Update on my adventure through final fantasy xi:
I have learned the basic systems. I steamrolled the first 3 missions of my nation of Windurst now that I have trusts (AI companions). I helped some new players level and showed them some dungeons. I had a great, 2002-flavored time. Matchmade parties are definitely the standard for good reason, but finding someone and chatting with them in a final fantasy dungeon we walked to the long way was so intimate and refreshing.
Made some mistakes buying gear I thought I could use. The red mage can equip bracers, but it turns out that class has no hand-to-hand skill that can progress innately, so he just flails his arms very slowly. It does quite a bit of damage though!...every so often. It was funny and sad, but I learned from my mistakes. Can't take anything in this game lightly.
Inventory management was labyrinthian with different categories for wardrobes and items and stuff but I think I got it somewhat down.
I'm really surprised by the differences between this and 14 in terms of how they expect you to level. Leveling is only done through combat, not quests, like a traditional rpg as opposed to a standard mmo. You would think grinding in this game would be just a process of attacking and repeating the same actions in a set region with little variation, not so different from 14, but turns out every enemy has totally variable stats and defenses and I got killed by the same type of enemy I was previously farming singlehandedly just cause I moved slightly away from the area. Chests can drop randomly and just have all sorts of random items, food, temporary stuff, weapons for random classes, its insane what you can find just outside. When a locked chest drops, you engage with a minigame that takes a while to guess digits. It's refreshing but weird that the game is built around walking and attacking stuff and even lets you set optional objectives, not one, but two different ways for targeting specific enemy types and fighting them over and over but yet still inserts danger and variation. It's outdated but also very ahead of today's practices of monotonous encounter design??
The penalties for dying in this game are nuts. I'm a sub-level 30 character right now so I don't lose any exp, and getting exp is actually pretty quick anyway. However, the amount it sends you BACK in distance if you've ventured across the map for a quest is insane, and the time it takes you to walk is slow. I'm on a quest right now to give the thief cat lady some rock for a book she (shamelessly) STOLE from the library. I have to use some kind of glass she gave me to investigate the cave for her thing. Sure, I'll do it.
The cave is not on the map and in fact the very corner of a terrifying canyon that has no music, just the wind and my heavy steps. I see some ghosts floating in the distance of some large animal fossils. They attack me and I shortly die.
I was unprepared for that and didn't have my AI comrades with me.
I respawn at the town and use one of my 3 chocobo passes to get there faster. I avoid the ghosts entirely. The cave is full of goblins, butchers and ambushers.
I cannot get away in time from one of them who is very angry at my face. I didn't get my AI friends to block for me in time. I try firing an arrow from a distance. It misses. I run.
I am dead.
I realize I am sitting on a mountain of gold from helping my nation with conquests. Time to deck out, get gear, get magic, the works. I remembered I passed a teleport book so I try and figure out how to teleport there instead of walk. Turns out that costs 1000 gold. That's how much I made playing finishing the last mission! I could also use 30 "tabs", but those take a while to farm from repeating combat with monsters outside after accepting training regimens.
This time I'll just walk leisurely. I enjoy myself. I kill some monsters. I pick a level up. I learned Cure II, Bio, and Aero. I avoid the ghosts before the cave. I enter. I have killed some goblins. I healed my companions, I let them tank, I use my new sword, use a new sword ability. I aggro two goblins at once. I barely make it. I rest for hp and gather my thoughts, fix up my inventory. I feel I'm getting the hang of this.
A skeleton walks out of a dome of discarded skeletal debris. He looks not too different from the skeleton gouls I fought and killed earlier. I check him, the game tells me he is very tough and dangerous. I am a man of hubris so I fight him while a goblin sees and approaches. I realize that the skeleton hits hard but not so bad. I position myself such that I engage the goblin while my friends fight the skeleton. The combat text is flying as i select spells, job abilities, and sword skills. I killed the goblin! One of my companions just evaporated. He said something about his time being up. Are AI companions timed? I wasn't told about this.
I realized his hp must have depleted as my other, tiny ninja friend is dying. I struggle to heal him. I struggle to heal my healer. I am dying. I struggle to heal myself. My companions cannot body block for me any longer.
I am currently dead. When you die, the game lets you stay dead for an hour in case another adventurer happens upon you and revives you. You can end this wait by respawning at your last home point, but that place is miles away. I am poor and cannot afford the teleportation fees. I have but one chocobo pass left.
Let me just sit and decompose. I try to use the /shout command "HELP ME SOMEONE" . It doesn't work when you're dead.
/Say commands don't either, I tried.
I can't even access the main menu to search for players in my area to send them private /tells and tell them to revive me. I can't access any part of chat at all. None of my groups, linkshells, unities, nada. I can just lay dead and watch the environment and its inhabitants, and sky change color from the mouth of the cave. The clouds move beyond me. Dawn has come and gone 3 or 4 times.
An adventurer and his AI party passed me earlier. I saw him fight near me. I was hoping he would notice me. I don't think he did. He seemed too young to have a revive spell anyway.
I realize that rather than be frustrated at my situation, I can just enjoy the absolute absurdity of this. It's so hardcore.
This is like Ultima, but expanded to the nth degree. Not Ultima Online, but just the original old school Ultima. This is the endgame of that philosophy of design. A world is out there and you see things come up to you and you come up to them too and something in the text spews out that tells you what kind of stuff is happening. You get things, you lose things, you die, you come back. The world is still there for you to walk all over until you finally get it to click, once that moment finally comes.
Right now this game is just a screensaver. It's a beautiful screensaver I have for an hour. If someone doesn't revive me by the end of the hour, I am alive again for another chance to get back here. If someone does, the screensaver is over and I can walk through it. But eventually, I guess it will become a screensaver again.
I don't know if I will ever even finish the story content of this game, if I will ever see it click and see the world before me make sense as one living, breathing organism with how much time all these things take. But damn, what a thing.
I have learned the basic systems. I steamrolled the first 3 missions of my nation of Windurst now that I have trusts (AI companions). I helped some new players level and showed them some dungeons. I had a great, 2002-flavored time. Matchmade parties are definitely the standard for good reason, but finding someone and chatting with them in a final fantasy dungeon we walked to the long way was so intimate and refreshing.
Made some mistakes buying gear I thought I could use. The red mage can equip bracers, but it turns out that class has no hand-to-hand skill that can progress innately, so he just flails his arms very slowly. It does quite a bit of damage though!...every so often. It was funny and sad, but I learned from my mistakes. Can't take anything in this game lightly.
Inventory management was labyrinthian with different categories for wardrobes and items and stuff but I think I got it somewhat down.
I'm really surprised by the differences between this and 14 in terms of how they expect you to level. Leveling is only done through combat, not quests, like a traditional rpg as opposed to a standard mmo. You would think grinding in this game would be just a process of attacking and repeating the same actions in a set region with little variation, not so different from 14, but turns out every enemy has totally variable stats and defenses and I got killed by the same type of enemy I was previously farming singlehandedly just cause I moved slightly away from the area. Chests can drop randomly and just have all sorts of random items, food, temporary stuff, weapons for random classes, its insane what you can find just outside. When a locked chest drops, you engage with a minigame that takes a while to guess digits. It's refreshing but weird that the game is built around walking and attacking stuff and even lets you set optional objectives, not one, but two different ways for targeting specific enemy types and fighting them over and over but yet still inserts danger and variation. It's outdated but also very ahead of today's practices of monotonous encounter design??
The penalties for dying in this game are nuts. I'm a sub-level 30 character right now so I don't lose any exp, and getting exp is actually pretty quick anyway. However, the amount it sends you BACK in distance if you've ventured across the map for a quest is insane, and the time it takes you to walk is slow. I'm on a quest right now to give the thief cat lady some rock for a book she (shamelessly) STOLE from the library. I have to use some kind of glass she gave me to investigate the cave for her thing. Sure, I'll do it.
The cave is not on the map and in fact the very corner of a terrifying canyon that has no music, just the wind and my heavy steps. I see some ghosts floating in the distance of some large animal fossils. They attack me and I shortly die.
I was unprepared for that and didn't have my AI comrades with me.
I respawn at the town and use one of my 3 chocobo passes to get there faster. I avoid the ghosts entirely. The cave is full of goblins, butchers and ambushers.
I cannot get away in time from one of them who is very angry at my face. I didn't get my AI friends to block for me in time. I try firing an arrow from a distance. It misses. I run.
I am dead.
I realize I am sitting on a mountain of gold from helping my nation with conquests. Time to deck out, get gear, get magic, the works. I remembered I passed a teleport book so I try and figure out how to teleport there instead of walk. Turns out that costs 1000 gold. That's how much I made playing finishing the last mission! I could also use 30 "tabs", but those take a while to farm from repeating combat with monsters outside after accepting training regimens.
This time I'll just walk leisurely. I enjoy myself. I kill some monsters. I pick a level up. I learned Cure II, Bio, and Aero. I avoid the ghosts before the cave. I enter. I have killed some goblins. I healed my companions, I let them tank, I use my new sword, use a new sword ability. I aggro two goblins at once. I barely make it. I rest for hp and gather my thoughts, fix up my inventory. I feel I'm getting the hang of this.
A skeleton walks out of a dome of discarded skeletal debris. He looks not too different from the skeleton gouls I fought and killed earlier. I check him, the game tells me he is very tough and dangerous. I am a man of hubris so I fight him while a goblin sees and approaches. I realize that the skeleton hits hard but not so bad. I position myself such that I engage the goblin while my friends fight the skeleton. The combat text is flying as i select spells, job abilities, and sword skills. I killed the goblin! One of my companions just evaporated. He said something about his time being up. Are AI companions timed? I wasn't told about this.
I realized his hp must have depleted as my other, tiny ninja friend is dying. I struggle to heal him. I struggle to heal my healer. I am dying. I struggle to heal myself. My companions cannot body block for me any longer.
I am currently dead. When you die, the game lets you stay dead for an hour in case another adventurer happens upon you and revives you. You can end this wait by respawning at your last home point, but that place is miles away. I am poor and cannot afford the teleportation fees. I have but one chocobo pass left.
Let me just sit and decompose. I try to use the /shout command "HELP ME SOMEONE" . It doesn't work when you're dead.
/Say commands don't either, I tried.
I can't even access the main menu to search for players in my area to send them private /tells and tell them to revive me. I can't access any part of chat at all. None of my groups, linkshells, unities, nada. I can just lay dead and watch the environment and its inhabitants, and sky change color from the mouth of the cave. The clouds move beyond me. Dawn has come and gone 3 or 4 times.
An adventurer and his AI party passed me earlier. I saw him fight near me. I was hoping he would notice me. I don't think he did. He seemed too young to have a revive spell anyway.
I realize that rather than be frustrated at my situation, I can just enjoy the absolute absurdity of this. It's so hardcore.
This is like Ultima, but expanded to the nth degree. Not Ultima Online, but just the original old school Ultima. This is the endgame of that philosophy of design. A world is out there and you see things come up to you and you come up to them too and something in the text spews out that tells you what kind of stuff is happening. You get things, you lose things, you die, you come back. The world is still there for you to walk all over until you finally get it to click, once that moment finally comes.
Right now this game is just a screensaver. It's a beautiful screensaver I have for an hour. If someone doesn't revive me by the end of the hour, I am alive again for another chance to get back here. If someone does, the screensaver is over and I can walk through it. But eventually, I guess it will become a screensaver again.
I don't know if I will ever even finish the story content of this game, if I will ever see it click and see the world before me make sense as one living, breathing organism with how much time all these things take. But damn, what a thing.