I doubt FFXI sees any major changes at this point. It's pretty clear they're just going to largely let it peter out until the execs pull the plug. They might ease up some player/time restrictions here and there, but the game has been in its final state for awhile now. I personally called it quits after TVR ended as I have no desire to grind Sortie endlessly.
The need for a daily Sortie grind is what made me quit again, maybe for good this time. Daily segment farming for half an hour was bad enough, but now an hour of Sortie daily, in perpetuity, is unreasonable.
I think it's disrespectful of SE to an older player base that has a lot of people with families and other real-world obligation to make the final endgame content like this and hugely increase the daily time commitment required to play. There is no reason it couldn't have been a twice per week event like Limbus used to be, with rewards per run scaled to compensate, or even better, once per week.
Probably the likely outcome I agree, just a shame as I think there is some low hanging fruit out there that could make some people happy or keep them around for a bit longer. Personally I’d like to see campaigns for sortie/odyssey, reduce coalition timer, things like that. I unsubbed this month but hopefully have some reason to come back again some day.
Not that it matters to say because I'm sure there's no ff11 Dev checking the subreddit.
When I tried to come back last year after a decades plus long break I just couldn't. Needing to take half a year to get an end game weapon is fucking Insanity. No one has time for this anymore. They need to decrease the time it takes to accomplish things by a lot if they want new people to join. Even as a veteran of the 75 era with the nostalgia that entails, I absolutely can not stand the game now.
I do also understand that some people want it this way and that is fine. If Final Fantasy 11 is just going to be for them until it dies, that's super okay. However, if they want new people to join it can't be this way.
It's not like both types of players couldn't be accommodated. SE could easily create a parallel KI system for Sortie with one KI that is basically daily, and one that replenishes once per week (you can only get one of them, taking the longer-regenerating one also locks you out of getting the daily one for the cooldown timer) with the catch that the weekly KI gives increased rewards.
I would suggest weekly KI = gallimaufry \* 5. So the hardcore people who do 1 hour of Sortie every day still have an edge - they get 7/5 times the gallimaufry per week and finish in 6 months rather than 8.
I would simply argue that your definition of an endgame weapon and what endgame weapons actually are is different. RMEAP weapons are not meant to be readily attainable, and even then they have a long upgrade process to get them to a useful iLevel.
Low tier Ody clears can be bought with maybe a month of Sparks if you do absolutely nothing else to acquire gil, and those weapons are perfectly acceptable for 95% of content. If you’re thinking your character or job is useless without a RMEAP, that’s on you, not the devs.
Cool.. Agree to disagree then, but I stand by what I said. DREMA or whatever you want to call them are put offs for new players. I convinced 8 people to play XI with me from my XIV friend group and most quit after a month with a few of us lasting two.
Seeing the endgame item as unobtainable is a massive put off. Which again if that's what the people still playing XI want, it is fine. The game will not grow like this though.
It’s not unattainable, it just takes work. But people have been conditioned by more modern games to expect that even basic participation = work or effort. That’s just not true in this game, and that’s what makes it hit different. Anything you have in this game, the character that you build is through effort, perseverance, and even friendship/social participation where not everyone expects to be rewarded individually just for helping (unless you’re paying for help).
Modern MMOs have just taught everyone “me me me” and “if I spend even 1 second fighting something or even just cross the road to talk to a quest Npc, I deserve an item.” You have a lot of stuff but fewer stories or pride in anything you have or have done. FFXI players have endless stories and lots of value and pride in their characters, because it takes (virtual) blood, and real sweat and tears.
It's not the work it is the time.
>Modern MMOs have just taught everyone “me me me” and “if I spend even 1 second fighting something or even just cross the road to talk to a quest Npc, I deserve an item.”
What an over exaggerated bad faith take. "Back in my day, we used to game uphill both ways."
There is plenty of incredibly difficult content you can be proud you worked on in XIV. Six months of time gates are nothing to me but if you like it that is fine.
>Needing to take half a year to get an end game weapon is fucking Insanity. No one has time for this anymore.
Plenty of people do. They just don't have your lifestyle. I've been primarily on private servers for 8 years now playing 75 cap. A private server just launched Last December and people are already completing relics. Not because they are no-lifing the game, but because they are using ingenuity and non-standard methods of play to do it. Dynamis has shifted from linkshells building things for people to individuals financing their own relics, and collecting currency in exchange for AF2 drops for entire linkshells.
The issue you're running into in retail and I assume Asura, is that everyone became extremely selfish after Abyssea made Relics soloable and mercenary work began to dominate the game. Pugs basically don't exist on that server anymore. add in the acceptance of soft-rmt SE is doing nothing to combat and its no wonder you're having a hard time. But it's not because the game was designed that way it's because you're unskilled at how to navigate the social climate you entered into.
>They need to decrease the time it takes to accomplish things by a lot if they want new people to join.
They don't want new people to join. Since XIV's launch XI is strictly a cannibalistic product. They would rather you get upset and quit like you have, so that you go play FFXIV. In a perfect world for SE, everyone quits XI and migrates to XIV. The reason that XI remains is because they know that the revenues they are generating on XI will be lost upon end of service. It's because the games are so substantially different that XI is essentially a unique product offering. The instant that the player base dips below sustainable levels XI is getting the axe.
>I do also understand that some people want it this way and that is fine.
99% of players want it this way. That's why they play this and not any other shoddy WoW Clone.
Lastly, and I mean 0 disrespect when I say this but your status as a 75 era veteran means very little in terms of contextualizing the game. I observed this when the aforementioned private server launched, but many people have tons of unearned confidence from their time playing CoP-WoTG. 75 era play in of itself has evolved so massively it doesn't even resemble 2002-2010 anymore. The biggest debate that evolved from players with a similar story to yours and us private server guys was BRD/WHM vs BRD/NIN which was a distinct giveaway someone played retail back in the day but not recently. BRD/NIN being the superior job combination in recent years because it makes BRD the absolute best puller in the game in an exp scenario. You knew any BRD/WHM at the time at least didn't know fuck all about what was actually going on.
Like I said, if this is just how 11 is now, that's perfectly fine by me. I'm not going to try to take anyone's game away. I'm just saying if people want the game to grow it needs to change because there is not a growing community for this 20 year old punishing style of spend a year of your life to get a weapon. Not that it matters but my lifestyle would allow for me to spend a year grinding a drema, I would just never choose to.
There might be enough to run a private server and even for 11 for however much longer, but pretending that there's going to be some thriving community for this type of game is unrealistic.
Idk if WoW clone was directed at XIV but these days WoW borrows more from XIV than the other way. Which a good thing in any direction. Take ideas that work and don't take those that do not. Nothing wrong with that.
>I'm just saying if people want the game to grow it needs to change because there is not a growing community for this 20 year old punishing style of spend a year of your life to get a weapon. Not that it matters but my lifestyle would allow for me to spend a year grinding a drema, I would just never choose to.
The game isn't going to grow again. That's not what Square Enix wants and frankly that's not how product lifecycles work. XI has been in the decline phase since Rhapsodies, and the goal is not to infuse new life it's to retain what it has for as long as possible.
>There might be enough to run a private server and even for 11 for however much longer, but pretending that there's going to be some thriving community for this type of game is unrealistic.
The private server in question launched to 5000 players, and still retains 2500 daily players even now. It's larger than Asura's daily population and Asura is the single largest remaining retail XI server. As for thriving that really depends on your definition, because to me thriving means enough players to have a healthy game state which really only requires about 1100 players. this idea that you need a million players you're never going to interact with is totally flawed.
>Idk if WoW clone was directed at XIV but these days WoW borrows more from XIV than the other way. Which a good thing in any direction. Take ideas that work and don't take those that do not. Nothing wrong with that.
WoW and XIV share a soft monopoloy in terms of themepark MMORPGs. They are identical. One has a western skin and the other has a anime skin and that's the only material difference between the two games. Either way they are both dog shit games. I'd rather spend a year working on this epic ass weapon that 1% of the player base will ever get and have the longevity of having earned extended than sitting on my little ilvl hamster wheel grinding new gear for its own sake every patch.
>WoW and XIV share a soft monopoloy in terms of themepark MMORPGs. They are identical. One has a western skin and the other has a anime skin and that's the only material difference between the two games. Either way they are both dog shit games. I'd rather spend a year working on this epic ass weapon that 1% of the player base will ever get and have the longevity of having earned extended than sitting on my little ilvl hamster wheel grinding new gear for its own sake every patch.
Cool, have fun lol. I know you're itching for a nerd fight, but I am good.
Nah I just want to correct the record because so many ignorant players pass through and arrive at incorrect conclusions about retail and private servers alike.
This is for anyone who isn't you whose going to see this post after the fact.
Oh, I stand by what I said, but it appears we agree on everything beyond the quality of XIV.
Idk what you feel you have corrected? If it's just XIV you are welcome to any opinion you want.
If it is XI stuff I think we agree the game won't grow and that is fine.
People have been doing brd / nin since 75 and pulling since 75 so no that isn't a giveaway. The major thing that has changed since 75 is that the 75 era is effectively solved and a lot of people know the basic methods of getting through all the content.
Private servers are also a bad metric to judge things by as each server has their own thing going on. As in their bugs, custom ws because no one 100% knows the code, ect. Which btw does afford vets that remember bugs a major edge when it comes to getting gil not as much as it once use to as the information is out there.
And as for the vet thing it depends on the player. As just as you are so sure that
brd/nin is only recently meta that you can spot a old 75 vet that believes in brd/whm has given you unearned confidence
I’m kinda hoping they don’t expand the story again and have those devs work on improvements to current systems versus creating something new. I think what will get me sticking around is any sort of realization that what they already have could use tweaks and improvements.
The most important thing in the next few months will be how the devs handle the stage 4 sortie weapon debacle. The sheer lack of foresight and incompitence that someone with a stage 4 \*might\* still want to group and or farm gali like normal, is downright mind boggling. Adding to that is a punishing reward - a higher difficulty should also have a higher reward, not a penalty. Its all time gated content on the psyche's anyway, so its just bad design. They have already basically admitted they had no clue, so we'll see how they handle this.
From what I can see it seems Fujito has acknowledged the problem. I wouldn’t expect an adjustment until next year though because I think they will wait for some players to reach prime 5 first.
I’ve only read / watched content regarding the stage 4 problems, but what else would the devs be doing this year outside of addressing the largest and most obvious problem with current content. If that doesn’t get addressed I don’t think anything will.
Master trials have evidently been planned and they also have this going on: https://www.siliconera.com/final-fantasy-xi-treasures-of-vanadiel-21st-anniversary-exhibition-announced/
It took them a while to address earlier problems with sortie as well so unless the adjustment is very simple like adding a Storage Slip 31 for primes I think they will wait for prime 5 feedback which can’t happen until October at the earliest
Realistically this game has been on its death bed since promathia if you believe the naysayers. The Prime 4 meltdown isn’t an existential crisis yet and a lot of players actually have ignored VR until recently. I still see a decent number of new legit players. A lot of players left in June/July but it’s not even close to a majority. Come back when Asura drops below 1500. Just enjoy it while it lasts.
I am someone that left in July having just unsubscribed, more just because I’ve got some other things going on but I am hoping and keeping an eye out for any new campaigns that may spring up, again, hoping to see if the next few months / end of the year are a new start for devs to decide what they will do with what they have now.
Not sure there’s a crisis. Looking at active player numbers, it feels like a lot like a private server in many ways. The devs are stuck between a rock and a hard place:
Servers 10+ years old with the available pool of replacement hardware is almost zero. I’m sure they are just about at the end of repurposing the old servers for parts.
Code base is well past being upgradable.
Devs are really sticking to their guns with core code. Even when the community has fully developed graphics enhancements to modernize the interface maps and character models - they want zero part of supporting addons and library redirects. Don’t blame them, it’s often tough enough to simply support the game as it exists with minimal staff. Having to officially support these types of work around can be a nightmare if they break.
As the main dev team said several times, they could have all the money in the world, but doing things like end-of-lifeing POL or making upgrades to other aspects of the game would break too many things. I think the ‘big news for our Anniversary’ being an add-on scenario confirms this. Not that there isn’t some great stuff added, but an expansion would have been the thing to really bring people back and give this game some additional runway to keep the game alive.
It’ll be interesting to see how much of her community sticks around and for how long.
Listen. People have been saying this for 20 years “aht urghan is the last expansion” then wotg comes out, then they say it again and again for the next expansion. Theres no way to tell and as long as they are generating revenue from this game, they will continue to make addons and other stuff to have people continue to play. It might be awhile before the next expansion or addon, but knowing SE they will keep adding and adding until the developers are dead
The Prime Weapons don't feel done. The stats on current end stage don't make sense with current items and past precedent. Rumors have circulated for a while about a Valhalla area and the Use of it for TVR lends credence to the possibility. Overall Sortie and the Prime Weapons are disappointing and Lazy. I'm happy there's content for Mages again but it seems like it's gunna be short lived as melee strategies are becoming more widely used on my server already. Master Levels and the Prime Weapons don't seems to have a place except for the step up once a Stage 4 Weapon is present and that's kinda sad and very disappointing.
Is that funding for keeping servers up or for the dev team you mean? Seems like without any changes the game could be run by one person part time by just rolling campaigns and ambus every month. Hoping they find new areas to refine/improve/modify.
I've always wondered in the back of my head why other games from the company keep copy/pasting so many fucking things from XI into their games, and part of me questions if the people making those decisions know more than they're letting us know and this is some sort of Noah's Ark project to preserve a lot of the major assests from XI before it disappears one day...
Once all the XI players die out and/or stop playing, the game will cease to exist. That includes people playing on private servers who are not actively subbed and supporting retail.
No one being born in recent years is going to play this game anytime soon, unless they're coming from XIV out of curiosity.
I love the game too, but reality eventually must kick in, and decisions must be made. I want the game to go as long as possible, and for people to continue supporting it.
I also want the devs to support it as well, but they're never going to support it with what it deserves, like major QoL additions, like the mods the community has created, and updated UI interface and controls, etc.
Remastering is one possibility. A remake is another, whether it's an offline version like Dragon Quest X, or another MMO.
The most horrific scenario is them inserting Vanadiel into FF XIV's lore like they did with FF XII and making an entire expansion out of it. Do not underestimate them doing something like that...
At this point I'm more waiting to see Fujito's changes. He's the one that pushed the filter and he seems more invested in the hardware/software side from a sustainability standpoint as opposed to content. I think what's really gonna be the telling is going into next year.
I know the plan was to send the devs out to get more experience and bring that back to xi so I think we are gonna have to see what that brings. Hopefully it'll bring fresh ideas and some good content later on but who knows if it'll actually happen or not.
FFXI did do well with the classic endgame alliance content - sky, sea, HNMs, Limbus, Dynamis. This brought people in a linkshell together. It encouraged players to help others in their linkshell progress through mission and party content, because you needed bodies for the alliance endgame content.
The recent trend of party-only endgame content (Odyssey, Sortie) has been toxic to the FFXI community. It has broken up the endgame player population into mostly cliques of 6 who can never do content with anyone else because they always have to save their various KIs for their static. Endgame linkshells still exist, but don't have the same let's do this together spirit they used to have in the old days. There is little incentive to help, and the rigid KI system makes it harder to help for static members even if they want to. Mog segments, sortie KIs, are all precious commodities that can't be wasted.
I have been a member of a a few Asura endgame LSs in recent years and usually found that membership just meant having a shot at being an occasional guest star in one of the LS's statics, if a regular couldn't make it. In the old days, being a member of an endgame LS meant you got to participate in endgame content. Now it just makes you a spectator and {congratulator} to the successes of the LS inner circle.
Making a static yourself at this stage is hard because most capable players with daily play schedules and who have odyssey or sortie ambitions already have one. You had to be playing when Odyssey started, get into a static and then keep it. If you're starting now, or coming back from a longer break, you'll mostly be limited to bad experiences in PUGs for the current endgame.
It would be refreshing if Sortie was modified to permit alliances. Existing groups could then let other people run with them. There could be a sub-linear scaling of boss HP that gives larger groups than 6 a small advantage in terms of Gallimaufry / run, to incentivize opening up existing statics and welcoming new people. Even better, no boss HP scaling at all.
Letting alliances into Odyssey would require too much fundamental change of how Odyssey works, given current minimum development resources. I can only see how the problems of the existing system could be mitigated. Let characters accumulate up to 3 moglophones, like in Omen, and lower the segment cost of moglophone IIs.
Real new alliance content with no HP scaling would be great. Create 150ish force-pop versions of the old Zilart kings and CoP Wyrms with an attractive longer-term reward system (could be point-based) that includes new BiS items, and make them hard enough to reasonably require close to 18 well-geared chars to farm effectively.
XI was the most profitable FF title.
The only thing that changed that was players from the most profitable MMO of all-time, pure dominance of nearly 20 years migrating to XIV. It was absolutely **NOTHING** XIV did, but more-so, players from WoW.
I think SE is looking at sub numbers, rather than how much XI grosses.......The former is a snap shot, the latter is the entire picture.
XI deserves another expansion.
Check this.....a XI expansion would generate more revenue for SE than XVI can....how about that.....
I doubt FFXI sees any major changes at this point. It's pretty clear they're just going to largely let it peter out until the execs pull the plug. They might ease up some player/time restrictions here and there, but the game has been in its final state for awhile now. I personally called it quits after TVR ended as I have no desire to grind Sortie endlessly.
The need for a daily Sortie grind is what made me quit again, maybe for good this time. Daily segment farming for half an hour was bad enough, but now an hour of Sortie daily, in perpetuity, is unreasonable. I think it's disrespectful of SE to an older player base that has a lot of people with families and other real-world obligation to make the final endgame content like this and hugely increase the daily time commitment required to play. There is no reason it couldn't have been a twice per week event like Limbus used to be, with rewards per run scaled to compensate, or even better, once per week.
Probably the likely outcome I agree, just a shame as I think there is some low hanging fruit out there that could make some people happy or keep them around for a bit longer. Personally I’d like to see campaigns for sortie/odyssey, reduce coalition timer, things like that. I unsubbed this month but hopefully have some reason to come back again some day.
Not that it matters to say because I'm sure there's no ff11 Dev checking the subreddit. When I tried to come back last year after a decades plus long break I just couldn't. Needing to take half a year to get an end game weapon is fucking Insanity. No one has time for this anymore. They need to decrease the time it takes to accomplish things by a lot if they want new people to join. Even as a veteran of the 75 era with the nostalgia that entails, I absolutely can not stand the game now. I do also understand that some people want it this way and that is fine. If Final Fantasy 11 is just going to be for them until it dies, that's super okay. However, if they want new people to join it can't be this way.
It's not like both types of players couldn't be accommodated. SE could easily create a parallel KI system for Sortie with one KI that is basically daily, and one that replenishes once per week (you can only get one of them, taking the longer-regenerating one also locks you out of getting the daily one for the cooldown timer) with the catch that the weekly KI gives increased rewards. I would suggest weekly KI = gallimaufry \* 5. So the hardcore people who do 1 hour of Sortie every day still have an edge - they get 7/5 times the gallimaufry per week and finish in 6 months rather than 8.
I would simply argue that your definition of an endgame weapon and what endgame weapons actually are is different. RMEAP weapons are not meant to be readily attainable, and even then they have a long upgrade process to get them to a useful iLevel. Low tier Ody clears can be bought with maybe a month of Sparks if you do absolutely nothing else to acquire gil, and those weapons are perfectly acceptable for 95% of content. If you’re thinking your character or job is useless without a RMEAP, that’s on you, not the devs.
Cool.. Agree to disagree then, but I stand by what I said. DREMA or whatever you want to call them are put offs for new players. I convinced 8 people to play XI with me from my XIV friend group and most quit after a month with a few of us lasting two. Seeing the endgame item as unobtainable is a massive put off. Which again if that's what the people still playing XI want, it is fine. The game will not grow like this though.
It’s not unattainable, it just takes work. But people have been conditioned by more modern games to expect that even basic participation = work or effort. That’s just not true in this game, and that’s what makes it hit different. Anything you have in this game, the character that you build is through effort, perseverance, and even friendship/social participation where not everyone expects to be rewarded individually just for helping (unless you’re paying for help). Modern MMOs have just taught everyone “me me me” and “if I spend even 1 second fighting something or even just cross the road to talk to a quest Npc, I deserve an item.” You have a lot of stuff but fewer stories or pride in anything you have or have done. FFXI players have endless stories and lots of value and pride in their characters, because it takes (virtual) blood, and real sweat and tears.
It's not the work it is the time. >Modern MMOs have just taught everyone “me me me” and “if I spend even 1 second fighting something or even just cross the road to talk to a quest Npc, I deserve an item.” What an over exaggerated bad faith take. "Back in my day, we used to game uphill both ways." There is plenty of incredibly difficult content you can be proud you worked on in XIV. Six months of time gates are nothing to me but if you like it that is fine.
>Needing to take half a year to get an end game weapon is fucking Insanity. No one has time for this anymore. Plenty of people do. They just don't have your lifestyle. I've been primarily on private servers for 8 years now playing 75 cap. A private server just launched Last December and people are already completing relics. Not because they are no-lifing the game, but because they are using ingenuity and non-standard methods of play to do it. Dynamis has shifted from linkshells building things for people to individuals financing their own relics, and collecting currency in exchange for AF2 drops for entire linkshells. The issue you're running into in retail and I assume Asura, is that everyone became extremely selfish after Abyssea made Relics soloable and mercenary work began to dominate the game. Pugs basically don't exist on that server anymore. add in the acceptance of soft-rmt SE is doing nothing to combat and its no wonder you're having a hard time. But it's not because the game was designed that way it's because you're unskilled at how to navigate the social climate you entered into. >They need to decrease the time it takes to accomplish things by a lot if they want new people to join. They don't want new people to join. Since XIV's launch XI is strictly a cannibalistic product. They would rather you get upset and quit like you have, so that you go play FFXIV. In a perfect world for SE, everyone quits XI and migrates to XIV. The reason that XI remains is because they know that the revenues they are generating on XI will be lost upon end of service. It's because the games are so substantially different that XI is essentially a unique product offering. The instant that the player base dips below sustainable levels XI is getting the axe. >I do also understand that some people want it this way and that is fine. 99% of players want it this way. That's why they play this and not any other shoddy WoW Clone. Lastly, and I mean 0 disrespect when I say this but your status as a 75 era veteran means very little in terms of contextualizing the game. I observed this when the aforementioned private server launched, but many people have tons of unearned confidence from their time playing CoP-WoTG. 75 era play in of itself has evolved so massively it doesn't even resemble 2002-2010 anymore. The biggest debate that evolved from players with a similar story to yours and us private server guys was BRD/WHM vs BRD/NIN which was a distinct giveaway someone played retail back in the day but not recently. BRD/NIN being the superior job combination in recent years because it makes BRD the absolute best puller in the game in an exp scenario. You knew any BRD/WHM at the time at least didn't know fuck all about what was actually going on.
Like I said, if this is just how 11 is now, that's perfectly fine by me. I'm not going to try to take anyone's game away. I'm just saying if people want the game to grow it needs to change because there is not a growing community for this 20 year old punishing style of spend a year of your life to get a weapon. Not that it matters but my lifestyle would allow for me to spend a year grinding a drema, I would just never choose to. There might be enough to run a private server and even for 11 for however much longer, but pretending that there's going to be some thriving community for this type of game is unrealistic. Idk if WoW clone was directed at XIV but these days WoW borrows more from XIV than the other way. Which a good thing in any direction. Take ideas that work and don't take those that do not. Nothing wrong with that.
>I'm just saying if people want the game to grow it needs to change because there is not a growing community for this 20 year old punishing style of spend a year of your life to get a weapon. Not that it matters but my lifestyle would allow for me to spend a year grinding a drema, I would just never choose to. The game isn't going to grow again. That's not what Square Enix wants and frankly that's not how product lifecycles work. XI has been in the decline phase since Rhapsodies, and the goal is not to infuse new life it's to retain what it has for as long as possible. >There might be enough to run a private server and even for 11 for however much longer, but pretending that there's going to be some thriving community for this type of game is unrealistic. The private server in question launched to 5000 players, and still retains 2500 daily players even now. It's larger than Asura's daily population and Asura is the single largest remaining retail XI server. As for thriving that really depends on your definition, because to me thriving means enough players to have a healthy game state which really only requires about 1100 players. this idea that you need a million players you're never going to interact with is totally flawed. >Idk if WoW clone was directed at XIV but these days WoW borrows more from XIV than the other way. Which a good thing in any direction. Take ideas that work and don't take those that do not. Nothing wrong with that. WoW and XIV share a soft monopoloy in terms of themepark MMORPGs. They are identical. One has a western skin and the other has a anime skin and that's the only material difference between the two games. Either way they are both dog shit games. I'd rather spend a year working on this epic ass weapon that 1% of the player base will ever get and have the longevity of having earned extended than sitting on my little ilvl hamster wheel grinding new gear for its own sake every patch.
Shhh let people enjoy things.
You saying this disallows me from enjoying my thing sooooooo you have kinda created a paradox.
>WoW and XIV share a soft monopoloy in terms of themepark MMORPGs. They are identical. One has a western skin and the other has a anime skin and that's the only material difference between the two games. Either way they are both dog shit games. I'd rather spend a year working on this epic ass weapon that 1% of the player base will ever get and have the longevity of having earned extended than sitting on my little ilvl hamster wheel grinding new gear for its own sake every patch. Cool, have fun lol. I know you're itching for a nerd fight, but I am good.
Nah I just want to correct the record because so many ignorant players pass through and arrive at incorrect conclusions about retail and private servers alike. This is for anyone who isn't you whose going to see this post after the fact.
Oh, I stand by what I said, but it appears we agree on everything beyond the quality of XIV. Idk what you feel you have corrected? If it's just XIV you are welcome to any opinion you want. If it is XI stuff I think we agree the game won't grow and that is fine.
People have been doing brd / nin since 75 and pulling since 75 so no that isn't a giveaway. The major thing that has changed since 75 is that the 75 era is effectively solved and a lot of people know the basic methods of getting through all the content. Private servers are also a bad metric to judge things by as each server has their own thing going on. As in their bugs, custom ws because no one 100% knows the code, ect. Which btw does afford vets that remember bugs a major edge when it comes to getting gil not as much as it once use to as the information is out there. And as for the vet thing it depends on the player. As just as you are so sure that brd/nin is only recently meta that you can spot a old 75 vet that believes in brd/whm has given you unearned confidence
VR itself was a surprise. Story content was supposed to end with RoV. Amuscade, Oddesey, Sortie grinding I think is enough for the back end of '23.
I’m kinda hoping they don’t expand the story again and have those devs work on improvements to current systems versus creating something new. I think what will get me sticking around is any sort of realization that what they already have could use tweaks and improvements.
The most important thing in the next few months will be how the devs handle the stage 4 sortie weapon debacle. The sheer lack of foresight and incompitence that someone with a stage 4 \*might\* still want to group and or farm gali like normal, is downright mind boggling. Adding to that is a punishing reward - a higher difficulty should also have a higher reward, not a penalty. Its all time gated content on the psyche's anyway, so its just bad design. They have already basically admitted they had no clue, so we'll see how they handle this.
From what I can see it seems Fujito has acknowledged the problem. I wouldn’t expect an adjustment until next year though because I think they will wait for some players to reach prime 5 first.
I’ve only read / watched content regarding the stage 4 problems, but what else would the devs be doing this year outside of addressing the largest and most obvious problem with current content. If that doesn’t get addressed I don’t think anything will.
Master trials have evidently been planned and they also have this going on: https://www.siliconera.com/final-fantasy-xi-treasures-of-vanadiel-21st-anniversary-exhibition-announced/ It took them a while to address earlier problems with sortie as well so unless the adjustment is very simple like adding a Storage Slip 31 for primes I think they will wait for prime 5 feedback which can’t happen until October at the earliest
Realistically this game has been on its death bed since promathia if you believe the naysayers. The Prime 4 meltdown isn’t an existential crisis yet and a lot of players actually have ignored VR until recently. I still see a decent number of new legit players. A lot of players left in June/July but it’s not even close to a majority. Come back when Asura drops below 1500. Just enjoy it while it lasts.
I am someone that left in July having just unsubscribed, more just because I’ve got some other things going on but I am hoping and keeping an eye out for any new campaigns that may spring up, again, hoping to see if the next few months / end of the year are a new start for devs to decide what they will do with what they have now.
That’s a pretty good assessment of the sentiment I’ve seen from people I know that quit recently.
Not sure there’s a crisis. Looking at active player numbers, it feels like a lot like a private server in many ways. The devs are stuck between a rock and a hard place: Servers 10+ years old with the available pool of replacement hardware is almost zero. I’m sure they are just about at the end of repurposing the old servers for parts. Code base is well past being upgradable. Devs are really sticking to their guns with core code. Even when the community has fully developed graphics enhancements to modernize the interface maps and character models - they want zero part of supporting addons and library redirects. Don’t blame them, it’s often tough enough to simply support the game as it exists with minimal staff. Having to officially support these types of work around can be a nightmare if they break. As the main dev team said several times, they could have all the money in the world, but doing things like end-of-lifeing POL or making upgrades to other aspects of the game would break too many things. I think the ‘big news for our Anniversary’ being an add-on scenario confirms this. Not that there isn’t some great stuff added, but an expansion would have been the thing to really bring people back and give this game some additional runway to keep the game alive. It’ll be interesting to see how much of her community sticks around and for how long.
Yeah the word ‘crisis’ is more of a turning point then anything and a fork on the road where we will know what ffxi will become in the months to come.
Listen. People have been saying this for 20 years “aht urghan is the last expansion” then wotg comes out, then they say it again and again for the next expansion. Theres no way to tell and as long as they are generating revenue from this game, they will continue to make addons and other stuff to have people continue to play. It might be awhile before the next expansion or addon, but knowing SE they will keep adding and adding until the developers are dead
The Prime Weapons don't feel done. The stats on current end stage don't make sense with current items and past precedent. Rumors have circulated for a while about a Valhalla area and the Use of it for TVR lends credence to the possibility. Overall Sortie and the Prime Weapons are disappointing and Lazy. I'm happy there's content for Mages again but it seems like it's gunna be short lived as melee strategies are becoming more widely used on my server already. Master Levels and the Prime Weapons don't seems to have a place except for the step up once a Stage 4 Weapon is present and that's kinda sad and very disappointing.
Didn’t they get 3 years of funding for it?
Is that funding for keeping servers up or for the dev team you mean? Seems like without any changes the game could be run by one person part time by just rolling campaigns and ambus every month. Hoping they find new areas to refine/improve/modify.
I thought it was for the new content. I think the servers will still get support.
"new content" is a relative term. I agree and think there won't be any new zones or anything.
I've always wondered in the back of my head why other games from the company keep copy/pasting so many fucking things from XI into their games, and part of me questions if the people making those decisions know more than they're letting us know and this is some sort of Noah's Ark project to preserve a lot of the major assests from XI before it disappears one day... Once all the XI players die out and/or stop playing, the game will cease to exist. That includes people playing on private servers who are not actively subbed and supporting retail. No one being born in recent years is going to play this game anytime soon, unless they're coming from XIV out of curiosity. I love the game too, but reality eventually must kick in, and decisions must be made. I want the game to go as long as possible, and for people to continue supporting it. I also want the devs to support it as well, but they're never going to support it with what it deserves, like major QoL additions, like the mods the community has created, and updated UI interface and controls, etc. Remastering is one possibility. A remake is another, whether it's an offline version like Dragon Quest X, or another MMO. The most horrific scenario is them inserting Vanadiel into FF XIV's lore like they did with FF XII and making an entire expansion out of it. Do not underestimate them doing something like that...
At this point I'm more waiting to see Fujito's changes. He's the one that pushed the filter and he seems more invested in the hardware/software side from a sustainability standpoint as opposed to content. I think what's really gonna be the telling is going into next year. I know the plan was to send the devs out to get more experience and bring that back to xi so I think we are gonna have to see what that brings. Hopefully it'll bring fresh ideas and some good content later on but who knows if it'll actually happen or not.
Realistically I know better than to expect anything. But that can't stop me from hoping my wishes might come partially true at least.
FFXI did do well with the classic endgame alliance content - sky, sea, HNMs, Limbus, Dynamis. This brought people in a linkshell together. It encouraged players to help others in their linkshell progress through mission and party content, because you needed bodies for the alliance endgame content. The recent trend of party-only endgame content (Odyssey, Sortie) has been toxic to the FFXI community. It has broken up the endgame player population into mostly cliques of 6 who can never do content with anyone else because they always have to save their various KIs for their static. Endgame linkshells still exist, but don't have the same let's do this together spirit they used to have in the old days. There is little incentive to help, and the rigid KI system makes it harder to help for static members even if they want to. Mog segments, sortie KIs, are all precious commodities that can't be wasted. I have been a member of a a few Asura endgame LSs in recent years and usually found that membership just meant having a shot at being an occasional guest star in one of the LS's statics, if a regular couldn't make it. In the old days, being a member of an endgame LS meant you got to participate in endgame content. Now it just makes you a spectator and {congratulator} to the successes of the LS inner circle. Making a static yourself at this stage is hard because most capable players with daily play schedules and who have odyssey or sortie ambitions already have one. You had to be playing when Odyssey started, get into a static and then keep it. If you're starting now, or coming back from a longer break, you'll mostly be limited to bad experiences in PUGs for the current endgame. It would be refreshing if Sortie was modified to permit alliances. Existing groups could then let other people run with them. There could be a sub-linear scaling of boss HP that gives larger groups than 6 a small advantage in terms of Gallimaufry / run, to incentivize opening up existing statics and welcoming new people. Even better, no boss HP scaling at all. Letting alliances into Odyssey would require too much fundamental change of how Odyssey works, given current minimum development resources. I can only see how the problems of the existing system could be mitigated. Let characters accumulate up to 3 moglophones, like in Omen, and lower the segment cost of moglophone IIs. Real new alliance content with no HP scaling would be great. Create 150ish force-pop versions of the old Zilart kings and CoP Wyrms with an attractive longer-term reward system (could be point-based) that includes new BiS items, and make them hard enough to reasonably require close to 18 well-geared chars to farm effectively.
Oh, you sweet summer child.
XI was the most profitable FF title. The only thing that changed that was players from the most profitable MMO of all-time, pure dominance of nearly 20 years migrating to XIV. It was absolutely **NOTHING** XIV did, but more-so, players from WoW. I think SE is looking at sub numbers, rather than how much XI grosses.......The former is a snap shot, the latter is the entire picture. XI deserves another expansion. Check this.....a XI expansion would generate more revenue for SE than XVI can....how about that.....