Final Fantasy XI is set in the high fantasy world of Vana'diel. Each major region in the world is divided into zones, which include outdoor areas, cities, towns, wilderness, and dungeons. Once a character reaches level 30, advanced jobs are unlocked, which increases the options for skills and abilities.
Some advanced jobs requires fulfillment of quests, such as the Dark Knight which requires slaying creatures using the Chaosbringer great sword. There are numerous Story missions that reward players with experience, loot, and other benefits.
Almost every one of my best memories isn't just from some fight, but it's the people I did it with. Nowadays players rarely touch these parts of FF11 or multiplayer PvE and PvP activities that offer underpowered and antiquated quest rewards compared to current endgame loot. Of course there are people who lapsed and came back in return, but it is set up now that leveling can go up pretty quickly, and we try to avoid having content in the older part of the game where you have to form a party and spend many hours on that content or put in a lot of time and effort.
It's a bit of a shame to see so much of FF11 collect dust. But it's also inspired the developers to be creative. Since the dev team didn't want players to have to solo content that usually requires a full group, they created the 'Trust' system, essentially unique NPC allies that you can summon at-will to form a party with.
Rather than making people get stuck in that content and grind for it, we would rather have them use it as a stepping stone and move on so they can catch up to the people playing the game [actively] so they can socialize and be up-to-date on the content. PlayOnline seems like madness now, but it's easy to forget how little of the modern infrastructure felt figured out in Gmail was still two years away.
There was a time when FF11 fully embraced the grind. Chains of Promathia added quests and missions that were frustratingly opaque. New areas would cap your level, requiring very specific armor. New enemies aggroed in new ways to magic, sound, sight, and even True Sight enemies could see you even with invisibility on , thus requiring players to carry stacks of expensive consumables to safely navigate the world. I really felt like the developers were trying to keep that monthly fee going.
It sometimes felt like an abusive relationship. Who remembers camping timed spawns to earn certain gear with abysmal drop rates? But we kept coming back for more, because when we survived and came out on the other end, we had war stories to reminisce about together. Subsequent expansions often shipped with little content baked in, to be fleshed out over time via sizable patches and maintenance downtime, with only the most opaque and shallow fetch-quests occupying the disc space.
This was before all of the current QoL improvements, too. So getting around was a tremendous chore. We often had to hire white mages to teleport us for a fee, usually to far flung locations to save us a half-hour here and there. One annoying CoP mission required me to run to one of the most remote locations in the game—taking around an actual half an hour—just to click a spot in the middle of an empty field, get a key item and text message, and then I was off again to another spot in another far off place to do the same thing.
It was almost every quest. Other competing MMOs and their easy skill-ups, gratifying character progress, and perhaps most importantly, ease of entry, started to look awfully good. Games like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars simply required you to enter your log-in and password, select a character, and that was it.
If we were to redo it now… trying to create something like that in modern times would be pointless. I have a particularly strong memory of just the first time getting to play: Hours of difficult setup, an unreliable internet connection, very few notions of English, but eventually I landed in Bastok Mines by the Alchemy guild.
I remember my dad was helping me set up and we tried together to figure out how to move he's not into video games so he was just watching without being very involved. Eventually I got the movement down and after turning the first corner saw this player standing in the middle of one of the alleys in that area. When Square Enix later moved their player database over to a new backend system my character of eight years could not, for mysterious technical reasons, be converted to a normal subscription.
My account vanished. Eventually I was the only editor on a non-FFfocused gaming magazine or website that was still regularly covering the game. I asked if I could take direct feed of the game or off-screen footage of what we were seeing.
The game was over four years old by this point, and this was one of the basic introductory areas. There were no secrets to be revealed, no technical issues to ruin anticipation, no spoilers.
It simply would have been cool for FF11 players to see the game running on an actual Xbox It became too difficult to extend the life of the game on the PS2. So we did eventually have to make that decision to leave that system behind. But having later worked at Square Enix for a time myself for the short-lived cloud-based gaming initiative Shinra Technologies , I fully understand its conservative PR approach.
Few games can claim FF11's longevity, especially considering its monthly fee. When Square Enix shut down the console versions of FF11 in , that seemed like it would be the beginning of the end.
But in reality that was a relief for the developers, freeing them to ramp up the visual quality of the monster designs, armor and weapon variety, and overall game graphics. We were also seeing fewer and fewer game developers making games for the PlayStation 2, so much so that I believe Seekers of Adoulin was one of the last releases for the PlayStation 2 in the world. The developers did the same with the Xbox , refocusing their efforts on Windows.
Final Fantasy 11 couldn't be completely reborn—it was, after all, originally built for the PS2—but one of the biggest limitations from the console hardware, memory, was no longer an issue. We just feel it was a milestone at that point, and maybe some people took that as a sign to pause their playing of FF That transition was actually timed to coincide with a narrative arc reaching its conclusion.
As the player base has dwindled, the devs have done an amazing job adapting the game to accommodate more solo play while still maintaining challenging group content. A lot of veteran players don't like how much easier things have gotten. In my experience however, as I've been playing catch up in recent weeks, it's not exactly easy. Yes, you can solo most content and it's not as gear or item intensive as before but, I still wouldn't call it easy. You can't just shut your brain off and walk through.
Even though official support for FF11 will one day end, most MMOs find a second life in small but fiercely loyal private servers. But Final Fantasy 11 didn't end. Amazingly for its age, FF11 still retains a certain elegance thanks to cohesive visual design, smart architectural decisions stairs look like actual stairs unlike, say, World of Warcraft's spiraling ramps and fluid character animations. In short, it has aged gracefully—no longer shackled by the limitations of the PlayStation 2—and subtly improved the complexity of the weapons, equipment, and the creature design and bosses.
Matsui credits the talented artists Square had in the early s, when the team was juggling a number of big projects. I think the designers took a lot of time in putting the effort into the designs to try and get the quality raised as high as possible to the last minute.
Fujito added that color is critical to how Final Fantasy 11 can still look decent today, considering its PS2-era limitations. I really need a Blu-ray that compiles all the cutscenes into a single movie or something, because the characters in FF11 talk a lot. Usually by the end of all the grinding I just wanted my quest rewards, because for me the pleasure was in the playing, not the reading FF11 does not feature voice overs.
Square Enix has typically ported every Final Fantasy game to any device that would run them. Surely, then, FF11 could be ported to something newer, right? Oct 25, Is there a recommended guide for XI in terms of how best to experience it now from a story perspective?
It's something I have on the gaming bucket list but have found it somewhat impenetrable when I've tried. XBlade Member. Oct 26, I was having a fun time recently until I got to level Parshias Member. Costy said:. Doc Kelso Member. Oct 25, 4, NYC. Dekuman said:.
Quinho said:. AccidentalPancakes Member. Apr 10, I think nearly everyone that tries to get into it now will be put off by the obtuse nature of the game as well as the grind. I have to actively avoid FF11 music because it triggers unreasonable levels of nostalgia. I am kinda spoiling myself a little bit, but one thing that I should mention is that I am loving the game's soundtrack. Daddy JeanPi Member. Oct 27, 1, Tatsu91 Banned. Apr 7, 3, JeffJeff Member. Jul 13, But remember that it is a old game from times long past.
Grab some guides and go for it! Oct 28, 29, No imo. PlayOnline is though. Oct 27, 3, Virginia. I haven't played it since or stopped when WoW released , so it's cool to hear that you can solo it now because it was such a chore back then to get groups. Steeped in a Sea of Games The Fallen. Tatsu91 said:. The Mobile XI was cancelled? Excretus of Borg Member.
Travel is far, far easier now. No one takes boats unless it's for quests or for fishing. Airships are empty. Regardless, you still need to travel through dungeons and open areas. There are tons and tons of teleports ant travel options but they don't get you precisely where you need to go. AuthenticM Makes cold threads? I guess? Here's a tag. The Fallen. I tried getting into it some years back.
I booted the game, got to where I had my character, couldn't understand anything about the interface or even how the character controled, so I uninstalled the game right there.
Sectorseven Member. Oct 25, 5, Steeped in a Sea of Games said:. The good old days of spending 30 minutes just to travel to another town by boat. Damn it made the journey feel epic. FF11 was an incredible game if you didn't have a life outside of it.
Alobel Member. Feb 25, I got the game when it came out as a christmas present, without even knowing that it was an online game, that it required a monthly subscription or that it was in English. Being 11 and speaking Spanish meant not really knowing what to do, nor being able to play for more than the first 30 free days which were less because of how ridiculously long it took to install the original CD version of the game , with my parents, understandably, refusing to pay for a subscription.
Of it I remember mostly walking around one of the main towns, Bastok , getting obliterated all the time and missing levels, getting KOed could imply levelling down and trying to communicate. I pretended that I was 13 years old, I guess that sounded mature enough to be taken serious by other players, haha. This proved somehow defining and every once in a while I get the temptation to try it again.
I did it at the beginning of Covid and I think I enjoyed it, with caveats. The world is great. Each area takes quite long to traverse, and it takes a few of the areas to create a biome. At the same time these areas are realistic. They might feel a bit empty, but they contribute to its realism and the sense of exploration. Continents are connected by sea, requiring travel by boat. Which literally take around 15 mins of real time, all while you see the landscape changing, the sactually travelling.
It is also original. Nice cities with their own idiosincracies and their own plots. The Bastok one is really interesting in the way it deals with an oppressive community with very particular religious beliefs. Old ruins that resemble more old alien skeletal remains than buildings. A very original lore. The playable races are recognisable while also original one of them, the Galka, is particularly good, a very interesting culture based around a sexless reproductive system around reincarnation.
The music is great. Very similar in style to the classic PS1 final fantasy games, in my opinion. The problem I have it on the plot s and gameplay. The plot is divided on expansions, factions city states , mini expansions And while interesting, it has nothing to do against other final fantasy games. Well, the game is kind of boring. It is definitely not friendly to new players. Those guides linked on previous messages are essential for new players nowadays.
And it can get really, extremely repetitive. Levelling up requires fighting monsters over and over with trusts, ai companions, and some exp enhancing objects you might obtain easily, is not that hard. And, after level 50, requires unlocking by new quests every 5 levels until level They require items, mostly randomly dropped by enemies.
The same happened with normal plot advancing quests. Also, after certain moments you gain new Job and level enhancing abilities. So, more grinding on top to add to the levelling. Sometimes I feel like it. It happened to me last week in the middle of an expansion mission, on a dungeon.
Unsubscribed and went back to XIV. It has some great things, some that have aged quite a lot. But it could end up haunting you and making you come back from time to time.
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