(no subject)

[lathany]

A plea to zandev, ao_lai and chrisvenus (and possibly others I don't know about).

What's Final Fantasy XI like?

Comments

[chrisvenus]

I like it. My main problem is I haven't had time to play it much recently. :( There looks like there is interesting plot that you can uncover by doing the missions and quests and things as well as exploring the world, beating up the bad guys, making friends and going adventuring with people.

zandev can probably give the more complete summary of the pros and cons having experienced much more of it. There are whole areas that I've not played with at all that John has much more (thinking aboutt he crafting stuff here). Its also very interesting that you can change jobs to do any job. I've got upt o 15th level thief and was vaguely contemplating taking a play as one of the other jobs just so I could see what it was like doign something else. Means you go back to level one and being all wussy and beating up those monsters that previously you could have killed with one blow, no problems.

There's loads of cool stuff there. It does seem largely geared towards party play so you have to either make a group of friends or be happy to find total strangers and ask if they mind partying up. The latter is the way I run and seems to work ok though I do seem to have problems finding parties sometimes. On the other hand the more of us that get online the more we can try to organise times to meet up to go adventuring (hoorah!).

You also get tetra master when you buy FFXI but I was never a big fan of that so don't ever really play it.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Its also very interesting that you can change jobs to do any job.

Is the job system like in V / X-2?

It does seem largely geared towards party play so you have to either make a group of friends or be happy to find total strangers and ask if they mind partying up.

Certainly I regarded that as the main downside - I assume the usual rules with strangers apply (ie. mostly fine, but the odd idiot is around)?

[zandev.livejournal.com]

You can't change job on the fly like in X-2. You need to go back to a town to do so.

Having said that, there is no penalty to changing jobs.

Once you have done a quest at level 18, you can select sub-jobs. For this, you can select a job as a second job and get the benefits of it as well as your main job, but its level is capped at half your main job level.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Sounds much closer to V. I assume you can ressume your old level in a job as well?

[zandev.livejournal.com]

Yes, the level you have in each job is entirely independent of other jobs. If you equip a job as a sub-job then it is temporarily capped at half the level of the main job.

[zandev.livejournal.com]

I've had pretty reasonable experience with partying with random people. For instance I was in a great party recently where everyone else was Japanese. :)

As you said, there are a few idiots around, but as (apart from a few special events) there isn't any Player-V-Player conflict you can generally just ignore them.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

there isn't any Player-V-Player conflict

For which I admire Square-Enix's obvious understanding of (rare, annoying)players!

[zandev.livejournal.com]

Heh. I keep meaning to post a journal entry about this (and probably still will), but have not got around to it yet. This is probably because I'm too busy playing FFXI. :)

I really like it. There is a huge amount to do in it.

It isn't quite what I expected. It isn't really tailored to casual play, particularly as past the first few levels it is hard to get experience points without a party. Also it is really quite tricky, and takes a long time to do things.

These factors may put some people off, but I feel make it a stronger game in the long term.

My current playtime is now perhaps double that of any of my playthroughs of a single player FF, and I've really only scratched the surface of the things you can do in the game.

It does feel like an FF game, but there are obvious differences. The real time combat is not actually much of a change in that the actions do occur fairly slowly, so it still has a turn based feel and there isn't really a manual dexterity requirement. Other things are more noticable as differences. As stated before, having to team up with people for experience (and some of the key quests) is interesting, but means that you have to spend time organising people. Also, as the monsters difficulty is based around parties, it means that places where you may go for experience are dangerous if you are on your own. It's easy to get killed just trying to get to other people. This does give a feeling of actual danger which is often missing from the single player FF games.

Having real people trading items means that crafting and trading is an interesting persuit which isn't really the case in single player games with a fixed economy.

Due to the requirement for teaming up, gaining job levels means that you need to devote at least 2 hours at a stretch to play for levelling up which can make things difficult for players without much time. However, there are plenty of other things to do. I've probably only spent 10% of my time actually gaining levels (which probably explains why I'm not very high level yet).

[lathany.livejournal.com]

My current playtime is now perhaps double that of any of my playthroughs of a single player FF, and I've really only scratched the surface of the things you can do in the game.

Wow. Although, I'd have to ask, what's you usual play-through time? (I do 50+ hours for VI-IX and X-2 and 100+ for X).

Due to the requirement for teaming up, gaining job levels means that you need to devote at least 2 hours at a stretch to play for levelling up which can make things difficult for players without much time.

Yeah, that would be a problem for me.

Sounds great, though.

[zandev.livejournal.com]

My current elapsed time is around 300 hours. :)

This is slightly misleading though as it does include some times where I've left it logged in (this is useful for selling stuff in bazaars).

[ao-lai.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I could ramble about MMORPGs for ages... On the whole, though, I agree with what John has said.

It is balanced towards parties, yes, and I don't yet know how viable it is to solo at higher levels. The more of us who play it though, the easier it will be to find people, and it's arguably more friendly towards casual play than some of the others - If I didn't log on to SWG for a few weeks, my harvesters would explode, my house would decay, everything in it would vanish... If I don't log on to FFXI for that long, John will be even further ahead of me, but that's about it. :)

To me, though, what really makes the difference in this sort of game is the depth. The presence of other people makes for a rather different game experience to any single-player game - You're no longer wandering alone through the world, there are other people there to team up with, trade with, talk to, whatever. There's also more content: FFXI is designed so that people can play it all day, every day, for months, and still have more stuff to do. (On the other hand, it does indeed take a long time to get things done!)

There are the crafting skills, which I've never really seen in a single-player game. It's hard to make money with it unless you're good at it, largely because of the way that the economy works (and I'm in danger of getting sidetracked now), but it's quite well implemented as these things go. I don't have much skill in anything yet, but as soon as I get a decent amount of money together...

Hmm, anyway, I like it. I'm sure I'll think of more comments later...

[lathany.livejournal.com]

it's arguably more friendly towards casual play than some of the others

<laughs>

I see your point. Although I also don't play any others (and haven't even managed a Diablo session yet...)

[zandev.livejournal.com]

From a game design point of view, I've found it quite interesting in the way that different activities in the game have different requirements on them.

For instance, past the first few levels, gaining experience requires a party and thus needs some time in a contiguous block, but is relatively quick once you get organised.

Crafting takes quite a long time, but this can be broken up as you see fit. Selling stuff takes a lot of real time, but you don't need to be logged on for stuff to sell in the auction house.

Gardening takes very little effort, but that effort needs to be regular and takes a long amount of real time. You generally need to check your plants once a real life day for a week or so.

Fishing just takes a really really long time. :)

Killing monsters for items can be done in realatively short blocks, but takes quite a lot of time in total.

And so on.

[zandev.livejournal.com]

As a further comment (one I meant to make in the previous message):

This means that it is quite an interesting challenge to arrange activities that fit with real life comittments. I'm currently finding it is effective to do some crafting/trading/gardening during the week, then join a party at the weekend when I've got some time in a block.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

That's a very useful tip. I've not got the game yet, but I'm starting to become tempted...

[ao-lai.livejournal.com]

You could always go to somewhere like http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/ and browse a bit. It might provide a bit more of a hint as to how the game works.

If you do get it, one of us can get another World Pass... :)