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FFXI...is it right for me?
-_Lavos_-
Member Posts: 11
Hey everyone,
So I have been a fairly avid MMORPGer for about 6 years. I have played AC, EQ, DAOC, ACII, Planetside, COH, and now GW.
I am getting sick of GW b/c I am done doing the PVE thing and while PVP is fun, I still want more.
Now, I did have some questions about FFXI.
First off: Population - Is the population in this game large (in general how many ppl on at peak hours)? Is it mainly a Euro/Asian game? I am an American player and want to find a fun game w/ a nice steady population.
PVE - I know as in all MMORPG's there will be a grind, but how is it in this game? Is the PVE fun? How vast is the world? And can you solo for a while or is grouping key throughout the game?
Classes/Customization - How customizable are your characters? And is there a lot of balance?
In general too, what are some of your thoughts about the game and its direction in the future. I know it has been out for a while and I am looking for something good to play that I can jump into both when I am busy and can play casually but also when I just have a ton of time and can go hardcore.
Please let me know your thoughts!
Thanks
Comments
PvE: In terms of the grind, in the first day, you can get to about level 10. To get to level 20, maybe another two or three days. It gets longer and longer as time goes on. By about level 40, it takes several hours to obtain the next level. By level 55+, it can take a full day to get a level. At around 70 (75 is the level cap), you'lll need a few days to hit the level. Although the grind on this game is horrible, there is so much other stuff to do (crafting, farming, roleplaying, questing, talking to friends, PvPing, ect.), you'll barely notice. When I stopped playing last year, my play time was 32 days. I was level 51, and had a 36 subjob. That should give you an idea on the grind.
For about the first 10-13 levels, your probably going to be playing on your own. Then, after that, its on to partying with other players. However, it IS possbile to solo the whole game, but it can be very slow by doing so.
In terms of the size of the map....It can take hours trying to get all the way across the map on foot. There a couple dozen areas, each one takes a good 10-20 minutes to traverse the entire map, on foot. When you hit level 20, you can do a quest, and get a license to rent Chocobos, which are birds that basically make your movement about 3x faster. You can also take ships, airshps, teleports, ect.
Fighting is, unlike some other MMOs, fun. You can either play the standard way of targeting a monster, attacking it, and waiting for it to die, or you can play with stratagy. By strategy, I mean you can line up special attacks your team has, as well as spells, to unleash lethal combos. Also, where players stand can help other players hide behind them, and do extra damage. The battle system on this game is very complex, and can take a bit of time to master. My suggestion is to look for guides online.
For classes/customization, there are hundreds of possiblities. There are 5 races you can choose: Humes, Elvaan, Galka, Tarutaru, and Mithra. With each one, you can pick male/female (except for Galka and Mithra). Then, pick the height (small, med, tall), and one of the many faces. With each face comes two hair colors. For classes, there are I think 13 different classes. When you hit level 18, you can pick a subjob. A subjob is another class, and its level is half of your main, and you get the extra ablitlies, stats, skills, ect of it. For example: I was a 51 black mage/25 white mage when I quit. That means I had all the stats/ablities/spells of a 51 black mage, as well as those of a 25 white mage. And, withen each class, you can branch off into different parts of it. For melees, you can be a tank, damage dealer, ect. Mages, you can pick different elements to focus on, weakening spells, enchantments for your team, healing, ect. In other words, the possibilites for customization are endless. And in terms of balance, they are all pretty much equal, unless you play as a white mage. In PvP, the whitemage is usually the first to go down.
For PvP, rather than the standard "one player fights another to the death", PvP in FFXI is more of a game. Currently, there are two types of PvP. I only played Ballista, which is a game where your team needs to dig up rocks, find the goal, and shoot the rock into the goal. However, the only way to score a goal is to first kill a player of the other team. And thats the fun part: ganging up on the weakest member of the other team, and scoring a goal when he dies.
There is another game, which you have 4 torches and 2 fires, and have to try to steal the other teams fire. I never played this game, so I'm not really sure about it.
Finally, this game keeps growing larger, both in size of the maps, as well as the number of players. I loved the game, but had to stop when school started, since I was too busy playing to focus on my work.
Oh, and you can't really be a 'casual gamer' on this game. Unless, however, you just want to kill monsters solo. But you can really only level up when you have a couple hours to kill.
everything about the game is too slow paced and there's no variation in the weapon system...that killed it for me. and to the post above me...there are male/female options in every mmo, also face/hair/and height choices :P...and the subclass thing?..it's honestly just a pain in the ass, who wants to start from lvl 1 again after grinding for months on end. not i!
For the first one, about my last post: Yeah, I know a lot of them have that, but I was being specific. Some games force you into 1 gender, with one or two faces *cough* Kal Online *cough*.
And to the second post: You mean, your supposed to put on a new pair after you shower? I thought it was every 5,000 miles....or was that my oil?
Hey,
Well I played this game for over 2 years (just recently forced myself to quit) but first off let me just say, if you are just looking to play casually for a couple hours a day I wouldn't recomend this game. I think that aspect of the game is what turns most people off to this game. Yes there is a lot to do, but in general, especially once you get up into the mid levels expect to spend a decent chunk of your day playing if you want to get anywhere.
Now on with your questions :
1) Population is big. There a lot of players from all over. US , japan, and europe. Most of the time this is not a problem at all because, as posted before, the world is big enough that you wont notice too much and with the autotranslater you can communicate fairly well with people who dont speak english.
2) PVE: After level 10 or so, you will start wanting parties. Usually consists of 6 players. Basically, theres mellees, tanks and mages When you hit/get hit by the mob you get TP. At 100+TP you can use weapon skilils which you aquire as you level up. The strategy comes in here.. If you follow one Weapon skill with another you can create a skillchain, and if you follow the skillchain with magic damage from a mage you can make a magic burst. More damage. Now if you kill a mob and quickly get another one and kill it you get exp bonuses. That is pretty much the basics of the combat system. Of course it is more complicated than that but nothing major.
As far as the grind goes, it can be pretty bad. I would say, if your just starting, expect anywhere from 3-6 months or more to get up to the top levels. The most common complaint about this game is that a lot of the time that you could be working on leveling, your inevitably going to spend looking for parties or trying to make one. The people who arrange their own parties generally level quicker.
Solo: There is basically only one job that can solo through the whole game and that is beastmaster (control mobs to fight for you ) I guess it is "possible" to solo other jobs all the way but I have never heard of anyone doing it and it would take astronomical amounts of time and frustration. A lot of jobs can solo decently at top levels, however, but nothing crazy.
Classes/customization : As far as races and looks, pretty limited. There are 5 races ? I think. And maybe 6 or 7 different looks for each one. Classes are fairly customizable. Im not sure exactly how many jobs there are, i would guess 15 now? Cant remember exactly. They added 3 new ones recently. But for each character you have a main job and a subjob (which you can change anytime you want so long as your in a city) Each job you have to level independantly however. So if you want a new subjob you gotta start it from scratch. So potentially there are tons of combinations, BUT, they do not all work well together. If you use a subjob that does not fit your main job well (for example if your a white mage and your subjob is warrior or somethin) you will most likely have a hard time finding a party that will want you. Not that it wouldnt have its uses in certain situations, but in parties a white mage is not gonna be needing any skills of a warrior and would be missing out on other spells/skills from a job that would benefit the party. I would say in general there is usually only one or two subjobs that are widely accepted for each job.
For the most part, the people in the game are friendly and that is what i enjoyed most about the game.(of course there are your asshats as in any game but they dont usually last long) As for the future of the game, it doesnt seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. They just recently added a new expansion pack and when I played up untill a couple months ago, there seemed to be a steady flow of new players coming in all the time. Overall though the game is very fun and addicting so long as you have free time on your hands, at least in my opinion. Sorry I ended up writing a novel here. hope it helps you out some on your decision.
The servers are fairly evenly split between NA and JP (Euro's in there too), and the auto translater makes it fairly easy to communicate group tactics and what not, though it won't let you have a decent conversation. Also, sometimes JP will not want to group with NA players, though this has gone down a lot compared to how it was in the first year or so of NA release.
The PvE is a grind, and it'll depend a lot on you if you find it fun or not. You mostly get into a group and kill things to gain levels, hitting auto attack and doing a Skill Chain every mob or two. There are also missions, Bcnm, and other things you'll be doing, but the largest part of your time will be spent grinding in exp parties.
Beastmaster is the only job that can solo for exp the entire game, though it takes a good deal longer than it does for other jobs who group. On the bright side, you don't have to spend time lfg, which can take awhile if you choose to be one of the lesser desired jobs.
Other jobs usually solo to 10, then start grouping, though I usually found it faster solo to 15, at which point group exp starts getting better than solo. Some jobs can still maintain decent solo exp into their low 20's, but that's about as far as it goes.
Customization is terrible in this game. You'll look pretty much like everyone else at your level, though eventually it just turns into you looking like everyone who plays the same job as you. You also have pretty much no control over how you character learns skills and what not, so you'll have the exact same abilities of everyone else in your job in addition to looking like them.
Balance between Jobs is good for the most part, though at later levels some damage dealers become a good deal better than others, but no so much to completly make the others obsolete. Most jobs are good against a certain mob type, so while that War/Nin may rock the socks of your Drg on Weapons, if you move to flying creatures the Drg will return the favour.
The game looks to be continuing it's present course, just adding a few new missions in the next update, and maybe some more merits to grind out when you hit the level cap. It's hard to play casual, unless you're a Beastmaster, at which point you can exp for however small a time as you wish and still make some progress. (I got my beast to 75 mostly in 30 minutes chunks, with the random 4 hour grind fest if I got a saturday afternoon with noting to do around the house.
If you just want to play for a few minutes a day and not be a bst, you can do other stuff in the game such as crafting or farming if that's your bag. I had a guy in my Ls who barely played an hour a day, highest job was a 60 paladin after playing for years, but had 3 crafts raised to a 100, and the rest at 60. But, if craftings not your bag, not much to do in small 30 minute play times. Unless a Brenner match is going on, then you can have some quick PvP fun.