March 2024 Version Update

I love FFXI. But man, coming back, seeing how utterly far behind I am (Job Points etc) I'd pretty much immediately quit.

I hope one day the world of Vanadiel can live on. The stories that FFXI told were good, and I hope one day we see a single player game set in Vanadiel.

I personally don't care if it didn't play the same. I spent hundreds of hours in some of these locations, I'd love to see them represented in a modern engine. I look forward to seeing them in 14, even if I don't play that.

But if you did a FFXI:R or whatever, I doubt anyone would be too excited. It'd have to be marketed completely differently. The game just doesn't have the same recognition as any of the other mainline games.

A lot of people have forgotten gear-swapping was a MISTAKE. I wonder how many of them would love FFXI if they couldn't theorycraft/spreadsheet sets for every possible scenario. Windower made FFXI what it is, not SE.

There would certainly be people who come back, but not enough to make it worthwhile for SE to bother pumping money into it. Let's be honest anyway, it would never be something that lives up to expectations. We aren't going back to the days of SoA/pre-SoA content design. At best you could maybe pray for an ACP/MKD/ASA style mini expansion that maybe adds a Reisenjima sized zone or something if they managed to convince anyone at SE that getting a few more people to work on XI for a year was worthwhile. No grand storyline, no half dozen new zones with a half dozen new dungeons, no new jobs, etc etc

At this point I'd be completely content with more standalone fights like the Princess Flan, but I think even that is a high expectation at this point. I am closer to canceling all but 1 of my accounts than I've ever been too simply because it is no longer worth the extra money every month for the 2 or 3 days per reset that I use either of the other characters.

Just make an iLevel version of Limbus, copy paste the existing zones, update the monsters with appropriate stats, maybe screw around with gear and accessories.

That can't possibly be that hard to do compared to what they did with Sortie and Odyssea.

They need to open up all the merit categories. Let us have them all even if its a longer grind to go beyond the current limits.

The tricky thing about an expansion or the like to me is that post-Odyssey and post-ML/Sortie XI has an incredibly wide band of player power and investment now to the point of, well... Who do you make the content for? Do you just kind of shrug and make an expansion sort of like Adoulin where the mobs are in the level 99-110 zone? People that have actually invested in the game for the past 5 years are going to plow through that content like it's nothing and we're back to having this conversation in a week at most. Do you make it expecting a high level of current content completion, like some MLs and Empy +3 behind you? Then you're putting up a huge gate behind the new "boxed" content (assuming it's a discrete release) such that it's unlikely to excite and draw someone back in that wasn't already at least half on the treadmill in the recent past. You could use/abuse difficulty levels to fix some of this for whatever instanced content would end up coming with the product, but the open world would sort of be essentially doomed in this scenario.

As a more recent player without much baggage or history with the game I do kind of think they've let player power scale out of control deliberately to better accommodate low-manning older stuff (as well as incentivize the new stuff like Odyssey and Sortie of course) to make up for a waning playerbase. That makes it hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube so to speak, and it's very hard for me to imagine a large, discrete release (so not just one piece of content like Sortie or the Flan fight) that doesn't either blatantly powercreep everything before it (real i159 gear now!) or isn't immediately irrelevant to everyone that's actually participated in the newer stuff. Maybe I'm just not creative enough.

I mean sure, a long *** time ago it was a mistake, but SE leaned into it hard. People were swapping gear with /equip head macros long before Windower was released, and equipsets were added by SE as well. You can, and plenty of people have, theorycraft, spreadsheet, and use sets for every possible scenario without ever installing Windower.

You just do what they've always done, ignore half. Then throw them the smallest adjustment to something a couple months later.

Then a couple months later ignore the other half, then a couple months later adjust something they need.

Never let them all be happy at the same time to maximize retention as they wait for their turn.

Vana'diel's size, depth and worldbuilding make it one of the biggest IPs (second-biggest, after XIV?) they have in that way. I wonder to the financials; at one point just the IP would have had a huge asset value on the balance sheet, which must be/have been revised down every year, creating a depreciation cost on their P&L. Presumably the accountants have historically written that cost over to XIV because they consider it the same market share, but realistically that shouldn't be the case since 2016.

I hope Yoshi-P has a plan to capitalise on a potential resurgence of FFXI interest generated by the Echoes of Vana'diel raid in XIV next year (whether it does or not is a different matter). It felt bizarre that the 2019-2021 mass-influx of players due to Ninja/Covid only resulted in TVR, but I presume the majority of CBU3 were working on FFXVI at that time so couldn't take time out to knock up a new XI expansion in Rhazowa. I dunno guys, hire more people already? Outsource like the add-ons? Not so optimistic as he's already talking about CBU3's new project in interviews.

Would be good if they could create a single-player XI sequel that has online elements, and properly build on the existing history and storyline rather than eg dropping a cataclysm or a 100-year leap.

If we ever did get something else here, I hope they realise that infinite power creep is dumb. Start me off on another continent with new jobs only and release a couple every year, new level caps, no Trusts, etc. I'd go again.

I hope Fujito decides to do another look at job balancing/adjustments.

FFXI doesn't need another full scale job adjustments for every job, but a couple of jobs definitely needs some.

For example, Ninja is on life support right now, only used for super niche use cases. Ironically enough, if the bonanza katana was more widely accessible, it would probably make ninja more appealing again as an off-tank.

That means 1 piece of equipment is necessary to restore ninja's usability? But I digress here.

FFXI's 22 jobs make it challenging to balance. Giving out new rewards from new content potentially impacts that delicate balance. That's a headache the current skeleton crew doesn't want to deal with, I'm sure.

Instead of Adding new master trials and new Endgame they also need to add new stuff for Beginners / New players to catch up Ambuscade is not enough it would take them months to gear through ambuscade barely anyone invites noobs to Ambuscade every 1 does VD Ambuscade, There should be something New for the new players/Returning players to gear up to be able to solo most of unity as well.
You see alot of new players in Discord and Reddit but not a lot of them catch up they stop once they are 99 they get mega hard stuck.

You dont have to balance the jobs, you balance the content.

Gaol did a good job of forcing job versatility, which they then *** up by making Amp cheese the only way to get RP in a timely manner. But for the sake of killing the NM's and moving up the ladder, job versatility is required.

There will always be a meta. The goal is to make sure that meta changes based on content, not because dev's are changing numbers behind the scenes.

You can do all 25 fights on COR though. Only job that is used on all.

The resistance in Sortie is *** stupid you can not always explain the ***to people when your pugging you are right somethings must change in content maybe.

you add new zones
New Missions
New World Content: Open world NM's that spawn 15-30mins kinda like how abyssea worked? to make things entertaining in the open world maybe new mats that way you can farm no idea something similar?
New Battle fields, not stupid like Adoulin release making everything prior bad and weak i mean equipment,
Most importantly a new reigon
A new City
New Music
New Main story
New Fame Quests
Mobs there give alot of Exemplar points for catch up mechanics?
but you would still need a Grp or solo with trust but not as bad as it is now? maybe 1000-2000 Exemplar a kill?
CHEMIST AND TIME MAGE TO MAKE DRAYLO HAPPY

Sure, until you get a party of 6 people and they're all like "Hey bro, I've got COR, I'm ready to do all 25 fights"

Also, some V25 strats involve multiple KIs, at least in the current meta, so...good luck with your COR only strategy.

In practical terms, it is extremely difficult, and requires even more job flexibility from your teammates, if you are a COR only.

I mean yeah, sure, but we know very few people are engaging with V25s beyond those who already have them so whatever theoretical situation you've made up is pretty irrelevant to reality.

Not really that tricky. The start of the expansion can be "easy" for those in reforged armor (pre-ody and pre-sortie) and by the end of the expansion, the expansion gear "upgrades" can bring a player inline with Odyssey\Sortie gear. Then the endgame of the expansions can be "hard" for everyone while they grind out the new endgame BiS gear.

Sortie is a good example of this. Killing a top boss or two doesn't require R30 Ody gear. This enables you to upgrade empy, which for most jobs are very significant upgrades. Which in turn will enable more progression in Sortie.

A lot of the gameplay end of FFXI was a mistake. They came up with a cool world and made it feel like a Final Fantasy game, basing their gameplay off of another game with very loose mechanics. I wouldn't doubt if the deeply strategic gameplay was all just a coincidence.

When designing a job, they most certainly were not sitting there tirelessly thinking about how they'd make it a competitive and well-balanced tank, healer, or DPS. They were thinking what kind of cool stuff a particular job could do.
"What can a Warrior do?"
"I dunno. Berserk is a status effect in every Final Fantasy game, let's give them that. Maybe Double Attack could pay homage to the earlier entries with multi-strikes."

Considering how loose FFXI is with its mechanics, it's nothing short of a miracle that it's as balanced as it is lol

Be careful what you wish for. We'll end up with an option for ML50 players that drops you to 40 in exchange for 1 additional point of merit cap for that job.

Link Master Trial completion to getting 1~3 Bonanza weapons. BARANCE!

In theory? Absolutely.
But on a practical level? I dunno man.
Can you name a single relevant fight/event where Yaguy Darkblade would make NIN an awesome tank/offtank?

I'm sure there's gotta be something but I can't honestly think of anything right now.

It wouldn't do anything. It's cute and is possibly the best jelly piece currently in game. It makes the morons cream at the thought. But ask whatshisface(nitenichi?) how many times he used it.

It's useless. It doesn't matter how good it sounds or how much someone overhypes it.
*It'd be neat for Crystal Paradise.

Stop trying to stuff bonanza trash into normal rewards like they have some value beyond eye candy.

Doesn't the NIN Tank in Crystal Paradise keep the target to himself and away from everybody else for like 90% of the fight?
Because if that's so there's hardly any benefit in using Yagyu Darkblade, alas.

Not as a tank, but frees up the party to not have to all sub nin. aka useless but cute.

Edit; Right on cue to take the bait

Add it as the carrot to the end of ML 50 and baby, you got a stew goin'

Pretty sure there would be many applications, but none care to figure it out, when it's out of reach anyway. I think people forget it's not only about giving other people shadows, but it's about the highest enmity generation in the game. Every utsuaemi that hits 6ppl is 960CE and 2880VE of base enmity. That's 3 times more than Foil and you have 3 utsusemi spells, so you can cast them without any delay. With good enmity gear it takes like 12 utsusemi cast to cap both CE and VE enmity (well just 4 casts for VE). Its Also extremely easy to spike enmity on something like segments farming.

Should be also easily one of the best weapon for solo, because of shadows on trusts.

Plenty

I used Mjollner and Claustrum "plenty" of times for entertainment too.

My mistake not adding the qualifiers of "not just for tehluls" in the used it question. How many times did it actually serve a purpose that Su5/rema wouldn't have.