Another FFXI Private Server.

Found the quote, it isn't quite as stark as I was remembering. The full post makes a distinction between the development and operations teams and makes no mention of the ops team downsizing, though I'm not sure how many people that is. I had assumed most of the forum mods, GM's, etc. were already being borrowed from XIV and not full time XI staff.

He said the people who left the XI team would work on other projects to improve their job skills, and possibly come back to XI in the future. That was over a year ago now.

It will probably be a nothing burger but:

Says the XI addict. Yes, you do.

That sounds an awful lot like getting a new job with another team and occasionally helping out with XI when workflow allows.

I guess in a micro sense I end up doing the same thing but it's all code fed into the same family of devices, so even though it's a scattered array of open source and internally developed libraries/services/etc, at least it's sortof in the same ballpark and using the same turd of a build system. I'm not sure I could manage 30 completely different spread out repos and switch on a whim, that'd make my head explode.

I assume with a video game the entire toolchain is massively different: texture creation, animations, items, builds, server quirks, etc. Seems like it'd be a lot to switch, more than what I end up dealing with anyway. I feel like it'd be too much of a mindfuck for me to deal with personally.

You'll have some resiliency. We worked with one company that had 25+ year old devices and one person of thousands knew how to make changes to a single embedded controller that couldn't be replaced, no one else even knew where the source was. You eventually make yourself essential enough they know they can't get rid of you and it's increasingly a factor with anything written in C, C++, or asm.

I mean, you tend to schedule blocks of time to work on different code bases, so they're switching.. for weeks/months maybe to finish something, then going back.

yuck, no angry private server derps pissing off on this thread about how great they ackusukally are.

Sorry but you were very misinformed. Unless you have trusts out, there's no mandate to have ilvl gear on. Earth staff is, indeed, an excellent DT piece until you can get a better option. If you are in a party with other players and you haven't summoned trusts, there's absolutely no reason not to use an earth staff in your DT set. If you can land a debuff with RDM empy+2 body and don't need the macc from an ilvl piece to land it, then it's still BiS for enfeebling magic potency.

It's also incredible trivial to get rem's tales chapter 2, you can do it within 30 minutes of hitting level 99, but that's...not really the point.


As someone who just finished leveling a brand new character from 1-99, I can assure you that the game 100% does not start at max level. There are metric shitloads of things to do from 1-99, including lots of things that are quite difficult and interesting. Your personal gear doesn't matter all that much if you're using trusts (which, as I've already pointed out, you don't have any obligation to) but you are still actively playing the game, using all of your abilities, learning new skills, and if you want you can go farm and/or craft all the BiS gear for every level. I personally think it's a waste of time, but if you want to do it, go for it. You don't have to be a slave to the meta.


It doesn't matter which part of the game design it comes from, FFXI has massively more interesting gear swaps and interesting design/equipment considerations than any PS has, period. As far as all the gearswap/can you get banned nonsense, I've never played with gearswap in my life and always used SE's equipsets and it works fine. There's no need to use gearswap or even consider whether it will get you banned.


This is also hardly even true. How many pieces of gear are truly used in endgame BiS sets in the 75 era that you pick up along the way? Moldavite earring...Rajas ring...? Most of the stuff you listed earlier is absolutely trounced by endgame gear. Emperor hairpin, Monster Signa, Fuma, okote, Jujitsu gi, you name it. 99% of the gear you get from level 1-75 will be replaced at 75. The fact that a handful of pieces, mostly level 60+, most of which require help from 75 players, will be used at endgame, is not a particularly strong point (for me).


You're missing the point again. I'm not saying that a person interested in engaging in Sortie should go camp leaping boots. I'm saying if you and your 1000 friends who are playing on PS want to pretend it's 2005 and play "classic FFXI" you can log in to the retail game and go camp Leaping Lizzy so you can have another .75 accuracy when EXPing in the dunes. You can not finish the level cap quests and stay at 75 in your Walahra Turbans, fighting Genbu.


Similar to the above point...you and your 1000 players from *whatever PS* can migrate to the retail servers and then the population problems (for 75 content) would no longer be a problem. There would be thousands of people who want to do this content. In fact, since there are 16 live retail servers, you could all congregate on the same one to make it easier to group up.

...Except then, whenever you wanted to recruit a friend you'd have to convince them to buy a game from the company who developed it, and then give that company money every month for maintaining the servers. Which seems a bit beyond the pale for the enthusiasm of the PS crowd.


Again, my point was that the # of people (your "stark minority") who would be playing FFXI if PS didn't exist > # of people who move from PS to Retail.

You said it yourself, they're vastly different games, so...why would the second number be large, if they're so different? I think the logic stands that if the game experiences are so different, both numbers would be small but the first would be larger than the second, which was my point in the first post I made in this discussion.

Its like Maletaru is typing out these long pointless posts while ignoring the greater point. People aren't pretending it's 2005 when they are playing on these free servers. They are playing them because they are free. All those things you pointlessly listed out that can be done in retail come with a price tag that people are no longer willing to pay. It's that simple. That's all it comes down to. There is no nostalgic draw. It's just money.

If the free servers didn't exist, these people still wouldn't be paying to play FFXI. There are plenty of other free games out there. And most of them are actually legal, so they aren't going anywhere.

Not that the private servers are going anywhere, either. The campaign against them has failed. All of the trolling has gone nowhere, because you can't beat their price tag.

That is mostly true but these people pretend to be some kind of upper echelon connoisseur of FFXI, and they claim the price tag is nothing to them. They are experiencing the "true" FFXI while stroking their moustaches and bop from private server to private server to play the REAL FFXI. They bring that up in every debate about the servers, that money is never a consideration and if only SE created these servers they would be swimming in money from all the people that are literally not willing to pay to play said game lol. So that is why they have to debate on other points because they claim money has no sway in why they play there.

At this point there should just be a never-ending thread about private servers vs retail because everyone loves to chat in those threads, I doubt anyone even cares about the OP's video or whatever he posted. But at the same time I'm not interested in being semi-force fed (I can't resist clicking) seeing this repeating convo on the recent post feed when I just came here to see if there were any Gravewood Log stacks up for sale on the retail server of the game that I play

I would play a private server if they had the latest update barely before the Ark Angels HTBF.

Even pay for that.

But as far as I know, for whatever reason, they seems to be strucked in the 75 era, and I would never play in that time.

It was not my time, nor my taste

RA doesn't even play ffxi aside from free campaigns. I have no idea why he obsessively posts here or why anyone takes him seriously.

I also know XI players love to cling to this idea that private server players are "poor scum of the earth", anecdotally the poorer people I know are the ones paying $36/mo for FFXI and the average people are the ones playing horizon.

another PS topic and another round of delusional ffxi players! love it

Jesus Christ, what happened here? It was just a simple video guys. I think its all being taken a bit too seriously.

Not everyone is as broke as you are.

So here's the thing, one of the most commonly mentioned things I hear when people talk about their dislike of retail is the community on retail. As far as I'm concerned that extends specifically to people like you, Draylo, RadialArcana, etc.

Now, you seem very concerned about SE - being the small indie dev they are - so I'll make you a deal.
If you, Draylo, and Radial Arcana all make videos dropping all your items, deleting all of your characters, deleting your SE + POL accounts, sign a contract swearing you'll never play FFXI again, and then after posting it, you delete you FFXIAH accounts, I will offer to buy the full game, plus expansions for my entire LS AND pay for all of their subs for as long as they want to play retail.

Assuming they all accept - which since you think the only reason they don't play retail is because of financial reasons - that would give us at least a full alliance to play our own little 'nostalgia locked' challenge mode in retail.

If, however, you choose to keep your characters intact despite the fact that deleting them would lead to an overall increase of retail players and game revenue, and thus be an overall net positive for the game itself - then it's time to accept the fact that you care more about your personal enjoyment then you care about the overall wellbeing of the retail game which makes you no different from the people playing on private servers; at which point I would kindly invite you to drop the self-righteous virtue signaling façade.

Maletaru quitting would be more of a negative to the game than your weird hypothetical group of stunted manchildren would be a positive, so your premise is wrong at face value.

Never mind that it's just an outrageous and silly proposition and there's no chance anyone would've taken it seriously.

The primary complaint is that they dislike the retail community and you think it is specifically the members of that community who dis on PS that are the source?

but like why? if you are playing on retail Maletaru, Draylo, and Radial Arcana aren't going to be "annoying" you about anything. I mean RA might but :D he is just a grumpy cat.

I am not sure you actually know what the make-up of the "retail community" is.

outside of this site I wouldn't know who any of those people are would never have interacted, I think pinning the communities sins on a small handful is a little ridiculous.

I played for an extensive amount of time on Wings. Any time I encountered someone who was aggressively anti-retail it was always someone who hadn't played the game in 20 years and like, found a basement level take on reddit like "trusts ruined game, game bad" and made it their whole personality.

we are so back

This is why I have a hard time buying the "people play PS because they are free" line of thinking. I've never met or read a post by someone that played a PS because it was free, they all had some aversion to playing retail due to the gameplay. Usually it wasn't justified and was some take they heard from others or they couldn't adapt to the modern game, but the sub fee doesn't seem to be pushing people to PS as much as some gameplay reason.

You just see this sortof thing more on the subreddit than you do here. People say the dumbest ***about XI retail there and it's obvious they haven't played in over a decade.

meds

When I say

"People play PS because it's free"

I'm not saying

"People want to play FFXI but they can't afford $13.95 so they play PS"

What I'm saying is (and I've said this very explicitly):

"It's much easier to convince your friends to play a PS because there's no cost"
OR
"It's much easier to convince YOURSELF to play a PS because there's no cost"

The fact is there's a lot less commitment and it's much less difficult to get your friends to play a game that's free than there is to get them to buy a $30 game and then pay $15/month for the game indefinitely. If you think this is a non-factor, I'd love to hear more about your logic.

I bring my friends on PS to get them interested enough to want to stomach the PoL account creation/game purchasing/installing process lol.

Once again, I don't think the cost is the factor and no one is solely playing a XI PS solely because it's free.

How many players new to XI do you think play on a PS vs those that are there because they played it 15 years ago and wanna relive 75-cap? Again, if you go on reddit and see discussions about this - you'll see most discussions revolve around players going to PS because they don't like (either in fact or fiction) where retail is. Maybe it's easier for them to decide to do so because it's free, but that's not the primary reason. Same with the post I quoted, they have some view of retail that makes them choose PS for the gameplay.

Would they pay $15 to pay for a PS of the same experience? I have no idea, but it's not even part of the discussion when I hear people talk about private servers. The only place I hear people claim to play PS because they are free is here.

As for not being able to afford it, I don't think that's a factor either, so I agree there. Most gamers spend a lot more than that monthly on games so spending $15-$20 or whatever for a sub fee is kindof insignificant. So it's not about affording it.

Think of a friend you used to play WOW with, or HOTS, or SWTOR, or Destiny, or DOTA 2, or whatever game.

You connect with each other. Hey, how's it going, what have you been playing lately? Oh, been playing horizon xi, you should come check it out. It's free and has no sub. "Eh, sure, *** it I'll give it a shot."

Now ask them to try out retail ffxi. It's $30 and then they have to pay $15/month.

I'm not talking about the nostalgia tourist, I'm talking about the nostalgia tourist's friends.

I literally was just talking to one of my friends about coming back to retail ffxi a month or two ago, here's the quote:


Then he never got back to me. If the game were free, this never would've happened. It's a factor.

Also: this guy's character is on another server, so that's another $16 he'd have to shell out to play, unless he started from scratch.