After nearly three and a half years...

[one true zog]

Thinking of taking the plunge again.

I left last time in a severly foul mood. Looking back, it wasn't entirely FFXI's fault, as I had just come off a four year stint of Everquest and I had carried the negativity from that game over.

It's been a few years and I've been through many MMOs, good and bad. My expectations and additude have shifted, as I'm more interested in exploring and grouping with people that straight stat-whoring and lewt-fisting.

Is it possible as a fairly casual player (and one who works night shift to boot) to enjoy the game still? I can remember the endless LFG, even as a RDM.

...Perhaps a job that's less reliant on expensive/rare equipment. (I hear the economy has settled down since I was playing, which would be nice.)


I always loved the environment in FFXI, and the races each had their charm. If I do come back, is there any fairly casual, mature linkshells kicking about? (duh)
As long as they don't mind the odd salty language. I don't shy from stating my opinion, but I don't tolerate drama either.

Thanks!

Formerly Mewn of Siren.

[one true zog]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

Duuurrr..

Also, a query: I'd be playing on the PC, and I have an XBox 360 controller I use to play PSU.

Is it compatibe with FFXI?

If so, are there any issues?

[Katashi Takishiro]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

...Perhaps a job that's less reliant on expensive/rare equipment. (I hear the economy has settled down since I was playing, which would be nice.)

Yeah the economy has returned to damn near launch prices! Everything has plumeted in value except for the items that really have a true high value or are worth the time to camp/craft!

I've been looking over the AH prices on all the servers for several weeks now, deciding on which server will be my new home. So far nearly every server's AH prices are very similar give-or-take 100-300 gil, for low lvl items & crystals!

[one true zog]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

Interesting.


Browsing around, I noticed they did away with the worldpass system? Good riddance, I say.

Might pick up a copy later today or on my weekend.

I usually play Thursday-Saturday, starting at primetime until sometime in the morning, depending on my mood and if there's anything else that's more important to do.


Any reccomendations for a server/LS that caters more to casual gamers?

[Heartily]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

Diabolos has a mid range economy. Sparta shell is a good one- wide range of player levels with a caual attitude and lots of help available for lower levels.
I'm a casual player- only get an hour or two a day. I solo alot and enjoy beast
and Blue mage, but also solo red, thief, paladin, war, and ranger. Since I don't
have much time, I never LFG, I'd rather get 30 exp than sit there doing nothing.

[Legal Fish]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

Go read update notes from after you quit. You should have at least 12 to 18 to go through.

[Shadowneko]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

well seeing as it's summer there should be people on in the the daytime but your best bet seems to be weekends....well at least for me but I'm playing a lvl 50 job...

I see quite a few low-levels but it depends on the day and the times...getting 37 seems easy but after that it's crazy XD

[Amele]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

Yeah the economy has returned to damn near launch prices! Everything has plumeted in value except for the items that really have a true high value or are worth the time to camp/craft!
I've been looking over the AH prices on all the servers for several weeks now, deciding on which server will be my new home. So far nearly every server's AH prices are very similar give-or-take 100-300 gil, for low lvl items & crystals!

markets are pretty broken at higher levels. (examples: noble's tunics at NA launch were worth 8 million gil which meant decent profit if you could synth one (the cloths being worth around 7 million gil) - now they're worth about 800k and 800k respectively.) since SE removed trillions of gil, but didn't really remove many/any items.. is still removing gil, but isn't really removing items...

so now we have item inflation instead of gil inflation.

[Eiyoko]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

...as I'm more interested in exploring and grouping with people that straight stat-whoring and lewt-fisting.

Good to hear there are still players out there that are like that! :3

Is it possible as a fairly casual player (and one who works night shift to boot) to enjoy the game still? I can remember the endless LFG, even as a RDM.

You won't find it necessarily easy (since there are a lot of end-gamers around nowadays - at least on Caitsith there are @.@), but it is very much possible. When the new jobs come out in the new expansion, there will be more people leveling up, so at that point things should get somewhat easier if you're looking for a party.

Otherwise, why not go and explore or something? Even if it means losing exp in some cases, it's usually a lot of fun, lol. I have, on many occasions, taken my low-level white mage to the deepest parts of King Ranperre's tomb just so I could see Vrtra in person. I died twice, but it was worth it for me - she looks so much cooler in-game than she does on Model Viewer =3 I did the same with Jourgmand not long after (somehow I managed to get all the way there in one piece, WOOT! XD even though Jourgy killed me afterwards, hehehe). If you really want to be on FFXI at some point in time (i.e. You're like me and you've got nothing better to do at the moment), but you simply don't feel like leveling up or anything, go quest or explore. Watch old cutscenes, even! In my personal experience, this has always kept the game fresh for me in one way or another. After a year or so in not watching this one cutscene in the game, I went back and watched it, and I felt like a newbie again (in the good way) ^^

...Perhaps a job that's less reliant on expensive/rare equipment. (I hear the economy has settled down since I was playing, which would be nice.)

If you ask me, no job is "reliant" on things like that. People always recommended me to get stuff like a Scorpion Harness, but I did fine, if not better, with my Brigandine and then my Feral Jerkin (which was given to me as a gift). Some people said I needed snipers rings, but I just used those DEX rings and I did rather well (DEX raises accuracy AND critical hit rate, so even if I had a smaller accuracy boost, I was landing more critical hits, and that suited me just fine). It's not so much what you have at your disposal - if you know what you're doing, having the best equipment in the game doesn't matter quite as much...though it is quite nice to have (ever met those players with great gear, yet no clue what they're doing? That's what I mean).

If I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about how much a job costs to level, buy food/ammo/items for, or keep well-equipped (though keeping up your stats to a good amount is reccomendable if you want to perform well enough). Just find a job you have fun playing and stick with it. I did that with Corsair, and though I practically burned my wallet from the inside out (which wasn't really that smart, rofl), I had a blast.

As for the economy, it has settled down considerably, though at first it had actually had a complete crash, which caused a temporary (yet very severe) price spike in Chocobo Feed when chocobo raising first came out. Unfortunately, this also means it's a bit harder to make as much money as before, but it's still possible to find a good way to make profit.

I always loved the environment in FFXI, and the races each had their charm. If I do come back, is there any fairly casual, mature linkshells kicking about? (duh)

There should be, though there are still the bad eggs no matter where you go, I wouldn't pay heed to them. I like the environment in FFXI as well, and I have a fun time watching stories unfold during quests, missions, AF plots and other things. Whenever I would get tired of the power grind (which was very often), I would always go back and look at old quest scenes to entertain myself, or I'd go explore or something.

Now we've got Besieged with Aht Urghan, and that's tons of fun no matter what level you are. I like going there as my level 41 White Mage - sure, I can't do all that much in the way of damage (even if I were a DD class), but curing random people always made me feel happy, and I get to do that A LOT in Besieged as a 41WHM. It's also fun to cast higher-tier Dia on those Bhoots and still get skillups XD

By now I've probably gotten carried away If you decide to return to FFXI, don't worry about the power grind; just have fun. ^^

I might note that Caitsith has a fairly decent economy, and the player database isn't all that bad (it just seems to be bad to some people because the ones that misbehave and such are doing it so constantly and they seem to be everywhere o.o I swear, they stalk me or something, LOL)

-Eiyoko, Caitsith

[Arthoros]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

I am actually in a pretty similar situation - I have been absent for about two years, but re-activated my account yesterday and started from scratch. What do you know - I instantly found a linkshell that seems to be full of kind and mature people, and now I can't help but to feel addicted again. Heck, I can't wait to experience the story again, and enjoy the world of Final Fantasy XI.

[ioshua]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

Looks like it's the season to resub. The woman and I picked the game and new expansions back up after letting our subs go late 2004/early 2005. Our old data is all gone (confirmed by SE) but starting from scratch isn't so bad. We're going to take a much more casual spin this time around and hopefully not burn out.

After years of wow, aa, mxo, bla bla bla, I always found myself longing for the atmosphere and gameplay of FFXI. It's good to be back.

[Richie]

Re: After nearly three and a half years...

The trick to leveling/questing while also working is the static group.
If you get a decent static group that does everything together you eliminate all that down time looking for group and waiting for shouts to do things like avatars.

If you have any friends that still play I would try getting one together before you start playing. People are pretty much always willing to level a new job on a 2-3 day per weeks schedule simply because there is little to no effort involved in leveling a job in this way other than the actual grouping part.