Is Final Fantasy XI getting too hard?

[Zidane007nl]

A linkshell called Beyond the Limitation tried to defeat the powerful enemy Pandemonium Warden in the game, but failed.
They fought against it for 18 hours O.o. No wonder members was passing out or getting ill. :crazy:

http://petfoodalpha.com/?p=1055

Is Final Fantasy XI getting too hard with such enemies? I wouldn't be in their place...

[AngelicWings]

Oh yes, most certainly. Hah. I stopped playing like a while ago but even then it was too hard for me. But I don't just mean the enemies you fight etc. But I also mean how it so overwhelming, there is way too much to do but perhaps it's for the worst - I would say it would be a complete nightmare for any newcomers to play. But it keeps on expanding and expanding. Wow.

*Fly High to the Sky*

~AngelicWings~

[Müninn]

People still have yet to beat Absolute Virtue, and it's been around for quite a long time. There's supposed to be a way, the dev team even gave "hints" on how to do it, but yet people have yet to figure it out. But, really, I guess that's part of the challenge and fun. And imagine the bragging rights you get if you're the first to complete such a task. :P

One major flaw with the game, though, is that it's not for casual players at all. Just about everything requires a full party to do which at times can be very hard to set up. I played for 4 years, only got two jobs to 75, and still have only completed maybe a 1/4 of the content up to the point at which I quit. For me it's mainly due to my schedule and inability to make scheduled runs, but I still say it requires too much time just to get something little in there at times. One thing though, the sense of accomplishment you get when you do reach a goal is awesome. But beyond that, meh.

[Dr. Aeyze]

It's not too hard.

Admittedly, Pandemonium and AV are stupid, personally I think there's probably some trick to them that nobodies going to crack anytime soon, I think off the top of my head Absolute Virtue has been defeated. We have almost a pop set for Pandemonium but we're taking a break from ZNM for the time being.

But with a team of well equipped people who know each other well and have a good sense of teamwork you can lowman anything. When Kirin was first out it was a standard 2hr+ fight of kiting with skillchains and magic bursts but now we can do a Kirin in under 45 seconds. When Chariots in salvage were first fought nobody could defeat them because strategies that were previously successful like kraken DRKs etc to zerg out mobs were useless since mobs were designed with those resistances in mind. But now doing a chariot in 15 minutes is pretty standard fare that we can do with about 7 people.

But in terms of the hardness of the game, unlike WoW it really does hinge on other people to progress. Admittedly that's not gonna suite everyone but tbh I play FFXI because of the people I know on it, if my friends and linkshell were to break I'd probably quit but meh, I have such great fun on FFXI and Ventrilo I'll keep on playing even if two out of many many HNM's are unbeatable.

[Müninn]

The only time AV has been beaten was through an exploit where they would DoT him to death on another side of a wall that he would not go around/over. As far as I know, there is no legitimate defeat of AV.

And as you said, Aeyze, it really does depend on the group of people you are with. If you're with a good group of friends things there can be really fun and the challenge is of no concern. I mean hell, it took us 4-5 wipes to complete the final ToAU fight, but god damn was it worth it, just such an epic awesome ending. That doesn't even count the few times we decided to flee the fight as well, since we were running low on time/MP/Pots/RR etc. (And no, we really didn't have the best set-up for it and it was the first time for us doing it and we read very little on strategies. But reading up strats at times take away some of the fun, no? =D)

The only reason I quit was not because it was too hard, I rather enjoyed the challenge, but because of my play time. Trust me, if I had time to play more regularly, I'd be right back at it, pounding through missions, quests, HNMs, all that.

I actually miss the Kirin fights, we never really had enough awesomely geared people to do less than a minute fights, but we'd rarely go over the 30min mark. Honestly, that short a fight to me seems so... Meh. (Oh and, NIN tank + 4x SAM timing out 2hrs and a BLM timing out MBs on Faust = major awesome fun)

PS. It's 5am as I'm writing this and I've not slept. Please don't mind the ramblings, grammatical errors and such. =D

[~Manick~]

Kirin used to be a 4-6 hour fight. NA LS's years ago didn't really have a clue what to do, some even resorted to Aspiring Kirin until it ran out of MP (yes, this is true, and funnily enough it did work). I think the same will happen with the new HNMs, but I do think that SE should still nerf them a little. Sage Sundi said himself that the video the Dev team made of them defeating Absolute Virtue, and posted to the fans, was apparently around an 18 hour fight.

[Mirae]

Ohey, it made the Yahoo news! lol
http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/new-game-enemy-takes-a-solid-day-to-defeat/1238418

My opinion on this? It's pathetic...programming a monster that takes a full day to defeat. Completely unreasonable to expect that of your players. Contradicts the "Don't forget your job, school," etc disclaimer entirely. It's of course up to the inidividual and there are always extreme gamers, but if you ask me. 18 hour+ fights. Can kiss my behind. It's retarded.
Sure, make him sh!t-hard, fair enough. But come on, so many hours required...

[Dusk]

I have a feeing this news is going to make SE think "shit", people in my LS were talking about that fight last night and I was like "Thats bull" lol.

FFXI isn't too hard tho, it's the same with every game. Take World ofWarcraft for example, there are some dungeons/instances people cant do. At first everyone complaining about Illidian and pretty much 3-4 dungeons before him being too difficult.

In FFXI a level 20 mob could potentially kill you,it happened to me when I converted once when a mob was hitting me in a beginner zone and I had 5HP and it hit me for 6HP and I died, embarassing...yeah but it's all about knowing what your doing and whether you got brains to do it right. Everything can always be too difficult in all games if you dont know what your doing, even in offline games some "mini-game bosses" can be quite hard especially in old school RPGs

[Mirae]

SCHWING!!!!!


The past two weeks have seen considerable feedback from players regarding the amount of time required to combat the Pandemonium Warden, a recently implemented Notorious Monster (NM). Discussion has spread significantly throughout forums, and it has become apparent that this is indeed an issue of major unrest in the community.

We would like to assure players that the development and management teams place a high value on their feedback, and the issue has since been taken under serious consideration. Together with Absolute Virtue, it has been deemed that the combative techniques for weakening these NMs are too difficult. As a result, some players have engaged these enemies using unanticipated methods which led to extended battle times. It is by no means the desire of the development team to see players involved in encounters that require an excessive amount of time and effort to complete. It was for this reason that previous measures were put into practice which prohibited NMs from being held in battle for prolonged periods. In response to these events, we have determined that further alterations are required to prevent such battles from exceeding a certain predetermined length of time.

Included in the version update scheduled for early September will be modifications to the degree of difficulty of Pandemonium Warden (and associated pets), Absolute Virtue (and associated pets), and Jailer of Love. The aim of these changes is to create battles where a decisive outcome may be reached within a shorter period of time.

The development and management teams would like to take this opportunity to express their commitment to a healthy and wholesome game environment for players everywhere to enjoy, and to thank them for the continued feedback.

Seems they didn't like the attention :P
Still, this is a good thing.

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news13981.shtml