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[Mondai]

I've read people that were disappointed with FFXIV and wished it stayed in its 1.0 version and played more like FFXI , which is weird for me since I think FFXI's gameplay is really bad (compared to now I mean, it was fine when it came out but there's a reason FFXIV 1.0 failed as badly as it did). Sorry if my post is scatterbrained , but I just want to know for those who played FFXI a lot, what aspects of the game did you enjoy the most and do you think FFXIV should incorporate more of it or is the gameplay just too archaic for today's gaming landscape?

 

[Brigandier]

Gearswapping to switch multiple gearsets (builds) with the press of a button increasing weaponskill or magic damage and reducing damage taken etc etc

Skillchains and magic bursting, weather positioning and buffs all affecting all aspects of battle.

Content is harder and feels more of an achievement when cleared, not so much now but during its golden years.

FFXI was much more grindier but the sense of reward for perseverance was immense compared to XIV content.

FFXI had a slower battle pace where you were definitely punished for using abilities or a spell at the wrong time on certain enemies, People had to listen and know their role not just hammer icons on screen to win.

Enjoyed my 16 years playing XI thoroughly but there comes a time where friends finally quit or sadly pass away and linkshells (guilds) finally break up and content was becoming very recycled and all done/seen before.

It might not be very popular anymore but every FF fan should experience the FFXI expansions, They have some of the best story, characters, environments and music the series has to offer it makes me sad knowing people never experienced chains of promathia or treasure of aht urghan when they were originally released so many years ago.

 

[jshackles]

The fact that when the game first released, nobody knew what the fuck they were doing. No huge media hype cycles, just a "welp, here's Final Fantasy XI and it's online and good luck!"

The game was extremely technical, so there was more to it than "go here, level up, get better". No quest markers, you had to actually pay attention to what you were doing. If you sucked, nobody would join up with you. You can't play the game solo, so this actually forced people to either rage quit or get good.

Because partying up was a huge part of the game, it made me feel like I was making real friends in game - I had to know their schedules and would usually chat about what they did for a living, where they lived, etc.

 

[Ailike]

Everything was deliberate. No faceroll on GCD. The zones had character. This thing here? It has a secret no one will figure out for months. Is that good or bad? Who knows!

The job swapping was revolutionary back in the day. As a result you -were- your character, and people knew you as such.

 

[Lasha]

Oh where to begin. There was a sense of scale unmatched by modern game. You spent weeks out in the wild levelling purely due to the distances involved. Each area had a distinct identity that made visiting the other city states feel like a real endeavor.

XI's story is arguably among the best in the series. It treads into areas and topics that the mainline games seldom touch upon. XI is where the DNA for XIV's integration of plot and progression comes from. Everything has an epic story attached to it. Even the smallest side quests have cutscenes and are written out. Unlocking new quests required long and dangerous quest lines followed by an epic story to fully unlock skills as you level up. Some of the stories are pretty horrific like the blue mage questline.

XI is still probably my favorite MMO. It's definitely worth giving a shot if you can get past some of its jank. I made a new character during covid and played through all of the expansions during covid. SE added a companion system and boosted exp so the entire game can be played alone. It's not the same experience I had as a kid but it's definitely fun as hell

 

[eNT1TY]

Traveling was part of the experience, if you needed to get anywhere at some point you had to hoof it. City to city travel literally took a 15 min ferry ride or a 5 min airship ride. A lot of the fun for me was getting to know people during these commutes. Also, setting out to a destination after finding a party was also an endeavor, you would have to rent chocobos and all the party members would ride through several zones to get to a grinding spot. I recall making money selling teleport services in town to various zones with each zone being a different spell i had to learn.

 

[Punished Miku]

Its just so incredibly technical. I was a WHM for 5 years in a sorta top tier linkshell. Was up there with Ninja Gaiden Black as far as the speed of reflexes and intricate button pressed needed. Instantly healing 10 different status ailments while running a haste, protect, shell, bar-element rotation, managing hate levels and curing the whole alliance while anticipating group wipe moments for benediction and managing MP the whole time. And thats just one possible job, and that's just the combat.

Story and lore were crazy. Music was amazing. Felt like you just lived there.

 

[Meicyn]

Bringing an MMO of its scale to the PS2, a console with a whopping 4 MB of video RAM, and have it work was a monumental software engineering achievement.

Prior to this, the only other online multiplayer RPG on console was Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast.

Both games were examples of what you could do on a console, previously considered unlikely or impossible.

Having been there to experience both games at the respective JP launches, was definitely novel to have everyone enjoy a shared experience for the first time, something we kinda take for granted these days.

 

[OsirisBlack]

I've read people that were disappointed with FFXIV and wished it stayed in its 1.0 version and played more like FFXI , which is weird for me since I think FFXI's gameplay is really bad (compared to now I mean, it was fine when it came out but there's a reason FFXIV 1.0 failed as badly as it did). Sorry if my post is scatterbrained , but I just want to know for those who played FFXI a lot, what aspects of the game did you enjoy the most and do you think FFXIV should incorporate more of it or is the gameplay just too archaic for today's gaming landscape?

/feet “Creed Sabatons” I think was the macro
/ja “Shield Bash” <t>
/wait 1 seconds
/feet “Koenig whatever they were called”

Also the combat was much more varied, I love FFXIV but there is so much missing from the game. There are no debuff characters whatsoever think RDM feom XI having access to Slow, Slow II, Paralyze, Paralyze II, Party buffs like Refresh. Whm having Dia Pld shield actually mattering. Summoner actually being a summoner.

 

[Comandr]

The biggest thing I miss about FFXI and old MMOs in general is you were unique. In FFXI you didn’t just get all of your spells and abilities handed to you when you leveled up. You had to purchase or quest for them. Then, your skills had to be trained. The amount a white mage could heal that actually trained their healing magic was a pretty significant amount compared to someone that never invested the time.

Skill chains and magic bursts were really cool and required communication and cooperation. You know, two founding principles of a MMO.

Traveling to Jeuno to get a bunch of spells in your teens was a fucking pilgrimage.

My biggest gripe with FFXIV is there is almost no distinction between classes anymore. There are only four classes. Tank. DPS. Ranged DPS. Healer. The rest are just flavors of those classes. They don’t matter. They all do the same thing. Black mages and bards both do range DPS. Black mages do magic and bards to physical attacks but they are both capable of sustain and burst damage of roughly equivalent value because god forbid anything be considered unbalanced.

If I recall, FFXIV doesn’t even ALLOW you to queue a dungeon run without at minimum a tank healer and DPS.

I’ve had so many interesting grouping experiences being stuck with an odd class mix and trying to figure out the best way to play.

Your decisions mattered. Not doing your job could mean endangering yourself or your party and dying had real consequences. You could level down, lose access to spells and gear, maybe you forgot to bind yourself nearby so now you respawn and you’re on the other side of the world again. You died because you or someone else were careless or some shit hit the fan somehow and there goes HOURS of work. This created a real sense of presence and investment. People in games like FFXI and EverQuest would go to all lengths to avoid dying. It made it fun. Just being able to throw yourself at something and die and come back in two seconds with no penalty cheapens the experience.

I would love to see a remake or next gen final fantasy mmo that went back to a more slow paced, deliberate style of gameplay. FFXI’s worst offenses are just movement and the user interface. Everything feels delayed and clunky. If they could just resolve that, give the game a fresh coat of paint with a new engine, I’d be so on board.

 

[xellos2099alpha]

Please, literally no one want current XIV to play like 1.0. 1.0 was truly terrible. But back to question, XI was good during tis time. At time it can be too much of a time waster. Sitting around 3-4 hours for HNM was NOT fun. I would say XI community is good but it can be toxic as hell. My former ls moved to xiv so i don;t reallty miss xi too much. XI story is good but at time the progression is too unforgiving. Prime example is COP. To get to initial new area of the expension, you need to survive 3 pretty damn hard area and the boss of the area. If you fail, good bye 2 hours ability pretty much. The stupid mammet fight too and the fracking Omega and Ultima airship fight was the worst. That fight is the very defination of exclusion by job. If you don't have the "right" job, forget about beating the fight.

 

[xellos2099alpha]

The biggest thing I miss about FFXI and old MMOs in general is you were unique. In FFXI you didn’t just get all of your spells and abilities handed to you when you leveled up. You had to purchase or quest for them. Then, your skills had to be trained. The amount a white mage could heal that actually trained their healing magic was a pretty significant amount compared to someone that never invested the time.

Skill chains and magic bursts were really cool and required communication and cooperation. You know, two founding principles of a MMO.

Traveling to Jeuno to get a bunch of spells in your teens was a fucking pilgrimage.

My biggest gripe with FFXIV is there is almost no distinction between classes anymore. There are only four classes. Tank. DPS. Ranged DPS. Healer. The rest are just flavors of those classes. They don’t matter. They all do the same thing. Black mages and bards both do range DPS. Black mages do magic and bards to physical attacks but they are both capable of sustain and burst damage of roughly equivalent value because god forbid anything be considered unbalanced.

If I recall, FFXIV doesn’t even ALLOW you to queue a dungeon run without at minimum a tank healer and DPS.

I’ve had so many interesting grouping experiences being stuck with an odd class mix and trying to figure out the best way to play.

Your decisions mattered. Not doing your job could mean endangering yourself or your party and dying had real consequences. You could level down, lose access to spells and gear, maybe you forgot to bind yourself nearby so now you respawn and you’re on the other side of the world again. You died because you or someone else were careless or some shit hit the fan somehow and there goes HOURS of work. This created a real sense of presence and investment. People in games like FFXI and EverQuest would go to all lengths to avoid dying. It made it fun. Just being able to throw yourself at something and die and come back in two seconds with no penalty cheapens the experience.

I would love to see a remake or next gen final fantasy mmo that went back to a more slow paced, deliberate style of gameplay. FFXI’s worst offenses are just movement and the user interface. Everything feels delayed and clunky. If they could just resolve that, give the game a fresh coat of paint with a new engine, I’d be so on board.

I would LOVE to see where a Bard is on par with a Black Mage.

 

[Northeastmonk]

I had an amazing time on the beta on 360. Sure, I wasn’t hardcore afterwards and I only leveled to the point of getting a Chocobo and getting my 2nd class. The music is fantastic, loved journeying around the world, and then seeing OP players from Japan completely destroy high level monsters and NM. I bought the FFXI Atlas because I had such a great time. I’m not big into MMO’s, but XI was awesome. I made it to Jueno after I reached level 20. I’d see monks along the way pounding away at these large firefly creatures. I’d love to play it again if they somehow remade it with QOL improvements for time management.

 

[eNT1TY]

In this game you were so much more dependent on your linkshell (guild) and peer groups than any other mmo i ever played, i recall raising a summoner when they 1st came out and each to learn each summon was basically a mini raid. Some fights were quite hard like getting fenrir and there was absolutely no incentive for others to tag along to help other than gratitude for their kindness., no drops, no loot, no titles, friendship was literally the loot for non-summoner participants. The mechanics for certain classes to be optimal were quite convoluted requiring macros to switch certain pieces of gear out for others to optimize a certain spell then switching out to another piece of gear to maximize mp replenishment and back and forth etc. Crafting was different than any other game i played and the gear was viable with many pieces still bis in endgame for certain jobs and tons more just useful. Time of day and location could influence the quality of certain combines. Some jobs/classes were wholly dependent on crafters for fundamental mechanics like ninjas needing certain powders as a consumable to be able to cast their ninjitsu or rangers needing ammo to shoot.

I wish i played further than stopping at CoP. Asura server was also rather toxic early on so people were forced to adapt. Good times. There were so many ways to grief people to contest grinding spots or certain hnms or even sabotage rival auction house dwellers. I remember getting undercut on wind clusters in the first couple of weeks after launch by two particular individuals so i would spam their in box with rocks a single rock per slot until it would fill up and their auction house goods wouldn't sell allowing mine (or anyone else's though just a handful of us cornered the market at the time) to go through, i would do this for weeks until it became a banable offense and a stern talking to by passive aggressive JP GMs later.

 

[Lasha]

My biggest gripe with FFXIV is there is almost no distinction between classes anymore. There are only four classes. Tank. DPS. Ranged DPS. Healer. The rest are just flavors of those classes. They don’t matter. They all do the same thing. Black mages and bards both do range DPS. Black mages do magic and bards to physical attacks but they are both capable of sustain and burst damage of roughly equivalent value because god forbid anything be considered unbalanced.

FFXIV has homogenized classes so much since launch. All that remains are:

• Melee DPS with an auroa that generates aggro
• Melee DPS without an aurora that generates aggro
• Ranged DPS with healing skills
• Ranged DPS without healing skills

I miss the diversity of subjobs in FFXI and all the goofy jank that came with it.

 

[Zug]

FF11 was inspired by Everquest, and FF14 by WoW.

 

[Meicyn]

FFXIV has homogenized classes so much since launch. All that remains are:

• Melee DPS with an auroa that generates aggro
• Melee DPS without an aurora that generates aggro
• Ranged DPS with healing skills
• Ranged DPS without healing skills

I miss the diversity of subjobs in FFXI and all the goofy jank that came with it.

Yeah, the homogenization has gotten particularly egregious. I have reached a point where I login to play for story content and first-clears of new raids, but then I quickly move on. The game’s combat system was always middling at best and I found fun where I could, but now it’s reached a point where optimization is the name of the game and seems to be all that matters.

They literally have everything revolving around balancing for these ultimate fights, content that less than 0.1% of the community engages with (this is additionally hilarious when you consider the current drama over cheating in that content right now). This 2-minute rotation crap where every class has to align to that timing for fight design has made everything so… choreographed. Like, moreso than ever before. And that’s really my problem with the game, everything is designed around maximizing efficiency, and every fight runs on a predictable schedule. It feels so artificial, streamlined. No unpredictability allowed.

Efficiency is so important to the team that cool flavor abilities are constantly removed. Samurai losing Hissatsu: Kaiten was the final straw for me that proved that the combat design team has lost touch with, at least what I think, what made the game fun. Did its removal harm the class’s DPS? Nah. You can still do big damage with Midare Setsugekka and move on. They shifted the numbers. The class functionally speaking, remains unchanged. Yet a good chunk of flavor and style was removed. And an element of resource management, i.e. decision making on the part of the player, was stripped away. The class lost something important. Reminds me of how they ripped Dark Knight apart, which had a clear identity in Heavensward, but now is this half-assed wannabe warrior with a strong shield that pops. Yawn.

I will be back for 7.0, but I am looking elsewhere for my next big MMO to play. I’m watching Blue Protocol closely and hope its action combat is engaging, but we’ll see. I tried PSO2 NGS but that was a shallow experience. I know Riot is working on their MMO but we probably won’t see that until 2025.

 

[Lasha]

Yeah, the homogenization has gotten particularly egregious. I have reached a point where I login to play for story content and first-clears of new raids, but then I quickly move on. The game’s combat system was always middling at best and I found fun where I could, but now it’s reached a point where optimization is the name of the game and seems to be all that matters.

They literally have everything revolving around balancing for these ultimate fights, content that less than 0.1% of the community engages with (this is additionally hilarious when you consider the current drama over cheating in that content right now). This 2-minute rotation crap where every class has to align to that timing for fight design has made everything so… choreographed. Like, moreso than ever before. And that’s really my problem with the game, everything is designed around maximizing efficiency, and every fight runs on a predictable schedule. It feels so artificial, streamlined. No unpredictability allowed.

Efficiency is so important to the team that cool flavor abilities are constantly removed. Samurai losing Hissatsu: Kaiten was the final straw for me that proved that the combat design team has lost touch with, at least what I think, what made the game fun. Did its removal harm the class’s DPS? Nah. You can still do big damage with Midare Setsugekka and move on. They shifted the numbers. The class functionally speaking, remains unchanged. Yet a good chunk of flavor and style was removed. And an element of resource management, i.e. decision making on the part of the player, was stripped away. The class lost something important. Reminds me of how they ripped Dark Knight apart, which had a clear identity in Heavensward, but now is this half-assed wannabe warrior with a strong shield that pops. Yawn.

I will be back for 7.0, but I am looking elsewhere for my next big MMO to play. I’m watching Blue Protocol closely and hope its action combat is engaging, but we’ll see. I tried PSO2 NGS but that was a shallow experience. I know Riot is working on their MMO but we probably won’t see that until 2025.

I had every DoW and DoM at 80. I've yet to complete the MSQ for the latest expansion. I just can't motivate myself. My time is now spent doing social things, decorating my house, playing mahjong, and doing BLU stuff. I just don't feel the magic of the combat system anymore. All endgame is pretty easy to grasp since you don't really have decisions to make. BLU raiding is more fun because of all the jank and the absolute clusterfuck having a party of omniroles can be. I feel like BLU should just become a full spinoff with its own content and story.

 

[zomboden]

I tried to play FF11 recently on Horizon but I could not get past the god awful controls. And this is coming from somebody who enjoys Warhammer Reckoning, City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot servers. I have a high tolerance for the jank but my god what were they thinking.

 

[Meicyn]

I tried to play FF11 recently on Horizon but I could not get past the god awful controls. And this is coming from somebody who enjoys Warhammer Reckoning, City of Heroes, Dark Age of Camelot servers. I have a high tolerance for the jank but my god what were they thinking.

It’s a controller game, through and through. The team that made it did the absolute bare minimum to make it functional via keyboard/mouse. The expectation was that you would plug in a controller and go from there. Square has historically been a console-focused team, and PC gaming had largely been niche in Japan for a long time.

It was the same with FFXIV 1.0, the same team made it, and they flat out expected gamers to plug in controllers. It wasn’t until Naoki Yoshida came onboard to do the revamp of the entire game, where keyboard/mouse finally got the treatment it deserved. He was a PC gamer who grew up playing Diablo, so he was different from a lot of his console-focused peers.

 

[Myths]

The music

 

[Bond007]

This thread and alot of the responses bring back great memories of my nearly a decade of playing. Hi and lows my overall experience was unmatched and to this day one of my favorite games ever. I had Samurai, Paladin, Corsair, and Warrior at max. Only downside to me (i had a great linkshell btw) was the heavy reliance on others to get things done.
Tried to get into XIV and it simply didn't have the same charm and gameplay feel.

 

[STARSBarry]

This thread and alot of the responses bring back great memories of my nearly a decade of playing. Hi and lows my overall experience was unmatched and to this day one of my favorite games ever. I had Samurai, Paladin, Corsair, and Warrior at max. Only downside to me (i had a great linkshell btw) was the heavy reliance on others to get things done.
Tried to get into XIV and it simply didn't have the same charm and gameplay feel.

In a way this was the last MMO to really try this before everyone followed the WoW formula, and that requirement was what created such strong bonds within the community.

when people talk about "what's been lost" in modern MMO's what's always given almost immediately if not the first answer is the sense of community. With making MMO's easier to solo, this removes the incentive for players to interact and rely on other players. FFXI I think got this and baked it right into their game from the very start, you needed to group up and talk to people from the very start. Sure this makes players quit, but the ones that stayed where the types of players that an MMO lives and dies on.

its one of the reasons its still going to this day.

 

[Mondai]

In a way this was the last MMO to really try this before everyone followed the WoW formula, and that requirement was what created such strong bonds within the community.

when people talk about "what's been lost" in modern MMO's what's always given almost immediately if not the first answer is the sense of community. With making MMO's easier to solo, this removes the incentive for players to interact and rely on other players. FFXI I think got this and baked it right into their game from the very start, you needed to group up and talk to people from the very start. Sure this makes players quit, but the ones that stayed where the types of players that an MMO lives and dies on.

its one of the reasons its still going to this day.

But you can solo pretty much everything in FFXI now though right?

 

[Bond007]

But you can solo pretty much everything in FFXI now though right?

I havent played in years- but by the time i was leaving there was already a shift happening towards being able to do things solo- with the new content coming out and level cap increases making things of the past alot easier. But the ability to solo back then was pretty dependent on the class you were using.
The game was 75 cap for a very very long time- later updates increased this and the amount of EXP earned was insane compared to the slow grind early on.

 

[Arsic]

I've read people that were disappointed with FFXIV and wished it stayed in its 1.0 version and played more like FFXI , which is weird for me since I think FFXI's gameplay is really bad (compared to now I mean, it was fine when it came out but there's a reason FFXIV 1.0 failed as badly as it did). Sorry if my post is scatterbrained , but I just want to know for those who played FFXI a lot, what aspects of the game did you enjoy the most and do you think FFXIV should incorporate more of it or is the gameplay just too archaic for today's gaming landscape?

Every piece of gear you got in end game had value.

All end game content was always worth doing.

Leveling up couldn’t be done solo past level 10 basically.

Group fights required from level 10 onward a lot of coordination , and call outs.

Every fight was do or die.

Leveling down made the world a scary place.

Exploring was rewarded.

Far better soundtrack.

Chains of Promathia expansion better than all of 14’s story expansions combined.

Notorious monsters and the items they dropped gave you immense reward feelings like beating a dark souls boss that’s been kicking your butt for hours.

The economy mattered.

—-

That’s just some reasons. To be fair, a game like this couldn’t work in 2023 in a lot of ways. However, people want hardcore MMOs so small tweaks would make this work. I’d be happy to give up leveling down for example but you can still lose exp to 0 of that level gap. AKA 0/2500 exp to next level but you can’t lose anymore or go down. That way death is still punished. Notorious monsters could have adjusted drop rates for the lower level ones like leaping lizzy and valkrum emperor. Adjust early game enemy damage from moves like goblin bomb.


Simple things could make the game less oppressive while retaining the hardcore elements.

 

[xellos2099alpha]

Every piece of gear you got in end game had value.

All end game content was always worth doing.

Leveling up couldn’t be done solo past level 10 basically.

Group fights required from level 10 onward a lot of coordination , and call outs.

Every fight was do or die.

Leveling down made the world a scary place.

Exploring was rewarded.

Far better soundtrack.

Chains of Promathia expansion better than all of 14’s story expansions combined.

Notorious monsters and the items they dropped gave you immense reward feelings like beating a dark souls boss that’s been kicking your butt for hours.

The economy mattered.

—-

That’s just some reasons. To be fair, a game like this couldn’t work in 2023 in a lot of ways. However, people want hardcore MMOs so small tweaks would make this work. I’d be happy to give up leveling down for example but you can still lose exp to 0 of that level gap. AKA 0/2500 exp to next level but you can’t lose anymore or go down. That way death is still punished. Notorious monsters could have adjusted drop rates for the lower level ones like leaping lizzy and valkrum emperor. Adjust early game enemy damage from moves like goblin bomb.


Simple things could make the game less oppressive while retaining the hardcore elements.

I have to call bullshit on COP better than xiv expension. COP is good but NOT that good compare to shadowbringer and endwalker. Of course liking the story and music is subjective. Singing priase about the old ignoring all the fault with it is just like Emet want to restore the old world. XI is essentialy design to waste your time to the nth degree; everything takes hours to do at the very least. 1 bad pull at GC or CN and entire zone is under lockdown. Spending hours looking for exp ptand no one invite you and you just completely waste an evening. Spending hours camping nm and HNM and got stolen by bot is not fun. People no longer want to spend hours with zero progress, or worse, regression due to wipe.

 

[Brigandier]

Every piece of gear you got in end game had value.

All end game content was always worth doing.

Leveling up couldn’t be done solo past level 10 basically.

Group fights required from level 10 onward a lot of coordination , and call outs.

Every fight was do or die.

Leveling down made the world a scary place.

Exploring was rewarded.

Far better soundtrack.

Chains of Promathia expansion better than all of 14’s story expansions combined.

Notorious monsters and the items they dropped gave you immense reward feelings like beating a dark souls boss that’s been kicking your butt for hours.

The economy mattered.

—-

That’s just some reasons. To be fair, a game like this couldn’t work in 2023 in a lot of ways. However, people want hardcore MMOs so small tweaks would make this work. I’d be happy to give up leveling down for example but you can still lose exp to 0 of that level gap. AKA 0/2500 exp to next level but you can’t lose anymore or go down. That way death is still punished. Notorious monsters could have adjusted drop rates for the lower level ones like leaping lizzy and valkrum emperor. Adjust early game enemy damage from moves like goblin bomb.


Simple things could make the game less oppressive while retaining the hardcore elements.

Agree with nearly all but I think Shadowbringers trumps everything in XI/XIV however CoP has so much nostalgia they were the days where I never had a care in the world and would play til 3-5am trying to get to "Sea" lol

 

[Brigandier]

Traveling to Jeuno to get a bunch of spells in your teens was a fucking pilgrimage.

When you got to Batallia Downs and you thought you were home free to Jeuno for the first time and whallop:

Please, literally no one want current XIV to play like 1.0. 1.0 was truly terrible. But back to question, XI was good during tis time. At time it can be too much of a time waster. Sitting around 3-4 hours for HNM was NOT fun. I would say XI community is good but it can be toxic as hell. My former ls moved to xiv so i don;t reallty miss xi too much. XI story is good but at time the progression is too unforgiving. Prime example is COP. To get to initial new area of the expension, you need to survive 3 pretty damn hard area and the boss of the area. If you fail, good bye 2 hours ability pretty much. The stupid mammet fight too and the fracking Omega and Ultima airship fight was the worst. That fight is the very defination of exclusion by job. If you don't have the "right" job, forget about beating the fight.

Darters and flail made up for the wait and losing claim though lol aspid and KB were annoying and so was Dring drop rate back then.... but damn Tiamat khim and cerb were painful camps.

Yeah if you weren't a PLD,NIN,SAM,RNG,WHM,BRD you had absolutely no chance getting into a 6-4 group back in the CoP era.

The music

In a class of it's own imo.

This thread and alot of the responses bring back great memories of my nearly a decade of playing. Hi and lows my overall experience was unmatched and to this day one of my favorite games ever. I had Samurai, Paladin, Corsair, and Warrior at max. Only downside to me (i had a great linkshell btw) was the heavy reliance on others to get things done.
Tried to get into XIV and it simply didn't have the same charm and gameplay feel.

Agreed, XIV is missing something I never stick around after an expansion is complete I don't find the game itself and the so called group related content much fun.

 

[Lasha]

But you can solo pretty much everything in FFXI now though right?

Everything except some endgame is soloable. The game is a drastically different as a result. Playing now is akin to visiting a FFXI theme park. You will get to experience the excellent story and a facsimile of playing the classes which leaves out the painful bits that led to the game being epic.

 

[STARSBarry]

But you can solo pretty much everything in FFXI now though right?

Honestly I didn't know, when I last played it was wings of the goddess.

I guess it was sort of what happened with WoW after Burning Crusade, where it just got easier and easier afterwards.

 

[eNT1TY]

If i recall for players now, besides so many qol improvements, you can "collect" ai npc companions called "trusts", some being quite powerfull (like evil Shantotto that WILL out dps you), of all different jobs and form a mini party and consume all of the story content that way. Not sure when these changes were implemented after i dropped the game before CoP but a friend still dabbles off and on and i've watched her solo with a partial party of npcs quite effectively in old zones i remember content that would wipe a fairly coherent full party if they were slacking.

 

[Lasha]

If i recall for players now, besides so many qol improvements, you can "collect" ai npc companions called "trusts", some being quite powerfull (like evil Shantotto that WILL out dps you), of all different jobs and form a mini party and consume all of the story content that way. Not sure when these changes were implemented after i dropped the game before CoP but a friend still dabbles off and on and i've watched her solo with a partial party of npcs quite effectively in old zones i remember content that would wipe a fairly coherent full party if they were slacking.

Trusts are so OP that you can functionally autolevel. They play more optimally than most players did during the game's heyday.

 

[MagiusNecros]

FFXI has identity. FFXIV doesn't.

Doing things in FFXI is much more rewarding then FFXIV.

Arsic pretty much said all that needs to be said.

FFXI feels like a Final Fantasy game. FFXIV feels like something else. And FFXIV is getting worse all the time.

Haven't played FFXI in a while but what I enjoyed the most was the atmosphere and how you were rewarded for exploration.

FFXIV is very much one and done and has very stagnant and lifeless zones. After MSQ you don't have much else to do.

If no big changes happen in 7.0 for XIV I will be looking elsewhere. Whether it's fully experiencing FFXI, taking Lord of the Rings Online for a spin or hoping Blue Protocol is good we will see.

Story is getting crappier, battle system dumbed down to where every job is a Fell Cleave Warrior, and now is currently being exposed as a Den of Cheaters and miscreants that would make Mos Eisley from Star Wars blush in embarrassment.

I ultimately prefer replayability or something to find in the MMO world that keeps me engaged. The instanced content thing just ain't it.

The most fun I have in XIV is probably Blue Mage but once you get all the spells that dies off rather quickly because you can't run anything with anyone. And BLU in XI at a glance is SO MUCH MORE.

 

[Buggy Loop]

The insane depth of the builds, the party composition and support roles. The music. The level design also back then, it really was an adventure to travel and there was no such thing as rushing blindly, you would die so fast. The grind was tough but made it so that you would really understand your role, the better you did the faster you were called into parties. You spent so much fucking time grinding in the popular spots that peoples would start to recognize you for a few days at least. Insane. Nowadays MMOs make you speed through the levels as if they're handed out for nothing.

I was Red mage main, most peoples thought you would be a refresh machine for the party, but a good red mage with all the cycles of buffs/debuffs and contributions to combat would make a huge difference in party efficiency. There was not a fucking second i was not casting, macro'ing or doing a skill during a fight.. Was also cool that these were so good for survival and explore, even solo some hard places, i loved just going alone and explore. Beastmaster was 2nd main i tried to level but never managed as far as RDM, but i love the solo'ing aspect of the game too, because i had mad respect to those peoples who could advance solo after seeing all the hardship it typically required to grind levels in groups.

After FFXI, honestly MMOs have taken the easy route. Seems like peoples were constantly complaining about any form of grinding. "QOL" like 2x exp because you've rested, etc. Other MMOs brought that and i think eventually it was everywhere. I'm not sure it was the right direction. Almost all MMOs i played after, including FFXIV, you can basically bulldoze your way to high levels really fast.

 

[Brigandier]

Haven't played FFXI in a while but what I enjoyed the most was the atmosphere and how you were rewarded for exploration.

FFXIV is very much one and done and has very stagnant and lifeless zones. After MSQ you don't have much else to do.

This so much.... Every zone in FF has a quest or a ZNM or a NM or a HNM or something that's necessary to access another zone of importance.

 

[Beastclaw Raider]

FFXI was everquest with a final fantasy skin, hardcore old school mmorpg. It's a thing of the past, sadly, as Pantheon rise of the fallen will probably never come out.

 

[Arsic]

I did want to add if there is one thing that really sets XI into another league compared to XIV, it is the world.

In a MMO the main character is the world you inhabit. Zones you visit are stories in themselves, and I saw that in a post above.

In XIV zones are not memorable for the majority of the time, and you just teleport around without issues , flying through a zone in a heartbeat , etc .

Vana’diel is the tip top of world building in games for me. You have zones where a part is safer and leveling takes place, and later chunk has hardcore enemies you can’t mess with. Or you have to sneak through an insanely difficult area to get to a safe camp to exp together.

You are in the world hoofing it often. Listening to incredible soundtracks that made these areas come to life.

Every XI player can close their eyes and know what Sanctuary of Zi Tah sounds like and looks like, plus could tell you where it leads to or connects to.

They can tell you the gripping tale of getting to valkrum dunes for the first time to group up for exp, or a boat ride they were on and pirates wiped it out. Or stepping into the sprawling jungle labyrinth trying to find how to get to their exp party camp without getting lost or Altepa Desert being the most perfect desert map in a game ever.

It’s not even a competition. I would sit in Rolanberryfields back in the day listening to the music afk selling items while doing homework.

Vana’diel is the best world ever made.

 

[Pasta la Vista]

I played from the PS2 release and switched to PC around Chains of Promethia then played everything through the first Abyssea expansion. Music and atmosphere was top notch. Loved the sub jobs but /nin was basically required for most melee and all tank jobs.
Game has some serious issues when you get into end game stuff too. HNMs, Dynamis, Sky, Sea etc. Lots of botting happening with NMs/HNMs. I spent alot of time playing that game. More than any other game I played in my life. So I have nostalgia for it but also resentment.

 

[Bond007]

FFXI did grind correctly and you were rewarded for it. Rewarded with gear that would last you nearly forever or at least something you carried with you at all times for swaps.
I stopped playing Destiny for example because they make you grind- waste your time and then make all you loot obsolete with the next update.

Fond memories of traveling to new locales, farming/farming NM's- always a great adventure. Especially the beginning when everyone was still figuring things out and people would ask if you had traveled as far as the Dunes yet? The adventures on the boat rides were epic.

 

[Arsic]

 

[AngelMuffin]

 

[Mr.ODST]

Everything, was such a good MMO and really brought the sense of community and roles.

Best MMO by far is Star Wars Galaxies, nothing has ever come close to what that game brought to the table and has only ever felt like the only real MMO