Is FFXI Dying?

Very much agree, I was disappointed that when I got halfway on CoP missions when the started making those easier. I was happy be done with it well before levelsync came about. I honestly feel a lot of the new stuff is a bit easy, but i guess there has to be easy somewhere to keep new players coming or this game will die.

HA Touché

Might be right there. The missions were all encompassing, you were involved from level 30 til 75, and you did fight a god ...

To be honest, I think it's the opposite. FFXI has never been new-player-friendly to begin with, especially compared to something like WoW. I seriously doubt very many "WoW n00bs" are going to stick with a game as difficult as FFXI for very long. I'm sure a few of them will, but they're hardly the downfall of Vana'diel. If anything, it brings a bit of diversity.

That's my biggest problem with the game: a lack of diversity. Out of the 15k or so people on each server, it's unofficially ruled by a small percentage of the "hardcore" ones. You know the type(or in some cases, you *are* the type): standing around WG all day, arguing amongst each other about microscopic differences in one pair of gloves over another while waiting for yet another SAM to show up for your merit/nyzul party, and when the occasional new player sticks with the game long to actually make it to WG, they get mocked and insulted when asking for help in a genkai or something.

These are the people who ensure that nobody who spends less than 8 hours a day in-game will ever be accepted into the fold. And since SE creates ridiculous content that caters only to these people, new content will be geared toward a progressively smaller and smaller amount of hyper-nerds with each update, and eventually the people who only play for fun will have no reason to play at all. That's pretty much the opposite of a "kids game".

Everyone should quit playing this game.

Don't you remember what fun life was?

I'm 3 weeks sober.

I don't think the game is dying, there seems to be a good cycle of new people coming in and old players going out.
Besides as SE has already stated: "We will continue to support FFXI and make new expansions as long as people are playing."

.... In my opinion every update they release dumbs down the game more and more... how is this game "difficult" anymore?

In all honesty they haven't really changed the "difficulty" of anything. They made things more convenient and casual-player friendly, however by no means did they truly adjust conformity of how you wish to play or what you choose to fight. Anyone remember the original Fafnir? Nobody could beat it and people bitched, so they raised the level cap, not the NM's difficulty.

They added bell chimes though, that never gets boring!

I agree with this to a point. While I don't think this game is dying in any way, I do think that both the game and some of the players have been around for so long that they no longer play for the fun of the game. The "spirit of adventure", so to speak. It's now all about verification of formulas on wikipedia, getting merits, or seeing who has the absolute best gear set for any given situation and playing the job to what some consider its maximum potential.

When the fun is gone, what do you have left? A overbearing sense of emptiness and a belief that the game you once loved is suddenly on the verge of death.

There's my noobish $.02

So did you just describe a genre?

I just described what I've seen in the time I've played this game. If that is what this genre normally does, then I suppose I did. ^^

As one Canadian said to this thread, I will have to agree with her.. Nice post Celene, I wouldn't have said it more clearer! PROPS!

I can understand the frustration, and all I can really say is the game is what you make of it. I complained in another thread about how absolutely boring people have gotten with this game, how close-minded when it comes to different things...party setups, job/subjob combinations, cookie cutter strategies, etc. The way it was explained to me made a lot of sense (whoever that was, credit where credit's due and all that); basically, the O.G.'s, the ones that have been playing since launch or not long after...they've all done their exploring, done their playing around with different things to see if it works or not...and now, to a lot of them, it's "Let's just get this ***done already so we can move on to the next thing". Can't say I blame them...my 6th trip to 75 might make me a tad impatient, too. Obviously there's still some enjoyment there, or else they wouldn't be playing...I would think anyways.

My Linkshell goes a long way towards helping me through when I get frustrated with those types of mentalities in the game, so I can only recommend to find a group of more adventurous, explorer types as yourself and static with them. You can get your experimentation done, without the O.G.'s losing their ***because you wanna bring a weird job for any given event.

Oh I agree. I was in that thread with you about the cookie-cutter strategies. For this one; however, I'm merely responding to why some might think the game is dying. I don't see this game as dead or dying in the slightest, but I just got here too. There is still so much for me to see and do and I enjoy the little things, like walking around Miseraux coast and looking at the scenery. The veterans, on the other hand, look to the days gone by and sigh at what has become of this game today.

It's the same if you were to ask an elderly person what they think of the world now compared to what it was when they were kids. This world has gone to hell in a handbasket according to them, but to a child or young adult, it's the exact opposite.

EDIT: Just changed the wording on a few things.

You are right, after playing for about 5 years now it's really turned into that. Although it's not so much that I've turned into this number crunching over-the-top perfectionist, it's the fact that the majority of older players have, which makes it virtually impossible for me to have fun when I can't even walk around WG as a DRK/RNG (just for shits and giggles) w/o 15 people trying to flame me and lon00bing me to death.

It's really come to be ridiculous that with everything you do there is a certain path you have to follow and if you stray just a bit from it, you are condemned. I hate the fact other people try to play the game for me, if only they would pay my monthly fees. :(

I like to consider the HNMs, and the 21-24hr spawn NMs.
Because these are unobtainable by almost any player, as they spawn 1/server/24hours, for like, 5k+ players/server, and some of them (simurgh) have less than 10% droprate(thatbitch), there will almost always be something you havnt gotten or done, on a technical level, Unless you have a huge possee of followers who bow to your every whim 24/7..........

I was lvl 74 Bard for almost a week, seeking for hours and got nothing.

My bard mule used to get blind invites every couple hours so, WTF?!

Bard LFP sucks just as much as WHM lfp'ing.

I hate waiting so i just log.. no time to wait

>_>

Hey I was standing outside the temple doing 1337 damage bish :P

WoW need to die first...

Oooooooh.
Drk/Rng, I'm such a nub I never thought about DRK using Marksmanship WSs. That's kinda neato, altho, I'm sure they'd whiff alot. xD

Lol, I never actually do anything as it, I just had it subbed for fun day when I was bored and went out killing stuff.

Then I get back to whitegate and get laughed at for a good 30 mins, it was just stupid -.-

/feeds the troll

did someone say troll?

It's okay, you can always laugh right back at them for having superiority complex disorders from a video game. That's more pathetic than any bizarre in game combination or action.