Should I play again?

Siveria

Hi, I am currently extremly bored with the current crop of mmo's and been thinking of going back to ff11, what I wanna know is how much did they wowifiy it with the recent abbysea changes? Also, I have a few lv 75's (I played last way before abby expacs came out) how out of the loop am I going to be? I *was* considering starting over but then again thats a major pain in the ass in ff11, well least it was back when i made my current char. I'll be coming back with no linkshell, decent gil funds (though i am in no way rich), and gear for most jobs but i'll bascally be like a.. hmm what is the word.. vet who forgot most of the game? other than how to get around.

I now have some more questions..

1: Is the game still massivly time consuming to get anything done like I remember it?

2: Any linkshells willing to take in a old player who forgot a ton of stuff? Prefer one thats more casual and talkative.

3: How lost am I going to be never having done any of the abbysea quests or even the lv 80 level cap unlock, highest one I have done is the 75.

4: Is Windower still around? This tool made the game much better than it would have been without it, I especally used to love playing around with the plastic surgeon plugin, this plugin bascally allowed you to change your race/face client side only to any race in game, if I got sick of looking at my hume I just opened console in windower and typed race 6 (or race mithra) to turn me into one client side, then face 3a/b to choose what face/hair I wanted. Technacally it was against the tos, but there was no way for anyone to know unless you told them, or were dumb enough to post screenshots or videos of you using it.

5: Does it still use that stupid playonline shit? or did square finally smarten the hell up?

Thanks all, I might make my decision on going back to ff11 or not based on this.

Tbia88

You played when i played, when it was fun.

I recently went back, and enjoyed it for a short time, but found the new content to be very solo oriented, and repeatitve.

 

It is fun to play with old friends if you can find any, but everyone is all about gear and expect you to have XXX gear and if you dont they wont let you join no matter how good you are, and you know how gear progression goes, you miss some events, good luck getting people to do old content to get you ready for new content.

 

Really only worth going back to if you have a group of friends willing to play and do the content you missed with you, there is a bunch you missed and honestly you would spend a month working on catching up, thats if you have people, longer if you are trying to convince strangers to help.

 

EDIT: Leveling is super fast, and only cap that is hard is the 95-99 one. Once you unlock them all on one job it honestly takes 8-10 hours to get from 75 to 99, and then you just skill up party after that.

Siveria

So in otherwords I just should pass then it seems, because I don't have anyone who would be coming with me, and as you said trying to convince people to help is a massivly stressful task, i've done it before, people in mmo's today are too self-centered I noticed, mostly because most "mmo"s just turn out to be single player games with a irc chatroom till a certan point, usually level cap. Its why I have almost given up on the genre.

Currently waiting for FF14 ARR, even though they kinda made the game like world of warcraft -_-. Apparently people are really pissed by that too from what I been hearing/reading around.

Tbia88

Yeah, I am debating if i should try 14 again, i was so disapointed the first time, do not think I could handle that a second time.

 

I just got into the wizardry beta test, and to be honest, it feels like old FFXI with a mix of DDO. I would dare to go as far as saying it should of been the direction 14 should have tried to go. It is worth looking into if you want the old FFXI experience, closest thing out there.

Phrame

I actually just came back to FFXI yesterday (after playing on and off since PS2 launch in 2004) and started a character on Phoenix server if you're on it. Character name is Larke. 

As far as your questions go:

1: The game has become massively less time consuming actually. I played for an hour last night and got to level 10 (and this is with running around and wasting time). You could probably level to 99 in about a week or two if you played enough and got into the right groups in Abyssea, etc. starting from scratch; from 75, it should only take about a week tops. 

2: There is a linkshell on Phoenix full of MMORPG.com members that started back in September/October from this thread: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/365899/page/1 I was able to get in touch with one guy in the LS but I don't have a pearl yet myself.

3: Abyssea is completely different from anything else pre-75 and will be confusing at first, but it's easy to learn. The level caps are really easy besides the one from 95-99. You'll probably need to use ffxiclopedia.com a decent amount, but Abyssea has become second nature to most people playing so just ask around and you'll learn the ropes quickly.

4: I'm pretty sure there is a Window feature native to FFXI now, but it obviously doesn't have the extra features you're talking about. I haven't played enough recently to say, but I'm sure there are tons of people who still use it. 

5: Yeah the stupid Playonline shit is still there, unfortunately. Even worse, now it's paired up with the Square Enix Account Management system so your account can be linked to FFXIV, but this just makes it doubly annoying to me. But at least you can register all your codes in a normal browser. 

 

I'd come back and try it out for a while. The game is still a lot of fun, but it's totally different nowadays because of Abyssea. It's a lot more solo/low-man friendly now, which is a plus. 

Wizardry

I am playing but i will be honest,the game is NOTHING like the game of old.I know an easy statement that sounds fake ,but it is 100% true.If SWG vets thought that game was changed for the bad,they have not seen anything like the FFXI old>new.

What i do now is mostly stick to myself,but if anyone asks for help or to chat ,i will.I won't get caught up in Abyssea,it is a rubbish design.

What really baffles me is Square seems to be incredibly dumb to the gamers ideas.It seems they have ALWAYS been listening to e very small niche group of people.

Abysse was not received well,it still is not liked yet Square is about to release another Abyssea xpac.That will be 4 straight Abyssea xpacs all designed basically the same with minimal twists.The team has become super lazy and offer nothing creative anymore.EVERYTHING is designeds to be a grind VERY similar to old Dynamis but with a twist.

Sqaure should quit with the lame Abyssea idea and make something new and creative.There are still a few ideas for class design as well,maybe they shoudl hire me if they can't figure it out.hint hint>>>reactives.

Tbia88

What they really need to do is get off the Low man/ solo friendly gear every other game is on.

 

Sorry, yes, i understand we all dont have hours anymore, I understand gettting a group is hard, but that forced grouping is what made old FFXI so good, it was being forced to talk to someone, forced to become friends, and forced to work together.

You dont build community with solo/lowman, a good guild is not a community, its is a guild.  I remember being able to walk around town and see XXX and be like oh hes a dick he ripped off this group of people, or be like there is YYY hes a nice guy, let me /wave to him.  Oh look there is TTT we grouped for like 4 hours the other night, and i helped him with that mission, oh hes saying thank you again. The way it is now, you barely remember anyone you grouped with.

k11keeper

1. no you have no reason to wait for anything anymore and nothing really takes too much time anymore.

2. There are linkshells willing to take old players and new and teach people what is going on with the game now. One of my linkshells is very much into that. Leveling +2 farming etc and they are not difficult to find honestly.

3. Like said above only lvl cap quest of any significance is the 95 cap one. A ochain/aegis pld can solo it or you can find a few bsts to help with dawn mulsims or you can do the 4x mnk, smn, sch method. All work well but that taru can tear most jobs to pieces. Honestly you won't be that lost with a little bit of time. If you were able to grasp the game before it will all that much easier for you now. Most mechanics are easily figured out after a little bit of time and practice. Mostly concerning procs and such.

4. Windower is still around even though they have a feature that lets you minimize the game now in order to do full gear swaps you need windower and the script macros or spellcast. Those are third party tools so you can't use them with xbox or ps3. In all reality though it is more frowned upon if you don't use windower then if you do unlike in the past.

5. Yes still has playonline. Oh and they changed/added more too it. Now you need a square enix account and the payment method is even more rediculous. Luckily as it was before once you get it set up it's never really an issue again other than the obsurd amount of time it takes to log in.

 

Phrame

Originally posted by Wizardry

Abysse was not received well,it still is not liked yet Square is about to release another Abyssea xpac.That will be 4 straight Abyssea xpacs all designed basically the same with minimal twists.The team has become super lazy and offer nothing creative anymore.EVERYTHING is designeds to be a grind VERY similar to old Dynamis but with a twist.

Sqaure should quit with the lame Abyssea idea and make something new and creative.There are still a few ideas for class design as well,maybe they shoudl hire me if they can't figure it out.hint hint>>>reactives.

The expansion pack they're about to release, Seekers of Adoulin, has nothing to do with Abyssea. Are they releasing more Abyssea areas too? I hadn't heard of this. 

There are probably two reasons for the grindy content you're talking about. The first is that FFXI is 10 years old and probably recieves a tiny production budget. The second is that most of that budget is likely going to the development of the new expansion. 

Their ideas in Seekers of Adoulin are actually a step away from the Abyssea trends from what I've been hearing anyway. It's supposed to be a challenge for players after the 99 cap, so I don't think you'll be able to use things like Atmas and such, but I might be mistaken.

Ingvar

The new producer seems to know what hes doing and is taking the game away from the abyssia crap.

k11keeper

Phrame is right the expansion seekers of adoulin has nothing to do with abyssea. Anything concerning abyssea has been finished for over a year now. Voidwatch, Neo nyzul, legion, meeble burrows, neo limbus, and soon to be neo salvage has been the content post abyssea. Seekers of adoulin is gonna take it even further and for once since treasures of aht urghan an expansion will have new zones instead of re-hashed zones that arlready exist.

Plus it wont be supported by the Ps2 so hopefully it wont limit content like it has in the past. Which honestly has been the major reason why the last few expansion have had no new areas.

Neo_Liberty

so.. u should expect to solo to high lvl?

k11keeper

No not at all. The game is very much group centric. Though more low man groups than in the past. Soloing for exp would take entirely too long by most peoples current standards. Actually most exp groups are full alliances due to how the xp chaining works in abyssea and how the Grounds tomes work outside.