Final Fantasy XI (new thread)

[Rep]

Looks like we might need to take out Yumcax to carry on with the storyline missions, 15k Bayld and who knows how many people.

[Tobal]

well i think it just be you that need clearance, be on the look out for wk shouts they usually happen a lot at the weekend. Yumcax also an asshole with his death curse move.

[mikewl]

Damn, can try and get the Wildskeeper Reive going one evening, hopefully it won't need so many people for it now.

[Rep]

I managed to beat it last night, took close to 3 hours though (lol), AoE Doom is cheap as ****. Should be on about half 7ish tonight to knock out that final chapter.

[Tobal]

good to have had Rep back for a week and get some stuff done. I do forget how much the game has changed since Adoulin (and nearly all for the better), that anyone coming back from 75 or Abyssea/Voidwatch days would be overwhelmed.

I did like that the ending boss fight has one cutscene that was probably the darkest moment in FF game, despite how it all got wrapped up (disappointingly, letting higher powers sort it all), the final boss music was good(almost up there with Odin and Alexander) and the Adoulin ending song Forever Today isn't a patch on CoP's Distant Worlds. I think WOTG got a redone FF main theme based on the one they did for the Mother-crystal addon.

Still the best selection of music in any FF game.

[mikewl]

It was a bit of a dash to the finish line with Rep on a deadline, actually though it made the final evening all the more exciting, time was running late and the last few BCNM's were all must win situations, luckily all worked out in the end. It was definitely the best section of Adoulin missions, boss fight after boss fight. Wondering now where they will go with the game, if Adoulin is the final proper expansion, maybe there will be some additional storyline, just to finish things off, hopefully they let us know soon.

[Rep]

It was great, I remember having a list of issues a mile long when Adoulin first There's a lot of overhauling been done to modernise it. The ability to instantly teleport to any town, city, BCNM, dungeon entrance and having multiple ways to do it is just such a time saver, no more running around for ages trying to get somewhere. Obviously there's also the buffed movement speed for everyone too, that helps.

The trusts solve issues involving a lack of players, their A.I is pretty good too (unless you're a caster), having a WHM, BRD, BRD with you for solo is crazy fun, and makes soloing the likes of Kirin a joke. Also tried a random Limbus and walked out with 50+ Beastcoins. Records of Eminence was also excellent, I could waste days doing that.

However, the biggest problem there isn't anything you can really do about, most fights just involve tank and spank, and it hadn't really been apparent until spending 18 months with ARR, you can apply the same strategy to every fight depending on if there's adds or not. That's down to the games age though.

Wildskeeper is also a bit of a joke, that said I only did one of them (technically 2 if you count the story), it's just 2+ hours of people throwing themselves at a HNM with auto-reraise gear on.

Those 2 things aside though, if they did announce another expansion pack, I'd be all over it, there's loads I still wanted to do during the trial, but ended up getting more done that I thought I would. There's clearly dozens of ideas taken from ARR, the final area itself looking like a XI version of Coil of Bahamut.

[Tobal]

The future of FFxi !!! looks like a live stream to announce something/s... could be F2P, server mergers, Ps2 closed, new expansion(I hope), mini addon, road map of updates, new version for ps3/4/one, working w8/10 editions(without faff). Looking forward to Thursday lunch time.

[mikewl]

Will be interesting to see what they announce, just really wondering what direction they are going, looking to expand the game or wind it down.

[Asura]

Has it wound down since FF15 came out?

I know they're not the same, but it is sort of the successor.

[Tobal]

you mean 14 and they play quite differently, which why I don't like 14's gameplay, but then i never stuck it out long enough to bother with raiding. 11 really is in a class of own nowerdays, nothing plays like it.

its held steady at 250k'ish paying subs, how many of those actively play everyday it probably closer to 100k+mules/2nd's. The problem is although that generates more than enough cash to keep the servers going, people will only stick around with new content and that costs a small dev team... so there always the possibility it will cross that line where SE will say no-more updates and move the team on to 14 or mobile games(urgh)

[Tobal]

Well.... i somehow got the later part of the last message almost spot on.

1 more year of major content updates including 3 addons mission senerios (new areas, how big or small is unknown). Then march 2016 ps2/360 support dropped and only maintenance/qlc/balances for pc... no one knows if this means just tiny bug fixes or similar updates to what we get now.. couple job fixes, Spells, high level fights.

They're also making some sort of smart phone game app based on xi, likely using your character.

Im likely to stick around for year to play the last mission content and can only hope the new areas no matter how small take us north to the orcs homeland , south to mithra homeland and far east.. which for japanese mmo of this age it should have featured a Japanese theme expansion years ago.

[Rep]

Was bound to happen soon, it's had an amazing run, no doubt I'll be returning for the final content, similar to how I did with Adoulin.

[Asura]

I'll be the first to say that I never liked FFXI, and have often been vocally critical of it. I generally dislike games with grind, or anything which feels like "work", and when I tried to get into it, I played it for about 2 months as a monk, and very quickly found myself fighting for hours against the same enemies over and over, easy, bored, dull. It wasn't all bad (the world, stuff like the music etc. and the pad controls, which were novel), but altogether I found it very off-putting.

However, I will say that one thing it has done very well is weathered the introduction of newer games and supported its community. It's had regular expansions, seemingly well-time content updates and they've really made an effort to engage people as the game has dwindled; not simply ditched it when things got a bit tough; polar opposite to something like Matrix Online. They obviously had a good plan for how to both improve the experience and cut costs in the long term, so their operating costs have dropped as the game has got older - basically they get the same amount for less money, so the smaller userbase isn't a problem.

Kudos to Square-Enix, really. Very few MMOs do this well. In honesty, I think it sits shoulder-to-shoulder with WoW, EVE and Guild Wars 1 in this regard.

[Tobal]

Like all MMO's recently the grind is eased massively, between just the ease of solo play over the years and newly added npc helpers (looking at FF15 it seems oddly familiar with 1 controlled character and 3 npcs running around you), and the abundance of exp buffs and short term achievement goals means you wouldn't be in one area for long.

I expect it to go on at least till 2017, it hangs on to the how far they scale back the patches after march 2016, and what the final content added to the game will be, is it similar to the mission addons they did between Wings and Abyssea, to full on hardcore battle content Abyssea turned out to be (as the original swan song for 11, until 14 ver1 bombed). My likely plan is stay till dec/jan, cancel then sub up when the real end of the world comes.

It be a shame the world of vandiel will never grace the mainstream in single player game, the world, art, music, characters and story are a league ahead of 10,12 and 13 combined.