Old FFXI Vs New FFXI

People who have been a part of the FFXI community since either the beginning or near the beginning, how do you feel about the game today in comparison to when it first came out?

I have read comment's where people bash abyssea saying its "broken FFXI", and "no one wants to level in normal parties anymore because abyssea has no cap (making abyssea 70+)"

(now these aren't my words, im neutral and just want my af3+2 and to have fun lol)

I would personally out of sheer curiosity like to see what the FFXIAH community thinks, old school to new, is the game broken now?
how would you fix it if you could sit the dev team down n give em a piece of your mind.

I love exping in abyssea parties, its fast and easy,, it also requires any job. Getting parties on pup was pretty much impossible before abyssea. Abyssea is like FFXI God-Mode

However... i think abyssea ultimately broke ffxi. Back in the day it would take forever to level to 75, so usually by lvl 75 a person knew how to play their job (generally). Now you can get from 30-75 in two days or so, and not even play the job at all.

abyssea is fun, but it takes the skill out of the game

The community feels like it's gone down the shitter but hey, at least the game is actually playable now.

Forget nostalgia, the olden days were ridden with terrible game design decisions (HOHOHO LET'S PUT ASTRAL RINGS WITH THE AF COFFERS). My best memories were with my social shells in 2004-2006 but that had nothing to do with the actual game itself.

I can't speak on the game's current state, as I quit a few months back, I did get an idea where it was heading though, and I did not like it.. It was nearly impossible to get anyone to do anything else, and my idea of fun isn't grinding in the same place on the same mobs every day for hours on end with no end in sight..

Sure it was great that I didn't have to spend forever to level jobs that I only kinda wanted to level (BST for example) but after awhile it gets boring.. I used to absolutely dread the 5k~ an hour exp on average I'd get in normal parties and the actual work I had to put into it, but once I got a good taste of Abyssea, I soon realized that I actually enjoyed it as much as I thought I hated it.

Abyssea took a large portion of the exp grind out.

However, it also introduced something that XI never had before: gradual progression of gear.

It used to be that levels were gradual progress, and gear instantly changed your standing as a player. It's the reverse now.

You build your weapons up now. Your armor comes in stages. There are more sidegrades, not just raw upgrades. You progress greatly on atma now, too; something that you have to build the NM up for.

You can no longer just zerg everything, either; you have to hold mobs as you kill them to try and proc stuff. You can't just DD burn everything down instantly and hope you can outheal the damage done by TP moves.

Overall, yes, it's an easier game; but I personally think, having played XI since...longer than I can recall now, it's much better this way. You no longer need to be super pimped to trio everything; you can just grab two casual friends.

It's a different pace, and I feel as though the fact that you gradually build your weapon and armor up to maximum power made it a better game.

I miss things like capped COP, Einherjar, and other such things. I also miss having the feeling that my gear required effort to obtain. Now it's easier than ever to get the best stuff in the game. I get tired of seeing all these stupid noobies with almost full/full AF3+2(and masamunes and kannagis galore) who really have no idea how to do anything besides abyssea, but even if they do anything they have such good gear and level advantage that they don't even need to know any of the old methods. Course, not like it helps them much. I swear, my LS has to be one of the only ones left that uses actual tactics when ***hits the fan. Everyone else is like, "oh noes, we're losing. BREW IT ZOMG!" Other than that though, I do enjoy the game. Battlefield music is still something that is continually amazing, though the only new music really is the Shinryu fight music >_>;

I really miss old EXP parties. I wish they'd make you unable to enter abyssea if you're under level 70. I also miss when God gear was great gear and seeing people in hodgepodges of gear rather than the sleek uniform AF armor. I miss being able to just weaponskill kill during EXP with no hassles. I miss doing and seeing KSNM/BCNM shouts. I miss a lot of stuff, and I'd bring it back if I could.

I also miss the hardcore PUPs, BSTs, and SMNs(and DRGs for that matter) who leveled mostly solo before abyssea and before level sync. They were some of the best players and continue to be so, and I'm glad they got a break. I hate all these new PUPs, BSTs, etc. I hate how anyone can take a job up, get the best gear(AF3 lawls) in a matter of days, and then act like they've been a career <insert job here> forever and ever.

I definitely hate more of the new than I like, but I still like it enough to play and enjoy it. I really love triggering weaknesses. Especially blue. It's such a nice shade of blue, and I like the different shapes for the different !! for the color blind people.

Quoted for emphasis. Even higher level endgame mobs like Kirin were so much weaker after the first cap raise.

brb soloing AV with my masamune

I miss the old days when linkshell whould call ppl to wake up for HNM such as tiamat and shiz, i also liked the dificult of dynamis as it was, same for einherjar, sea, sky, everything. Now all the stuff is easyer and i kinda hate Abyssea. i liked to duo/triu alot of NM's with friends but now i can solo them. everything droped in price too, I miss fighting Dark Ixion and Sandworm as a 18 man group like normally did with linkshell, etc. I wish lvl cap increase whould of not happened and just a add of new areas/gear etc whould happen but also monsters dificultness be higher. I miss the waiting time for a HNM to pop to claim and kill which doesnt happen in abyssea since most are item spawned. I hope SE add new HNM's in non-timed areas and stuff that need skilled ppl to do with full alliances so the old way linkshells used to work can happen again. Also hope that they reduce the timers of old HNM to less than 24-72 hrs.

This are my points about old/good stuff - sorry if its kinda confusing but didnt felt like making a text about it lol.

new jobs? new area's that aren't just recolored BS? putting some skill back into having a high lvl job?

it took it being made ridiculously easy to lvl a job for people to see how awesome pup and blu could actually be

im a decently new player only 2 years in , i dunno what it was like before FoV, level sync and such
i've heard that the promyvion's were a source for exp before lvl sync

This never happened to begin with.

was just quoting something someone else posted, its kinda true both ways, back before you either had to be a really good player with a marginal amount of skill to reach 75th OR have a dedicated LS that just allowed you to leech. its just what I've seen on my server anywho



i could've been misinformed but i was told that blu actually was an amazing job when it was first released and they were forced to gimp it down some?

BLU was pretty amazing because the typical two-hander job wasn't all that great (dual wieldan axes and rampagan errday) and even then, it was a gimmicky "WOAH I CAN DO WS DAMAGE WITH A SIMPLE SPELL".

The period between ToAU's release and the famous two-handed weapon patch wasn't very long though.

I do miss the difficulty and tedium of leveling each of my jobs to 66. I used to kick myself for going for Maat's cap; however, the joy of finally attaining it was only matched by obtaining my Amanomurakumo, which is also now not what it used to be. I also miss the difficulty of enemies, where only certain groups could take on certain monsters, whereas the majority of Abyssea monsters can be taken down by casual groups. That being said, its certainly a different mentality, but that doesn't make it a bad game.

Or you could just keep seeking til you got another party. Given time, anybody could hit 75.

I don't recall any nerfing, though it's been a while.

yeah no i definitely don't want anyone thinking im ranting about how they broke the game, i was just wondering how the ffxiah community felt about it mainly, my personal opinion is that abyssea party's are the equivalent of smn burns without having to find a lvl sync lol

Pre-abyssea was far more flawed than "abyssea leeches":
*Kings were relevant
*SMN burns
*Extremely long lines (or incredible amounts of gil) for HQs/marginal upgrades
*Time Limit on Dynamis/Limbus/Einherjar
**** months worth of grind to level a job.
*Relic weapons
*Specific setups for merit parties and limited camp (thanks Stefanos)
*GODAWFUL Salvage drop rate.
*BLM couldn't be together with melee in the same EXP pt past 50.
but people would rather get mad over "leeches" than anything else.
*SAM and WAR were the only DDs. Now about every job can DD, even PUP and meleeWHM, the only shitty melee jobs are DRK and PLD.
Also, is it wrong for me to think TurtlePLDs/Atma-less DDs are leeches?

SMN burns could've been fixed so easily SE just didn't feel like it. It wasn't a plague until level sync. Simple solution: 2 hour = no experience.

given the amount of time someone is willing to wait lol , pup getting no invites for 2+ days isn't entirely unheard of is it? then again the server im operating on isn't as large as some others so might be different on Fenrir




you don't recall any jobs being nerfed in ffxi ever or blu specifically ?

People are wearing nostalgia glasses in this thread.

Old XI had major problems.

more so talking about the people that allow friends to afk for hours on end, in abyssea party's, sorry didn't specify

BLU specifically.
Yes.
No comments if you think leeches are issues compared to what was listed...

Don't forget picky merit party setups and limited camps. Seriously, *** that ***.

Another simple solutio for SMN burn whould be resists on more than 3 monsters... making it hard for burn.

What was there... like 4 merit camps outside of puddings and trolls?

Shits ridiculous.