Horizon Strikes Again

Now that you've jogged my compartmentalized memory, this checks out. I was super frustrated during WotG. Traversing zones was the absolute worst, and all I remember of endgame then was spamming campaign wide-scanning on RNG for Sandworm and DI pops.

The state of the game is fairly good at the moment, but nothing on the horizon is the general worry. 5% had their V25 complete, 10% more with V20, 2% with a prime III, only the people that blist thru it probably feeling really bored and likely feel frustrated. Trust/botting/old grievances has nothing to do with it, the 6 people max/min is the problem, specifically sortie. Content is boring and has zero reason to not be open to an alliance, at least for the once a week KI. Leaving friends behind because one night you 7/6 and the next you 5/6 and you have to call trust make the content dragging for the “not obsessed” players that might have 1-2 hours of game time 3-4 times a week.

For horizon, it’s just people that want to save $15, because, well, FFXI is an amazing world to explore.

WotG: released Nov 2007
Lest We Forget: released Dec 2010
37 *** months lmao. I stopped doing WotG missions because I couldnt even remember the story the patches were so far apart. I might be mis-remembering, but it was like "hey we have new WotG missions" and it was like two missions. Not to mention there was no incentive to keep up, there was no major reward (they tried once with that san quest where you have to get signatures which would reward you with all the gobbiebag items that was added that patch), nor was any major content blocked behind doing missions.

Just to compare, I'm basing this on page creation dates on wiki, missions that tie in with other expansions (Apoc Nigh) dont count:
CoP Aug to Nov 2005
ToAU: was April 2006 to Aug 2007
SoA: Mar 2013 to Nov 2014
RoV: May to Nov 2015
TVR: Aug 2020 to May 2023 (33 months, less than WotG)
Abyssea: June to Dec 2010

Moogle add-ons kept people busy then for 1 day to 2 weeks depending on how hard you went.

retail and horizonxi players



(in other words, nothing to see here)

Didn’t WotG add that stupid random augment system? You’d get a weapon drop, do an annoying fight in a Wings zone, then get random augments from a huge list and most were trash. I think I fought a Pixie for the katana and the mob you fought have different augments. I can’t recall if it was Wings or Abyssea, what was that?

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Succor_to_the_Sidhe

Like you said, most of the augments were trash.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Succor_to_the_Sidhe

I knew what you were talking about but had to look it up lol.

Was WotG, which was really the start of the random augment hell, wasnt even the worst one, that was the silly casket fights for completely random pool of random augmented equipment, atleast with the weapon you know you're getting something back, even if it's crap

or the grounds of valor crap, where you'd trade a piece of your gear, fight an NM and get completely random augment on it, sometimes making the item worse

And you couldnt reuse the item either lol

F in the chat for all the downgraded Dusk Gloves +1

I could write a whole book on this, theres a whole psychology behind this debate. The reality is, these people are deliberately and actively hurting retail XI in various ways. Ultimately, I blame SE overall for the damage done to the game due to their lack of care and continuing to do so. I do have to admit I have a slight disdain for these servers since day1 because of how in every single case they come back to talk ***about retail, convert others and generally try to harm it in any way possible. For someone who cares about the game like I do, I have always been outspoken in my opinion about it. I think anyone can see how it hurts the game, most that claim it doesn't are just the type of people who are playing on p servers and don't care.


Especially now at this point in the games life when the company does literally nothing. I've kind of also been turning into a "who care" approach like what can you even do when the company itself literally does not give a ***. To the point they are trying to invest literally nothing into the game, not even to correct errors in updates at this point.

That still won't stop me from pointing out the complete and utter hypocrisy by almost every one of those private server defenders.


No it isn't, its in the current state due to SE primarily. Their complete lack of care in policing the game and keeping it healthy. Imagine if they actually policed, or even used a scare tactic randomly banning in waves to stop people from afk botting. When job points first came out people were actively teaming up and doing it as content of sorts. Then slowly when the content started to get stale, they realized they could just afk bot it and had no repercussions. That effectively killed a means to create teaming up and content progression. Then they stupidly had the idea to continue with master levels to appease a playerbase long gone (in fact, the people who would have liked that are literally on a pirate server wishing for your games death.) They also had another chance to create teaming up and content, but because they didn't police their game it caused people to repeat the exact same sequence of events. This in addition to the slow trickle of new content until now, is the bigger reason. Multi boxing wouldn't really have stopped that much if they had a way to get rid of it.

Multi boxing really came to popularity during Abyssea. It def had a negative impact on the game, especially during that time so its hard to defend people saying they use it to fill spots and help their friends. The reality is that its mainly out of greed and in the extreme of cases lack of playtime/friends to do things with. I don't think past Abyssea that it would have been a problem if SE policed the game well and didn't create so many systems that incentivized multi boxing... I personally think they added too many of those. They had delt with the low man only situation only to later redo it and ontop of that give incentives to multi boxing thru those point systems for rewards. So while it does/did hurt the game, it isn't the cause of where it is. If they kept steadily adding new content and had a road map for the game, it would remain healthy if you ask me.

I could erase all my progress tomorrow if it meant the game doing better and getting what it deserves. Most of the people who have strong opinions actually care about the game. They grew up with it or played for years and it means something to them. Thats why even a lot of people who don't play anymore still come back occasionally or keep up with it. At this point, over two decades later, can people really say its just a game? Personally I have played literally over 20 years , and I have been happy for most of them and it means a lot to me. I don't want to see it do poorly, but some of these people have a vendetta against it and want it to fail. I don't think any of it has to do with hours or dollars spent.

Most of your general sentinment is in regards to SE, not the game itself or its community. Their lack of care has made you disgruntled, you even admitted you occasionally play to scratch an itch. The things you are describing are because of the lack of care and funding.

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The game would be dead.

And be clear, by "AFK botting" you mean ML's. The ridiculous grind that is 40+ pretty much guarantee's botting will happen. Very very few players have 20~40 hours of free time every week to devote to FFXI.

If someone imagines that grinding level is "fun", they can go play Horizon along with the rest.

It's been answered to you over and over in each thread. They want retail to fail and actively try to damage it and convert people to their servers. I have given tons of evidence across threads (and can do so again, I have debates with them often on youtube.) They are literally trying to recruit for a server that was backwards engineered, shitty and buggy, and a poor copy of an era of a real game. You can't convince me to make that make sense, they are literally saying a copy of the real game is better. Not to mention they constantly lie about how it actually was like, they paint a pretty picture when I know for a fact theres tons of bugs and have seen things that would have never happened in era. They come and critique every thing the current game has to offer and downplay certain aspects to give their server a favorable image.


There is a whole psychology behind it, these people have grudges thru each era of FFXI and the choices the devs have made. They want to see it fail. Ultimately they are just actively helping the downfall of the game, and I think a lot of people feel the same and just don't want to enter the debates. Especially now with all factors considered. That is why every time they come to debate it here, they are met with strong opinions. I don't know what you fail to understand about it. Its the internet and people just do these things.

I agree, they've finally achieved "balance" between the jobs but actual content to play them on is limited. 6-man limit to everything really encourages niche private groups due to all the flexibility that is required. Stuff that you can bring in 18 people encourages larger more inclusive communities.

If they actively policed the game when this first came out, job points, it would not be dead. If they actively policed along with steady content, it would be fine. They didn't do that at all, and in fact they are removing funding. So as it is now, it would not make sense. They would need to have a roadmap and new content, and slowly police the game to make people change course.

Yeah I find that boring as hell, but its what all these idiots have clamored for... Literally saying the game was dumb and dead because they removed an exp grind via lv1-75, even though they added an even more ridiculous one in 99~to ML50. They would have added incentives to it like they did with job points, if people actively did the "content." Because they are all botting it, nobody cared enough to complain and protest, and because the community is small and the game defunded, the company didn't give a crap.

Ehh .... that's ... nonsense

Right off rip, mass bans = lower revenue. Some return, most won't, especially because automated bans tend to catch lots of non-cheaters because most of you don't know half of what you think you know.

Grinding is no longer fun and hasn't been fun in a very long time. JP and now ML's is just grinding, in corners of the world far away from the content that is actually fun. Someone mercing / grinding in KRT or the Bay has zero effect on your ability to get Gaol clears, farm RP, farm segments, do Sortie or the occasional Ambuscade. It does not effect Dynamis-D or Omen, if you are still into that. Them off in a corner does not effect you.

Everything else you said is just spite. You actually hate private worlds and the people who play on them, and you are free to do so. Don't direct that hatred towards the live players as you shake your hand at the sky cursing those kids and their dog.

JPs atleast felt like steady progress, job depending but you were always getting another point on the category list, gift tiers and your CP gain goes up every chunk of gift tiers.

EP starts pretty reasonable but not for very long, and while the sj increases are great, massive for some its still quite the grind to get to each one

More like your post is nonsense and putting words in my mouth. I never said it was good content design, it's just what we got. I never said mass bans, I said periodically banning with intent to scare like every MMO does. OK big brain, tell us what we don't know and what every other MMO is doing wrong.

People botting so heavily does have an affect, just look around you to see It. Nothing I said is spite. It's my opinion in a debate, stop trying to deflect to weaken my argument

When AI allows you to troll in Latin, it has gone to far...

TBH The only reason I played Horizon was to see if 75 was as fun as I remembered or if it was nostalgia glasses. Plus an added bonus was I got to play with my little brother who never played XI back then.

So I went and got 2 jobs to 75(BRD and THF), and frankly loved every minute of old school exp parties and the social experiences they were, met a ton of really nice people along the way, blew through ROTZ and COP with my brothers, yah, it pretty much reminded me why I fell in love with XI to begin with and it was every bit the joy I remembered.

But still it came with the bad too, got bored of it around endgame, the joy I had at 75 of Low-manning content on THF wasn't really there on Horizon due to their /NIN nerfs and other "balance" choices, not to mention the probably still broken Status bolts.

Was super fun though helping my brother do the Lv20 Avatar fights, getting his Carbuncle Mitts, stuff like that. Really brought back a feeling I had missed from that era, seeing the game through his entirely new eyes. Was well worth it.

Exemplar Points just totally missed the mark. they should have rolled them out slower outside, with greater gains in content like Odyssey and Sortie instead of intentionally hamstringing gains due to level adjustment. let people tryhard them outside, reward the players participating in the content. it wouldn't stop them being less boring, but at least it would offer a bit more reward. I am not sure who is thinking we want just soul crushingly boring and dragged out grind, but someone should at least smack them in the head with a shoe.

Most spider mobs typically drop some form of Spider Webs.

How do you expect someone to take you seriously when you're complicit? The policy is no third party tools.


You and I could go observe a character and probably discern by it's actions and pathing whether or not it's a player. SE on the other hand doesn't enforce without overcoming the burden of truth. The only way to prove if someone is afk is their character performing actions and failing to respond to a GM.

Why do you think chatmon is so loud? "HEY ***, A GM IS GONNA BAN YOU IF YOU DON'T COME BACK AND RESPOND TO THEIR MESSAGE!". Yeah, we already figured out how to beat that ages ago. Meanwhile, there's fkn bot programs built into the community's launcher for the game. Really man?

Wait what happened?

i dont know what half of it means

SE doesn't have GMs message you any more. People aren't using chatmon to get away with botting. They just ban such a small portion of the botters that most take no precautions and still end up ok(until they aren't).

People complaining about RMT are people that need to find something else to do, SE created monbereaux so you can bot all night without running out of mp, they made mobs that basically can’t kill you, respawn within 3 sec, in zones with no aggro, created this distorted EP where you need 30M per jobs so you can bot all night for the next 5 years and still be short (lol), you do 2 hours of dyna and you get 2k (WTF?!?) for 2 hours play, how many hours do you think people have in their life?!? Most real people I know have 2 hours 3-4 times a week, they just can’t do it without bot or RMT (in my opinion worst than botting as you pay a botter lol). So recap but folks are close minded:
- dyna: 2xweek for 2 hour each
- sortie daily for 1 hour each
- odyssey daily for 30 min
- omen 2xweek for 1 hour each
- EP where do you put that ?!? wtf is wrong with you ?!? It doesn’t fit anywhere, and I didn’t say the other stuff
- all the other ***like sparks,gear,ambu,monthly,organizing and more importantly actually talking with each other on discord about the stress of life and what people go thru, try it that’s more important than your game “rightfullnes” feeling.

I rather play with people that bot and respect their family than gamers that spend 8 hours a day here and are execrable.

The puritan will kill the game and somehow still blame others.

Game is 20 years old, it’s a video game, most of us just want to chat and do some content, you accomplish it in hard mode with equipset congratulations.

I don’t play on horizon, but they don’t have that workload so they can just focus on XP, we can’t.

Moral of the story, do x10 times the EP in instances and that will help at the problem, people play the game enough, and enough is enough.

This thread is wild. It's like people are reading what they want and responding accordingly.