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About FFXI's major 'flaw'
darquenblade
Member Posts: 1,015
Ok folks, I've been a Final Fantasy fan for years--playing the original on NES 15 years ago is what got me into RPGs in general. However, I've always stayed away from this particular game because of the one constant complaint I keep hearing about it: You cannot accomplish much of anything without a group, but at the same time it takes multiple hours just to get a group.
So here's my question--if this game is so group focused and practically impossible to solo, why is it so hard getting a group? Shouldn't everybody be looking for one theoretically?
I've wanted to try this game for so long now, but the thought of spending the majority of my time LFG twiddling my thumbs hasn't sounded appealing.
Comments?
Comments
This game is heavily party based if you want to XP!!!
Remember if you want to XP!!!
There are other things to do while you are not leveling for XP!!!
Hehe sorry for trying to make a point. Yeah you usually need help to do things in this game, but many many of the other things that can be done is not heavily reliant on group efforts.
These would things such as Crafting, Mining, Fishing, Logging, Exploring, many quest/missions can be soloed if you are a higher level (but its always more fun to do them with others
)
Solo for XP if difficult but there are some jobs that can do it decently. Beastmasters are a popular choice. Ninjas can solo decently too if setup properly. SE has added Experience Point bands that give xp bonuses. These bands make soloing less painful. From my own experience I solo 2hrs a day earning 3000 xp with my Ninja. Its not the greatest compared to a party where you can earn 3-5k in an hour. But if you don't have time to wait for a party 3k for 2hrs isn't too shabby imo.
Because the experience penalty for parties with a level spread greater that 3 is huge. The level cap for FFXI is 75. There is a built in search engine to find people within your level range but many times you can't find that one or two required jobs to round out your party to go out and XP. You HAVE to have a tank, you HAVE to have a healer and 9/10 times you HAVE to have a refresher (to replenish magic points) Lastly you HAVE to have damage dealers but this has the biggest pool of people to pick from. Yet even still some people insist on certain damage dealers in your party and complain or drop from party if the party isn't built the way they like it.
As for the long looking for party concerns you have: It seems to me that it used to be much easier to find groups back in the old days ( a couple of years ago) Certain level ranges had specific zones people would flock to to grind. ie: 11/12-20 valkurm dunes, 20-25 qufim island, 25-30 the jungle etc etc Some jobs naturally would get parties faster than others but even the unpopular jobs would get parties within a reasonable amount of time. This doesn't seem to be the case nowadays unfortunately. There gets to be a point in leveling that if you aren't a bard or a red mage you won't consistantly get parties in a reasonable amount of time. This can be a real drag once you get 1-2 capped jobs like I did and wanted to drop back and level something else for fun, or level your mule.
One other thing I'd like to point out that a few others have as well, the server communities are starting to slide in quality. When I first started playing everyone seemed to know each other, bust each other in jeuno and repeatedly party with each other. Now there seems to be many new faces with bad attitudes and are generally poor players. People leveling jobs they have no clue about only beacuse they get parties fast.
All I can say is this, and you can take it however you'd like to: My first 2 years the number of hardcore players quitting was few and far between. In the last month or so I played before I quit I saw more of the "well known" players quit than I can count. (perhaps because gear that used to cost 8-10 mill now costing 70-80 mil+ lol)
I hope I brought some light to your question dude, good luck
The Group Finding was not that hard for me, some of the Quests and just the pure Grinding groups are usually plentiful in this game. So i would say this game revolves somewhat around groups but not as much as u think.
im going to try and stick to the subject and address your question.
The problem is half the classes are not needed and or are broke.
Broken / not needed
#1 Dragoon (they dont do good burst or DPS... they basicly do nothin, they have some moments in ballista but thats it)
#2 Paladin (Tanking isnt about taking hits, its about not taking hits Period)
#3 Thief (it takes a gswd to team up with a theif and then at 60 a gswd to replace a theif lol)
#4 Dark Knight (I had my 5 level run <65-70> but it ends there)
#5 SAM (Basicly not needed but in the end game, there very strong)
#6 WHM ( feel bad listing whm here, i really do. But i am sorry, smn > whm, with a real tank (read ninja) you dont need a whm... in end game alot of mobs are kited... dont need many whms...)
Needed class, by picking the below classes
this will allow you to reach 75 and to allow you to join merit PTs with ease
#1 NIN (w/o question, ninja is the most over powerd job i have ever seen in a video game...)
#2 BRD (they fit into anything, astral,mana etc burn)
#3 BLM (Mana burn is the best xp in the game and they fit into "normal pts")
#4 SMN (same as blm but astral, they also work better with a ninja then a whm)
#5 RNG (still the king)
#6 WAR (very close to rng)
#7 MNK (i got one thing to say, Bones. They have a little harder time but once they hit high
lvls they are golden. They also have the easiest time in merit pts)
#8 RDM (i have nothing to say, i hate rdms.... rdm/drk *burn*)
NOTES:
You can try to argue with me on the whm, i might even give that point to "you" but the rest of this is 100% (also my rdm notes is shakey at best)
Best end game job?
SMN - Bar none. every end game LS is always looking for smn... and its because they do over 500
dmg every 45 secs and they can get that down to 25 secs DIABLOS FTW!
So there you go, i am a lvl75 galka drk.... safe to say how i feel. So there you have it,
insight from someone that has played FFXI for about 2-3 years. Safe to say ive seen alot.
Thanks everybody for your answers. In the time that I had posted this I also had a chance to talk to one of my buddies that played FFXI for a while, and he brought up a lot of the points you all mentioned here.
Thanks.
The economy is so bad that a new player will have a very hard time. No matter what class you play, you need uber gear (BRD maybe doesnt and smns best gear is maybe ying yang (rare ex item) and AF2.
How is a new player going to afford my gear if he goes melee? Or is a new player going to afford nin or rng? They cant. Your best chance is to roll bard and then try to get ABJ for those other classes your interested in. bottom line is you cant garden, you cant farm places like ZiTah and Beadux.. you cant make money in ffxi (other then bcnm). IGE HAS RUINED FFXI . Now that being said, the fact that i would guess and say 70% of the ffxi community has at one point or another boughed Gil... the community is also at fault.
BRD is the best newbie class, great money maker for BCNM and you fit into every pt FFXI is not a good game to go into now.
Now, im a big ffxi fan. i have loved and hated this game in so many instances but. If i was someone thats looking for there mmo fix... i would wait for either Vanguard SoH or Heros Journey. I have to say, all the mmos out and all the upcoming mmos suck. Maybe if there was an EQ1 Classic server, i could go back to that but atm imo nothing is good (and please dont say EvE).
This kid is 100% retarded. It's to be expected though Dark Knights are usually this jaded about the game because the only thing they're good for is closing Light skillchains for Dragoons and stunning bomb tosses.
Ninjas are good for one thing, and that's avoiding damage. They have litterally no defense and when their shadows are down they rely on evasion until they can get another set up. If something goes wrong they drop like a stone. Not to mention Ninjas are terrible at holding hate. Black Mages usually perfer Paladins while White Mages perfer Ninjas for obvious reasons. Paladins can hold hate much more effectively with an arsenal of healing and other spells.
The major flaw is that Square did a terrible job designing the game period. I played for about 7 months and then got tired of the game. Farming and crafting are just too much of a chore and with all the bots you don't get half the stuff you need anyways. Bots always camping NM's for the uber items that drop from them thus the only way to get said items is to pay out the arse at the AH for them and if they're EX then you're completely out of luck. And if you don't have the absolute best items for your job even if those items are impossible to get because of the bots then you're considered gimp and booted from every good party and are stuck in parties with people that have no clue what they're doing. Square needs to take away these uber items from random NM's such as the archer's rings from stroper chyme or the monster signa from Hoo Mjuu the Torrent. Those items should be items gained from a quest or a BCNM or something like that, not randomly dropped from a NM that spawns every who knows how many hours.
Soloing is too much of a pain if you're not a Ninja or Beastmaster or at least have ninja subbed with utsusemi. It shouldn't always be that a one on one battle with something 9 levels below you is a fight for your life yet it is in this game once you get to about level 20 or so.
And unfortunately popular belief is that certain jobs suck no matter what. Everyone thinks that dragoon sucks well just wait until corsair comes out. Or blue mage. Who in thier right mind is going to want to party with a blue mage if that person needs help learning an enemy attack? "Oh I know. Let's part with this blue mage and let ourselves get hit by a goblin bomb just so the mage can learn that himself." I just think that the job design was not well thought out. Especially the skill chain aspect. There are like two skill chains that everyone wants to use(and we all know what they are) and the rest are pretty much garbage, so if you don't have a weapon skill that fits into one of those two chains then you're automatically gimp and useless. I think that's just utterly retartded. Square needs to adjust the weapon skills so that every chain is usefull or eliminate the chains that aren't used and just have weapon skills for the two chains that everyone wants to use.
I think that the game could be fun if those problems were fixed. I understand why players want the people that they party with to be the best they can be but that shouldn't have to be the case. Group activities in MMORPG's should be challenging yet fun. In Final Fantasy it seems that if something's challenging it's not fun because people are always complaining. I think that Square has made minor attempts to fix major problems and that just isn't the way to go.
Don't know where you have been sturmwind. But Baldrian is 100% right on almost all his points. Maybe some months ago before CoP came out. Blm wanted Paladins. Now it's basically give me two ninja's for blink tanking. Everyone that I knew that use to be pure whm. Are now either finishing up smn or working on finish it up. Because most serious LS have it as a requirement now. Just ask any Skies PT which they prefer. Smn or Whm you'll quickly find out just how popular SMN has become.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
Ok, I'm going to resist the urge to flame you here and just point out some mistakes. Obviously you have not played the game in a long a$$ time because most of the things you dislike about the game are different now.
i.e. they changed the Stroper Chyme drop to a BCNM now. The result? Sniper's rings are now 2mil a piece, at least. Much more expensive before they gil farmers left.
Also, you said crafting is too much of a pain...well....if it wasn't a pain, do you know how many people would be 100 crafters? Tons. And would it make any decent gil being a 100 crafter? No.
The majority of your complaints seem to be with the players of FFXI. You stated many times how people disliked players for this or that. Or won't party with particular jobs. That is not SE's fault, that is just the players.
Also, DRG is extremely strong if people give it a chance, just no ne ever does. Or they don't add in the added DPS of the wyvern into the equation for whatever reason.
Anyway, I think you should be more informed before you act like you are informed. I can go on and on and on, but I will stop there.
I'll have to agree with Velcroy on alot of things. For the record: DRG is a strong job! In my LS's static we have a DRG and he whoops ass! Even if take out the supplement dmg the Wyvern deals his dmg is still more than decent. I dunno what the job was like before certain updates but they rule now and alot of ppl r lvling it. Let's face a sad yet true fact here,though: When a company makes a game it can never know if certain aspects of it will work out or not. They can test it all they like but they still cannot simulate an entire community based upon it. That is y they have updates. My complaint with SE is that they rn't doing anything about the gil-sellers. But then again a recent event that took place while we were on a NM hunt with my LS showed me that even the players have to help out fight them. We noticed that 3 char in the area of spawn weren't moving at all and once the NM popped the first time all three of them automatically pounced it. Immediately my LS figured they r using bots. We started cussing them out too but without reply. We called a GM who in turn sent a call to each of them which if they didn't respond to within 30 min they would face a severe penalty. 15 min later all three of them had cleared the area and the area was almost completely free for the next 4 days. My point here is that it is very convenient for all us players to blaim the company for everything wrong in the game but we shouldn't forget that we r a community which has been given some freedoms AND responsibilities as well. Try reporting suspicious activities when u c them. It won't hurt or cost u anything.
It's hard to find a party because the party dynamics are poorly designed. To get decent xp at higher levels (may not be true near lvl 75), you need:
1 - tank (PLD or NIN)
1 - healer (WHM, SMN, or RDM)
2 - damage dealers (WAR, MNK, RNG, DRG, SAM, DRK, BST, or THF)
1 - mana refresh/dispel (BRD or RDM)
1 - magic damage (BLM)
As you can see, some jobs are much more needed than others.
Furthermore, the party can only span a level range of 2 levels. Let's say 54-56 for example. The tank should be in the upper part of that so either 55 or 56. The damage dealers should be concentrated on the 56 side as well if possible.
It's possible to get xp in a less ideal setup, but except for a few specialty setups like manaburns, this is the way most jobs get their xp. Occasionally the BLM might be swapped for another damage dealer.
The chances of getting a party of the right levels with the right jobs at the same time is fairly small. The servers have 2000-4000 people on at a time, over half of which are not xp'ing.
I think the jobs are fairly well balanced within the different roles, but there are just too many damage dealers.
I think the gear selection is poorly designed. The best gear is both extremely rare and insanely better than the second best gear. Because the second best gear sucks so bad by comparison, no one wants it and no one wants to party with someone using it.
U r making a pretty good point there but still u r somewhat in the wrong at a few things. Personally,I haven't seen anyone being that strict about armors and I recently got lvl 50. Basically because ppl look for members through the player search system u can't know who's wearing what and once u have someone in u can't just kick him off because his or her armor isn't good. This could be the case only in my server too. I don't know what is going on in other servers. Also I don't think in other MMOs the number of healers is equal to the number of damage dealers. It is a natural phenomenon for some jobs to be used more frequently than others.
yeah people are not too concerned with armor as much these days, player skill > then any armor you could buy. Also i dont get where this drg = worthless comes from drgs are a extremely powerful job and do very well as dds even better with the new update for them. Getting parties is and isnt as hard as some people make it sound it all depends on what jobs are on and seeking at that time. As a pld i have no trouble getting invites unless there is a lot of plds or nins seeking near my lvl. But i do have a to say Nin vs Pld is really about what your preference is a lot of people prefer nins a lot of people prefer plds. But i do have to as a pld i prefer a rdm over a brd but as nin i prefer a brd over rdm. Its just what you like i guess.
And if you are going to start and be a new player i suggest starting a craft asap, i really wish i did when i started. It can be hard to make enough money to buy the gear you want especially post 50 when gear starts to get really expensive. But to be honest gil is not too hard to earn you just gotta not be lazy and do a lil research is all.
A lot of people say lvling thf helps because treasure hunter and TH2 help your farming capabilties as well as the ability to steal. But i on the other hand do many things to earn gil, i have fishing skill 22 atm working on getting it to 50 so i can catch black sole which sell for a decent price. Also i do bcnms which drop good items and spells that sell for good prices usually. And also garrisons which are similiar. Both can be really fun and really profitable if you know what you are doing. Occasionally i camp nms but im not a very patient person and sometimes they can be extremely overcamped as well.
You just gotta find out what you like to do. I used to mine alot but found that i liked fishing a lot more. Atm its less profitable but when i get higher skill and lvl my cooking i will make more gil then i know what to do with since at least on my server food prices and increased astronomicaly and all the good foods sell really really fast. And if i can fish my own ingrediants i will make that much more gil.
I really hope you give this game a try it is one of the best mmos i have ever played and ive played quite a few in my days SWG, DAoC, L2, lil bit of WoW(and hated the easy boring game), Some GW which i found very similiar to WoW but worse
. I like this game because it is really challening and there is always something you can be doing even while waiting for a pt.
dunno if i should cry or be happy? im pretty new to FFXI i've read about this game for about ehm 14 days? read read read read, forum posts, news what so ever i've read it haha (school is borring u c)
i've just got the game a week ago, i c the point with all the gil stuff haha *hand on heart AUCH* but i like the game, and if u get depressed THERE IS ALLWAYS TETRA MASTER XD have played tetra master in 50 hours or so haha and FFXI hhmmm maybe 20
i just wanna say: if u like FF u shouldn't buy FFXI unless u like MMO's 
there's a huge dif. but as i said: i LOVE FFXI 
don't care if i have to run around crafting or so to get money 
btw some kind person gave me 6000 gil thx a lot who ever you are 
a shame i deleted that char though.......
but as many old FFXI players say: FFXI is 2 hardcore for many players caurse of all the ''slow''-gameplay.......... oh well better try it then never buy it i say
hope somebody is smiling now 
"Everyone is quick to blame the alien" Rather don't post a reply than post what will harm you later. I still like the cookie!