XI Was So Challenging, It Brought People Together

I haven't play many years so my memory is fading, but there are a couple of things that I remember hopefully it isn't incorrect:

1) Battle system, not the very first version of button mash battle system， but new one. You accumulate TP and auto attack, and pick which skill to use, each skill has individual cool down just like XI. Jobs had FFXI SP with long 15 min recast etc.

Oh and not to mention ranged dps had ammo.

On the otherhand XIV battle system has global cool down thus it's more like wow and less like XI.

2) Adventuring: 1.0 feels a lot more like having a real adventure in dangerous areas, some things aggro and there are NMs. I still remember getting some of the HP with a friend, which involved lots of death just like XI in the old days. Didnt really get to that in ARR.

Oh and 1.0 had overworld NMs too.

Regardless what Yoshida said, most of the community found 1.0(1.2 more likely)closer to XI and ARR more like a wow clone that is just.... very different from original FFXIV.

honestly, i find 11 to be quite isolating. While it sounds like 14 is more so designed to be isolating, 11 has always been isolating simply because of the ppl. No one likes working together or helping ppl out. Half of em will *** even if you just ask a question. Which goes to show its not only the game mechanics that can be isolating or bad, but the community as well.

Just out of curiosity: when did you start playing or when was your main era of playing XI?
I guess it depends on luck a bit as well but from personal experience I cannot support this statement, at least not in pre SoA years. However, looking at the development the game took, especially since SoA release which were much more focused on a XIV type of gameplay, I have to say that I understand your remark and sometimes feel as well that the quality of the community decreased compaired to the early (especially lvl75) years.

There is nothing wrong with that, providing quest directions through NPC text and enviroment is a typical old-school design.

For everything, there would still player interactions, which are... the whole point of a MMORPG.

Can we have Ivalice FF online but like old XI please?

Warrior was trash when 2.0 first came out and wasnt used to tank anything unless your main tank wouldnt go pld. Penta melding has been a thing for a lot of the player base since 2.1 when they added the first crafted dps accessories. Before that any serious crafter/gatherer had penta melded.

I honestly don't know why people bring up relic as being a challenge.... they weren't they were just a massive time sink. My old dyna leader had like 6 relics back then and we used to sell the xarc mats to people for quite a bit of gil. Those animated weapons weren't a challenge either we never lost a single one.

Tanakas vision for AV and PW was stupid both of which unobtainable till they got nerfed an 18 hour wipe saw to that. Even back in the day there weren't that many well known players and Avesta was probably the only one known cross server. Obviously each server had a bunch of top players and a good portion of the server knew about them but the same can be said about XIV.

Lucrecia hasn't been a thing for a while now and they were pretty much an unknown JP group when they got their first world first. It's the same with Elysium they were a pretty much unknown group when they got the a8s world first, actually I think they got a4s as well. Though this world first crap is all from WoW and it was never a thing in FFXI nor is it as big in XIV.

Idk why people keep saying time sink isn't a challenge. There are many kind of challenges, killing harder bosses is just one type of challenge, time sink item or items that require certain amount of social skill is also a challenge.

IMO, timesink is a challenge because:

1. It tests players ability to improve grind efficiency when it comes to grinding, by setting goals, daily and weekly quotas, research in economy and so on. And that's (surprisingly) skill that's being used very often irl.

And those who has the ability to find more efficient grinding methods, set goals to improve character, efficiently plan and use their time will always make progress faster than another player who just randomly log on, randomly do events, or do unproductive social activity.

2. Leading a linkshell in MMO still require considerable amount of communication and coordination skills, because it's people. And dealing with people is definitely a challenge.

3. And to do events consistently for years as a leader is definitely a challenge. Most people can't tolerate doing same things over and over, thus it's definitely a challenge to be able to do it because it requires determination.

If grinding time sink item in FFXI is just a competition of who has more playtime, then it's probably not a challenge. But that really isn't the case IMO. Plenty of ppl played as much as a dyna leader in 75 era but they never accomplish a relic, it's really more than just time investment.

It was kinda big at first, but it slowly lost momentum when everyone realized every 6 months you would basically lost all progresses and become a nobody again, with Yoshi-P giving your old gears like they were free candies. Maintaining a static was more stressful than anything in FFXI ever due to the jump-the-rope memorization nature of the fights, the lockouts and the 8 party-members limit.


Tanaka isn't perfect, but when it comes to game design, him and Yoshi-P are in completely different lagues. Yoshi-P is an unimaginative hack that got lucky, Tanaka is a *** legend even if you discard his FFXI contribution.

I just don't really view a time/gil sink as a challenge. As it will get done eventually and I did start collecting currency and mats to make a relic back in 2008. The relics I ended up with after the dyna nerf wasn't the one I was planning on making back then. Though apart from the base relic item you didn't even need to step foot into dyna till the later stages if you had a decent income. Even then you could just buy the test and the fragment from linkshells. You could farm gil at your leisure and use that to buy the currency. I'd say mythics were more of a challenge back then than relics were. I'm not saying that they aren't an achievement as they are but just not a challenge.

There are quite a few that say relics in XIV are a challenge but they aren't they are just a big grind compared to downing the last boss of the raid tier.

I started back in 2007. Granted it was a lot better in terms of getting ppl to do things with back then simply because we had to if we wanted to get anything done. But the moment the option started becoming more common, ppl started turning there backs on helping other ppl.

Now a days its even simple stuff. I needed 2 synths a little while back. Even offered 20k for em (even tho iv been a crafter for a long time and never charged anyone to craft things for them). Issue was there was limited ppl i could find that had the skill levels i needed. When i found one guy he refused to do it saying that reward simply wasnt worth his time. Stuff like that irritates the hell outa me.

Nah, it was just harder to play. So they made it easier.
Also, My experience and much of what I said includes the 1.0.

In my opnion, FFXIV 1.23 was where the game should have stayed.
It was at 1.23 that they got serious about retaining customers. They could have reduced the entry graphics like they did for 2.0, but other than that we were just missing content. Maybe a little less clunklyness but that would have been resolved by reducing the animations frames and graphics.

1.23 was so good I actually miss it, and have an itch to go and steel cyclone materia pt.

2.0 didn't retain ANY of the good elements from both FFXIV 1.0-1.23 or FFXI.

This, 1.23 would have been real FFXI-2 with improved design mechanics from XI if they continue that direction. But they decided to do mini wow direction in ARR, which is sad...although it's probably a better business decision. Wow mechanic is a proven successful formula that sells, XI is not. Thus it's less risk to copy and paste a proven successful formula, more risk to try and perfect XI design and hope it sells.

Is it though? Not many WoW clones have been very successful, just WoW itself. Almost all of them have faded into obscurity like the new Star Wars or Aion etc.

Makes you wonder and contemplate the current position we are in with MMOs, gaming, the movie industry and pop culture in general.

As is the case in other entertainment industries, every MMO has tried to replicate WoW's success by using WoW as the gaming experience benchmark, and replicating it. We're basically all playing WoW clones.
(FFXI, currently, is probably the Justin Beiber fan that went to the plastic surgeon and asked to look like him.)

But this isn't happening in MMOs only, or games for that matter. Look at the direction DC took with their movies. They're trying to cheeply replicate the success Marvel has experienced over the past 20 years. Only they're very late to the game and know that, so they're cutting corners. That corner-cutting cheapens the experience. As is painfully apparent in the BVS abomination of a movie.

We've also been suffering the same cloning phenomenon in general gaming. Since the advent of FPS, it seems that all production and marketing efforts are being focused on FPS. they get the biggest budgets, they seem to make the most money.

But do they really? When people compare successful FPS to other types of games they're usually comparing modern FPS with huge budgets to older platform, RPG, fantasy adventures. Its not really a fair comparison considering how big the gaming industry is today. Who's to say a fantasy adventure platform with with the right resources wouldn't outperform something like overwatch? No one is trying to. Everyone is playing it safe.

I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed the drop in quality and quantity of non-superhero movies from Hollywood in the past decade. It seems like every major movie is either a DC or Marvel one. Star Wars now falls into that fold with Disney's acquisition of lucasfilms.

We're heading towards a very stale place and point in history where everyone is trying to do the same, safe thing. Just like what happened to the music industry where non-mainstream music such as hip-hop became so popular, it flipped the beast on its head, becoming the generic mainstream style of music. Only music is far cheaper to produce than games and is far more talent focused as opposed to resource/capital intensive.
While the music industry can survive and continue to be diverse because its cheap to produce, and now more than ever, cheaper to market, the gaming industry isnt the same.

That is until technology comes along and makes anyone reasonably capable of making their own game (we're 5 years away from individuals being able to produce their own games as good as SFV5 with the next generations of game engines and softwares).

So the gaming industry needs to evolve. Virtual reality is a big opportunity for that to happen. However, its going to require bigger budgets, and more diversity. Tossing out virtual reality FPS isn't going to cut it. I've been arguing for years that FPS's are going to kill the gaming industry, and I now think that superhero movies are going to kill the movie industry as well.
I am probably wrong though. At least, I hope I am wrong.

I thought that reality TV shows were the death of TV. It seemed like there was a reality TV show for everything. Thank God, over the past 5 years they seem to have died off and the resurgence of good tv shows with good writing and development has resurfaced.
Is Game of Thrones to be given credit for that?
The quality of TV shows coming out from Netflix and HBO has been excellent over the past 3 years.

TV shows like Argo, Breaking Bad came at a time we were starving for content. We were being flooded with reality tv at every corner. For some, Breaking Bad was probably the first TV show they followed that wasn't a reality one (due to their age).

We need a breaking bad, a game of thrones for the gaming industry, badly. WoW clones are cancer, slowly eating away at the industry.

And yet only one of the two managed to create both a functional game and a well balanced game.

XI is functional, but is and always has been an unbalanced mess.

XIV 1.0 was barely functional and amazingly unbalanced.

XIV 1.23 was 1.0 at its best and it was under Yoshida's command at that point.

XIV 2.0/3.0 are functional and literally every combat class can be used in every bit of content without causing extreme duress on your healers.

8th times the charm'

Remember when they thought it was a good idea to have dps checks for healers?
A few good WHMs and SCHs I know quit...never to return.

They always intended for WHM and SCH to DPS whenever possible. SCH was more of a support healer and SE's concept of "Support" in XIV/ARR is to have a class be considered one main role and then having "Support" as a side thing. BRD and MCH are a DPS with "Support" through songs/yurrets (Losing a negligible % of damage, MCH can toggle support between turret AA making them lose less), WHM,SCH,AST are healers whose "Support" is to deal damage when they are not required to heal (AST has cards, but they still need to balance out AST so it isnt a total loss when you replace either a SCH or WHM), WAR and DRK are tanks but they each can output DPS while still functioning as main tanks or offtanks.

The main problem with XIV's job system is simply that they nerf new jobs on arrival since they released NIN because people will automatically complain how DRK, AST, and MCH instantly invalidated WAR, SCH, BRD. Instead of releasing complete jobs they instead handicapped them by taking away key components that made the original jobs whose roles these three were supposed to replicate. AST cant sect dance, would be too "OP" to have someone competently doing both roles as a subhealer who arguably has less DPS than either healing class. DRK is paper thin and the idea of "MP management" isnt focused on Darkside MP cost but instead spending all of your MP on abilities to maintain hate through damage. You also have the fact that DRK doesnt get nearly enough to compete with WAR. MCH is pretty much the only "complete" job on arrival, it just needed slight tweaks on DPS but they completely wasted two or more ability slots with abilities that if you used one you reset the timer for the other (The same thing they did with SA and TA on NIN). Then, you need to be in melee range for Stun when Stun/Silence locking a target hasnt been a key mechanic since T1 of BCoB (Again, making one option far superior. SA being the best potency from the front and tied to TAs timer was just stupid).

The main problem with ARR is the dev team and the community. Not the fact that the dev team intended to make classes that could withstand the implementation of other classes unlike in XI where as soon as they released one job eventually the old jobs get overtaken and ignored. However, instead of making either job applicable they just made new jobs basically worthless except in a few niche circumstances and instead of buffing them to match they buffed them enough to make them just below negligible to use if played properly.

SW and Aion are way more profitable than people think, I recall reading one article about SWTOR being top most profitable mmo or something, after F2P model. Definitely more profitable than XIV 1.0 which let's Player play for an year without having to pay for it.

A MMO doesn't necessary needs 10 million sub to be consider successful. They just need to make enough money to satisfy investors.

No.

Also no.

And tbh, no.

I don't care to argue the rest, but this part is plain laughable.

Why is it laughable? With a DPSx4/Healerx2/Tankx2 setup you can bring in any jobs you want that fit that setup.

This is most likely what he is talking about

to be specific, the most optimal settup would be MCH NIN DRG WHM SCH SMN WAR DRK to get every bit of DPS and utility out of a limited 8 person settup with no duplicates. PLD and AST dont do enough DPS, despite their obvious advantages, MNK doesnt have a vulnerability up or crit rate up buff and DK debuff doesnt work with DRKs (Which i think is ultimately stupid). BRD doesnt have a vulnerability or crit rate up buff and the songs are the same potency as turrets before BV and BV is on a ridiculous recast timer. BLM right now cant stand still and cast for their highest DPS and they lack supervirus/E4E which is pretty vital in a multi-target forced double tank environment.

so in actuality, sure certain jobs have certain niche circumstances where you can switch out a job or two but ultimately the game depending on what patch it is does not support all jobs being represented equally in their respected roles.

That is 7 jobs.... the 8th would be a MNK though it doesn't have anything to buff other jobs damage though it has traited mantra it has stupidly high raw damage. Which high dps and mantra is pretty much needed to skip phases in world first progression parties and to help on healing with low ilvls.

Edited it. You could go three melee but your DRK would have to alter its DPS rotation pretty hard to avoid DK. Yea, MNK has high stable DPS and enhanced mantra but you dont really need either when you have two physical vulnerability up buffs and battle litany (heavy crit dependent DPS requirements too). Lots of jumps in content also hurt MNK more than any other melee/caster (And in A1S-A8S there are way too many for you to keep GL3).

Well you kinda do since your healers at world first progression will be well behind on ilvl as will the rest of the pt and that 20% extra healing can be vital. Not to mention most world first groups will still use PLD as it has the best defensive CDs to help with the low ilvl.

Yes.
Also, yes.

And honesty has nothing to do with it, yes.

And you must have misinterpreted Raenil, because with XIV in its current state there are no problem jobs. Not within the confines of setup prerequisites.

Having been a Warrior main since 2.0, I take issue with this statement, and all of your previously stated "elitist" strategy claims.

The only way you were effectively DPSing as a "Warrior" in 2.0, was if you were going Marauder and setting DPS sub abilities(Raging Strikes, Straight Shot, etc.). DPSing as WAR main tank was not a thing. You could maximize your performance sure, but you weren't doing what WARs of today are doing, nor WARs of late 2.0.


An ideal composition only matters in early raid cycles, and usually SMN is not within the standards of all raid fight environments, namely ones involving phases with multiple spread out adds(see A3s and M2s).

Dark Knight cannot maintain Delirium and deal its optimal DPS. Dragon Kick is part of Monk's rotation, and Monk still deals best theoretical single target damage. It's easy to place a Monk in a DRG or NIN slot, and see no discernible difference in party DPS.

Depending on the fight, PLD has more mitigation than DRK and more self heals, and can maintain itself in Sword Oath more readily and with less support than DRK can Gritless. It's still weaker mind you, even after the recent buffs, but it's not so much so that it will break your raid.

BRD has Foe's Requiem which affects all magical damage. This includes Ninjutsu(sans Shuriken), DRK skills and spells, Healer damage, and Caster damage. Does not impede the BRD.

BLM has E4E. The argument about standing still applies to MCH, BRD, SMN, and healers as well. It is RNG and fight dependent on which DPS will perform best.

There have been times in the past where certain jobs were unplayable in raid scenarios(namely DRG before the Mdef and positional change buff), but FFXIV in its current state is rather balanced. It's really splitting hairs to claim otherwise, with the one exception being raids in early raid cycle.

I agree with this XIVs jobs are now extremely well balance and you can do every bit of content with any job set up. My static used to run MCH DRG MNK SMN AST WHM PLD WAR and we generally have really good raid damage. Though we have only cleared A5S due to people having to leave and time zone issues we didn't know about till recently when the clocks changed. I think we have only been into A6S about 3 times =/.

XI was so challenging, it brought people together from all walks of life and from all over the world to MPK each other.

Most of the time when a settup is "Situational" its for like one or two fights in the raid set. Coolies, so your BRD has to have MCH geared up, your DRG or NIN need to go MNK, your PLD or WAR has to gear up DRK or WAR, and your BLM or SMN has to have either or geared. Doesnt exactly mean for the largest part of any content really that a settup of MCH NIN DRG WHM SCH SMN DRK WAR would be unable to be efficient enough to push phases in most content that you can think of.