i don't care about the japanese getting the same earlier. i care about them getting the game earlier then putting everybody else on the same servers.
let me tell you, 6-7 months go a long way to give an unfair advantage.
this is especially evident in crafting. new players can't compete with older players when it comes to crafting.
reason 1. higher level crafters can make better items from the same resources, so a lower level crafter may lose money for purchasing the same materials where a higher level crafter would make money.
reason 2. higher level crafters can make items that everybody wants, say food that give 2-3x better stats than what the lower level crafters can make. this means lower level crafters have no market to sell to.
let's face it, squareenix treated non-japanese players like shit. if you didn't feel wronged, you probably didn't know what they did. like how the effects of sneak and trick attacks were fully usable as a sub-class until it was released to the non-japanese.
I used SaTa as a DRK/thf all the time. What are you talking about?
man your special ... quite unique in fact.
Well he says that they made it so You can't SaTa with thf as a subjob. I want him to clarify his statement since you can Sata just fine with thf as a subjob. I do agree that camping Notorious Monsters was imposible if a JP was there but that was about it.
A look on FFXI. The issue has been brought up since FFXIV is launching soon. Now that I look back on it, FFXI was an abnormally horrid experience. I probably wouldn't play FFXIV because beneath the pretty pictures and sweet music, there lies the sewers we call customer service.
How FFXI scarred people:
Section I. Bad game mechanics.
1. Level gap within a party was roughly 1 or less. This meant you can't play with friends or that you might wander for DAYS before you find a public party.
2. Many characters were just useless late game. Monk/Dragoon/Thief/Ranger, basically all physical damage dealers were useless in boss hunts.
3. If you did not buy an extra character to hold your stuff, you couldn't craft. This may not be a big deal in games with micro-transactions where this is intentional but FFXI was a subscription game.
4. Repetition.
A. 0 character movement (as in moving left or right) for most character classes. There was 1 puller who moved, the other 5 party members did not need to move at all.
B. Same battle sequence used for the whole day. A party would choose a battle sequence within the first 5-10 minutes of play. After that, the EXACT same sequence would be used for the rest of the day. Sometimes 8-10 hours without change.
C. You could play the game blind-folded for 95% of the time. My friend watched tv with the client windowed and did not need to look to play.
5. Lack of customization.
A. No skill choices. Only class choices.
B. Equipment stats/effects had no fluctuation whatsoever.
Section II. The bad customer service.
1. Accounts could not be deleted properly. <--- especially important
The problem lay in 2 facts:
A. Characters would be preserved for 6 months free of charge.
B. Deleting all your characters and preventing yourself from playing did not preventing SquareEnix to charge you for just having the account.
Result: You got charged for having an account that could not be used. SquareEnix got sued for this and lost. Unfortunately, they did not refund any player, they only changed their policy.
2. The Japanese players had 6-7 months access before non-Japanese players.
A. Non-Japanese players could not make money in crafting since earlier crafters could craft better items with the same materials. Non-Japanese players saw no hope in making money from crafting until after about 2 months of losing a LOT of money.
B. Japanese players had a thief sub-class exploit that allowed some classes to do 3-4x more damage than after the patch. The exploit lasted all the way up to a month before North American release.
C. Japanese players had less competition when they farmed their rare items.
3. The servers were in Japan so NA players could not fight popular bosses when a Japanese player was present.
The funny thing is that if you've played within the last year and a half or so, you'd realize that a lot of these problems plain just don't exist. Level Sync made partying a breeze, dual classing and job switching fixed any sort of class balance because you could always switch characters.
Also...I hate to point this out...but the game is made by a Japanese company. It kinda makes sense that the Japanese would get it before NA/EU. Besides that point they're planning a global release for FFXIV
Talk about emotional scarring with WoW though. I played the free trial, and after the trial period decided to cancel my account. After trying to find the cancel button for an hour, we decided we would sue them if they didn't cancel the account. Needless to say, they no longer require credit cards for the free trial.
Also....the fact that you are emotionally scarred from playing a video game...probably means you need to seek psychiatric help.
yeah, and now since you can change job people REQUIRE that you change it ... now you have to level ALL the job, nice improvement!
Do kids and idiots not realize that life is a precious thing anymore?
You talk through this post about how long and hard you played this game several months 8-10 hours a day yet you hated it the whole time? wtf is wrong with you to devote such a large chunck of your life to soemthing you hate. If you took nothign good from your gaming experience in this game then you should of moved on months ago. The time you spent hating ff11 you could of learned another language or picked up an instrument.
Dont do things you hate when they arent forced on you. Game to have fun if you not having fun move on to a different game and have some fun.
A look on FFXI. The issue has been brought up since FFXIV is launching soon. Now that I look back on it, FFXI was an abnormally horrid experience. I probably wouldn't play FFXIV because beneath the pretty pictures and sweet music, there lies the sewers we call customer service.
How FFXI scarred people:
"Scarred"? Really? Rather melodramatic word choice, don't you think?
Section I. Bad game mechanics.
1. Level gap within a party was roughly 1 or less. This meant you can't play with friends or that you might wander for DAYS before you find a public party.
Level gap was up to 3 levels and that's only because xp was calculated based on how the mob con's to the highest level job in the party.Regardless, hundreds of thousands of people leveled up multiple jobs - up to all 20 in some cases - just fine. And now, with level sync, it's a non-factor anymore as you can simply sync down to another character's level to tighten the group up.
2. Many characters were just useless late game. Monk/Dragoon/Thief/Ranger, basically all physical damage dealers were useless in boss hunts.
Many "characters"? I think you mean "jobs". That's a moot point. People leveled multiple jobs for different reasons. They leveled some for facility, some for soloing, some for farming and yet others because, believe it or not, they simply found them fun to play.
Not all jobs were ideal for all situations, yet all had their moments to shine. Perhaps DRG, for example, wasn't helpful in some parts of the game, but try telling a Merit party grinding on birds that a DRG is useless and see what they tell you. I played DRG to level 75 and had a blast the entire way, because I enjoy the job.
3. If you did not buy an extra character to hold your stuff, you couldn't craft. This may not be a big deal in games with micro-transactions where this is intentional but FFXI was a subscription game.
That depends on how much of a hoarder you are. Personally, I had more than enough space to carry evrything I would ever need, and then some.
Let's do some math...
Personal inventory can be up to 80 slots.
Mog Safe can be up to 80 slots.
Mog Locker can be up to 80 slots.
That's240 slots alone possible on one character, without anything else. But there's more options...
Mog Storage can be variable depending on what furniture you put in your room, but can hold up to quite a bit.
Armor Storage NPCs can store a number of entire armor sets, freeing up more room.
A mog satchel, provided with a security token, doubles your character's inventory space... so that's up to an additional 80 slots, bringing the possible limit up to 320 slots even without using the armor storage or Mog Storage. Including them, the total amount on a single character can go much higher.
If you can't make do with 320slots of inventory, at least.... then I don't know what to tell you.
4. Repetition.
A. 0 character movement (as in moving left or right) for most character classes. There was 1 puller who moved, the other 5 party members did not need to move at all.
Really? So Thief doesn't need to maneuver around behind the mob to do their job? Mages don't need to move and make sure they're out of range of AOEs during a battle? Tanks don't need to maneuver and make sure they're keeping aggro on them? Also, you can move around as much as you want during a fight.
And besides, how is "moving side to side" a necessary part of combat anyway? Are you that fidgity? Frankly, I'd call this a personal nit-pick of yours, and not a flaw with the game.
B. Same battle sequence used for the whole day. A party would choose a battle sequence within the first 5-10 minutes of play. After that, the EXACT same sequence would be used for the rest of the day. Sometimes 8-10 hours without change.
You would use the same exact battle sequence, "all day", for "8-10 hours"?
Way to exaggerate.
I've been in some pretty long parties, and we have never used exactly the same battle sequence in every single fight over even the course of one hour, because no two fights ever went exactly the same. Different mobs require differing strategies, sometimes you get an add... sometimes a fight goes bad and has to be recovered, some mobs would be tougher than others, requiring an adjustment to how players approached it.
C. You could play the game blind-folded for 95% of the time. My friend watched tv with the client windowed and did not need to look to play.
So your friend is/was one of those xp-sponge types who contributed next to nothing to the group and instead let the other 5 people carry them like dead-weight. Lovely.
I would bet real world money he was doing the absolute minimum of what his given role could do, and contributed nothing to the group to help the fights go more quickly and/or more smoothly.
I've been in parties with people like your friend, and it was very obvious that they were either A: Not paying attention or B: Sucked at playing their job.
Believe it or not, it's very obvious to a group of at least decent players who in a group is doing their part and who isn't. It's easy to tell who is giving effort, and who is simply riding coat-tails. In most parties I was in, folks like your friend would have almost inevitably been replaced ASAP by someone less ignorant.Even on the seemingly least "useful" job, there are always little things you can contribute to help the fights go that much more smoothly.
Your friend's laziness is not a sign of poor game design.
5. Lack of customization.
A. No skill choices. Only class choices.
Right, because you don't earn skills as you leveled your job and/or weaponskills up.You don't unlock more powerful weapon skills through quests, certain weapons, or other means. You don't select the most ideal weapon skill to use in a given situation, based on what you're fighting, what Skillchain you happen to be participating in, or so on...
Oh wait, yes you do.
B. Equipment stats/effects had no fluctuation whatsoever.
... Are you sure you even played FFXI?
No fluctuation in stats or effects from gear?
Why do you think people swapped gear in and out, camped or quested for specific items, or carried multiple sets of gear around with them for specific situations? Purely for looks?
Section II. The bad customer service.
1. Accounts could not be deleted properly. <--- especially important
The problem lay in 2 facts:
A. Characters would be preserved for 6 months free of charge.
B. Deleting all your characters and preventing yourself from playing did not preventing SquareEnix to charge you for just having the account.
Result: You got charged for having an account that could not be used. SquareEnix got sued for this and lost. Unfortunately, they did not refund any player, they only changed their policy.
Provide a link to support this entire part, please.
You are charged for active Content IDs. Deleting your character does not cancel the content ID, it simply leaves an available one open to you. You cancel your Content ID(s), you are not charged for them.
Other than that, I'll agree SE customer service does leave much to be desired. No argument there.
2. The Japanese players had 6-7 months access before non-Japanese players.
Actually, they had about a year before the rest of the world. See, because they released the game in Japan a year before they released it anywhere else. Thus, Japanese players had earlier access to the game before the rest of the world. See how that works?
A. Non-Japanese players could not make money in crafting since earlier crafters could craft better items with the same materials. Non-Japanese players saw no hope in making money from crafting until after about 2 months of losing a LOT of money.
Bullshit. I personally knew many non-JP players who made good money through crafting, and were doing so only weeks after starting the game. It's called using your brain and doing some research when crafting.
As for the crafts losing money... all crafts are expensive to level up, and it's well known that this is the case. However, there are different paths you can take to level a craft, some that level faster and are more expensive, some that are moderate but you break mostly even, some that are slower but earn you money along the way. Again, it's a matter of using your brain and finding the best approach for your circumstances.
B. Japanese players had a thief sub-class exploit that allowed some classes to do 3-4x more damage than after the patch. The exploit lasted all the way up to a month before North American release.
People using exploits in a MMO? No way! That *never* happens! (note very obvious sarcasm here)
Guess what? There was a duping exploit players found loooooong after the game was released in all its other regions... In both cases, it was corrected.
C. Japanese players had less competition when they farmed their rare items.
.... Yeah because, see... the Japanese were the only ones playing the game, thus they only had other JP players to compete against...
FFS are you seriously calling this a valid argument?
3. The servers were in Japan so NA players could not fight popular bosses when a Japanese player was present.
And it was addressed by SE by adding a delay to account for ping differences so that the other regions had a fair shot at them as well. This happened years ago. The result? Groups outside of Japanese ones are able to successfully claim raid bosses now - or any NM - and have been for a long time now.
Any other old, long since resolved issues you want to dig up and use as a current argument?
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
i don't care about the japanese getting the same earlier. i care about them getting the game earlier then putting everybody else on the same servers.
let me tell you, 6-7 months go a long way to give an unfair advantage.
this is especially evident in crafting. new players can't compete with older players when it comes to crafting.
reason 1. higher level crafters can make better items from the same resources, so a lower level crafter may lose money for purchasing the same materials where a higher level crafter would make money.
reason 2. higher level crafters can make items that everybody wants, say food that give 2-3x better stats than what the lower level crafters can make. this means lower level crafters have no market to sell to.
let's face it, squareenix treated non-japanese players like shit. if you didn't feel wronged, you probably didn't know what they did. like how the effects of sneak and trick attacks were fully usable as a sub-class until it was released to the non-japanese.
I used SaTa as a DRK/thf all the time. What are you talking about?
Having played FFXI since day 1 of its NA US launch, I was asking myself that same question through his entire post.
Everything he stated is either flat out false, exagerrated, irrelevant, personal opinion positioned as "fact", or unsubstantiated by any actual proof.
The game he's describing does not resemble the one I spent the past 7+ years playing.
The sad thing is, people are taking his word for it.
To some here, I'm sure defending the game based on what I know first-hand will make me a "fanboy"... Whatever. I'm an informed and experienced FFXI players who has called SE out on my share of issues over time. Regardless, in my experience, and what I know about FFXI does not match what the OP says about it, at all.
Using objective, verifiable facts, let's look at it from another angle...
FFXI maintained ~500,000 players up to at least 7 years after its launch, placing it as the 4th most populated P2P MMO on the market for much of its existence. Many newer MMOs of the last couple years alone can't boast those numbers after even 7 months on the market. Older MMOs that came out around the same time as XI have nowhere near those numbers and haven't for a long time.
FFXI only recently had its first server merge, bringing server numbers from over 30, down to 24. Again, many newer MMOs fall well below that many servers only months after their release, much less almost 8 years after.
FFXI has managed to achieve this despite being a niche game, despite SE's various poor decisions, despite having an aging engine, despite having a rather unintuitive interface (at first)... despite all the other complaints you can throw at it.
Despite all that, it has maintained a very large and very loyal following for over 8 years now. Knowing how unforgiving MMO players tend to be, would that be the case if FFXI or SE were as screwed up as the OP claims? Think about it.
Given the hysterical nature of how the OP positions his post - using a phrase like "emotional scarring" to set it up... I'd say they're very clearly going for "Big Drama" from the word go, and aren't particularly concerned about accuracy.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
K bye then have fun playing wow because your obviously the most uninformed player ever cause every dumb thing you mentioned they have stated it wouldnt be in 14.
Can we get over this "go play wow" nonsense once and for all please? There are other games and that mentality is far worse than someone stating how they feel. It's not clever and it's gotten old.
The only true issue i had with XI was the head start JP's had in a player run economy. The rest were all design choices and they were what they were.
I also sold mats to the higher lvl players until my crafting was high enough. Then I competed with them and in some cases drove them out of the market. In-game Economy is a big problem that needs to be fixed in just about every mmo these days. In a lot of cases it's because crafted items are junk compared to dropped gear. If you want to make in-game money you have to sell things like arrows, food, and potions that people run out of.
In other words, you used your head and found a way to fit into a situation that benefited you despite not being as advanced in crafting as the longer-time players.
You are an example of the kind of person who does well in FFXI, while others like the OP are busy crying "MENTAL SCARRING!!!"
It also brings to light something the OP also ignores in his "you can't compete with higher level crafters" claim: You don't have to compete with them to make money. Just have to use your brain a bit.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
yeah, and now since you can change job people REQUIRE that you change it ... now you have to level ALL the job, nice improvement!
You ("you" in general) choose to level jobs that others want you to. No one forces you to.
I'm playing the game, again, over 7 years. My Ninja is level 14, and will stay there. Why? I don't enjoy the job and won't invest the time playing it. I'm more interested in playing jobs and doing things I will enjoy for my time.
Yes, I've been told "you need to level Ninja"... My take is, "No I don't".
Regardless, there is nothing I've wanted to accomplish in the game that I haven't been able to. There are plenty of people in the game who welcome the challenge of taking on a task without following the accepted cookie cutter approach; and they are quite successful.
It all boils down to what types of players you choose to associate with. I will not associate with players who want to tell me how I'm supposed to play the game.
It ultimately comes down to personal choice. You choose to play as others tell you to, or you choose to play as you want to. Don't blame others for your choices.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I am skipping FF completely. New skin on thesame korean style grindfest.
lol... what? I won't deny that FFXI had a huge grind (it's the reason I quit), but it's not even Korean. It's a Japanese game. If anything it would be an American style grindfest, since it's more like EQ (to my knowledge) than Korean MMOs.
my arranged party was STRICT. our level gap was less than 0.1 levels for 2 months straight.
If i ever did a simple quest on my own for items or gold or something, they made me die for the sake of the gap.
So, the 1 level difference rule was imposed on you by the people you chose to group with. It was not imposed by the game itself, as you present it in your OP.
Anyone who actually plays FFXI knows that xp doesn't take a serious hit until after 3 levels, so you were buried with that statement as soon as you committed it to text.
Still, you presented it in your original post as a factual fault with the game.
Well, that speaks tons about the credibility of your OP, now doesn't it.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
the level gap for most arranged parties was only 1 or less. mine met togther frequently so we kept it at 0.1. public parties often had gaps of 3 or so but never good arranged parties.
as for being unable to find parties for days if you didn't have an arranged party, that's not exaggerated. around lvl 55+, melee classes could often search for days without finding a party. dragoons in particular.
the thief trick/sneak has a different multiplier depending on whether thief is a sub-job or main job. before the global launch, the trick/sneak combo had the same multiplier whether thief was a main job or a sub job. basically, a class like dark knight had a much bigger multiplier than they do now. it's the difference between how much damage a thief does with a normal hit and a dark knight does with a normal hit.
if you got the game at global launch, you may have heard about this. i only knew because one of my arranged party members was fluent in japanese and english and had the game since the japanese launch. i did check the change log at the time and it was mentioned. it should be in the change log around september 2003.
for crafting: many japanese players already had crafting at mid lvl 90s by the time ffxi was released globally. no matter how long it takes for a first wave player to have high crafting, it takes much longer for a later player to achieve the same level of craft.
someone mentioned that they sold their materials to a higher level crafter to level their craft faster. if you had been one of the earlier crafters, you could use those materials to make items as well and sell it instead of only the materials.
here's another problem: if you were crafting food, you were screwed since the materials could not be sold to higher level crafters.
why did i call it emotional scarring? because it wasn't just about the bland game mechanics. it was that global players were treated very poorly.
I'm hoping that FFXIV would not have those problems.. but we all need to be realistic about this new game. problems will arise, and there will be features that may or may not appeal to everyone.
I wish that keyboard / mouse will be alot better than FFXI "compact keyboard" and the combat will be dynamic and "less boring" i.e: attack.. wait. and count. 1 .. 2 .. 3 .. "slash" .. 1 .. 2 .. 3 "scratch butt" ..
The instant that I learned that the thief that I spent 2 weeks of solid solo grinding on was going to end up useless anyways was the instant I quit forever. Also, I almost quit right when they charged me to create a character (on top of subscription fees) but I reminded myself about the $50 I spent on the retail box and swallowed my rage. Recently I tried to come back to the game just out of curiosity, I didn't remember any of my information I used to log in with and there is no way to recover it, I'm left owning a useless box of coasters.
The disc's final resting place was in my microwave.
I'll wait a few months after FFXIV's release. If people complain about something that I would quit over, I'm not going to touch it.
I'm hoping that FFXIV would not have those problems.. but we all need to be realistic about this new game. problems will arise, and there will be features that may or may not appeal to everyone.
I wish that keyboard / mouse will be alot better than FFXI "compact keyboard" and the combat will be dynamic and "less boring" i.e: attack.. wait. and count. 1 .. 2 .. 3 .. "slash" .. 1 .. 2 .. 3 "scratch butt" ..
I think my biggest gripe about XI was the combat. WhenI heard of XIV I was hoping it wouldn't be that again. But really I'm just going to have to try it to see. When the Nippon beta testers were calling it slow I was really thrown off because I always figured they liked a paced combat system better.
We'll see.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
I'll agree with the OP about some things withe FF11 and yeah it had its problems. For some reason though I get the feeling that he hasn't done any research on Final Fantasy XIV besides reading Final Fantasy in the title. I've been reading a few posts and people have been complaining about how in FF11 japanese players got a head start. Well in FFXIV we're all starting at the same time. I've also read that there was no character movement when you were in a party in FF11. In FF XIV XPing requires that you move from place to place to reach crystals scattered about the land so you can rest up and restore MP. (Also to your friend that would paly in windowed mode and watch TV while he was in a party, I definately would'nt want to play with him because i'm sure he's gotten a lot of people killed.) In FF11 yeah there wasnt really much choice in skills or character customization. In FF XIV there literally a ton of new options when creating a chracter. In FF XIV you pick and choose which skills you want to play with to make your own job.
the level gap for most arranged parties was only 1 or less. mine met togther frequently so we kept it at 0.1. public parties often had gaps of 3 or so but never good arranged parties.
as for being unable to find parties for days if you didn't have an arranged party, that's not exaggerated. around lvl 55+, melee classes could often search for days without finding a party. dragoons in particular.
the thief trick/sneak has a different multiplier depending on whether thief is a sub-job or main job. before the global launch, the trick/sneak combo had the same multiplier whether thief was a main job or a sub job. basically, a class like dark knight had a much bigger multiplier than they do now. it's the difference between how much damage a thief does with a normal hit and a dark knight does with a normal hit.
if you got the game at global launch, you may have heard about this. i only knew because one of my arranged party members was fluent in japanese and english and had the game since the japanese launch. i did check the change log at the time and it was mentioned. it should be in the change log around september 2003.
for crafting: many japanese players already had crafting at mid lvl 90s by the time ffxi was released globally. no matter how long it takes for a first wave player to have high crafting, it takes much longer for a later player to achieve the same level of craft.
someone mentioned that they sold their materials to a higher level crafter to level their craft faster. if you had been one of the earlier crafters, you could use those materials to make items as well and sell it instead of only the materials.
here's another problem: if you were crafting food, you were screwed since the materials could not be sold to higher level crafters.
why did i call it emotional scarring? because it wasn't just about the bland game mechanics. it was that global players were treated very poorly.
Well crafting food was actually one of the best and easiest things to craft for the first 50-60 lvl or so all i did was crafting juices sure i lost quite a few Syncs course of the 10 lvl gap at the begin of every new juice but it was cheap enough to not matter at all and they always sold and even if not i just lvled all my mage classes using my juices to speed it up.
And its easier to be the first wave to craft higher u say?? Hmmm i have to admit i have a hard time seeing why that would be true.
As far as i am concerned was it only helpful that there were crafters at high lvl already for example lets take Woodworking for example like in Cooking u were able to lvl fast and this time even with decent earnings in the end if u focused an Bolts now the only thing which could become expansive r the Bolt heads and it would have been even more expansive in the begin if there were almost no Crafters able to craft them....so being in the second wave helped a lot there.
Also making gil to spend on your crafts were only easier do u think the first wave was able to farm and sell stuff as good as the second wave?? Who would they have it sold to?? No one needed it at the begin.
Sure it does have downsides like the high lvl crafters get more HQs and course of that can sell cheaper than u and still make a good win but that only became worse and worse as more ppls became high lvl crafters.
And the lvl gap in a party...well the highest lvl player mattered really i had a friend of mine doing merrit pts with me all the time and he was a lvl 50 brd....we didn't get any penalty's and he still had a good exp/perhr.
I do have to agree with u on the finding a pt point it really was tough as a DD but ppls with friends just started static pts tho...
I finished quiet a few jobs from 1 to 75 that way.
Yeah I hope people that were burned with FF 11 will come back and give it a try, and I hope Square-Enix has learned from past mistakes and will put forth a much better product.
Comments
I'm not a WoW hater, but you seem to be a bit slow
Well he says that they made it so You can't SaTa with thf as a subjob. I want him to clarify his statement since you can Sata just fine with thf as a subjob. I do agree that camping Notorious Monsters was imposible if a JP was there but that was about it.
My theme song.
yeah, and now since you can change job people REQUIRE that you change it ... now you have to level ALL the job, nice improvement!
His post is relevant to this thread... but if it has to be explained why, it kinda loses it's effect.
Do kids and idiots not realize that life is a precious thing anymore?
You talk through this post about how long and hard you played this game several months 8-10 hours a day yet you hated it the whole time? wtf is wrong with you to devote such a large chunck of your life to soemthing you hate. If you took nothign good from your gaming experience in this game then you should of moved on months ago. The time you spent hating ff11 you could of learned another language or picked up an instrument.
Dont do things you hate when they arent forced on you. Game to have fun if you not having fun move on to a different game and have some fun.
[Mod Edit]
I am skipping FF completely. New skin on thesame korean style grindfest.
Sinister Savant MMORPG Community
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Having played FFXI since day 1 of its NA US launch, I was asking myself that same question through his entire post.
Everything he stated is either flat out false, exagerrated, irrelevant, personal opinion positioned as "fact", or unsubstantiated by any actual proof.
The game he's describing does not resemble the one I spent the past 7+ years playing.
The sad thing is, people are taking his word for it.
To some here, I'm sure defending the game based on what I know first-hand will make me a "fanboy"... Whatever. I'm an informed and experienced FFXI players who has called SE out on my share of issues over time. Regardless, in my experience, and what I know about FFXI does not match what the OP says about it, at all.
Using objective, verifiable facts, let's look at it from another angle...
FFXI maintained ~500,000 players up to at least 7 years after its launch, placing it as the 4th most populated P2P MMO on the market for much of its existence. Many newer MMOs of the last couple years alone can't boast those numbers after even 7 months on the market. Older MMOs that came out around the same time as XI have nowhere near those numbers and haven't for a long time.
FFXI only recently had its first server merge, bringing server numbers from over 30, down to 24. Again, many newer MMOs fall well below that many servers only months after their release, much less almost 8 years after.
FFXI has managed to achieve this despite being a niche game, despite SE's various poor decisions, despite having an aging engine, despite having a rather unintuitive interface (at first)... despite all the other complaints you can throw at it.
Despite all that, it has maintained a very large and very loyal following for over 8 years now. Knowing how unforgiving MMO players tend to be, would that be the case if FFXI or SE were as screwed up as the OP claims? Think about it.
Given the hysterical nature of how the OP positions his post - using a phrase like "emotional scarring" to set it up... I'd say they're very clearly going for "Big Drama" from the word go, and aren't particularly concerned about accuracy.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
In other words, you used your head and found a way to fit into a situation that benefited you despite not being as advanced in crafting as the longer-time players.
You are an example of the kind of person who does well in FFXI, while others like the OP are busy crying "MENTAL SCARRING!!!"
It also brings to light something the OP also ignores in his "you can't compete with higher level crafters" claim: You don't have to compete with them to make money. Just have to use your brain a bit.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I would say Galka in Subligar, personally.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
You ("you" in general) choose to level jobs that others want you to. No one forces you to.
I'm playing the game, again, over 7 years. My Ninja is level 14, and will stay there. Why? I don't enjoy the job and won't invest the time playing it. I'm more interested in playing jobs and doing things I will enjoy for my time.
Yes, I've been told "you need to level Ninja"... My take is, "No I don't".
Regardless, there is nothing I've wanted to accomplish in the game that I haven't been able to. There are plenty of people in the game who welcome the challenge of taking on a task without following the accepted cookie cutter approach; and they are quite successful.
It all boils down to what types of players you choose to associate with. I will not associate with players who want to tell me how I'm supposed to play the game.
It ultimately comes down to personal choice. You choose to play as others tell you to, or you choose to play as you want to. Don't blame others for your choices.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
and his name is Britneyspears..... >.>
My theme song.
lol... what? I won't deny that FFXI had a huge grind (it's the reason I quit), but it's not even Korean. It's a Japanese game. If anything it would be an American style grindfest, since it's more like EQ (to my knowledge) than Korean MMOs.
So, the 1 level difference rule was imposed on you by the people you chose to group with. It was not imposed by the game itself, as you present it in your OP.
Anyone who actually plays FFXI knows that xp doesn't take a serious hit until after 3 levels, so you were buried with that statement as soon as you committed it to text.
Still, you presented it in your original post as a factual fault with the game.
Well, that speaks tons about the credibility of your OP, now doesn't it.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
the level gap for most arranged parties was only 1 or less. mine met togther frequently so we kept it at 0.1. public parties often had gaps of 3 or so but never good arranged parties.
as for being unable to find parties for days if you didn't have an arranged party, that's not exaggerated. around lvl 55+, melee classes could often search for days without finding a party. dragoons in particular.
the thief trick/sneak has a different multiplier depending on whether thief is a sub-job or main job. before the global launch, the trick/sneak combo had the same multiplier whether thief was a main job or a sub job. basically, a class like dark knight had a much bigger multiplier than they do now. it's the difference between how much damage a thief does with a normal hit and a dark knight does with a normal hit.
if you got the game at global launch, you may have heard about this. i only knew because one of my arranged party members was fluent in japanese and english and had the game since the japanese launch. i did check the change log at the time and it was mentioned. it should be in the change log around september 2003.
for crafting: many japanese players already had crafting at mid lvl 90s by the time ffxi was released globally. no matter how long it takes for a first wave player to have high crafting, it takes much longer for a later player to achieve the same level of craft.
someone mentioned that they sold their materials to a higher level crafter to level their craft faster. if you had been one of the earlier crafters, you could use those materials to make items as well and sell it instead of only the materials.
here's another problem: if you were crafting food, you were screwed since the materials could not be sold to higher level crafters.
why did i call it emotional scarring? because it wasn't just about the bland game mechanics. it was that global players were treated very poorly.
I'm hoping that FFXIV would not have those problems.. but we all need to be realistic about this new game. problems will arise, and there will be features that may or may not appeal to everyone.
I wish that keyboard / mouse will be alot better than FFXI "compact keyboard" and the combat will be dynamic and "less boring" i.e: attack.. wait. and count. 1 .. 2 .. 3 .. "slash" .. 1 .. 2 .. 3 "scratch butt" ..
The instant that I learned that the thief that I spent 2 weeks of solid solo grinding on was going to end up useless anyways was the instant I quit forever.
Also, I almost quit right when they charged me to create a character (on top of subscription fees) but I reminded myself about the $50 I spent on the retail box and swallowed my rage.
Recently I tried to come back to the game just out of curiosity, I didn't remember any of my information I used to log in with and there is no way to recover it, I'm left owning a useless box of coasters.
The disc's final resting place was in my microwave.
I'll wait a few months after FFXIV's release. If people complain about something that I would quit over, I'm not going to touch it.
Don't trust Square Enix, not even for a second.
I think my biggest gripe about XI was the combat. WhenI heard of XIV I was hoping it wouldn't be that again. But really I'm just going to have to try it to see. When the Nippon beta testers were calling it slow I was really thrown off because I always figured they liked a paced combat system better.
We'll see.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
I'll agree with the OP about some things withe FF11 and yeah it had its problems. For some reason though I get the feeling that he hasn't done any research on Final Fantasy XIV besides reading Final Fantasy in the title. I've been reading a few posts and people have been complaining about how in FF11 japanese players got a head start. Well in FFXIV we're all starting at the same time. I've also read that there was no character movement when you were in a party in FF11. In FF XIV XPing requires that you move from place to place to reach crystals scattered about the land so you can rest up and restore MP. (Also to your friend that would paly in windowed mode and watch TV while he was in a party, I definately would'nt want to play with him because i'm sure he's gotten a lot of people killed.) In FF11 yeah there wasnt really much choice in skills or character customization. In FF XIV there literally a ton of new options when creating a chracter. In FF XIV you pick and choose which skills you want to play with to make your own job.
Wrong thread. My bad.
Well crafting food was actually one of the best and easiest things to craft for the first 50-60 lvl or so all i did was crafting juices sure i lost quite a few Syncs course of the 10 lvl gap at the begin of every new juice but it was cheap enough to not matter at all and they always sold and even if not i just lvled all my mage classes using my juices to speed it up.
And its easier to be the first wave to craft higher u say?? Hmmm i have to admit i have a hard time seeing why that would be true.
As far as i am concerned was it only helpful that there were crafters at high lvl already for example lets take Woodworking for example like in Cooking u were able to lvl fast and this time even with decent earnings in the end if u focused an Bolts now the only thing which could become expansive r the Bolt heads and it would have been even more expansive in the begin if there were almost no Crafters able to craft them....so being in the second wave helped a lot there.
Also making gil to spend on your crafts were only easier do u think the first wave was able to farm and sell stuff as good as the second wave?? Who would they have it sold to?? No one needed it at the begin.
Sure it does have downsides like the high lvl crafters get more HQs and course of that can sell cheaper than u and still make a good win but that only became worse and worse as more ppls became high lvl crafters.
And the lvl gap in a party...well the highest lvl player mattered really i had a friend of mine doing merrit pts with me all the time and he was a lvl 50 brd....we didn't get any penalty's and he still had a good exp/perhr.
I do have to agree with u on the finding a pt point it really was tough as a DD but ppls with friends just started static pts tho...
I finished quiet a few jobs from 1 to 75 that way.
Yeah I hope people that were burned with FF 11 will come back and give it a try, and I hope Square-Enix has learned from past mistakes and will put forth a much better product.
It's soooo much better running around doing errands for NPCs with !s above them, right?