Final Fantasy XI

Hiya!

I'm considering playing a new game. Not sure if I will change or when. Depends on the next few weeks/ next month. Right now I wouldn't have time anyway with Christmas and New Year around the corner. :D But since consideration is there and a nagging "check what you could play" feeling I look around. ;)

So far my post in the LF Game section didn't lead far. Vanguard and LotRO were suggested, but I heard/ read things that turn me off so far. Looking into the list that's stickied there FF XI gets the most matches so far, so I'm around to ask for details.

First of all I look for a game. A game is played for fun, I want to play with others, have fun with others, a nice chit-chat and so on. I hat being reduced to a statistic number, like XYZ DP/S or so. Or people not taking others with them, just because the party setup would reduce efficiency (Oh my. We could kill one mob less in 5 min). So what is it like in FF XI? Also I don't like "oldtimers" (sorry, no better term at hand) shoving down "their" rules and setups down newcomers throats (don't mix up with giving advise/ help, I mean things like raid-bots where you have to join to get some items and bit points and everything setup so they are in favor). I actually left ANarchy Online beacause of that. It turned a fun raid into a grind you have to do. (I hope this opening wasn't too harsh)

So after complaining and whining about what I do not want here is what I seek. ^_^

 I look for a game that actually gets me immeresed, downright draws me into the gameworld and makes me feel part of it. I want the fascination of P&P RPG on my PC so to say. Coming from p&p RPG I'm kind of an old-schooler. I want things to do, monsters to kill and explore a world. I was disappointed noone in Anarchy Online liked to explore the world. The awe in some areas and the little details I looked at really made me feel like seeing a world of its own. But I had to do it on my own, as exploring doesn't give you XP or is efficient in any number crunching part of the game. I want ot play and have fun, no e-sports guy here. I have enough lists at work to keep up-to-date sometimes. ;)

 Seeking a living breathing world I also look for different things to do. Crafting that means something (and hopefully is more than just stare at the monitor while your char is harvesting for hours and then "poof" craft-fail or a mere bleep, here's your item that is no good anyway), crawl through dungeons, kill mobs, see cities or perhaps even roleplay (yup, several years of mmoRPGs and almost no RP in any of them *sigh*).

 But due to work social life, girlfriend and so on I can't always play, so I'm no hardcore gamer. It can happen I can't play for a week or two even. So you could rather call me a casual player. This makes me go solo sometimes, or at least not always having the time to setup a team if it would take hours (I remember spending an hour or two to get a healer and a tank into one team in Anarchy Online. Tanke loged of, doc joined the team and vise versa). So to say I either sometimes need something to do solo, or teams gathered quickly. So what's there to do in FF XI?

Any advise, hints details about the game itself would be nice. I need honest advise from players, no "just play" or "of course it's great, we play it". :)

Thanks in advance

Hey there!

to answer some of your questions about FFXI, ummm... i know what you mean about not wanting the game to turn into a math problem and how to tweak as much dps out as possible, i myslef have never had to worry about that in FFXI as in other games like WoW.  Things to do?  Well theres more than i could tell you here, i've played for well alomost 4 years now off and on, and i havent gotten max level on a single job yet.

The class system is very nice, switching between jobs whenever you want without having to create a whole new char is extremely awesome! start out new without having to lose all your fame/rep and wealth you've acquired thus far, but still get to try a healer/tank/dps job all on one char. It is very nice.

Crafting is a grind for the most part, but not like other games, you get alot of the mats by just going out and playing and if you do a little research you can know what your looking for to save for crafting and what you can vendor off. pretty much everything you craft is useful to someone and some of the richest people in the game are crafters that dedicated enough gil and time to go far in it. Crafting is really not for the fient of heart here, you wont be maxing out and crafting skills anytime soon, also if im not mistaken you can do all the crafting skills there is, not having to choose 1 or 2 is also nice.

This game really is BIG, i mean BIG! personally i havent exlpored close to everything yet. Im quite casual with this game myself but really this is the best MMO i've played and i've tried most of them. Even exploring is a challenge, considering not many mobs are soloable and will kill you quick =D, but if your someone the likes a little meat to your games you'll like the hurdles you face, just traveling to the next city or dungeon is epic. you have to be on your toes and organized to even make it to the entrance =D

Now as you said you don't have much time to play and sometimes can't put groups together. I don't want to turn you off but this game is entirely group based, after level 10 there isn't much you can do alone to get EXP or do missions ( which is where the story line takes place with ingame cutscenes and all! VERY COOL!) but there is alot you can to solo but the game is very focused on group dynamics.

This post has gotten a little longer than i wanted there is just so much to this game and trying to explain it all would take pages and pages, but from someone who has really enjoyed this game for years and is still enjoying it at my own pace, i am very happy. The community is also the best in any MMO, you'll never find a more helpful bunch of people in any other MMO.

Hope i helped you make a decision either way but, you know for $20 you can get the game and all 4 expansions, either download them or goto gamestop and get the box, either way you can't beat the amount of content for the money plus with 30 days free sub you'll more than get a chance to see if you like it. $20 to see if this game is for you is very nice considering if you like it you'll more than get your money out of it over the years! 

I have an admittedly retarded reason for not playing all of my FFXI trial. I couldn't get the game resoloution to change which frustrated me to no end. Sure make the gameplay different, and put your own twist on it, but for the LOVE of GOD Square, please make your menu screen idiot friendly!

If you want immersive, it depends on your imagination. I can immerse myself in anything, because I like to write books, therefore I have an overactive imagination. Hence I can play WAR and somehow be immersed. But if you really want my two cents, choose this or Lord of The Rings Online.

Hi there!

First of all, I'll try to be completely honest. What I say is my opinion and may not reflect the actual truth, as in it might be biased, I don't know. I'll try to avoid that though.

One word that I'd use to describe FFXI would be an "unpolished diamond".  I think FFXI is one of it's own kind. It really can't be compared to more mainstream MMO's like WoW or LoTRO or Warhammer. It doesn't have as many players, because it's aimed for a different kind of audience. It has also lasted for so long because no MMO that would rival FFXI has never been released yet (and most likely won't be in the near future).

The game has it's good sides which can't be rivaled by any other game,  but it has it's bad sides that can drastically affect the overall gaming experience. The game is Heavily >group based<. As of now not much can be done without some kind of group, and the general gameplay like exping is almost always done in parties with 2 to 6 players. This means that people have to look for group to gain exp. Sometimes it takes 5mins, sometimes 3 hours+ to get a group. This is something that one has to get used to if you're not playing with RL friends. For now there hasn't been any other way to gain levels, but SE is releasing an event for people at low levels who want to party but don't have time/can't get an invite. Nobody knows how good it is though, so I cannot say how much it eases the worst part of the grind, waiting. But one thing is for sure, this game will <never> be as solo friendly as others. There are good sides to this however. People are "forced" to be considerate to each other which results in more mature social atmosphere. As SE has dumbed the game down more retards have started arising but it's really not as bad as in other MMO's.

You will have a lot more social interactions with people, in good and bad. The game is international, which means there are the English and the Japanese playerbase. Japanese don't want to speak english so they hang around with each other and only join with English people to exp. However if you say few japanese words they really change their attitude and might even start chatting with you in english.

If you can find a helpful linkshell and make many friends you're good to go. Friends liek to help each other, random people not so much. I'm sure they can answer your question if you happen to have any (and I'm pretty sure you will have, there's so much to learn from the level1 it might be almost too much).

Some people go for efficiency, others don't really care. In exp situations as long as you can do your job well not many care about anything else. There are elitists who will be rude and arrogant towards you, but it's really hard to avoid these kind of people in any game I guess :/. If you can make friends who don't really care about maximum efficiency and play for fun you'll have a good time. Of course the opposite can happen too!

Now I might be biased here, but I feel that FFXI has the "depth" that many games are lacking these days. There are lot of details put into the areas. There is almost too many things to do. This game is over 6 years old, there have been so many content updates I can't count them all. This game is really old school. It's hard.  Because this game is old, many have a capped level character by now, so you're in a kind of minority. Of course there are people who like to explore, and the games quests really encourage you to do so. The quests aren't simply there for exp, almost everything has a story included and while rewards may not be as good as in other games, the stories really bring depth to the game.

I like crafting. It's not as profitable as it was, aside from fishing, but it's fun way to pass time. There's no button smashing minigame included, but researching recipes, getting the ingredients and then seeing 5 0.3 skill ups in arow really entertains me, I don't know why. Fishing has pretty cool minigame included, but it gets old fast I guess. Roleplay is in no favor in XI, but of course there are certain guilds specifically for that kind of playstyle.

Not being able to play for week or 2 is just fine. It's not a race to 75, and I believe you can get stuff done even if you have to take extended breaks. Just prepare to be playing this game for long time though ;). The good thing is, when you finally hit the level cap it feels GOOD. Like you've really achieved something. And you don't have to play just one job. You can change anytime you like. If you dont like to play Job X today, go to your mog house and change to job  Y. And believe me jobs are what this game has. 20. That should be enough for every taste known to human.

There's lots of stuff you can do alone, well, to some extent. Like I said they're releasing a soloable way to gain exp, gil, and maybe even certain items. Quests can be soloed, crafting can be done solo. Even some missions. But the main focus is group.

Hints: Getting gil is hard. Don't stress about it, if you can get to 30, some quests that can make you money become available. My RL friend that started playing a while ago didn't have to farm at all after getting to 30. You just gotta be good at researching. Most of them quests can be done solo, or with LS friend if you happen to get lucky. At first it's gonna seem like an impossible task, but with few tricks you'll be fine. I can tell you one of mine that will net you even 100 000 gil per week by just logging in 5mins a day if you want. Not in public of course, I don't want my secrets revealed to anyone ;).

Also remember that this game will be frustrating at times. Parties dont work out, you die just before finishing a quest and delevel. But there are the days when everything just locks in and you get lots of stuff done. In bad times it's better to just take a break and come back later, kind of like a new start. One can't rush this game through, it'll make you insane if you compete to get to 75.

There's more stuff that I could tell, but I can't remember. There's too much. One final tip is to try to avoid thinking that this will be like WoW or the likes, because the ruthless start might scare you away too easily then. Don't hesitate to ask for help from strangers, be polite and enjoy the world of Vana'diel!

Originally posted by Pabswikk

I have an admittedly retarded reason for not playing all of my FFXI trial. I couldn't get the game resoloution to change which frustrated me to no end. Sure make the gameplay different, and put your own twist on it, but for the LOVE of GOD Square, please make your menu screen idiot friendly!

 

There is a config tool for the game.... /sigh. You can also change your registry files or get windower to fix your problem.

@OP.

Since there are some good posts already no need to type a big write up on this, look around on these forums, lots of information lurking in replys.

Just a heads up, The game takes a Huge time investment....if you can not dedicate at least 2 hours a gaming session dont bother with it. When you get Higher level, yeah there are things you can do for shits and giggles if you dont have a lot of time to play that day, but at the lower levels theres not. (hopefully the Field of Valor thats coming in next update will help with the stagnation of the lower levels).

~HappyGaming

I did config. Couldn't make the resoloution work. Anyway that's beside the point. I was jesting.

My point is that for immersion MMOs you want mainly PvE based games, with good, well structured storylines. Such as LoTRO and FFXI. FFXI has the advantage of tons of neat features because of years of expansions, whereas the universe of LoTRO may appeal to you more and the graphics are superior. Unfortunately, there's no 'Magic' per se in those games and you may therefore find it hard to connect with your character.

FFXI have better graphic then lord of the ring if you play on xbox360.

Heck, i don't even think FFXIII going to get better graphic then FFXI.

Anyway if you are here asking, you already know your answer. FFXI is not a game you can just say "oh its another clone"

I personnally can't stand another Turbine game anymore. Asheron call was amazing... but any works after that turned to shit.

And funcom sucks! Don't even think about Age of conan. You will quit after 1 week and your credit card will belong to funcom forever and will be charge every month forever from now on. (they enjoy keep your CC information and always charge you even if you cancel.)

Anyway for one, if you count the "amount of "i am back post" you will notice there is no MMORPG like FFXI always make player return.