XI Was So Challenging, It Brought People Together

It's unfortunate they couldn't keep up with the games mechanics after people bitched to Yoshida at numerous conventions about how easy Final Coil/raiding in general was.


Optimized party synergy is only necessary for world first progression, because you're going in at 20 ilvls below the gear that drops from the raid with the intent of spending all day breaking down mechanics and how to deal with them.

Once your ilvl ramps up a bit, any composition within the 2/2/4 set-up will work. And as ilvl continues to climb, so does the ability to use completely silly compositions.

I'm sorry you seemingly know nothing about how the game is played.

For A3s I am refering to the tornado phase, where SMNs DPS goes to ***, because it has no way to apply its DOTs in an effective manner to the slimes, same thing with Brawler balls in M2s. Ruin II and Bio 1 do not give it some sort of godsend advantage over Black Mage.

GL3 is not hard to maintain(especially after the duration increase), and even when you lose it, it's not like you die, nor does your DPS completely fall off the map. Really not that hard, and you can even have your group work with you so you can maintain it over the course of the entire fight. That;s always been the thing with Monk and always will be. GL falling off sometimes is how the other DPS are even able to keep up.

There's a difference in surviving a tank buster, and having a tank buster do next to nothing to you. That difference being whether or not your healer has to stop DPSing to fix you up. With appropriate use of regens and shields, PLD takes next to nothing. DRK requires far more support, particularly when the tank buster is physical. Added fact, PLD can precast Clemency and negate Tank Busters by itself.

Even with just one caster, the BRD still enhances the total DPS of 3 party members, and the partial DPS of one to two others. Foe's lasts longer than Hypercharge as well, and BRD deals more damage than MCH directly. MCH also does not have Second Wind, and must rely on healers coming out of DPS stance if it is the target of mechanics or screws up.

Don't get mixed up. You do not gain DPS by taking off casting stance as a ranged. You only come closer to maintaining optimal DPS for the fight when there are long bouts where you cannot stand still(which are few and far in between). SMN has Dreadwyrm Trance, that's it. You have to have used 3 Aetherflow abilties to use it as well, it is not an advantage over BLM.

He made the other melee more like Monks, particularly Ninja, but they can both lose their buff easily on a boss jump. Particularly Dragoon. You have to use Geirskogul for optimal DPS, but there are times where you have to know not to use Geirskogul so that you do not lose Blood of the Dragon. But then there are times where the jump lasts so long that you lose Blood of the Dragon, and the recast on it isn't up yet, so you lose DPS, just like a Monk!

And your final note, this applies to any setup of Tankx2 DPSx4 and healer x2. Except in the early raid cycle, as I already said.

Okay, but it's still about personal button mashing. It wasn't about cooperative group play at all.



I was sneaking through mire one time and heard an imp's giggle, or whatever it is, and jumped irl. That's the first/only time I've been scared of a game (like scared of a movie). For me, XIV never replicated that (and neither has XI honestly). The journey wasn't hard, mounts were easily summonable, and Home Points were never too far away.


NMs I'll give you, but why the monster spawned/where it spawned doesn't really relate to the combat system.


I don't think that's true. I think it would have drawn a lot more fans if that were the case. By 1.2, they were heading towards something very casual. ARR was them just painting WoW in FF tones with action combat.

That's the problem. If you want to play WoW, without playing Warcraft, there are 32 flavors. If you want to play FFXI, there's only 1 and, while good, it's little freezerburnt in its' old age.

To me, in combat-oriented MMOs combat is where the similarities matter. 1.x and especially 2.0 did not make grouping matter enough for most players to want to.

I always play tanks/healers so I took Paladin, Marauder and Scholar to cap in 14 in the dungeon finder but rarely did I ever see a shout or LS activity looking to group to exp.

If you ask me, XI nailed the balance of an MMO around WotG (as far as exping). That's when they introduced FoV/GoV, level-sync, and, of course, campaign.

- - -

Unrelated: I don't hate people that want a casual experience in an MMO, but I loathe the people that want a solo-oriented game in an MMO. I don't fire up offline RPGs and rail on and on about how it needs group-capability and content for groups.

I had these arguments every day when i was playing even though i sat there and followed the discussion on minmaxing to get this information. Thats the one thing i miss about XI, the community came together and put all this information out there and if you disagreed on proven stuff you were an idiot and could be proven as one.

I'm guessing he's talking about bringing any class/job to endgame content and it working just as good as any other class/job. In short, I understood that he meant that classes are interchangeable, which they are, to a certain point.

It's ok child, you can keep your ego in check for now, you're still a literally who.

Better than a grouchy old dude who has no idea what he's talking about.

That's precisely the thing, you have no idea about you being better. Don't let your ego talk about things you have no idea of.

I never said I was better. Just that I know exactly what I'm talking about in regards to XIV's and XI's job balance.

XI is a horrifically unbalanced mess. There exists content in which a large majority of the jobs in the gamer are absolutely nonviable.

And it has been this way since the games creation, either through actual combat mechanics or player created meta.


XIV is exceptionally well balanced. Most imbalances are taken care of rather quickly. And they are constantly tweaked to remain balanced, because job exclusion is ***.

All DPS are interchangeable.
All tanks are interchangeable.
All healers are interchangeable.

Unless you're doing content below recommended iLvl (World First progression) there is literally no content in XIV that can't be completed with any standard 1/1/2 or 2/2/4 job combination.

The bad thing about XIV is it is easy to wrap your head around. Unfortunately, there are still bads somehow that dont understand the simplest concepts. The optimal setup has been figured out for most encounters and if you know how to deal with the set number of mechanics in the entire game its really only about the predestined gear check that can easily be overcome with crafted gear or, yknow: skill and proficiency.

This is for 4 man dungeons Enuyasha.

Nope, there isn't a single fight in the game where a mechanic invalidates a single DPS job. Final Coil had a really close call when DRG had DoH/DoL tier M.Def, but that is long since past.

PLD's shield blocks are nice, but not necessary. Like parries. Proper cooldown rotation while maintaining good DPS is the making of a good tank, and PLD cooldowns are more than sufficient for going the distance. It was in a rough spot for Gordian Savage World First progression, but within a month, PLDs were clearing nearly as well as other tanks. The best PLD I've encountered in XIV cleared A3S on week 3.

AST is completely viable. It IS weaker, in exchange for amazing support abilities, but it still works fine outside of world first progression in the savage raids.

Have you seen the all one job settups :D

Tis possible with 4 jobs that are the same role to clear a 4 man dungeon. Game is super easy, yet there are still parties that cant farm or make it through a roulette dungeon in one shot.

Got tired of wiping because people think its fun to wipe for hours in content thats months old that there are multiple guides out there for whatever learning style you have.

EG: dah fuq is a twister, landslide, DPS check, or divebomb.

I pointed it out because you changed the 1/1/2 to a 1/1/6, instead of changing 2/2/4 to 1/1/6. It made no sense to change the 2 to a 6 when it's talking about 4 man content.

Still in context with the 8 man settup, mentioning content that is specifically made for 1 tank, 1 healer, 1 melee, and 1 ranged specifically is inconsequential as of course its meant to be completed by any randomly thrown together group that youll encounter in the DF.

Yeah, and that also means that every job in each category is very bland and devoid of any real uniqueness or flavor. Since SE seems incapable of implementing both job balance and identity, I'd rather take an unbalanced mess, but a one where I can play an actual, say, BLM, as opposed to just a ranged DD with cast times.

Are we actually going to pretend XI's jobs are extremely well nuanced outside of a few very specific examples?

More nuanced than anything in XIV, tbh.

Not hating on XIV or anything like that, but as far as actual job variety goes it cannot hold a candle to XI.

If you mean XI has BLU, which actually does stand out from the rest of the games jobs, then sure.

Almost any 2 same-role jobs in XI have more mechanical differences between them than any 2 same-role jobs in XIV. That's just a design consequence of that interchangeability that you praised a few posts ago.

I'm not really seeing it outside of the pet jobs (PUP being the standout with attachments), but more power to you if you can, I suppose?

Can you give an example to illustrate how none blu none pet jobs are mechanically the same?

Every melee class.
Engage -> Buff -> Build TP -> WS -> repeat from Build TP until target is dead.

The buffs are 'different' until you realize most of the exceptionally good ones are obtainable via support jobs. And even then, a lot of them share similarities.
Ranged Physical really only encompasses RNG and COR, but COR's nuance from RNG is that it operates as a support class when it isn't shooting ***. As far as shooting ***goes, the variation isn't significant.

All support generally operate the same the same. The difference is either the type of buffs they provide and how effective said buffs are. Y'know, GEO blowing BRD out of the water, while COR buffs are unique enough to justify existing alongside GEO de/buffs.

Mages fall into either healing, debuffing/DoTing or nuking. RDM and SCH can delve into all three aspects, but they have an area they excel in and perform relatively poorly in the others compared to the more specialized jobs.

Pretending Jumps or SATA are a massive game changing mechanic that radically differentiate DRG or THF from the other melee jobs is an insane notion. Or that multiple tiers of any spell is a 'complex' gameplay mechanic.

Inb4 I get attacked for being a XIV fanboy.

I've been playing XI all day, and I still am as I type all of this.

Everything you typed in your previous post is leagues beyond the complexity of FFXIVs 1 2 3 spamming imo.

In XIV those are the same class of job. Just the fact that you are able to place a meaningful distinction between the 2 already puts XI quite a bit ahead in terms of job diversity.

Then you haven't actually played the game at high end gameplay or delved into how abilities synergize with each other.

Oh, is this the part where we pretend guns/bows don't have massive delays similar to recast/cast times as black magic spells with movement interruption just because they don't have visual cast timers?

Every melee class do engage, build tp and ws because that's how FFXI battle system works, fundamentally. How else do you expect FFXI DD class to deal dmg with current system? In that case I can say in other MMO you just select a skill after cool down thus every class is the same.


However if you view jobs past the battle system then it's definitely not quite the same.

Out of 22 jobs, I would say 17 of them are DPS jobs, or at least SE want them to be DPS when they design the job. Remaining 5 jobs are designed not to be dps job but still has dps ability. And That's how variety comes in in FFXI.

For example, you think jobs like RDM is mage job "excel at something but performs relatively poorly in the others", I think it's a DPS job that can change role mid battle, in other words, hybrid job. Why is it a dps job? SE gave it temper 2, strong WSs, self enhancing buffs, multiple melee legendary weapons. Thus it's a hybrid DPS job that can heal, debuff, support and so on.

Now compare with other DPS job like WAR which cant change role mid battle(but can change weapons), that's how they function differently, both as DPS. Even though both can engage, build tp and ws, they still play differently and needs to make different decisions when it comes to how to play them.

You claim RNG and COR is the same if both are shooting, but no cor ever just play the job to shoot. Support is part of the job and that's how it's mechanically different. One job only dps and another do both dps and support.

I don't see how supports operate the same either. Bubbles, rolls and songs operates way different. You can use different rolls and songs for everyone in ally, you can't do that with bubbles. Geo Bubbles needs to be constantly take care of mid battle but not song rolls unless dispelled. Bubbles and songs are static buffs but rolls has random element in it. I just don't see how all 3 types of buffs operate the same way as you claim.

I wouldn't say SATA is mechanically the same as Jump, personally. You can coordinate the pt and close big SCs with JA like SATA, or use this JA on targets that you cant hit. In other words the existence of SATA may change pt strategy, v.s jump which is more like a solo JA player can choose when to use it.

Im not here to claim you are a XIV fanboy, but I think you claim jobs in FFXI are mechanically the same because you pigeon holed those jobs into engage tp ws(which is how battle system works) and disregard any other aspect related to the job that's not engage tp ws. But engage tp ws is just one aspect of playing the job, there are many more.