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Author Topic: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI  (Read 34493 times)

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Classic

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Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« on: October 03, 2008, 12:07:11 AM »

I keep reading this as "Let's Play Final Fantasy XI" and then thinking, "Let's not."

What is the appeal of this MMO? Does it just attract the stupid (e.g. Scott)? Or is there actually some legitimate appeal to it? It seems like an MMO where you got to be a clan member from out of a tactics game would be really cool. I hear there is a job system, and a game that encourages partying to the exclusion of single player play. Why is it actually the worst thing to ever spend money on?
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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2008, 12:15:00 AM »

Because it's built around the Japanese mentality of "If you feel like the game is raping you, it's fun" or...I mangled that, but the idea I am attempting to say is that it's insanely hard (some of the bosses) and grindy.
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Rico

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2008, 10:39:26 AM »

Quick, turn on the Pacobird signal.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2008, 10:47:36 AM »

You know, criticisms of the game that were totally valid when you all played it 5 years ago have not gone unnoticed by square and they have slowly but decidedly been making an effort to oh never mind
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Classic

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2008, 10:56:07 AM »

Well, Lyrai  just complained about it being an (unusually hard) MMORPG... I don't think they're going to change that.
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Norondor

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #5 on: October 03, 2008, 11:14:55 AM »

it's hard compared to WoW, but so is flan.
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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #6 on: October 03, 2008, 11:30:34 AM »

If I want serious business penalties every time I die, I'll boot up fucking Diablo 2 and roll a hardcore druid.
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Rosencrantz

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #7 on: October 03, 2008, 11:44:44 AM »

Around the start of the year, I was in a FFXI group with guys from the ToastyForums to see if the game was any better with a permanent group. Not having to be LFG constantly was a huge help, but it's still such a tedious grind and it's a pain in the ass to earn money, so I quit before too long.
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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #8 on: October 03, 2008, 12:23:36 PM »

It's still the distilled essence of an MMORPG.  That is:

1) No soloing, fucking ever.
2) Player-based economy is the only real way to get by.
3) Min/max or face, if not defeat, a torrent of rage from your allies for not being as efficient as possible.
4) Quests never deviate much from kill x ys or bring me z qs.
5) Everything else is grinding.

I'm sure it appeals to certain players - those who want nothing more than to be a part in an extremely efficient machine.  Very Japanese.  If you're looking for the usual exploration and freedom of the genre - and the series - however, you can forget it.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #9 on: October 03, 2008, 02:52:03 PM »

There is something extremely fucked up about my psyche that calls me to be an FFXI apologist to its detractors and its harshest critic to its fanboys.

It's still the distilled essence of an MMORPG.  That is:

1) No soloing, fucking ever.

Not exactly true.  For reasons that should be fairly obvious, they can't at this point make players as strong as WoW players in relation to mobs because it would require restructuring the game from the ground up, but they have done a LOT to add solo viability in the past few years.

1) Signet change: you get a massive buff to evasion and defense when fighting EM or weaker mobs while signet is up, and resting hp ticks scale with your level/max hp.

2) Adventuring Fellows: A short quest chain at Rank 4 gets you an item that lets you summon an NPC that will follow you around, fight for you, heal you, and only cost you 30% of your exp.  He'll level up and gain new abilities, too.  I had a lot of fun with mine.

3) Buffs to EP/DC XP.  This just happened a month ago but particularly easy prey XP was doubled.  I was trying it out and leveled a Ranger from one to 6 in 20 minutes. 

4) Dancer, a new job that converts TP into healing abilities.  Sub it and lololololol

5) Campaign: The most recent expansion allows 60+ish players who are LFG to travel to frontier bases and sign up to fight TEH BEASTMAN HORDES for solo XP.  It's nothing compared to the XP you get in a level 75 merit point party (usually 10-12k/hour) but hey, it's 3-4k an hour on a good day and it's great if you only have like a half hour to play and just want to jump in and kill stuff.  Also, no XP loss for dying while your Campaign tags are active.  So there's that.

None of this makes it like WoW soloing, and rightly so, because the game's focus is totally party.  But it's not like soloing isn't semi-viable these days.

Quote
2) Player-based economy is the only real way to get by.

This was always my favorite part of the game, honestly.  I like the fact that crafting is actually viable.  MMO crafting is a dying institution, it seems, and it's nice to have a game like FFXI that still strongly supports it, but YMMV.  I would rather make money to buy something than wait for a random drop in a 40 man raid, at any rate.

Quote
3) Min/max or face, if not defeat, a torrent of rage from your allies for not being as efficient as possible.

Every game has this problem, and FFXI's player base is such a bunch of pussies that they'll just complain about you in LS chat.

Quote
4) Quests never deviate much from kill x ys or bring me z qs.

Yes and no.  They aren't that rewarding either, for the most part.  The main reason to quest in FFXI is cutscenes, because hey, you're playing an FF game. 

That said, most quests really flesh out a complete story arc.  It's really impressive the amount of detail and dialogue there is in the game, to say nothing of all the nation and expansion mission tracks, each of which basically encapsulate an FF game in themselves.  Chains of Promathia, in particular, is one of the more engaging Final Fantasies in recent memory.

Quote
5) Everything else is grinding.

Yes.  But the flipside is that the (massive) endgame is way more casual than, say, WoW, without getting into too much detail.

Quote
I'm sure it appeals to certain players - those who want nothing more than to be a part in an extremely efficient machine.  Very Japanese.  If you're looking for the usual exploration and freedom of the genre - and the series - however, you can forget it.

I've been playing it on and off since launch, and my current character is about 4 years old.  I dislike the game more often than not; it really does suffer from absolutely crippling design flaws that will never be fixed.  That said, I can honestly say that not once in the past 4 years have I logged on my dude and said, "hmm, there's nothing for me to do."

FFXI is a game for somebody who wants it to be a full-on hobby in its own right.
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Brentai

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #10 on: October 03, 2008, 02:58:09 PM »

FFXI is a game for somebody who wants it to be a full-on hobby in its own right.

Ding.

And yes, the same is true for WoW, which doesn't excuse a damn thing.  I stopped playing WoW at the point where a session took more than an hour minimum.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #11 on: October 03, 2008, 03:36:41 PM »

FFXI is a game for somebody who wants it to be a full-on hobby in its own right.

Ding.

And yes, the same is true for WoW, which doesn't excuse a damn thing.  I stopped playing WoW at the point where a session took more than an hour minimum.

Well, that's the genre; not really sure what to say otherwise.

Totally agree about the exploration thing btw.  You go out into the world and there's nothing there.  I'm not sure why half the zones in the game even exist.
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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #12 on: October 03, 2008, 04:03:32 PM »

So how about that boss that was still alive after 18 hours and the people who were fighting it were vomiting and shit.
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Brentai

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #13 on: October 03, 2008, 04:10:26 PM »

I think they got rid of that guy.  Confirm/deny.
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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #14 on: October 03, 2008, 04:11:51 PM »

There were two, actually. They nerfed one and he was beaten in 4 minutes by a bunch of Dark Knights spamming the MMO version of "Sacrifice HP for Attack" and the sword boosted attack and drained HP into you or something Pacobird what am I talking about here...

I think something had "Octo" in it's name.
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Kayma

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #15 on: October 03, 2008, 04:24:03 PM »

I remember running to Jeuno as like a level 4 just for shits. That was.... fun?

I think I quit when I hit twenty, got the stuff for my Chocobo, and was told I had to wait like a day to get it.
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Doom

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #16 on: October 03, 2008, 04:34:17 PM »

Pacobird I'm going to have to file a cease and desist in your direction because it is simply intolerable for you to speak in your clear, logical and handsome way and revive in me the dark, twisted seed of my psyche that thinks FF11 would be an awesome hobby, thanks.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #17 on: October 03, 2008, 04:40:23 PM »

There were two, actually. They nerfed one and he was beaten in 4 minutes by a bunch of Dark Knights spamming the MMO version of "Sacrifice HP for Attack" and the sword boosted attack and drained HP into you or something Pacobird what am I talking about here...

I think something had "Octo" in it's name.
Kraken Club.  Hits up to 8 times every swing.  They used Souleater, which adds 10% of their max HP to every swing as damage, and Blood Weapon, which converts all damage done to healing.  Kraken DRKs are bullshit but the clubs still sell for 20-30 million so whatever.

They nerfed that, but hilariously, the guy could still Benediction and wipe your group after Blood Weapon wore off, the DRKs killed themselves on souleater in 3 seconds, and everybody died.  Absolute Virtue's been arounmd for 4 years with 0 legitimate kills.  He's a joke.  Nobody does him.

The one that people actually spent 18 hours on was Pandemonium Warden; the outcry came from a lot of players who'd come to the conclusion that square actively hates its players base, which might be true.  The response was OK FINE WE'LL MAKE IT SHORTER OH AND HERE'S SOME STUFF TO IMPROVE LEVELING and blammo doubled EP XP and City of Heroes paragonning so you can actually play with friends/guildies on the jobs you want to play.

Current status of AV and PW is still unkilled, though now they have way less HP and automatically despawn after two hours.  Most endgame stuff in FFXI has really hard time limits like that; 4-5 hour raids don't generally happen but you're usually racing against the clock, which is really disorienting the first time you encounter it because holy shit this is still FFXI right


Pacobird I'm going to have to file a cease and desist in your direction because it is simply intolerable for you to speak in your clear, logical and handsome way and revive in me the dark, twisted seed of my psyche that thinks FF11 would be an awesome hobby, thanks.

I will swear up and down that FFXI is, on the whole, the best PvE experience currently available on the MMO market, and certainly the most cooperative.  That said, that shit requires an investment.  You really need to make a decision at the outset about how you are going to play that game, because if you plan on just fumbling your way to max level like I did, it's going to take you the 3 years of rerolling jobs and quitting periodically in disgust that it took me until you just suck it up, buy some gil, pick an OP job, and power your way to 75, at which point the game totally changes.
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Pacobird

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Re: Let's Play Final Fantasy XI
« Reply #19 on: October 03, 2008, 04:50:56 PM »

Current status of AV...is still unkilled,

http://kotaku.com/5049761/epic-hard-ffxi-boss-killed-in-one-minute



And as I said, they nerfed that.  It was a bullshit tactic that has been used for years to kill a variety of the hardest bosses in the game in literally a matter of seconds.  AV has never seen a legitimate kill.
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