more solo friendly; not

unicorngtm

Generally, I play FFXI maybe 3-6 months at a time then get bored try some other games, and come back again. This time around I find that FFXI has actually regressed signficantly. Case in point leveling, and making players litterally wait.

Levelling especially at the higher levels is now a distinctly a "must group", or well too bad. Now in Abyssea (level 70ish and up), you can play maybe 5 hours, and get maybe 5 levels, or more. The equivalent solo is maybe 2-6k ish exp/hour solo, or maybe 7-20 hours per level (I find 6k is not all that easy to get regularly, and I'm a BST/solo class often).Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Abyssea to some extent. But one of my classes 75-80 levelling process was 50hours+ or so and another classes 75-80 levelling was 5 hours or so (talk about power levelling ...). Of course the solo side does have a lot of travelling, mob contention with those who are doing their weapon trials, which brings me to another point, or maybe 2.

Many of the weapon trials are wait for a NM mob to pop, or wait for a day of the week (elemental-based; goes fire day, earth day, ... dark day; approx 1hour real time per game day). This is essentially regressing FFXI back a decade where time sinks were build into the game. So right now, I wait for 1 out of 8 game hours, travel to an area, then slaughter as many vermin or whatever type I'm after. I didn't get past Eve Online's trial; why? Because it litterally made me wait to get my new ship. Not farm parts, not quest, not improve your skills, litterally wait x days until your skills levelled themselves (thats the mechanic; skills level due to real time passing, logged in or not, and you pick which skills level in your queue). So, right now I'm back to literally waiting for something (day of the week, or extremely rare weather). Not my idea of fun, and frankly any game that "makes you wait", is generally counter intuitive. (Some can debate you can do other stuff, or all games are make you wait to get some goal, but usually that wait involves a game mechanic of killing mobs, etc, not sitting on your hands doing nothing).

And who created these trial that say "kill 1500 mobs with specific weapon skill as a killing blow" (I think there are 4 of these particular types of trials before you weapon is levelled, and that's just to get it from 75-80). Someone really has it in for FFXI players ....

Satimasu

More solo friendly, yes. More efficient than partying? Of course not. Partying is always and always will be the fastest. But not getting completely stomped by EP's for 20exp a kill with downtime inbetween each one is definitely more friendly I'd say. With Campaign and Besieged, you don't even need to bother with partying. Is it slower? Yeah, but that's how it's meant to be. This game has come a long way from what soloing was in the past.

 

The weapon trials are kinda' funny, because they can usually be done with parties. Sure, the finishing blow ones on a certain elemental day or whatever kinda' sucks. But the difference is that you just aren't stuck with that one weapon to use for your game and you can do whatever else you'd like. It is kinda' funny to see a bunch of people with the same kill x mobs running around in the same zone seperate instead of a party, making things take much longer for everyone.

unicorngtm

Originally posted by Satimasu

More solo friendly, yes. More efficient than partying? Of course not. Partying is always and always will be the fastest. But not getting completely stomped by EP's for 20exp a kill with downtime inbetween each one is definitely more friendly I'd say. With Campaign and Besieged, you don't even need to bother with partying. Is it slower? Yeah, but that's how it's meant to be. This game has come a long way from what soloing was in the past.

I think the point was more the now seemingly huge discrepancy in partying vs solo. Definitely both have become significantly easier, otherwise the game would've probably died a slow death because it's simply a much more competitived MMO market, than before. In any case, after an Abyssea party, I almost feel a little cheated out my gaming experience, as it was so quick.

Though I think it was really not a viable option doing EP's solo before; realistically, you had to do high DC, EM, or T, otherwise it wasn't worth it.