Source
r/ffxi•
sky_byte

QoL improvements that I, as a temp player, and you would like to see

Recently I came back from a three year hiatus to play during the free trial period. My goal was to play through the whole storyline, since the first time around I rushed through much of it. Unsurprisingly, I did not finish during the free period but did make it past Treasures. Still have the mini-expansions, Wings, Seekers, Rhapsodies, Voracious, and any mini-storylines like Voidwatch left to do during the next free trial.

The game is still fun, altho some of the missions (particularly CoP ones) can be a bit repetitive. I would love to come back full-time, but all the end-game content added in three years is a bit too daunting for my casual self. Particularly the stuff that requires a full party or more of real players (not trusts). Note that I do NOT fault the dev team for this. Its a good thing.

Anyways, during this time I noticed a few things that I would like to see added/changed to make the game more user friendly and fun:

  1. First, and foremost...quest/mission markers. In 2022, it is ridiculous that this is not in the game. Especially give how vague mission/quest orders are about where to go. You essentially have to consult a wiki for everything in this regard, and I can see it as being a big turnoff to new players. I can't imagine what hell it was like back in the day for a PS2/Xbox player who didn't have a PC nearby to consult for missions. While this game does have a lot of quests and missions, it should be too hard to add simple markers for where to go next. At the very least, all mission/quest descriptions should tell you to go around <pos> of <name of area here>. They kinda had the right idea with the new adventurer initiation quests, but its like they gave up on it.

  2. More sendable gear to mules, particularly ultimate weapons. Maybe I'm missing something, but I see no reason why you can't send Relic/Mythic/Empyerean/etc weapons to your mules. I know that gear is supposed to be special and unique, but are they really all that rare anymore? All while doing missions on my alt as a BST, I kept thinking how nice it would be to use my Aymur from my main. Same goes for mission rewards. If I have the Adoulin rings across all my characters, is that really gonna break the game? Of course not. This change might encourage people to create more mules, which would mean more money for SE.

  3. Redistribution of enemies. I made mention of this in another topic. There are some great zones (like Purgonorgo Isle for example) that sit empty. Why not replace some (not all) of the lower level enemies in these zones with non-aggro CP and Apex enemies? As somebody else pointed out in the other topic, most of the Apex camps take place in boring, musty dungeons. At least give parties more beautiful backdrops to play in and make the game feel more populated.

  4. Adventuring fellow as Trust. This is another change that should have been made for a while. One of the other things I did during the free trial was work on my adventuring fellow during downtime/leveling. This is another feature that has been largely forgotten, as they are generally not as useful as trusts. Why not combine the best of both worlds? With adventuring fellows, you've got characters you can customize and have their own personalities. Now imagine being able to use them as a trust, with buffed stats/abilities to match trust standards? You could call them at the rendevous point, make changes, and those changes would be reflect next time you summon them as a trust.

  5. Revisit Monstrosity. To me, this was such a fun - if not pointless - system. And maybe that's why they abandoned it (aside from its lead going to FFXIV). But it IS fun going around as a Behemoth, Cerberus, or Dragon Quest slime and either leveling in areas you normally wouldn't go to, or scaring the bejeebus out of unaware players. While it seems nobody is interested in PvP in FFXI, monstrosity could be made more practical by applying a rewards system with gear that you can also use on your player jobs, not just your monster.

That's all I got off the top of my head right now. Any comments on these (like why you can't send a Mythic to a mule) or other QoL changes that YOU would like to see?

Posted Jan 6, 2022, 6:41 AM UTC

010
MiDoItPoGo•

Spell lock.

3
VAX1S•

Literally the only thing that bothers me. And ppl complaining about qol that literally made the game easy mode but now need guides and arrows pointing you where to go. They have that. It’s called ff14 online

3†
atcoyou:windurst:•

Agree. Spell lock... Arg.. Esp on mass pulls, though vanarial (sp?) makes it a bit better.

Also, I think markers etc are not necessarily needed however the instructions from some nocs can be a bit cryptic, esp on older things. It all worked well when people would chat in LS upon release and you essentially had ants out seeking sugar and reporting back to the hive mind... But then, you have the option to consult wiki if you get stuck. Would rather se use resources for other things in 11. New content in particular. Though fixing spell lock is long overdue... (though I suspect they don't know how at this point.... Spegehetti code and all)

2
VAX1S•

Fkn hate spell lock.

2
Sand__Panda•

We are getting it, but how much?.. is more storage.

I can never have enough.

So yea just more storage either on the player or via a NPC.

Also it would be cool if there was an quest to get trust magic versions of my mules, that I could level...

1
matthewbattista:bastok: Dead Body•

(1) This is absolutely a remnant of XI's initial launch. XI came out with nothing. There was no supporting material whatsoever. It's why people actually relied on the [now hilarious] Brady Guide. However, because there was nothing, XI fostered a community like no other game I have ever played. With no information, it forced people to communicate and work together... although at first JP players were extremely hostile to NA players because we broke practically everything they had built before NA launched. People spent hours, days, months testing new information or theories. To this day, I still don't think the playerbase really has a true understanding of some mechanics (HQ rate, NM spawns, TH) actually work. Unfortunately, this means today many players have to rely on wiki, BG, or other sites to find the information they're looking for.

(2) Hard disagree. Those things are gated for a reason. Obviously they are tremendously more common today than a decade ago, but allowing them to be sent or used my characters which haven't earned them simply devalues them even more. If you have a BST alt, great, but it doesn't deserve an Aymur simply because you already completed the progression once before.

(3) From what I understand of other games, this is simply what happens as games move on from lower level or flavor zones. Is anyone in an [S] zone for anything but missions or quests? It's a shame that past resources go to waste, but I think randomly finding i119+ mobs in previous zones would simply cause more headaches because most players would forget. There's no fun in getting wiped out in Castle O or Maze of Shakhrami in an effort expand the high level mob areas.

(4) Honestly adventuring fellows weren't even good in their prime. Trusts are vastly superior, but I do think the ability to have the trusts play different styles would be novel. It would be pretty cool if you could have, say, Amchuchu switch between DD / hybrid / turtle roles as a tank.

(5) XI is not a balanced game job-wise. It was never intended to be and it likely never will be. Unlike a WoW or XIV roles, an XI WHM was never intended to be able to stand toe-to-toe against an XI WAR. The game simply wasn't designed to facilitate equality, but there were always jobs that absolutely shined in PvP scenarios. RDM COR DRK SCH RNG could sling damage, and WHM PLD were always annoyingly difficult to kill. You had to gear your job specifically for PvP if you wanted to be effective, and as XI has always had an inventory problem, it simply wasn't a priority for most players. XI is PvE at its core, and I think most players saw Monstrosity as a PvP system and recognized it would have no worthwhile reward.

1
Rhikirooo•

As someone who has also recently come back to the game i really do understand the dauntingness of the end game.

I'm takeing my time and collecting old items and overall just having fun, but i do want to break into the endgame eventully. But as i played during the 75 era and am just now stepping back into the game, but holy jebus the 99 items confuse the hell out of me there's so many stats on them that i can find it hard to compare.

Looking forward to trying to understand it though.

1
VAX1S•

  1. So basically you want the game to tell you where to go so you can be lazy.

  2. Why tf would you want to have your main and alt using the same rema? This isn’t ffxiv. The only reason i can think of is one day you want a tardru using aegis then next day you want your mithra using it. But why? Aside from aesthetics. Why?

  3. 19 years playing. I’ve never once heard from others or myself say Damn i wish this place was prettier while we repeatedly kill mobs for Exp? You don’t exp for the views. You do it for the exp.

  4. Adventuring fellow in party and get exp penalty orrrrr use trusts and get no penalties.

-7
atcoyou:windurst:•

If I could send rema to myself I could farm ambu and other things like crazy. Enough people already have dm and ody mules that this would have an impact on single box players being even less competitive.

2
sky_byteOP•

  1. Having a good idea of where to go in a world as huge as FFXI is not lazy. Then on top of that you have dozens of NPCs in every inhabited zone. I'm not talking about the game holding your hand every step of the way during quests/missions. But take the first Bastok mission for example. Cid wants you to go to Dangruf Wadi with his little thermometer and take an acidity test. But that's all he tells you. He doesn't even give you any ideas on where to go, and when you do actually do the test, the game doesn't even tell you that you did it. That would be fine if that were just the early game, but all through the game it's like that. Imagine playing in a world bigger than Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Cyberpunk, or the Witcher and being given very vague ideas on where to go. Those games would be blasted, and rightly so. If you think not wanting to tab back and forth between FFXI and a wiki for nearly every mission/quest is lazy, then I don't know what to tell you.

  2. As I said, it's so alts can actually use them (ie in missions and quests, or even faming gear). Not for cosmetic reasons. I went through the trouble of building Aymur, Idris, Terpischore, and Nirvana. Why shouldn't I be able to use them on a mule? It wouldn't be breaking the game.

  3. Appearance was just a side bonus for leveling in some of the more beautiful zones. The main reason is to make use of nice areas that are just sitting there and not being used.

  4. Orrr adventuring fellow in your party as a trust that has no exp penalty. A trust that is relatively unique.

1