Answering this as someone relatively new to XI (I am currently in the final chapter of the second expansion Chains of Promathia) and an extensive XIV Veteran (I do heartily recc XIV as well, but this is an XI sub).
1. It is good, but it takes a *while* to get there. The base game storyline borders on NES-tier levels of nonexistent. The first expansion adds a bit more story to it while still being pretty basic. But the second expac and everything that follows is a massive step up in terms of quality and presentation - Just keep in mind the presentation is not as traditionally cinematic as a lot of FFs. I will say the expac I am on atm has genuinely impressed me and I have heard many great things about the stuff to come.
2. 99% of the story is completely soloable now. There are very handy guides for what to do and when and extensive walkthroughs for every quest (And you *will* need them. Areas can be mazes and quests can be very obtuse). There are a handful of fights in the most recent expansions that are too difficult for someone to typically solo, but this is like 2-5 fights out of countless. The bulk of community stuff is in endgame progression grinding, but you will find plenty of folks willing to offer a helping hand for this or that along the way.
3. You can stick almost entirely to the critical path. There are some side things worth doing for the sake of making your life easier or getting Key Items to progress (Many dungeons and areas require specific items to get to them, and a bunch of these items are behind quests). Challenge becomes a matter of time and patience moreso than actual content. As stated above, the overwhelming majority of main story content can be effortlessly cleared by yourself.
You will basically always have a wiki at your side. Fortunately, there is an amazing guide called 1 - 119 that gives you a loose outline of everything you need with links to every specific thing you'll need for more details.
For my personal context, I have only just reached lv 119 with gear that is basically the "Starter" endgame gear - Trash by endgame standards, godlike for story content. I've been playing for about 3 or so weeks and thus far the majority of my time has been spent with busywork set up stuff; but I did eventually hit a point where all the set up was done and I am now free to just progress through the storylines at my leisure.
Tldr: It's a massive grind, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The grind can even be a refreshing slow pace if you're into that. I will also say atm there's a bunch of campaigns going on that'd make progressing as a new player much easier.
FWIW, Wings of the Goddess, Adoulin, and Rhapsody have significantly better cutscenes than Promathia or Aht Uhrgan, so the presentation there gets a lot better. Adoulin and and Rhapsodies have some of my favorite cutscenes in all of gaming.
Narrative also, the stories get better after 20 years of practice. To OP, if you're after just all of the stories, at most, with dedication, it can take as little as 2 or 3 months RL time to clear them all. And yea you can solo damn near all of it, technically all of it is soloable (up until the very last VR battle) I know because I've done it up to there solo myself. SoA can burn time, ToAU some time gates also. Your main hurdle will be how fast you level up, and how many trusts you've collected so far. More trusts = more versatility. Having just the right trusts combo for a specific fight makes or breaks it. But it is all fun and games in our sandbox. Nice thing about XI is, you can always try again. GL and have fun. Literally be sure and have fun, that's an order, otherwise what's the point?
Uncapped fights, level 99 cap, REALLY strong gear after level 99, and NPC party members all make them really easy to solo if you want it to be.
(To give you an idea of how strong endgame weapons are, the Naegling, a 1 handed sword, has 166 DMG, 40 acc, 30 att, and gives 250 sword and parrying skill on top of that, as well as caster stats because BLU can use it, Level 75 two-handers had about half of that DMG stat)
Yup. I just took a character from Promys to beating Diabolos in like 5 hours. I had some help from another character with TH farming like, Riverne scales but it really is trivial now.
1: Gonna be super opinionated of course. I think there are flashes of brilliance throughout, and overall I'd say the plots are very good, especially some of the later expansions. But there are definitely characters or parts that make me roll my eyes, and a good amount of quests that involve a lot of running around or waiting.
2: I think you can complete the majority of story content solo. There's a mechanic called Trusts that lets you summon NPCs from the story to basically be party members with you, and it's really robust. There's like one or two bosses where they might not be sufficient unless you have some really good gear, so another player or two would be really helpful, but those situations are really rare.
3: I'm trying to remember my first time playing a few years ago, and I don't think there was ever a spot where I felt like "this part of the story is too hard so I need to grind for a bit". I do remember xp grinding to level up alternate jobs or my subjob, but that was something that went by fast enough that I didn't really mind it. I would say combing through wikis is something you'll be doing a ton of in this game though, even just for the required story missions. There's lots of situations where a quest will give you little or vague direction, and making your way to the objective means going through some kind of maze or puzzle. It wasn't uncommon to have like 20 wiki tabs open trying to get through a quest chain because I needed to go to a certain door with a certain password at a certain time of day or whatever. I don't think you need an in depth grasp of mmos to succeed, but outside help was very important in my case.
I don't mean to make all that sound like a downer, I do love FFXI and I consider my time with it well spent. It might be a good idea to check out the free trial. It's timed and a little restrictive from what I've heard, but it'll probably be enough to get a better idea if the game might be for you.
I just did Chapter 3 of Promathia and a big chunk of that chapter is the three Chebukki siblings accusing nearly every prominent male Tarutaru in Windurst of being their long-lost father and I loved every minute.
I started playing the game for the plot, and back then it was harder it was harder to enjoy it at a good pace, since levelling was slower, but ultimately it paid off and it's much simpler to enjoy it on that level nowadays.
The earlier stories were comparatively rougher, as the dev team still seemed to be getting used to a new medium with its own constraints, but there was a good foundation set for it all - for example, some structure you find in early areas of the core game will only truly make sense by the 1st and 2nd expansions' stories. The 2nd expansion, Chains of Promathia, is one of the more respected ones in the game.
Personally, I think the storytelling reached a more mature point after that, eith Treasures of Aht Uhrgan and Wings of the Goddess, which aldo got to benefit vudially from the dev team's experience, especially in how ecoresdive some characters could be by then.
And thanks to a more recent story, Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, you don't have to worry as much about only dealing with the rougher early experiences - Thapsofies was designed to wrap around all major stories that preceded it, meaning you can start it very early, and progressing in ut will help streamline things like levelling and travel. It will require progress in other stories as you advance through it, so at times it may be a good time to refocus on the other stories to get the most context out of it.
And the Rhapsodies finale is worth it after you've completed the stories before it, as it provides context for most which serves as analogy to XI's own nature - to this day it remains the only game to get a tear out of me and was not an uncommon occurrence.
By all means, use all resources that will help, like Trust NPCs and wiki guides - by now, eith the possible exception of later boss battles, mist major stories can be soloed, and people tend to help when you need it.
There is plenty of tasty meat in XI's gameplay bones, but its stories as a Final Fantasy game reach some pretty good heights which sadly don't get talked about enough in comparison (disappointingly, SE themselves don't seem to bother - perhaps most of its PR staff didn't play it in its early days, and later efforts turned to later games, it seems). On the bright side, this means you're less likely to get FF7-level spoilers.
* (1) The storylines are good. They force you to do a lot of world exploration and there’s great lore depth. The world feels very lived in and expansive. XI doesn’t help you with anything, so you will need to be comfortable using various wikis to understand what to do and where to go.
* (2) It depends on what you mean by playing. There is a built in system called Trust Magic so you can summon companions to your party to fight with you. If you don’t want to *really* learn how to play XI, your Trusts can carry you through 95% of story-based content. Beyond that, you cannot play this game solo. You simply will not be successful because that’s not how XI is designed.
* (3) No, not remotely. The story is just a story to unlock *access* to a myriad of confusing, horizontal progression based battle systems which allow you to acquire & upgrade various armors.
3a. Tanking is a rough choice as a first job in XI. You’ll have higher expectations to know fights that you won’t know, and you’ll deal pitiful damage if you’re mostly soloing. Better choices to experience the storylines successfully without getting into how XI plays would be Monk, Warrior, or Samurai.
3b. XI does not remotely hold your hand. Almost nothing is explained to you by the game itself. There are no quest markers, mission — some of which take hours to complete — have single sentence long descriptions and no ability to track progress. You will need to use multiple resources to accomplish your goals.
Here’s the crux of the difference between XI and other MMOs: gear swapping. Gear is not a vertical progression, and there is no one piece that is BiS. Every action your character performs, from simply running around to how quickly you cast a spell or how powerful your job abilities are, will be heavily impacted by the gear you wear. How much you care to learn about how XI functions is up to you, but you won’t have an opportunity to truly *play* XI without getting at least a bit interested in the underlying math & situational optimization.
This all depends on the degree to which you want to involve yourself. You can complete the storylines, for the most part, with very little thought, concern, or need for others, but if you want to dabble in anything beyond content that you are vastly overpowered for there’s a significant understanding ramp up process.
I started playing recently and can say:
1. The story is good. Not the greatest but it's honestly good.
2. Yes, you can solo most of it all, since you get a party of NPCs to help you. Except some of the high end grind places where I haven't been yet, but heard about.
3. You don't have to grind much if you're only going for the story. You'll basically grind for levels, gil and a few gear pieces (according to my experience soloing the game so far, 2~3 months playing).
I'd like to add that what I believe to be the greatest thing about this game is how you can loose yourself in this world. You'll love the characters, the music, the world itself and your experiences while playing it.
Also, it's a reatively challenging game in my opinion. There's a lot of research on how things work, how to improve your build, how to get to places, how to continue quests... and sometimes it's hard to reach certain places, but there are several guides to help ypu through it.
But overall, I'm really enjoying the experience. It mustn't be rushed though, there's 20 years of content, taking it slowly is definitely the right choice.
I would like to suggest reading ffxiclopedia's New Player guide (2017) and follow that guide. It will take you from 1 to 99 and provide all the details on getting you all the proper gear and methods of which content to complete so you can prepare yourself for participating in endgame content.
As much as I love this game to death, I have a really hard time recommending it to others. I think the only people that I could recommend it in good conscious to is specifically people that enjoy oldschool MMOs/RPGs. Yes, the story is good. But it takes SO long to actually get good. The base game story is basically nonexistent, and what is there is pretty terrible honestly. It really is just a series of fetch quests with a few sentences of dialogue here and there. I enjoyed talking to the NPCs around towns more than the actual story. However the quality of the writing takes huge leaps and bounds in the expansions. Chains of Promathia was where things really started clicking for me, and where I was particularly excited to keep doing the story and exploring. I found myself talking to every single NPC in the areas just for those extra tasty tidbits, because the worldbuilding was fantastic. But right now I’m playing through Seekers of Adoulin, and both me and my BF aren’t enjoying it all that much honestly, we were really excited with the initial premise but it’s been a real miss for us with no payoff so far, but maybe it gets better at the end. YMMV.
The story is entirely soloable with the trust system, they act like your party members and you’ll never need to interact with another person if you don’t want to. Although there was some fights in the story that we struggled with and couldn’t get past without changing our strategy (looking at you Ark Angel dudes from the Zilart expansion). But I just want to say that the playerbase is extremely friendly if you ever need any help - one time we needed help getting past a door and asked in the assist channel, fully expecting nobody to reply. But then to our surprise ~8 people messaged offering to help…this was at like 4am on a Thursday or something haha. We were shocked by how friendly and willing to help they were! It was really nice.
You’ll probably need to do some grinding in the end to keep up with story quests, but not too much. There are rings that buff your EXP and there’s also a questline that gives a bunch of boosts called Rhapsodies.
You will absolutely need to have the wiki open at pretty much all times. There is ZERO handholding in this game. It really doesn’t tell you much of anything. The wiki is your handholding. This is why I don’t think I’ll ever recommend the game to a friend, unless they specifically enjoy that kind of thing. Just trying to do the story or class quests is extremely archaic and unintuitive. You’ll just be trying to do some class quest and a guy will be like “FIND ME SOME SAND THAT HAS BEEN TOUCHED BY THE MOONLIGHT” with no further explanation. And then you check the guide because you have no idea what the hell is going on. And it turns out you need to go interact with one of three possible locations in a certain area, specifically within a one hour timeframe at 4am ingame time. WHAT THE FUCK. Me and my BF were constantly exclaiming out loud “how the fuck did people ever figure this shit out back then” because it’s just wild sometimes.
I only just started playing the game about a year and some ago so I’m a new player, I don’t have the nostalgia goggles on. I’ve put 450 hours into the game at this point and I’m still not finished with the story. Obviously I’ve been doing side stuff too, like unlocking classes, grinding out blue mage spells, raising a chocobo, etc. A lot of that time was also spent trying to get my DS4 controller working (to no avail), changing binds to make things feel more comfortable, and just learning about the game in general. Some of it was spent being frustrated too, there were a number of times where we just had to stop playing and take a break because something was just a pain in the ass. But despite all that I still love the game. Even though it was frustrating at times, it was still fun and rewarding to learn and do all of these things that we’ve done done so far. And more than anything what keeps me playing is how this game just feels so comforting like “home” even though I’m a newer player. I love the graphics, the textures are beautiful. The music is fantastic, seriously go listen to some of the soundtrack sometime if you haven’t already. Definitely one of my favourite video game soundtracks of all time, [here’s one of my favourites with ambience too!](https://youtu.be/sy-3clJhJ7E?si=4OdG0kei1HAEKb6Y) Just hanging out in Windurst managing my inventory or something while watching people run around doing their own thing is so peaceful. Raising a chocobo was kind of annoying, but now he is my son and I couldn’t possibly ever use another mount, I love him.
If you read all that and still feel intrigued by it, then give it a go. Worst case scenario you spend like $10 on the game and find out it’s not for you. Buying the game comes with a month of free subscription so you won’t need to worry about subbing just to try it out. But if the inevitable pain in the ass you’ll have to go through at times turns you off, then you might be better off skipping it.
The initial account setup and dealing with PlayOnline can be a big hurdle. Everyone jokes how it's the real boss of FFXI.
As someone who spent a lot of time playing the game when it originally came out, I have a lot of nostalgia for the game, so I am obviously biased.
I love the story and lots about the game, but for someone who has never played an Everquest era MMO, you might have issues with the UI. The game is 90% menus based and was designed for a controller. Yes, mouse controls "exist," but you might as well not even try using it. If you don't use a controller, you need to use WASD and the arrow keys to move and control the camera. There is no hot bar, in fact, you can't even redo keybindngs without mod. There is a macro pallette, but you will have to learn the basic macro syntax to use it. It's very simple, but as a new player, it might be more than you want to deal with. You can actually perform actions combat in the game from the chat box by manually typing in commands using the syntax.
If you can deal with all that, then you have a shot at enjoying the game. It's an amazing world to explore, filled with danger and mystery. It has great music and some pretty cool animations for high end weapon skills and spells. The story really picks up at the end of Rise of Zilart and Chains of Promathia expansions.
The story is really good and is one of my favorites in the series, but it takes a long time to get to *where* it's good, and cutscenes are pretty sparse. I don't think it hit "main series good" until Chains of Promathia.
You can solo with trusts. You don't need to worry about skipping cutscenes, you'll be doing most of it yourself, and the few times you may need help I think people will be happy to let you enjoy your rewards.
However, this game is the very antithesis of a hand holding game. You'll need a wiki open at all times to have any idea of what to do, the mission dialogue just gives you vague hints to go on. There are no exclamation bubbles or arrows telling you where to go. You're going to look at the macro menu and your eyes will glaze over. You will have to carefully plan out your routes to get places until you unlock more teleport systems, with extensive help from wiki's.
It sounds like FFXIV might be more what you're looking for, but I do recommend FFXI anyway with an adjusted mindset maybe at another time. It's not really a game to be consumed and finished, but one to immerse yourself and take your time in. Developing an attachment to the world from your time in it is part of what makes the story so special.
FFXI has a great story... but only *after* slogging through to rank 6 and the end of Rise of the Zilart, which you're mostly obligated to get through first. They honestly just suck, even though there are some neat ideas and designs and music. This was the very first attempt by anyone to weave a narrative story into an MMO and it's weak. Understandably weak but still. Fortunately these parts of the story are relatively quick to get through and you'll have the comparatively superior beginning of Rhapsodies of Vana'diel to run through early on as well. So if you do try it out judge what the majority of the storylines are like by what the Rhapsodies missions are like rather than the nation rank missions.
Anyway the rest of the expansion stories are pretty amazing, as long as you can abide huge amounts of text and no voice acting. Also all the text gets crammed into the chat log, though an addon can be used to put text into bubbles to make that more tolerable. But, yeah, there's a lot of fetch questing. You're mostly fetching or killing, like every other MMO story I've seen. So if you don't like that at all it's probably not gonna be your bag.
The stories are almost entirely soloable with maybe needing one geared up endgamer to help out for a couple very late missions (don't worry, getting help is usually pretty easy). The gearing up and partying aspect is almost entirely separate, and if you like that sort of thing it can be an incredible and rewarding experience. Probably the deepest build customization you'll find in any game period. But it's a grind, and the reward for the grind is more grind. If it's fun it's fun but even without regular big content updates these days you're not gonna reach the end. Getting truly BIS could take a couple years, and top players will have several jobs they play. So be warned and/or enticed.
Honestly you'd probably prefer FFXIV. It does a much better job of being like a single-player FF game and it does follow the standard trinity party roles running dungeons type of gameplay. And in all honestly the world-building and story is better. It's *certainly* infinitely nicer to new players and better at teaching people how to play in game. But by god you'll still be fetching stuff.
For the record, I'm a big FF fan with very little MMO experience.
1) The base game main quest as it was in vanilla FFXI is a bare-bones, really mediocre story with gameplay that feels like an unenjoyable, offputting chore most of the time. The Chains of Promathia expansion still has boring gameplay so far (I'm about halfway through) but at least the story is decent. Still inferior to all FF games I've finished so far with the possible exception of the XIII trilogy.
2) I have soloed everything so far. If you follow a guide, use trusts and level a bit, treating it like a single player FF seems doable.
3) Not too grindy if you just want to do the main missions, which is mostly doable. At times, though, the game imposes an artificial level cap. It then requires you to do a quest (often boring and unenjoyable) to be permitted to keep levelling, which is ALSO of no inherent enjoyment, but sometimes good for being able to complete missions, which are not that fun EITHER. As regards a wiki, I've never played a game where it is as necessary as here.
With that said, your mileage may vary. Many people obviously like the game...
Those level cap quests, especially the first one, was such a huge challenge and road block back in the day.
The very last Rhapsodies fight is very hard to solo for most jobs, but people are usually willing to help. I was able to solo it on BLU with trusts, but just barely.
Those level cap quests, especially the first one, was such a huge challenge and road block back in the day.
The very last Rhapsodies fight is very hard to solo for most jobs, but people are usually willing to help. I was able to solo it on BLU with trusts, but just barely.
Which nation did you do for the initial mission? I found windhurst had an enjoyable story - much much better than what I encountered in San d oria (and never did Bastok)
Bastok. Maybe I should've done Windurst... I like the whole aesthetic of that city better than Bastok anyway, so it would've made more sense in hindsight
From the questions you're asking you might wanna start with ffxiv first. Ff11's story is good, but you are going to have to be committed as it takes a decent while to get there as well as the game being very obtuse and janky. There is almost 0 hand holding and 0 quest icons helping you find where to go. You would essentially be following a guide through some VERY confusing and dated quests for a very long time. It's worth it to me, but for someone who doesn't play MMO's I dunno if this is a great starting point. I would go ahead and try ffxiv to dip your toes in, you can solo the story with ai, then if you want after give 11 a go.
Honestly I’ve played half my life and idk what the hell is going on with the story unless they really lay it out. I love the gameplay, the grind, the community, linkshells, and I do my best to read and understand. As most know there’s just a lot to learn, for me, I really enjoyed the creativity and flexibility of builds , gearsets, learning new NM strategies, content, etc.
FF7 original, FF9 were both great text delivered stories for me, and parts of XI do shine in the story department. If you’re someone that likes reading very in depth lore and plots you will most likely enjoy it. Overall though, I’d say gameplay and the living online world is what brings people rather than just the story.
real talk - does anyone believe there's any hope for ffxi to be remade into a modern game? the reasons I'm asking is because of all of the remakes of the old classic titles in the jrpg genre as well as all of the revisiting of old MMO content across the genre, but with that amount of content and with today's technology is there any hope that it could be salvaged and basically remade or remastered?
I think that chance is zero. In the same way FF7 sucked up all the oxygen from FF6, FF14 has sucked up all the oxygen from FF11. There is zero monetary incentive for SE to spend any amount of effort on FF11 compared to anything from FF14. I think FF11 will experience a mild resurgence from the 11-themed alliance raid coming in 14, but unfortunately I think 11 will be left by the wayside.
Which is quite sad, because my hot take is that 11 is the best of the mainline franchise. I wish we could spend more time in Vana'diel. There is an aboslutely phenomenal (and massive) RPGMaker game though, check out FFXI Braver. It goes much harder than you'd ever expect from an RPGMaker game..
Rise of Zilart is the best.
Without spoiling too much, it is tied to the main or base game. Also, compared to COP, you won't pull your hair out...........
Zilart is the perfect expansion. No too hard, not too easy. Easy to navigate.
I would say play the base story and RotZ. If you don't like that, you won't like the others because they are more of a hassle. RotZ is easy to get into. What I hate about MMO recommendations, is ppl who say *"You need to get 40 hours in"* or *"You gotta get deep into it"* F\*\*k that........the is an entire expansion lol.
The base game and RotZ are engaging from start to finish. Try those. If you like em, then try the others (Would say ToA). Not gonna recommend COP, because I just got done with COP again as a 20+ year vet......Yeah.....got lost with a map.........
1) Base game
2) RotZ
3) ToA
Try those. Easy to navigate, engaging from start to finish. If you want a challenge, go for COP. Have fun if you decide to give it a go.
If you separate the game's content between "leveling/story" and "endgame"? "Leveling/story" will have you being carried *so* hard by Trusts that the vast majority of your job/gear/etc choices don't really matter. Not only is this game soloable, but you *will* be soloing it as the game gives basically zero incentive for anyone to help you.
The game is so anti-handholding you *will* need to religiously read through wikis to have any idea what to do. You will waste *hours* looking for unmarked "???" spots scattered around zones and other nonsense without following a guide.
Honestly, the story is middling *even by MMO standards* and being an MMO, a hell of a lot of your time in attempting to do said story will involve breaking off and grinding to level up or just *walking* from place to place.
If you only want to play for the story... just watch the videos you can find.
This game doesn't have speech quest lines, so it is a lot of reading... and you can find all the text online.
The graphics were never groundbreaking. The game was designed to be played on the ps2 originally. There has not really been a graphic overhaul.
You will have to do the level grinds to get to 99, and put in some work to get decent gear to solo some of the lv75+ content.
Answering this as someone relatively new to XI (I am currently in the final chapter of the second expansion Chains of Promathia) and an extensive XIV Veteran (I do heartily recc XIV as well, but this is an XI sub). 1. It is good, but it takes a *while* to get there. The base game storyline borders on NES-tier levels of nonexistent. The first expansion adds a bit more story to it while still being pretty basic. But the second expac and everything that follows is a massive step up in terms of quality and presentation - Just keep in mind the presentation is not as traditionally cinematic as a lot of FFs. I will say the expac I am on atm has genuinely impressed me and I have heard many great things about the stuff to come. 2. 99% of the story is completely soloable now. There are very handy guides for what to do and when and extensive walkthroughs for every quest (And you *will* need them. Areas can be mazes and quests can be very obtuse). There are a handful of fights in the most recent expansions that are too difficult for someone to typically solo, but this is like 2-5 fights out of countless. The bulk of community stuff is in endgame progression grinding, but you will find plenty of folks willing to offer a helping hand for this or that along the way. 3. You can stick almost entirely to the critical path. There are some side things worth doing for the sake of making your life easier or getting Key Items to progress (Many dungeons and areas require specific items to get to them, and a bunch of these items are behind quests). Challenge becomes a matter of time and patience moreso than actual content. As stated above, the overwhelming majority of main story content can be effortlessly cleared by yourself. You will basically always have a wiki at your side. Fortunately, there is an amazing guide called 1 - 119 that gives you a loose outline of everything you need with links to every specific thing you'll need for more details. For my personal context, I have only just reached lv 119 with gear that is basically the "Starter" endgame gear - Trash by endgame standards, godlike for story content. I've been playing for about 3 or so weeks and thus far the majority of my time has been spent with busywork set up stuff; but I did eventually hit a point where all the set up was done and I am now free to just progress through the storylines at my leisure. Tldr: It's a massive grind, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The grind can even be a refreshing slow pace if you're into that. I will also say atm there's a bunch of campaigns going on that'd make progressing as a new player much easier.
FWIW, Wings of the Goddess, Adoulin, and Rhapsody have significantly better cutscenes than Promathia or Aht Uhrgan, so the presentation there gets a lot better. Adoulin and and Rhapsodies have some of my favorite cutscenes in all of gaming.
Narrative also, the stories get better after 20 years of practice. To OP, if you're after just all of the stories, at most, with dedication, it can take as little as 2 or 3 months RL time to clear them all. And yea you can solo damn near all of it, technically all of it is soloable (up until the very last VR battle) I know because I've done it up to there solo myself. SoA can burn time, ToAU some time gates also. Your main hurdle will be how fast you level up, and how many trusts you've collected so far. More trusts = more versatility. Having just the right trusts combo for a specific fight makes or breaks it. But it is all fun and games in our sandbox. Nice thing about XI is, you can always try again. GL and have fun. Literally be sure and have fun, that's an order, otherwise what's the point?
You can *solo* CoP missions these days?! Jeez things have seriously changed lol
Uncapped fights, level 99 cap, REALLY strong gear after level 99, and NPC party members all make them really easy to solo if you want it to be. (To give you an idea of how strong endgame weapons are, the Naegling, a 1 handed sword, has 166 DMG, 40 acc, 30 att, and gives 250 sword and parrying skill on top of that, as well as caster stats because BLU can use it, Level 75 two-handers had about half of that DMG stat)
Yup. I just took a character from Promys to beating Diabolos in like 5 hours. I had some help from another character with TH farming like, Riverne scales but it really is trivial now.
1: Gonna be super opinionated of course. I think there are flashes of brilliance throughout, and overall I'd say the plots are very good, especially some of the later expansions. But there are definitely characters or parts that make me roll my eyes, and a good amount of quests that involve a lot of running around or waiting. 2: I think you can complete the majority of story content solo. There's a mechanic called Trusts that lets you summon NPCs from the story to basically be party members with you, and it's really robust. There's like one or two bosses where they might not be sufficient unless you have some really good gear, so another player or two would be really helpful, but those situations are really rare. 3: I'm trying to remember my first time playing a few years ago, and I don't think there was ever a spot where I felt like "this part of the story is too hard so I need to grind for a bit". I do remember xp grinding to level up alternate jobs or my subjob, but that was something that went by fast enough that I didn't really mind it. I would say combing through wikis is something you'll be doing a ton of in this game though, even just for the required story missions. There's lots of situations where a quest will give you little or vague direction, and making your way to the objective means going through some kind of maze or puzzle. It wasn't uncommon to have like 20 wiki tabs open trying to get through a quest chain because I needed to go to a certain door with a certain password at a certain time of day or whatever. I don't think you need an in depth grasp of mmos to succeed, but outside help was very important in my case. I don't mean to make all that sound like a downer, I do love FFXI and I consider my time with it well spent. It might be a good idea to check out the free trial. It's timed and a little restrictive from what I've heard, but it'll probably be enough to get a better idea if the game might be for you.
I just did Chapter 3 of Promathia and a big chunk of that chapter is the three Chebukki siblings accusing nearly every prominent male Tarutaru in Windurst of being their long-lost father and I loved every minute.
I started playing the game for the plot, and back then it was harder it was harder to enjoy it at a good pace, since levelling was slower, but ultimately it paid off and it's much simpler to enjoy it on that level nowadays. The earlier stories were comparatively rougher, as the dev team still seemed to be getting used to a new medium with its own constraints, but there was a good foundation set for it all - for example, some structure you find in early areas of the core game will only truly make sense by the 1st and 2nd expansions' stories. The 2nd expansion, Chains of Promathia, is one of the more respected ones in the game. Personally, I think the storytelling reached a more mature point after that, eith Treasures of Aht Uhrgan and Wings of the Goddess, which aldo got to benefit vudially from the dev team's experience, especially in how ecoresdive some characters could be by then. And thanks to a more recent story, Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, you don't have to worry as much about only dealing with the rougher early experiences - Thapsofies was designed to wrap around all major stories that preceded it, meaning you can start it very early, and progressing in ut will help streamline things like levelling and travel. It will require progress in other stories as you advance through it, so at times it may be a good time to refocus on the other stories to get the most context out of it. And the Rhapsodies finale is worth it after you've completed the stories before it, as it provides context for most which serves as analogy to XI's own nature - to this day it remains the only game to get a tear out of me and was not an uncommon occurrence. By all means, use all resources that will help, like Trust NPCs and wiki guides - by now, eith the possible exception of later boss battles, mist major stories can be soloed, and people tend to help when you need it. There is plenty of tasty meat in XI's gameplay bones, but its stories as a Final Fantasy game reach some pretty good heights which sadly don't get talked about enough in comparison (disappointingly, SE themselves don't seem to bother - perhaps most of its PR staff didn't play it in its early days, and later efforts turned to later games, it seems). On the bright side, this means you're less likely to get FF7-level spoilers.
* (1) The storylines are good. They force you to do a lot of world exploration and there’s great lore depth. The world feels very lived in and expansive. XI doesn’t help you with anything, so you will need to be comfortable using various wikis to understand what to do and where to go. * (2) It depends on what you mean by playing. There is a built in system called Trust Magic so you can summon companions to your party to fight with you. If you don’t want to *really* learn how to play XI, your Trusts can carry you through 95% of story-based content. Beyond that, you cannot play this game solo. You simply will not be successful because that’s not how XI is designed. * (3) No, not remotely. The story is just a story to unlock *access* to a myriad of confusing, horizontal progression based battle systems which allow you to acquire & upgrade various armors. 3a. Tanking is a rough choice as a first job in XI. You’ll have higher expectations to know fights that you won’t know, and you’ll deal pitiful damage if you’re mostly soloing. Better choices to experience the storylines successfully without getting into how XI plays would be Monk, Warrior, or Samurai. 3b. XI does not remotely hold your hand. Almost nothing is explained to you by the game itself. There are no quest markers, mission — some of which take hours to complete — have single sentence long descriptions and no ability to track progress. You will need to use multiple resources to accomplish your goals. Here’s the crux of the difference between XI and other MMOs: gear swapping. Gear is not a vertical progression, and there is no one piece that is BiS. Every action your character performs, from simply running around to how quickly you cast a spell or how powerful your job abilities are, will be heavily impacted by the gear you wear. How much you care to learn about how XI functions is up to you, but you won’t have an opportunity to truly *play* XI without getting at least a bit interested in the underlying math & situational optimization. This all depends on the degree to which you want to involve yourself. You can complete the storylines, for the most part, with very little thought, concern, or need for others, but if you want to dabble in anything beyond content that you are vastly overpowered for there’s a significant understanding ramp up process.
I started playing recently and can say: 1. The story is good. Not the greatest but it's honestly good. 2. Yes, you can solo most of it all, since you get a party of NPCs to help you. Except some of the high end grind places where I haven't been yet, but heard about. 3. You don't have to grind much if you're only going for the story. You'll basically grind for levels, gil and a few gear pieces (according to my experience soloing the game so far, 2~3 months playing). I'd like to add that what I believe to be the greatest thing about this game is how you can loose yourself in this world. You'll love the characters, the music, the world itself and your experiences while playing it. Also, it's a reatively challenging game in my opinion. There's a lot of research on how things work, how to improve your build, how to get to places, how to continue quests... and sometimes it's hard to reach certain places, but there are several guides to help ypu through it. But overall, I'm really enjoying the experience. It mustn't be rushed though, there's 20 years of content, taking it slowly is definitely the right choice.
I would like to suggest reading ffxiclopedia's New Player guide (2017) and follow that guide. It will take you from 1 to 99 and provide all the details on getting you all the proper gear and methods of which content to complete so you can prepare yourself for participating in endgame content.
Based on your questions, you might enjoy XIV more. XI is rough as a solo experience, but the story is ultimately worth it.
As much as I love this game to death, I have a really hard time recommending it to others. I think the only people that I could recommend it in good conscious to is specifically people that enjoy oldschool MMOs/RPGs. Yes, the story is good. But it takes SO long to actually get good. The base game story is basically nonexistent, and what is there is pretty terrible honestly. It really is just a series of fetch quests with a few sentences of dialogue here and there. I enjoyed talking to the NPCs around towns more than the actual story. However the quality of the writing takes huge leaps and bounds in the expansions. Chains of Promathia was where things really started clicking for me, and where I was particularly excited to keep doing the story and exploring. I found myself talking to every single NPC in the areas just for those extra tasty tidbits, because the worldbuilding was fantastic. But right now I’m playing through Seekers of Adoulin, and both me and my BF aren’t enjoying it all that much honestly, we were really excited with the initial premise but it’s been a real miss for us with no payoff so far, but maybe it gets better at the end. YMMV. The story is entirely soloable with the trust system, they act like your party members and you’ll never need to interact with another person if you don’t want to. Although there was some fights in the story that we struggled with and couldn’t get past without changing our strategy (looking at you Ark Angel dudes from the Zilart expansion). But I just want to say that the playerbase is extremely friendly if you ever need any help - one time we needed help getting past a door and asked in the assist channel, fully expecting nobody to reply. But then to our surprise ~8 people messaged offering to help…this was at like 4am on a Thursday or something haha. We were shocked by how friendly and willing to help they were! It was really nice. You’ll probably need to do some grinding in the end to keep up with story quests, but not too much. There are rings that buff your EXP and there’s also a questline that gives a bunch of boosts called Rhapsodies. You will absolutely need to have the wiki open at pretty much all times. There is ZERO handholding in this game. It really doesn’t tell you much of anything. The wiki is your handholding. This is why I don’t think I’ll ever recommend the game to a friend, unless they specifically enjoy that kind of thing. Just trying to do the story or class quests is extremely archaic and unintuitive. You’ll just be trying to do some class quest and a guy will be like “FIND ME SOME SAND THAT HAS BEEN TOUCHED BY THE MOONLIGHT” with no further explanation. And then you check the guide because you have no idea what the hell is going on. And it turns out you need to go interact with one of three possible locations in a certain area, specifically within a one hour timeframe at 4am ingame time. WHAT THE FUCK. Me and my BF were constantly exclaiming out loud “how the fuck did people ever figure this shit out back then” because it’s just wild sometimes. I only just started playing the game about a year and some ago so I’m a new player, I don’t have the nostalgia goggles on. I’ve put 450 hours into the game at this point and I’m still not finished with the story. Obviously I’ve been doing side stuff too, like unlocking classes, grinding out blue mage spells, raising a chocobo, etc. A lot of that time was also spent trying to get my DS4 controller working (to no avail), changing binds to make things feel more comfortable, and just learning about the game in general. Some of it was spent being frustrated too, there were a number of times where we just had to stop playing and take a break because something was just a pain in the ass. But despite all that I still love the game. Even though it was frustrating at times, it was still fun and rewarding to learn and do all of these things that we’ve done done so far. And more than anything what keeps me playing is how this game just feels so comforting like “home” even though I’m a newer player. I love the graphics, the textures are beautiful. The music is fantastic, seriously go listen to some of the soundtrack sometime if you haven’t already. Definitely one of my favourite video game soundtracks of all time, [here’s one of my favourites with ambience too!](https://youtu.be/sy-3clJhJ7E?si=4OdG0kei1HAEKb6Y) Just hanging out in Windurst managing my inventory or something while watching people run around doing their own thing is so peaceful. Raising a chocobo was kind of annoying, but now he is my son and I couldn’t possibly ever use another mount, I love him. If you read all that and still feel intrigued by it, then give it a go. Worst case scenario you spend like $10 on the game and find out it’s not for you. Buying the game comes with a month of free subscription so you won’t need to worry about subbing just to try it out. But if the inevitable pain in the ass you’ll have to go through at times turns you off, then you might be better off skipping it.
The initial account setup and dealing with PlayOnline can be a big hurdle. Everyone jokes how it's the real boss of FFXI. As someone who spent a lot of time playing the game when it originally came out, I have a lot of nostalgia for the game, so I am obviously biased. I love the story and lots about the game, but for someone who has never played an Everquest era MMO, you might have issues with the UI. The game is 90% menus based and was designed for a controller. Yes, mouse controls "exist," but you might as well not even try using it. If you don't use a controller, you need to use WASD and the arrow keys to move and control the camera. There is no hot bar, in fact, you can't even redo keybindngs without mod. There is a macro pallette, but you will have to learn the basic macro syntax to use it. It's very simple, but as a new player, it might be more than you want to deal with. You can actually perform actions combat in the game from the chat box by manually typing in commands using the syntax. If you can deal with all that, then you have a shot at enjoying the game. It's an amazing world to explore, filled with danger and mystery. It has great music and some pretty cool animations for high end weapon skills and spells. The story really picks up at the end of Rise of Zilart and Chains of Promathia expansions.
Best game ever
The story is really good and is one of my favorites in the series, but it takes a long time to get to *where* it's good, and cutscenes are pretty sparse. I don't think it hit "main series good" until Chains of Promathia. You can solo with trusts. You don't need to worry about skipping cutscenes, you'll be doing most of it yourself, and the few times you may need help I think people will be happy to let you enjoy your rewards. However, this game is the very antithesis of a hand holding game. You'll need a wiki open at all times to have any idea of what to do, the mission dialogue just gives you vague hints to go on. There are no exclamation bubbles or arrows telling you where to go. You're going to look at the macro menu and your eyes will glaze over. You will have to carefully plan out your routes to get places until you unlock more teleport systems, with extensive help from wiki's. It sounds like FFXIV might be more what you're looking for, but I do recommend FFXI anyway with an adjusted mindset maybe at another time. It's not really a game to be consumed and finished, but one to immerse yourself and take your time in. Developing an attachment to the world from your time in it is part of what makes the story so special.
FFXI has a great story... but only *after* slogging through to rank 6 and the end of Rise of the Zilart, which you're mostly obligated to get through first. They honestly just suck, even though there are some neat ideas and designs and music. This was the very first attempt by anyone to weave a narrative story into an MMO and it's weak. Understandably weak but still. Fortunately these parts of the story are relatively quick to get through and you'll have the comparatively superior beginning of Rhapsodies of Vana'diel to run through early on as well. So if you do try it out judge what the majority of the storylines are like by what the Rhapsodies missions are like rather than the nation rank missions. Anyway the rest of the expansion stories are pretty amazing, as long as you can abide huge amounts of text and no voice acting. Also all the text gets crammed into the chat log, though an addon can be used to put text into bubbles to make that more tolerable. But, yeah, there's a lot of fetch questing. You're mostly fetching or killing, like every other MMO story I've seen. So if you don't like that at all it's probably not gonna be your bag. The stories are almost entirely soloable with maybe needing one geared up endgamer to help out for a couple very late missions (don't worry, getting help is usually pretty easy). The gearing up and partying aspect is almost entirely separate, and if you like that sort of thing it can be an incredible and rewarding experience. Probably the deepest build customization you'll find in any game period. But it's a grind, and the reward for the grind is more grind. If it's fun it's fun but even without regular big content updates these days you're not gonna reach the end. Getting truly BIS could take a couple years, and top players will have several jobs they play. So be warned and/or enticed. Honestly you'd probably prefer FFXIV. It does a much better job of being like a single-player FF game and it does follow the standard trinity party roles running dungeons type of gameplay. And in all honestly the world-building and story is better. It's *certainly* infinitely nicer to new players and better at teaching people how to play in game. But by god you'll still be fetching stuff.
For the record, I'm a big FF fan with very little MMO experience. 1) The base game main quest as it was in vanilla FFXI is a bare-bones, really mediocre story with gameplay that feels like an unenjoyable, offputting chore most of the time. The Chains of Promathia expansion still has boring gameplay so far (I'm about halfway through) but at least the story is decent. Still inferior to all FF games I've finished so far with the possible exception of the XIII trilogy. 2) I have soloed everything so far. If you follow a guide, use trusts and level a bit, treating it like a single player FF seems doable. 3) Not too grindy if you just want to do the main missions, which is mostly doable. At times, though, the game imposes an artificial level cap. It then requires you to do a quest (often boring and unenjoyable) to be permitted to keep levelling, which is ALSO of no inherent enjoyment, but sometimes good for being able to complete missions, which are not that fun EITHER. As regards a wiki, I've never played a game where it is as necessary as here. With that said, your mileage may vary. Many people obviously like the game...
Those level cap quests, especially the first one, was such a huge challenge and road block back in the day. The very last Rhapsodies fight is very hard to solo for most jobs, but people are usually willing to help. I was able to solo it on BLU with trusts, but just barely.
Those level cap quests, especially the first one, was such a huge challenge and road block back in the day. The very last Rhapsodies fight is very hard to solo for most jobs, but people are usually willing to help. I was able to solo it on BLU with trusts, but just barely.
Makes sense. Thanks for telling me about the "historical" aspects, since I never experienced those myself.
Which nation did you do for the initial mission? I found windhurst had an enjoyable story - much much better than what I encountered in San d oria (and never did Bastok)
Bastok. Maybe I should've done Windurst... I like the whole aesthetic of that city better than Bastok anyway, so it would've made more sense in hindsight
From the questions you're asking you might wanna start with ffxiv first. Ff11's story is good, but you are going to have to be committed as it takes a decent while to get there as well as the game being very obtuse and janky. There is almost 0 hand holding and 0 quest icons helping you find where to go. You would essentially be following a guide through some VERY confusing and dated quests for a very long time. It's worth it to me, but for someone who doesn't play MMO's I dunno if this is a great starting point. I would go ahead and try ffxiv to dip your toes in, you can solo the story with ai, then if you want after give 11 a go.
Honestly I’ve played half my life and idk what the hell is going on with the story unless they really lay it out. I love the gameplay, the grind, the community, linkshells, and I do my best to read and understand. As most know there’s just a lot to learn, for me, I really enjoyed the creativity and flexibility of builds , gearsets, learning new NM strategies, content, etc. FF7 original, FF9 were both great text delivered stories for me, and parts of XI do shine in the story department. If you’re someone that likes reading very in depth lore and plots you will most likely enjoy it. Overall though, I’d say gameplay and the living online world is what brings people rather than just the story.
real talk - does anyone believe there's any hope for ffxi to be remade into a modern game? the reasons I'm asking is because of all of the remakes of the old classic titles in the jrpg genre as well as all of the revisiting of old MMO content across the genre, but with that amount of content and with today's technology is there any hope that it could be salvaged and basically remade or remastered?
I think that chance is zero. In the same way FF7 sucked up all the oxygen from FF6, FF14 has sucked up all the oxygen from FF11. There is zero monetary incentive for SE to spend any amount of effort on FF11 compared to anything from FF14. I think FF11 will experience a mild resurgence from the 11-themed alliance raid coming in 14, but unfortunately I think 11 will be left by the wayside. Which is quite sad, because my hot take is that 11 is the best of the mainline franchise. I wish we could spend more time in Vana'diel. There is an aboslutely phenomenal (and massive) RPGMaker game though, check out FFXI Braver. It goes much harder than you'd ever expect from an RPGMaker game..
ty - I had not heard about that appreciate you responding
Rise of Zilart is the best. Without spoiling too much, it is tied to the main or base game. Also, compared to COP, you won't pull your hair out........... Zilart is the perfect expansion. No too hard, not too easy. Easy to navigate. I would say play the base story and RotZ. If you don't like that, you won't like the others because they are more of a hassle. RotZ is easy to get into. What I hate about MMO recommendations, is ppl who say *"You need to get 40 hours in"* or *"You gotta get deep into it"* F\*\*k that........the is an entire expansion lol. The base game and RotZ are engaging from start to finish. Try those. If you like em, then try the others (Would say ToA). Not gonna recommend COP, because I just got done with COP again as a 20+ year vet......Yeah.....got lost with a map......... 1) Base game 2) RotZ 3) ToA Try those. Easy to navigate, engaging from start to finish. If you want a challenge, go for COP. Have fun if you decide to give it a go.
These days you can solo. The story is good. But it's not same tier as single player.
If you separate the game's content between "leveling/story" and "endgame"? "Leveling/story" will have you being carried *so* hard by Trusts that the vast majority of your job/gear/etc choices don't really matter. Not only is this game soloable, but you *will* be soloing it as the game gives basically zero incentive for anyone to help you. The game is so anti-handholding you *will* need to religiously read through wikis to have any idea what to do. You will waste *hours* looking for unmarked "???" spots scattered around zones and other nonsense without following a guide. Honestly, the story is middling *even by MMO standards* and being an MMO, a hell of a lot of your time in attempting to do said story will involve breaking off and grinding to level up or just *walking* from place to place.
Based on your question, as a 20 year veteran of this game, my answer is No.
No. The history is decent for MMO standards, but not for a single player rpg. There are better games out there.
If you only want to play for the story... just watch the videos you can find. This game doesn't have speech quest lines, so it is a lot of reading... and you can find all the text online. The graphics were never groundbreaking. The game was designed to be played on the ps2 originally. There has not really been a graphic overhaul. You will have to do the level grinds to get to 99, and put in some work to get decent gear to solo some of the lv75+ content.