New Trust System - Who Will You Upgrade First?

I don't care if others 'suffer', but I think that people who've played for 10+ years often have a poor or slanted view on what features contribute to the game's environment.

How many of us would have kept the game if you could HP warp at launch? The need to travel played a vital role in setting the pace and feel of the game. I'm not saying any one specific change would ruin that, but if you take too many away you change the pace and feel substantially. Spending the time running to a camp made the experience feel real and got you invested in every party and event you participated in.

As the hyperbolic examples illustrate, removing all inconvenience makes it no longer a game. The point where you've gone too far isn't easy for any single person to select. But, when you have so many mission lines to get through to 'catch up', there's a strong incentive for new players to skip them because they feel rushed. Then, they're left with a completely trivial progression of check wiki -> talk to npc -> maybe farm item -> slaughter nm that doesn't fight back -> repeat. What players want and what gives players the best experience are not always the same thing.

Again, plain and simple, inconveniences serve as part of pace setting and world building. Faster isn't universally better, and while I do think that it would be a straight improvement for the long-term players, I don't know that it'd be good for the game.

Edit: I don't think it's likely FFXI will ever return to a state where people are doing missions in groups, but other MMOs have suffered from 'skip pressure' where a person doing their first attempt at a raid is told to skip the cutscene by their group because nobody else wants to wait. A lesser form of this could occur when you're being helped or accompanied on missions.

TBH FFXI doesn't offer much for the eye. A lot of zones are very bland and uninspired, simply can't compare to what they already made in FFVII-FFX. Only very few locations are worth exploring for the sight. It's not like there is hidden treasure or collectibles either.

Today the majority of missions can be done with trusts so no pressure there.

Back in the day when I had to team up for missions the pressure wasn't just a feeling, it was real. In a full alliance I always found someone to be antsy or with some time constrains, even back then.

*edit*
I get the pacing part, I just don't think you can invoke the same feeling today with trusts. Even the walk speed was slower back and imho it felt too slow despite being new to the game.

The vast majority of my time playing XI, I had next to no idea what any of the stories were about at all. Cause you were with 17 other people most of the time, and getting left behind meant no sneak and invisible.

You hammered enter at every opportunity as fast as possible, the only way you could read things was if you were the mage and everyone was waiting on you, and even then you were making people wait.

FFXI was the worst game that has ever been released for pressure like that, cause you had to actually travel in dangerous zones and would die if you were alone.

The only time I actually got into the story and lore of the game was when I came back in 2016 after quitting another mmorpg, and had trusts.

How slow do you read lmao

There was no enternity, no fastcs, how could you not keep up with the slow scroll speed???

Guess on the other side I just had a LS static of 6~ people and we just ran through it all together, since that was a lot less mainic than 18 people through promies or aquaducts etc and there wasnt any push to speed read anything, we just waited for the ones who wanted the story. Maybe im an outlier though

I was always stressed doing story content in alliances (most people seemed to be), I just hammered. I didn't even try to read much of it cause I was concentrating on getting out asap of it and getting sneak.

This is kind of apples and oranges though. FFXI was a totally different game at launch. Different staff that worked on the game, different vision, different set of players etc. I may have been 16-18 when FFXI started taking off, so I had lots of time. I'm sure others did too. Traveling the vast world of FFXI made perfect sense because the world was immense. It didn't even feel "slow" back then, because everyone was progressing at the same pace and the collaborative feel for the game was much stronger than now. You explored the game and learned at the same time. It made a lot of sense to slowly immerse the player into the world of VanaDiel. I still remember watching that opening Cutscene and reading the warning message every time I logged into POL. Do people still do this anymore or have you turned that opening CS off?

Fast forward 20+ years (basically an entire generation later), and so many things have changed. The staff, the world, the paces, people's time (and competing interest for other things), responsibilities, age, etc. Traveling is a chore, and just prolongs the carrot. It frustrates people more than anything, so Home Points/Survival Guides/Fast Travel is totally reasonable to keep the player focused more on what they want to do. (Unironically, 3 of the modern events in FFXI all involve traveling to a large degree "exploration content", and people dislike this because of all the running around. Peculiar Foes is also a "monthly traveling event").

You can't sell that model in 2026 anymore because people will go somewhere else where they can get faster rewards. Everything that has changed made SE adjust the game to what the modern player wants as far as time:reward, to a relative degree. It still keeps many of it's core elements that makes FFXI unique (job change, gear swapping etc), but it has definitely adapted with the times in some ways.

Now, I am not saying they would make cutscenes skippable. In fact, I am almost certain they won't. They just finished TVR within the last few years, and they are very proud of that mission line. They advertise it heavily in their "Return to Vana'Diel" campaigns. It would make no logical sense for them to allow you to bypass the primary feature they are trying to sell you on as to why you should return to the game.


Are we sure SE knows what gives the players the best experience? The players aren't kids anymore. You can give them the option and let them decide what they want to do with it. If they made missions/quests skippable, many/some would skip it. Some might not because they enjoy FFXI for the story. Personally, back in the day, I did follow the storyline a lot, but after CoP, I was just counting the seconds until it was over. When I went back to do all of the SoA quests for Ygnas, there were many quests with CS and I skipped 95% of it unless there was something interesting. I'm finishing my last main mission leg now for Mastery Rank, and I skipped everything about Windy so far. I just don't care. I did watch a bit of TVR, though. I'm sure some would still want to know the story behind race/lore/nations etc, so they would choose to still watch CS if they were skippable. But everyone's different, so I don't know why that would be an issue to allow that huge timeskink to be bypassed (previous paragraph explains why I believe they won't).

Add to the fact that current SE Dev has heavily promoted "getting to 99 as fast as possible" so you can experience endgame. They run campaigns so often to speed you through the game so you can play the parts they are promoting and investing in. They give out freebies so you don't have to even waste time on certain content. They've practically abandoned their entire "Content Progression" model (they pivoted to where you can choose your difficulty level in Odyssey and Limbus), so you can pretty much skip past all of that. They try to force you to "do" a lot of it with Vana'Bout quests and monthly deeds stuff, but for the most part, that's just filler content to keep you busy and promote the global campaign. They are hinting to players subtly "skip past all that stuff and get to the end quick" and play at a level that you're comfortable with. They've even made guides that help new players get up and running quickly, and even tell you explicitly where to go and who to talk to. Old FFXI era they didn't tell you ***, you spent hours figuring things out and sitting in Jeuno waiting for someone to shout out the secrets. That feel in the game is just gone. Everything they are doing now sends the message that endgame is where you should be (even powering up trusts helps to some degree here).

I don't think it would be a wild idea to make missions skippable, or to improve some travel mechanics even further to speed up the game. It's right in line with what they've been doing in recent years.

edit: why do you think Mastery Rank became a thing? Everyone skipped past hundreds of content/dialogue for years, and finishing old stuff you never knew existed or mattered only became important when they dangled a carrot with it. Most people simply didn't care about being "100% done" with everything. They ignored/skipped right past it until it mattered, then they cared. In other words, most players don't really care about things that hog your time and would prefer bypassing it and getting to the carrot. There's a very small set of players now that enjoy the journey (kind of a societal problem in general, but I digress)

I mean all the story line except the last part of TVR is done solo with trusts, you can go as relaxed as you feel like.

I don't see how imposing a particular style of play on a player is "doing the right thing for them".

If they themselves do not enjoy being forced into a 20min unskippable cutscene they do not watch regardless, who is anyone to tell them no, you must like this CS. Like how is that a reasonable response.

It sounds a lot like forced RP. If you don't spend 20min traveling on a chocobo, you have not experienced XI. That was a period in time that won't come back anymore, and is the sort of thing private servers sell to wishful time travelers.

Im sorry, but slogging through a 2002 game CS in 2026, where you have to pay monthly to play? Let me risk my account turning on an add-on that bricks my game during some cutscenes.

That's just plain not giving a ***

Billion-dollar company btw



SE has been sucking *** *** at making games lately... nah for the last 10 years. I don't remember a time since I brought a SE game and was excited to play it outside of Nier.

what story content were you doing in alliances?

CoP the fights are party but the zones were much safer with more bodies

...and took significantly longer... so not the best idea. We was young an dumb.

No u was young and dumb and relied on smn burn cuz you was unskilled.

The real ones had a pld nin-drg thf rng rdm blm static and mopped the floor with that weak *** content.
Marcin Kraze Xauron Iluvitar Slinger was real ones, good times

He might be referring to the Promys, Sacrarium, Aqueducts, Riverne etc. Dying in a bad spot left the party pretty much stranded, whereas an alliance could do rescue missions a lot safer (kite and hold, mass zoning etc) and the majority of the group could continue on. I specifically remember joining alliances to do the former mentioned. Statics were good enough with a party, but back then the population was enormous and there were groups doing missions by the hour. The most typical group would struggle a little bit.

Much simpler times but they were my greatest memories in this game.

"might be" don't know how you could misunderstand what cop zones are

Someone always had a bst friend who had a friend who had a friend and a thf and it turned into a 15+ member clusterfuck

Different times, in the before times when humans communicated and had some modicum of fun

I learned my lesson on how awful that setup was when we had subligar farms in aqueducts. Even back in the day a group of 6~8 who communicated was always the most fun/relaxed way to do content

And then you get to the end BCNM where only 6 people can participate and use of 2hr was required for most jobs. Either the math aint mathin or this explains why you had such a miserable time.

Even back then, absolutely nobody wanted to tank, heal, or support.