So Why Did You Quit? (and Still Read FFXIAH?)

Are you under the impression that the same group of programmers has been on FFXI for two decades? Because man, I knew that you knew nothing about development, but I really hadn't quite grasped the depths of your ignorance on this matter. The realistic case is that whoever they had was the last group of people they assigned to the project, probably right around Adoulin, as they would have had to staff up a bit for that. After Adoulin, some people got rotated out, and the newer ones stayed on. And like, SoA is ten years old, so even in this instance they've been there a while, but I can absolutely promise you that the actual development staff has seen turnover.

If I had to guess, this was in response to someone or someones making a stink about how they'd leave for a while now, and they were promised this some time ago. It's also entirely possible that people DID quit and this is the cover story, so if you want to tinfoil it up, that's a far more plausible route.

The fact that the sub price hasn't gone up with inflation means you actually do NOT have the same sub, but even putting that aside: MMORPGs are, in terms of dollar spent per hour of entertainment, the biggest bargain on planet Earth. Nothing else even comes close. That math only works, though, if there's enough players paying that sub fee to actually support the department. XI is, as I point out on the database page, absolutely still in the black. But it's not making money hand over fist anymore and (most likely) will not ever do so again, which means it's going to have fewer resources assigned to it. You don't fund a project based on the current state of things. You fund it based on the expected state in 6,12,18 months.

When a cop pulls you over, do you tell them your taxes pay their salary? You pay for access to the game. You HAVE access to the game. If you don't want to pay for a game that's not being actively improved - a completely reasonable stance! - then you are free to not pay it, but SE has been crystal clear about their direction for this for a long time now.

I mean, yeah, it probably is! Time is not a flat circle; it marches forward, and that means sometimes things happen at the same time. Again, if you think anything that could be carved from XI's budget would matter at all to XVI or even XIV then you don't really understand how the math at this scale works at all.

So why did you quit?
I got bored.

and still read FFXIAH?
This type of endless entertainment.

FFXI is the type of project I'd pawn off on interns

When was the last time you paid a sub for 11? I'm curious if I'm talking to someone who is paying for the same service I am and cares about this game or?

I have every right to be mad they are reducing the content the game gets and that leading to lots of people quitting, asking me to effectively pay for them to be retained by a billion dollar corporation like it's my responsibility is laughable and it's even more laughable you think that's some kind of argument.

There are no coders on the 11 team at all, they are all planners and this has been stated numerous times. It has been this way for over 6-7 years now, you would not know cause you don't play the game tho? The only time any coding happens or any graphics are made, it's from the 14 team when they have time and they are allowed to do so.

There is no re-training needed for these people and I highly doubt they even wanted to be so, we just get told this garbage to we shut us up and accept the reduced budget for the game and put up with getting less and paying the same.

Also the inflation argument is nonsense, they have added numerous additional ways to pay more for the game. From mog wardrobe to AMAN mules / goblin box mules (which a lot of people do) so we are not paying the same sub as we did before.

Literal nonsense, you can damage control for this garbage company and garbage new game they are pushing out all you want but I won't accept what you're saying as anything but that.

16 pre-orders have been garbage, YoshiP has been damage controlling like a politician and they have been money saving anywhere they can and pushing out macro-transactions mounts and outfits to a disgraceful level on 14 lately while putting out less content.

We are effectively paying for 16, becasue they have a limited staff in the division and when they are working on that pos we get less because of it.

When can we lock this thread, too?

muh lock everything

I have paid a sub continuously since PC retail release. I have never taken a break from paying, even when I've taken a break from the game. I paid for several until recently, when I finally made peace with the fact that I wasn't ever going to triplebox again.

I'm gonna tell you something now, something real, and true, that you will not and probably can not believe, but: I want XI to return to glory more than anyone. More than you, more than <insert whoever you like here, but I won't because it'd be rude to name-drop>. I am number *** one on those particular power rankings, and I don't give a ***if you believe me or not, because it's 100% the truth. I had some of the very best moments (non-wedding/childbirth division) of my entire life, and made friends who I still talk to, to this day. I've hired some of them professionally. XI made my life substantially better in multiple ways, and the burning in my heart for its revival exceeds any emotion you have ever had.

But I can like more than one thing, and I can do math. You don't seem capable of either of those.

You keep tossing out things about XVI for some reason; I don't really understand why. XI's fate was written when the Salvage bans happened: you can't nuke a sizable percentage of your most accomplished and active players, especially in a game that rewards slow-burn achievement as much as XI does. SE didn't understand what they were doing, and we can't really know if it would have stopped them even if they had. But everything since 2009 has been steadily trending downward because the population never recovered after that, not in any real way.

So anyway, I don't know why you hate a game you haven't played, or a guy you haven't met, or any of that. I can't really discern your motivations for anything you do, if I'm being honest. All I can do address your words and your actions, which are unhinged beyond the point of parody. So like, as a person? I don't think this is healthy for you, and you should find some other way to spend your time.

It'd be hypocritical of me to lock a thread I'm actively derailing (bad admin, no cookie), but I might demain it at some point? I don't know. I've said all I'm going to say here, so where it goes from here, I guess we'll see.

Fair enough on the first few paragraphs.

I don't hate 16, idgaf about it, I do care that it's obviously causing problems for the other games in the division.

You can say it's not all you want but you don't know any better than I do, and it surely does look that way to me and makes sense it is as such a massive project.



Pathetic cheap shot, didn't hurt my feefees tho.

You can be passionate and even annoyed about something and talk about it online on a forum, without it being some kind of serious issue. Come on now.

I didn't cherry pick these events because they suit my argument. They are the most recent additions to the game and they all display the same marked change in philosophy. The game is winding to a close and events are going to be prolonged so players have anything left to do.


If you don't like running, the back and forth for objectives in Sortie might bother you. The constant running, scouting, and kiting in Odyssey is no different. The constant back and forth for merit refills for Shinryu is no different.


I'm not saying that everyone should be enjoying Sortie. Just pointing out that the vast majority of the complaints are not specific to Sortie, but generalizations about a game transitioning to maintenance mode.

Problem with that is dyna-d is fun and can take an alliance and chat while doing it.

Omen can also take alliance, can be done twice a week and can stock KIs.

Sortie is a 1hr daily, single party, where majority of time is spent running.

Can have maintenance mode without boring pointless running in 1hr "daily" content.

On subject, friends and the combat system are what keep people coming back. Pointless grind and burnout from said pointless grind is what makes people quit.

Hah, chill. Fun is definitely relative.

Can claim to love sortie all you like, sounds like rationalising grinding your way through poorely thought out content to me.

I guess I should answer these, if I'm here.

Why did I quit playing?
I technically still have an active sub and log in from time to time for various reasons, but I haven't actively played since I finished Rhapsodies. My friends stopped playing and I didn't want to server shift or join another group, so my time wound down until I finally just stopped logging in. It remains my favorite game ever, and I'll probably go through Voracious Resurgence now that the story's complete.

Why do I still read FFXIAH?
Aside from the obvious reason I'm here, I do enjoy the community (which is why I wanted to get on staff in the first place). Much like XI itself, it's mostly a product of a different time that is unlikely to be replicated any time soon, if ever again.

The problem we face as a community playing a long running game is the company simply does not care in general for any of us, your passion and loyalty for something isn't rewarded or valued. If they can give you less and you will stay, they will give you less and that's as simple as it goes because it's all about the money. Why give someone 10, when they will take 5 and be angry but still keep paying? Buisness 101, straight from the playbook of Blizzard entertainment right before they alienated their entire fanbase.

I value the developers, but I do not value the guy in charge of the division making these money choices becasue he just sees us walking wallets and that's as deep as it goes to him.

When they give you less you have to be willing to give them less money in return, cause if you don't you're admitting they can do whatever they want and you're staying regardless. That's a terrible lesson to teach a corpo suit.

Same with the cash shop stuff, if they can sell you a desired mount instead of giving you it in the game as a drop from content they will do that, cause you're not only going to stay and pay the sub on XIV whether you're mad or not but you're (or enough others) are probably still going to buy it for $35 while being mad too.

You being mad and them making more money > You being happy and making less money.

If anything we have an opportunity here to display our displeasure at a point where it actually matters and will be noticed, becasue if ff16 underperforms as it's looking to they are going to want the other games to carry the losses to make it look less of a disaster. The executives are laser focused right now on the profits and losses of this division due to the ff16 gamble, if you ever wanted to unsub or pay less to show you're annoyed now is the time to do it.

I normally pay way way too much on this game over 6 accounts and multiple AMAN mules, and I've cut back to 1 account at the bare minimum level of support since the producer letter and I'm just going to do other stuff for a while.

Sortie sucks, the removal of developers sucks and VR was honestly cheaply made to a level we have never seen before. I hate to say it cause I really care about this game but maybe the general sentiment of this thread is good and needs to happen.

Fujito answered this question in the interview.


Basically, the job of a "game planner" is way more complicated than you think. Producing a game entirely from scratch is drastically harder than implementing content within an established framework. It is more than just learning a new engine even though game planners do need to learn how to use those tools anyways.



That is probably because coder's job is mainly developing development environment and tools. Once this is done game planners can implement game content on their own using the development tools. So coders can go work on a different project and save money, only come back to fix problems related to development tools.

Keeping coders on a project without needing to give them work is a waste of money, this is not a SE problem, it's literally how any employer or PM would do.



We aren't paying their wages, SE does. We only pay for SE's services.

If you feel your money isn't worth it, you can choose not to pay and play other games instead. We are not hiring these people with a responsibility. We are paying for a service that we can cancel anytime we want.

Being upset and generate unverified rumors because of other people's business decision isn't healthy. It's their company, their decision. Us as customers just choose to pay or don't pay.

If SE decided to kill FF11 and put money on a different game, I'll just quit FF11 and play their next game happily(if it's good). I really see zero reason to be upset if I can control how I spend my money anyways.

I've been playing FFXI since the second year it was born, it's the best MMORPG PVE experience I've ever experienced.

Throughout the 20 years I have made some sporadic break, between 1 to 3 months maximum, in the end I end up wanting to return and I have always enjoyed the game.

But now I've been the longest period of my life without playing FFXI, I haven't played for about 6 or 8 months.
The reason is the focus on daily tasks that FFXI has implemented, a bad habit copied from FFXIV.

I think the design of daily tasks shows little talent and little desire to put effort into a game, and the fact that Odyssey and, above all, Sortie is daily has made me tired, both me and my friends who have also been a while without playing.

I would like to come back, basically because there is no other game that resembles it, it is still unique, but the thought of coming back and knowing that I have to do Odyssey and Sortie .... takes away all the desire.

Also the community is much worse (Asura) than ever in the entire history of FFXI, with mediocre players asking for absurdly high requirements that shows that they are mediocre to cover their weaknesses.

A change that I would put is to change Sortie, I would make it give triple points but you can only enter 1 time every 3 days, so you avoid the "fatigue" of the player to have to do 1 hour of an event EVERY DAY.

It is a pity that FFXI uses the daily system of the current mediocre MMO, in the past it was much more disguised and was more intelligent and brought more things with Nyzul isle of 30 min but you could accumulate up to 4 stacks, or Salvage, Dinamys, Limbus every 3 days that made you have variety, every day you did 1 different thing.

Now with Odyssey with an insufferable lag that makes the event very little fun and Sortie 1 hour heavy that a few days later you do not want to return ....

I started playing XI in December of 2003 and never really stopped until I cut down my playtime drastically around the time that part 2 of Delve was released. Most of my friends had moved full time to XIV and I had begun dabbling in it as well.

When Rhapsodies came out, I said I'd stick it out til the end just so I could get closure on the story and because the early Geas Fete content was easy and enjoyable to get into. I had hoped that such content might attract some old friends back, but it never happened.

The update that added Omen was when I cut back entirely and decided to only do login campaigns and seasonal events that interested me. Omen was too difficult for just myself to do, so it seemed right to end my progress there for the time being and focus on XIV content. I had realistically 'done' everything in XI, with the only things left to do being making extra REMA weapons, which didn't really seem worth the investment.

COVID is what brought me back as I suddenly had an excess of extra time to waste on another game, so I had about 4-5 years of 'new' content to digest. I spent the first few months getting current with Ambuscade, Domain Invasion, and leeching cards in Omen. I made my first Aeonic and soon followed it up with another.

VR was announced a bit after I returned, so that was the hook that kept me coming back, but it's over now. At this point, I feel like I've caught up with everything I missed over the years and the prospect of only having Sortie in front of me for the foreseeable future is kinda depressing. I can only really stomach the event once or twice a week, Ruspix plate be damned.

Primes are looking very interesting, but not millions of muffins interesting, in my opinion. I get about 20-25k a run duoing with my friend when we can fit it in, so the idea of finishing a weapon anytime soon is quite daunting.

Odyssey does not bother me as much as Sortie does as I can log in, use my moglophone solo, and log out having made some gil in only 30ish minutes. I quite enjoy the ending gil/segment reward as I view it as a sort of scoreboard for how well I did that run. I've long since accepted that the highest vengeance clears on the Gaol NMs are out of my reach, so the base gear is good enough for me.

For now, I will keep with my pattern of focusing on XIV when new content drops and come back to XI when it slows down. I'll be playing XVI when it comes out and hope that it is a return to form. I've been disappointed by the last 2 single player entries in this franchise, so I'm crossing my fingers that XVI is the one to set the ship straight again. If not, at least XIV's next expansion is being unveiled in a few weeks?

The run in Sheol C is fairly linear, I think it'd be more equivalent to Sortie if you were running from Floor 1 to Floor 5 back to Floor 2, then to Floor 4, etc. The amount of running with nothing to do in-between in Odyssey is minuscule in comparison. There also really isn't that much scouting or kiting going on, the person doing most of the movement is the tank pulling multiple groups. So yea, there is running, but it really isn't comparable in the amount you do.

I don't necessarily disagree with Shinryu, especially since they raised the # of merits required. If it were back to where it was, I don't think it's that unreasonable given how short it lasts. The difference is I can go knock out two Shinryus and a segfarm in the amount of time it takes to do one Sortie run.


Has the player requirement situation really changed that much? It was a while ago obviously but I remember pre-Abyssea days when I played SAM and NIN, players had pretty strict gear requirements even for exp parties and I distinctly remember not being invited until I had Hagun and O.kotes, among some other items for those jobs. Players made a point to make sure I knew why I wasn't being invited. It's actually one of the reasons I quit in years past, fighting Mee Deggi over and over only to lose the claim to a bot and for them to get the drop had me rage quit at least twice.

The lag...yea, it's bad, its unmanageable in segfarms especially on Floor 2. Sortie was fine for a while but it's gotten to the point there that I have to time my bursts around the lag spikes. It's nearly making the content unplayable when you have to hit macros 3-5 times for anything to go off.

Why did I quit?

I've had a ton of dislike for a lot of Square Enix's decisions over the years, but, at the core of the game, I loved it's mechanics, even the direction game mechanics took overtime, I was mostly in favor of.

But, the effective price of the game to play it the way I wanted to, having access to more and more wardrobes, etc, increasing in an ancient game, when other games I play offer so much more in terms of new content over time for way less money?

Add to that SE getting invested into NFT/Crytpo offerings, and more specifically the WAY they handled those things...

I just couldn't stomach giving SE money anymore. For the record, I don't think there's any moral or logical imperative for anyone else to reach the same conclusion, we all value things differently. But personally, despite how much I liked the game mechanics, and eventually, even more than that, coding addons and other things for the game, just didn't outweigh the unpleasant feeling of supporting a company I'd grown to despise.

Why do I still read FFXIAH forums?

I don't with any frequency, every six months or so I'll get a wild hair and check in here and/or the FFXI Reddit just to scratch the nostalgia itch.

I sometimes feel as if people describing why they are quitting a game, or any game, comes with a lot of analysis of the game. But I find this similar to "Why did you escalate from smoking weed to cocaine?" "Well, the high wasn't quite right. It was OK. The price never really improved even though I felt I was getting less out oof it, and..."

I look at it in a Star Wars sense: a "game" is what Chewie and Han are playing on the Millennium Falcon, the little holographic table with the holographic monsters that they sometimes play. It's a thing to pass time while you're getting from point A to point B - but can you imagine spending 40 hours a month on that? A 100 hours? A Rubik's cube is a game too.

When you look at it from this perspective, it's sobering. It makes you want to put down a game and go do something else.

you're a legend all the same and please do frequent the forums. XI's loss that you quit.

edit: give me free customized lua now k? pls..? lol

To all the people saying they don't like the daily grind of Sortie + Odyssey: you do realize you can just...not go every day, right? I know there's FOMO and everyone wants to be the first prettiest lady at the ball, but nobody is forcing you to be efficient with your tags.

If you and all your friends agree that doing 1.5 hours of events every single night is taxing and stressful, just...don't do them. Go every other day, or only on weekends, or whatever you feel like.

Sure, you get fewer rewards that way, but that's how effort works. If you put in 1/2 or 1/3 the effort, you get 1/2 or 1/3 the rewards out. It's like saying "I wish they'd make Dynamis [D] a monthly event, but drop 8x as much currency."

I mean, I guess if you want to just log in to FFXI twice a week, do Dynamis, Omen, Sortie, and Odyssey, then log off for two days, that's fine. For me, I prefer to play every day and it's nice to have something to do as opposed to logging in and standing around bazaaring for four hours because all my tags are on cooldown for two more days.

This is already getting long enough as-is, but I think MMOs especially have a difficult job of balancing:
1.) Give people lots of stuff to do so they can play your game forever
2.) Not getting people burned out because there are too many things they need to do

These things are diametrically opposed and I think if Sortie was a 1 hour, every 3 days event people would be shitting equally-sized bricks that there's nothing to do in this dead game.

played since 04

quit because SE has been dog ***for a decade

just pay some RMT dude to let your character auto-follow them. Be resourceful, be creative, win son.

I am pretty sure the main problem was the lack of content variety in past 3-5 years(2018-2023).

What makes horizontal progression fun is that you can do wide variety of different content for progression. For example, if you want to grind 200m for a rema, you can do dyna D for unlock/gil, omen for gil, ambu for gil, or you can solo salvage for gil, join seg farm for gil. There are more than one way to farm your 200m for your rema which makes the grinding less boring.

This also applies to other gears for progression. Pre-2018 You can do omen, bcnm, ambu, SR here and there for small gear upgrades that comes fast, then they eventually adds up as you collect more gears. So it feels like you are always doing different content for progression.

Post 2018 newer content like Odyssey and sortie was designed to last for a long long time, and they completely locked players into one content for one progression path. Odyssey went from v15 to 20 to 25. It's technically "new content" with higher levels but it's still the same mechanics and same seg farm zone that was done million times. Then the new legendary weapon is locked in sortie.

It lacks variety to keep doing the same thing over and over for years for current gen upgrades.

Yes, you can log on 2 days per week and play other games 5 out of 7 days so you aren't doing Odyssey/sortie everyday, but it doesn't change the fact that there are only 2 content. Or you can go back to pre-2018 content and grind old gears. But not everyone is interested in something that was also done a million times 5 years ago too, especially if many gears from older content is being replaced now.


If sortie is a 1hr event every 3 days, with 2-3 different content that also offers new legendary weapon progression, it would be a better way to solve this burnout problem.


I personally feel 4-5 content that co-exists and drops newest relevant gears would be ideal for a horizontal progression game. 2 is not enough for me personally.

only emotions they feel are green
Only passion they have is their bonus at the board/executive management level, or how they're going to pay their bills, keep their kids in school, afford stuff in a competitive economy. If it means dropping you and designing content for some zoomer kid who's mom and dad will buy him the next trendy game, than that's what they have to do.

the guy who often needs to point his resources/teams in the right direction otherwise he will have to fire them at some point in the future because they didn't make any money
it's been more than 20 years of content. its crazy its lasted as long as it has. I was a kid when I started. I have kids who are my age when I started now. I tell my son "Prime is older than you are. how *** crazy is that?!"
Have you played other games recently? I'm not a fan of a lot of SE's choices. But when it comes to cash shops, allow me to introduce you to EA and Activision/Blizard. I'd like you to play Diablo Immortal for 2 weeks and come back here with a new understanding of SE's minimal pay-to-win/in-game cash shop strategies. I've disliked SE since XIII but they're not corrupt crooks, dopamine dealers and preying on people's gambling tendancies. Kudos to them for being pretty damn purest and ethical and true to the old gaming industry, despite the fact that they're owned by a chinese overlord pressing them for profits.

Pay RMT

or work hard, grind and bust your *** and do the impossible like an idiot in a 20-Year-old game.

My IQ might be 2 but my master levels on 7 jobs is 50....

*forgets to inhale*

At least I know how to play the game...

*dies*

*wifes sells account to a saudi prince*

Was it worth it?

dont forget early deterioration of eye site, pains in the wrists, early erectile dysfunction from lack of regular blood circulation, loss of muscle mass, increase in cortisol and a fatigued adrenal gland.
I'd much rather pay some dude in china to grind away for what is peanuts to me and enough to keep his kids in school and pay his mortgage, have a working peepe, no diabetes, and a waist size below holy *** "that's a huge ***".

SE is not owned by Chinese....=.=

SE also made a bunch of gacha fyi....