Maybe it's been dead for a long time now... and it's because of the people. Allow me to elaborate.
FFXI enforces grouping for most activities... twenty jobs and you have to select six to make a party with. Let's list the jobs.
Bard
Beastmaster
Corsair
Dancer
Dark Knight
Dragoon
Monk
Ninja
Paladin
Puppetmaster
Ranger
Red Mage
Samurai
Scholar
Summoner
Thief
Warrior
White Mage
Colour coded;
Green = allowed to play
Orange = sometimes allowed to play
Purple = rarely allowed to play
You see, the main flaw in a game where grouping is ENFORCED is that some jobs can be completely cut out of the loop. That's not too awful right, 16/20 jobs can still play?! Only lost 20% of the jobs there. Well, let's examine closer:
Bard - Universally accepted
Corsair - Universally accepted
Dark Knight - Zerging only
Dragoon - Zerging only
Monk - Salvage only
Paladin - Accepted into endgame tanking situations
Ranger - Zerging/ranged fight only
Red Mage - Universally accepted
Samurai - Universally accepted
Scholar - Universally accepted
Summoner - Poor man's Ranger, good for astralburns though
Thief - Treasure Hunter only
Warrior - Universally accepted
White Mage - Universally accepted
So only eight out of twenty jobs get any real playtime and attention... 40%. Now, let's look at the original list and I will colour which jobs are ACTUALLY weak.
Bard
Beastmaster
Corsair
Dancer
Dark Knight
Dragoon
Monk
Ninja
Paladin
Puppetmaster
Ranger
Red Mage
Samurai
Scholar
Summoner
Thief
Warrior
White Mage
So where only eight jobs are allowed to play, sixteen are actually very capable. 100% more! The problems with those in red are simply mechanic problems created by SE; pet jobs as a whole do not function well and Dancer relies too much on TP to be -that- effective on anything strong.
This is the problem though: for DDs, it's WAR or SAM only. People will not accept anything else. My Adaman Hauberk is towngear since it's DRK only; I'll never get to play it properly. Worked so hard for Towngear Hauberk; it's all so ... wrong.
DRK is a very powerful DD with considerable utility. Hugely underestimated... there really isn't much of a difference between it and SAM. People are blind however...
DRG... there was recently drama on BG about someone's Valkyrie's Fork being ninja-lotted and people responded "who cares?" since it's "only a DRG weapon", which made me disgusted. If this was some Samurai's Hagun everyone would be up in arms, but because it's not Warrior or Samurai, it's perfectly fine? Ridiculous.
MNK has intense DoT and can keep up even with superbuffed 2handers; it shouldn't be relegated to Salvage only. This is a sad, sad view.
NIN is a perfectly capable tank. It should not be excluded; a capable Ninja is still and will still always be a very strong tank. This is another sad thing.
RNG is also fairly strong. People don't like them for meleeburn events like Einherjar yet these same people bring BLMs to deal damage in these events? Do they realise that a RNG's method of damage is essentially that of a BLM's, except they will easily surpass the Black Mage's damage over time?
THF is relegated to "Treasure Hunter whore", where none of your gear is considered in the least and nobody cares as long as you're using the knife and the hands; two symbols of the playerbase's pathetic hatred and scorching uncaring attitude toward you. YOU ARE JUST A WHORE. If that's why you play, have fun; I prefer to play my THF as the capable DD it is, against the whims of the playerbase... but they'll never let you play it for that, never.
Simply put, there are too many conceited Samurais and Warriors who think they are god because they play an incredibly easy to play job and get results out of it. The blind playerbase follow these idiots and so the problem perpetuates, until the game loses all fun and becomes a case of "play these eight jobs or quit".
FFXI is dying.
It is the playerbase's fault.
I only hope FF14 eliminates forced grouping and in FFXI that they nerf Samurai or Warrior, just to destroy these idiots.
I am SICK of all of my efforts becoming naught because people would rather have an AF feet WAR or a Domaru SAM over an Ebody DRK, great THF, strong DRG, awesome MNK etc etc.
This is what will happen to even the top drops in the game if you are not WAR or SAM.
10 comments:
I agree with the sentiment here - looking for party for 3 hours on DRK, only to have to log out before I get an invite, or get an invite shortly before leaving, is rather frustrating.
When I do get a party, according to all my lvl60+ parses I've always been the top DD (although a DRG once beat me with wyvern damage included..) in the party. STR ring SAMs, hell yeah!
RE: Puppetmaster - I think a lot of PUP's 'weakness' these days is stagnant player perception. With access to some great melee gear (Usukane, Relic, Enkidu etc) and solid weaponskills they (should be able to) easily hold their own in a merit/fodder mob situation. On high level stuff they have can bust out the BLM frame to put up serious damage.
I mean, uh, lolPUP.
Yeah, it is very frustrating that how much you play is basically controlled by the playerbase.
Doesn't help that everyone and their mother adores and levels SAM nowadays either.
I don't agree wholly w/ those job rankings, but I have to agree w/ the sentiments. I know where yer' comin' from though.
It depends what your LS often does or what type of event you're talking about. For example, my LS almost never uses warriors for events. And we use rangers very often. And we never use scholars (not saying they're not useful). Etc.
Similarly monks can tank quite a bit of stuff. But I guess it's mostly just low man stuff.. not general "big LS activities." We did however use a monk tank on Sandworm->Serket last month. He tanked both the worm and the scorp. I have to say, I loved it and felt completely comfortable w/ the mnk+pld combo. But yeah they're underutilized =/
As for a diff topic, HNM's. I don't mind sitting the 3hrs or the style at all. I come home from work, and while I lesson plan, make dinner, check my mail, etc, I have a social venue that I can effectively 'dual box' at the same time. It's a wonderful combination for me and it gets me geared /(^^)/. Can't say I always enjoy it, and indeed for the majority of my time playing the game, it wouldn't have suited my lifestyle. But for some people, the system quite well integrates into their life and they actually enjoy it.
It's really interesting hearing about how other linkshells do things! I wish mine was more open to these things honestly.
As for HNMs, it depends wholly on my mood. Sometimes I don't mind camping them if I -do- have other things to do, but sometimes I just want to play the game when I log on and standing around for a potential ~4 hours including travel times doesn't really excite me.
I sometimes run off and play on my PS3 but it's irritating constantly having to come back a few minutes before window and such. Paradoxically however, I do enjoy the way we do HNM things... hard to describe.
I like the event but hate the journey? I guess would be the best way of describing it. If only they'd fix it already...
Raen, you didn't even list Blue Mage or Black Mage... your job list is only 18 strong XD
Pretty obvious how those two fit though, orange for BLM and purple/orange for BLU depending on how your LS runs things.
I truly believe that a mixed group brings far more to the table than just bringing along a group of one size fits all jobs that can handle anything, provided you have the players to back that up. Besides a few jobs in genuine need of updating, most of the ignored jobs are simply more complex or require more effort, knowledge, and coordination to play at an advanced level. Given the state of FFXI's playerbase... is it so surprising that adaptation has been kept to a minimum?
The jobs that are widely favored are either nearly idiotproof (DD) or essential (support, healers, tanks). Something works well at a level far below metagame, and so as people progress they remember that and use it at higher levels, creating what is supposedly the current FFXI metagame. I truly doubt it's anywhere near the metagame we could be at if we utilized the potential of each job, but that's the breaks.
I'll quit writing now, I'm approaching blogworthy post length here.
Good catch ;x very strange since I was looking at my Job List ingame when compiling the list and I have BLU40 and BLM37!
I also agree with your comments as well! Balanced groups are just so much more interesting too... who wants to do everything with WAR SAM SAM SAM etc?
Being a BLU main, I can offer some perspective here. There isn't a whole lot of room for us in most linkshells, except as a cannonball machine. However there's much more to us than that. BLU is arguably one of the most versatile DD's in the game and can even step outside of that role if the situation calls for it. Thanks to our spell mods, we can push certain stats obscenely high in conjunction with the gear we can use.
I'm blessed to be in an LS that can appreciate a good BLU. I have the more popular SAM and PLD, but for 99% of the stuff we do, I'm BLU.
I can see what you are saying in terms of the general playerbase but really gear progression means that many jobs if played to their full potential.
If people are close enough and do enough a range of events in the game then they often accept different tactics.
We are currently doing salvage bosses with dark/sam co tanks. We do einherjar with people on their favourite dd, so we end up with a few of each (from your orange group).
Yeah, it's probably more a problem with my personal experiences than anything, hence the rotting towngear Hauberk picture :(
I'm glad to see that you guys get to play your favourite jobs though :)
As other people said I think your experience can't be generalized.
While your likshell may not use drks others do all the oposite, etc
Take it easy
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