriously but that is to be expected in end game.

After all a wipe of a raid in FF is much more costly both in time and effort than most games around.

Other than that though I usually encounter more helpful players than not.

Plutarch

End-game is such a heavy burden. I won't defend the survivalist, man-eat-man attitude of the other players at this time in the game, but it makes sense. We can all admit that this is one of the top 3 hardest MMORPGs ever made. It's a laborsome task getting to the top, and by that time you're so heavily sucked in that nothing else matters because you literally have to scrap a social-life in reality just to get there. These people do whatever it takes to advance their interests.

With that said, this is why I always stopped jobs at around 65-70. Got up there, then bam, started a new one. It's really fun when you have a bunch of friends in the game with the same habit. Helping strangers and teaming up for the lower level quests and missions was always my favorite part, and the most rewarding feature in the game.

bigdaddysfe

Here was the thread I was looking for. I remember there were some people who were tired of being abused by loot hungry elistists.

 

I am sure most of you guys are disenfranchised with the game by now but if any of you are still around any playing the game, check out my thread in the LS section, looking to join a people-first as opposed to loot-first kind of group. In return I can at least be an extra body for the short term and someone that will pay for thier part of a Gold World Pass subscription deal.

 

Hope some of the good ones are still left.

WSIMike

Community seems to be very hit or miss by server, and then further, by linkshell.

What I've noticed is that the more laid back linkshells are either nearly entirely social and don't' really do much, or are "side LS's" for people to hop into when they're not doing something with their main LS. The Dynamis LS's I've been in have been cool... All they ask is that people cooperate and be cool... and everything goes fine. I wouldn't abide elitist attitudes from anyone, in any setting... so I haven't had much experience with those types of LS's.

I'm seriously considering moving from my "home server", Pandemonium... something I never thought I would do. But at this point, the server has really "slowed down"... most of he people I knew have moved to other, presumably better, servers where they say the game is far more lively and people are more active, etc. So... I might be making that move as well. Question is which one... I have friends on Remora and Phoenix... so it's a matter of which one to go to.

Decisions, decisions.