How Could SE Realistically Improve Modern FFXI?

I'm sure those people do exist. I don't run into them, because it's a 20+ year old game and at this point I almost always just play with people I know and who are considerate of each other.


1) It's 2024. It's more likely that people would just quit playing instead of taking advantage of the "massive opportunity" to gear a BRD.

2) Besides, we all know what would really happen. The tryhards would make the full REMA BRD on their main anyway, so it really wouldn't create any opportunity for the casual BRD player who just wants to use Marsyas.

Hell, I'm currently finishing up making an Idris on my main even though I have an Idris GEO on my alt, solely because my group sometimes lacks buffers but I really want to go on my main in some events like segment farming or Sortie. So I'm living proof that there's no need to ban dual-boxing to encourage people to play support jobs on their main.

Some of this is down to S-E's event design too. I have no problem just playing on my alt on BRD GEO WHM (and leaving my main out entirely), for something like Ambuscade where I get basically the same reward regardless of which character I use, or or Dyna where I don't need points/unlocks on my main any more. But if it's Sortie, RP, Segments... I actually need my one main character in. That actually motivated me to duplicate some of my mule's jobs on my main, so I could fill a needed support role and still bring my preferred character for points. But it's not hard to see that this design will also encourage some people to push harder to bring their non-support main (for the points they want) AND their support mule (for the buffs the group needs).


So for people who dislike dualboxing so much, BE THE SUPPORT JOB you want to see in the world, on your main. I play with a super dedicated BRD who is usually on that job and out-DDs a lot of DD jobs. I play with people whose preferred main jobs are healers, or who usually come on SCH for Odyssey/Sortie. I play with plenty of people who have a geared non-mule GEO and who will come on that job when needed. And I don't really play with anyone who PREFERS using a dualboxed mule BRD over the dude who is 100% focusing on playing his killer BRD, or a bot WHM over an attentive player WHM.

We have access to mule buffers and healers too, yet these people still exist. And almost unanimously, the other players prefer playing with humans filling the support/healing roles. So I kinda think your argument that players won't play these jobs because mules exist is BS.

Real players are preferable, mules ALLOW real players to get stuff done with their friends without being forced to play with trusts that will produce worse results.

Eh...depends on the content. Like Thorny said, you're leaving rewards on the table for Ambu. For things like segs, Sortie, Omen, Dyna, etc. you lose nothing by bringing a 6th (except a trust which...lol...)

It's true if there were no alts and I had 5. I do think that it would be a net increase of socialization and boosting up newer players. The downside is a lot of things would be significantly more difficult because some things you just can't kill without those alts (on a small server like ours). I am FREQUENTLY 2boxing important roles which couldn't be filled by new/returning players, and so are many of my friends. We've done a ton of Ody clears while 2boxing for newer players, we get lots of dynamis clears for people and we all 2box for dynamis, etc. If all those mules disappeared it would definitely be a major loss to the ability to do stuff, especially for off-peak hours.

This is all theoretical of course, there's not really a practical way to enforce this stuff, especially with the resources SE has. Interesting discussion though.

It's worse for the person to bring them along when they are useless, you're better off just letting them solo. You're enforcing in their mind they are garbage and useless, which is extremely counter productive. when I set things I up specifically do lower tier stuff so people can feel useful and engage with progression.

Doesn't this just make it vastly easier to form parties, to the benefit of everyone? If all the tryhards gear BRD and GEO and are willing to play them, then we can let noobs do Savage WAR and everyone wins!

I think you're missing the point. Every decision comes down to a value proposition. Every job has positives and negatives. If you remove a major positive(you can find groups easily), without adding any new positives or removing any negatives, it becomes less appealing. If it becomes less appealing, less people will do it.

Just to be clear, I am absolutely, unequivocally, not arguing in favor of banning dual-boxing today or in the future. I am stating that past dual-boxing has led to the situation we have today, where groups have less real players, support mains are less common, and the game is falling apart. I don't have a solution now, but I think it's foolish to pretend dualboxing hasn't pushed the game to where it is now.

Every group using a dualbox or two to fill parties is removing social ties they would've had to form with 1-2 more people. Now, in 2024, you may not have the option to find those 1-2 people. But, how many of your mules were made or first active in 2024? Would you have added more people to your linkshell in 2020 if you weren't filling spots with mules? How about 2016? How long have your mules been eating party slots that could've gone to strengthening player ties?

Bingo. Asura cesspool might be different, but on most servers there's a small population of people who already have their own friends and things to do. This is further exacerbated by stuff like the modern game's focus on dailies that are often done in a static (Sortie, Gaol), so those people are not joining shouts for those events, and are often busy with that stuff so they don't want to join others for random shout content either.

Even if I do shout, or try to ask a secondary LS if someone wants to go, it's so frequent in 202X FFXI that I don't get any bites. If our party didn't have the option to use a mule or two, we'd often be left just unable to do content. Which leads to players getting uninterested in the game and taking a break, maybe for good. We just don't have the population of FFXI in its prime, to support a random shout culture any more outside of Asura (which obviously has its own issues).


What do you think about Trusts? The FFXI dev team realized long ago that the declining population (and difficulty filling parties) was a risk, that was the motivation for why they created Trusts. Dualboxed mules are really just a better substitute for Trusts, so if you're against dualboxing you should probably also be against having Trusts in the game.

There's a little bit of a difference in that for a player to be a better alternative than a trust it's a relatively low bar to clear, versus the potentially much higher bar to be a better alterative than someone's geared up mule. But effectively, both trusts and mules serve as a disincentive for parties to wait around and shout for extra players who have needed jobs.

learning by watching may not be equivalent to learning by doing, but its far from telling someone they're useless. and if you never take the training wheels off and let them fall, how will they ever get better? maybe people's time is so much more valuable as adults, but the expectation for anything PUG is that you are perfectly geared and fully knowledgeable about the fight, which is ridiculous.

The obvious thing is, the people with full REMA alt bards did the work to get those REMAs in the first place. Not like those characters suddenly popped up all REMAd up.

Yes, I am aware it is easier to make remas if you have geared characters to take you through it. I doubt we are discussing a mythical first 99 job player.

I'd argue you can 4 song brd pretty much anything in the game, but you can't Marsyas 3 song brd the same content. So empyrean > aeonic. I'd feel.. dirty.. being a 3 song brd in an aeonic group, so would say empyrean is a minimum to brd on aeonic clears.

Absolutely, I agree that it makes things easier to form parties. That's precisely why I geared a GEO on my main.

But I was responding to you saying that eliminating dual box mules would give other players more of an opportunity to play jobs like BRD, even if they don't have all the shiny REMAs. And I don't agree, because what would really happen is that the same kinds of players who currently use mule buffers would just make the same buffers on their mains, and would get all the toys. So you're still not going to have much room for the person who might play BRD if all they had to get is one Aeonic - those people would be surpassed in no time by other players who WOULD make all the REMAs if that was the only solution because dual boxing died.

I think that trusts have been a necessary part of the game since the era they were added, just like dualboxes are a necessary part of the game in 2024.

Trusts are absolutely nothing like real players and it's incredibly disingenuous to suggest otherwise. A full team of 5 trusts provides less maximum cure output, less average magic haste(equal now with cornelia), less accuracy, and less damage than a decent dualbox BRD.

If you were shouting for a group, and you couldn't find a last member, you can use a trust. You can get decent value out of a few of them if you have key roles filled and the content isn't very hard. But, if you're shouting for a group and you have a mule, you don't even try to find the last member in the first place. Your mule gets benefits from being at the event, so you don't take that extra time. If two people in your friend group have mules, that's 2 flex spots that always get filled before searching. If three people in your friend group have mules, you have a whole party.

These incentives change how likely you are to forge new friendships and encounter others, you state yourself:
The reason you are able to only play with people you already know is because some of you have mules and you're using those to fill in gaps. If you didn't have that option, you'd have been forced by necessity to make new friends and strengthen your group, even if it meant helping undergeared players catch up to you. That's how MMOs are supposed to work.

These fully geared and maxed out players can only play one job at a time. So, unless they also prefer to play bard, or legitimately believe they cannot win content without a maxed out bard, it doesn't matter. You have the option of bringing an undergeared BRD and using your own amazing DPS, or bringing an undergeared DPS and using your own amazing BRD.. pretty sure most people will pick their DPS.

What 4th song is that vital? Honor march is 58 accuracy and 232 attack. Sword madrigal is 85 accuracy. Valor Minuet IV is 201 attack. If you have soul voice up or haste 2 available, honor march replaces victory march outright, making both of those completely free. If not, it's still a substantial enough gain to be effectively a free song. Obviously it's been a long time since I had to choose(I have brd mules too!), but I can't imagine taking daurdabla over marsyas if it was one or the other.

Eh, trust healers have kept me and my party members alive in countless situations, which is the exact same expectation for a player healer. In some respects, trust healers are better than a lot of players. Monberaux and Yoran remove my status ailments faster than most "real player" WHMs I see, I often get cured faster than I do with a a real WHM, etc.

While trust buffers are clearly a worse alternative to a decent player, if used for something like capping magical haste... well, capped is capped, and it's still a reason people would rather use a trust than wait and shout in the hope of filling a spot.


I don't even bother trying to find the last member when I have a TRUST who can do a subpar version of what that hypothetical player could do. I don't have enough time in my life to go back to waiting to shout and form groups with random people, which could already be enough of a headache at FFXI's peak population.


Nah, my mule is kind of a pain in the *** to have to manage alongside playing on my main. I would much rather play only one character, I bring the mule to help my entire party so we can do the event and not wait around in hopes of finding another person with the right job to join. Most of my friends who also have multibox mules feel the same way, invariably we prefer to have 1 human per party member. They, and I, use the mules to plug holes for our party, or to do stuff solo when we wouldn't feel like shouting for other players regardless.

The mules do result in less shouting, but if the only choice was to shout we would be far less inclined to even bother doing the activity.

I don't bring the mule because the mule gets stuff, I bring the mule so my party can eliminate the need to wait to try to recruit another person. Shouting IS the thing people like me are trying to eliminate, simply because we don't want to spend the time to shout to set up the party. We're even willing to trade off performance (dedicated player that we'd have to shout for > mule > trust) to gain that extra time from not shouting.


No, I wouldn't be forced to make new friends... I would just quit playing the game entirely. If I was playing an MMO to meet new people in 2024, that game would not be maintenance mode FFXI on a server where I already know the regulars because we've all been here for years.

Is it though?


I took a 4 song brd without aeonic through aeonic clears in a dd party. Without 4 songs you'd have to either drop a minuet or a madrigal or a march if no rdm. I did double march, no rdm. Madrigals and carols for the harder fights. 3 song brd means you need a rdm in your party.

I concur. I wholeheartedly believe that if SE would expand on the the roles of more jobs to fit into TANK, DD, HEALER/BUFFS ....we'd have a much wider variety of Party combinations and fewer multiboxers. (I wonder what started this whole mess?) In my opinion, in Abyssea, everyone and their mother felt like they needed to be a DD and have a pocket-WHM).

Oh man, there's no undoing that now. That ship has sailed.

What's going to do, to invalidate someone's 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th characters? ....Give us Subjob #2? :shrug:

Can't unfuck the dog. Genies out of the bottle. Pandoras box can be closed.

Pick your saying.

It really depends on your connotations.

It's playable and fun for people who still enjoy it. Not falling apart.

The instance lag/delay in instance server seem to be increasing on average. Maintenances don't seem to resolve this issue at all, if they ever did in reality. Kinda falling apart.

The game is archaic/dated and incapable of growth. The plan of the devs seems to be sustained maintenance instead of focusing on improving this or giving up entirely. Artificially not falling apart.

If it were a current game that had to deal with reality, it would absolutely be falling apart and shuttered. But this game is anomalous because of it's age and that it's still going, who owns it, and their priorities for profits on their supplementary MMO income.

It might have been more appropriate for this topic to have been 'Does SE realistically need to improve FFXI for it to continue?'

Make it free ^^
I would make a character for each job lol...

After 23 pages of suggestions, did the game improve?

By Hiring Horizon-XI Team, to ban all cheaters and multi-boxers. That defiantly will bring back Partying and lots of dead content that no one want to do, cause why not pay that merc.

MAKE FFXI GREAT AGAIN!

Wat.

The game is alive alright, maybe you guys actually played so much that you have nothing to do in the game, are part of a LS that do not foster newcomers, maybe you’re too addicted to those 50K+ sortie and feel like everything in the game is a job and every little hiccup become an insurmountable mountain. And you can’t stand it. So while waiting for the time lock, you just going wherever your mind want to go (positive or negative).

-Go explore other server and meet others (did it loved some, got burn by some, got lied by some so what… it’s a game (mea culpa: I did speak my mind to all of them on the way out, understand that as “the good, the bad and the ugly” lol, but I love those folks with those mediocre shouts 8/8 Idris geo can we have it, those were the good dudes of Asura, they made my last few days real fun)
-Post COVID will be different with the game, accept it. Dads and moms, ladies and gentlemen will be going out and socialize, and some will bot during, it’s ok, they not hoarding your instances.
-Actually those folks are extremely enjoyable to chat and play at night for an hour or two
-Go help someone get his first unity accessory +1 and upgrade it with them and you’ll see it takes a while.
-Farm A/B for a change (there was some nice strat posted somewhere)
-Go do something outside of the group and accept "failure" like an 8K sortie, they will thank you.
-farm stone to make 15 KoH I Noor so you/your friend can have it sign (mine signed by my friend and all farmed)
-Open your vanadiel world
-Yes there is tons of stuff that SE can do, yes, but you can also do what you said instead of whining about. Invite ppl, so your sortie with just 2-3 ppl, that’s the way it is, no biggie.
- what’s the difference between trust and alts anyway?!?

Phoenix has no shouts (besides of JP but they refuse to play with NA… and no one cares) but has probably the most AH transaction per active player of any server, is actually somewhat healthy, discord is mandatory and at some points most cross TK (I’m not an officer so don’t ask me for a pearl).

The game is only fun by your surroundings, if it’s dark then everything is dark and I’m sorry for you.

There's hardcore gamers and casual players in this game; nothing wrong with either. The Asura thing you keep talking about was just a casual player (you) joining a 'hardcore' static and not being able to keep up performance wise. The discord message didn't really matter on the way out. If that ruined Asura for you because one group didn't work out, dunno what to tell you really. Good and bad groups, for one reason or another, on all servers.

Funny, Gav, a dude you likely never met… but you actually expose the actual point, hardcore player are not happy, criticized the dual (or more) boxers (which I’m not), criticize about leaving peanuts on the table, others players never up to your speed on their first time, intransigence and so forth…

I may get crap for this, but you can completely effectively work a Brd in All content without Carn. Yes, people will insist you have it, or not let you join without it.

Now yes, some of those people may not understand how it works or whatever excuse they have, but being told you can't join a Seg farm run without a Carn is stupid.

Similarly a whm without yag. With /Sch and the other Divine veil gear, you can get by, Yag just makes Whm's job easier. (i know Ody bosses are different, and its a little more necessary there)

People don't like to play supports because the community as a whole has higher expectations and has to rely on supports to carry most things. I'm going to include Tanks as supports for this point.

For much of the harder content, (specific fights excluded) You need some form of tank and some form of support either Buffing, Debuffing and or healing. Yes, obv you need a DD as well, but Which DD? Typically doesn't matter. But without the ability to heal or hold the mob, Most DD's are screwed.

Yes, there are some fights where Monk can solo, or Drk or Blu. but the other issue is typically the blame falls on the tank or support when ***hits the fan.

This is typical in almost every game where supports and tanks exist. And the answer isn't to get tough skin, or get better. Its that people need to not be jerks when things go wrong. But not gonna change human nature, therefore people don't like to play supports.

I still think there should be some form of parse in game, similar to what they have in League of Legends, where it gives you a readout of everything. Damage done, Damage absorbed, Healing done, Damage mitigated etc, on top of what current parses give. Currently parses only help those who are dealing damage. It leads nothing to help supports.

Eh...gonna disagree on this one. There's plenty of content you can do without Carn and it's not really necessary for a lot of things, but there's definitely content you can't effectively do without Carn. High level Ody bosses, for example, are 15 minute fights. You have ~3m of SV, after that you need to NiTro your songs. Without Carn, your SV songs will wear off with 2~3 minutes left in the run. Some of these bosses, especially for groups that are newer, will go all the way to the last minute, sometimes the last second. You can't afford to replace SV songs with regular potency ones for the last few minutes of a run.

For other content (including segments) it's pretty inconvenient without Carn because the party needs to stop to get songs twice as often. With Carn you can do NiTro -> NiTro, without you need to do NiTro -> bridge songs -> NiTro. This also means that for some period of time you will also not have a Marcato'd song. It's not a win-or-lose thing in many cases, but it's still a pretty significant compromise that isn't as dumb as some other requirements I've heard of people asking for.

/SCH is great, but Divine Veil "gear" (a single piece of gear) is just hoping you'll get a proc. When you have 6 people with a debuff on them, hoping that you'll get a proc isn't a great strategy, especially when you also need to be curing. This will be context-dependent, but there will be plenty of cases where 26% chance is not going to cut the mustard. Also /SCH is irrelevant for all Gaol bosses so again...depends on the content.

The problem is that all this nuance is lost on many people because nobody cares about these jobs so they just parrot the meta answers. For a 4 minute ambu Carn will most likely do absolutely nothing for you, but that won't stop johnny pickup from demanding you have one to do ambu with him. If you're leading something you should either:
Know the requirements for the jobs in the fight OR
Listen to the people who know those jobs and see if what they're saying makes sense

Still though, if you want to do all the endgame, you can't realistically get by long-term without getting all the essential kit for your job.

There's no way not to sound like a *** about this, but the fact is, most people that have alts have yWHM, iGEOs and 4-REMA BRDs, so unless you're brand new to XI, or a recently returning player, these are minimum barriers for average XI veterans playing these jobs for any serious content.

this is true, but the veteran label and steep requirements in PUG shouts gets tossed around so much, and most of the time the requirements are not needed for the content being shouted for. this is mostly laziness in trying to recruit strong members with minimal effort, which is fine until it gets abused to the point that you deny the people who need it most a chance to participate (ambu, segments, etc.) be picky all you want for 9 boss sortie or v25 odyssey, but *** sake people, nothing else is on that level.

I agree, there should almost never be a requirement to have full REMA, full +3 Empy jobs in something like Ambuscade. It's catch-up content ffs lol. Even seg farms, at least for a DPS, don't require much more than a Naegling and a pulse.

I'm at a point in game I rarely do any content outside my LS. Most experiences with PUGs tend to be bad and I just don't have the stomach for it. I'd rather not do content than have a bad/frustrating time.

Yea, i guess my gripe should have been more about PUGs. For my LS, its not a problem. Btw, you can Ride Nitro to Nitro without Carn. Just much tighter timing. Yes, for Ody Bosses, sure, the extra SV songs can be necessary, so that's a valid point.

I just wouldn't look for a PUG for Ody Bosses.

I somewhat feel like it's the School teacher complex. Pugs want you to be geared to the max on whatever job you are on. And its somewhat of a realistic expectation if you are coming on a job that's shouted for. (depending on the content) They have no knowledge of what else you have not any need to care. You may have a Whm thats maxed out, and a DD that's BIS everything, and your Brd is passable with 3 REMAS. And you may out DPS the DD's on that Brd, But since you don't have a Carn, Tough Luck. And I guess I am mainly talking about AMBU here.

It's not nitro to nitro, carn gives more soul voice

It's inconsequential 99.99% of the time, but that's what carn does

Do an extra 2% damage on your first KI to negate the "need" for carn

I know where you're coming from, and even feel the same way sometimes. the problem is that when the majority of people have that mentality, the community suffers as a result. 0 PUGs at all on any server but Asura, and on Asura they have unnecessary requirements tossed around in almost every shout.

what do you do when your static member takes a break or quits or whatever? some of the servers do have a discord which helps, but otherwise finding interested and capable people can be very difficult. they've either quit themselves, made alts, or bought from mercs.

I don't see an easy solution to this, but I guess a large number of people who were after prime weapons or v30 armor have already accomplished those things.

I just used nitro, equipped the best duration gear in the game without Carn, and then cast Valor Minuet V. My timer said 9 minutes. Please explain how you can make it to the next nitro window without losing a song.

I guess if you (can afford to) wait until the end of your nitro window to cast all your songs you could maybe get by with like...15 seconds left on your buffs as nitro comes up...still extremely risky and if someone's using fastCS and you aren't and they go through too many teleports too fast, their songs are gone. Would not recommend this. It also forces the team to gather at an exact point in time instead of "some time in the next 90 seconds". What if you're in the middle of a pull or someone is off doing something?