So I’ve been reading up on an FF wiki and was saddened to learn this-
A few things:
Iifa Tree is called The Tree of Eva in the Japanese ver.
Vivi was prob. a Type/Ver. 0 or a prototype Black Mage. Quan/Quale caught him as the ship carrying him was off to test these prototypes on an island or such, and Vivi fell from the ship.
They can make it hard and tedious because they’ve done it already with XI. I dunno if you’ve played XI before but here’s my perspective. I got XI when it first came out to PS2 so this was during 2004. I played the game long enough to get to max (level 75), have decent equipment and finish the majority of the game’s story. The first 30-40 levels or so was fine, and didn’t take that long to get to. Maybe even up to level 50. After that point however the game’s design flaws became very glaring. Specifically the entire leveling system is one huge grindfest. And just to make matters worse, the game even punishes you for dying by taking away experience points. You can even delevel.
Now imagine how frustrating it can be if you spent several hours getting a level (so you can equip the new armor you just bought, use a new spell etc) only on the last fight before retiring for the night you die and drop back down to the previous level. This moment of anger is way worse than any ragequit someone might pull on you in SF4.
This isn’t to say design flaws didn’t exist before level 50. When you first choose a job (class) you can solo levels 1-12 relatively easily. There is one job, Beastmaster, who can solo the entire game but that was built with soloing in mind from the bottom-up plus it’s only one job out of around 15? If you choose any other job by level 12 enemies become too tough, take too long to solo and reward you with too little experience for how much you need to get to next level (tnl). I’m talking 12-50xp when your tnl is already in the thousands leaving you no choice but to join a group/party if you ever hope to continue advancing. Furthermore, hope any group you join has competent players or else you’re just wasting your time.
Why join a group? Mobs/enemies in XI are ranked on a scale depending on the difference between your character’s level and their level. eg. If you’re level 20 and the mob is about level 25 the game will rate them as Incredibly Tough. On the other hand if you’re 20 and you see something that’s level 15 the game may rank it very easy or too weak. Beating up too weak mobs btw nets you zero xp. Only way to get any decent experience is to fight incredibly tough enemies within a group. Here’s another kicker, the very easy label can be misleading. If you’re playing a job that isn’t built to solo (jobs such as red mage and ninja have some soloing capability but obvious not on the level of a beastmaster) or have the proper equipment for soloing fighting a very easy monster by yourself, even if you’re at level 75, you WILL end up dying. Since the game likes to punish players for dying, you do lose quite a bit of experience points when you die at 75. I don’t remember the exact number but it was several thousand.
This can be mitigated by a white mage casting raise on you, but if there are no white mages around you’re SOL. There’s also a lot of downtime after you’re raised, for a few minutes you’re in a weakened state and can’t risk fighting anything until you recover. That means if a party member dies, especially if it’s someone like the tank and is raised, the entire party and gameplay effectively comes to a stop. Everyone has to stand around and wait until they recover.
Another thing about joining groups. The idea of having Japanese, Euros and North Americans play on the same server is a cute one, but you’d be lucky if you ever get to play with a group of Japanese. Biggest issue is language barrier (the auto translation feature wasn’t very good and the JP players didn’t even bother to use it), second is difference in time zone, and third the Japanese just didn’t want to play with anyone aside from one another.
Regarding the vast numbers in different class combinations. Well here’s the thing, you only have the freedom to combine whatever job/subjob together if you’re just messing around. If you’re a part of a serious experience/leveling party. Even an end game party there is no freedom to choose what you want to play. You HAVE to conform to the standard builds.
Every year, SE publishes an FFXI Vana’diel Census. Look it up. One of the things it reports on is job distribution, that is which job combination players are using the most. Some common ones are White Mage/Black Mage, Black Mage/White Mage, Red Mage/Black Mage and Ninja/Warrior. I write common, but it should really say requisite combos. If you’re a mage don’t even think about subbing a melee class or you can forget about ever receiving an invitation. The same goes for Ninja, you better sub Warrior because Ninjas are the tanks of a party.
Even race + job combos aren’t free from discrimination. People only want to to party with Tarutaru mages, good luck if you’re a Galka and you want to be a Black Mage. SE has nerfed your race with low mp. You get lots of hp and strength but the other races still do the melee jobs better. Only thing Galkas had going for them is the Monk job I think.
As for making items very hard to obtain. Look up Dynamis and see what people had to do and the amount of time they have to sink into it in order to get the good stuff. When I was playing FFXI’s economy was also plagued with RMT, gilsellers, and inflation simply because people were buying gil all the time to get the big ticket items. This practice made it virtually impossible for legit players to get the items they wanted. By the time you’d saved up for it the price had already jumped a million or two. As for the items you couldn’t purchase and are exclusive to the character who receives it (usually from a monster drop), well a while ago in this thread I wrote about some of XI’s end game and how retardedly long it can take to get something. I think it was about comparing the drop % of items in XII with XI. Going back to playing on the same servers as the Japanese. The servers were all located in Japan so the Japanese always had the advantage when it came to claiming monsters.
I should mention that the 500,000 in the 2009 press release is the same number of subscribers SE reported in '04-'05. Their userbase has remained stagnant over the years and I believe it’s because the game’s design does exactly as you say, drive away Western players.
I’m sounding pretty negative but XI did have some pros:
That being said, if SE wants FFXIV to attract more players and compete with industry powerhouse WoW they really should develop a game as dissimilar to XI’s design philosophy as they can.
Anyone here ever watched the FF5 ‘Sequel’ anime OVA?
I also played the crap out of FFXI. Got up to 74 Bard/WHM before Chains of Promathia hit, so needless to say, I put way too much time in to the game for that era. Didn’t have the “umph” left to get 75. I loved every aspect about combat mechanics that the game had to offer, which made me attempt to level up a BLM/WHM, seeing as I really couldn’t enjoy the combat mechanics at all as a bard. I really wish more games would incorporate the chain linking style of combat, as it adds depth.
I am hoping that they see the massive level grind for what it was, and act upon it for FFXIV. As you said, there was nothing worse than deleveling after being able to use new equipment/spells etc.
I’m really hoping they make a more balanced job system. I felt sorry for friends that chose to play a Dark Knight, who would sit for countless hours in Juno spamming to get a group, yet never receive an invite after hours of waiting.
And I swear to God, they better have TaruTaru in FFXIV. Screw Galka.
Pretz is hilarious and it’s pretty well animated for it’s time. Endings pretty lame but Mid shows up. Was my first expirence with blatent Fan Service what with Linaly’s glowing ass an all. I like it as it’s rather brainless fun has come pretty cool fights and Pretz makes me laugh but it’s not particularly amazing or anything and only really vaugly references it’s source material with Mid saving his Grandfather an all. Oh Rouge makes me laugh to that womans nuts and Prits bombs blow Rasberries at you befor they go boom. Best bombs ever. Valkus is a riot to. Man in general this movie is goofy as hell.
All I know is that they better have Level Sync in FFXIV. I spent months just to get to level 30 (I played probably once or twice a week)
Oh yeah, Skill Chaining and Magic Bursting were definately fun to do especially when everyone in the party was ‘in the zone’. But then you run into another potential problem when a black mage begins to think they’re invincible and just start spamming nukes.
You were a Bard, I played a Red Mage so I think we can both agree when you’re partying with someone who’s constantly refreshing your mp you tend to get a little trigger happy. This in turn leads to the mage, most likely a taru drawing hate from the ninja and lets face it, lazy mages loved playing with ninja tanks over paladins. Of course the taru with his low defense and hp gets killed in two or three hits and any momentum the party was carrying comes a complete stop as the taru was also the main source of damage when you’re performing magic bursts and everyone has to wait for him to recover. The sceneario didn’t happen often, people were generally smart players but when it did it was just another time sink SE decided to force upon their players.
Dark Knight was bad for finding parties, but I thought Dragoon was worse lol.
One other thing I forgot to mention in my list of pros. I really liked XI’s music. Then again I didn’t play an unwanted melee class so I didn’t have to spend hours standing around in the same area waiting for an invitation listening to the same song loop over and over.
Oh so true about over zealous Black Mages. What made matters worse, was the language barrier should you get a different speaking BLM in your party. During my play hours, this was very likely. I was lucky enough to have a set group in our LS, so didn’t actually have to worry about this too often.
Ugh, poor Dragoons. I forgot all about how hard they had it. I honestly think the most wanted and best classes to play (just because you always got groups) were (in order)
Red Mage
Paladin
Bard
It seemed at the time, that Warriors, Monks and Ninjas were interchangeable. God, I forgot how much I love that game. Just hate the grind. I’m sure it has evolved quite a lot since then. Hell, I remember that the high end game was not very thought out, and there were one, maybe two locations anyone could go to level up, and they were always over run by way to many players. This was before WoW had introduced instanced areas, so at the time, instancing seemed like a dream come true. Now I hate it. I am praying they think of this ahead of time with 14.
Song loop over and over? I played a bard! Lol. My God how I got sick of those same songs after 74 levels.
Oh…and seriously, FUCK RSE QUESTS!
Yes, it’s one of the few VHS tapes I still own!
Yeah, the level grinding back then was super stupid. After you quit they reduced the amount of XP required to gain the next level. Back then when you reached Level 65 you were at the HALFWAY point in XP totals to get to 75. They also reduced the amount of XP lost for dying instead of a flat 10% of your current level’s exp-to-next-level total. At 75 I think I lose 2,000 out of 44,000 XP.
With the introduction of the Aht Urghan expansion they made levelling stupid easy.
Dark Knight isn’t so bad these days, and Dragoon is one of the better damage dealers!
Yes… the seeking parties for hours is a major let down, unless you were a Tank/Healer/Support job you’ve got 10 other jobs to compete with for party slots! My first job was Samurai, then Ranger, then Corsair <- I get annoyed constantly with party invites on Corsair even when not seeking :bluu:
Damn, reading all of this has me really intrigued about what the game has shaped in to. The XP differential is crazy. I actually remember being in the 60’s, saying how much XP it would take to hit 70. It was absurd lol. I’m sure if they had the XP model you are talking about, in game back then, a lot more people would have stuck around. I know I would have.
Corsair…No idea. Dragoon good? /boggle Dark Knight good? Time to go read up on the game.
In a nutshell Corsair is kind of a hybrid Ranger/Bard… it has decent Marksmanship (Gun) skills and some unique buffs that you ‘roll dice’ on for varying levels off enhancement that also have synergy bonuses if you use rolls with certain jobs in your party. ‘Fighter’s Roll’ for insance gives/boosts Warrior’s ‘Double Attack’ proc rate by a small percentage, but it’s more potent with a Warrior in the party.
Still, Ranger’s beat out Corsair’s ranged damage. Bard’s buffs are way more reliable than Corsair’s… but it’s a fun job imo!
With DRG and DRK, they’ve added new abilities and job traits… ‘Call Wyvern’ is no longer Dragoon’s 2 hour ability, it’s now on a 20 minute timer and the new 2 hour ability is ‘Spirit Surge’ it boosts the Dragoon’s and his Wyvern’s attributes for a short period of time. Dark Knight has a new spell ‘Absorb TP’ and ‘Dread Spikes’ it lets them absorb physical damage they take for the duration of the spell.
Check http://www.ffxiclopedia.com to check out the current game!
Screw FFXI. It took me 4 years to get my first level 75 job (Blue Mage). And I played it for an excessive amount of time each day. Spent 2 years to get Thief to lvl 41, and 3 years to get Ninja to 37. Calling this game hard is the worst understatement.
Should have cancelled my acct a long time ago, but I keep it because I have a friend that plays and will be needing help soon with his Limit Break and AF quests, among other things.
If any of you peeps are on the Leviathan server, hit me up.
Did I miss something, or are you saying you were saddened to learn Iifa tree was called Tree of Eva?
That’s interesting, and cool to hear if true. If I remember correctly, Kuja told one of the Black Mages that the earlier models had a much longer life expectancy than the latter. Also, that would explain his comparatively odd look.
IX is great man. In a recent interview at IGN, one of the creators stated he’d like to make a sequel to it. Hope something develops…
I reactivated my account this month, after suspending it in Feb, to help out a friend who just started too! I’m on Caitsith server though.
Thieves had it way worse than Dragoons in terms of party invites.
PvP is horrible, as well.
At least the storylines were good (Chains of Promathia, especially), and the music and environments were good, too.
CoP was good, the thing that sucked was the level caps before the introduction of Level Syncing/equipment scaling. Having to keep multiple level capped gearsets to do them was annoying.
Anyone reactivating their dormant accounts to help friends start up in FF11 need to realize that the “help” their friends need is a swift ass-kicking for playing that enormous piece of shit.
WoW lets you level up with groups OR you can do it by yourself. WoW also has way more abilities for characters (WoW Warriors and Rogues actually have a SKILL SET, unlike FF11 Warriors/Thieves which have shit unless they sub a mage job, which makes them shittier), and more fun character archetypes overall (why be a Bard/Dancer when I can be a DEATH KNIGHT?) that are way more interactive (i.e., they are encouraged to use their skills) than FF11’s cooldown-o-rama “jobs.”
And even WoW isn’t all that good (it does some things very well, and other things not so well, but that’s a rant for another thread), but it runs circles around FF11. Hell, City of Heroes/Villains lets you solo or group, and the latest patch even introduced user-generated content that you can level up in! All the way to max! Oh, and since you aren’t dealing with “we won’t admit any mistakes or engage in any sort of feedback collection/commentary” Japanese developers when playing either game, you can actually submit suggestions that may see the light of day. How long did FF11 Dragoons have to suffer before devs did something? Years and years. Fuck that.
FF11 isn’t “hard.” It isn’t “skillful.” It isn’t even a “video game.” It’s a second job that you pay for*(Thanks, Darkstalker – specs, non-ninja editing his own message with the swiftness of the lynx)*. Tell your friends who start their accounts that being a gaming masochist stopped being cool… well, actually, it was never cool. If they want a second job, help them find one that pays.
Dr. B holds many jobs, and none of them require that he ponies up his own cash to keep working. He gets paid, in money and gratitude. Also he’s mad sexy and I want to “do” him. No homo.
Wouldn’t this be more accurate?
With all the ffxi talk i knew it would shine the specs signal. 
Cant make any judgments yet on 14, don’t know enough about it.
Thanks for the info and the link. 
To each their own I guess. I hate WoW with a passion on so many levels. Not saying FF11 was the best MMO by any means. After all, I quit after a year of playing to go back to what I consider the best MMO to ever exist, Dark Age of Camelot. No better PvP out there imo. (Never played Ultima, but hear it was damn good as well). FF11’s huge lack of PvP is one of the few things that drove me away from FF11. Could only level grind for so long before you were left with nothing to do, or bored. But that was years ago.
Unfortunately, Mythic went the opposite direction from DAoC, with Warhammer. What an awful game.
And give me TaruTaru’s for XIV!