Does anyone on here actually prefer FFXI to XIV?Follow

Oh, my mistake.

WUTEVA
YALL DONT KNOW ME

Look, I'm just saying that unless you magically found some way to pack multiple pieces of gear into one slot that the rest of us haven't figured out, there isn't any possible way you were as well geared as you say you were. You were making sacrifices, whether or not you were even aware of it.

Well number one, right off the bat, you're completely wrong about crafting. I've never blown "millions of gil" to get anything. If you do Tradecraft leves it levels your crafting rather quickly as well. You don't need to "grind it out with annoying recipes" to get anywhere with it. Not to mention you're ******** about master crafting when you claim to "only be in the 40s". You can't touch master crafting until 50. And unlike FFXI, it is less of a grind to level crafts. (Trust me, I know. Look at my crafting levels in sig.) That all took me probably 9 of the 10 or so years I really played FFXI. I've been playing FFXIV since PS4 release, and have all crafts and gathering 50+. I enjoy crafting on both, but months to years is a rather disparate comparison.



There is a trick to everything. Level Botany and Culinarian, and you can easily get the crafting headgear from npc that is better than fully melded crafting headpiece. This really helps. It took me about an hour total of gathering and crafting to do this (after both of those jobs were leveled of course). It would have taken me another hour probably to get master goldsmithing, but I put it aside to start over on a less crowded server.

The ones that tend to ***** beyond that, are the ones who can't buy themselves the next level of craftmanship. Which is the 3 star recipes. You have to actually craft the items yourself. (SE's way of separating the buyers from the actual crafters.) Which to be honest, is simply a matter of wanting to do it. Kind of like wanting a RME on XI. You don't need to be a master craftsman to make money. It just depends if you really want to make those recipes yourself, or buy them from someone.



This I am curious about. You said (and I'll quote it below) that you're not max level, which is 50. Meaning you're not even able to access the majority of endgame content. There is a ton of stuff to do that is not hardmode or extreme. Crystal Tower is far from hardmode, yet challenging enough when you hit 50. And you make it sound like repeating a fight is a huge chore. You literally just restart it. You don't have to regroup, or shout for more members. You don't lose 30-99 seals. A friend doesn't /blist you for life. It simply restarts. Even in the dungeons, you don't have to fight your way back through it. You simply go to last boss or w/e that killed you.



Again the last part of this is an outright lie, or you have no clue about leves. Grinding on "annoying recipes" is not the only way to level a craft. Grinding at mining/botany nodes is not the only way to level miner/botanist. Grinding at same level monsters is not the only way to level a class/job. There are Leves, Hests, Fates, dungeons, missions, quests, etc. that will all give experience for whatever it is you're doing.



Wrong. So wrong. There are tons of low man dungeons to do. And they've even added more. Yes, some are called "hardmode" but that's simply a classification to say it's not for level 30. Some of them really aren't that hard if you've geared up your lv50 decently. Not only that, but people shout for raiding and map hunting companies all the time. Have you tried treasure maps? I don't know how long it's been since you've played, but they've also added Hunts, with random occurrences of NMs. You can also continue the story, which they keep adding to as well. But from looking at your levels, I seriously doubt you've gotten into the story, let alone finished it. (You can't at 42)

But there is the part that absolutely baffles me. You're level 42. You can't access the majority of the stuff you're complaining about. You can't even access Atma weapons until after you access Zenith weapons. Which you can't do that until level 50 and having beaten the first part of the main story, and your final job quest. (Neither of which is hard, and can literally be soloed. In fact, it forces you into solo fights to learn your job. If that's not casual enough then wtf?) There are a few fights along the way where you have to party up, but unlike XI, there is Duty Finder. You don't need to shout for 20 hours for people to join you on a mission that 90% of the community hasn't done. (Looking at you SoA) Instead you just sign up for the Duty.

The only part I'll admit to is that Atma farming can be a *****. You can get really lucky, or not. But when compared to XI's RMEs, it is far less of a grind IMO. In essence that is what you're doing with those weapons. They're the relics of XIV. But really, in essence I don't see how you could even get into that being level 42.

Well since you asked...

I never played WoW, so I don't know how much of a "clone" anything would be to it. But here is what interested me in both games.

FFXI

This was my absolute first MMO. I had never played one before it, and seldom played one while I was playing it. Most were kind of crap when compared to it IMO. I got it back when it came out on PS2, and have played it on 360 and PC as well. (At one point I had a 2nd character to dual box with.) At first I really liked the character models and the somewhat realistic nature of things. I looked at WoW before choosing, and to be honest WoW looked cartoonish to me. They even called their characters "toons" which kind of turned me off of it.

I always liked the atmosphere of FFXI. It was kind of neat being the traditional fantasy game, but with subtle little hidden technology that was beyond the scope for medieval fantasy. I started out as a RDM, in the hopes I could become a RNG/RDM. But to my despair, I learned rather quickly that enspells did not work on ranged weapons. Luckily I found that out before getting RNG, as RDM could use bows. So I changed to RNG/NIN and slowly leveled that up. Found some great friends along the way.

Eventually I started crafting. Loved it for the most part, but steadily began to hate how the skillups dwindled. It became more of a job than anything, but I still enjoyed it. Despite it being a grind, I slowly leveled woodworking, as it supported my job as a bow RNG.

I liked sky, though it was boring a lot of times. I usually had to sit for hours and scan for Zipacna. Which usually got me into trouble, as I would entertain myself by saying in linkshell Zipacna... is not up. By the time ToAU came out, my friends and I experimented in creating our own linkshell, but constant drama pushed us all away at some point, and I played around with my new love COR.

I loved the stories, as I've loved the stories in all FF games. Though CoP was challenging, I loved trying to beat it merely to see more of the story. That made it all worthwhile to me.

However, around the time of Abyssea, I had grown disenchanted with all things "big group". It was a lot of drama. A lot of fighting for who lots what. A lot of corruption in leadership, either favoring themselves or favoring someone close to them. It turned the whole game into a career, which made me feel like a work horse most of the time.

So, with a small group of friends, and a few dual boxes, we set out to conquer Abyssea content. Which was fun for me. And it started getting me into leveling more jobs to 99, as it was far easier and far less of a grind.

Then the dark days came. Voidwatch... Crappy droprates. Crappy gear. Crappy content. Crappy 18 person content. From there it began a cycle of bringing back big group content, and a constant stream of ilvl creeping. I had COR, so I never had a gripe like some of being left out. It just didn't feel like "good" content to me though.

It brought back more of the shouting for hours to get the perfect group. More drama. More lotting restrictions a la dynamis when it was big group. It felt like they tried to bring back some form of dynamis, but make it "new". Then quickly after it became low man content, but by then I had no point to doing it. There was better gear outside of Delve, and somewhat easier to obtain.

So simplified:
1. Liked the story. Still like the story, but will not play until SoA is done.
2. Liked the challenges, until they became filled with drama.
3. Liked the design styles; characters, architecture, etc.
4. Did not like the grinding of everything. Anyone who played pre-ToAU knows what I'm talking about.
5. Do not like the ilvl creeping now, where gear is replaced by next update.
6. Do not like the job balance.
7. Do not like shouting/waiting for group content.
8. Like the newer things they're implementing from XIV. (although it seems to destroy the memory on 360)

FFXIV

First of all the graphics on PS4 blew me away. I know that's not fair to compare to a game that was on PS2. However, FF games are known for amazing graphics. XIV is simply amazing in that respect.

Again, I went back to my XI roots. I wanted to be an Archer and eventually a Bard. This job was simply everything FFXI RNG was not. You could move while shooting. (a huge handicap if you've ever played rng in ballista and had someone run in circles around you) You don't need to carry thousands of arrows with you either. (another huge handicap to XI rng)

It took me a little bit to get used to the fighting system. As it should. Used to auto-attacking, I went out and started auto-attacking things. Very soon afterwards, I found out that using an ability did way more damage. It was the equivalent to having weaponskills, but instead of building TP, you have TP set at 1000, and each ability slowly takes some away.

The next thing I loved, was not having to rest to get HP back (and later MP). It refills like FFXII. This game felt a lot like FFXII online in that regard.

Slowly I began what I thought would be a grind to 50. But after unlocking Leves and Guildhests, and doing a few FATEs and main story along the way; I suddenly found myself level 25 in less than a week. (And not playing 24/7 either)

I took a slight pause to craft and mine at this point. Now I had tried both of these in the beta, and absolutely love their system for it. Crafting is actually fun and levels up in experience (not .1-5 skill ups). The experience is balanced and increases as you level, as long as you craft stuff close to your level. The gathering jobs are fantastically done as well. You can go out and actually gather what you want to gather. If you want copper ore, you go and get copper ore. You don't run around mines all day gathering stacks of pebbles, hoping to get a few copper ores. Each spot has certain items, and each node gives you a list of those items to choose from. You don't have to wander all over a zone to hopefully get something you're looking for.

Back to leveling. What took me from PS2 release to ToAU release, I had done in about a month on XIV. And that is getting my main job to max level. My bard could now finish the first part of main story, and then do Crystal Tower. Which btw looks absolutely amazing in HD.

Shortly after I had unlocked my relic weapon, and was busy getting atmas for it (7/12) when we decided to buy a house. Yes... unlike XI, you can buy a house in XIV. However, on the server we were on, the housing districts were absolutely crowded, and the spot we wanted was 3-4mil. So my friend and I looked into other servers, and found the least populated one the spots were under 1mil. We set out to start all over (this month) and do it all from scratch. In less than 18 days, I'm already lv47 Scholar (or Summoner), simply doing main missions, job quests, guildhests and fates. Not to mention I have all crafts 10+ with goldsmithing and alchemy 27/34 respectively. Miner is 30. They would be higher, but you only get 6 leves a day.

So simplified:
1. Like. Fresh and new. Better graphics that make it hard to go back to FFXI. Less laggy due to better memory allocation. (I won't go into pc on that, as it's a separate issue completely. I know it's far better on pc.)
2. Like. Way less of a grind. There are grindy parts, but you'll find that in all MMOs. The game is rather casual in what you can do at any given time.
3. Like. Decent story that encourages you to level as you go. (like CoP)
4. Like. Far easier crafting/gathering system. With lists of recipes at your disposal, and no wasted time gathering things you don't need.
5. Like. Ease of transportation. Every character, despite job, can warp/teleport to waypoints. (this is something they've gradually started putting into FFXI)
6. Like. You can swap jobs with ease. (FFXI has sort of done that recently with wardrobe and gear sets) However, you still need to run back to mog house. On XIV you do not.
7. Like. Better job balance. Duty finder. (I'll explain both of those after, because it's a major point)
8. Like. I can change my character slightly for a mere 2k gil at any time. After a certain quest is completed, you can change hair style and color, face paint/tattoo, makeup, etc. Can't do this in XI. You're stuck with the same character for 10 years, unless you completely start over. Little things like this make a difference in a game you play over the years. (or for a little bit of money, SE lets you change your character completely, and even gives you 1 free change after a month or so)
9. Like. No skill ups at all on your classes. Your skill comes from knowing how to use your job, and where to place yourself during battles. No more tedious .1-.5 skill up on your sword.

Now... a little on Duty Finder and Job Balance.
A major thing I absolutely hate about FFXI is the job balance. Ever since they've raised the level cap, or maybe before that, the jobs have been completely unbalanced. In general, tanks can't hold hate, some DDs are better than others, and a lot of the jobs are simply not used. FFXI forces you to level jobs you might not even care for, in order to secure a spot in endgame content. This constantly changes, but for the most part, some of your jobs will never be used.

I have a lot of jobs 99. I use about 5 of them for various reasons. For soloing and messing around, I jump on BST, THF or DNC. Neither of those jobs, however, are ideal for endgame content, unless someone wants TH. Then you might get to use THF. Fortunately I have a job that is desired (COR) that I actually enjoy. For some of you players out there, you might not like COR, or BRD, or healing. So unless you have a well-geared DD flavor-of-the-month job, you're pretty much shut out of most big group content. Unless by some miracle you know a guy that knows a guy, that may just let your PUP squeeze in. But unfortunately there's a MNK that will do the job better. So go level your BRD while we do this Delve.

In FFXIV, yes things are simplified, but they are also balanced WAY better. Content usually calls for a tank, a healer, and 2 dps in 4 person groups. In 8 it usually calls for 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 dps. Jobs are broken down into these categories, and the content is balanced to where any job can work in either slot. Or if you're "hardcore" you can actually make up your own parties and do the content your way.

This is simplified even better with Duty Finder. An in-game mechanic that takes people from all servers, and groups them together for content they are seeking to do. It is extremely hard to get "left out" in FFXIV. Duty Finder is not racist, nor jobist. It will find you a party to do a duty. You may have to wait a little while, as there are a lot more dps jobs than tanks/healers, but it is not a constant day-filled shouting competition.

Got something better to do? Just sign up for the Duty on the job you want to do it on, then go fish. Once the duty starts, you can easily change jobs back and commence the duty. You don't need to catch a teleport, or hitch a ride to Port Jeuno or Adoulin. You simply go in from wherever you happen to be, finish the duty, then you're right back to where you were fishing.

And THIS, is why they call it casual content. You don't have to spend all day trying to do something. You don't have to spend all day in a particular zone, waiting for an event to occur. You're in control of when you want to do 99% of the content.

Ugh, nope. Most tedious **** ever without a guaranteed payoff (you will more often than not get the materia you don't want). Time = money argument comes to mind here.

If we had any sort of control over the kind of materia we got, I'd be for it. But instead, most of my spiritbonding has just cost me gil/materials in order to get materia that was less than their value.

By the way, most +spiritbond gear is useless, because all that does is take up slots that... you should be using to equip more stuff to be spiritbonded.

Thing is, I'm not hardcore in XIV, and I still have a blast. I get 3-4 hours 4-5 days a week most nights. Turns out I was just on the wrong class - I leveled up WHM for convenience, but I didn't start having fun at endgame til I leveled up BLM. I still play WHM on occasion (I am thinking I might try it for T5 since I can't get a group on BLM since well geared BLMs are a dime a dozen).

I also have a surprising amount of fun on WAR. I never thought I'd enjoy a tank job. But it feels a lot like FFXI's WAR, which I did enjoy. (Fell Cleave! Wheeeeeee)

And I still have fun in FFXI too, of course. My old LS surprised me with ADL runs last night and I'm now 2/5 umbrals toward 99 Ghorn.

So basically you saw/heard what other people were saying, and just rolled with it. Rather than trying it for yourself. =/



Annoying because they take a little bit of work? Each 5 levels gives you 3 options. And some are even repeatable. Meaning 1 leve can get you 3 turn ins. In all honesty I found those types of leves more annoying than paying a little gil to teleport. You get part of the gil back from quest at any rate. Also, you can set a free teleport. So as you're doing this, one way is free. The other way can be free if you set it as home point and warp. Yes, I know. Warp has a long recast. But it is a method of making that cost go down, or away completely.

All I can say to not having materials, is look online to see what you need. I'm sure you use sites online for FFXI. Why not FFXIV?

This sounds to me like a whole lot of just not wanting to do it. =P



When you actually get to 50, and actually do the story. Which btw is designed to push you into it as you level. (Think CoP) You will get into better dungeons, that drop better gear. Which in turn will get you into better dungeons that drop better gear. Think of it like SE wanted you to run Skirmish > Delve > Skirmish > Delve > Skirmish in XI. Eventually you do start collecting Mythology Tomes. (You're also not limited with Mythology, only Soldiery. And a rather big limit of Soldiery at that.) Or you can do the new Hunts, which they just changed with an update today. Mythology and Hunt seals both will let you buy AF2.

There's quite a bit of content after 50, which is why I find it rather sad that you quit at 43. You're not even in the endgame stuff yet. It's like quitting FFXI at 90 because you heard Delve sucked. Both games are designed to get you to top level, and then do the better content. The rest along the way is fodder to entertain you slightly while you get there.

And as I said before, I never played WoW. I really don't know how any game would compare to it.



I don't know which maps you tried. And to be quite honest, haven't tried a lot of them myself. I do know they increase in level, and the ones recently added are for hardcore people.



They recently changed the B rank to cut down on this. But this also depends on what server you play on. The legacy servers, people are absolute ******** about this content. Half the time you'd never know a nm was up. Other servers might shout and wait for people. The server I play on, people have waited up to 10 minutes before to make sure everyone got in on an A rank. But that's all community. No way to control that.



Stone Vigil is my favorite dungeon of the story. The story tends to pick up there as well. I know why you stopped, and it has a lot to do with the job you picked. However, it does suck you didn't make it further in story. I mean, you're not even to Garuda yet. :(

But I think people have vastly different views for what "casual" means. For me, it means I can turn on the game, and go do something. Despite it being fun, or a grind, or whatever; I like being able to jump into a game and just go do it. Need a party for it? Hit up Duty Finder. I'm not shut out of something like old FFXI systems like sky, nyzul, etc. at 75, because I can't get a party together. FFXI has just recently added what they call "casual content" like RoE. For 10-11 years prior to that, there was hardly **** to do, unless you managed to gather people, or join a linkshell. You spent most of the day standing in town waiting for shouts. That to me, is not casual. That's dedicated, borderline hardcore, to stand around and wait for what you need to get done. Big linkshells became like a job, where I would get home from work, login, and have to go to an event to get anything worthwhile. That's not casual imo.

FFXIV, I can login, and maybe do a dungeon. Queue up Duty Finder, and I'm in. If it takes awhile, as some bigger group dungeons do, I can go do something else until it commences. I don't need to waste that time /sh for a group, and hoping we get the right people for it. I don't want to go do a dungeon? Maybe I go mining, to get stuff to make money. I can literally go to the spot I need, for the item I need, and gather as much as I want. I don't spend countless hours wandering around an entire zone to hopefully get a few of that item. Whichever one of those is casual, that's up to you, but I find FFXIV far more casual than FFXI.



Again, I can't speak to WoW, but PLD is probably one of the most boring jobs on FFXIV. lol Even healing on SCH is more entertaining. At least you get a pixie. If you truly want excitement, and want to move more, I'd suggest MNK or BRD. If mage is your thing, BLM or SMN (which gives you access to SCH as well). I'm just glad they made SMN into a dps, rather than a gimp healer.



I hope you get into the story more, and actually get to endgame this time. You might like it. Some of the later fights are a lot more fun imo.

ZAM trying not to make Google angry.

There's only so much you can do with a game as old as FFXI is, and to be honest, I'm amazed at what they DID accomplish. There's a few things they could do, but IMO, there's a limit to what the engine will allow.

Though they could make some more QoL changes, such as....

1). Synthesis Failures on recipes you're well over cap (is this REALLY necessary? All it does is cause needless frustration and it only serves to make the player think they wasted their time even leveling the craft in the first place)
2). Increased skillup chances (crafting 20, 30+ of a recipe for no skill gains is just not fun whatsoever)
3). Allow us to turn crystals into clusters a'la Nokkhi's quivers and/or allow crystals to stack to 99 so we don't have dozens of stacks of crystals that only sell for 1k on the AH.
4). Give us a few more reasonable recipes to fill in some gaps in some crafts
5). Make some types of items more reasonable to acquire (especially skins) so that skilling up is actually possible (this + #2 makes it perhaps even more ridiculous than it was in the old days because nobody farms that stuff anymore, thus very little of it in the AH and it seems like some spawns (especially tigers) have been greatly reduced in some areas)
6). Expand FoV so that it is competitive with GoV and/or add more Training Regimes to fill in some gaps (the 30-45 level range is completely barren of any decent places to use FoV/GoV to level on until you're able to handle Crawlers' Nest/Garlaige)

^^
This.

They're trying to fix flaws in FFXI; we're getting updates every single month on a game that is 12 years old. How many 12-year old MMORPGs are still being updated monthly with lots of QoL fixes, and even new content after 12 years?

The list is surely very small.

While FFXI shows its age and there are things I sorely wish they'd change (some of which I listed above), I still have to step back and say "this game is amazing" as I _still_ play it after all of these years, and the fixes and things they've done to the game in all of this time have really improved the game by miles.

Heck, the Abyssea areas, Trust System and the I-Level gear alone have changed the game radically from what it was during WoTG. I know some players talk like they don't like the changes, but they seem to be the vast minority.

This is definitely not true. SE has introduced things to promote SC/MB, but the player base has moved from that. As a RDM, I've always SC and/or MB in party even though no one was setting up skill chains. The player base is simply not interested.

I'm about to quote what you said... not because I disagree, but because I wish to share my thoughts on what was said:



Broken, how? Granted I've not done much group play since I started playing again, I'm asking out of genuine curiosity.



Job Balance has always been atrocious; it was when I joined during RoZ and it never really did get any better. There was always the FoTM job, only it tends to be FoTY instead. And there's always those jobs nobody cares about.



I've always felt that PUP was that class they just "threw in there" just-because. Since they can't wear any of the awesome melee stuff, they'll never be all that great at melee, but yet they don't have any magic skills so they can't really do magic either. I get that their automatons are supposed to be powerful, but eh. I just feel the whole job is flawed from the get-go and it never was fixed. At this point, I wonder if they even know how to fix it; they might just be hand-waving it going "meh, we'll just leave it like that, too much trouble to fix it".



As they've always been, yes. I don't understand why we can't at least invite from other regions and why the command line /pcmd add ____ only works if you're standing very close to the person you're trying to add. That doesn't even make sense.



I think the mentality behind the BLU spell rate learn at Lv99 is that if they're 99, then they probably just want their spells and such or something, I don't know. IMO, a BLU should always learn the spell the first time it is used on them, 100% chance but that's just my opinion. Some of the mobs that you gotta learn spells off of aren't exactly plentiful, and the spells they want you to learn aren't used a whole lot. It sucks even more when you need 5, 10+ times before you learn the stupid thing. I remember a friend of mine spending HOURS trying to get Frightful Roar, for example.



Well, skillchains are awesome when you're alone with your trusts! lol. I love killing a mob in less than 5 seconds. That's always fun. In groups, hmm...



Skillchains are free damage as they've always been...but you're right, offensive magic just doesn't do enough (and takes too much mana) for anybody to really care about Magic Bursts.