Remember The Days In FFXI When..

You couldn't find anyone else to respond to your shout except a DRG, THAT was not part of the strategy at all. So you "Made due" with a DRG and won anyways. Got items AND a sense of accomplishment.

R.I.P. challenge, you were fun.

There was never any challenge in FFXI, the games engine simply doesn't support complex mechanics. The hardest skill based mechanic in FFXI is SC + MB, which can be made infinitely simpler by careful job and ability selection.

You didn't "make do", it was another illusion, a handful of people carried the rest through the event and worked around the handicap imposed on them by those not willing to play multiple jobs. The difference between running with and without handicaps is so great that eventually they just stopped bringing non-useful players along with them and started low manning everything.

At this stage in FFXI if players don't have multiple jobs adequately geared, with at least one being a support job, then there should be no pity for them. XP and decent gear is easier to get then ever, it's three to five days worth of work.

What do you mean never any challenge? I mean, back @75cap, there was Vrtra, Odin, Bahamutv2, Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden. Other HNM weren't much of a challenge in a organized team but due to the nature of timed spawned NMs you wouldn't always have that, and a lowman Tiamat would put up a fight.

Then there was solos against certain NMs on certain jobs, and solo holding HNM on a certain, ridiculously powerful job, at the time.

I mean you didn't faceroll through this stuff like perhaps what you can do in recent years of FFXI, people would be on their game.

And none of those were challenging. People face rolled them all the time. Nothing those did (PW after patch) required any sort of skill. NM's now are far more powerful with much deadlier TP moves and access to a wide variety of ways to give you a bad day, and we still face roll. This is all because "difficulty" in FFXI is just player stat A vs monster stat B. If monster stat B is higher then player state A, then it's "hard", if player can get stat A higher then monster stat B, then it's "easy". And if player can get multiple stats above the monsters, then it's "face roll" easy.

What you yearn for isn't some "old school content", but rather you yearn for your own ignorance. Things appeared hard back then because players were ignorant of game mechanics. You didn't know that haste values stacked upward logarithmically. You didn't know how to calculate your own TP / Store TP for x-hit, and there wasn't easy site access where someone else could tell you how. You didn't know about cRatio or mRatio. You didn't know how to calculate out accuracy and hit rates. Most still don't know that defense down scales the same way haste does. Players were ignorant about using stacked support jobs to raise the stats of pertinent players in such a way that it far exceeded the boss monsters, they thought Bard's best contribution was ... ballad. They wanted to use Bio over Dia to lower the tanks damage, without realizing that faster fights mean less damage anyway. You didn't know jack sh!t about enmity mechanics, CE and VE, hell most still don't know about those. Our difficulty was only born out of our own lack of knowledge. Once we knew game mechanics, or we know someone who knew enough to assist us, then suddenly everything became easy. We started stacking haste, march, attack buffs and defense down debuffs to amplify our damage, which speed up the fights and gave the boss NM's less time to use too many "you lose" moves. We started figuring out how to do Bard, and eventually COR rotations to buff multiple parties of melees. Healers finally figured out that AoE healing was more time efficient then single target healing and that time, not MP, was the true valuable resource. Tanks figured out how to maximize their own hate accumulation along with durability, it become virtually impossible to kill them as long as there was a semi-competent healer somewhere nearby.

And the crowning achievement was when we leaned how to maximize gear swaps. Windower extended macros was one thing, but spellcast and then later gearswap made it so we didn't have to make nearly as many gear compromises. We could focus on maximizing our situation specific stats to go along with those targeted buff / debuff in order to crush the target enemy stats.

It's all a game of dice, and if I can stack enough +1's then everything seems easy.

Sidenote:
There were exactly two boss NM's in this entire games history that were "hard", original AV and original PW. They were only difficult because they were specifically designed to never be beaten. The first AV kill demonstrated a blank drop pool, not even a title, and they only beat it due to abusing a pathing mechanic to glitch out it's AI. After this pathing glitch was fixed a combination of NA and JP linkshells fought it for over twenty four hours straight and couldn't kill it because it would just restore it's HP. Original PW was designed with infinite forms, it would just keep recycling through them and it took a group fighting it for eighteen straight hours to demonstrate this. Both of these things, in their original programming, had effectively infinite HP and thus were effectively impossible to kill without first finding a way to break it's AI. After some very bad gaming press in Japan, since making infinite HP impossible to beat boss's is considered bad form in the gaming industry, SE "updated" the fights and gave them both limited total HP. This enabled us to beat them and they very quickly became "easy" as we used the same strat on them that we used on virtually everything else, raise stat A over stat B.

You claim people facerolled them all the time (which isn't remotely true), then go on to say they appeared hard due to a lack of knowledge of mechanics at that time.

Not that I took most of what you said with anymore than a grain of salt, but are you going to make up your mind here?

Lets not forget that up until recently mnk or nin or even sam were tanks because pld couldn't hold hate unless everyone backed way off, thus negating the need for capped haste melee.

It wasn't entirely about 'lack of knowledge' there were fundamental mechanics that limited players, thus making things harder than they are now.

Enmity gain from damage (pld too little, dps too much)
Sub par combat skills (only certain classes haveing A+ melee skills)
Sub par jobs (pup/bst/smn)
lack of good gear for some jobs (flat out hard for certain jobs to cap acc or even gear haste, or get reasonable refresh)

Then there are the game changing items, aegis, ochain, idris, bard harp.

Players were also far more limited with spells, abilities, gear (haste/refresh-etc, and even debuffs--you didn't have GEO's ridiculous def down, etc.

Just a quick question, since I've recently returned. What's your definitions of decent gear? I want to figure out what I need to go do as quick as I can.

The things I listed were never being downed by 6 people, even with a deep understanding of mechanics and very good equipment. I'd also say six people would be extremely hard-pressed to defeat Tiamat even under the same conditions, and there would not be any facerolling it.

Like Kaitaru said, the only thing I really miss from that era is the social aspect. Though I only miss the exp PTs in a social respect; leveling itself was boring to me.

Which encounters did people claim to be difficult? I'm not attacking you here, genuinely curious because from my experience outside of the things I listed, I can't recall anything else people claimed were exceptionally difficult. Though some cases are arguable due to the nature of timed spawn; you simply wouldn't have a full force generally speaking.

Remember waiting 3 days so you can get a 1/4 chance of claiming a monster, so you can get a 1% of that monster dropping an item, that you and 10 other people lot for....what great days those were...

Please tell me which timed spawned HNM, that was heavily camped, that had a 1% drop. I'll wait.

Bubbly Bernie obv

Idk.

I see it the exact opposite way. the fact that those things were so rare was part of what made them cool / desirable. there was some sort of weird fun in not getting a faith torque for the hundredth time...

you're right in that it makes no sense why that would be fun, maybe it speaks more to something broken about me, but I miss it.

I finally got one shortly after abyssea, bst 99 >>> solo'ing it full time until it finally dropped. even then it was something stupid like 0/30-some.

*edit

& there were finally some better choices for mnk in that slot.

Sure, the way to getting the items was stressful, but that just made the satisfaction of finally getting it increase tenfold, in addition to having something to keep you striving after for years. This is why that era lasted as long as it did, because people didn't cap out in weeks, and had something to work towards.

I mean come on, you simply cannot compare anything in recent era to finally obtaining that Dynamis piece you really wanted, or that HNM drop. Even better if it was a highly regarded item. Nothing for me, in any game, likely ever again, will compare to the satisfaction of obtaining Dalmatica, Morrigan's Robe and Duelist's Chapeau at 75cap.

I guess we all have a different experience in game. Back during 75 content we needed a party, you NEEDED that lonely DRG who was the only one to respond to your shout.

I personally never felt so arrogant that if we had to MAKE DUE that I was carrying anyone. That is a World of Warcrap analogy that doesn't belong in FFXI. Likewise that is where the challenge has went, apparently SE loaned it to some other company.

We don't need a party to do much of anything anymore. Now a days to make due means you did not get your "steam roll" setup of six that has a 100% win rate no matter if everyone shows up naked, so the party is called off and the event doesn't happen.

By the way, the above and everything I said is all opinion based, there is nothing to argue about, I'm not trying to change the world one opinion at a time. Please don't argue =\

The game used to be challenging and fun

I miss all the pre-abyssea era.

I didn't say it was hard or took much skill, and you sound like you had some bad experiences. Personally I did Dynamis with good players who were fun to play with, and in addition to the thrill of obtaining my own equipment, it was great to see and get theirs too. We all embraced in joy!.....unless of course one of them outlotted on you that piece, then you were enemies for life. Heh, no but seriously, it was ok.

I really didn't mind people out-lotting me on equipment so much as it happened to be people ninja-lotting after already getting their loot when agreeing to the hosting LS's rules, or the hosting LS changing rules mid-run so they can favor their friends.

That's just you being dense on purpose. E-thug life go

People who knew the game mechanics face rolled everything, people who were ignorant didn't and complained about it being hard. For a long time those two groups didn't interact very often, you either knew or you didn't. Eventually as the wiki's got more populated that knowledge become codified until anyone could know, forums become more popular and boss NM strategies were no longer considered LS secrets. Now everyone knows you can do A, B and C to win fight X, where as in the years gone by the only way to know was trial and error until you got it yourself.

Everything I said is 100% accurate. I remember when Chary was considered "hard", unless you knew to stack evasion songs and -accuracy / slow debuffs, then a NIN + BRD could duo it easily. Kirin used to be "hard" requiring multiple alliances, until we figured out that kiting him around wasn't the best strategy and super buffing a bunch of melee's was better. Ground wryms were easy once you learned to have everyone stack on the paws and have two tanks building consistently building hate. I could go on but the picture should be very clear. Everything goes from needing lots of people, to being done with a party of six or less. Virtually anything can be beaten by throwing enough bodies (assuming it's designed to be beaten at all) at it, which is what uninformed people did until they learned better.

But hey, e-thug life bro.