Asura.Floppyseconds said:
»There is nothing to feel overwhelmed about.
This is the same as if you played CoP, quit, and then came back during WotG era.
You know you have to:
*Level jobs
*Do missions
*Get gear
*Anything else
You don't need to know there are 50 events 500 pieces of gear and 5 new ways to get somewhere. You learn as you go.
'OMG, Campaign, Missions, Einherjar, Salvage, Assault, ISNMs, ANNMs, Campaign BCNMs, Stronghold NMs, ZNMs! I don't know what to do! Too much info!'
Playing FFXI is the same as it has always been. Get a LS, meet people, and get distracted from the 50 million things you have to do. You know you need missions, but someone is going to be fighting a NM and ask if anyone wants to. You go to it, and digress.
Use the wiki it is your friend. Let me know if there are things you need changed to make your life better.
First off, thanks for all the changes made to BG Wiki. I'm finding it much easier to use now in comparison to just a month ago.
So, I think this really all comes down to how you play FFXI. I am not what I will call a "Social MMO Player". I don't play the game simply to socialize. Whenever I log in, I try to have some specific purpose to logging in that day. Getting sidetracked by other stuff is natural, but I at least have some plan going in. There are some days I never say a single thing in LS.
I was fortunate enough to be given a pearl when I ran across some people spawning NMs while I was doing RoV missions. However, without the missions being done, I didn't have KIs to help them, etc. So aside from the story being what I care about most, that was plainly what I needed to do if I wanted to play with others. Once I completed the story, I participated in some LS stuff, but then ended up not having enough silt to buy the Tribs KI.
I have a couple things that I clearly need to do, like farming silt and job points. Gear is really what gives me a hard time though in deciding what to do. IMO, most job threads don't do a very good job at identifying 'mid-tier' (or perhaps I should say "easy accessibility") gear. Beginner and top level are good. When I look at something top tier and go "There's no way I can get that anytime soon", there aren't always alternatives given (or if they are, they're not necessarily any easier to get). There's a terrible assumption in some of them that if you're gearing the job, you're going straight for the top.
Sure, my WHM may be 'good enough' for a lot of events, but there's no way my PLD or BLU is. I don't want to jump into a LS event and end up being carried (even if they would absolutely do it, I don't like being that person). I want to put in the time to get a decently gear job that can contribute to the team. I prefer to do most of that farming dual boxing. Another reason for this is that I don't want the LS committing time to me and my characters when I may end up quitting again if I lose interest. I know everyone fondly remembers farming Dynamis to get someone a relic and then having them quit.
This has turned into more of a rant than I intended, but what I was going for was "It's not that simple for everyone."