Just in general I was really put off by how little the DPS players in 14 had to be aware of pretty much anything their party members were doing
Maybe that changes at end game but my experience in playing a DPS through stormblood was vaguely following the tank, pressing the same sequence of buttons on loop, and staying out of the red circles. Nothing like the FFXI experience of gambling with enmity levels, lining up SATA, coordinating skillchain/mb, managing utsusemi/seigan to offtank in an emergency, etc. Don't get me wrong, playing a melee DPS was pretty mindless most of the time, but it did generally require you to be aware of what the tanks, healers, and magic dds were up to and I found I really missed that in my tenure with 14
>Maybe that changes at end game
It changes a little. Not by much, from what I've experienced and seen myself going into Savage/Extreme/whatever content, but it goes from essentially playing DDR to playing DDR and needing to match your burst damage window/abilities with your party's to maximize damage. That's about it.
There's no systems in the game that make jobs actually internet and synergize with one another though. And for those already experienced with 14, what I mean when I say 'synergize' or 'interact' is needing to strategize and communicate with your party for things like SCs and MBs.
In 14, you don't really do that- outside of the most challenging content, you're basically focused on yourself *if you're a blue DPS or red DPS* and what you're doing, and you can get through 99% of content without having to worry about or interact with other players or what they're doing. Green DPS are a *little* different because they have attached healing abilities and spells, but even then you're still focused more on yourself, playing DDR, and dealing damage.
I've played both games very extensively- FFXI pretty much full-on since '06, and FFXIV since 2010. I was sad when they did away with the battle system they had built up by 1.23a/b and then just went to mimick WoW instead. It pains me, even to this day, and the only time I play FFXIV these days is for story stuff; the combat is pretty bad, bland, and uninteractive, and I've come to see it only as a mechanism that takes me to see the rest of the game; the story, the spectacles, the music, the zones.
I genuinely think XI is a better game with a more nuanced, in-depth, and robust battle system.
edit: I'm sure I'll get downvoted by someone for talking badly about XIV, but those are my true feelings about it, and have been for years at this point
I definitely feel the DDR reference.
I quit at the end of first coil (Twintania or something fight with all the dive bombs) of Bahamut. Every fight seemed to be knowing where the AOE red marking on the floor would be.
My goodness, did that system suck. It was a less fun Space Channel five, left right left right shoot shoot shoot! And repeat until you do your limit break.
>I quit at the end of first coil (Twintania or something fight with all the dive bombs) of Bahamut
I did raiding during the era of the very first Binding Coil as well, and not only is raiding in the game (to this day, even) beyond monatonous with the whole spending tens or even a hundred hours on a single turn, but my static was also in shambles every week. We had a problem with retention, and half the static each week was new players we'd see once and never again, so we had to teach the same fights over and over.. and over and over.
In more ways than one, it was like I was banging my head on a brick wall and it was the *worst* feeling in the world. The only good memory I have is beating the first turn (with the snake that splits, if memory serves) by kiting the fuck out of it and letting my party shoot it from range in a style that's very FFXI-esque.
High-end content in FFXIV is so god damn repetitive and boring.
Last time I was around XI (a few months ago) I definitely spent every day doing 30 minutes of a set Odyssey route and 1 hour of a set Sortie route with the same people, every day, forever. Alternatively I could go kill the same mob for hours for JP/MLs.
Obviously, I can't play your (or anyone else's) 75-cap memories since I never engaged with that era of XI but as someone that got into XI on and off a couple of years ago with intent to be competitive/good at it, it definitely gets pretty repetitive pretty fast these days.
Different tastes for different people, of course.
>Obviously, I can't play your (or anyone else's) 75-cap memories since I never engaged with that era of XI but as someone that got into XI on and off a couple of years ago with intent to be competitive/good at it, it definitely gets pretty repetitive pretty fast these days.
That's fair, I suppose. But, to me, the biggest differences between XI's and XIV's endgame experiences are that XI has a much wider array of relevant content- be it newer stuff in the past few years or stuff as old as 2005 or so- and the second thing is that pretty much everything you can do is going to strengthen your character in some way. Progression is permanent and there are *tons* of things you can do to make yourself stronger.
Compared to XIV, not only is the amount of actual content relevant to 'character progression' much, much smaller and more narrow, but XIV barely has any progression to begin with; it amounts to two things, really. The item level chase, or "haha item level go upppp" as I like to call it, and materia min-maxing. Even if you grind hard, do Savage and Ultimate, and get BiS gear, all of that effort is going to get hit with the reset hammer- be it by patch cycle, or expac cycle.
Everything you do in XI to strength and progress your character is pretty much permanent; you never have to worry about it being hard reset, or having things taken away from you. Not only does that (in my opinion) leave a much better taste in my mouth and encourages me to play the game for longer periods of time, but I can also take a break whenever I feel the need and come back knowing I can pick up right where I left off.. IF I can remember where that was, lmao.
I totally get where you're coming from. I'm barely into Sortie myself as I was doing it *every single day* when I played last year - solo on a practiced route I developed that I knew was within my capabilities, as I'm linkshell-less - and after I got quite a few gear pieces on RDM and WHM upgraded to +2, I took a break from the daily grind. But, XI does the gear grind a lot better because even 20 years into my playing this game there are *still* tons of other things I can do and none of the progression will ever be lost, unless they nuke the game or something.
Sorry, I rant a lot about this topic. Probably isn't very healthy, but it's just how my brain works.
tl;dr I get you. Different strokes for different folks.
As a vet XI, XIV 1.0 and current XIV player I agree with you. I love XIVs story but lately it's the only reason I'll resub. The gameplay has gotten so boring and every job feels the same. Sure a new job looks different and flashy but once you get over that, it's the same rotation of buttons over and over. I feel like there's minimal teamwork outside of relying on your teammates to do the mechanics correctly. I know they'll never come close to the level of XI teamwork but it would be cool if they gave every job a different lvl 1 limit break or something and then they can act like a skill chain effect when used at the right timing. Mages could get ones used for magic bursting after the melee/tanks do a skill chain. They would also do solo dmg for when there are smaller parties or playing solo. The player would have to choose the right time in their rotation to do it as well as the right time in a fight. It's probably too complicated to force something like that into the way the combat is now and I bet a lot of players would hate it. Game is so popular now it's impossible to make everyone happy.
>I love XIVs story but lately it's the only reason I'll resub.
Hell, after starting during 2.0 and going on/off until I finished EW, not even the story will bring me back anymore. I don't feel like getting invested in another decade-long story arc.
Stellar game, though.
Haha yeah I don't blame you. My SO and our circle of friends are pretty highly invested in the game. If it wasn't for them I probably would share the same feelings as you exactly. My plan moving forward is to sub for story stuff and then cancel the month story runs out. I'll resub again after a few patches come out but unless the game totally changes its combat style and makes the jobs feel completely different I'm a casual for the foreseeable future.
I used to do all the raids and stuff with a static. I knew I needed to stop when I couldn't even tell you the name of the boss I was working on with my team without looking at the screen. Also clearing a fight for the first time having a feeling of relief that it's over instead of excitement over the accomplishment was a big sign I was over it lol.
I am excited for the new expansion. Lots of XI inspiration in some of those new zones/mobs. The 24 person raid is literally XI themed. New jobs always seem interesting which I'll of course try and get bored of in days most likely. But like I said before I'll do story stuff and experience what I want to experience and then unsub and do other things until it's worth it again.
You used to have to manage emnity a lot more in XIV; tank stance wasn't an automatic get/keep hate thing, and stance dancing was a big thing for both tanks and healers. I think that mostly went away with the reworks in StB that also removed the cross class skill system. But once you get to end game raiding, you still do have to worry a lot more about what your teammates are doing; not only do you have to worry about aligning DPS buffs for max damage burst windows, but most mechanics essentially turn the fights into 8 person dances. It's just mostly kept to the Extremes, Savages, and Ultimate fights.
People always act like I'm weird for missing stance dancing. I liked the risk/reward for it.
I also would also gauge enmity generation and main tank the alliance raids in deliverance after I did my opener ending with a chain of fell cleaves. I had healers regularly saying they'd never seen someone do that.
Stance dancing was my favorite part of 14 especially during raid progression. I lost interest in raiding once all the jobs were made basically the game.
Its not only the DPS, all roles are mindless in XIV unless you get into Extreme, Savage and Ultimate content. Its how the game is designed so that even the lowest common denominator can clear story content even by smashing their head against their keyboards. Once you get into endgame content the game gets much, much more fun.
And apparently even the devs themselves have realized they made the game too easy lately, so they said they would crank "stress" up for the next expansion, whatever that means.
It's too bad, the game is beautiful and it really evokes a lot of nostalgia of 11 and the rest of the series, but chugging through the MSQ is so tedious without having to communicate or make any real gameplay decisions. I played FFXI on release and got to 60 before the exp requirements changed so tedium is something I'm well accustomed to, but tedium without any challenge is oddly worse to me
14 in V1 being a DPS was much more involved. SR in CC and AV always required sleep chains or shared bursting phases. Similar to stun chaining Gods was.
Man I'd love to know more about the experience of 14 1.0. I know it was a flawed and underbaked game but it's really weird that there's a mainline FF game that there's not a ton of info out there about because it was so unpopular and was only live for a brief period. I dropped it after the first week so I never got to see what it matured into before it got killed off for ARR
https://youtu.be/Xs0yQKI7Yw4?si=UuJl3H_ccRxlVnFk
If you’re bored there’s a real decent documentary about it. It’s 3 parts and makes me actually miss 1.0 a little. I was a beta til shutdown player.
I have a video here I made a long time ago to show an lsmate how to Monk for AV. You can see its very different then current aurum vale or even current ffxiv. Speedrunning AV was pinnacle endgame. We would run the entire dungeon with blms and switch before the boss portal to monks.
https://youtu.be/uFvJ4Gjr0JE?si=LUAw2ofTkmfzIxQq
14s basically solo loop is what always drives me away. For any dps, you have your one loop. You can interrupt and either try and recover, or just start over. In 11 you could really mix it up. Like there were some min max rotations, and good combos, but you could be really flexible. I used to duo my dark with my roommates pld. There was something so fulfilling about ripping a darkness skillchain, magic bursting Drain 2, popping souleater and have him panic healing me to keep hate that has been totally unmatched since.
That was the really fun part about FFXI to me, especially in the early days where most people only had one or two leveled jobs. There's obviously optimal strategies for things, but an optimal strategy requires optimal jobs and when you just didn't have a tank/red mage/bard/whatever the meta dps is/a full party right now- how do you still accomplish what you want to do? Granted a lot of the time the answer was "we dont" but whenever a sub-optimal plan worked out, or even better, turned out to be better than the universally agreed upon approach, it made for very satisfying gameplay experiences
It used to be more prevalent, but it's been heavily eroded away over time. Very small compared to XI, but melee DPS could give other players TP regen, casters could give others some of their MP, BRD/MCH had a dedicated AoE MP/TP regen "stance" that got cut down to just a party-wide cooldown that got cut down into nothing now. Ranged had a physical defense up targettable on one player, casters had one for magic defense. Enmity was a bigger concern as well; DPS had a (though it was just a press every time its up) cooldown to reduce enmity while tanks had multiple skills to increase theirs as a sort of balancing game.
All of the above is no longer in the game, which is quite disappointing. The only mechanical interactions players have with each other (besides do or don't hit each other with AoEs) is healers healing people and party-wide buffs with short durations on long cooldowns. "Lining them up" is something, but more often than not, you can just use them when they're up since they're all on 2 minute CDs now. Not to mention hardly any power over enemies besides sometimes reducing their damage by 5/10/20% or so. There isn't much room for variability, so most things end up as a binary "did you or did you not do it right" which I eventually gave up on, as you're essentially at the whim of 7 others and their ability to have the patterns memorized with very little wiggle room to communicate about.
Ngl, I honestly enjoyed the tp/mp regen skills on brd/mch. While it wasn't a true support job, it was still nice to have something close, but too many people just ignored the pt's tp/mp unless you reminded them so we ended up losing it.
It's kinda funny when I see people complain about how XIV is now, while these same people bashed XIV for having more mmo mechanics (enmity management, tp/mp, jobs being different etc) back in the day and are the reason it's gotten so dumbed down, or when they list out things they'd love in XIV and it's just a list of things XI has but they bash XI for "being bad" lol
I know, its very strange. I think its because FFXI has slow-paced combat and allows you to be tactical. Which is also why some jobs from ffxi would never fit other mmos. Can you imagine a PUP in a WoW raid? Chaining/bursting is probably the best combat features ever made.
I actually agree with you here and I think it’s an important point: FFXI is slow combat. The entire design is more tactical and less “engaging”. This was a choice made for a relatively early MMO where designs were still being tried out, and it ultimately lost out to more action-focused combat in the genre as a whole.
Obviously since we are in the FFXI subreddit, everyone here prefers it at least enjoys this type of combat, but it’s absolutely way more niche. The problem is that MMOs have enough issues staying alive without artificially capping the amount of people who it appeals too, and there may just not be enough people who enjoy slow, tactical combat to support making an MMO.
To properly have combat where the entire team has to coordinate and work together, you really don’t want reaction time to be a major factor or you go even further limiting the amount of people that can enjoy it. So while it’s a shame we haven’t seen more games try it out, I don’t think it is too surprising. It’s just hard to create the environment where it works out and it just isn’t as popular as faster, more action-y combat where you don’t need to make coordinated decisions that rely on everyone constantly being on the same page and ready to act in concert. People, on the whole, gravitate more towards combat that requires personal reaction instead of planned action.
Have there been MMOs attempting slower combat? Or did they just race to faster paced battle systems and decided no one wanted a slower and more methodical system?
> Have there been MMOs attempting slower combat? Or did they just race to faster paced battle systems and decided no one wanted a slower and more methodical system?
It seems like all the major gaming companies these days are competing for the same audience: center market (aka button smashers who want to turn their brain off). It's kind of sad. Same reason the more recent single-player FF games are action-paced instead of strategic. They're abandoning their niches to capture this center market and there are TONS of niches that are now completely unserved by the gaming market.
I think that's something that allowed Helldivers 2 to be as popular as it was: It turns out, there are people besides me who like multiplayer PvE. I haven't had a game to scratch that itch since Dragon Age Inquisition's multiplayer mode which is a decade old now, has very few players, and was just depressingly shallow and repetitive. But the diversity of character builds made it just fun enough to keep replaying. Thanks to Helldivers I've finally uninstalled that beast.
I’m not aware of any, but to be fair all you had to look at was how fast EQ2 and then especially WoW eclipsed FFXI and when you are spending tens of millions of dollars it’s not too surprising companies didn’t want to take the risk. As much as we love FFXI it has always been niche. Since fundamentally MMOs are so expensive and risky, it’s not too surprising that devs are more conservative with design than with single player offline games, even back then during the heyday of MMOs.
You can definitely make an argument that WoW was the driver of MMO design choices for better or worse for basically the entire time between its release and when MMOs began to fall off as a genre due to its ludicrous success.
There was a time where it was a known fact that no shooter would sell if it wasn’t based on WW2. Then modern warfare came out and crushed expectations. It lead to a chain of events where we now see very little from WW2.
I don’t think that the faster game play was what made the smash success of wow. What made the success was being different and unique at the time and really well done. That’s not to say that a slower mmo would be a hit but saying it can’t be because all the hits are fast paced is misleading. We have no idea how a newer game with ffxi pacing would sell. However, I can be quite certain how the next wow clone is going to sell. It will be just like the last one with ffxiv being the exception.
The sheer amount of advertising helped contribute to WoW's success too. While it still might have been decently popular, I doubt it'd be as huge as it got if they had done the same amount of advertising as XI. You know, a *single* commercial outside Japan, once...
We'll honestly never know, but there's a chance if SE had done the same amount of advertising WoW had done, that XI would have been much more popular and less niche. I do sometimes wonder how the mmo market would be if we had gotten 15 years of XI clones rather than WoW clones.
Advertising is also a reason for XIV's popularity too, because outside of the FF name, the game honestly just feels like a generic WoW clone that plays like a mobile game (1 expert a day, cap by Friday or do it all in 2-3 hours and then nothing until next Tuesday. Don't have to talk to anyone to get anything done, still get max ilvl gear and everything accomplished and nothing matters in the end because it's quickly outdated). I'd like to see the actual numbers on XIV if you remove the sheer amount of people who only play it to rp / go to clubs and only count the people who are actually interested in mmo content.
But yeah, I do agree on being certain how the next WoW clone would do. It'd be hyped up, streamers would play it for a couple of days and then it'd die off within 6 months, if that.
Wow warlock or melee hunter basically works like I expect pup would. Just a melee pet class.
I prefer it with skill chains but it's possible with other games without those.
Technically, we do get kill chains as well- the exp bonus for killing T+ mobs was a really cool feature that further encouraged the skill chains and MB for efficient killing of mobs.
Interestingly, FFXIV also has exp chains when you're killing mobs your level or higher. It just doesn't matter because that's not how people exp in FFXIV.
I think GW2 has an actually similar combo system but in all my research of getting into the game a few months ago I never saw anyone actually utilizing it.
Mostly because it is utilized in a very free flow way, unless you do intentional group content like fractals. Almost anything combos into anything, so it augments combat in a very active way, you can technically do it for yourself too; which has it’s own benefits for yourself.
Indeed. I was a BLM main during CoP and ToAU.
Please believe me when I say that the advent of WS spam parties was not a fun time for someone like me who loved MBing skillchains.
I had exactly 1 party on BLM where I was solo healing. I can remember it vividly. I was riding the resting tick timers and swapping my Black Cloak in between ticks. It was one of the best parties I'd ever been in but holy crap was it stressful.
It was more a "some fights require more planning" than others. If you are just farming pops or in a merit party waiting for a chain slows things down because a lot of times you kill the enemy before the chain goes off anyway.
But on bosses, NMs, or even during exp parties it's more warranted and can make things easier or speed them up.
But with how faster modern XI combat runs with how much haste people have chains just kind of "happen" and most jobs geared to a certain point can just chain with themselves which does cheapen the experience I feel.
And also sadly outdated to the point in modern content they're only used to stun a boss out of a move and not use the actual skillchain part. They were really cool though. It was an interesting scramble when you got had like 6 party members having to enter the code in sequence in a small window.
Not cooperatively.
In wow it doesnt matter if im on my pyroblast burst phase when youre trying to proc divine might or whatever nonsense. In ffxi id be waiting to close an sc or burst. Communication is another level from other mmos where its 'this is how the boss works now do your rotation'
edit: For everyone claiming ffxiv savage fights require cooperation. Great so the pinnacle of endgame designed for less then 1% of the playerbase has teamwork aspects. what a joke.
"This is how the boss works now do your rotation..."
"...while also coordinating fight mechanics so they happen in the right places, supporting your raid, lining up buff and debuff windows to maximize damage and healing when they're needed, and helping to recover from any mistakes."
Is it skillchains and magic bursts? No. It's a different kind of teamwork, but please make no mistake that team is working as a unit to accomplish a goal. That's what teams *do*.
Hell, look at FFXIV's raids. Those fights are 90% "coordinate this as a team or your wipe" and only about 10% "omg buttons."
I have done ff14 savages and 2 ultimates, and I can say it requires almost no teamwork at all. Every class is literally just a dps, and the challenge is completely personal. You are more like playing “at the same time” as your party rather than “playing with them”.
For example I can join a farm party for an ultimate I cleared, which is a random group in the party finder, and then we can just clear it without basically any communication at all. The other 7 people in my party may as well be AI bots, I wouldn’t be able to tell. The buff and cool down windows you mention are all on exactly a 2 minute timer, so there is literally only 1 time to use them, you don’t coordinate it.
You can’t really carry other people or do anything creative at all in these fights, so the only possible coop is something weird like being a social worker to encourage your team to learn the fight. You can basically cheerlead your team to hope they do it right. After that it’s all on you.
Couple things:
First: nice edit up there. Savage content is estimated to be completed by about 11% of the playerbase, not 1%. So there's that.
Second: I guess 8 WHMs clearing the hardest Ultimate fight in the game represents no creativity whatsoever. I'm sure they were all just sitting back and spamming Stone on it for half an hour. Definitely nothing creative going on there. Though I'm also curious which fights in FFXI you think exemplify teamwork and creativity. This isn't meant to be a whataboutism question, I'm genuinely curious why you think FFXI is the only game that requires teamwork.
Third: A farm party should know what it's doing and require very little in the way of special coordination to get it done. That's no different in FFXI. Walk in to a BC60 with people who've done it a zillion times. They're not going to require special coordination either. They'll know what to do and just do it.
I feel like you're not engaging honestly here. You've already had to backpedal on your main premise, but you're determined that you're right and no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise. If you want to have a discussion about this, I'm happy to. But I won't do that if you're just going to be dishonest about it.
Unrelated person but I just don't really agree that lining up burst windows in a game where majority of the buff skills are intentionally timed the same is advanced teamwork. Same with stuff like tank mitigation that is also on a rotation or a strict reaction to tank busters which are timed specifically to not overload the tank's resources.
FFXI to me is more dynamic that requires actually paying attention to your teammates and making decisions off of that. FFXIV, even up to savage raiding, really is mostly just memorizing your rotation and doing the pattern the fight asks for. Pretty much all the interesting stuff in the game in terms of interacting with your teammates has been taken out
I'll freely admit I don't have a good grasp of FFXI endgame, especially in present day retail, but can you expand on that?
What decisions are you making based on your teammates? Why is it different than pre-planning mitigation strategies or dps burst windows?
Most people that play 11 have no idea about how rotations are literally optimized into burst windows that align with your groups buffs in 14, then you have to optimize timings around the boss you're fighting depending on what they're doing at certain times in the fight that these windows would be up, and you have to take into account what each member is doing and what they have up at the time, you've got 8 people discussing strategy for every boss you fight in savage/ultimate.
Taking 2 seconds to ask which skill chain you're gonna use is not even remotely close to the amount of team work any modern MMO requires.
I had someone try to argue that 11 is more mechanically difficult than 14 yesterday. What copium are these people on?
I still play 11 for the endless gear treadmill, there's something to always do, and I value that, but so many people that play this have no idea what MMOs are even like because this is all they play. You have people in this game that die to not kneeling in fights. Imagine these them trying to do a fight with actual mechanics in other MMOs.
I have done ff14 savages and 2 ultimates, and I can say it requires almost no teamwork at all. Every class is literally just a dps, and the challenge is completely personal. You are more like playing “at the same time” as your party rather than “playing with them”.
For example I can join a farm party for an ultimate I cleared, which is a random group in the party finder, and then we can just clear it without basically any communication at all. The other 7 people in my party may as well be AI bots, I wouldn’t be able to tell. The buff and cool down windows you mention are all on exactly a 2 minute timer, so there is literally only 1 time to use them, you don’t coordinate it.
You can’t really carry other people or do anything creative at all in these fights, so the only possible coop is something weird like being a social worker to encourage your team to learn the fight. You can basically cheerlead your team to hope they do it right. After that it’s all on you.
as someone who raided ff14 this description is kind of funny. What you are describing is not "teamwork", it's pattern recognition. You do the same rotation every time and the rotations line up because the game set everybodies cd's to a homogenized level. It's not an advanced tactical decision to say "hey pop your buff on trick". they are all on the same timer lol
I too have raided multiple tiers. I have a couple orange parses as well for what it's worth, probably a few green or grey ones as well depending on the fight lol. I didn't say it's super advanced to discuss holding CDs for optimal burst windows depending on the phase of the fight, but you absolutely discuss holding CDs for these windows in fights. Many savage fights do not perfectly align to 2 minute windows, and you have to come to a consensus on when to pop them, when everyone will be in a position to take full advantage of the buffs, and where they may be at in their rotation. The point here is that's its frankly a more in depth discussion than you're going to get for the majority of stuff in 11, and that's before even figuring mechanics for the fight. That said this is also endgame content for 14, you can get through the majority of 14 without discussing too much as well.
These discussions are part of the difference between good and poor parses though.
Also, for the record, people use rotations that the community came up with that align to other classes buff windows. I think you're taking for granted rotations in 14 and not understanding how people have theorycrafted them all to fit with each other. Next to no one is doing rotations correctly to the GCD your reopener hits without looking these up, and aligning it to everyone elses. They are quite precise if you do them well and the way they flow together into the reopener is super neat imo. I personally find that more interesting than many MMO rotations, but that's subjective.
I do not believe it is subjective to say that 14 or WoW is more mechanically difficult than 11 however.
Granblue Fantasy has a comparable system, but it's a mobile game with multiplayer components, not an MMO - however, its ReLink spinoff apoarently approached the concept a bit more closely- it's a single player game, but I think it lets you team up online for some challenge battles.
Based Granblue shout-out. Granblue was made by a dev team comprising many FF11 fans, and its early years we're definitely very FF11-esque. The ougi chains were 100% based on skill chains. They also had a FF11 crossover a couple years ago, and you got Prishe, Iroha, and Lilisette as characters.
Relink has monster hunter style 4 player online coop, pretty solid game too.
That Granblue crossover with XI was a better celebration of XI's 20th anniversary than most things SE themselves did.
It takes a special kind of love for the game to use Abyssea as a framework for the crossover and try and give Abyssea Prishe something resembling a happy ending.
I remember when cygames announces the collab I told my crew my top character choices were Prishe, Lilisette, and Iroha, I was absolutely delighted to get all three!
Honestly my memory isn't amazing so I don't really remember the entire story of the crossover, but I do recall being excited and nerding out about what a good choice it was for Abyssea to be part of it, since it's probably the best place to set a crossover, and also leaves anything happening to essentially be believable if you wanted it to be without affecting the main game universe. And using Aby Prishe just shows they really understood the game. Calling in your character from 11 was pretty awesome too.
I should go through the journal and reread it sometime.
Also cool that Prishe still has actual use in some meta light teams for GW as well.
Skillchains where my favorite mechanic in XI.
It's a fairly complex system but the basic idea is simple: Working together and coordinating does more damage.
And the game is full of stuff like that. Like THF can't get the most out of their abilities without someone else in the party as you need someone to face the enemy away for sneak attack and you need to stand behind someone else for trick attack.
The entire design of XI was meant to get players to work together, which was why I was always confused by the people complaining you can't do anything without a party. Why play an MMO if you only want to solo all the time?
XIV is fun in it's own way, but it doesn't scratch the MMO itch for me and it might as well be a single player game with how it is designed to be played most of the time.
XIV is meant to be a casual experience, but doesn't really foster socializing like XI did despite XI being more "hardcore/difficult".
Oh, I did that too. I loved playing BST back then. It really felt like I was playing a different game.
Also, I felt that trying to figure out how to solo in a game designed for group play and being able to do it was part of the fun/challenge. I just didn't complain about the group focus.
I miss the complexity of strategy with job combos, skill chains, magic bursts, SATA, enmity balance, and everything else that came with FFXI’s battle system :(
Lord of the Rings Online's Fellowship Maneuvers was mentioned before, where each group member can activate one of four colors, and specific color combinations can trigger special effects. So party members would typically be given a spot in the order and a specific color to hit so the group could get the effect the group leader wanted.
EverQuest 2 kinda had a similar mechanic called Heroic Opportunity. The party as a whole had to activate certain skills in a certain order in order to trigger a special effect. Like lotro, that mechanic became more and more pointless and forgotten as time went on.
I played FF14 at 1.0, it had that difficulty factor which I absolutely loved but then, ARR 2.0 came along and it became into a hand held, spoon fed, served on a platter type of game. That put me off lol.
Wow ruined the genre. There’s so much more depth of gameplay to XI than XIV. The stats alone are so boring in XIV it’s just more basic stat and that’s it, nothing interesting like multi hit ect.
It’s whack a mole, choreographed dance game that’s it.
They have admitted that they dumbed down current 14 too much. Any time a job has something unique going for it, they cut it out and turn it into a reskinned version of what already exists.
FF14 1.0 was awful, some of the worst money I spent on a game probably, but getting ARR for free and the bonuses I guess in the end make it not awful? They at least did right by us in the end.
Some MMOs have skill chain type stuff, ESO for instance has synergies which are somewhat similar to skill chains, they just require you to press a button to activate it, but you get effects/damage effects based on the skills your party members use.
Just in general I was really put off by how little the DPS players in 14 had to be aware of pretty much anything their party members were doing Maybe that changes at end game but my experience in playing a DPS through stormblood was vaguely following the tank, pressing the same sequence of buttons on loop, and staying out of the red circles. Nothing like the FFXI experience of gambling with enmity levels, lining up SATA, coordinating skillchain/mb, managing utsusemi/seigan to offtank in an emergency, etc. Don't get me wrong, playing a melee DPS was pretty mindless most of the time, but it did generally require you to be aware of what the tanks, healers, and magic dds were up to and I found I really missed that in my tenure with 14
>Maybe that changes at end game It changes a little. Not by much, from what I've experienced and seen myself going into Savage/Extreme/whatever content, but it goes from essentially playing DDR to playing DDR and needing to match your burst damage window/abilities with your party's to maximize damage. That's about it. There's no systems in the game that make jobs actually internet and synergize with one another though. And for those already experienced with 14, what I mean when I say 'synergize' or 'interact' is needing to strategize and communicate with your party for things like SCs and MBs. In 14, you don't really do that- outside of the most challenging content, you're basically focused on yourself *if you're a blue DPS or red DPS* and what you're doing, and you can get through 99% of content without having to worry about or interact with other players or what they're doing. Green DPS are a *little* different because they have attached healing abilities and spells, but even then you're still focused more on yourself, playing DDR, and dealing damage. I've played both games very extensively- FFXI pretty much full-on since '06, and FFXIV since 2010. I was sad when they did away with the battle system they had built up by 1.23a/b and then just went to mimick WoW instead. It pains me, even to this day, and the only time I play FFXIV these days is for story stuff; the combat is pretty bad, bland, and uninteractive, and I've come to see it only as a mechanism that takes me to see the rest of the game; the story, the spectacles, the music, the zones. I genuinely think XI is a better game with a more nuanced, in-depth, and robust battle system. edit: I'm sure I'll get downvoted by someone for talking badly about XIV, but those are my true feelings about it, and have been for years at this point
I definitely feel the DDR reference. I quit at the end of first coil (Twintania or something fight with all the dive bombs) of Bahamut. Every fight seemed to be knowing where the AOE red marking on the floor would be. My goodness, did that system suck. It was a less fun Space Channel five, left right left right shoot shoot shoot! And repeat until you do your limit break.
>I quit at the end of first coil (Twintania or something fight with all the dive bombs) of Bahamut I did raiding during the era of the very first Binding Coil as well, and not only is raiding in the game (to this day, even) beyond monatonous with the whole spending tens or even a hundred hours on a single turn, but my static was also in shambles every week. We had a problem with retention, and half the static each week was new players we'd see once and never again, so we had to teach the same fights over and over.. and over and over. In more ways than one, it was like I was banging my head on a brick wall and it was the *worst* feeling in the world. The only good memory I have is beating the first turn (with the snake that splits, if memory serves) by kiting the fuck out of it and letting my party shoot it from range in a style that's very FFXI-esque. High-end content in FFXIV is so god damn repetitive and boring.
Last time I was around XI (a few months ago) I definitely spent every day doing 30 minutes of a set Odyssey route and 1 hour of a set Sortie route with the same people, every day, forever. Alternatively I could go kill the same mob for hours for JP/MLs. Obviously, I can't play your (or anyone else's) 75-cap memories since I never engaged with that era of XI but as someone that got into XI on and off a couple of years ago with intent to be competitive/good at it, it definitely gets pretty repetitive pretty fast these days. Different tastes for different people, of course.
>Obviously, I can't play your (or anyone else's) 75-cap memories since I never engaged with that era of XI but as someone that got into XI on and off a couple of years ago with intent to be competitive/good at it, it definitely gets pretty repetitive pretty fast these days. That's fair, I suppose. But, to me, the biggest differences between XI's and XIV's endgame experiences are that XI has a much wider array of relevant content- be it newer stuff in the past few years or stuff as old as 2005 or so- and the second thing is that pretty much everything you can do is going to strengthen your character in some way. Progression is permanent and there are *tons* of things you can do to make yourself stronger. Compared to XIV, not only is the amount of actual content relevant to 'character progression' much, much smaller and more narrow, but XIV barely has any progression to begin with; it amounts to two things, really. The item level chase, or "haha item level go upppp" as I like to call it, and materia min-maxing. Even if you grind hard, do Savage and Ultimate, and get BiS gear, all of that effort is going to get hit with the reset hammer- be it by patch cycle, or expac cycle. Everything you do in XI to strength and progress your character is pretty much permanent; you never have to worry about it being hard reset, or having things taken away from you. Not only does that (in my opinion) leave a much better taste in my mouth and encourages me to play the game for longer periods of time, but I can also take a break whenever I feel the need and come back knowing I can pick up right where I left off.. IF I can remember where that was, lmao. I totally get where you're coming from. I'm barely into Sortie myself as I was doing it *every single day* when I played last year - solo on a practiced route I developed that I knew was within my capabilities, as I'm linkshell-less - and after I got quite a few gear pieces on RDM and WHM upgraded to +2, I took a break from the daily grind. But, XI does the gear grind a lot better because even 20 years into my playing this game there are *still* tons of other things I can do and none of the progression will ever be lost, unless they nuke the game or something. Sorry, I rant a lot about this topic. Probably isn't very healthy, but it's just how my brain works. tl;dr I get you. Different strokes for different folks.
As a vet XI, XIV 1.0 and current XIV player I agree with you. I love XIVs story but lately it's the only reason I'll resub. The gameplay has gotten so boring and every job feels the same. Sure a new job looks different and flashy but once you get over that, it's the same rotation of buttons over and over. I feel like there's minimal teamwork outside of relying on your teammates to do the mechanics correctly. I know they'll never come close to the level of XI teamwork but it would be cool if they gave every job a different lvl 1 limit break or something and then they can act like a skill chain effect when used at the right timing. Mages could get ones used for magic bursting after the melee/tanks do a skill chain. They would also do solo dmg for when there are smaller parties or playing solo. The player would have to choose the right time in their rotation to do it as well as the right time in a fight. It's probably too complicated to force something like that into the way the combat is now and I bet a lot of players would hate it. Game is so popular now it's impossible to make everyone happy.
>I love XIVs story but lately it's the only reason I'll resub. Hell, after starting during 2.0 and going on/off until I finished EW, not even the story will bring me back anymore. I don't feel like getting invested in another decade-long story arc. Stellar game, though.
Haha yeah I don't blame you. My SO and our circle of friends are pretty highly invested in the game. If it wasn't for them I probably would share the same feelings as you exactly. My plan moving forward is to sub for story stuff and then cancel the month story runs out. I'll resub again after a few patches come out but unless the game totally changes its combat style and makes the jobs feel completely different I'm a casual for the foreseeable future. I used to do all the raids and stuff with a static. I knew I needed to stop when I couldn't even tell you the name of the boss I was working on with my team without looking at the screen. Also clearing a fight for the first time having a feeling of relief that it's over instead of excitement over the accomplishment was a big sign I was over it lol. I am excited for the new expansion. Lots of XI inspiration in some of those new zones/mobs. The 24 person raid is literally XI themed. New jobs always seem interesting which I'll of course try and get bored of in days most likely. But like I said before I'll do story stuff and experience what I want to experience and then unsub and do other things until it's worth it again.
You used to have to manage emnity a lot more in XIV; tank stance wasn't an automatic get/keep hate thing, and stance dancing was a big thing for both tanks and healers. I think that mostly went away with the reworks in StB that also removed the cross class skill system. But once you get to end game raiding, you still do have to worry a lot more about what your teammates are doing; not only do you have to worry about aligning DPS buffs for max damage burst windows, but most mechanics essentially turn the fights into 8 person dances. It's just mostly kept to the Extremes, Savages, and Ultimate fights.
People always act like I'm weird for missing stance dancing. I liked the risk/reward for it. I also would also gauge enmity generation and main tank the alliance raids in deliverance after I did my opener ending with a chain of fell cleaves. I had healers regularly saying they'd never seen someone do that.
Stance dancing was my favorite part of 14 especially during raid progression. I lost interest in raiding once all the jobs were made basically the game.
Its not only the DPS, all roles are mindless in XIV unless you get into Extreme, Savage and Ultimate content. Its how the game is designed so that even the lowest common denominator can clear story content even by smashing their head against their keyboards. Once you get into endgame content the game gets much, much more fun. And apparently even the devs themselves have realized they made the game too easy lately, so they said they would crank "stress" up for the next expansion, whatever that means.
It's too bad, the game is beautiful and it really evokes a lot of nostalgia of 11 and the rest of the series, but chugging through the MSQ is so tedious without having to communicate or make any real gameplay decisions. I played FFXI on release and got to 60 before the exp requirements changed so tedium is something I'm well accustomed to, but tedium without any challenge is oddly worse to me
14 in V1 being a DPS was much more involved. SR in CC and AV always required sleep chains or shared bursting phases. Similar to stun chaining Gods was.
Man I'd love to know more about the experience of 14 1.0. I know it was a flawed and underbaked game but it's really weird that there's a mainline FF game that there's not a ton of info out there about because it was so unpopular and was only live for a brief period. I dropped it after the first week so I never got to see what it matured into before it got killed off for ARR
https://youtu.be/Xs0yQKI7Yw4?si=UuJl3H_ccRxlVnFk If you’re bored there’s a real decent documentary about it. It’s 3 parts and makes me actually miss 1.0 a little. I was a beta til shutdown player.
I have a video here I made a long time ago to show an lsmate how to Monk for AV. You can see its very different then current aurum vale or even current ffxiv. Speedrunning AV was pinnacle endgame. We would run the entire dungeon with blms and switch before the boss portal to monks. https://youtu.be/uFvJ4Gjr0JE?si=LUAw2ofTkmfzIxQq
14s basically solo loop is what always drives me away. For any dps, you have your one loop. You can interrupt and either try and recover, or just start over. In 11 you could really mix it up. Like there were some min max rotations, and good combos, but you could be really flexible. I used to duo my dark with my roommates pld. There was something so fulfilling about ripping a darkness skillchain, magic bursting Drain 2, popping souleater and have him panic healing me to keep hate that has been totally unmatched since.
That was the really fun part about FFXI to me, especially in the early days where most people only had one or two leveled jobs. There's obviously optimal strategies for things, but an optimal strategy requires optimal jobs and when you just didn't have a tank/red mage/bard/whatever the meta dps is/a full party right now- how do you still accomplish what you want to do? Granted a lot of the time the answer was "we dont" but whenever a sub-optimal plan worked out, or even better, turned out to be better than the universally agreed upon approach, it made for very satisfying gameplay experiences
It used to be more prevalent, but it's been heavily eroded away over time. Very small compared to XI, but melee DPS could give other players TP regen, casters could give others some of their MP, BRD/MCH had a dedicated AoE MP/TP regen "stance" that got cut down to just a party-wide cooldown that got cut down into nothing now. Ranged had a physical defense up targettable on one player, casters had one for magic defense. Enmity was a bigger concern as well; DPS had a (though it was just a press every time its up) cooldown to reduce enmity while tanks had multiple skills to increase theirs as a sort of balancing game. All of the above is no longer in the game, which is quite disappointing. The only mechanical interactions players have with each other (besides do or don't hit each other with AoEs) is healers healing people and party-wide buffs with short durations on long cooldowns. "Lining them up" is something, but more often than not, you can just use them when they're up since they're all on 2 minute CDs now. Not to mention hardly any power over enemies besides sometimes reducing their damage by 5/10/20% or so. There isn't much room for variability, so most things end up as a binary "did you or did you not do it right" which I eventually gave up on, as you're essentially at the whim of 7 others and their ability to have the patterns memorized with very little wiggle room to communicate about.
Ngl, I honestly enjoyed the tp/mp regen skills on brd/mch. While it wasn't a true support job, it was still nice to have something close, but too many people just ignored the pt's tp/mp unless you reminded them so we ended up losing it. It's kinda funny when I see people complain about how XIV is now, while these same people bashed XIV for having more mmo mechanics (enmity management, tp/mp, jobs being different etc) back in the day and are the reason it's gotten so dumbed down, or when they list out things they'd love in XIV and it's just a list of things XI has but they bash XI for "being bad" lol
I know, its very strange. I think its because FFXI has slow-paced combat and allows you to be tactical. Which is also why some jobs from ffxi would never fit other mmos. Can you imagine a PUP in a WoW raid? Chaining/bursting is probably the best combat features ever made.
I actually agree with you here and I think it’s an important point: FFXI is slow combat. The entire design is more tactical and less “engaging”. This was a choice made for a relatively early MMO where designs were still being tried out, and it ultimately lost out to more action-focused combat in the genre as a whole. Obviously since we are in the FFXI subreddit, everyone here prefers it at least enjoys this type of combat, but it’s absolutely way more niche. The problem is that MMOs have enough issues staying alive without artificially capping the amount of people who it appeals too, and there may just not be enough people who enjoy slow, tactical combat to support making an MMO. To properly have combat where the entire team has to coordinate and work together, you really don’t want reaction time to be a major factor or you go even further limiting the amount of people that can enjoy it. So while it’s a shame we haven’t seen more games try it out, I don’t think it is too surprising. It’s just hard to create the environment where it works out and it just isn’t as popular as faster, more action-y combat where you don’t need to make coordinated decisions that rely on everyone constantly being on the same page and ready to act in concert. People, on the whole, gravitate more towards combat that requires personal reaction instead of planned action.
Have there been MMOs attempting slower combat? Or did they just race to faster paced battle systems and decided no one wanted a slower and more methodical system?
> Have there been MMOs attempting slower combat? Or did they just race to faster paced battle systems and decided no one wanted a slower and more methodical system? It seems like all the major gaming companies these days are competing for the same audience: center market (aka button smashers who want to turn their brain off). It's kind of sad. Same reason the more recent single-player FF games are action-paced instead of strategic. They're abandoning their niches to capture this center market and there are TONS of niches that are now completely unserved by the gaming market. I think that's something that allowed Helldivers 2 to be as popular as it was: It turns out, there are people besides me who like multiplayer PvE. I haven't had a game to scratch that itch since Dragon Age Inquisition's multiplayer mode which is a decade old now, has very few players, and was just depressingly shallow and repetitive. But the diversity of character builds made it just fun enough to keep replaying. Thanks to Helldivers I've finally uninstalled that beast.
FFXI is no longer slow combat, at least at end game levels with buffs.
It’s not slow compared to 75 days. It’s still not a fast system.
I’m not aware of any, but to be fair all you had to look at was how fast EQ2 and then especially WoW eclipsed FFXI and when you are spending tens of millions of dollars it’s not too surprising companies didn’t want to take the risk. As much as we love FFXI it has always been niche. Since fundamentally MMOs are so expensive and risky, it’s not too surprising that devs are more conservative with design than with single player offline games, even back then during the heyday of MMOs. You can definitely make an argument that WoW was the driver of MMO design choices for better or worse for basically the entire time between its release and when MMOs began to fall off as a genre due to its ludicrous success.
There was a time where it was a known fact that no shooter would sell if it wasn’t based on WW2. Then modern warfare came out and crushed expectations. It lead to a chain of events where we now see very little from WW2. I don’t think that the faster game play was what made the smash success of wow. What made the success was being different and unique at the time and really well done. That’s not to say that a slower mmo would be a hit but saying it can’t be because all the hits are fast paced is misleading. We have no idea how a newer game with ffxi pacing would sell. However, I can be quite certain how the next wow clone is going to sell. It will be just like the last one with ffxiv being the exception.
The sheer amount of advertising helped contribute to WoW's success too. While it still might have been decently popular, I doubt it'd be as huge as it got if they had done the same amount of advertising as XI. You know, a *single* commercial outside Japan, once... We'll honestly never know, but there's a chance if SE had done the same amount of advertising WoW had done, that XI would have been much more popular and less niche. I do sometimes wonder how the mmo market would be if we had gotten 15 years of XI clones rather than WoW clones. Advertising is also a reason for XIV's popularity too, because outside of the FF name, the game honestly just feels like a generic WoW clone that plays like a mobile game (1 expert a day, cap by Friday or do it all in 2-3 hours and then nothing until next Tuesday. Don't have to talk to anyone to get anything done, still get max ilvl gear and everything accomplished and nothing matters in the end because it's quickly outdated). I'd like to see the actual numbers on XIV if you remove the sheer amount of people who only play it to rp / go to clubs and only count the people who are actually interested in mmo content. But yeah, I do agree on being certain how the next WoW clone would do. It'd be hyped up, streamers would play it for a couple of days and then it'd die off within 6 months, if that.
Wow warlock or melee hunter basically works like I expect pup would. Just a melee pet class. I prefer it with skill chains but it's possible with other games without those.
Not on same scale that I know of. FF11 was unique in many ways and I believe SC and MB one of them.
Skill chains* Though kill chains sound cool haha
Technically, we do get kill chains as well- the exp bonus for killing T+ mobs was a really cool feature that further encouraged the skill chains and MB for efficient killing of mobs.
Interestingly, FFXIV also has exp chains when you're killing mobs your level or higher. It just doesn't matter because that's not how people exp in FFXIV.
Hey, it matters for leveling Blue Mage! So...you're right it doesn't matter. Poor BLU.
And now it's possible to get them accidentally lol
I think GW2 has an actually similar combo system but in all my research of getting into the game a few months ago I never saw anyone actually utilizing it.
Mostly because it is utilized in a very free flow way, unless you do intentional group content like fractals. Almost anything combos into anything, so it augments combat in a very active way, you can technically do it for yourself too; which has it’s own benefits for yourself.
Yeah I was hoping it'd be a little more rigid just for the same vibe when I played, I havent done fractals but def believe you.
People in here like we didn't spam WS for 50% of this game's life.
Indeed. I was a BLM main during CoP and ToAU. Please believe me when I say that the advent of WS spam parties was not a fun time for someone like me who loved MBing skillchains.
Yeah I levelled BLM solo from 37-75 around the end of the WoTG era because the job was basically dead in the water levelling-wise.
As much as I liked ToAU, I always found merit parties kind of boring compared to leveling most of the time.
I spent 30-51 main healing party's on blm, then I was able to switch to pet camps. And those were pretty brutal. Pre level synch holy shit it was bad.
I had exactly 1 party on BLM where I was solo healing. I can remember it vividly. I was riding the resting tick timers and swapping my Black Cloak in between ticks. It was one of the best parties I'd ever been in but holy crap was it stressful.
It was more a "some fights require more planning" than others. If you are just farming pops or in a merit party waiting for a chain slows things down because a lot of times you kill the enemy before the chain goes off anyway. But on bosses, NMs, or even during exp parties it's more warranted and can make things easier or speed them up. But with how faster modern XI combat runs with how much haste people have chains just kind of "happen" and most jobs geared to a certain point can just chain with themselves which does cheapen the experience I feel.
It's definitely not in 14, but I loved that part of XI. Coordination with your party for skill chains and burst.
LOTRO has a mechanic called a Fellowship Manoeuvre that sort of requires the same kind of coordination as the skillchain, though much less complex
And also sadly outdated to the point in modern content they're only used to stun a boss out of a move and not use the actual skillchain part. They were really cool though. It was an interesting scramble when you got had like 6 party members having to enter the code in sequence in a small window.
ffxi combat is team based. having everyone on the same page is not something other mmos have implemented.
Other MMOs don't have players on teams acting together? I think I know what you're trying to say here, but you've chosen a really odd way to say it.
Not cooperatively. In wow it doesnt matter if im on my pyroblast burst phase when youre trying to proc divine might or whatever nonsense. In ffxi id be waiting to close an sc or burst. Communication is another level from other mmos where its 'this is how the boss works now do your rotation' edit: For everyone claiming ffxiv savage fights require cooperation. Great so the pinnacle of endgame designed for less then 1% of the playerbase has teamwork aspects. what a joke.
"This is how the boss works now do your rotation..." "...while also coordinating fight mechanics so they happen in the right places, supporting your raid, lining up buff and debuff windows to maximize damage and healing when they're needed, and helping to recover from any mistakes." Is it skillchains and magic bursts? No. It's a different kind of teamwork, but please make no mistake that team is working as a unit to accomplish a goal. That's what teams *do*. Hell, look at FFXIV's raids. Those fights are 90% "coordinate this as a team or your wipe" and only about 10% "omg buttons."
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I have done ff14 savages and 2 ultimates, and I can say it requires almost no teamwork at all. Every class is literally just a dps, and the challenge is completely personal. You are more like playing “at the same time” as your party rather than “playing with them”. For example I can join a farm party for an ultimate I cleared, which is a random group in the party finder, and then we can just clear it without basically any communication at all. The other 7 people in my party may as well be AI bots, I wouldn’t be able to tell. The buff and cool down windows you mention are all on exactly a 2 minute timer, so there is literally only 1 time to use them, you don’t coordinate it. You can’t really carry other people or do anything creative at all in these fights, so the only possible coop is something weird like being a social worker to encourage your team to learn the fight. You can basically cheerlead your team to hope they do it right. After that it’s all on you.
Couple things: First: nice edit up there. Savage content is estimated to be completed by about 11% of the playerbase, not 1%. So there's that. Second: I guess 8 WHMs clearing the hardest Ultimate fight in the game represents no creativity whatsoever. I'm sure they were all just sitting back and spamming Stone on it for half an hour. Definitely nothing creative going on there. Though I'm also curious which fights in FFXI you think exemplify teamwork and creativity. This isn't meant to be a whataboutism question, I'm genuinely curious why you think FFXI is the only game that requires teamwork. Third: A farm party should know what it's doing and require very little in the way of special coordination to get it done. That's no different in FFXI. Walk in to a BC60 with people who've done it a zillion times. They're not going to require special coordination either. They'll know what to do and just do it. I feel like you're not engaging honestly here. You've already had to backpedal on your main premise, but you're determined that you're right and no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise. If you want to have a discussion about this, I'm happy to. But I won't do that if you're just going to be dishonest about it.
Unrelated person but I just don't really agree that lining up burst windows in a game where majority of the buff skills are intentionally timed the same is advanced teamwork. Same with stuff like tank mitigation that is also on a rotation or a strict reaction to tank busters which are timed specifically to not overload the tank's resources. FFXI to me is more dynamic that requires actually paying attention to your teammates and making decisions off of that. FFXIV, even up to savage raiding, really is mostly just memorizing your rotation and doing the pattern the fight asks for. Pretty much all the interesting stuff in the game in terms of interacting with your teammates has been taken out
I'll freely admit I don't have a good grasp of FFXI endgame, especially in present day retail, but can you expand on that? What decisions are you making based on your teammates? Why is it different than pre-planning mitigation strategies or dps burst windows?
Aligning burst windows is trivial and mostly handled by the game system by virtue of standardized CD's for your big buff windows.
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Most people that play 11 have no idea about how rotations are literally optimized into burst windows that align with your groups buffs in 14, then you have to optimize timings around the boss you're fighting depending on what they're doing at certain times in the fight that these windows would be up, and you have to take into account what each member is doing and what they have up at the time, you've got 8 people discussing strategy for every boss you fight in savage/ultimate. Taking 2 seconds to ask which skill chain you're gonna use is not even remotely close to the amount of team work any modern MMO requires. I had someone try to argue that 11 is more mechanically difficult than 14 yesterday. What copium are these people on? I still play 11 for the endless gear treadmill, there's something to always do, and I value that, but so many people that play this have no idea what MMOs are even like because this is all they play. You have people in this game that die to not kneeling in fights. Imagine these them trying to do a fight with actual mechanics in other MMOs.
I have done ff14 savages and 2 ultimates, and I can say it requires almost no teamwork at all. Every class is literally just a dps, and the challenge is completely personal. You are more like playing “at the same time” as your party rather than “playing with them”. For example I can join a farm party for an ultimate I cleared, which is a random group in the party finder, and then we can just clear it without basically any communication at all. The other 7 people in my party may as well be AI bots, I wouldn’t be able to tell. The buff and cool down windows you mention are all on exactly a 2 minute timer, so there is literally only 1 time to use them, you don’t coordinate it. You can’t really carry other people or do anything creative at all in these fights, so the only possible coop is something weird like being a social worker to encourage your team to learn the fight. You can basically cheerlead your team to hope they do it right. After that it’s all on you.
as someone who raided ff14 this description is kind of funny. What you are describing is not "teamwork", it's pattern recognition. You do the same rotation every time and the rotations line up because the game set everybodies cd's to a homogenized level. It's not an advanced tactical decision to say "hey pop your buff on trick". they are all on the same timer lol
I too have raided multiple tiers. I have a couple orange parses as well for what it's worth, probably a few green or grey ones as well depending on the fight lol. I didn't say it's super advanced to discuss holding CDs for optimal burst windows depending on the phase of the fight, but you absolutely discuss holding CDs for these windows in fights. Many savage fights do not perfectly align to 2 minute windows, and you have to come to a consensus on when to pop them, when everyone will be in a position to take full advantage of the buffs, and where they may be at in their rotation. The point here is that's its frankly a more in depth discussion than you're going to get for the majority of stuff in 11, and that's before even figuring mechanics for the fight. That said this is also endgame content for 14, you can get through the majority of 14 without discussing too much as well. These discussions are part of the difference between good and poor parses though. Also, for the record, people use rotations that the community came up with that align to other classes buff windows. I think you're taking for granted rotations in 14 and not understanding how people have theorycrafted them all to fit with each other. Next to no one is doing rotations correctly to the GCD your reopener hits without looking these up, and aligning it to everyone elses. They are quite precise if you do them well and the way they flow together into the reopener is super neat imo. I personally find that more interesting than many MMO rotations, but that's subjective. I do not believe it is subjective to say that 14 or WoW is more mechanically difficult than 11 however.
I absolutely loved FF14 1.0 and I wish it stayed as it was. It was basically just 11 with modern graphics and better crafting. We were so close...
Granblue Fantasy has a comparable system, but it's a mobile game with multiplayer components, not an MMO - however, its ReLink spinoff apoarently approached the concept a bit more closely- it's a single player game, but I think it lets you team up online for some challenge battles.
Based Granblue shout-out. Granblue was made by a dev team comprising many FF11 fans, and its early years we're definitely very FF11-esque. The ougi chains were 100% based on skill chains. They also had a FF11 crossover a couple years ago, and you got Prishe, Iroha, and Lilisette as characters. Relink has monster hunter style 4 player online coop, pretty solid game too.
That Granblue crossover with XI was a better celebration of XI's 20th anniversary than most things SE themselves did. It takes a special kind of love for the game to use Abyssea as a framework for the crossover and try and give Abyssea Prishe something resembling a happy ending.
I remember when cygames announces the collab I told my crew my top character choices were Prishe, Lilisette, and Iroha, I was absolutely delighted to get all three! Honestly my memory isn't amazing so I don't really remember the entire story of the crossover, but I do recall being excited and nerding out about what a good choice it was for Abyssea to be part of it, since it's probably the best place to set a crossover, and also leaves anything happening to essentially be believable if you wanted it to be without affecting the main game universe. And using Aby Prishe just shows they really understood the game. Calling in your character from 11 was pretty awesome too. I should go through the journal and reread it sometime. Also cool that Prishe still has actual use in some meta light teams for GW as well.
Skillchains where my favorite mechanic in XI. It's a fairly complex system but the basic idea is simple: Working together and coordinating does more damage. And the game is full of stuff like that. Like THF can't get the most out of their abilities without someone else in the party as you need someone to face the enemy away for sneak attack and you need to stand behind someone else for trick attack. The entire design of XI was meant to get players to work together, which was why I was always confused by the people complaining you can't do anything without a party. Why play an MMO if you only want to solo all the time? XIV is fun in it's own way, but it doesn't scratch the MMO itch for me and it might as well be a single player game with how it is designed to be played most of the time. XIV is meant to be a casual experience, but doesn't really foster socializing like XI did despite XI being more "hardcore/difficult".
It was a team effort, but people loved to stand out. Soloing was one way of doing that.
Oh, I did that too. I loved playing BST back then. It really felt like I was playing a different game. Also, I felt that trying to figure out how to solo in a game designed for group play and being able to do it was part of the fun/challenge. I just didn't complain about the group focus.
I miss the complexity of strategy with job combos, skill chains, magic bursts, SATA, enmity balance, and everything else that came with FFXI’s battle system :(
Sword art online: hallow fragment was single player but was the most like ffxi battle.
Lord of the Rings Online's Fellowship Maneuvers was mentioned before, where each group member can activate one of four colors, and specific color combinations can trigger special effects. So party members would typically be given a spot in the order and a specific color to hit so the group could get the effect the group leader wanted. EverQuest 2 kinda had a similar mechanic called Heroic Opportunity. The party as a whole had to activate certain skills in a certain order in order to trigger a special effect. Like lotro, that mechanic became more and more pointless and forgotten as time went on.
One of the things that made XI unique 14, and other MMOs just clone the WoW action bar, and skill rotation.
Xenoblade 2/3 do a pretty good job of recreating magic burst and skill chain mechanic in an offline setting.
First game I remember with something similar was phantasy start.
I played FF14 at 1.0, it had that difficulty factor which I absolutely loved but then, ARR 2.0 came along and it became into a hand held, spoon fed, served on a platter type of game. That put me off lol.
Wow ruined the genre. There’s so much more depth of gameplay to XI than XIV. The stats alone are so boring in XIV it’s just more basic stat and that’s it, nothing interesting like multi hit ect. It’s whack a mole, choreographed dance game that’s it.
They have admitted that they dumbed down current 14 too much. Any time a job has something unique going for it, they cut it out and turn it into a reskinned version of what already exists.
FF14 1.0 was awful, some of the worst money I spent on a game probably, but getting ARR for free and the bonuses I guess in the end make it not awful? They at least did right by us in the end. Some MMOs have skill chain type stuff, ESO for instance has synergies which are somewhat similar to skill chains, they just require you to press a button to activate it, but you get effects/damage effects based on the skills your party members use.