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FFXI vs FFXIV Difficulty
Moudeeb
Member CommonPosts: 14
Played FFXI for a year, you couldn't leave town without a group or you would die. Will / is FFXIV the same level of difficulty, requiring a group and no solo play? The only reason I stayed with FFXI for a year was due to the crafting.
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you cant solo all the way if you expect to do the quest at the same time
The crafting is better. Soloing is possible to still make progress with your character (but not all content can be soloed, this is not an MMO-lite like recent released/announced games).
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The forms of 'difficulty' between the two games are very different. I'll just compare the leveling experiences, and will consider FFXI back in the day:
FFXI, soloing was damn near impossible past level 10 or 15, so there was forced grouping, and the actual process of leveling was not 'difficult' it was just tedious. The difficulty was in finding a group, and a decently efficient one at that, then it became pretty much mindless stationary mob grinding. Fun in its weird way, but not 'difficult'.
FFXIV, soloing is possible to a vastly greater extent, pretty much to level cap if you are so inclined (though you will not unlock all the games features if you do not complete certain group-required milestones, much like how FFXI's missions worked, but easier). The 'difficulty' is in short challenging scenarios one encounters in group play (in dungeons, guildhests, trials, etc.), and these take awhile to build in complexity, but everything else is made very streamlined and easy.
Basically, you aren't forced to huddle in town anymore, it's okay to go out and have fun, even on your own.
P.S. If you thought FFXI crafting was good enough to stay with the game alone, you should adore FFXIV crafting.
FFXIV, from what I've played from beta, is MUCH MUCH easier than FFXI was. So far the only thing I've found even remotely difficult was one of the THM class quests (solo-only).
Now, I keep hearing promises that the stuff that isn't in the game yet will be more difficult, but as we can't play it yet, I can't really comment on that.
The crafting is more involved than FFXI, but gathering gets very tedious. They've basically turned all crafting / gathering into a mini-game. It's pretty cool for the most part, but atm there is no ability to craft / gather stuff in batches, which gets very tedious later on.
Also, they removed some of the complexity from both crafting & combat.
- For crafting, things like weather / time of day bear no impact on what you craft. The crystals still exists, but it's all about managing a resource pool (CP/GP) to increase your rate of success or quality.
- For combat, there are a lot less skills, but most have unique uses (which is good). However, atm most of the skills revolve around spamming the same 1-2 abilities (THM / Archer being an exception). They also removed the skill chain system, and replaced it with a super dumbed-down limit break system, in which you're whole party shares 1 limitbreak gauge, and depending on who activates it it does something different. (Mage = AoE Nuke, melee dps = single target attack, tank = party dmg mitigation, healer / archer = party full heal).
Take from that what you will.
This is untrue.
I wouldn't take it for anything, because it is all inaccurate. This sounds like the impression of someone who played for a couple of hours on one class then thought they understood the entire game.
From your point of reference all FFXI would have been was "Engage target, auto attack until it dies or you die".
For the record while FFXI had more SPELLS for certain jobs (most of which were barely used), FFXIV most definitely has more abilities for people at lower level so you are just completely off base with that assessment.
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No it isn't.
If you want to level cap solo, go for it. I plan to. I can craft all my own gear and It will be good enough for all solo content. The stats on it will be less than dungeon loot gear but if I want to solo the game, I don't need gear designed for dungeons that require 4-12 people and I won't miss it.
Not all content in 14 is available to the solo minded player.
I don't think that's what the OP is asking though. Can you play this game solo? Yes.
Some of the story quests require you to run dungeons. Not sure how you'll do that solo. Also, why bother playing an MMO if you just want to solo? Why not play a single player game?
I've heard this a hundred times before and the answer is, it doesn't matter why. If someone wants to solo an MMO what do I care if they do it?
Get your story to 15 and your starter class to 15 using the quests and you open up every class and area.
The only withdraw I will make because I simply don't know is Jobs. I don't know if you need the levels or the quests for the levels. Jobs are described as needing 15 and 30 of two classes but most stuff requires quests to unlock. If you do need the 30 quest to unlock Jobs you will need to group up to defeat Ifrit at 20. It's a 4 man I believe and no, you can't solo it.
If Jobs are level specific, you don't even 'need' to do that. Will you miss out on the story line quest? Yes. Does it mean you can't get 50 in everything? No, it doesn't. It's just going to be done in a different way and if you run FATE content and you figure out what ones have NPC support, you don't even need global participation there.
Core content can be done solo.
With the Duty Finder, I don't understand the need to avoid group content. Even if you don't have a guild (free company) or close group of friends who play, there is nothing stopping you from using it to find groups for Guildhest Quests and dungeons.
I'm not bagging on people who prefer to play solo. Live and let live, is my motto. But if SE is giving you the tools to easily find groups, why not use them?
People don't wish to group(more so in the leveling process of the game) for a number of legitimate reasons. One common one is you don't have to share loot which means you get more materials or items to sell for gold. Another common reason is people are idiots. And if you're trying to rush to be one of the first max level players so you can be in the first wave of people completing end game content or you wish you control the market early on to be set for the rest of your gaming career in FFXIV then being slowed down by idiots is counterproductive towards your goal.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
It's not that you want to solo, but that you just want to solo. You do realize what the second M stands for in MMORPG, right?
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore)
Now Playing: N/A
Worst MMO: FFXIV
Favorite MMO: FFXI
I played XI for years and loved it, but you are blinded by nostalgia.
FFXI would not do well today simply because it wasn't that great. The "old school" unforgiving nature aside: Leveling was a pain (not that leveling should be short, but the original curve took so long and with nothing enjoyable or challenging for most of it except a long monotonous grind with extended wait times for parties for many jobs, and excruciating for some that were unpopular), skill chains were not balanced properly and became ultimately useless once people learned how to play their jobs properly, combat without skill chains was terrible, speaking of combat job balance was the worst I've ever experienced in an MMORPG, grinding exp for an exp cushion was boring, endgame fights were okay but not as good as today's endgame fights, dynamis currency grind was retarded (and I had my relics when that was still an accomplishment), camping was ruined by cheaters and botters, and the community while better than most suffered from all of these issues and a quick look at killingifrit shows you the real underbelly that drove community politics and ruined the game for many decent people.
It was one of my favorite MMORPG's of all time, and I still talk about it but you can't see past your rose colored glasses to see that FFXI wasn't perfect.
As for FFXIV being "casual" even 1.0 had more difficult encounters (Garuda, Ifrit Extreme, Darnus) than the majority of XI's and that is saying a lot considering it was simply placeholder content to placate those of us that stuck with the game while they made ARR.
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Thank you all for the replies. I will be preordering FFXIV due to your responses.
Thanks again for your time and info
I will have to chime in on this and say a few things in which I completely disagree.
I started playing FF11 since ps2 release and played for more than 7 years as far as experience go with topic. I and I am sure a lot of other people did not find combat boring as you say, I found it to be incredibly fun and one of the reasons i stuck with game for so long. People seem to have a weird idea of FF11 being super endgame focused like todays mmorpg are but I can safely say I had the majority of my most memorable moments and fun times outside of endgame stuff.
from:
1)actually being scared to explore and having dangers in every corner, seriously just going to jeuno for the first time was a adventure in itself as anything around could link or agroo and kill you. In Final fantasy 14 its carebear and my little pony land where from what i encountered from beta ( and playing 1.0 for a long time) very few enemy even bothered to attack you, and dont even get me started on making exploration with teleport at any location 24/7 easy mode which makes exploration and travel inmersion feel lackbuster.
2)combat was slower but more strategic and chaining skill chains and magic burst ( at least before they made game easy mode) was incredibly important and made the combat a whole lot more rewarding for your actions. It definatly was not just "auto attack spam"
I also loved the pacing I do not want to play a mmorpg let alone a rpg and be able to max out characters in 1-3 days. This completely kills off achievement and accomplishment of actually fighting your way to the top.
Final fantasy 14 is just a spam fest of skills, and one of the biggest reasons I am having doubts on it. you do combos but it doesn't matter very much as it should and most of the people just skill spam back to back with little effort.
I also much prefer "old school" combat for levels, I am sick and tired personally of quest hubs, fetch quest and etc which are a lot more boring to me.
No offense to you man but i tried to keep it as short and civil as possible and just hate the typical complaints from FF11.
P.S- finding party was never problem for any experienced player no matter job. You could of easily crafted/farmed/explored/made your own party/etc instead of sitting in one spot LFP. Every time i hear this excuse i just laugh a little about it.
To OP:
this game is easy mode compared to FF11 and a little more difficult compared to 1.0.
It just sounds like you weren't very good at FFXI, I'm sorry but skill chains/magic bursts were not better than spamming TP. It is a proven fact.
Also not everyone "just leveled" I had all 75's, but most of my time was spent doing endgame.
FFXI was easy. Low level content was far easier than it is in FFXIV, are you seriously going to compare early missions and early BCNM with the low level dungeons even available in beta? They were incredibly easy by comparison, most were tank and spank and didn't really require all that much "spanking". The only piece of difficult "non-endgame" content might be CoP content when it was level locked, but people didn't bring "noobs" to that. I met no one who didn't have a 75 who even beat the prommy's. Also once we figured out how to beat them, they weren't really that hard, I ran many people through those missions preparing our LS for sea and frankly their difficulty is overrated.
Later endgame fights were a mix, some were really not hard at all (winning the claim was all that mattered, after that it was a cakewalk even with a severely undermanned team). Some were better, however combat at endgame was entirely spam and it was boring (people did not skill chain 99% of the time). I had fun with it, but it was easy to master. I can teach anyone how to play endgame in FFXI in a week (if only I could give them all the necessary gear). Any position too, even a main tank. There were so few tools available to non mages that it was painstakingly easy to play your role at the highest level. Theorycrafting and macro creation were the height of challenge as far as combat goes.
I also leveled 4 jobs to 75 before skill chains completely fell out of favor among those who wanted to min/max leveling. It was fun, I loved skill chains. You know what changed? Nothing, the game wasn't made easy mode people got parsers and figured out that skill chaining was a waste of time and they could get higher exp chains by spamming and tailoring groups to burn parties.
Terrible system, fun game for which I am still nostalgic for. But it was certainly not hard, and combat certainly was not funner outside of ONE mechanic (skill chains) which was broken, and neglected by the people playing the game at its highest level.
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