Improvements from FFXI?

It seems that since FFXI is dying, SE is going to make FFXIV online. I bet it's gonna be FFXI but with new and improved stuff...

What kind of stuff annoyed you in FFXI that you wanna see fixed in FFXIV?

As for me, I hope they make levelling much more shorter! In FFXI it took, no not hours in most cases, but DAYS to level up. Personally, I feel that this time spent is all just tedious and only adds thousands of hours to the play time just sitting there levelling.

The lvling was tedious in XI, also, since I play WoW a lot as well as FFXI, the graphics hurt my eyes, but it's a given that they'll be improved.

Yeah. Especially since it's gonna be on PS3. You know what else bothered me...?

The fact that such a limited amount of faces and hairstyles were available...

More room for character customization, especially at the beginning so every newbie doesn't look like a clone. I want my character to be a little piece of me :(

It seems that since FFXI is dying, SE is going to make FFXIV online.
Final Fantasy XI's population recently reached an all-time high, actually. It's hard to say it's dying.

The ability to walk over pixel high ledges that get us stuck or give us a jump button, either will fix it. Also, I can see that Galka through that branch, don't tell me I can't.

A fantastic improvement would be not being so excruciatingly dull and tedious that it doesn't make me want to vomit my intestines into the gutter after a couple of hours then shut it down and install it, all while saying "This is the most boring MMORPG I have ever touched and I can't believe how much I just spent getting myself signed up for this awful crap".

Another improvement would be for it to actually feel like an FF game. FFXI just didn't feel like an FF game.

Finally, include lots of hate for the music from San D'oria.

I hope they will fix it to be a single player RPG.

Having played two years of WoW after playing 3 years of FFXI I have a slightly different perspective and things that used to annoy the crap out of me in FFXI make more sense now.

Leveling should be more accessible, but not ridiculously fast. In WoW who cares if you're 20, or 42 or 72 or even 79. You're either 80 and covered in epics or GTFO... you don't matter an 95% of the content isn't available to you until you get that little bit of XP to hit 80.... even then you'll be shat upon by people who don't like the fact that you aren't completely geared out from Maly, Naxx and Ulduar.

Making leveling too easy and making all of the content a throw away after every 3 months when a new raid is released makes it so that there is nothing else in the game.

There is content while leveling in FFXI, though it's painfully slow. Being 60 might actually mean something while obviously 75 means more. I used to believe that it shouldn't be so hard to get the rewards in FFXI, but if it was painfully easy it would also grow far more stale and rewards really do mean more if they take more effort.


The ability to walk over pixel high ledges that get us stuck or give us a jump button, either will fix it.

Absolutely. Jumping needs to be added. Nothing de-emerges you like not being able to step walk over a bump that someone could easily traverse in a wheelchair.


Another improvement would be for it to actually feel like an FF game. FFXI just didn't feel like an FF game.

Pure opinion and from the sounds of your whole few hours of experience I don't know that you're one to make that call. You can't play even one of the offline games from only a few hours and say it doesn't live up to the name. Beside that, what does make an FF game feel like an FF game. The series has made some major diversions in its history.

There are plenty of people who didn't think FFVII felt like an FF game because suddenly it was so much more mechanized. To the really old school fans VIII and XII didn't feel much like FFs because they weren't based in a more traditional RPG environment with nothing but swords and castles.

What makes a FF is broader than all of that and I'm sure XIV will be as much FF as XI was.


More room for character customization, especially at the beginning so every newbie doesn't look like a clone. I want my character to be a little piece of me

This is a huge problem in FFXI. We need more than to pick faces from a (short as hell) list. Also, gear throughout needs to be more varied, especially early on so you can feel the customization. In FFXI everyone starts with the same gear to their race. By the 10-20 stretch you are either wearing a harness, a doublet, or scale mail. That's just too limited and everyone looks the same. More variety of gear with similar stats so you can at least pick gear partially on aesthetics.

Either that or add a system like LOTRO has where you can pick a show set that everyone sees while you're really wearing other gear with better stats that may look like crap.


If the graphics in FFXI look like crap to you then you need to go tweak your registry. With the graphics truly maxed out FFXI probably has the best character and mob models of any MMO out there (LOTRO included). The environments are still not too great and the biggest problem is the draw distance of large environments. They need to adjust it so that things don't pop in so badly.





Biggest thing they need to improve is SE themselves. Their customer service is terrible. Many GMs are straight up racist. Problems are ignored for years and SE largely ignores and takes for granted their playerbase. Setting up your account and logging in each time should be very very simple the way it is with WoW. Blizzard is a fantastic company. They have a lot of 1 to 1 interaction with their players and take feedback very seriously. SE needs to learn this above all.

It seems that since FFXI is dying, SE is going to make FFXIV online.
Final Fantasy XI's population recently reached an all-time high, actually. It's hard to say it's dying.

Not only this but it is confirmed that they have another years worth of content already planned out, and they also confirmed that they'd continue development for new content after that.

Yearg pretty much said it, but there's a couple of things I will add.


If the graphics in FFXI look like crap to you then you need to go tweak your registry. With the graphics truly maxed out FFXI probably has the best character and mob models of any MMO out there (LOTRO included). The environments are still not too great and the biggest problem is the draw distance of large environments. They need to adjust it so that things don't pop in so badly.

No doubt. If they actually had a high draw distance, and some of the technology in newer engines (pretty much just lighting/ambient occlusion/etc.), FFXI would probably look the best on the market. It is still very well done, has just as high of a poly count as the newest MMO's and textures are still very nice. It has aged very well considering when it came out.



Biggest thing they need to improve is SE themselves. Their customer service is terrible. Many GMs are straight up racist. Problems are ignored for years and SE largely ignores and takes for granted their playerbase. Setting up your account and logging in each time should be very very simple the way it is with WoW. Blizzard is a fantastic company. They have a lot of 1 to 1 interaction with their players and take feedback very seriously. SE needs to learn this above all.

This is the no. 1 thing I want. I want this more than anything, I'm sick of being treated like :bou::bou::bou::bou:, it's amazing how FFXI still has a playerbase after the way SE treats them.

With Wow touting 11 million no other game seems like a success, but among most MMOs FFXI is pretty competitive and like Om said, it's amazing that they have any players at all the way they treat people.

The game has changed significantly in the last two year. If it had started 7 years ago anything like it currently is it would probably be easily number 2 by a mile the way WoW is No. 1 by a mile. It had so much going for it with a great story, the Final Fantasy title, etc.

If FXIV can learn some of the biggest lessons and not suffer from the shadow that is cast by FFXI being an upsetting experience then I think FFXIV will be a very competitive game in the MMO market (which means something still in the megalithic shadow of WoW). They already have mentioned things they will fix that are huge so it seems they are going in the right direction and certain other issues will definitely not be a problem.

-World Passes will probably not come back because it's a stupid idea to make it difficult for people to get on the same server who are friends. This has gone to the wayside with FFXI and no doubt will be gone in XIV.

-Soloing won't be completely impossible most likely. Once again, this is something they've already made a HUGE improvement in for FFXI and they say they've learned from WoW.

-They will charge on the 30 day cycle instead of billing you full price for 5 days if you sign up on the 25th. Stupidity, but they've announced they will fix this.

-I strongly assume that certain issues with the basic structure of the game will be rethought as they become ridiculous but immovable problems in FFXI... problems like inventory management and mostly the 7 space auction limitation.



All that said, MMOs aren't for everyone and FFXIV won't be for everyone. People hate that it ruins their collection of boxes being online and all. People don't like the concept of paying to play, etc. Of course, if you put it into perspective how much you are paying for each hour you play the game vs how much you get out of most retail games... MMOs are one of the cheapest forms of entertainment out there. People think nothing of throwing 10+ dollars at a trip to the movie theater for 2 hours of entertainment, but if you tell them to throw 10 dollars at something they may spend 30+ hours a month enjoying they look at you like you're crazy.

I think FFXI's battle system is the second most amount of fun I've had with an FF battle system~

I agree with most of the points raised here to be honest, what i would like to see changed are..

Graphics: Its a bit bad that your graphics look pig ugly until you go and change reg files! But still this has been out for a while and graphic limitations back then were obviously far greater.

Leveling: OMG this needs to be made easier, im not talking bam Mr Mandragora die, oh look i gained 57 levels easier, just a bit easier lol. Im a lvl 37 DRG whose finding it hard to level up (being a WAR sub dont help i admit). i can spend days, non stop level grindidnand only gain 1 maybe 2 levels!!! Crazy stuff! This Fields of Valor is a help, but not enough i feel.

And character customisation: I cant begin to count the amount of times i have run into a character that is IDENTICAL to me in each and every way!

Endgame: I feel this game is much more geared towards engame players, until you reack 75 all you can really do is a few mission levels and some quests, it isnt until you reach 75 that you can really go mad and do everything. I was on a LS with quite a few lvl 75s and all i got was sorry you cant do this, its lvl 75 only got rather annoying as i felt i was being left out a tad lol!

Thats all i can think of right now!

Leveling: OMG this needs to be made easier, im not talking bam Mr Mandragora die, oh look i gained 57 levels easier, just a bit easier lol. Im a lvl 37 DRG whose finding it hard to level up (being a WAR sub dont help i admit). i can spend days, non stop level grindidnand only gain 1 maybe 2 levels!!! Crazy stuff! This Fields of Valor is a help, but not enough i feel.

I think they've probably struck the perfect balance now between Signet bonuses to eva/def, Fields of Valor and increase XP from weaker mobs. The game needs soloing to be an option, but obviously not the best one.

There are two primary reasons leveling shouldn't be too fast an easy.

1) Believe it or not (I didn't 2 years ago) working harder for something even in an MMO (or perhaps especially in an MMO) makes you appreciate it more. Leveling being slow but not impossible makes it mean more to be high level and even if you don't think it would, it will give you a greater sense of satisfaction in the long run rather than the relative emptiness you can get by leveling 3 alts to 80 in the span of a month in WoW.

2) Encouraged group play is really a good thing. You get to really understand what other people do and how they function in a group. You learn through real experience (rather than artificial numbers) how to react to oshi moments. Group play, like I said, should not be the only way to level, but making it possible to realistically reach max level having never played with another person leaves you unable to really play with other people.

I played WoW for 2 years and I still can't tell you half of what Shaman's do in that game because I've not be put in enough situations to really work with them and the fact that my function in a raid is relatively independent the remaining members. After 3 years of playing FFXI and 2 years off from the game I can still tell you detailed information about strategies and the roles almost all of the jobs can play under certain circumstances to pull a group's collective *ss out of the fire.


Perhaps I'm just an old fogey noticing games getting too easy. It just seems like everyone wants everything handed to them and wants to play a massively-multiplayer game without anyone around. While some would say they just want to solo to max level, then the next wave argues that they should also be able to have the best gear completely solo. This is something that is watering down WoW quite a bit.


Endgame: I feel this game is much more geared towards engame players, until you reack 75 all you can really do is a few mission levels and some quests, it isnt until you reach 75 that you can really go mad and do everything. I was on a LS with quite a few lvl 75s and all i got was sorry you cant do this, its lvl 75 only got rather annoying as i felt i was being left out a tad lol!

All MMOs are going to have this to some degree, but I have to agree largely with this point. There needs to be more mid-range content. I personally feel that FFXI does that a hell of a lot better than WoW does though. The problem is, even though FFXI puts serious content throughout the level spread, they have no pacing. CoP is laid out so that from 30 upward, at every 10 levels, there's major content. The reality, however, is that people want you to have the experience of a 75 job to do it as a level-capped event. Also, you need the income of a level 75 job to buy all of the things required to pull these off.

There needs to be more solid content along the way that's not fluff, but isn't impossible in the mid-range levels. Also, if this content could have some rewards, that would be great. Sure there's some intrinsic reward for being rank 10 in your nation, but realistically, there needs to be a bit more. More content should give decent amounts of money, experience and gear.





Now for one of my own wishes rather than responses...

As I've been playing lately (I returned after a 2-year hiatus FYI) I've been noticing a major problem in leveling. There's one factor that slows down my XP in the low range more than anything and it's that annoying "You must wait longer to perform that action" error message when finishing off one mob and trying to instantly engage another. I'd probably be able to pump my XP/hr up by 1k when absolutely rofl-stomping EPs if they would just make this not an issue.

Similarly, checking ... anything in the game. If you do it once you have to wait a good 10-20 seconds before you can do it again? Just checked your mail? Wait longer before doing it again. Just checked the sales status on the AH but forgot to look at something... wait longer to do it again. There needs to be more fluidity there and less of the server trying to cover its butt from being hammered.


Also, sending and receiving things shouldn't make you want to claw your eyes out. Send 8 things to a mule, wait 30 seconds to logout, hit the play button, select your mule, wait for it to load, check your mail, wait for it to load, take it out, logout of the mule, log back to yourself... repeat. If you've got a lot of stuff to send between characters this can end up taking an hour or more. Purely ridiculous in a game that's made for enjoyment.



Next up, inventory space is the bigger problem in this game. If you're going to have a game with 20 jobs that can be leveled on a single character and every job needs 40-60 pieces of gear for various situational stuff.... and most of the best gear cannot be sent away from your character once obtained... there needs to be better inventory.

Luckily they fixed macros to have 20 books of macros, one for each job. Something similar needs to be the case for jobs. Each needs their own closet or something. Inventory was one of the biggest reasons I left the game 2 years ago.

Ahhh the inventory space, thankyou for reminding me of this very valid point.
This is something that REALLY annoys me, i think the characters need to be able to carry more. The amount of random drops you get is unreal and it clogs you inventory.

The worst bit is when your after a rare drop and you obviously get other drops, you then obtain the rare drop and its a race against time to sory out your items so you dont loose it!!
Happened yesterday with a Carbuncle Ruby!! (Got it now thoigh).

Also, for a game focused so heavily on group play, not being able to invite someone because they are not in the same zone is pretty lame. Party invitations need to be able to happen worldwide.

I think they should get rid of some of the more tedious aspects of the game. Stuff like how long those airplane rides takes and how fast characters run. And the length of downtime when you die.

The agonizingly slow pace of running without enhancements really annoyed me. What would have been so bad about making all the characters run faster? Would getting from one location to the next in 1 minute rather than 5, really make the game less fun/challenging/etc?

It's just little things like this that bug me. Just seems unnecessarily tedious.

Captain obvious.

I think they should get rid of some of the more tedious aspects of the game. Stuff like how long those airplane rides takes and how fast characters run. And the length of downtime when you die.

The agonizingly slow pace of running without enhancements really annoyed me. What would have been so bad about making all the characters run faster? Would getting from one location to the next in 1 minute rather than 5, really make the game less fun/challenging/etc?

It's just little things like this that bug me. Just seems unnecessarily tedious.

First let me say that I completely agree with you, but let me also play devil's advocate a bit. I think slow travel is one of the things that makes Vana'diel seem so absolutely huge. I think completely trivializing travel could be a serious problem and make the world feel far smaller. For the sake of familiar comparison, WoW's world is pretty darn big, but you don't feel that way. You can be any place in the game in literally 5-10 minutes tops and most in far less.

Where it really sucks in FFXI is things like boat/airship rides. Taking the boat to Aht Urghan or Nashmau is absolutely horrible. Doing the simple Dancer flag quest was unbearable and took me a couple of hours simply because of slow travel.

I don't want to lose the novelty of the travel and actually being able to see familiar land masses as you pass by, but I also don't want to be bored to tears by a 10-20 minute ride when it's completely old hat. I'd be happy if they kept things like the ships for people that like them, but allow for alternatives. What if you could simply pay an extra 500 gil instead of 200 and be instantly teleported to the same destination the boat would've taken you.

Seems like a win-win to me.


As for walking, yes, walking is unbearably slow, however, I think zoning makes this far worse. When you need to travel between parts of a city the zoning thing adds insult to to injury quite badly. I really wouldn't mind them bumping up the speed of movement across the board. I do think if they remove zoning as an issue the running won't seem so bad.


So while we're on the topic, they need to obviously make callable chocobos that are less of a chore to get and maintain. A simple advanced chocobo license type thing would be perfect. Having a chocobo whistle with limited charges is quite silly imo.

When you equip an item it should not take up inventory space in the bag because its FREAKING ON ME. I always found that ridiculous and make macroing such a big ass pain.

That and male mithras :3

Yeah, other than the obvious of wearing something that's in your bag, they just need to rethink inventory overall. Not just in a general MMO way. FFXI (and probably FFXIV) is special with being able to level up and gear out 20 jobs on a single character. With so much Ra/Ex gear and so much situational gear they just really need to think harder about potential storage solutions.

When you equip an item it should not take up inventory space in the bag because its FREAKING ON ME.

On that same subject, furniture displayed in your Mog House should not take up room in your safe. I kind of understand why they did it for equipment and your inventory, because if you just tried to take off gear instead of swap it and you didn't have space, that could cause problems. That, and the moves that some mobs have that unequip random pieces of gear.

I've only just started on 11 but I find the biggest problem is the running speeds, which sounds odd. It's not so much a game altering problem, but it's something small and ridiculous that you have to put up with throughout. I'd like to see running speeds changed depending on race to add a little realism. It'd be quite cool, I reckon. I don't think this would affect race decisions too much, but then again maybe it would. At the very least running speeds need to be about doubled to make them realistic.

Also, my knowledge of things tells me that chocobos are essentially FF horses. Horses can run about 4 times faster than humans, and I'd like to see this sort of stuff added too. It's not like it's gonna destroy people's enjoyment of the game. Compared to other chocobos, the races and stuff will remain the same.

All these changes will do is make the game a little less tedious. Just some simple logic into body sizes etc. to make the game a little more lifelike. Also, I'm pretty sure everyone would agree that being able to go from one side of a city to the other in half the time is something that would have absolutely zero negative effects.


And I can see massive equipment troubles in the future. Limited home storage space is completely unnecessary. At the very least we should get more than 50 basic spaces. And everything should stack when stored at home. Everything. Also, as has been said before, if I'm wearing it, I ain't carrying it. These little things wouldn't cause any problems if they were changed, so it seems like SE put them in just to be annoying.

You do get Inventory/Safe/Storage/Locker upgrades to 80 max each later. If you purchase the Satchel then its another potential 80. But the problem isnt the space because its plenty for ONE JOB, and because you will eventually level another job that may not share the same armor, then therefore it eats up space like mad.

I have PLD, WHM, and SAM that i level, and my god the space it HURTS. None of those job share alot of common equips, and with macroing other pieces in to optimize my performance...ffffffffffffffff!

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They should however make it so Tetra Master is playable in-game. More interactive minigames between players thats casual! Or better yet, Triple Triad. Even Bliztball or whatever. If you have a minigame thats easy to implement inside the actual game itself, and it is reminiscence of older FF Titles, it can be potentially awesome.

Bliztball

Yes please.

Eww, personally, I really didn't care for Blitzball all that much, but I do agree that some kind of mini-game would be nice. Although, Blitzball on the PS3/PC could be more enjoyable. Right now we have the gambling tables and /random wars? Sure we have Chocobo races, but it requires sooooo much to raise a good Chocobo. Oh, and The Pit, but people rarely do that too. I suppose we have Ballista and Brenner too.

I like the card game idea, maybe a Blitzball or made-up sport, and some other stuff in FFXIV though. Not something else we have to pay extra money to have access to.

Also, something else to change. I have a friend that has ALL the cardian cards. A complete deck. We have yet to figure out what they are for, if anything. He deserves a medal or something for doing that and considering how much people love collectibles in games these days, make stuff like that worth something.

I wasn't a fan of Tetra Master, but Triple Triad was great. It would be great to have either available in game as just some fun distraction. Maybe some small reward for different levels of having a complete collection of the cards.

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From a design standpoint I understand why certain things are limited, but while they are great for saving server space (and money) for SE, they suck for the players. Take armor set storage. I get it... if you only check for a full set it's a 1 or a 0 on their server. To add a check for each pieces and whether or not it was +1 would mean extra strain on the servers having 10 extra choices instead of 1 for a particular gear set for however many 100k accounts are active. However, it's needlessly crappy. Small things like that drive people away.

Poor some money into making the players happy and don't cut corners to save cash. It's a business model that works great for Blizzard.

By spending more on the game you'll save (or make) more money. While it may cost more to you initially, it's definitely worth it when you don't lose 100k accounts due to people getting frustrated with some silly aspect of your design limitations.

Also, something else to change. I have a friend that has ALL the cardian cards. A complete deck. We have yet to figure out what they are for, if anything. He deserves a medal or something for doing that and considering how much people love collectibles in games these days, make stuff like that worth something.
I do not believe the cardian cards serve any purpose beyond avoiding aggro. If you have a two of cups card, no two of cups cards cardians can aggro you. If he has the full deck, I believe that would mean no cardians will ever aggro him, regardless of what level he is.

He's tried that, it didn't seem to work. I think that might just have been a theory or rumor.