Playing FFXI the OLD WAY?Follow

You missed my meaning...

IF there was a "healthy population" of people who wanted non-TP Burn groups, enough to play on a Pre-ToAU server, then why not make a Post-ToAU server and simply don't do the TPBurn?

FFXI was always polarized anyway. In pre-ToAU on the server in question, BLM is much, MUCH more powerful than most of the other jobs in the game. I remember post-ToAU retail, WAR, SAM and NIN all got absurdly powerful due to the nature of mobs in the expansion being very poor for casters.

On the private server, ToAU is "enabled" but all of the mobs are set to level 99, so unless you plan on BLM burning them you really don't have access to anything in the zones except the unlockable jobs.

There was never a good balance in the game, which is whatever. No MMOs have a decent balance.

Edited, Feb 17th 2017 10:43am by Zackary

By ToAU you meant Zilart, right? Right? Because that's when burn parties started to rise. By the time the last chapter of CoP was released those horribly stifling "traditional" (traditional to what, I have no idea) three mage one tank two specific melee parties were over.

A 10% delta between the top and bottom sounds pretty good to me. As for amount of work that has to be done, with the numbers this close that's 100% the choice of the player.



Yeah FFXIV's cross class system is pretty garbage. But they're re-vamping it for Stormblood so we'll see what they do there.



I never played pre-CoP FFXI and I had no trouble getting into parties as a BLM main to magic burst on Distortion (because nobody knew how to make anything else apparently). Once ToAU landed that came to a screeching halt.

My advice in that case would be to play what you want to play. Since the performance of each class is so close, you play what you enjoy. How is that not a player choice? Also fun fact, there are now class trials where you can try out a class at a high level to see how it feels. Almost like test driving the class before sinking a hundred hours into leveling it.

Slow to reply, but my earlier critiques on crafting were the "back in the day" basis, for the most part. When it came to consumable HQs, the drastic differences for some types were precisely what led to the lack of profit on NQing. And when it came to NQ durables, the lack of outlet for them also contributed to their general lack of profitability. Sure, an NQ Scorpion Harness was still useful, but no one ever actually used something like a Carapace Harness, either. That's more of what I was getting at with "useless" commentary. Meanwhile, synergy's attempt at enchantments (or even anima-style stuff) isn't what I was getting at, either. Rather, consumables that would outright improve stats on the item based on either what you used or some pre-set path. And while this exists somewhat through stuff like Skirmish gear and other things, the problem is the mix of RNG and the augment items not being crafted, but exclusively dropped.

Regardless, one of largest MMO peeves nowadays is the fact crafting is so secondary to direct drops. Far as I'm concerned, no mob should ever drop a completed piece of equipment. Put some NPCs with the utmost basic "white" items for given level ranges as a failsafe sure, but anything a crafter makes should outclass that. And that'd pretty much be step 1 of establishing a more living economy.

Yeah I understood that. But that's the natural progression of the character's kit. If MMO classes started out as complicated as they end up, very few people would ever make it past the introductory stage. Things have to start simple to ease you into playing the game, then later they get more complex. And actually not just MMOs, but basically every game works this way.

Ok I think I'm seeing what you're saying now, and you're right. The different jobs/class' playstyles place very different demands on the players that aren't super obvious when you pick the class up for the first time. But still none of it is sudden. Those kits grow slowly over time, giving you a chance to get used to each change as it happens so that by the end you're used to it and you're maybe adding one more button or one more proc and that's no problem because you've been doing it this whole time.

Also balance like you're describing would lead to VERY serious homogenization issues where the classes don't feel different from one another. If, for instance, a subtlety rogue played just like a feral druid, what would be the point of having two different classes there? Even FFXI with its more limited job kits separates the classes nicely so that no two really feel exactly the same. FFXIV skirts the edge there a little tightly but even they manage to make similar jobs feel different by varying the playstyles between them.

Well FFXIV also has 13 jobs (soon to be 15) whereas WoW has what? 34? Each spec in WoW is practically its own class with its own playstyle branching off from a common base class (so a fury warrior and an arms warrior have a few things in common but they're very different to play).

That's a nightmare to juggle, and personally I think WoW's done a stellar job of making that particular nightmare work as well as it does. Is it perfect? No. Is anything? Perfect balance is one of those things that gamers wish for longingly on forums that doesn't really exist. Some games can get close, but there's a price for that (the aforementioned homogenization problem), and some games don't give a **** (hi2u early FFXI). You try to keep the player's options viable and competitive and it's SUPER hard to do. Perfect balance though is basically a unicorn.

There's a prevalent belief that a game being solo-friendly means friendships can't rise up or are perhaps forced to suffer.

The reality is that a lot of MMO endgame tends to force uneasy alliances, where the only way to progress after a point is to put up with people you really don't want to be around or tolerate game play that really isn't all that enjoyable. For those who don't want their entertainment to be marred by such, MMOs can be an embittering experience as one struggles to find a group where the personality clashes are minimal while the frustrations of play can at least be minimized by good company. Not everyone succeeds in this regard, and it's more of a thing in XI because it's not with the time on LFG tools and cross-realm functionality. And as I recently brought up in the XIV section, the $18 world transfer fee doesn't do the player any favors.

Generally speaking, those who aspire for solo-friendly just want to be able to log in and actually get something done. It's not that they don't want to play with others, but there's usually something about the process that complicates it. Using XI as an example, if you were someone that didn't want to play RDM as a main healer back in the day, you were going to have a hard time. People would use that preference against you, and even if they never actually played with you, the "reputation" of closed servers could be forged solely on hearsay. And while you might've had people who legitimately deserved ire, like those who ran off with LS banks, ninjalotted, and the like, the actions of a few bad apples do not legitimize hamstringing the ability of other players to get things done, particularly in a manner they find enjoyable, even if not in the coveted "most efficient" way.

Ultimately, things like this are a lesson XI learned much too late, and is perhaps why the WoW model took greater root in popularity than this or the Everquest type. However, even those games are stuck in the raid-centric model and the fear-mongering that raids would die if people didn't have to conform still exists. That tends to bring me to my ultimate point that if something is fun, then people will participate. If forced party play isn't fun, then something is wrong somewhere. And yes, how games are designed do influence our behavior, which could turn an otherwise pleasant person into a total buttmonkey when things take a turn. Stuff like lockouts and (steep) penalties for failure feed into that. Sadly, you'll have those who believe such things should also be present to encourage better play, when the reality is it likely doesn't and even discourages participation. So, yeah, we've got ourselves to blame in some ways, but no amount of personal tolerance or respect for others will change how things are coded.

Frankly, the RP element of MMOs has been lost. And I'm not talking about where you fit on the trinity with a given job/class. Rather, playing differently needs to be more valued, even if it occasionally means having strengths and weaknesses. And shining in those moments of weakness is what's going to make an encounter more memorable, be it a static party, guild group, server-only PUG, or cross-server match-up. None of the MMO Catch 22 crap. No more presumption someone's read a guide or watched a video. No more "skill-based rotations" that can mean performances are orders of magnitudes different from those who "get it" and those who don't. Some will groan at all this, sure. Some will resist the notion, absolutely. Yet, I'd posit it's all of this conformity that makes people seem so... disposable. And not because someone could do something on their own.

Lyrailis,
While I largely agree with many of your sentiments , I do have to kind of take exception to what you said above. Gear swaps can play a huge part in effectiveness... not one percent, but often 100% or even an order of magnitude impact on performance. That said, FFXIs old macro system was horrible for doing anything like this. However, with the inclusion of /equipset and the mog wardrobes, it really does become quite simple and reasonable to integrate various gear sets into your play. So, not to bash you, or anyone else, but I'd strongly suggest playing around with the gear sets (under the macros sub-menu) to see how much easier that process is now; it's one of those QoL things that SE took far too long it implement.

It's not the ease of doing so that bothers me, it's a combination of logistics and how silly the concept is.

I don't like the idea of carrying around 50+ pieces of equipment for a single job, when you can only wear ~15 at a time. ONE Mog Wardrobe is only 80 slots, and they expect you to pony up $4/mo to unlock Wardrobes #3 and #4.

I like the idea of being able to play multiple jobs, but that means carrying a huge ridonkulous amount of gear just to swap in for a couple seconds and swap it back out.

And yeah yeah yeah, ok, maybe I was exaggerating when I said 10%, but still.

And now we come to the "silly" part. So, I'm trying to imagine a battle, where you're fighting a warrior, and suddenly he sticks out his hand and goes "hey hold on, I gotta swap here." so the battle stops, he slips off his chest plate, pulls another one out of his back, puts it on, and then says "Ok, I'm ready!" and then uses a special attack and then goes "hey wait a sec, I gotta put the other one back on!"

I HATE using the word "Immersion", but if there was ever an immersion-breaking mechanic in a game, this would be it. I know they got Macro Sets now, I know /lockstyle will prevent the annoying blinking in and out and losing lock-on with your target, but I hate the idea at its core.

And yes yes yes, performance performance, sherformance. I just don't like doing it, lol. For RP reasons, for Immersion Reasons, and as a gameplay mechanic, I just feel that it was one of FFXI's biggest flaws, that thing they should have never gotten into.

It cheapens the value of a piece of armor in my eyes if I know that I will only wear it for 2 seconds out of every 30.