shadow85

Tried to find a topic for it, but couldn't, which is surprising, given that it's been out since 2002 and is still played a lot. It's possible that I am blind, but I dug deep and didn't find anything but a few passing mentions in other topics.

I'm a FPS kind of gamer, but was growing up when this series was young (playing it on PS1), so of course, I've been a fan for a while along with a lot of friends.

Never tried it, because again, I'm more of an FPS player these days, but a friend who played it when it was new back in 2002 through early 2004 started again a few months back after finding thte 2008 collection with all expansions on sale, and of course... I got dragged into it.

Now I'm playing it as much as I am PR and BF2 (which is not much, as I am in the middle of 6 months of final work for my grad degree... ug...). Heh. It's still surprisingly good for a 6 year old computer game. GFX are not too bad, though nowhere near what you see in modern games. Play means more then GFX to me though.

I'm on Phoenix server. Anyone else?

I've specifically avoided WoW and such because I used to like RPG console games..... now look where that got me. Withdrawl!

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Bisclaveret

Ugh. I finally gave up on FFXI because of all sorts of problems it had. One of the biggest problems was the inability to tabout to check on anything else, if you were playing the game, that was the only thing you could do, alt-tabbing would close the game browser. That was solved by downloading the FFXI Windower but Playonline would treat that as an exploit if it had certain other code attached and could ban your account.

The game seems geared towards selling strategy guides, because the quests/missions give you the slightest of hints and the logs wouldn't give you any most of the time. To save you the headache, i'l link you to the FFXI Encyclopedia becasue that was the only way i could complete most of the quests. I mean, seriously, theres so many convoluted quest paths that you need something like that.

As an example, the Catch a Falling Star quest, a beginning area quest. In your quest log, the only thing it will tell you is: Sigismund wants you to bring him a "Starfall Tear" so he can take it back to his country as a souvenir of Windurst. http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/To...a_Falling_Star
Thats a little complicated for a beginning area quest, don't you think?

I found using my PS2 controller (i have an old Red Octane PS2->USB/gamecube/xbox converter) was a lot better than attempting to use the keyboard, as long as i had the complex keyboard set up. After all, the game was designed to be run on the PS2, and they haven't changed the control scheme at all from that.

The worst problem i had in FFXI was the brick-wall grind at around level 20-30. Theres a point where 90% of your time is spent grinding to get crystals to get gil so that you can afford 1 equipment upgrade, then spending another 2 weeks to get your other equipment upgraded, only to level up 1-2 times and have to do it all over again. While I like tedium, thats too tedious for me. That and the whole community communicating with linkshells that I couldn't afford and didn't ever get from anyone else made it an incredibly boring solo experience, when I couldn't ever get a group together to help me do anything.

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shadow85

Oh yeah, it's a pain at times. I also hate the minimizing problems, and if Square Enix really wanted to, you know they could do something about it with an update.

And yeah, the in-game hints suck for missions and quests. Best chance is to use a guide of some sort. Luckily today there are plenty of free ones out there online written by other players, ffxiclopedia for one.

That friend of mine who played it a while ago gave up because he knew nobody on there except random people he met and it just ground to a halt. Now though, him, me, and a few other real world friends are playing, so that makes a it a LOT easier.

Maybe things have improved, but on Phoenix, if you put up a group flag, you usually get an invite pretty quick. I've never waited more then 10 minutes. Might be just me.

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