Dhael said:
johnx61 said:
Final Fantasy XI was a case study in how NOT to make an MMO.
Could I ask you what issues you have with FFXI.
I know it can be a pain to play due to the heavily party-oriented format. But I personally found FFXI to be quite fun once you get used to the difficulty curve.
I prefer WOW only because it's easier to find private servers so I don't have to deal with the trolls on public. And WOW doesn't require you take your character very seriously. Both of which are plus for me.
Well, where do I begin.
The language barrier, first off all. What drooling idiot decides to mix players who don't even use the same script in their language? Having European, Asian and American servers should be a god damn law at this point. And not adhering to that law should mean the development team gets flogged for endless hours.
Secondly, the game is solo-unfriendly to the point of slap-happy ridiculous. Doing anything past level 10 by yourself if you're not a beastmaster is a good way to induce psychotic trauma. But making a working party is such a chore that you're pretty well screwed either way. I should also state that several classes are considered wholly unnecessary by most parties and never get invites. Dragoon is legendary for being considered useless to parties. Conversly, no party can even be formed without a white mage and a ninja. Ninja is a prestige class, IMO. As you not only have to pay for abnormally expensive gear and abnormally expensive ninjitsu spells, you have to also pay for abnormally expensive reagents that are used constantly as you tank the mob. Yes, Ninja is tank class in FFXI. That is like making Solid Snake stand in front of an army with his tranquilizer pop-gun while the enemy hails bullets, rockets and everything else on him. It makes no sense from a stand point of what ninjas are in literature, movies and legend. Paladins, with their aggro holding ability can tank in a pinch. But no one likes to have Paladins tank. Because, unlike Ninjas, Paladins actually have to be healed.
Third, no instances. Meaning that everyone uses the fossilized camping system of picking out a spot and pulling single mobs to your party until your brain drops out of your ear from boredom. Additionally, many high end monsters are on 24 hour spawn cycles, or even 1 week cycles in some cases. And that causes endless amount of fighting between the 10-12 linkshells sitting on the spawn point. This is not entirely true, actually. There are instances called Burning Circles. But they are only for boss fights and only accessable by one party at a time. And require a specific amount of untradable seals to enter that only drop from mobs that grant xp. FFXI also pulls the time-honored MMO BS of having the boss drop not enough valuable items to go around. Making the whole idea utterly pointless. And if you lose to the boss, your seals are not refunded and you have to go farm them again.
This brings me to another point, currency farmers. Since FFXI is most certainly a game of "Best equipment only need apply!", and since said equipment runs in the tens of millions of gil to purchase per piece, you can expect to spend over a billion in gil to outfit your character. This makes real money trade a lucrative enterprise in FFXI. And when 24-hour or 1-week spawns make their appearance, cutthroat RMT linkshells will do everything in their power to prevent your linkshell from killing the spawn so that they can claim it for themselves and put another $100 in their pocket. Since the first party to tag a spawn with damage gets full claim over it and no one else is able to attack it. To counter this, when an RMT party loses out on a spawn, they cast tractor repeatedly on anyone who dies to prevent ressurections. This assuredly means their opponents will lose and then they can claim the weakened spawn. Everyone on the server is well aware of who the RMT characters and linkshells are, but Squeenix patently refuses to ban these accounts because "We can't prove it."
And finally, the amount of grind involved in FFXI is so embarrassingly large that other MMOs won't talk to it at the office Christmas Party. I played FFXI for two years and did not manage to get a single job to 75. And in FFXI you don't just level your job. You have to level a sub-job along with it. Meaning you have to go back and re-do the areas that you hated the first time through. And leveling your sub-job usually requires that you level another sub-job along with it. Wash, rinse, repeat until nausea in induced. Oh, and if you choose to play a summoner, be prepared to
never summon anything! As a summoner your job is to sub-job white mage, use your bloated mp pool to cast underpowered heals and occasionaly summon Garuda to throw group haste on the melee combatants.
I think I've made my point. I know I'm gonna get a lot TL;DRs, so here's the short version.
FFXI is only good if you like catgirls enough to tolerate massive amounts of bullcrap.
