FINAL FANTASY XI 2012 Roadmap Follow

I'm hoping it's actually a queue system to play as "the" monster. For example, you login and register to be a Botulus Rex. Then the next time someone spawns it, you get a 1 minute notice that you will be transported there. You select "Yes" and then get to play as Rex against an alliance of 18, choosing the moves you will do with each tp, and the magic you will use, etc.

I've even thought it would be fun to chose droprates, but that would be abused.

I think the biggest issue is that, aside from the UI stuff, the entirety of this roadmap is either smallscale sh*t that wouldn't even take up half of the normal version updates anyone who's been playing since before abyssea is used to, stupid fixes for sh*t that should have been fixed years ago, and instead might get fixed in a few months, or promised level ups and rehashes of old content we've already done a thousand times. The only people who are excited about this sh*t are people who haven't been around long enough to realize how little there is on this roadmap, and people who are still in denial about the current state of the game

I'll wait for Vana'fest. I'm not impressed by any of this.

And I say this as a player that really misses Vana'diel. I was heartbroken to see all this stuff. It seems they're adding a lot of fluff, but no meat.

Exactly...

Exactly the point I was trying to make, and it was way before WoTG. How long did it take to finish ToAU, and what did we get for updates in those couple years? A few job ability changes and ZNM. Woohoo! >.>

I dearly miss the days when the release of new missions would be the most exciting part of the update.

I stopped playing after the last Add-on Scenario, and was sorely hoping they would add some sort of new story content in this road map. Hell it didn't even have to be a full blown expansion. Just a full scale elaborate mission line, that would last a few weeks.

What are their storyboard and Cutscene staff even doing right now?

WoW isn't older than FFXI...

I posted that post 10 minutes before i had to leave so let me expand on my line of thinking on this one without a time limit. While I agree that feeling great at the begining of expansion where everyrthing fresh and new but think about it. Given our current exp situation the only way to keep players in a new zone for a great deal of time is to have GoV from the get go and that means their dungeons would only be used consistently after launch. The new central city hub would only be used after that new area smell wears off to get to the new areas if there an incentive for it.

What I am saying is that once the dust settles on a traditional expansion. What's to keep us there? If it's new end game content what's to stop them from just releasing end game content with new battlefields in our existing world to reach the same effect?

A mini expansion with 3 new areas each with the whole map in mind to be an end game challenge would be a much better bet in my opinion. If you think about it name one expansion mini or otherwise that has shown the staying power of abyssea. They hit so many of the right notes with abyssea series of mini expansions the only one they really missed was a proper storyline and ACTUAL new zones. Where as a new expansion would loose it's new area appeal in less then 2 weeks.

I had several ideas involving areas people mentioned the most and I like to share one as an example. A 3 series mini expansions involving the mithran homeland to the far south. Accessed by Khazam by a not so traditional chocobo caravan through the jungle. The 3 mini expansion would feature 2 outer areas and 1 inner area. Each outer area would feature a mithran tribe similar to that fund in khazam. You will have to challenge their warriors, however they will not fight you until you are proven worthy by defeating various nms in their region. Once you defeat the warrioes you can challenge the head chieftain. Once you cleared both outer areas you will gain access to the inner areas with a more expansive town but similar challenges. Once you gained the respect of cheftains it will unlock shops and various quest barred previously. Explaining more about the area and their society. Once all areas are cleared in each mini expansion you gain access to main city where the... Good lord I forgot what their ruler title is,, Can be found. The whole city is completely hostile. You must defeat your way up the ranks of her army and challenge her to finally gain the respect of mithras everywhere.(at this point you will get a key item that makes any mithra enemy non aggressive.) The nm system would work similarly to how it did in the first expansion of abyssea.(in terms of tiers)

Anyways I think this would be a better route then releasing a completely new expansion where most areas only serve as exp spots.

There are ways to make zones useful beyond EXP or the occasional NM. Need a minimalist example? Cruor. Everyone can get it. Every mob in Abyssea drops it. No, not everyone will get it in the same amounts, but it can later be converted to rewards not arbitrarily locked by cooldown timers, JP midnights, or whatever. Stock these "vendors" with enough goods to keep people playing even after they get their directly desired goods and you're off to a good start. And just because it's something anyone can do at their own pace, for the love all that's holy, don't make the actual rewards sh*t. That is part of what kills an event before it's even figured out. The community needs less worrying about what the other guy's wearing and more having fun getting everyone the things they want to wear.

Things can get more complex from there. I'm not particularly keen on Lax's idea, as it introduces disparity between those who complete content and those who haven't (especially when introducing non-aggro mechanics). The whole gating areas behind certain requirements was also one of the more poorly received aspects of CoP, much as some try to justify it as motivation to partake in the missions. But really, one objective I'd take in making new zones more interesting is making them more dynamic. Campaign could be perceived as a baby step in this mechanic, but its biggest flaws are stagnation (one objective point) and the weekly tally reliance.

My mistake then. I'd assumed it was slightly older due to the larger fanbase (And the fact that whenever anyone mentions MMO's, WoW is the only one that's ever brought up). However, I can still point out that Runescape saw a total HD makeover and has been around since 2001. Now if THAT doesn't make a case, then nothing will.

Hmmm, after finishing reading the roadmap, i don't see anything there that will entice me to come back to the game, with POL demise, my account went inactive (yup, i'm one of those who didn't make the account transfer), again, but this time i'm going to leave it like that, i never liked the so called "end game" scene, and since almost everything they are adding lately to the game is end game related, there is nothing here for me, with all my friends gone, what's there to do... the last time i logged to the game was in early February, and what i did? i just was standing idle in Port Jeuno, looking at the shouts, gave a couple of teleports, then i started to run... i ran from there to Windurst... and it was... fun.

I warp back to Jeuno, went idle again for a while, then i just shut down the game...

I wanted to at least finish ToAU and Wings, but right now i don't care anymore.

Than you very much to all the people here at Alla, you are all great, peace :)

This pretty much. Updating the UI to something every modern MMO already has isn't new, its the dev's finally taking off the retard hat for once.

I how many people realize this game is still using DirectX 8 for it's graphics rendering. Most modern cards don't even properly support it anymore and it's being emulated in DX9 instead. They need to update the graphics code to DX9 at a minimum, maybe even 10/11 if they can swing it. This doesn't require texture / resources updates, those can stay the same, going to DX9 alone would vastly improve the game's appearance. Lighting / shadows and special effects would look so much better in DX9.

When was that?


Let's not forget how THAT would go:

Patch >>> OMFG SOMETHINGS BROKEN >>> yay fixed >>> OMFG WE BROKE SOMETHING ELSE >>> yay fixed >>> OMFG HOW THE HELL DID THAT EVEN BREAK IN THE FIRST PLACE? >>> etc etc

My cell phone games have better graphics then Runescape HD...

Edited, Apr 27th 2012 6:53pm by Telaki

As said, while several areas were added with Wings of the Goddess, most all of them were simply reskins of existing areas in the present. If you were familiar with those areas in the present, there wasn't any real feeling of exploration with going through those areas in the past, apart from avoiding the higher level mobs that frequent those areas. The only legitimately new areas were Grauberg, Vunkerl, and Fort Karugo-Narugo, while the others were nothing new at all.

The chances of a new, let alone several new weapon types being added is very slim, and they've gone on record that they'll never add throwing weaponskills, so that's pretty much out of the question.

The majority of the player base don't like spells being added that are generally considered unnecessary, such as the Gain spells and Temper for Red Mage (because they can't be cast on others), so adding more spells to appease the player base would only be worth it if they were actually good spells.

You're probably the only individual that still has a desire to see the Evolith system brought back, because the majority of the player base found it terrible because of how underwhelming the stats were you could obtain and just how overly troublesome it was to even make the gear useable. With players with several jobs, to have gear that was only useful for a single mob type (which is how a lot of the armor was) would be near impossible to pull off with current inventory limitations. With the feedback that they got from the response to the Evolith system, it's likely never going to make a comeback, because it was very poorly received due to how much work needed to be put into it for such a small gain.

Players want to see new, fresh content, not simply rehashed older content, which isn't unreasonable for us to expect if they want us to continue to play.

SE basically said a pet job shouldn't get the same level of TH without subbing THF as other jobs get by subbing THF. So I don't see Cait Sith getting TH3. I don't even see Cait Sith getting TH2, since gear that enhances pet TH (which SE talks about as something that they are planning for) would then boost it to the same level as /THF.

So they decided to fix those fixes that should have been fixed years ago and you're still complaining? Some people are never satisfied.

the issue is that they're just now realizing that this sh*t needs fixed, and are doing it during a time period where, while the fixes are greatly appreciated, they add nothing to the game other than easing our perpetual migraines ever so slightly, as we continue to slog away at the same, 3, 4, 5 year old content we've done for the last 3, 4, 5 years and not release anything new and interesting to keep our attention. Bug fixes and the like are sh*t you do after you've released a big new shiny to keep the players' attention, not when you've not released anything new except zerg-grind content (VW) or rehashed content (neo-nyzul, which wasn't even reskinned, it's 100% identical to old nyzul, except that the mob levels are higher, the NM names and ??? drops are different, and you can't save your progress, which was the one defining feature of nyzul). Legion is new, but it requires way to much effort from the players for waaaaay to little reward, and while they're aware of that, they're not really doing sh*t about it. That's all they've added to the game since heroes of abyssea. Voidwatch, Nyzul-2, and Legion. We need something @#%^ing new that isn't the same sh*t. Most of the players who would be really happy about these fixes have long since quit the game because they ran out of things to do.

1min automaton recast (Deus Ex Automata) isn't "long".



Hehe, so true. While I do appreciate the increased effort to get stuff right before implementing it, that whole update process did have a certain charm. The overwhelming deluge of new sh*t, some of it broken or messing up other things, just made every update feel like a new exploration.

It's a bit incorrect to just up and call puppets free. The job has a pretty steep entry cost through attachments and oils, and items needed to unlock frames are just icing. Parts being locked behind the ENM or Ashu Talif BCs don't really help, either.

Edited, Apr 29th 2012 9:12am by Seriha

Exactly.

Some people went nuts over the WOTG for the "Revamped areas", TOAU for pretty much scrapping the original areas and turning Jeuno in to a ghost town. That only "Low levels" touch...

Sorry but everyone can scream all they want, if you really are that unhappy I would suggest you quit and come back and "Look" in 18 months time. I also remember people getting angry at the fact they were paying a monthly subscription and forced to buy the expansion packs or be left out........

Now tell me SE can win if they "Listen to us"?

Everyone has made some valid points bashing the timeline laid out for 2012... but more to the point, what we want is something where the gameplay is "fun" again. And the most fun I ever had in this game, hands down, was Abyssea.

I left and came back to this game several times, but Nothing really changed, it was just subtle differences here and there. Admittedly, I had some fun with ZNM and Nyzule (even though nyzule had annoying wait times and znm had annoying pop farming), but overall, nothing thrilled me the way Abyssea did. Had Tanaka not screwed over the game's flow towards Abyssea, in favor of VNM / VWNM / crap-outside-abyssea, I'd still be playing every single day.

When Abyssea was introduced it made me see the game in a whole new light, giving hope to jobs that were lost and forgotten, allowing small groups to have the thrill of taking down giant bosses, and dedicated linkshells farm weapons on par with relics. The new AF was the most appropriate I'd ever seen it, supplying stats where they were needed and really making you feel good about working towards it. I never really ran out of something to do, since leveling became faster and I was able to explore more jobs to see which playstyle I liked best, and not have to panic if I didn't have that refresh +1 piece (even though I still wanted and tried for it) since I had atma that kept me going for days. Moreover, I was forced to "think" about a battle plan because the chosen approach influenced what the reward would be.

I know Abyssea still exists, it's not like it went anywhere, but we all see Tanaka devaluing the rewards gained through Abyssea, and it's only a matter of time before he flat out 'ruins' Abyssea intentionally on part of his "I'm back suckers" parade. Part of me is hoping for an Abyssea V2 where we can finally complete the Abyssea weapons, or at least a branched final-version of those weapons to 99 without it taking the currently ridiculous amounts of time (particularly, time that is invested in something almost none of us find enjoyable or want to do) ... but part of me just wants Tanaka to burn in hell, and the team that brought us Abyssea to return to FFXI, and revive that part of the game themselves so Tanaka doesn't completely screw it up. It'd be the ultimate ending to the game, where all of the old 75 content is now up to snuff, and all of the Abyssea content is up to snuff, all in such a way we'd be satasfied with. Then, after that, if they wanted to add more areas, a new expansion, new jobs etc, I think we'd all be happy to see it, but in the mean time they really need to fix not only what "Tanaka" sees as broken, but also fix what the "players" see as broken. Until some happy medium is found between those, the game is basically going to continue losing people day by day.

That being said, Vana'fest could bring many things. My guess is, however, it will be 95% news about FFXIV v.2.0, 4% recapping the FFXI timeline, and 1% crap. And if there 'is' an expansion for FFXI, which I highly doubt, it'll be another micro-expansion like the moogle kupo d'tat stuff, that didn't really add any content, but just threw in random stuff as an excuse to get to a single choose-your-own-reward / augment item.

Why would a "Vana'diel Festival" spend any significant amount of time talking about Eorzea?

Wow, Stockholm Syndrome much? You've totally justified paying for something you don't like under the idea that it helps the people that do like it instead. I hope I am never that much of a sucker with my money.