How Do You Feel About The State Of The Game?

How do you feel about the state of the game Currently?

stale and botted, cant even do exemplary anymore. its either you bott or 6 box.

Get off of asura! Jeez.

I feel a little depressed about its future, and also jaded/annoyed at SE. They have so much potential for the game but are deciding to let it stagnate like usual. I think the next year or two will have stuff to do and finishing their storyline but I think it will bleed subs during that time. We'll see what they decide to do after that.

I think I'm getting older and a lot of the things I loved and still enjoy, are getting passed up for the likes of candy crush and such. Damn Gen Z

I AM IN ragnarok

more camps than ever

The game is fine if you're not in a rush and playing with other people. I can only imagine it's soul crushing if you are playing by yourself

It has its ups and downs. I remember back in the days, that I knew so many people on Fairy just because I was stuck with them for 4 to 5 hours leveling at one camp. Level-capped dungeons were also really fun (and frustrating... how can something be fun and frustrating? The answer is the Stockholm Syndrome) and let you make more friends (or break linkshells, pick one). I miss that part in the current version.

On the other hand, it has many strong points. Less grind is a great addition, as I do not have as much time as I had when I was in my early twenties. I love the concept of Odyssey (even if I sometimes complain about it) and subjob locked out (hope for more content where you need to prove yourself without it). I'm completely not missing the open-world HNMs, even if it had some good moments, it was just an unneeded waiting time, and claim depended on which ls had a better bot.

Sadly, I do agree with Dryalo about S-E wasting the potential that this game could have. The 20th Anniversary proved to everyone, that the best what we can expect ('till another big Anni, maybe 30th?) is just a one or two small addition each year. It is not terrible, but obviously, I would love to get more.

a perpetual state of "almost".

They almost care enough to do more than the bare minimums.

They even almost try hard enough to pretend they're doing more than bare minimums.

They're almost competent enough to run the game.
(It's a good thing the players are almost smart enough to notice)
((and almost have enough dignity to stop accepting it))

"Almosts" really is a perfect description.

Unless you have six accounts or bot... kinda s***?

I honestly couldn't have said it better or more succinct.

It feels like the game is right on the edge of greatness. They've got this great game with a great world, but it's missing the content to get people excited and to talk about.

bacon mage!! we need!!!

You're absolutely right. I mean, think about how many different things are out there that they could reinvigorate. They could simultaneously satisfy those looking for stuff to do and those craving nostalgia. When I really thought about how many activities the game has, I was floored. Remember Garrison? Pankration? Eco-Warrior?

It's all still in the game. It's just not worth spending the time to play with. But that makes it all free content if they'd tweak some things and add incentives.

Considering in 2015 it was suggested that there would be no more major content updates, I'm grateful. Ostensibly, I'm in the minority.

There is of course, the glaringly obvious bot/rmt problem in modern FFXI and while it would seem like the game would be better with them gone (and I don't disagree with that entirely - it certainly does harm to immersion and community), it's often overlooked/ignored the value they provide (through services that absolve tedium), how difficult (and often pointless) it is to impede them and how it is practically impossible to remove them without significant detrimental impacts (the spam could easily be addressed though, long time-outs for consistently repeated yells perhaps).

I do have some frustration sometimes in the way modern content systems are handled. Apart from an Omen card transfer ratio improvement being well-past overdue, of specific note, is the Odyssey point-systems that encourage haphazard accruement methods. It does not incentivise nearly well enough other certain objectives, such as defeating 3 successive NMs in Shoel:Gaol, which is a feat more than deserving of a substantial RP bonus - 1:2:4 per successive run multiplier would be a start, providing new dimensions of depth by forcing players to consider carefully the order of NMs and weighing against the available job configurations. Unless I'm missing something or they have already implemented similar, this just seems like such an overt, easily implementable, undeniably beneficial, adjustment to content.

IMO this was one of the most tonedeaf things that came out of the AMA and various interviews last month.

They wouldn't increase the number of materials you can get from Ambu because they wanted those to come from "other content". In other words, they wanted people to run VW and Salvage to obtain HMP and Alex, but they seem oblivious that the majority of the ones doing those are bots and some of the zones are impossible to get into as a result, but also because no one wants to do that content in its current form. They haven't given us a reasonable way to obtain those materials outside of ambu, which they hamstring in favor of trying to force us into farming old content. I'd much rather see these mats removed from ambu and us be given a way to reasonably obtain them, but they apparently don't see an issue with the way the current content is used to get it.

Same with Shinryu. They didn't want to make it irrelevant content, but it's already irrelevant because it's more effective to get it from trove than the HTBF.

The Shinryu problem is exactly why a lot of this content won't be 'fixed', without some form of queuing system, congestion will prevent people from being able to get into any of it. I'm not sure why they couldn't add queuing to some of the older instanced content, though, I imagine there is some architectural limitation related to the non-WoE zones. Either way, whatever content becomes relevant again needs to be queued or we'll end up with issues getting into it on busier servers (I don't think Asura is alone on this one, although probably the worst case), something they've so far not done when rehashing old content.

The game was never rebuilt with a modern engine. This limited its long term viability. It's been in minimal mode for a while. It's now of a hobby than a game now. It has lost that MMO vibe and feels more like a set of individuals building up their characters. It's filled with RMT that drown out community activity with their spam and SE isn't doing anything to address it. I don't have anything against RMT but it's having a huge negative impact. I believe it could be something as simple as creating another chat channel for mercs but there is nothing being done.

It's funny because within a few posts on this thread people have said they want a reason to do old content and others have said they don't want SE to lock resources behind old content.

As to the impossible to get into comment, I've never waited more than a few seconds to get into Salvage, this is purely an Asura problem.

My opinion: the game is the best it has ever been. There are a million different things to do, you can solo most of it but there are still a handful of events which require a party or more, which gives a nice window to team up and make friends. I've got a really solid network of friends and do a bunch of really fun events with them, and when nobody is online I've got a laundry list of things I can do by myself to progress my character.

The economy is really strong (for me). I have a lot of avenues to make gil and regularly make quite a lot of it, but I also have a million things I want to buy with gil, so it's always a balancing act of how I want to dedicate my limited resources and at the same time I'm regularly accomplishing goals and getting new items for myself.

It could be as simple as "Hey, want a break from fighting Lilith? For this month, Moblin Maze Mongers is offering chances at obtaining that gear!" As long as drops are close to the same rate, it could at the very least give players a bit of variety instead of grinding the same HTBF thousands of times. And if they tied it to only one or two activities per month, it would funnel players in that direction, making it easier to team up.

My point was more that they don't see the current state of old content as an issue and seem to believe obtaining these mats motivates players to participate. They threw us a bone with Ambu by giving us a handful of Alex, but they apparently see no issue with how the rest is being obtained and the state of that content. The content is there, the framework is there, but it's stale and needs reworked, which could make it worth doing again.

Getting into Salvage is a bot problem, for some reason they flock to the same one and stand there and spam on the entrance. When I did my Terp trials, it took me over 45min to get in, but some seem to not have that issue, so maybe it's just when they start running low on Alex and turn the bot on. The point here is the same with Shinryu, though, no queuing means making the content more relevant would result in it being impossible to get into.

I think my biggest beef as a returning player is the reforged armor system. AF/Relic/Emp all multiple tiers of NQ,HQ,+1,+2. It's exhausting to look at wanting to play another job just because of all of those tiny upgrades; cards, chapters, monotonous upgrade items, etc. Just gearing one job with the core reforged gear takes so long.

If it was Diablo Immortal you could get those reforged armors done real quick for $1.79

I am very happy with the game atm. probably the best state of any point. I may be biased as this is the first time I am really well geared and doing the new content as it comes out.

Fixed that for you

To be completely honest this game has escaped from the jaws of destruction many times, that it's still running is a testament to the passion of its players and developers.

It's not getting a ton of money thrown at it, because Square don't care about it as a 20 year old game. Considering how little investment it gets the developers are doing a great job to add as much as they can to it and I personally appreciate their efforts. They literally had to learn how to use the cut-scene tools to make new cut-scenes, which is going above and beyond their job description.

XI is a niche mmorpg aimed at a more hardcore audience, it's not a mass market game. Sometimes you gotta take a reality check on your expectations.

As Stayfresh said, it is what it is and it could be a whole lot worse.

Still getting story content, still getting new leveling systems, still getting new gear, still getting new endgame content etc

Leveling content that no one does just Botts and boxing oh i mean botting and boxing :), the only content we have is leveling and there is no median for solo, if you solo with trusts ur so much slower, today i played for 3-4 hours to go from 20k to 100k/147k or something, and literally gave up, i don't bott i dont box how dare you say its content when its just made for the Botts, Square could have gone a different route, but no because people bott and 6 box this is normal now the people ruined the game. or the exp could have been much Lower. Than there is those guys who make Stupid videos with geo's and bard alt box botting, saying look u can solo So much Exemplary lying to people lol, what the *** happened to this game,

Don't say make a party, don't say look for a party BECAUSE THERE IS NONE! JUST SELLING SERVICES

I *** swear they should bann boxing