Opinions On FFXI's Life.

stuff to do pre SoA with balance rewards
Abyssea seal. +2 pts
Salvage
old school party. (mostly pre abyssea before people started to leech)
Dynamis
Campaign
Voidwatch
Trial of the Magians, (pts happening on trials etc)
Legion
BCNM
Einherjar
Empyrean Weapons
Relic Weapons
Mythic Weapons
Meeble Burrows
Nyzul Isle Uncharted or old floors
Limbus
sky and & sea stuff
VNMs

ALL that stuff people was doing in the past, lot shouts happening, different stuff to do that also give out balance rewards
.

now SoA time:
Monstrosity
Reive (not seeing much happening because of the following...)

Delve (mostly kill off the others events)

Skirmish (kill off EVERYTHING. kick to the balls to every other event!)
now wtf happen here? these 2 events kill off the others with broken easy rewards with almost little to no work.

sad to see how things going but with the way they rushing the game. and i dont wanna say it "dying" but how long you think it gonna last if you can literally first day play, leech to 99, (after the G1 G2 etc) do skirmish (seen people with a leeched whm there><) and be max out on gear/weapon in about a month or less with all jobs
but hey you guys asked for it

you guys asked for it ...
you guys asked ...

YOU GUYS ASKED FOR IT?!??!?

DAFUQ.

A cynical person might think that they want to kill off FFXI to drive players to FFXIV 2.0.

PARKER Edit:

man, i gotta get some rng af3 so my xhit isn't busted as ***

sure glad i farmed skadi feet+1 for my cor, makes getting around so much quicker

good thing i already auged all of my mnk af, the extra 10% on mantra is a lovely safety net and who doesn't like a longer 1h

i'll never do this one anyway because i don't enjoy it, but rose strap and nocturnus are the only things that were EVER good from campaign and they're as good as they ever were

hm, brought my newest mule through wotg yesterday so i could start on clears, need a wanion belt for high m.acc nuking and it'd be nice to be able to warp to akvan for hekas.. need some rubeus feet for embrava as well, and an anhur robe would be nice to save space vs af2+2 body and eirene's but i suppose those don't need clears

weird, i swear i had to do some of that to 99 my annihilators and i'm positive there were people asking for tips on how to best to do thunder m.acc trials this week..

great group gil activity, eirenes best in slot for curaga, coif-1 best in slot idle, maniacus sash best nuking without m.acc, FUN

if i couldn't make 65m in a day to buy them, i'm pretty sure i'd be blowing my seals from next login campaign on kraken one..

laeradr both best in slot, mythics

daurdaubla, ochain

annihilator, aegis, gjallarhorn

brd, whm, pld

letalis mantle, rng belt, orunmilas, thall mantle, lasaia pendant, probably more i can't think of atm

ws unlocks, thaumas coat, nares trews, nares cap if you dont have muyingwa clear

enif corazza

genbu's shield, wlegs, novia, novio, sash, aureole

synth mats & trials, admittedly pretty dead


if you want to skip all those events, be my guest, but you're gonna be pretty gimp for doing so

and bro what average player is going to do any of them other events if they can just do 2 event, well 1 event, Skirmish for mostly the best gear/weapon & easy gear in the game?

You hit the nail on the board exactly.

I remember when a lot of casual players and newer FFXI players from a couple years back before I quit for 2 years complained that the content was difficult. Complaints that it was difficult and too time consuming to obtain gear and whatever else they wanted.

Yeah, I can agree with that. But, when you make content and the reward from them too easy to obtain, you pretty much kill the content or burn through it within a month or a year. That's what has happened with Seekers of Adoulin and the game lately.

It's as if SE listened to them and catered to the overly casual, the lazy, and the ones who do not want to put as much effort and hard work in whatever they obtained. It makes me sick to my stomach now because when you have played FFXI since launch, the content was difficult originally but what you get out of it felt rewarding when you put so much work into them. It took time and effort to get what you wanted. It's almost as if the World of Warcraft mentality crowd in FFXI got what they wanted-- an easier MMORPG that had little challenges, consumed little effort and time, and made content faster to consume than it can create. There is little no sense of reward now because the gear is easier to obtain.

Another issue is that, like World of Warcraft, the newer gear have made the older gear and older content purely obsolete now. Very few of the gears from pre-SoA content are useful nowadays. The majority of them have been replaced nearly entirely by Delve gear, Plasm gear, and Skirmish gear. The majority of the older content save for Abyssea and Dynamis to a degree, have gone obsolete and useless.

Salvage is a good example. I have poured so much time and work into getting Salvage gear on my character. It took me a year and some months to complete Marduk's Jubba set with several different Salvage static groups. What happened some time later is that SE listened to the complaints that Salvage was too difficult and time-consuming to obtain the Salvage gear. They made the drop rates higher and with the higher level cap of 99, obtaining Salvage gear was much easier. You can complete an entire armor set within a month with a dedicated group from either Salvage I or II.

Then, out comes Seekers of Adoulin. The initial armors from the expansion didn't replace everything from Salvage. Then new content came that was easier to do if you put a couple hours into it and you have gear that nearly replaced all of Salvage I and II gear.

What happened to the effort and hard work there?

Gone.

What happened to the difficulty in obtaining better gear?

Gone; almost entirely. (Beating a Delve and Wildskeeper Reive boss still is somewhat difficult depending on the group you have.)

What happened to the older content save for Abyssea?

Gone, nearly obsolete.

What happened to the older gear?

Gone, nearly obsolete. (Relic, Mythic and Empyrean weapons are a good example of this unless they update it soon.)

Unless SE can update the game with newer content in a timely manner and continuously, and possibly add more difficult challenges to obtain gear that doesn't replace but complement older content, the game will have burned through the current content within a year. And, that is what is happening right now.

The game is pretty much just centered now around 3 areas of the new expansion:

1. Delve

2. Monstrosity

3. Skirmish

That will or already has gotten old very fast if it's the only thing players in this game do nowadays.

So, there you have it, the WoW-mentality won.

This.

I would love to come back to the game, but I feel as if I need to purchase an account. If they made it more accessible to new players I'd return.

Most of those (outside of mythics) are pretty average/basic things any player should have or work towards to obtain.

My personal opinion, FFXI is better than ever for me. I work an 8 - 5 job and own a home that requires a good deal of up keep. I've played since 1 year after NA launch and I have been to dynamis with an entire linkshell only to wipe multiple times. I have leveled up a job to 75 before ToAU. I leveled a second job to 75 when the 'elite' were on their 4th and 5th. I waited in line for AFv2 and Sky Gear, only to never see any of it. I spent years playing FFXI semi-casual through high school to slowly attain my goals. Sure, it was rewarding, but I do not miss waiting on the "hard core" players for two hours to start an event. I do not miss having to cater to a linkshell's rules to 'achieve' anything.

I love how FFXI. I love how you can do just about anything with a group of 3.

Did I beg SE to make it this way? Never once have I asked for anything easier. I'm just enjoying the game.

Honestly, the people that only play a game to get a shiney might want to look in the mirror before blaming "casuals". Is the game dead? To me, no way. I've taken many breaks and now I can take the opportunity to catch up on everything I ever dreamed of doing. After many years of checking one thing off my list and adding 20 new items to slave for. I can now clear entire expansion packs while relaxing.

Say what you want, I love my FFXI.

The old content didn't magically dissapear.

There's no reason that's really preventing someone who's starting anew from being able to rapidly climb through FFXI. In fact, it's significantly easier nowadays to reach 'endgame' in FFXI on a new character than ever.

I've watched returning players who don't have their original accounts level and gear up in a matter of a week or two. Granted, it required help of friends to do things such as limit breaks and such, but that's the point of a MMO no?

It's only once you've reached endgame, where prior content becomes invalid. Once you're level 99, there's no point in going for the 'old' endgame content, since the 'new' stuff trumps almost everything before it. Legion, Odin v2, Sea, Sky, Salvage, Nyzul.. all mostly dead content at this point.

And that's the crux of Aselin's argument.

It used to be a lot of endgame to do for 90% of the playerbase, as there was stuff to get from every bit of content. But now, SoA invalidates ALL of that content, and in-itself is easy as hell to complete.

Before, it used to be boring for a few of the hardcore players between updates because they've done everything.

Now, most of the player base can complete the highest tier of endgame and are now sitting around twiddling their thumbs until the next update.

In my opinion the game doesn't end when you have completed those events. After capping out on everything we aimed for a 12 man Tojil run to challenge ourselves. Hell, before delve was 1-5+mb'd, me and 4 other friends would low man the pieste for fun outside delve lol.

If you are out of things to gear towards, get good at sch stunning, level geo, play RDM as a PLD+RDM hybrid job in delve (DT sets ect), just find ways to be more efficient when one invites you to an alliance. When you are short on gil, you can go to Walk of Echoes and do flux 11-13-15 with another for a DD+healer team and make alot of gil very fast.

There is almost always something to do in this game, just sometimes during content lulls you have to challenge yourself to be better.

You can make a lvl 99 within days if you have abyssea. Get top end gear by Skirmish 2.0 which anyone can do. Skirmish 2.0 basically made it easy for anyone to get.

It's easier than ever to level and gear jobs. I don't think the person you quoted plays anymore, or he/she would understand that as well.

Not really. Speaking of a brand new character you're not just gonna be able to leech yourself up. You either need a kind friend up to this boring task(and if you're new it ain't gonna happen), or have the monetary capacity(you start with 10 gil)to offer to a mercenary(and I don't know about other servers but I haven't seen people offering burns in forever cause there's probably less boring ways to make money).
So it isn't all that simple for a brand new player.

Lately, every La Theine worm party I've been in has had at least 4 or 5 "keyers" who are all around level 30. It's not that hard to get into an Abyssea party and leech these days.

Never seen people turning down leechers? Only so many you can have in a party, someone must do the killing.

Lately? No I haven't seen any leechers being turned down. It's lucky if you can find 18 people to even fill the alliance.

You made my day!

I think FFXi will have at least 10-15 years more. There will always be a faifthul playerbase behind it.

I think in a few months, when we see where XIV stands, we'll see how it's going, if they announce server merges, then XIV has claimed quite a few XI players. Regardless, with the first launch of XIV we got Abyssea and everyone said XI was dying, same crap is happening now. Personally, I lost interest because I worked long hours for a few weeks around the time Delve came out and that was it, I was permanently behind and couldn't get into shout group.

If we do start to see XI dying, don't blame Akihiko Matsui, FFXIV, or the dev team of either, look to those people shouting "Delve weapon only" to every Delve run.

If the game goes downhill it's absolutely the fault of Matsui and his team. They're payed to keep the game interesting, if people leave is because they failed to do so.

Debatable, seeing as they picked up the project this late. One could make an argument that there's very little they could do with a better financial outcome than what they've done. Without speeding up the pace and allowing people to catch up, they rule out new players almost entirely. In a game this old, people are bound to quit regardless, with no new players that means the population is going to perpetually drop.

If you want to criticize matsui, there are plenty of ways to do so, but it's not as simple as 'he didn't fix it, it's his fault'.

They might not be supported enough but it's still them who develop the content, you can't blame the players. Players are customers seeking entertainment, lack of it will lead em away.

And a faithful developer? IMHO the moment FFXI stops being profitable, SE closes it possibly with a very short notice.

Maybe I'm just being cynical...