Old Players

Sorry, visible progress is much preferred by most people in the world. A business doesn't cater to the hardcore majority of a player-base because it doesn't work to make a game that only people who can dedicate extreme amounts of time. SE tried to do it, and it failed, so they're changing the game to, ya know, make it enjoyable.

^^ well I'll leave the rest of this conversation to you all. At least one player out there still misses the old days ^^b. See you again.

What was hard in old XI? I hate myself for responding to yet another one of these QQabyssea threads.

HNM - Time sink. That's it. Not hard. Not challenging. Time sink.

Sky/Sea - Sea above ^ Excluding AV back in the day.

Limbus - Fun, but gets old having so many pre-requisites to do one fight that might drop something that you want, that you might outlot the others on because it required more than a small group of friends. Causing a (you guessed it), time sink.

Salvage - Was fun, broke away from large scale events, short duration. But the drop rate made it a time sink.

Ein/Dyna - Guess what they were? And I did a relic.

So been there, done that, nothing was hard, all was a time sink. New XI is good. Gimps will be gimps will be gimps. No matter how hard the game is.

The drawback to nowadays predominately small social LSs is you have even less people
who don't want to do ***. lol

I honestly miss end-game shells for that reason, there was scheduled events or at least times to gather.
I know some event shells still exist, I'm just not in one anymore.

As far as the OP's complaints about things being too easy, that's all relative,
yeah a 75 content HNM is not going to be hard. Even calling them hard at 75 is a big stretch.

That "work" is the game and VW is classic MMO, needing every job to fully proc
and having a large group working together, sounds to me that you just don't like FFXI.

Old XI was much more fun, because it required more people to get things done. Sometimes more than 18 for things like Jailer of Love and such. Group cohesion was much more important. Particularly before all the merits were available, and a lot of JAs we have now weren't there. Seigan/Third Eye, Hasso, Retaliation, Accomplice, and other such things.

HNMs were difficult, especially when they first came out. Sky was difficult. Just like all things, it was learned and dissected. Old XI became easy by late 2007. COP had been sufficiently nerfed, 2handed update nearly obsoleted the need for mage heavy alliances, and the entire game was dissected. It became an outdated system with all the LSes that had foot holds in things like HNM, Dynamis, and the like making the game a bigger time sink than it needed to be, because you know, those leaders just needed all the leet gear for all the jobs they didn't play.

Morally, and for the well being of the player base, the game changed for the better. In regards to how they have changed things... particularly new dynamis, some things just aren't as fun as they were, but the game wasn't going to last forever anyway.

Indeed it was a double edged sword.
Timesinks were massive, tons of cooperation and teamwork were required to kill the NM let alone get the drop, and most of the time it went to someone else other than you.
But if you can recall the feeling of beating CoP for the first time prior to adjustments, the sensation is irreplaceable.

Things are quicker and easier now, but the sense of achievement or bond between your character and the effort put into it seems to have diminished severely.

I liked the way things were back in the day when lvl 75 was still the cap. Things weren't really hard, just time consuming. Didn't really need to join an ls for gear either, just needed a few skilled people and you could get things done easily. With just a group of three I used to get anything I wanted and was able to make enough gil to buy whatever I couldn't get from killing something. I kind of felt like ffxi stopped being fun after they increased the lvl cap. I quit almost a year ago now and I still can't help thinking about how ffxi was when I first started out lol.

i don't see why everyone's arguing over the semantics of what is and isn't "hard." some people will prefer abyssea, and some people will prefer pre-abyssea ffxi. something as subjective as what is and isn't fun isn't really something to argue over.

requiring a good shell with people you like for certain items, since mercing wasn't as popular pre-abyssea, made it difficult to obtain some gear. i found a shell i really liked, though, and i had a lot of fun doing stuff with everyone. honestly i think a bigger problem with pre-abyssea was the difference between the best and second- or third-best: looking at 5 haste and 15 dex on your legs vs 0 haste and whatever other stats you could find, for example.

whether or not abyssea content is "hard," there's still the matter that nobody pre-abyssea obtained their gear through leeching in a merit party for a couple hours and then soloing everything that dropped the best gear.

The only 2 thing I really hate about this is like the OP say.
Anything can be mnk+whm burned and require 0 brain cells.

That and the fact you see 0 difference between the harcore/skilled player and the Casual/sucking Player.So easy to get af3 +1/+2, any idiot can get them with ease.

I miss old content for that, yes there was still idiots with the "top" gears, but they were very few compared to today =(.The difference between a casual and a hardcore player was easyly seen w/o the /check use =/

Oh well at least it doesnt take a year to get 1 job 75 now right? xD

Old FFXI was harder, but I'm not going to confuse that with "More Fun"

There are plenty of "missed opportunities" I've had that I just won't get the chance for anymore because of some of the system changes. Or things that frustrate me, like some of the most useful gear at 75 being totally obsolete now.

But even with everything I'm nostalgic about, I still play and there are still things I enjoy doing, much of it new content which didn't exist 2 years ago. There is still EQ that I won't ever get no matter how good it is, I never would have had an Adaburk and I won't be getting every Emperyon even though they're "easy".

You can still tell the difference between a Good / Useful / Helpeful to have around player, someone who needs to get their LS leaders Epeen pulled out of their ... and someone who just doesn't care. It just takes more than an Idle set or a WS set to figure that out because the equipment is just that much easier to get.

I'm in favor of how much easier it is to equip jobs these days, with most people having 4, 5, 6 or even 10+ jobs it's reasonable to get a set which far exceeds the "average" set which you could obtain with the same effort at 75.

There are still people out there that just make your life a living hell, but given the amount of content and how it's spread out, there's almost always somewhere else or something else you could be doing to further advance yourself and just get away from them.

so +1 to new FFXI and +1 to fond memories of things I don't have to do anymore.

It seems very few of you get the purpose of all the stuff you did for gear back then. If you can honestly say that right now having all the gear you want that you earned in a month or so, that the game is fun then frankly you're an idiot. You do not need the best gear in the game to have fun and that seems to be the way you're all looking at it. 'Waaa It takes way too long to get gear that is vastly superior to other stuff' The enjoyment was in the process of you know, playing the game.... not just trying to max as fast as one possibly can. With this mentality I find it hard to believe that you can even enjoy anything as almost everything is subject to this including real life.

Einherjar was a time sink, wat? 30 minutes is super long?

I liked old XI much better. I had some of the best gear around then and as I do now for my main jobs (BLU and BLM) and I preferred the way things were before.

This reminds me of the South Park WoW episode.

They spend months and months farming and skilling to beat this guy, then after it's over ask what they are going to do. Cartman says, "Play the game" and they go back to exactly what they were doing to prepare for the big fight. The game isn't about getting the best gear (well it is in a sense), it's about the journey there, and the people you spend time with along that journey. I loved that you got close to people spending inordinate amounts of time together in the past. Currently, my schedule doesn't allow for that, so in a sense I'm glad its moved on. It does seem rather hollow, however.

When I was doing Einherjar people would take an hour to get there, it pissed me off so bad. This happened in two linkshells I was in.

Yea, I know, find a better linkshell. Just was an issue that I had with it, I'm sure others didn't.

Also, it's a time sink kinda because you have to cover all the other battles before odin, can't just go directly to it. The 30 minutes isn't the time sink, it's the time in days it takes to build a pop for it.

By that logic EVERYTHING in the damn game is a time sink lol. The game shouldn't be about getting the bestest gear it should be about having fun.. I find Einherjar a lot of fun as I did many other events with my friends that are now mainly low manned. While "fun" is highly subjective, I think getting gear extremely fast as it is now isn't as rewarding to someone as working towards it like it was in the past.

yup sounds like a video game to me

I had fun with einherjar, and yes everything in the game is a time sink one way or another. Was just pointing it out that not every wing gave rewards other than the feather.

The reward was having fun :) Or getting ampoules for a mythic or item if you weren't already capped out.

I think people should stop doing content that they don't enjoy. I don't care if it drops that uber piece of gear you want. If you don't like that particular area, or battle system, abort it and find your next best alternative. That would stop a lot of people from saying a system is a 'time sink'. By that logic you could have enjoyed both the old and new version of FFXI, and still been happy with your accomplishments.

It's much better than being butt hurt that you spent 200hrs in Limbus, which you hated, to get gear that is completely obsolete now.

I enjoy everything in XI for the most part. I am still here playing because I still have fun. I just prefer the old XI than what it is now.

I'm Sorry I didnt know standing around with your thumb up your *** for 3 hours waiting for HNM to pop was playing a game.

4-5+ if your doing Ixion/Sandworm.

Gear was hardly my only focus, I ran my own shells at 75, and looooooooooong after having everything I kept them running to get other people gear.

I think the majority of people both love and hate the events they do, one more than the other of course. I think that if your with friends you like then the grind isn't as bad as it would be with other players.

Just going to add a note. (to yours as you seem to get the idea that just because it takes time does not make it a time sink)

A time sink, is very much like how murder is viewed by the law. It takes intent for it to be so. It doesn't matter how long something takes, if it was carefully designed to function that way not to stall you but for a purpose (fun, sense of adventure, any real conceivable reason works) then its not a time sink, as a time sink is something made that way in order to keep you there. Stop calling everything that you cant do instantly a time sink, Im sure all of you would love some popular game where all of the content was removed just so you can fight the final boss as soon as you start playing.

Old XI was kinda shitty, and littered with obsolete game mechanics to artificially make the game seem bigger/longer than it is in reality.

No, I don't miss old XI in any way.

Then why did you bother doing the HNMs? You never needed to, the point of the HNMs being that way was to make them 'rare' HNMs (like every other nm in the game) were like that... don't even try to site that like they're comparable to the actual endgame content. Yes they were there, yes they were endgame but by endgame you knew what NMs where and why they were that way.

The only thing I miss about level 75 XI is that you had a wide variety of things to do to advance yourself (Salvage/Dynamis/Ein/Nyzul/SCNM/ZNM/VNM/etc etc); that's all I really want, is to mix up the events a little. They've started reviving older content and giving us different kinds of things to do again, so I'm totally on board.

1. People who cry about how easy FFXI is now, are just butt sore they can no longer prance around Juno showing off how special and unique their gear is. They have lost their godhood elite feeling, and hate being mere mortals.

2. When SE designed Abyssea, it was planned to allow low-man groups or individuals to fight most NM and HNM, because they believed the high majority of players would transfer to FFIV, especially the hardcore players who were crying at the time they needed a new challenge.

I am sure SE will now release some new gear only big LS leaders can get, and return them to their self importance peacock strutting selves.

lol why do people assume every single linkshell is like this? I know of one on my server with people stupid enough to keep doing it, but they are pretty irrelevant.

For the record, I never had any good gear really. I had played FFXI on 4 different characters on 4 different accounts and only on my 3rd did I actually reach 75 where I first started doing endgame. I then quit becuase of school taking up a lot of my time and I ended up not being able to get the account back due to lost information. My most prized possession at my peak (at 75) was a moliones's sickle which is not even an endgame item. Still I did experience my fair share of endgame activity (dynamis/einherjar/nyzul/HNM/Sky/Sea/Limbus). For me, I just miss how the game was not what I had tyvm.