How Could SE Realistically Improve Modern FFXI?

I love this game, but that has to be the one thing that really puts me off.

Or the fact you get shunned from some players for not using Anchor. Like if I don't cheat I'm crap at this game but if I pay out the arse for 6 characters and use add ons I'm rewarded?

I would say make multi boxing a ban offence, but then the game would die even faster, I guess.

Guess it would be making half the 3-6 man content either soloable or alliance content. I mean, seriously, I can take an alliance into most content, but I need a minimum of three to attempt old content like Delve or Vagary!?

Just shut ffxi down.

SE just doesn't know how to make games anymore

Should sell poker machines like their shitty cousin

I'd actually love to do some Incursion on my own with trusts, see how high I can get the level, probably can go all the way with modern gear without any special effort honestly. But nope, can't even enter. Give us the ability to do this junk solo if we want to! Solo is fun! I get that it's not the design sentiment of old FFXI but it's been twenty years.

*** those people, you dodged a bullet not having to play with douchebags like that IMO.


Yeah...cheating is rewarded; if it wasn't, nobody would do it. People cheat because of the benefits it gives them. It's a bit like saying "if I cheat on a test, I'm rewarded?" Well, yeah...that's the whole motivation behind doing the thing.

gonna blow your Mind,

Water... Is *** wet.

Most groups struggle to clear any V25, some dude does it 6boxing and the response is "yeah but Anchor"? Woof.

Like K123 said pages ago, '6boxing' in this sense isn't actually playing, it's a tool competition. Aside from anchor, it's not some amazing player skill, it's a mid-tier public tool doing fights that have very limited complexity with basic routines. Anyone with the same tool and settings, with comparable gear, can do the same easily.

I've cleared all V25s including Bumba with just my characters and only one human behind the PC. I don't mention it frequently because it doesn't do anyone any good to know that above average automation can handle FFXI fights, they don't have that automation and I have no plans to give it out.

It's also not at all related to the thread, and is just a low key ad for their paid tool.

TASbots are also much better at tetris than humans, this isn't revolutionary. I think the reason it came up was someone said multiboxing hurts the game and its removal would improve the game. Lead to people saying ody isn't boxed, lead to people saying it is boxable.

Using commonly used tools, it's not. If you get good enough tools, it is. Either way it's taking players away from the community. 6box is a bane on human interaction in a game about playing with other people

2boxing where you do everything in your power to include people over your mule is not. It can be a slippery slope though, and most people use tools for that too so... shrug..

Ad for their paid tool??
Unless its in the video itself, theres no link to any paid tool in the video description nor profile page that I saw in a quick glance on mobile.

The channel is named after the tool, and other videos are all related to it.

It's a bundle of low quality windower lua scripts, partially stolen from sel, with a basic desktop app to price-gate enough of it so that the addon can't just be copied around.

Remember when ppl had to alt tab to box i wish square enix finds a way to remove this ***and am sure they wont because this is still prominent in everquest but in everquest they would add rule sets for specific servers for multi boxing

Yeah, there's definitely a difference between full on automated parties, versus a player who brings a mule along to give better-than-Trust level buffs, or even to automate a WHM curebot, to fill slots when you want to do stuff with some friends and don't have a full party, or lacking needed buffs/heals.

For the latter, there's no way that kind of multiboxing hurts the game. If anything, it's one of the main reasons FFXI continues to be able to exist in this day and age. If I have 5 humans in the LS wanting to do some segment runs, but none of them have a BRD, filling that last slot with somebody's BRD mule to give songs is what is allowing us to even do the content. And if a BRD friend logs on, you better believe we're booting the mule in favor of a real person. That's so obviously a wildly different situation than one dude with an automated 6-box setup.

That kind of multiboxing is a part of why the game is the way it is.

Why do you think no one wants to play support. Spoiler, because everyones 2box is a support.
(and of course because support has to hit more than 1 button unlike a DD)

Its not as detrimental as the 6 box, but it's not harmless either.

MT did specifically say this, but my experience has been that it's a very small minority of people. If the event gives rewards for just being present(almost all events now), and there's limited space, people will absolutely try to cram their mule in.

I'll get flack for this, but it's true. Banning Chinese IP addresses would go a long way to fixing modern FFXI. Well probably not with VPNs and all, but you get the idea.

Pros to killing multibox
Asura ceases to exist
Eiryl is out of a job

Cons to killing multibox
Atleast 90% of the playerbase (not accounts) is gone

Idk i dont think you can kill off multibox, similarly to how you cant kill off windower or ashita without killing the game.

But are they using Anchor?

One of those screens had solitaire on it. That's not maximizing efficiency!

That because solitaire is a better game than the game thats earning money.

The right way to play. peripheral the bots killing stuff while you do something worth doing.

I don't really agree with this. The more important reasons are that:

(1) DDs/tanks don't perform nearly as well as supports on a mule that isn't highly automated (to such an extent that it's off-putting to many players, including me). Supports, on the other hand, can be used on a mule to great effect without having to actually pay much attention to that character and without needing any significant automation. I can, completely manually, swap over to control my 2-boxed mule on BRD or COR and sing/roll every 10 minutes, follow my main, and still get some decent benefit out of it by basically having the mule act like a glorified trust with more potent buffs (that you can actually select to better fit the situation). I can't use such a hands-off approach on a tank or DD, while also playing on my other character.

I'd prefer to have a friend actually playing the BRD, so they can focus more on not just giving buffs, but also perform better than a mule (or a trust) for supplementary roles like DDing and pulling/sleeping. But if I'm filling 2 of the party slots and bringing BRD and SAM, BRD is obviously the one that can benefit the party the most as a fairly hands-off mule. SAM kinda needs me to pay attention and constantly hit buttons, so I'll focus on that and tab over to the BRD when needed to refresh songs, toss a sleep, whatever.

(2) Everyone and their brother DOES have a COR leveled, so I don't think it's really an issue of people just refusing to play support jobs. It's more about the level of investment required to play the job. COR is relatively easy to gear to a level that meets endgame expectations, so is [pick any DD].

Compare that to BRD, which has an expectation of 4 REMA. that's a much bigger time/money investment than any other job to meet the baseline "requirement" for endgame, so it's understandable that fewer people are interested in putting in that amount of effort. They'll either settle for a mule that doesn't reach the level of a dedicated player (e.g., 3 song, no Mythic - but still better than a trust), or one of the players who really does care will make a second character BRD with all the goodies to both help the party in that situation, and open up an improved ability to play "solo"/dual-box with their pocket buffer.

WHM SCH require more effort, attention, and button-pushing than the "hit 1 button" DDs, but I see players more willing to play those jobs because the gear requirements are a lot lower. You can still be a very useful WHM with no REMA, whereas you would not be a good BRD. Now, people absolutely do use curebots, which I do have a little more discomfort with than a roll COR mule or a BRD mule. That's just programming a tool to do a job that a player, even one without a lot of time-consuming gear, can do well. But I do kinda understand that if you're trying to fill a party and you don't have enough real people, at least that role can be automated better than a DD, so if you're looking for that better-than-a-trust tier healer, it's not an unreasonable job to look at as a good mule job. Certainly a better fit than trying to have your tank or a main DD be the automated job.


Don't play with a__holes? My personal experience is that every LS regular I play with who has geared mules will gladly give up the mule's spot for a real player. I wouldn't play with someone who insists that their 4 characters get spots in a segment farm or Sortie, and only 2 other humans can play (when there are more than 2 humans who would like to come).

For events where you have extra room and no penalty for bringing other players, like Omen or Dyna, it's not much of an imposition on anybody for a player to bring an extra mule in to get some points. Really the only downside to other players is if the mules get drops from the treasure pool that should go to "real people" (but you can deal with that by configuring the mules to pass, set QM, whatever).

And sometimes, it just benefits everyone to use a mule to fill a party. Have 5 people who want Ambuscade? You get more gallantry for everyone by filling that last slot with somebody's mule than you would if you used a trust, so most people would prefer the mule.

I get that you could just say people should have to shout for randos to fill a party, but f that. This isn't 2006 any more, most of us are in our 30s-40s-higher, and nobody on not-Asura has time to wait and shout to fill a party for some dumb Ambuscade or segment farm. People just want to play the game with their friends without making it a whole big production.

LOL they've already been doing this for ages. I played with a Chinese guy back in the Aht Urghan era, and they were already banning Chinese IP addresses way back then, he got hit multiple times. He just used a VPN and registered with a non-Chinese address.

Imagine being someone working at SE who takes responsibility for two MMOs at the same time. Probably, they also didn't ban bots in XIV because of how modern technology is, so banning them won't be necessary.

Are you really implying people don't start an ambuscade group on the premise their mule will be part of it, rather than finding 4 other members and 'luckily' slipping the mule into the 6th slot?

You can be a very good BRD with just Marsyas, if the content is anything less than Ody V25 or 9/9 Sortie. You can absolutely do 8boss runs and most V20. You can cruise through Ambuscade, Omen, Reisenjima T4, Dyna-D. Segment farms may not be automatic 13.5k(I bet it's still possible), but they won't suddenly be worthless. The majority of the places where BRD actually needs REMA(P) are also places where WHM needs yagrush.

The issue isn't that BRD isn't useful with less. It's that so many people have created REMA BRD alts, that the value of a non-REMA BRD has been eroded. If all of these people were forced to play only one character, the amount of BRDs in the game would drop by 85% or more overnight. This would create massive opportunity for anyone who wanted to play BRD, even without REMA(P). It might even trigger the sort of linkshell-based development that used to exist, where people would help the BRD get the weapons and armor they need because they need a BRD with those weapons and that's the best way to get one.

The same is true of WHM and GEO, the vast majority of WHM and GEOs in parties are not single-account players. Because so many of them exist, the relative value of a single-account WHM or GEO is much less. Nobody wants a non-idris geo when they can have someone in their party bring an idris mule, but they very well might settle for Bagua+1/2 if they couldn't. In most cases, this won't change the outcome of the content either.

The argument that nobody wants to main WHM, GEO, or BRD is flawed. The tradeoff used to be that you have to play something less 'cool' and put more attention in, but you get easy access to groups and content. Mules took away that easy access, so players have responded accordingly and less of them opt to main those jobs.

I don't even need to write anything, Capuchin already said it all; wish I could upvote twice.

The only time we will EVER take a mule over another player is if the mule has the requisite gear and the player doesn't (like Idris or BRD REMA for bosses). We take all kinds of jank players to segs, sortie farming runs, ambu, etc. and if space needs to be opened up in Omen/Dyna, mules are the first to be kicked out and will be punted until we have 1 character per human in the alliance.

If people don't abide this basic common decency, *** 'em*

*This may be difficult to do on Asura, where at least half of the good players don't believe in decency. Use this advice at your own risk if your characters live in a cesspool


If Meki needs ambu points and I'm setting up and ambu and we fill up (have 7 characters), I'll just drop Male and go on Meki. It's not difficult.

But, you've still started ambuscade on the premise that Meki will be part of your group. If you ask your immediate linkshell and get 5 responses, you won't leave the 5th out, which is probably typical (social pressure would cause most people to do the same). You will, however, cease to reach out to additional friends or throw a shout out to fill that spot for gallantry. Because the initial premise was that you would bring your mule, you've reduced the bar for a full group and taken opportunities away that may have otherwise been created.

A trickier situation is if you shout to fill a group. You get 5 responses(or one more than you can currently hold, w.e). I would bet that a considerable portion of people would tell the last responder they are full before dropping their mule.

Edit: Not trying to attack you personally, and it certainly seems like you are the 'ideal' 2boxer with minimal negative impact. Just pointing out that even in your case, with no conscious effort to do so, the fact your alt exists changes party dynamics and will take opportunities away from others.

Eh...I see what you're saying but TBH I'd prolly ask in ls and take whoever wanted to go, then if we had 6 we go (with 1 of my guys), ir we had 5 and nobody else wanted to go, I'd take my other character...which is what we've been saying.

Theoretically I could shout or take up a second LS, but I don't think that's very realistic in modern Carbuncle FFXI. Nobody shouts for any content, for better or worse.

I think if Altana banned 2boxing tomorrow and had an enforcement mechanism it might increase engagement, but it would be tough going because the culture is just not there for PUGing and the population (depending on time of day/day of week) is also not there a lot of the time

If you had 5, and no mule, you wouldn't throw a shout out to allow a random to join your group(increasing your gallantry and helping a stranger)? If not, why not?

This sort of thing used to be commonplace, a 'last shout before going' for any content you were overqualified for. It's basically vanished with the ability to use mules to fill in blank space.

The power creep has progressed so far today that most players can't even do the highest content, they can't even hit the monsters let alone do good dmg. You're better off going in with 5, they are more of a hindrance.

if you can sell a leech spot that doesn't contribute at all, you can certainly bring a random that doesn't contribute at all. your sentiment is not unusual though, the whole mindset against helping people not in your ls/static has permeated the entire game.