Old FFXI Vs New FFXI

Pretty much. Measurable progress is really nice but there's not enough content to sustain things right now, even until the next update. Could grind out an 90 Empyrean (85s don't take long), but if you need Dragua or especially Apademak that's vaguely reminiscent of running a cheese grater over your ***.

You are wrong, there is a goal since June 2010. It's level 99. Doing some super hard content right now would be dumb because the gear will be outdated with the next level cap up. Honestly AF3 were just a bone to the players. Umadness will happen when gimps will realize their AF3 & empyreal is garbage.

Just like Umadness happened when a certain gimp realised their salvage gear was garbage?

More Umadness because only a few were pimp.

I look at it a good thing though, because it kills the complacency of the player base. Can't have linkshells full of players waiting for their leaders to hand down drops eventually, people have to get out there and get it, or end up two/three/four updates behind. People who get mayad were delusional for thinking that gear would last in the first place. They should have learned that lesson the moment Scars was released to ***all over old drops.

I also like knowing there's a countdown til the next echelon of content, it kills the boredom of having nearly maxed gear, and idling in WG all day til it was time for Salvage or KB. Now I can help my friends with new content they need, and run around anytime I want to min/max my own stuff. Not because it's the end all be all, but because it's amusing vertical progression, which hasn't been available in this game for years.

Edit: The best QQs of all will be when Abyssea ends and 99 content brings the rape without atma and superbrew crutches. Rani proves SE still knows how to make mobs that take more than a zerg rush to beat, hopefully the new end game will bring more content on that level without the Abyssea training wheels.

I like new FFXI, a lot.

First and foremost i enjoy how its taken the absolute grind out of exp. I enjoy a grind now and again, Its why i solo'd my Sub jobs to level ~40+ of FoV, Its tedious, But if i have friends its a little more enjoyable.

I like how endgame content isn't merely dictated by who has the better bot, and a back and forth between the same 5 zones over the course of a day, then off to perhaps Penis-Smashing (A.K.A:Salvage), in hopes this time the 0.0009% chance random number generator happens in your favor.

While Abyssea is now "the" zone, You don't zone in to camp 1 Mob every 21-24hrs. and you don't zone in with 120 minutes, no Time enhancements, and completely nakid, picking your 1 path and hoping you can finish that piece you've been working on for the better part of a year.

You can zone into Abyssea, Pick between a slew of enemies to defeat for the item you want (Seals mostly), or go after a certain drop, and have some control over its drop rate to an extent (Red,Yellow, Blue. It adds a sort of relief on it, If you can't trigger red, Blue, or yellow, theres always a chance you'll get what you want still, but having those in place can make it a bit more rewarding to co-ordinate your efforts for greater yield.

Really, in my opinion only, I don't really think progressively the game is that much easier, Its just people are smarter, people understand the game better. No one can think back and seriously tell themselves mobs like Fafnir, Nidhogg, Behemoth, King Behemoth, Adamantoise, Aspid, Kirin, Sky gods, etc etc were actually Difficult, can they? I Can't. I remember them being really simple, it was just as simple as killing Bennu, or Kukulkan.

The thing people really bandwagon heavily on is "MNK AND WHM CAN SOLO EVERYTHING", While :
1) Thats not true, there are a few mobs MNK+WHM duo cannot do without fail.
2) I Mean, if It wasn't for Salvage requiring 6 people, It'd been "WHM + MNK only" too, Remember most popular method for tanking Salvage Chariot bosses? MNK + WHM, extra help for killspeed really.

I won't ignore obvious broken-buffs, Cruor, Atma, Etc, However mobs like Rani can at least show even with those buffs SE knows how to create a monster that can at least challenge us for a short time, and still pose a threat for those of us seasoned in fighting it. Abyssea has made things EASIER, but they did not make the game "Easy", the game has always been "Easy".

On the content part, Items becoming obsolete only months after release... Yes, i can see that as annoying, Frankly it is quite the bother to me as well. I expect at 99 my +2 Empyrean Armor might take back seat to some other armor, maybe not completely but to some extent, and i anticipate it with eagerness, not remorse for the armor i have now becoming obsolete. The way i see it as its a new goal, I got what i have now, and it makes me happy to see my Character as it is, When the better armor comes, I'll simply get that too.

If getting new armor becomes a chore, if your old armor becomes obsolete, There is really no better cure than setting down the controller, or keyboard, remembering the fond times, and moving to other aspects of life.

I for one will continue to play this game as long as i have fun doing it, and as long as my friends are besides me, Its painfully optimistic, I know, But I'll do my best to enjoy every moment of it.

Because before long, The game will die out, And all the times i had will be a memory. With that knowledge in mind i can safely assume anything i do on this game is more or less a waste of time, and all the armor i get will eventually mean nothing anyway. So i don't dwell on the negatives of "Why bother! next update will be ***" its "The game is fun, and one day it'll be gone, I'll get what i can and play till it stops being fun!"

Mind you not everyone has this mind-set, And i can respect other peoples opinions on the game, However, this is my opinion, and i Doubt any of you actually read it :D

added more truth.

The problem is that they compromised their own challenge by making brew available, and brewing Shinryu then sets off a chain reaction where you can brew anything.

Then people who had no business getting near Shinryu get access because those cheap brews facilitate shout group Rani's.



Botting was never the primary factor of success. It was the number of people you brought and how consistently you camped. Botting could maximize those advantages, but if you couldn't produce a good turnout and camp consistently, botting did jack ***.

I've destroyed NASA shells on claims, it's all arbitrary. There's just as much of a chance you set your bot too early as there is that the mob loads on my screen during lockout.

And while botting was definitely a part of the reality, botting was moreso a failure in SE's execution than a flaw of old XI. It could have easily been corrected


And Abyssea isn't repetitive? I sure think spamming 50-75 mobs for Empyrean stages is just as repetitive as Kings ever were. At least in Kings it was a competition. In Abyssea you have to sit around and wait for everyone to have their turn because things are too ridiculously easy that anyone can do it.

MMOs are repetitive by nature. New XI isn't any better than old XI on that front, it just removed the confrontation.


And what's the trade-off for excessive drops? You finish your goals and sit in Whitegate all day until a new patch comes out and you have to do it all over again.

Terminal impact is the same, it's all a skinner box. Except this time there isn't really any end.



Was anything in old XI truly hard? No. But at the same time, compare the proportion of the population that could successfully engage in old XI's end game versus new XI's end game.

The things you are ignoring as only making the game "easier" are problematic because they made the game "easy enough" such that really bad people can get carried by crutches.

Cruor and atma make you don't have to be nearly as good of a White Mage anymore. Don't need nearly as much MP management because there are more sources of refresh, and emergency MP (temporary MP items, martello MP restore). -Enmity atma makes hate/cure management moot. Your reaction time much less important because cruor prospector buffs and Atma gives people a lot of HP so melee don't get 1/2/3-shotted nearly as easily. Fulms used to take melees out and could wipe you; Rani is the only mob that can do anywhere near that level of wipe-capable AOE damage.

Same goes for being a DD. The massive bonuses from cruor buffs and atma make it much easier to be a DD. The quality of your gear isn't nearly as important when you walk around with capped fSTR, and default 70% crit rate. It's a lot easier to get good gear since you can quest all the +1s. You can get Empyreans for a fraction of the effort it took to get a relic and get 40% double damage. HP buffs make shadow counting much less important since you can live through more hits.

Oh, and then we now also have a "win the game" gameshark potion as well as an Atma that allows infinite zombie for recovering from screw ups.

There was no emergency brewing if you *** up in old XI, and if you *** up you lost the mob.

Plus there were terminal challenges in old XI for the very best of the best. They became zergable at the end, but that's only because SE obviously stopped caring about "challenge" when they didn't bother scaling as level caps increased.


Kings were much harder relative to when they were released, than Abyssea mobs are relative to now. The caturae (particularly Rani) were really the only fight that were anywhere near difficult in Abyssea. Kings got gimped by time, Abyssea gets gimped by gameshark brew.

I've seen dozens of people wipe on Fafnir, even as close as two months before Scars came out. To be fair I still see people fail all the time on Rani, even with brew... But I think it takes a much more catastrophic level of failure to *** up a brew


Salvage was a small microsm of old XI. MNK and BLM were the only jobs where you really needed a complete set too. The rest of the jobs needed maybe 1-2 pieces and a wide variety of gear from other events. Events that MNK + WHM could not duo such as Fafhogg, KB, Aspid, Odin, Tiamat, Sandworm, Ixion, Jailers, Sky Gods, or grinding a relic.

I don't know how much I can add to this but I have to admit that the game's gotten a bit stale these last update. Sure, Abyssea makes me feel like a god and I can get all this great gear for myself, but it lacks the excitment that 'old FFXI' had. Back in the day, even seeing something like Omega fall for the first time was enough to send you jumping up and down. Or maybe getting sky gear and taking out Kirin, or seeing AV reveal himself to in all his glory.

I was watching those BG videos of them taking hours to kill Kirin or Tiamat and so forth with multiple alliances and I can't help and imagine how much fun it was for them. The only thing I've killed in Abyssea that filled with me with amount of excitment was killing Glavoid for the first time. On the other hand, every Kirin, every Ultima, every JoL got my blood running and that feeling just doesn't exist in this game anymore, sadly.

As far as gear goes, I wouldn't complain if they made it a little more difficult to obtain. Not repetitive, but difficult. Nothing annoys me more than seeing some dnc or nin take 20 minutes to solo a timed pop NM.

Abyssea is for those who are too chickenshit to actually learn how to play their jobs right.

I remember back in the days when people looked at you like WTF?! if you asked about SA+TA. Or before PLD when WAR was THE tank job either using axe/sword + shield or GA.

Or when Dynamis actually required full alliances and people STILL got their squads wiped.

Now all everyone does is key *** themselves and stay in Abyssea as if the rest of Vana'diel is covered in a cloud of Ocho's Bad Breath.

The game's gottan so dumbed down that the thrill and flavor have become bland and terrible. Last I checked, the logic of game progression is from EASY to INSANITY, not MEDIUM to CHILD.

So yeah, enjoy your Abyssea where everything is nice and willing to LET you win. Just remember, when you come out of Abyssea a level 90 <insertjob>, don't go near the bunnies, else they'll rape your face.

Because it's so hard to figure out how game mechanics work.

Abyssea has made the game fun for those people like me that can only play a couple of hours per night. I love the fact that I can go out with a couple of friends and help one another whenever we want. And not because of some lame window.

You can still tell those people in game that don't work, live with their parents, and/or have no social life outside of FFXI. They are the people with AF3+2 for all or most of their jobs with weapons to match.

Those same people are the ones that cry the game is "too easy now". Well princess I'm sorry your psuedo-eliteness has come to an end. Pre-Abyssea you might have thought you were hot snot on a silver platter but we all know you are really just a cold booger on a paper plate.

Change is good, especially for you babies with wet diapers.

Well, Im glad your paper-thin armor looks so cute on you sweetheart, now come out into Vana'diel and get own by a dhamel.

lol... he mad

Damn, Right smack dab on the button on this one. I tend to agree that this probably right for the most of. The working-class guy who has 2+ jobs irl, has more important things to do rather than live the lap of luxury, whilst, still leeching from your parents, or the system,( I do not point blame for the types who are disabled.. I point the finger at the laziness that some are who don't want to work).
The new system is fine, right the way as it is. It doesn't need to be changed. Why are the ones who have af3+2, bitching and complaining for? Because the working stiff is actually making progress, where as you think hes got it easy, now that you think it has been dumbed down? If so, suck it up buttercup, and if you have nothing to do but whine and *** just b.c the working guy is really coming close to owning the same gear as you now?

Does the truth hurt, now that the game has been almost made soloable?

Enjoy eliteists!!! Your time has moved on...

That's a big and stupid assumption to make.

Also shut up Neonracer you're still bad.

Most ppl on Ramuh know that I will stand toe to toe against any mob in FFXI solo. Many years of boxing has hardened me in RL so a LOLvideo game doesn't phase me. I'll gladly pay for you to come to Ramuh so we can fight side by side.

It phases you enough to make emotional diatribes about it on a community forum.

i honestly miss old ffxi. Abyssea has taken the challenge out of the game.

The grind is why i loved this game over shitty ones like aion/wow/(insert other mmos here). i enjoyed spending 8 hours in a party and getting like 2 levels. it was fun.

i remember, soloing things in sky and sea like faust, ulli, zip,despot, ix'aerns and turning around and watching an LS wipe to those very same enemies. the sense of accomplishment and the skill i felt i had was only matched by those i watched do the same thing. now, its not as fun to go and solo/duo things and abyssea has killed it for me. you cant solo things the same way. its all atma or abyssite based.

I took a 5ish month break and dont have my merit abyssites or all my atmas so my well geared nin at this point cant hang with the mnks or other nins. Unfortunate but it happens.

I miss the camping and the claiming of HNMs, salvage was by far my favorite endgame event and now, its useless with the exception of a single piece here and there.

abyssea took the skill out of the game. it took what seperated this game from the other MMOs out there...

This game was never skill based, no MMO's are.
No MMO's are hard either.

Actually I am finding this humorous! Makes waiting at the airport somewhat bearable.

It is a video game that we (and some parents) pay for to enjoy at our leisure.

Good job SE. Keep giving the middle finger to the elites!

U mad.. go taunt someone else u f'n wakin rager...


LOL

He posts what he wants just like you.. so meh.. eliteists....

Why ***?

<^.^b

It's sad that you're proud to be a hypocrite. I guess it's a failing in the way you were brought up.

Ive had that *** on block since the feature came out lol.

Well that may be what your opinion may be, but that still doesn't change the fact, that behind all your posts, you're not the poster child for perfectness. Far from it. I'll let you continue trying to berate me down, b.c in all honesty, I don't care what you think of me or what you post about me. Doesn't phase me one bit.

Enjoy what you love best.. b.c you know I'll always feed the troll, b.c I have nothing else better to do.


Walking away now....