Final Fantasy XI

Cafe Society
1

Final Fantasy XI, the Final Fantasy online role-playing game, was released in the US after being available in Japan for about (over?) a year. Are any other Dopers playing this?

I had absolutely zero interest in the game. I’m a fan of the Final Fantasy series, but hate MMORPG’s. They’re tedious and pointless exercises in obsessive-compulsion, doing the same thing over and over again for no reward. They’re filled with shrill, whiny, self-proclaimed “powergamers” who add nothing to the play experience. They’re usually released incomplete, providing little more than a glorified MUD, depending on the initial players to pay for the development of actual content. And they’re usually given the most reactionary of designs – set first and foremost up to handicap players and prevent exploits, with the idea of being “fun” lost. After I tried Star Wars Galaxies for a week and realized that not only did it not really feel like Star Wars, it felt like I was being punished for liking Star Wars, I swore I’d never touch another one.

So I can’t explain why I bought FFXI anyway. And I definitely can’t explain why I like it so much. I feel that I shouldn’t, but I do, and I can’t stop playing it. It’s got all the MMORPG stuff – the leveling-up grind, the frustration and paranoia about losing experience, the defeatist feeling that everything you’re accomplishing has been done already a thousand times by a thousand different people. And this game has its own annoyances – the UI is absolutely horrible, doing the basics like forming parties or contacting your friends is unnecessarily difficult, and some of the characters are sickeningly sweet.

But it’s still engaging; somehow it feels more like playing a Final Fantasy game cooperatively than it does like playing a MMORPG. It’s got all the familiar job classes (and you can switch jobs and have support jobs, like in FF Tactics) and spells and items and monsters. It’s got airships and chocobos, and each player gets his own moogle. There’s a ton of content, a lot of it as inventive and surprising as if you were playing a single-player game. There’s a story that explains the whole meta-game. You have quests with real cutscenes. It feels as if there’s always something to do, that you’re leveling up for a purpose instead of just for its own sake. And most surprising to me, the people are pretty cool – I’ve yet to meet anyone actually annoying or hostile, and in fact there’ve been many times that other players have jumped in to cure me when I needed it, or given me advice, or teamed up with me to get through an area. It’s the first one of these games that I can really see myself playing after the free month is over.

And it’s really cool that because it’s been out in Japan for so long, the Japanese players are at god-like levels to those of us who are new. One of the many times I was killed fighting a rabbit or some such, a level 60 white mage rode up on a Chocobo, looked down, raised me from the dead, muttered something indecipherable in Japanese, bowed, and walked off.

2

I assume that there’s a monthly charge for the online service? How much is it? I love FF, but I’ve been really reluctant to buy this game. I’m not sure I can afford the time commitment. That’s the reason I’ve never tried EQ.

3

How much of Penny Arcade’s critique is true? My main reason for playing this would be to hang out with a couple friends, and if what they say is true, that’s not going to work too well.

4

Yea, I stayed away cause of PA’s critique and it just sounded like another hack-and-slasher.

5

There is an official website:
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml

Click on getting started to select PC or PS2 requirements.

It has a cool feature:
“FINAL FANTASY XI has an auto-translate function. Text entered from the list of common phrases will appear in either English or Japanese, depending on the version of the game that the player is using.”
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/dictionary/index.html

6

Thirteen bucks a month? I’m not paying that. I’m already into Gemstone, and I don’t play as much as I’d really like. Oh well.

7

So meet new people. Jeez.
I think it will be awesome trying to decipher Japanese during a battle. I think it would be fun to actually get to know (in a net sense) different people from different countries. And then go kill stuff.

And heck, we do it here on this board.

8

You play GS too? Wow! I haven’t played in a while, but it was all KINDS of fun.

My problem with FFXI is, according to PA, you only get one character and have to pay extra for more. And I LOVE making characters.

9

Right, the cost is 13 bucks a month. And it is a big time-suck; I’m not convinced that it has to be, as you could level at your own pace, but then again if you’re paying monthly you kind of feel obligated to get a lot of time in on the game. I’ve been playing it like gangbusters ever since I got it.

As for Penny Arcade’s complaints, they’ve already addressed a couple of them. The biggest complaint was that you can’t choose your own server when you start a character. Technically, you can – you create a character, but before you go into the game, escape back out to the character selection screen, see which server it picked for you, and if you don’t like it, delete the character and create a new one. So it’s possible to do, but it’s a real pain as there are like 12 or 13 servers (but it cycles through them alphabetically).

The preferred way is to buy a world pass (in-game, with in-game money, not real money). A player on the preferred server goes to a location in game and purchases a WP; the price depends on the popularity of that server. He then tells the pass-code to his friends and they create a new character, specifying the server they want and the pass-code. Each WP is good for 5 new characters and lasts about a week. It is a nuisance, but the WP’s aren’t all that expensive. I was able to afford one after just a couple hours’ playing. I usually play with five of my friends (two of them did the switch-server trick, the rest used the WP) and we all were able to meet up with little problem.

Penny Arcade’s other complaint about that is by the time one player is able to afford one and invite his friends over, he’s already significantly higher-level than they are. That’s not necessarily true, either – the original player can switch jobs at any time to go back to level 1, and it saves all the experience he had in his original job. It’s not really wasted effort, since the work on each job is useful later on in game, when you can have a main & support job.

As for creating new characters, you do have to pay extra to create “content IDs,” and you’re allowed 1 character per content ID’s. The fee for each content ID is an extra dollar a month, and like the regular fees it’s waived the first month. YMMV, but I don’t think it’s that prohibitive as people make it sound – the only thing that changes from character to character is your race, gender, and starting city. I’ve tried three different races in the three different starting cities, and really didn’t see a lot of difference in the game experience; I’ve already deleted those other characters, even though they’re technically still free. What really makes the game different is which job you choose. And as I mentioned, you can switch jobs at any point and keep the experience from any other jobs you’ve had. After a quest at some level (10? 18? I’m not sure), you can have a main job and a support job, as in FF Tactics. (But the support job is capped at half the level of your main job).

As for Japanese/American communication, that hasn’t really been an issue. Because of the time difference, the Japanese and NA players are usually on at different times of the day with little overlap. There is an auto-translation chat function, but it’s kind of clunky and comes out sounding stilted. I haven’t tried teaming up with Japanese players yet, but I’ve read reports of English-speakers who have and they said it was odd but workable. (If anything, I’d imagine the Japanese are pissed off at having so many loud, arrogant Americans on their servers!) One good benefit for those of us in NA is that item drops from monsters are useful for higher-level players to craft items, so we can sell them at auction for a good bit of money, and of course the higher-levels have a new workforce of new players who can kill lower-level monsters to get them the materials they need.

And finally, about the “it sounded like another hack-and-slasher,” I’m not getting that impression from it. I’ve played as a mage and a figher, and they’re both pretty interesting, moreso than other online RPG’s I’ve tried (Galaxies, I’m looking at you). There is the typical online RPG auto-attack, where you just select something to kill and your character keeps attacking on his own until the opponent’s dead. But you won’t get very far with just the standard attack unless you’re fighting something very weak. In most battles, you have to use your spells and/or special abilities, which at least in the early game are awarded at regular levels. There’s a pretty neat system like limit-breaks in the single-player FF games, where you build up a “technique” meter for every attack and then can spend the power on a massive attack. When you’re in a party, this gets even more sophisticated with stuff like combos and EXP chains.

At the same time, almost all the monsters have special abilities as in the single-player FF games – they can do special attacks that do extra damage, or blind you, or slow you down, the usual FF status ailments. I’ve been pretty impressed by how much the battles feel like Final Fantasy random encounter battles (which I happen to like). At higher levels, there are big boss battles; I can’t wait to try one of those out. Also, moreso than Everquest or SW Galaxies IMO, the fighting and leveling seems to have a purpose, since there’s a story going on, with missions and cutscenes and everything. Granted, I don’t think it’s a story that would be satisfying in a single-player game, but the whole experience is so immersive that it just seems cool.

And writing posts this long is taking up too much time I could be playing. See y’all online…

10

Bump!

How are things now? I’m thinking of hanging up EQ for a while and trying this.