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re: That crazy Final Fantasy MMO
mojojoeo
A block off the park, living the dream.Registered User regular
A block off the park, living the dream.Registered User regular
So I am done with WoW.
Like shred my disks, and yes you can have all my stuff done.
But GD MMO's leave one giant time void.
I have been flirting with getting FF XI for my 360. I mean its like 20 bucks these days.
Mainly looking for something to play very casually.
Talk me into or out of it. GO.
Like shred my disks, and yes you can have all my stuff done.
But GD MMO's leave one giant time void.
I have been flirting with getting FF XI for my 360. I mean its like 20 bucks these days.
Mainly looking for something to play very casually.
Talk me into or out of it. GO.
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
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I suggest you find something better to do with your time than MMOs. I've come to enjoy doing other things than spending hours each day in a single game for months on end.
Pros:
1) Excellent community. Pretty much everybody who still plays loves the game, and they're usually quite helpful of new players. You don't really run into the plethora of morons you see in WoW.
2) No bugs. No crashes. Very limited downtime. I've never seen a MMO with such good quality control.
3) Many different classes to try out, and you can just switch between them in your Mog House (basically your personal house and bank).
4) Because of (3) you only need to level 1 character, so getting access to different areas that require a quest to access only needs to be done once.
5) Fun party dynamic. Basically every character has a few class skills (usually 5-10), then depending on what weapon they have equipped, they have a few (usually 5-10) weapon skills. In a party you have the physical damage dealers use their weapon skills in certain combinations, and you'll get a pretty burst of extra damage. The magical damage dealers can then cast a corresponding spell to the burst, and get extra damage as well. It sounds kind complicated, but once you get used to it it's pretty easy and I find it fun to do.
6) International community. A lot of Japanese people play this game, which I found to be a benefit overall though some people might list this in the cons category. My linkshell (read guild) was about a 50/50 split between USians and JPs and we got along great and had a lot of fun poking at each other's cultural mishaps.
Now, for the Cons:
1) Pretty much no soloing, ever, past level 12 or so, and even before that it's a grind. They've done some things to alleviate this a bit in recent days, but compared to WoW it's still nigh impossible to solo XP. There are a couple classes that can solo decently, but that's it.
2) Honestly, there's just not much to do before you hit max level. There's quests you can do for some cash, and they're pretty well done with fun cutscenes and all, but they aren't terribly rewarding. If you don't enjoy the XP party dynamic, you'll probably get frustrated quickly.
3) Some jobs have a stigma attached of being useless. This isn't really true of course, more just that they were underpowered for a long time or less essential. There's basically 2 classes that can tank, 3 that can heal, 2 that can regen mana to keep chains going, and like 15 random DPS classes that are pretty much interchangeable. What this boils down to is that depending on which job you pick, you might have tougher times getting into XP parties.
4) A lot of the most desireable gear is from long spawn timer mobs, and they're camped 24/7 so it can be a pain. A lot of people are serious gear snobs (though that's kinda to be expected at this point in the game).
Overall, I really enjoyed my time spent in FFXI, and if you have a good linkshell it can be a lot of fun, but I'll grant it's not for everybody and it takes a while to get into. I think there's still a few PA people wandering around as well
I've never played it, but the most common thing I hear said about it is that you can't solo, it takes hours to find a workable group, and the average group actually lasts about 20 minutes.
That's just what I hear.
Couldn't pay me to play it again though. The drama revolving around "statics" and levelling up with friends was more than sufficient to kill it for me, not to mention the difficulty of co-existing with farmers and limited areas to level up in.
I finally threw away my old discs this past weekend when I was making room on my CD shelves.
The server was deserted, I was on Ramuh.
It was a pilgrimage to find an area difficult enough to grant experience high enough to level.
I was incredibly bored and frustrated with it personally.
PSN ID - S-Starwind (Playing Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, Gundam Battle Ops)
Final Fantasy XIV - Masamune Server (Moving to Sargantanas) - Rykosho Hoshikaze
Steam ID - The Starwind
I have never played in a 20 minute group.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
If you are looking toward casual play, DO NOT get this game. Its greatest strength and weakness is the forced grouping which takes a lot of time and effort but builds a solid, well-mannered, competent community. Especially for the overcrowded DPS classes, getting a group can take a long time, and once in, you really need to stay for at least 2, and more likely 3-4 hours to make it worth it and to build your server reputation. Casual non-leveling actives are also sparse -- crafting is no easy feat like WoW (I was a 90/100 fisher when WoW was released, which literally required days of play time to achieve. Since then I hear its gotten easier).
If there is one more testimony to add to this, I'm sort of in the same boat. I've gotten bored of everything WoW offers other than raids, and my guild only goes 3 nights a week, leaving me with a lot of work nights where I have nothing to do. So at the same time I've been desperately trying to find a new game on the side, I just uninstalled FFXI 2 nights ago.
Black Desert: Family Name: Foolery. Characters: Tome & Beerserk.
(Retired) GW2 Characters (Fort Aspenwood): Roy Gee Biv
(Retired) Let's Play: Lone Wolf
14 dps people (including 3 thiefs) and you will have to wait 5 hours befoer you get a party, some days you will not get a party, espically if you havent spent hours farming for +1 eqipment in every slot.
Soloing is impossible for almost all classes, red mages can solo but not for very much xp/hr at all, beast tamers can solo at about 60-70% of the speed of a xp party. Every other class will have an epic fight with "easy prey" and "too weak to be worthwhile" monsters and then finish with 5% hp and need to rest for 40-60 seconds, and gain 12 XP from the fight, you need Several thousand XP to level up.
Starting at level 50 every 5 levels you need to do a quest to be allowed to level up higher, it basically revolves around conving 17 of your friends to come and help you do stuff, Overall most things in the game require lots of other people, levelling, missions (storyline for the game), quests, raids and if you want to enjoy the game you need to join a large, active guild.
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http://alexhays.com/loomis/
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=2273017122992832167&q=Drawing+The+Human+Figure+From+Your+Mind+-+Video+Lesson+1
Thanks for all the suggestions.
Tag- that is exactly it man. Wow is great but I'm done with everything I want to do (which is most everything except hardcore raid.) Its all not so fresh and I don't think an expansion would fix that.
Or accomplish what the rest of us hope for, break the MMOG habit.
Hadn't tought of that. Why throw away 3 months clean and sober.........
The funny thing is that WoW has an auction house because of FFXI. I remember in the early WoW beta when they thought a Trade channel would get the job done. The beta testers, myself included heavily suggested that an auction house like FFXI be implemented.
Luckily they improved upon that idea and I think they did make it much better. I think FFXI could have improved upon their auction house, but it works well enough for what it does.
I also loved the purchase history, was extremely informative for someone who didn't spend a lot of time scouring prices.
I really don't think an MMO is something you want to get if you're up for casual playing. Hell, I could finish a game or two in the time it took me to get an alt to 20. =\
When I got my first level 60 I kind of paused at the top of the mountain for a bit, asked myself "uh, now what?" and started playing an alt.
Then the gf got me into raiding and it was all over from there.
And then someone went and did this:
http://www.ffxiah.com/
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
FFXI deserves a lot of credit for its AH, skillchains, music, translated English dialogue, storyline missions, and graphics. But it also deserves the disparagement it gets for its unfriendly gameplay. SE has tried to improve it, but it hasn't altered the fundamentals.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
This is one of the truest things I've ever read. If you don't have friends to begin FFXI with, then skip it.
Really though, this post is redundant since everyone already covered all the bases.
I really hope one of those secret MMO projects squeenix is working on is some kind of more casual friendly spiritual successor to FFXI.
FFXI is not an MMO for the casual.
Hell of a game, but... yeah.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
I fully agree with most of this. The only two problems I had with FFXI were with its "unfriendly" game play -- namely the horrible PC interface and the difficulty breaking in.
The PC interface is a huge problem now, but since it was basically my first MMO that I seriously got into, I tolerated it because I didn't know any better. The lack of a built in windower, and the forced crash if you minimize make the game archaic and frustrating. The controls were also somewhat clunky at first, but you get used to them (though my hands did get cramps from having to always hold alt or ctrl to activate any skill). But since FFXI was designed to be a console/PC hybrid, I guess there was a limit on what they could achieve w/o just making separate interfaces (which could lead to unfair play).
The difficulty breaking in is new. When I first started near the NA release, I had no issue -- there were enough lowbie players that by level 15 on my first job I was in a good LS with people I would continue to game with for years. If not for WoW and the debacle that was the guild transition to it, I'm pretty sure we would all still be together (when I came back earlier this year, I was welcomed back with open arms by all the people who had stayed -- they were all still together. If not for them I would have given up quickly on my return). By the end of my time in FFXI I was a member of multiple close-knit LSs and was on friendly terms with enough players -- regardless of LS -- that there was always someone to chat with or something to do. Yeah the grouping was somewhat difficult leveling up, but it was the grouping that caused my real love and attachment to the game -- past 55 there were so few douches or incompetent players. Every time I get a bad WoW pug or read the public broadcast channels, I reminisce about the relatively assured quality of players past the first level cap (at least on Phoenix).
Of course, now that the game is way past its prime, this alluring quality seems to have somewhat eroded (based on my experience coming back to the game). The ease of xp at high levels and the scarcity of functional groups at low levels made people a lot less picky about who to take, and, subsequently, the overall quality of player slipped (as people no longer care as much about maintaining a positive rep). So contrary to what some of the posters above have stated, I hope for a new generation of MMO from Squeenix (or anyone really) that fixes the interface problem but returns the game to the highly social-centric style of play that existed at NA PC release. I just hope they do away with the tank/healer/buffer/X*DPS style so that the problem of 9 DPS classes sitting for hours competing for a few slots goes away (similar to the X/Nin WS spam parties of modern FFXI, only with WS/MB style interaction rather than just mashing out WSs as fast as possible). I love WoW for bringing MMOs to the forefront of public attention, but I'm worried we're going to be stuck for years with games that allow people to just march to the end by themselves with no idea how to play and no community quality. Forced grouping doesn't have to make a game unfriendly to people with limited play time -- its the need for 1 or 2 or 3 specific classes/jobs/roles for *everything* that does.
In terms of truly low-time commitment decent quality MMOs on the market, though, I would be interested in peoples opinion (either here or in a new post dedicated to it). I need something to stop the gap between now and WAR release/open beta :-/
Black Desert: Family Name: Foolery. Characters: Tome & Beerserk.
(Retired) GW2 Characters (Fort Aspenwood): Roy Gee Biv
(Retired) Let's Play: Lone Wolf
I really dislike having a bunch of UI clutter on my screen, and FFXI was the master of it.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.