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Author Topic: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI  (Read 34509 times)

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Miss Cat Ears

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #380 on: December 16, 2009, 06:34:11 PM »

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Cthulhu-chan

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #381 on: December 16, 2009, 09:57:46 PM »

God help me, I'm in on this. :loser:
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Niku

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #382 on: December 16, 2009, 10:00:22 PM »

I signed up :(
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Rosencrantz

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #383 on: December 16, 2009, 10:10:06 PM »

Me too, god help me.
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Envy

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #384 on: December 16, 2009, 10:42:29 PM »

If I must..again..
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Kayma

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #385 on: December 17, 2009, 05:46:00 PM »

Absolutely signed up. I can't wait to have my heart broken again.
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Cthulhu-chan

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #386 on: December 17, 2009, 10:54:31 PM »

I almost hope I do.  It's probably better, that way. :nyoro~n:
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #387 on: December 18, 2009, 01:37:07 PM »

Signed.  Hopefully a bunch of us can bro out in the beta for the solo-friendly ff mmo.
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Norondor

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #388 on: December 18, 2009, 05:01:05 PM »

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Shinra

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #389 on: December 23, 2009, 04:50:55 PM »

I have a sneaking suspicion the "solo friendly" aspect of FFXIV will play out like the "solo friendly" classes in FFXI did. The second I start hearing conversations about kite soloing for one tenth the exp rate of grouping, I'm out forever.

Prove me wrong, Square-Enix. I'm begging you.
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Rosencrantz

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #390 on: December 23, 2009, 05:58:55 PM »

Even when I had a stable bi-weekly group in FFXI, it was still a huge hassle. Having to schedule play times like that just kills the fun for me and makes it a chore. If I can truly play the game whenever I want and not take a significant hit to my exp rates or whatever, then they've got me playing for a long time.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #391 on: March 15, 2011, 10:10:58 AM »

Quote
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Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic.

As I mentioned in GND, FFXI's servers have been taken down to reroute electricity after the earthquake.  In light of this downtime, I figure now might be as good a time as any to give an update to anyone curious about the radically-changed state of the game; most MMOs periodically change to sell NEW!! and BETTER!! mechanics to fresh meat, but in the past year FFXI has gone through the most radical changes a major MMO has seen short of EVE.  I figure there might at least be some academic interest in what's going on, so why not post about it!!!

First of all, the biggest overall change is that the level cap has been increased for the first time since NA PC launch in 2003.  They've been doing it in 5-level increments up to 99; current cap is 90.  This means a bit more than just saying "we're letting you get bigger numbers" or even "we're adding new content WoW-style"; 7 years of endgame had been built up around a 75 cap and SE was notorious for bending over backwards to keep old content relevant.  A level in FFXI means a lot in terms of power, so incrementally bumping the cap by 5 levels every few months sends a pretty clear statement that they were ready to completely punt the old game to make way for something new.  And oh, did they make way for something new.

The focus of max-level FFXI is almost entirely on small groups (as in, 2 to 4 players) and in many cases solo work.  In fact, a major criticism lodged at the game right now is that it's too easy, and this isn't simply culture shock; it is in no way an exaggeration to say a MNK and a WHM can duo 90% of the content available with the right buff setups (I'll get to that) and even those who like the current situation agree the game will live or die based on what opens up from 90-99, because the right now is untenable.  Ideally, the current content will be a jumping off point for a true 99 endgame: essentially an extremely deep, complex, and fun take on WoW's badge system.  If not, FFXI will last about as long as WoW would with nothing beyond said badge system.  But even so, the content itself represents some innovative ideas by people who Learned Lessons, so it's worth taking a look at.

Anyway.  There are a few different aspects of FFXI's current endgame, but two major ones: Trial of the Magians and Abyssea.  Trial of the Magians is a weapon upgrade system, and Abyssea is a sandbox.  I'll start with Magians


Trial of the Magians: When Did I Start Playing a Solo Game

When the FFXI devs were coming up with Abyssea, which would be the focus of their new game, they were presented with a few problems.  Weapons are so important; how do we stop a bottleneck?  How do we add customization now that everybody's capped merits?  What do we do with people outside Abyssea, anyway?  How do we assure the people who invested a year or more into making a relic or mythic weapon their time was not wasted (well, not wasted in the context of the game, which would be the ultimate insult)?

They basically answered all of these questions with Trial of the Magians.  TotM is pretty simple: you take a weapon, get a trial for that weapon, complete the trial, and it upgrades, at which point you get a new trial to upgrade it further.  In practice, it looks like this.

As you can see from the chart, there are a bunch of different options.  Different weapon paths are better for different jobs, but it's worth noting that with some exceptions (staves, for instance, get spelldamage enhancement paths) everyone has the same range of changes in trial paths.  You can make an evasion weapon for your Dark Knight by following the wind elemental path for Greatsword or Scythe, or make a +magic attack weapon for your Thief (elemental WS, brah) by going ice with a dagger.  You might pursue other avenues first (giving a Ninja two katanas with +20 evasion and +9 AGI each is every bit as game-breaking as it sounds), but there's no restriction on going after them if you want, which has at least led to some pretty entertaining theorycraft.

Generally speaking, there are three groups of Magian trials: the elemental group, the weaponskill group, and the NM group.  The elemental group involves killing specific types of monsters on a given gameday of the week or under that weather condition.  So, for instance, if I want a STR/Attack weapon, I follow the fire path, which involves killing designated mobs on firesday or under fire weather.  This can be easy or obnoxious, though it's worth noting that if you kill a mob under the weather condition rather than the day, you get credit for killing 5.  It's grindy, but this is an MMO, and it's substantially LESS grindy than making a kajillion gil for a BiS weapon.

At any rate, if the elemental group is too grindy for you (the day-of-the-week thing is really annoying for trials where no good zone exists for that weather type), you might try the weapon skill path.  These weapons are generally slightly weaker than elemental weapons (emphasis on "slightly") and have MUCH less variety, but are generally quicker and infinitely more flexible.  The just involve using a given weapon skill on a given type of mob x number of times, or killing monsters with weapon skills.  Much more straight-forward; still grindy, but you can do it entirely at your own pace and the MMO Guilt ("fuck me lightningsday is in a half hour") never enters your mind.

Finally, the NM group.  These trials involve killing NMs with the trial weapon equipped a few times per trial.  Most of the early ones involve 1-hour repops that are mercifully useless for any function other than the trial*; the later ones involve various NM-related drops for the superpowered rapetrain-special-WS weapons (the Dagger is Twashtar with the Rudra's Storm WS) or a whole ton of normal mob kills for some multihit, kraken-club-style options.

Of particular interest in this whole system is the fact that you can use it to upgrade relic and mythic weapons, which were the best weapons at 75 and represented downright terrifying investments of time and resources.  Spent a year and a half on making a Mandau for your Thief?  No problem!  You can level it up to 90 along with your Thief itself.


I'll talk about Abyssea later.





*and with all trials, you can group freely and still get credit, so the whole system strongly encourages cooperation
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Shinra

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #392 on: March 15, 2011, 01:30:49 PM »

I bought FFXI during the last steam sale. How's the 1-75 grind? Did they ever make it so you could get advanced jobs/subjobs before some arbitrary level point? I haven't installed it or used my key yet, it's just sort of sitting on the back burner.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #393 on: March 15, 2011, 02:40:19 PM »

The subjob/advanced job prereqs haven't changed, but it's offset by how much faster the leveling process has become.  Just recently, SE doubled xp outside Abyssea, and you can now get skillups up to the cap from DC mobs rather than just EM or higher.  It barely matters, though, because the increase is offset by the fact that nobody does traditional parties anymore; we're leveling in Abyssea, which absolutely destroys outside partying (skilling up still happens outside, though).

This is a good segue into Abyssea, though.  Abyssea represents not only a huge shift for FFXI, but maybe the genre in general.  It's totally changed the game and how people play it; the Burning Crusade shift maybe begins to approach its impact.

Basically, there are two central realizations at work in its design:


1) as much as people enjoyed the FFXI level grind (and a lot of people did), the system was tired and was based on partying assumptions that were no longer valid.  Not only did a faster system need to be put in place, but it also needed to reincorporate casters, who had fallen by the wayside as melee just took over and hogged all the invites, and

2) it's okay to give players the opportunity to be absurdly overpowered and crush everything so long as you limit that overpoweredness to a particular venue, and then limit access to that venue. 


I'll start with XP.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #394 on: March 15, 2011, 03:00:38 PM »

ABYSSEA ACCESS

I want to start with a quick discussion of Abyssea access because it affects the rest.  Basically, Abyssea is an alternate universe Vana'diel that's been ruined by invading monsters.  The nine Abyssea zones are carbon copies/reskins (PS2 memory limitations, lol) of Vana'diel zones populated by various mob camps and questgivers in the form of refugees from the three major cities.  In order to access them you need to "buy" time with stones you get from an NPC in Jeuno.  Each stone buys you 30 minutes of time and you get one every 20 hours; however, items exist (Abyssites, which I'll explain later on) that let you get stones more frequently and get more time per stone.  I get about 2 hours a day, and it accrues quickly, as you can imagine.  I have about 200 stones in storage, waiting to be used.  The stone mechanic is a good way to make time more meaningful in a high-power situation, but I think they screwed it up in allowing you to get too many items allowing you more time faster.  Still, nobody's complaining.

The big thing here is that upon zoning in, no matter how many stones you have and how much time you have left over from the last time you were there, you can't start with more than 120 minutes.  This becomes really important for XP, as I'll explain.

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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #395 on: March 15, 2011, 03:09:16 PM »

ABYSSEA XP

You are probably familiar with the FFXI XP chain (kill another mob fast enough and you get bonus XP), but Abyssea is built around a different kind of chaining, which actually most closely resembles the FFXII chain mechanic, but with XP rather than items.  Basically, mobs start at a predetermined level, and each successive mob you kill of that type grants more XP, up until you kill a different kind of mob or you zone.  The mobs slowly power up too, but it's never a big deal.  The mob XP you get per kill caps at about 630. 

630 a kill should be surprising enough, but even more significantly, this mechanic functions regardless of how many people are in your group; XPing in a full alliance of 18 is now the norm, though people periodically join and leave and the process can easily happen with much less.  It's easier get a party (75+, at least) than it's ever been, thanks to the fluidity and flexibility of this mechanic.

"But wait!" you say.  "Getting 630 a kill is great and all, but surely this takes time, and how do we not run into that 120 minute barrier, resetting everything?"  The answer is time extensions, which are obtained through the treasure chest mechanic, which is up next.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #396 on: March 16, 2011, 06:08:36 AM »

LIGHTS AND TREASURE CHESTS

Details about lights are here.

Every time you kill a monster in Abyssea, everybody in your alliance in the zone gets a light, and the monster has a chance to drop a treasure chest.  There are four types of lights, each based on killing a monster with a different type of damage:

Azure: comes from killing a monster with a nuke; increases frequency/rewards for blue chests
Ruby: comes from killing a monster with a physical WS; increases frequency/rewards for red chests
Amber: comes from killing a monster with an elemental/magic WS; increases frequency/rewards for gold chests
Pearlescent: comes from killing a monster with regular autoattacks; increases frequency of all chests

The chests themselves are as follows, and are opened with a quick number-guessing minigame (high/low, guess with hints, etc.):

Blue: contains XP, cruor (Abyssea currency), or temp items; more azure lights mean more XP or cruor, and eventually they start giving 10-minute time extensions
Red: more lights
Gold: various kinds of items, both gear and pop items for NMs

The flow of an XP alliance is generally to build up azure and pearlescent lights, to maximize time extensions.  In this way, you can build up to 630 XP a kill and keep going long after the 120 minute mark.  This is a great system, because not only is the number of people of party (or their levels!) irrelevant, but it also encourages a mix of jobs; you need nukes to build your azure lights but also melee to get pearl going.  There's a place for everybody.  There's even a place for a few people to leech experience on low-level jobs, otherwise in charge of opening chests, keeping track of lights, and finding replacements. 

You can go with the full alliance if you want, or just go solo after you gain some power; I commonly bring linkshell friends who want XP along to open chests for me while I solo.  Got some solo farming to do?  Join an alliance in the zone in which you want to farm to help them out for a bit and build some lights, so you can get your own time extensions when you break off to solo.

It's a beautiful system that resolves many if not all of the problems of rigidity FFXI partying used to have, and throws you a staggering amount of XP in the process; 50-60k/hour is pretty weak in Abyssea.

The best part is that I haven't even gotten in to the actual content yet.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #397 on: March 16, 2011, 10:28:51 AM »

ATMA AND ABYSSITES: WHAT IS BEST IN LIFE?

I have mentioned several times that Abyssea lets you have a staggering amount of power for an FFXI game mechanic, and the means through which this happens are special Key Items you get from adventuring, completing quests, killing nasty NMs under special conditions, and so forth.  They are called Abyssite and Atma.

Abyssite are a category of 80-some key items that have a variety of effects; some increase the number of stones you get (Celerity) or amount of time per stone (Sojourn), some increase HP and MP by 10% (Merit) or all stats by 10 (Furtherance), some reduce the XP death penalty by 10% (Lenity), and so forth.  They are all cumulative; getting all 6 Merit Abyssites, for example, increases HP and MP by 60% while in Abyssea.  You can sort of think of Abyssites as Abyssea Pokemon: a major long-term goal is to, well, catch 'em all. 

One specific type, Lunar Abyssite, allows you to use Atma (also key items) to get big stat bonuses, like this, or this.  There are three Lunar Abyssites, so eventually you can set up to 3 Atma at once.  It's fucking unreal.  I crit regular attacks with a dagger on my 90 DNC for upwards of 200 damage a pop on Incredibly Tough mobs and Evisceration frequently lands for 2500.  I've seen Black Mages cast Blizzard V for over 5000 damage.  It's Atma that makes the Abyssea formula so fun, because we're all deliriously overpowered but that can only get us as far as the rewards Abyssea gives.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #398 on: March 17, 2011, 09:47:19 AM »

NOTORIOUS MONSTER STRUCTURE AND REWARDS

Abyssea, naturally, has rewards, mainly in the form of drops from Notorious Monsters.  The NMs themselves are arranged in a tiered system.  The first tier is made up of NMs that either respawn in the middle of camps of related mobs every 15 minutes (a group of lizards, for instance, might have a lizard NM in it), or are spawned from a pop item that drops from those related mobs, usually at about a 20% droprate or so.  These first tier NMs have about a 50/50 chance to drop, among other things, a key item that is used to pop a second tier NM in conjunction with a few others, and they are usually close to each other. 

For instance, one NM "cluster" is based around a big tier-2 minotaur NM named Bukhis.  Surrounding Bukhis's pop point are three mob camps: one for gargoyles, one for minotaurs, and one for bats.  The minotaurs and gargoyles drop pop items to spawn Terrortaur and Quasimodo, their respective NMs.  A third NM, a vampire named Lord Varney, pops among the bats every 15 minutes.  Kill all three NMs for their key items (you may have to kill multiples if you're unlucky), and you can pop Bukhis.  Pretty simple.

Now, as for loot, all NMs have one or two unique drops (the tier 2s have two or three), but they also drop various items used to upgrade class-specific armor, which is the general loot incentive for Abyssea.  The basic class-specific armor is purchased with Abyssea currency is mainly for looks: here's the Warrior set as an example.  However, you can upgrade it through the items NMs drop. 

The tier 1 NMs all drop various kinds of seals, which are used to upgrade the base set to the +1 version.  All seals correspond to a particular slot of a particular set; for instance, if our Warrior wanted to upgrade his boots, he would go after Ravager's Seal: Feet.  Each NM can drop four different kinds of seals and the zones in which they drop usually correspond to a slot; for instance, all feet upgrade items drop in the Abyssea - Vunkerl zone, which is where Bukhis is located, among other things. 

So the Warrior who wants these feet seals has a few options.  He can go after an NM in Vunkerl that drops Warrior seals as one of the four alone, but that wouldn't be ideal; even if he's certain he can solo it, it would take a while.  Instead, he'll pick a particular NM that drops seals, note the three other types of seals it drops, and make a group based on what others want.  Ideally he picks up 3 other people who want other seals, they change jobs as necessary or able (after all, leveling in Abyssea is super-easy), and farm that NM until all four of them complete their boots.  The Warrior does this for all slots and ends up with this vastly-improved set, which blows almost everything else out of the water.

But this is not enough!  The Warrior can now upgrade to a +2 set if he wants, which is, for pretty much every class, the best armor set in the game.  In order to do this, he repeats the process, but now focuses on items that drop from Tier 2 NMs, like Bukhis.  In this case, though, he can put together his group, saying "I want Bukhis's items to make +2 warrior feet, but anybody who joins me can have access to any other Bukhis loot and also the +1 seals Varney, Terrortaur, and Quasimodo all drop."  To sweeten the deal, Bukhis, like all Tier 2 NMs, has an Atma, and when you force an NM to drop an Atma (i'll get to that), everyone in your alliance gets it

This is GREAT; it gives random people just starting out a reason to help seasoned players get +2 items without leaving the seasoned players any disincentive for doing so.  By the time you've helped a bunch of folks get +2 items, you have a bunch of Atma and experience fighting these NMs, so you can start leading your own +2 runs and bringing along the next round of pugs.  It's a little embarassing it took so long for somebody to come up with this structure.

Eventually though, you might see a problem arise: if it's this easy to become powerful and eventually solo stuff, wouldn't the whole thing fall apart once people just decide to go solo everything without the X Factor of a new player?  Abyssea accounts for this as well, though: there is a Weakness Trigger system in place that ensures it is ALWAYS better to bring other people, no matter how easily you can solo your target or how inexperienced the people you're bringing.  I'll talk about that in the next post.
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Rosencrantz

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #399 on: March 17, 2011, 04:25:26 PM »

Good stuff; keep posting. I've heard of some major changes to FFXI in the past year or so, but I didn't know just how big the changes (and additions) were. FFXIV is taking large strides towards becoming a decent game, but that's still going to take at least a year (probably much longer) before that happens... so at some point in the future I'd like to play FFXI again.
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