How Could SE Realistically Improve Modern FFXI?

The one thing I'll never understand that hasn't been done for over a decade is another server merge.

I know old school FFXI required more teamwork to get the majority of end game done, but using Horizon as an example, if you pay attention to what their player base say, you always hear how amazing it is to play with a community that has life again. I'm a retail player and got bored with 75 era stuff, but it did feel amazing to always see, hear, and join people doing various activities. Despite negative opinions, current end game is the same way and if you wanted to have a sense of community again I believe all you need to do is merge the dead servers together.

In the past 2 years I've played on Asura, Bahamut, and Leviathan. Levi is my home and the majority of my friends still play there but man it's an ominous feeling there compared to Asura/Bahamut. If a new or returning player ever got thrown into one of the 12ish dead servers, it would be a depressing experience they're almost guaranteed to give up on. Alternatively, if they were thrown into Asura the RMT/merc spam would probably be just as overwhelming.

I truly believe if you want to draw old school players back, give them a server with people. This would also keep current players engaged and improve their QOL by having more people to do content with rather than feeling the need to merc or buy items.

Long rant, so I apologize... but I'll simply never understand why they don't merge servers. It'd make this feel completely new and refreshed.

They're making money by charging you to do your own merging. (and the smugglers server jumping are paying them a ton, too)

I'm shocked they ever did the first merge.

It's is not financially in their best interest to take a cash maker and eliminate it.

Here's an suggestion for an easy update that would improve player engagement with existing content:

Take off the restriction on Primeval Brew in Escha preventing credit for Aeonics, and drop the price of a Brew. This would give players an alternate method to solo Aeonics, just like they can already solo Relic/Mythic/Empy weapons (and theoretically Primes, if you're masochistic enough to grind out all that galli solo).

It revitalizes content that is getting old and unused. There are less groups doing Aeonic runs now, most of the hardcore crowd already have the ones they want, and more casual players don't have a very practical way to even engage with this content any more outside of buying clears from mercs (and FFS, don't balance the game around that). Also increases players going to Escha zones to grind out silt for Brews and beads for Aeonic KIs. No real downside, right?

There's also not much argument any more about "but that was one of the few remaining group activities", because most groups that care about farming weapons would be running Sortie these days instead. And it's not like you can't still do Aeonics more efficiently with a group, this just makes them more accessible to a larger portion of the playerbase.

Didn't X|V do something once to incentivize players to spread out to less-populated servers with EXP gains while playing on them or something?

Instead of merging servers, they could oblige the interests of all parties by offering something similar. Lower-population servers would see some revitalization, higher-population servers would cool off, and Square-Enix would make a killing from the people paying to merge over.

I know that the Besiege re-tune is nothing like the other re-tunes they've done. The only reason I bring it up is because someone mentioned that SE would never pay to have something re-tuned. The points you bring up actually strengthen my point. If SE would pay to have Besieged re-tuned just so people can get their vouchers easier, it isn't a stretch to imagine them elevating AV to level 145 and sticking in a new RoE objective that rewards galli and a VP.

Every month that passes and they add literally nothing new to the AH server jumping away from asura becomes more appealing.

But this definitely, mlvl +50% 24/7 on the bottom 5 servers. Hallmarks +50% muffins +50% segments +50% etc etc etc

Exactly how unity is supposed to work, but correctly.

They could actually deliver on what they promised which was a new zone unlocked at the end of VR.

A new zone like reisenjima, with extremely difficult mobs to kill and new NMs. I mean... VR should have unlocked a Limbus uncapped, with alliance-type content.

they could offer better deals on subs as it stands its kinda outrageous what they charge for a sub + chars + wardrobes (this i hate), makes it more expensive than current mmo's.

No thanks. One Asura is enough.

mwhahaha

Bold of you guys to assume anyone still left at SE knows how to perform a server merge.

If they don't have that knowledge/experience in their staff anymore, they could just come to ffxiah and ask for help; before long, someone will come into this thread and say it's a 2 line change in an xml file and could be done between bites of a doughnut.

If you want to play on Asura, just server hop to Asura for eight dollars USD. Literally no one is stopping you.

Some of us prefer to play on smaller servers where we dont have to wait 20 minutes to enter an event and have our screen filled with RMT shouts 24/7.

It's just a server transfer x10000 it's not overly complex. You can try to blow everything out of proportion but it's just silly.

Find and replace all Shiva > Leviathan. 5 seconds.

There won't be merges anyway, so it's a moot point.

Respectfully disagree. Besieged wasn't re-tuned so people can get vouchers "easier", it was re-tuned because it was going too fast and making it so that some of the addicts could not get in at all. There is zero additional reward, and there is a significant downside in that the event now costs more of your time for the same reward. The reason they are only increasing to level 99 (and not 119) is that they are trying to thread the needle of (a) not increasing the time so much as to piss off the majority who didn't have an issue with the current event difficulty, balanced against (b) slowing things down enough that more people can show up before its over, and hopefully continue to do the lame old content instead of simply abandoning it due to frustration getting in because it's already done by the time they HP and get into the zone.

It's a net negative to me, since everyone now has to waste more minutes per month for no new reward.

If they wanted to do something like your idea of a lv145 AV with actual *new rewards*, then the analogous way to modify Besieged would have been to stick new rewards into that event too. Direct currency drops, RoEs, whatever. But they didn't do that, and I agree with the crowd taking the position that's an intentional decision because they do NOT want to make any existing grind easier or give new rewards. Maintenance mode doesn't work when you let the players get through the limited amount of content faster.

In order to expand other content in the same way they did Besieged, they'd be doing stuff like giving Einherjar or Nyzul mobs MORE HP/stats and not changing the rewards. You know, because building a Mythic is too easy these days. Be careful what you wish for.

paid server transfers are ready in about a minute after payment goes through, it really is that simple, just moving 300ppl instead of one.

That's my bad, I misunderstood something you mentioned. But you're completely missing what I'm trying to say. The only reason I brought up besieged in the first place had nothing to do with developer intent. Someone else mentioned that SE would never touch older content, but alas, we're getting lvl99 besieged. Why are we getting lvl99 besieged? For the sake of my argument, it doesn't matter why. But the fact that it exists does.

One thing I genuinely do think would improve the health of the game is increasing the number of Auction House slots per character. It would help eliminate money out of circulation (AH transaction fee taking it out instead of just NPC'ing every item and generating more), as well as circulate more items in the economy.

It's actually more the opposite.

You think if there's more slots, then people sell more. But the lack of slots incentivizes undercutting and fast selling. If you're not pressed into moving items by the limit you won't price them well and they'll sell less often.

I'd rather see (all) NQ items be sold by npc and the AH be exclusively for HQs, it's a can of worms, but, NQ items are harder and harder to find when they don't exist as sparks.

I don't know the solution to this, I'm not even sure there realistically is one or one that SE would be interested in implementing at this stage of the game's lifespan, but the "on-ramp" to endgame so to speak is miserable. An incoming player spends the first 100 or so hours solo until they got all the stories and limit breaks done and their first 99, maybe some more time spent getting a second job to 99 or soloing VE-N V2 Ambuscade for some starter gear, and then slams into the brick wall. That wall being "play one of like three supports that functions in low gear, pay for merc stuff, or just spend the next year or two slowly soloing a REMA". At no point in this process do you have the opportunity to learn grouping culture and norms in XI, nor what's generally expected of your role or job in group content. Instead you just have the DD trusts beat everything up for you. The first "real group" someone might find themselves in would probably be for Ambuscade V1N these days, or maybe Dyna-D RP farms if they're in a social LS. Not the best places to learn how to actually play WHM.

There are many, many reasons for that wall existing and some are sort of "the point" of the game, which is why I'm not sure it's fixable. Things like the gear gulf being massive, gear empowering DPS way more than supports, the meta/design of XI heavily encouraging like 3 supports all empowering a singular DD (Of which there are like 11 DD jobs), support (particularly WHM) being seen as boring or less desirable to play, etc. There's also not really a steady influx of lower power/preparation players to do things gradually with, trying to get a CP party going even in returner linkshells is like pulling teeth especially outside of campaigns, and most casual or new player interest in XI ends at the point the story content does so the above aren't really issues to them.

This touches on other aspects that could use improvement too, like how wildly unbalanced jobs are in XI. I get that part of that is due to the underlying battle system being about slinging buffs and debuffs back and forth until one side gets the better math, but modern gear creep has led to some support jobs being viable 1/2 to 3/4ths of a DD in and of themselves. Then there's things like my understanding that sure, it's okay for some content to favor some jobs over others, but when the "relevant" endgame where this sort of thing matters is largely two events then seeing THF or (for most strategies) the pet jobs be either useless or incredibly niche while COR and WHM get to go to all content, forever, until the end of time, speaks to poor balance. At least the pet jobs get to come out on weird Ambuscade months.

But like I said I don't know how realistic further balance would be. I've read the We Remember Vana'diel articles and to my understanding most of the RoV/TVR-era balance in terms of job and gear design was literally one person's role. And I think the task of better balancing XI is far out of scope for one person to try and patch up with their best effort understanding of the game's systems, even when it doesn't feel like the game's internal math and systems are one step away from keeling over and giving in entirely.

It's not all doom and gloom though, I'll acknowledge that Empy +2 is a better on-ramp than has existed in the past.

Lot of good points there Blackmore, I think new players REALLY need a linkshell, or at least a few friends or the onboarding experience will be absolutely awful. That said, I think with a little bit of guidance/help from a player or two, it can quickly turn into a really positive experience. I'd like to think that a lot of the new/returning players who've come to my linkshell over the past few years have at least had an easier time getting up-to-speed, even if it is a lot of work and many of the things you say still apply.

I definitely agree about the job balance thing, but I view it more as a feature of the game than a flaw. At the end of the day, the thing that makes the game so special, unique, and fun is the fact that the jobs are extremely different to each other and NOT balanced. This and the complexity of the mechanics really make for a deeply engaging, though deeply confusing, experience. It's a strength and a weakness, but I would personally not want to see that changed at all, it would undermine the greatest strength the game has going for it.

Having to get through the stories really is a problem. Thankfully, Ambuscade and Domain Invasion can be participated in with very little progress, but those get boring quickly. You can't do any other meaningful endgame until you've finished Rhapsodies and/or at least one other storyline.

On the other hand, XI uniquely allows you to join up with other players right from the get-go. A character already level 99 won't get much out of a low-level EXP party, but it's still better than nothing at all.

When I've tried other MMORPG's, friends might join up with me, but they end up just getting in the way more than anything. They get no reward from helping out, they aren't privy to the next marker location on my quest or what enemies I need to slay 10 of for Farmer Joe. And because of the button-spammy GCD combat of the themepark subgenre, you can't even really communicate unless you're using VoIP.

XI forces you through a slog of 100 hours, yes. But that's par for the course of the genre. But at least with XI, if you've made any attempt at all to be sociable, you can at least have fun as you trudge through the boring parts.

Pet jobs are in a really weird place in XI. On the face of it they are cool, interesting jobs that change the gameplay dynamics.

However, they are let down by the clunky UI, delays when telling the pet to do anything, pathing issues cause why would the damn pet walk in a straight line when it can take a detour around the block and by the time it gets there the mob is dead.

Add to that they don't get player buffs, not affected by geo bubbles, are affected by all the debuffs just the same, are affected by master's gear but need to be some kind of savant to tell when the pet is about to do something to switch gear for that thing - when pet does it by itself - and the penalty when they die and cooldowns are not up yet is you have a gimp dd that can't do anything on their own.

When master can stay out of range and let pet do its thing they're great.

Worst change SE ever made to XI was the distance limit on bst JAs. That is a hill I will die on.

Which is a pity because pet jobs are probably the most unique XI subsystem relative to other MMOs. There is genuinely nothing like PUP or SMN in any other MMO (and I've played most of the post-2000 ones of note), so if someone's looking into XI for experiences they can't get anywhere else those jobs will rank high on the list. But outside of 1hr cheese SMN just ends up a worse version of other jobs and PUP gets to tank some niche encounters if built a very specific way. While BST is emulated in other MMOs better (WoW Hunters, etc), most pet archetypes are ranged-based so BST is a bit unique in wanting to fight with its pet even if XI's systems make that janky. I've seen White Lions from Warhammer Online and Survival Hunters in WoW do that too, but it's a rarer thing.

Someone that's attracted to the game by or falls in love with one of those jobs is not going to have a great time, unfortunately.

Direct and easy method to alleviate Sortie / Odyssey frustrations would be to add in one time RoEs for killing bosses.

This would encourage grouping at least once, and once people had a taste for grouping/a group at all, then they would go with a group more often/at all.

Something like Monthly RoEs that awarded a bunch of Galli for a few different things would be very welcome, too. Perhaps add in the caveat, "Defeat/complete thing AND enter Sortie."

Nothing so high as to basically say, "Free Prime Stage 5!" But an amount high enough to make it so soloers can actually get a piece of +3 Empyrean armor made in less than week a bit more viable. I long to be in one of those runs that makes over 50k Galli in a single Sortie. I can solo about 8k Galli per run, give or take. So it takes me effectively 9 days to make one +3 Empyrean piece. Meanwhile, folks with groups are getting theirs made in 2-3 days, so long as they're actually getting Starstones from the basement.
As it stands currently, I always get a Starstone well ahead of having the Galli.

I would: cut down the time required to master a job to max 20h. 20h grinding is already way over most single person games out there, but seems reasonable time spent for an average player to commit like 2h daily, can get his favorite job done in 10 days.

Cut down the time required to achieve a complete (any) ultimate weapon to 20h also. Again, seems reasonable 10 days commitment for an average player to achieve a goal.

Most gear progression is already pretty reasonable with exception of:

- the unlock mechanism of relics.I would make so you could unlock them all only beating once each zone
- despite not being generally strong nowaday, artifact gear can become tiresome if you already dont have the cards ready. Maybe halving the cards requirement
- I would make a complete run of Sheol C already giving 3 moglophone II (similarly, A giving 1 moglophone and B giving 2 moglophones)
- Halving the cost to upgrade unity gear

Regarding gil, I think thrice the cap on spark/acc to exchange would be nice

The brick wall is really just the mentality of other players/veterans etc.

Long time groups already have their friends, schedules, and play times locked in, more or less, and so there is no room for them to accept/adopt new players unless they have someone quit (and often times they can just fill it with a dual box'd mule).

They can then afford to be picky, because a lot of people are group-less and were on the backburner as fill-ins.

The other newbies are slotting into the back burner slots, if they're trying to go for endgame stuff at all, instead of trying to just slowly climb a ladder together.

Even if they do try to do that, their other newbie friends either aren't sticking around or are seeing other newbs they know get fast tracked by being lucky, and then leave in hopes of doing the same. The fastest way through the wall is for vets to break it down.

So the real solution is to change player mentality, but good luck doing that. Newbies need to know that the grind is long and it does not end. Vets just need to step in and help newbs more. But neither of these are appealing and can't be made to be appealing.

Other problem is the way Trusts lead you to the meta in a manner of speaking. There aren't enough job accurate trusts, and by this I mean...

There are 22 Jobs and roughly 109 trusts (120ish but you can only have one Unity leader trust available to you at a time).

Of these 109, most are subpar melees. The ones that have the greatest value are the ones that heal, buff, debuff, skillchain, and magic burst. Of the ones who do that, there is a single COR, GEO, and two BRDs. You these in conjunction a RDM and WHM trust (or Monbereaux if you stuck around long enough) to buff yourself as much as possible, so you don't really learn what other jobs do. To muddy the waters further, some of the other useful trusts are melees with unique weaponskills that heal or restore the party in ways that players can't with access to spells that no player combo can possess (Think Iroha II with access to Protectra/Shellra V but also Flare II and such).

In spite of there being Dancer Trusts, Scholar Trusts, SAMs, RNGs, THFs, NINs, BSTs, etc. None of them perform the way a player would, and none of them have access to even half of their job's whole kit. Their scripts are also player job dependent, Dancer trusts not using Haste Samba unless you have access to Cure on your main job, in spite of most all of them also not using Waltzes and instead locking into Saber Dance.

This leads players to not know that other job combinations can be quite a lot more potent than they're seen to be in their trust counterparts, with jobs that buff (GEO, BRD, COR) being seen as staples due to their associated Trust's efficacy.

Like an actual Dancer for instance can apply 10% JA Haste to the whole party, and -23% defense down that stacks with other defense downs with Presto Box Step within the first 15 seconds of a fight (-13% on engagement). These are both wildly powerful abilities that require no REMAs that people outright ignore almost all of the time because there's no example/demonstration of it without you or another player using it.

Obviously actual BSTs have pets and their pets do awesome things. There's a bevy of debuffs that BSTs get to make use of with certain pets all of the time that are highly desirable in lots of places, but again, there's no demonstration of it without personal or other player experience.

DRGs have a whole hybrid healer support thing they can do, which isn't in play all that much, but it is a thing. Ninjas have debuffs that can be nifty if no other option is present. Subjob stacking can be used to make up for lack of a specific job in some cases...

Point being, when people go look stuff up on, "How to do stuff the best." They find what is mathematically the best. Which is not very conducive to forming parties or playing with real people with all their foibles and desires, desires such as, "I will only play BST and never anything else!"

Part of the wall is people not wanting to forsake a good buff from Trusts for an equivalent or better skill from a real player, just because the skill is different/unknown to them.

A big problem too is that a lot of people who are already doing something with Trusts won't abandon their Trusts because there's a weird, arbitrary 5 whole minutes where once you invite a new person to your party you aren't allowed to summon new Trusts.

There's a way around that by changing the party leader, because only someone inviting another person cannot summon new Trusts. But even I only just learned that about two weeks ago.

Why is that even a thing? >_>

No reason other than to be obnoxious. You should be able to kick one trust and invite someone into a party without dismissing and recalling trust too.

They really did the absolute minimum / worst possible implementation of trust. Bottom to top trust and everything about them is ***. Terribad AI terribad casting no gear haste/snapshot/fast cast (mildly adjusted) severely limited abilities/spell lists severely under hp/mp (stat in general) ballad. flurry. paeon. haste1. zero enhancing duration (koh) zero song + zero roll +

It's so far beyond where you can justifiably say "theyre not supposed to replace a player"

I don't know. Maybe wishful thinking? Update the engine as it should have done a long time ago. I don't think this game will attract new players (only very, very few). They wouldn't feel like playing a DirectX 8.1 p2p MMO, only to say FFXIV is a thousand times better.

"Oh look! WingsXI? Let's try it why dontcha!?"
"Oh, there is HorizonXI!? Probably the best private server."

Me: "That's it. No retail then."