FFXI = New Player Unfriendly?

I'm curious of how players feel about todays ffxi in context of new players joining/ old players rejoining or restarting etc.

Now the point of this thread is to see how the current changes throughout the last few months have changed the game in a context for people without a long time play experience or without the abyssea add-ons.

Lets put aside the "SE wants to push new players towards FFXIV theory for this thread"

What's wrong with current game balance?

What can be done to fix it, without destroying what abyssea gave us?

Currently the AH is really unbalanced, its hard to find low level gear easily, and while it is now rather easy to acquire gil and other things with Abyssea newer or players unlucky enough to not have the add-ons get the shaft. Not to mention Abyssea's gimping of players due to being forced to leach exp 30+.

So, how do we think SE should respond? How will they?

Dude, there is a thread existing already, for EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE OF YOUR POST.

~_~

The whole people getting their money out of the game has been beaten to death in the other 500000 threads regarding it.

SE probably won't do anything and just let the game take its course considering abyssea has been out for half a year now.

Wait for Vanafest this year to see what SE has in mind for XI. Personally I would love to see something outside of abyssea so people make an effort to stop being gimp and relying on atmas etc.

I'd be happy if SE at least allowed us to do FoV more than once per game day... and MAYBE raise exp gained from books and fights. i mean abyssea kinda proves they don't much care about us leveling like crazy XD may as well allow the low level people to exp without leeching.

if people have ideas and such for the game though it couldn't hurt to post it here https://support.na.square-enix.com/form.php?id=20&la=1&p=0&fo=41

Not new player firendly

You would know.

I know it's Pchan and all, but he's pretty much right, at least regarding exp. Sure there's FoV, but it pales in comparison to Abyssea.

If it were that simple then this site should place blocks on new posts but since that is not the case, there's still the freedom of posting topics no matter how beaten a subject matter is. And besides not everyone can hop on ffxiah on a daily basis so I'm sure the OP wasn't aware of this until now.

As for the OP for this thread it is quite a challenge for both returning, new and current players,who want to catch up on their low lvl jobs. But you can get around some of the challenges. Things like FoV helps a degree; exp is better than none if you ask me. There is also the level static idea as well; to name a few ideas I can think of at the moment. I agree with Patrik on the alterations of FoV and even throwing in ideas at SE on possible future improvements of this matter.

Roll with the punches.

2009: Man, I wish there was something new and good to do instead of all this old ***. FFXI sucks.

2011: Man, I wish there was something old and good to instead of all this new ***. FFXI sucks.

I have to agree with the others. There's entire threads for every single thing said here. When I first saw the thread title "New player unfriendly?" my first thought was, well what the *** do you honestly think? I don't understand why you needed a thread for this.

I believe this relevant.

^ Awesome.

Just to thoroughly beat this horse.

Really only posting because I've had two friends return with new characters recently.
This game is no more unfriendly to new players than it ever was,
you're still going to need friends or an LS to get you going.
The fact that missions can be soloed now makes it easier to get help and progress.

Is it dead yet?

Of course, there's only far more stuff to do than ever.

The game itself is VERY new player friendly, as long as said new player is just looking to enjoy some of the story and leveling a few jobs. Fields of Valor makes leveling any low level job a lot easier and the additional assistance of the blue chests temp items makes it even more of a breeze. Add in the fact that there are a bajillion faeries and pixies around to toss out cures and hell yeah it's a good time to join up. Plus now new players have the advantages of know what jobs they should level (Mages, Monks, Ninja) and which not to waste their time on (everything I have leveled).

The only unfriendly aspect of this game really are the god damned people. 95% of the people who play this game are cutthroat scumbags who are just out for themselves. God forbid you ask anyone in this game for help without already blowing them for a year or having RDM leveled. You will spend your early time working on getting yourself ready for endgame and then spend the rest of your time either A) hating your endgame LS or B) sucking off your LS leader and getting everything you want while not so much as talking to people who can't help you with your immediate goals.

Really that's all there is to my take on it, I'm off to level a damn mage job -_-v

There were 2217 people online on the server last night, and only 9 people seeking LV1-75.

New player friendly, sure, but only if the character you start out with is LV80+.

All SE would have to do is make Abyssea 70+

So everyone would have to level 1 - 70 outside of Abyssea.

But like 100 people already posted that suggestion on these forums.

Eliminating the Once game-daily Fields of Valor Limit would really help too, as well as boosting the XP rewards for completion,

Or making FoV a little more elaborate would be nice too.
More pages, more difficult pages, perhaps with extra bonuses. More things to spend tabs on, more zones in which FoV is available.

It's a wonderful concept, but one that comes a little too shallow in light of Abyssea.

That wouldn't do anything. It'd just be Astral Burns all over again. Doesn't solve the problem. They'd have to do something completely different. Example being making a lower-level Abyssea-type atmosphere that gives them more EXP/HR than just leeching high-level parties, or something else with a better incentive.

Anyway, I feel like the game isn't very new-player friendly unless said new-player had a veteran friend that was willing to help them with pretty much literally every aspect of the game until they hit 90.

Changing Fields of Valor is definitely the easiest solution right now, because you can't really inject enough new blood into this game to make a complete overhaul of lowbie-XP a worthwhile venture, at least from the developer's standpoint.

That's a good point. They could also change mob respawn rates to mirror Abyssea respawns too. That should help a decent bit. Not that they'll do it.

I have no idea why someone would start this game currently.

With all the arbitrary ***you need like limit breaks and other *** just to end up in Abyssea is stupid.

I mean I think most people playing are pretty much doing so due to addiction these days.

edit: And nostalgia glasses.

FoV or something similar, in ToAU areas would be a start. Getting to 55 is still pretty easy (Plenty of people are still hammering level sync parties in Qufim and East Ronfaure S, even if only to get to 30 for Aby or get their subs up - at least on Siren.) But after that short of the two previous areas mentioned, or Abyssea leeching, there isn't much going on.

Bigger exp yield from Besieged would be nice too, and have it happen more frequently.

They could just nerf exp rates in Aby too, though I doubt that would ever happen.

What I'd like as much as old content being revitalized, is for crafting to be useful again aside from your typical consumables.

You could drastically boost beseiged making it a massive exp source at low level and preventing beastmen to trust the astral candy(free access to the bcnm). For instance if you are in exp range you get 500 exp from anything dying near you. This would however require to make TOAU access a lot easier (for instance only requiring one key that you trade without travelling to Jeuno).

Kinda make it more like Bastion you mean? I think it would be good if they adopted that type of exp gain/system to both besieged and campaign.