How Could SE Realistically Improve Modern FFXI?

doin it wrong

I mean you see the rate that new things come out that are just a quick recolor. Maybe they have a lot of time on their hands.

It's hard to say what people do over the course of their day. Plenty of people show up here to lurk, talk ***, or maybe even be helpful. Nothing stops someone who is getting paid to work on this game to come here 'for research', click translate to japanese, and marvel at how stupid people can be here for entertainment while pretending they are doing work and pressing the fill button on a layer, possibly with an alpha. Again hard to say what ps2 spaghetti gives people the freedom to do.

This is misleading though.

The dev team I think is about 3-4 (Matsui still works on XI for free here and there from home, mainly in regards Ambuscade) people now. I read an interview not long ago, and they stated literally one guy made the entire Dyna D event himself, so although they are few they can do a lot with what they have if they want to.

However XI was merged into XIV operations long ago, so server staff, GM staff, customer service, community staff that check forums and post on social media (yes they do read here and other places still), translators, even proper coders, STF staff etc are all shared and available. So technically there are a lot of people working on the xi still.

They could update Trials of the Magians for the level 99 stuff and finally bring some of them to ilvl.

I guess that make a few things OP, but it'd be a nice shake up, and it wouldn't be that hard to implement.

There are two dozen things they could easily implement that they never will.

Plus it would just result in more afk botting of trials anyway.

Said it a hundred times, adding more to ToM is low hanging, incredibly fulfilling fruit.

You could get 10,000 hours per idiot for 5 minutes of adding kill a thousand bugs, then a thousand skeletons etc

Add 1 ACC per 10,000 (creature type here) for the tp bonus weapons, ***, they'll go f.o.r.e.v.e.r.

But, they will never do it.

I haven't seen a pessimistic Eiryl post in a while, I was starting to get concerned for you.

Putting the pessimism aside, this is a great point, particularly for underperforming jobs. PUP enthusiasts would love a few new pieces to help pick the job up, and it would take very little development time on SE's part. Win-win.

If they didn't want to make the OP jobs even stronger, they could buff obscure uses for the jobs giving them more flexibility.

I'm sure someone has mentioned this in the thread already... get rid of the horrific PlayOnline Login stuff.

I've heard the private servers just require you hitting 'Play' to login. There is no reason a MMORPG today should still require Playstation 2 login methods. It's confusing, convoluted, and becomes a gatekeeping problem for people trying to play FFXI.

There is really no problem with Playonline, I don't know why people complain about it. It does what it needs to do just fine, I've played other mmorpgs with launchers and they are pretty much the same and just do it a few seconds faster.

Having said that, if they were going to do it they would have done it in 2016 when they changed to Squareenix accounts XIV uses. They didn't, and the reason I would guess is that the friend list and messaging systems are a playonline service, and that would require a lot of coding to re-create without playonline. They are not gonna do that, for a game with no cash shop.

Private servers for instance have no friend list functionalist at all, this is why. Having a friend list and messaging system > having a more modern launcher that you're out of in 10 seconds anyway.

That's all it needed to say. Wherever you are, you have been gone for nearly 10 months.

I really dislike this mentality to take ownership of what is fun.

I enjoy optimizing stuff and always have been, other do not find it fun.
I spend a lot of time optimizing my gil generation in an specific unnamed event that surpasses the old sparks time. i had fun figure out my strategies and pressing my limit to get down to making around 3mill/character/<20mins (Best time was 16 min)

I had fund logging all coffers from unity to find the average gil value of those coffers NPCable vs AHable

and its the same with other games;
endless space i spend months moving me from being challenged at normal and struggling at hard, to breezing through at max difficulty

Civ2: the amount of caravans i would have to get insane output in my cities. probably 80% of more of my time was handling caravans

UFO enemy unknown:
from Breaking the 8 bit limit in the game and creating spreadsheets for dmg output in the game

Buck Rogers:
Even this game i have a spreadsheet to compar weapon dmg output ,taking into account for a select-able backstab multiplier.


We have fun in different way.
Just because some people do something that you don't find fun doesn't mean they don't have fun from doing it.

a couple small things that I feel would make player's lives a bit easier
-removing the triple conformation for assaults and any other content that makes you confirm that you really want to enter a content multiple times
-consolidate teleportation into easier to manage menus or add additional teleport npc's to locations.
-allow access to all storage from nomad moogles, including actual storage that is normally only accessible from the mog house.
-remove the 3 person barrier to older obsolete content like incursion, certain bc's that resurfaced during vanabout and delve.
-allow the spending of any regional points for teleporting (conquest points, imperial standing, allied notes etc as most players have a surplus and don't really have a use for said currency

Well its a good job they didnt say everyone... the key word was "tend" because what you just listed sound mind numbing.

Some good ideas in this thread, realistically tweaking numbers/limits for the more annoying aspects of this game would help (re-entry times/min-people required/some grindy elements) I think are very doable. Of course depending on what is done there are pros and cons (some obvious, some not so)

Obviously new content or an expansion would help but I don't think that's realistic.

I think modernizing the interface may help (ie get rid of Playonline and use modern direct X) but I suspect that is way out of budget and not realistic.

From the business side not sure if SE could do something to inject more players into the game (which I think would help, be it returning or just new players) a flat monthly fee gives you access to a single account for both FFXI and FFXIV plus some other bonuses (not sure what these could be maybe free mog wardrobes, or in game items, other downloadable games/content, reduced requirements for certain quests) (key point here is the pricing needs to be such its saving the consumer money and making SE more money by increasing the user base)

Otherwise I think the main issues are the economy and getting people to party.

For the former I think a cross world Auction House would help, but I'm not sure to what extent or for how long. 90% of the items (probably more) in the game are just worthless to endgame players. Injecting more players for which those items have some value would help but leveling is so fast now its still limited and easy to skip. Having content people want to clear that requires it helps but designing that can be tricky and is often short lived.

Not sure how realistic my next suggestions would be as I suspect these would take some effort that is out of budget. The basic idea would be to help people find people to do stuff with, shouting is pretty dead on my server, xp parties are dead (which used to be a good way to meet people) so you're left at the mercy of your linkshell (which sometimes I get lots of help from and othertimes is dead).

The easiest thing they could do would be perhaps a helpers reward, e.g. if you help someone clear content for the first time (RoE objective or just titles from certain missions/bc/events) you get an item an item directly in your inventory, which you can take to an NPC and exchange for examplar points, gil, or bonus currency (either related to the event or of your choosing) even better if "helping" did not affect the normal requirements for entering the event (how to do this could be tricky)

More complex would be systems (within the game) to help people find each other (the LFG flag could be event specific so you could search and send tells) or you could register with an NPC and it would tell you people who are interested in doing certain events in certain time windows.

Most complex would be maybe a cross server lobby people could gather and go back to 1 server for an event and then return to their normal worlds. (the idea is to increase the chances of finding people to do something with)

You have some great ideas in here. As far as injecting new players into FFXI, I believe this is one of the reasons the new FFXIV is based on FFXI, it provides a funnel for FFXIV players to go and try this game. I don't know how successful this will be long term, but I've met a TON of FFXIV players in game recently.

I know some people really like POL, but it's really rough for new players to navigate. Even if it isn't realistic, revamping POL may be a great RoI, depending on how costly it would be to tamper with.

While this isn't addressing the big bottlenecks for new players, they are adding some UI features. Again, not enough in my opinion to make a meaningful difference, but the controller options were quite nice, and they've announced some upcoming UI features for BLU and PUP.

I don't know how controversial this would be, but I think mission encounters should be level synced to 75 or 80. If someone has already cleared a mission encounter, but still groups to help a new player, they are rewarded with silver vouchers.

I may be wrong, but I believe trusts are still OP at level 75 or 80, so if someone who has played for a while wants to blaze past these encounters, a mandatory level sync won't be too detrimental. It also offers the added benefit of putting active players together.

It looks like they might be putting more effort into a party-match system some time this year. I don't know how beneficial it will be, but I'm still curious nonetheless.

They could do a pass on some of the older WS and spells and just tweak some dmg numbers/ftp to give us more meaningful spell/WS/skillchain options again. Right now the game is basically: "I spam savage blade with this job and this weapon" or "I use X WS with this weapon almost exclusively"

*deep breath*

How could SE realistically improve modern ffxi?

This is all correct, I've said all of it many times, but it's only going to fall on deaf ears. (blind eyes)

This too

This three

It's all true and it's all pointless to mention because none of it is ever happening. Just yelling into the void. Which can be therapeutic, but yeah.

Sortie just sucks. The only reason it's tolerable is when you have a group of people to do it with regularly and actually enjoy talking to. The content needs to be rewarding and social, Sortie is just the latter and my motivation to do it regularly is entirely linked to the people I do it with, not because I give a ***about the content.

I'm really interested/curious to see how Limbus turns out. I'm stupidly optimistic that they actually listened to the feedback from Sortie and will make it actually good, rewarding content that people want to do for the social aspect AND the content. OTOH I know I might as well jump into a vat of copium and drown in it because that has a near zero chance of being true.

"How will limbus turn out"

Bots. Wall to wall bots. Every where. Every camp. Every minute. Every day.

How will the content be, ignoring that. Fine, I'm sure. Just fine. Open world, no instance, miserable nightmare of claiming. But rewarding enough to hate grind it. AF+4 (better) get +70 attack and 10DT on every piece like empyrean or it's dead from the jump.

(yes, asura only, because your server doesn't matter, so save the effort)

OH! But you'll be able to do it as an alliance, because it's open world. I forgot that part. (Maybe not bosses, we'll have to wait and see)

womp womp

I'm loving the first descendant - they added new endgame event which I can carry my friends in after I no life'ed for 2 weekends, it's fun helping friends and not feeling pushed to do stuff every day when they aren't around

I understand it 2 entirely different games, but I used to love that experience in FFXI - was like that before when you make your weapons and gear, could carry people through clears and have them support or assist. Now it's such a gated grind I warn people about coming back. The minute I tell them about sortie, they lose interest in returning to FFXI.


Truest words ever wrote.

Did I miss something? Where did they announce that it will be open world?

Yup that's the secret sauce. Otherwise you did it to yourself and you only have yourself to blame. Maybe Prime Weapons will be required some day to make a huge impact in the content. I'm not holding my breath on that. I just make them for jobs I like playing.

I won't deny that Sortie is, apparently, "bad content" or too grindy, or...something, because a lot of people quit over it and/or stopped doing it. The community seems to have agreed that it sucks. I disagree, but whatever, that's not the point of my post.

What is the good content in FFXI then? Not what content did you enjoy doing with your friends, what content is actually enjoyable to grind and fun to play?

Personally, I'd argue that very little, if any, of the content of FFXI is actually fun on its face if you ignore the social aspect and the rewards that come out the other end.

Who would grind:
Einherjar if not for the Ichor?
Nyzul if not for the tokens?
Dynamis [D] if not for the RP/gil/unlocks?
Odyssey if not for the segments?
Omen if not for the job cards?

...so I guess then my point is: people either think Prime weapons/Empy armor are "not worth the squeeze" in terms of grind, which is a hilarious take considering how grindy FFXI has been forever, or they take the attitude of "there's nothing to do WITH prime weapons" which is also true of like every item in the game at the time of its release. What did you need Aeonics to clear, more Aeonics?

I think there are some issues with Sortie the way we do it (it's boring and mostly running) but I don't think it was anticipated by the devs that people would be doing 9 boss runs. I think they probably thought people would spend a whole-*** run doing just C&D or something like that. Call it an oversight in their design (because it is) but...I really don't think it's any less engaging than say...Nyzul Isle, which is mostly running around in hallways. Magian trials, which is mostly 1shotting mobs that can't touch you (and always has been). Omen, which is mostly killing extremely easy enemies and bosses with 0-1 mechanics.

You could be put in an insane asylum for doing most FFXI events, they're boring as hell. The fun comes from making your equip sets, setting up your macros, getting powerful new gear, seeing numbers go brrrr, and hanging out with your friends. It has very little to do with the actual thing you're doing.


I think it would be basically impossible to change the game from "I only use this one WS on this boss" with the way it's set up. The problem is:
5 people doing WS > 1 person doing WS.
1 person gets TP fast enough to do SC
SC work the way they do

This means that they need SC to do basically 4-5x as much damage as a WS in order to "balance" SC. The only way to force SC to be relevant is, IMO, either massively scale down WS damage (so that the SC can be more relevant), add things like WS wall (which everyone *** despises because they love spamming), or add mechanics that force you to SC.

It's also the case that doing multi-step SC is actually more damage than spamming WS, when you have a small number of DDs like 1 or 2. The problem is that most content doesn't REQUIRE you to have only 1 or 2 DDs, so people bring more players and that basically smashes the idea of doing a SC.

At the end of the day, even if you made Fast Blade and Vorpal Blade do "almost as much as Savage Blade", absolutely nobody would use them in 99.95% of situations and you'd still end up spamming SB because...why do less damage for no reason?

I know the original Limbus was open world, but I'm curious about this too. Have they confirmed this, and also, where did Eiryl hear about the Artifact upgrades?

? Am I forgetting some really early patch to Limbus or something? I only have memory of Limbus as an instanced zone where you enter with only your group and see no other players.

There are time limits and time extensions, how does that work for an open world event? Did they totally revamp the entire event when this patch happened?


I think Eiryl just pulled all of this directly out of his ***, but IDK.

I just want to do something different. Vagary boss fights sucked in general and mostly boiled down to cheese tactics to avoid all the debuffs they spam. Using those tactics gets old very quick but Gaol is even worse, so yeah laughing away the misery is the only way to make it tolerable.

I would rather a 3 day lock out on sortie for 3X rewards. Same thing everyday get redundant really fast. Yes 9/9 is fun, racing your lines and stuff, but after 6 months that’s still boring. Also SE didn’t lack oversight, they knew you could since the implementation as they advertised the best group could technically do it in about 3 months, so 9/9 was always in play.

Original Limbus wasn't open world, it just allowed for only one alliance per area at a time. You gathered up, one person opened the zone, then every in the alliance could enter for a few minutes or until someone aggroed a monster. Afterwards the battle field become locked until the group either cleared the final floor or ran out of time.

But since there were twelve total battle fields, it wasn't that hard for server groups to schedule around each other.