NA release player thinking of returning.

[ioshua]

I played up to I don't remember what. Bard/Rdm somewhere around mid levels. I quit because I didn't like where the economy was going and saw some serious problems with groups ignoring players because they were missing one or two specific pieces of gear.

Just checking back to see how things are. Is the inflation insane? Do folks need to farm coin for a week or two so they can buy a weapon and finally get group invites? How's class balance? Everybody useful yet?

About leveling up, does everyone still go to er.. that beach place around the early 20s or are there systems in place that encourage grouping and leveling elsewhere?

There were a lot of things I loved about FFXI and a lot of things that really irked me. Getting bored with WoW and thinking of coming back.

Tell it to me straight. I can take it!

Edit: lol, there we go. I forgot I had my stats in my sig.

[Coinspinner]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

I played up to I don't remember what. Bard/Rdm somewhere around mid levels. I quit because I didn't like where the economy was going and saw some serious problems with groups ignoring players because they were missing one or two specific pieces of gear.

Still that way.

Just checking back to see how things are. Is the inflation insane? Do folks need to farm coin for a week or two so they can buy a weapon and finally get group invites? How's class balance? Everybody useful yet?

Worse.

Months.

Better than a 1 or 1.5 years ago. Mostly it's the players' ignorance and the fads perpetuated by forum trolls scewing people's perceptions that causes imbalance now. Did you leave when WoW was released, or before that?

Yes. Some more than others. DRG probably still needs work.

About leveling up, does everyone still go to er.. that beach place around the early 20s or are there systems in place that encourage grouping and leveling elsewhere?

The "system" is that smart players form their groups from town and use one of the other uncrowded zones available. Less competition + smarter players = more exp.

There were a lot of things I loved about FFXI and a lot of things that really irked me. Getting bored with WoW and thinking of coming back.

Tell it to me straight. I can take it!

Edit: lol, there we go. I forgot I had my stats in my sig.

No, pretty much the same game. More solo stuff, more useful and attainable EX items is Square's attempt to make it more casual-friendly and WoW-ish (not a bad thing at all, imo.) Having strong social skills and lots of friends is probably the key to getting your missions and quests done. And it helps you make money with reliable friends to BSNM and ENM with. Patiently studying the market and leveling a craft skill will also help greatly. Very different from WoW, where you can get away without really making any friends (since you can solo to 60 and instances are pretty easy) and money is practically handed to you. If you liked WoW better, stick with that, IMO.

[Medalink]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

I have to disagree, Most of the time on Ragnarok if you dont have even the half best equips it does not matter, As long as your good at your job you get invites. I have never been turned down for haveing low equips when I lvl my subs and what not. The econemy has inflated but most anything you need doesnt have to be bought off the AH. And you can camp NMs to get some nice items to sell for alot.

Rank is important on our server, if you have a higher rank you will get a better presuption.
I have allways had the gill to buy some of the best gear and I farm very little.

Hope that helps.

Medalink

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

I have allways had the gill to buy some of the best gear and I farm very little.

Medalink

So, if you were playing a mnk, sam, ninja for example you'd have no problem farming gil with your 56 whm for the following?

Scorpion Harness - 6 Mil
Ochiudo's Kote - 2 Mil
Haubergeon - 4 Mil
Emperor's Hairpin - 2 Mil
Fuma Kyahan - 1.7 Mil
Elusive Earrings - 2 Mil

Assuming you can farm anything of value when in competition with gilseller alliances who monopolise mobs 24/7.

[ioshua]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

From the sound of it, FFXI isn't right for me just yet. One of the biggest reasons I left is the minimum time commitment required. You can't just hop on, play for an hour or three and then log with any feeling of accomplishment.

As I remember it, to get anywhere in the game you'd have to devote a lot of time to playing. I've got a family that I'd like to spend time with and, from the sound of it, I would have to sacrifice time with them for even simple progression.

It's a shame too. FFXI is a beautiful game with the most immersive soundtrack I've heard in an MMO. The mission/cutscene mechanic is only found in one other game (ac2) and FFXI blows it completely out of the water. There's just this wonderful feel that FFXI has that nothing else can capture. Unfortunately, it's wrapped up in a myriad of giant time sinks and it all sits under a cloud of an economy that, even when I quit, could be considered broken.

I haven't played since the summer of 04 but I do check back here about every 6 months to keep tabs and see where the game is going. Looks like I'll be back in 6 again.

Thanks for all of your answers. I appreciate the input.

[Heoki]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

The economy is pretty bad. I was able to sell a bunch of stuff that I bought cheap about half a year ago for almsot 10 times as much. I have been back playing for about a month now. It's better to me. It's not as hard to obtain parties and more of the parties I've obtained have worked out good. It's not a solo game and you have to devote atleast 2 hours of play per session to progress. There's NPC buddies now that make soloing a little easier. Also, there are items that increase the amount of XP you get per kill by 75% temporarily.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

I don't know why people complain about FFXI being a time sink. MMORPG's have always been time sinks, with the exception of the recently released WoW. I guess people that are new to the scene would not understand but veterans know going in that your either going to devote time to the game or your not going to enjoy yourself. Different strokes for different folks.

[DakAttack]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

From the sound of it, FFXI isn't right for me just yet. One of the biggest reasons I left is the minimum time commitment required. You can't just hop on, play for an hour or three and then log with any feeling of accomplishment.

I never had a feeling of accomplishment in games like WoW, it was too easy to do anything. Wow that simple monster I killed just dropped some extremely rare weapon that I can sell for gajillions... Why does a baby wolf have a sword anyways? I'm not sure, but I really don't get the feeling of accomplishment finding it.

I get that feeling from completing storyline chapters and doing things that ARE a timesink. It's a timesink waiting in Jeuno for an hour trying to find members, it's a timesink spending an hour getting to the BCNM, it's a timesink defeating the enemy, but it's all worth it. The sense of accomplishment here is immense.

For me, I guess the sense is proportional to the challenge and time spent completing it. I've always had higher standards for myself.

[JP_Ikari]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

So, if you were playing a mnk, sam, ninja for example you'd have no problem farming gil with your 56 whm for the following?

Scorpion Harness - 6 Mil
Ochiudo's Kote - 2 Mil
Haubergeon - 4 Mil
Emperor's Hairpin - 2 Mil
Fuma Kyahan - 1.7 Mil
Elusive Earrings - 2 Mil

Assuming you can farm anything of value when in competition with gilseller alliances who monopolise mobs 24/7.

Ochuido's Kote = Tricky, Scorpion Harness = No thank you, Haubergeon = good luck, Emperor's Hairpin = BCNM? o O, Fuma Kyahans = Nope, try again. , Elusive Earring = BCNM 60, shredded Samson (PEACE OUT!!!!)

JP

[Lakai]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

In all honesty, if you thought it was bad when you quit, I wouldn't recommend coming back sadly. I was looking through some of my old screen shots and found some of when I bought ochiudoes kote for 200k (now 4 mil on the same server) and emperor hairpin for 360k (now 2mil on the same server) Inflation has ideally hit the fans and making gil hasn't become much easier then what it used to be. Hell, these days (probably), the fastest way to make a million gil is to mow someones lawn for 20 bucks and buy a mil sadly enough ><;

[Majikku]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

I was an avid Everquest 1 player since 2000. After quitting in 2001 for 3+ years and restarting MMORPG life with FFXI, a fresh start was all I needed to get back into a good game. FFXI didn't work out for me, and after 10 months of play, I decided to stop.

Towards the end of my game play, I found it too difficult to cope with my Party-less problems. Fenrir had a big NA/English speaking player base but also an even bigger JP player base. I love Japanese people, and party-ing with them was usually a blast, IF they wanted to Party up with you in the first place. I got tired of seeing the "JP only" or "No English" flags during party searches. If anything, this turned me off the most. I guess a communication barrier is pretty hard to deal with at times.

Another thing that I hated was the in-game economy. Things were priced too high in Auction Houses, which is okay I guess. To me, this just tells me the currency difficulty level of the server. What I didn't like was that NPC merchants paid too little for items you sell to them. Again, this is probably okay, considering SquareEnix is trying to promote player to player business. However, I believe higher NPC buying prices would be well worth it. Farming just adds to the constant grind, which I am used to. But I feel "heavy" farming shouldn't be a major part of this kind of gameplay. Mobs could drop more gil too. Besides, we are playing a Player vs. Environment game aren't we? Battles are pretty long, and players deserve bigger rewards in order to keep up with super inflations.

Right now, I have returned to Everquest. EQ after FFXI seemed a whole lot easier, but that's mainly due to several changes in EQ over the past years. Things are easier to do and accomplish here, but it isn't the FFXI feeling, which I'm badly desiring right now.

With some of the comments on this board, I don't think I'm ready to come back to FFXI even with the good changes I'm seeing.

[kuu]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

The economy is only bad for select people, that cling to old ways.

It depends on servers, more or less but,

About 70% of players have founbd "niches" for themselves to satisfied their incomes.

Whether it's bcs, enms, knowing what to farm, crafts, etc.

Just the other day, enm in a01, was easy as anything, with 5 members nonetheless.

Woodsman ring drops, easy 1mil( I don't believe that price either) split 5 ways. +xp of course.

And enm is pretty much a time limited free go.

As usual,
People who have no money complain
People who have decent money, live on
People who have lots of money complain they're out of stock and want to pay higher.

Which group are you in?

[Lunaryn]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

NPC selling prices do tend to be low compared to AH rates... but NPC buying prices tend to be similarly low, keeping some resources a bit price-controlled, and more available. The Copper Ore that would run me 500 gil at the Bastok AH on Midgardsormr is generally available from the Blacksmith Guild for 9 gil, and never more than 100. They do run out sometimes, but you can switch to the Goldsmith Guild, and they have more in stock the next day. There's some sense of accomplishment to synthing 2 stacks of Copper Ingots, and having 40k waiting in Delivery the next day, even if it's a slow way to make money (I tend to sink about 12-24k of that into buying fire crystals as I can't farm elementals yet, I have a San d'Orian character buy them since they're more plentiful in Ronfaure and less in demand). And eventually I'll be able to move up to better synths. At this point I'm making Tin Ingots to raise Smithing (these are pure junk, but at least they stack, and Tin Ores are cheap. I'd suggest just dropping them when your inventory starts to fill, though, they're not worth the effort of selling) and Copper Hairpins to raise Goldsmithing, and I can afford enough crystals to push my skills a bit for each pair of ingot stacks I make. 16k net profit isn't a whole lot, either, but it's not too bad for a little over half an hour's work each night. Alchemy's not too bad for ROI at low levels either, I've managed to turn a slight profit on most of what I've leveled on there so far. Haven't looked too far up the level list just yet, I'm taking this more for easy access to medicines than for profit.

BTW, when buying crystals at auction, always check both the stack price and the price of the corresponding cluster. Sometimes they're the same, sometimes the cluster is 800-1k more, but occasionally I've seen the cluster go for as much as 2k cheaper than the stack.

The bottom line though, is you need to decide what you want to get out of the game, and figure out how to do it, and over what timeframe. In my case, I have a static group I'm RPing with, and the game functions largely to provide a framework for developing our characters' stories, as well as something to explore and work on while not RPing. I tend to spend some time crafting every day, and my ingots usually sell by the next day. I xp as time and situation permits, though as yet I've only been in one full party, and have pt'd w/ one other player a handful of times (being able to read Japanese at about a 1.5 year level helps here). Now that the last of our static group are starting to get online, I should be getting more xp opportunities than before, but the main reason I'm concerned with xping is simply to keep up with other static members, not to reach a certain level goal by a certain time.

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

About 70% of players have found "niches" for themselves to satisfied their incomes.

Where do you obtain that figure from?

[kuu]

Re: NA release player thinking of returning.

Where do you obtain that figure from?

General estimate. From the amount of random people that, are using foods like sole which is 20-30k a pop, generally no cost cutting, complaining rampantly, and power crafting away their profits, etc.

Not many people on my server complain very much and people that I know are dirt poor, play 2 days a week at most, which would be normal to have low incomes then.

This does not mean they will be buying that 10 mil peakcock charm and such and such. There's a big different from living comfortably in ffxi, and going around buying scorp +1s.

If you want advice on how to make gil in ffxi, use the search button up there. There is everything from 10k bee chips and honey farming, to 20k-30k silks, to 200k enms, to 10mil bcs, to crafting for profit, like above, Selling/crafting CP items, etc.

Though really, finaly word is,
if you want to be at "little cost to level" mmo's don't choose ffxi, there are other games out there with the model "every level you get, you can afford the best eq x2 income."

On leveling, it's gotten better, though how much depends on the individual.

There are many new ways to eek out more xp, and solo for some, but nothing drastic.

firstly the curve for lvl 50+ is reduced a lot now
New exp bands helps overall in the long run.
NPCs help soloing also
ENM
etc etc

Recently I just found out you can summon your NPC in prov's now. So for hour or so with xp bands, you can squeeze out about 1k pretty easily a day, plus some memories to sell for profit.