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Square Enix isn’t well known for producing newcomer-friendly games. Many of their titles bring a difficulty curve that can make things rough for players new to the genre to master. There’s nothing wrong with a challenging game, of course, but when it comes to one of those genres in particular— massively multiplayer games— it’s hard to justify building a game that won’t hook a big chunk of the marketplace, at least from a business perspective. Final Fantasy XI has always been an odd man out in the industry in this respect, more akin to EVE in it’s stubborn refusal to cater to the masses than the Warhammers or the Warcrafts. While most companies try to build something that everyone will get hooked on, Square stayed true to their trademark Final Fantasy style of creating a fun, story driven game that rabidly consumes your attention and time.

Like many who have tried it, this was always my problem with the game. I loved the world design, the mechanics, the storyline… but the sheer amount of time it took to get anything done in the game was staggering. More than once I loaded it up, gave it a solid go, but stalled and got burnt out on parties that went nowhere or worse yet lost me experience points. I don’t have the time or patience to deal with that crap.

That’s why I was pretty excited when I read what Square was doing to improve the situation. So, my friends and I decided to load it up once again and give it a play through this last month. The changes are dramatic, without question:

• The EXP reward for soloing or playing in smaller parties has improved significantly, and they’ve beefed up the base reward for killing easier enemies.
• The Pages of Valor introduce the tried and true Kill X of Y quest design to FFXI; in each zone you can walk to the outpost and grab your choice of kill orders. Upon completion, you’ll be rewarded with EXP, gil and “tabs”. Tabs can be redeemed at the many Pages of Valor points in the world, and can do everything from buff you with Refresh or Regen for an hour (makes leveling SO much easier!) or teleporting you to your home nation, which helps in getting around the world.
• They also introduced a Level Sync feature not unlike other MMOs, except it works on a party-wide basis. A party leader can pick one member for everyone to sync down (but not up) to. This ensures that everyone gets a good chunk of EXP, and lets veterans of the game level with their friends who might just be joining the game. For example, our Black Mage was level 66 and joined us in Valkurm Dunes, a level 12-18 zone.
• The introduction of Warp Cudgels, the pages of valor home nation teleport, easier/cheaper access to outpost teleportation from your nation and the introduction of the Whitegate-to-Jeuno teleporter have all made getting around the game world much faster.
• Likewise, the addition of chocobo raising has given another mode of quick transportation from anywhere in the game world. If you’re in for a long walk, just summon your chocobo and ride to your destination in style.

These and other minor tweaks to the fundamentals of the game have really improved the experience for players like me who are revisting the game. It’s really night and day compared to when I first played back at launch. I have to applaud Square on finally deciding to do the right thing and making these changes. Clearly they didn’t want to do this stuff. I goes against their formula, really. But with the game approaching it’s 6th year of service and growing temptation from modern MMOs pulling at their remaining player base, it’s clear they’re trying to hold out on what numbers they have… at least until they can come out with their next-generation MMO (I can’t wait!)

I only hope that with the great success these changes have received from the community, Square will realize that these kinds of improvements shouldn’t be last ditch effort to keep people playing. If they’d implemented these changes 4 years ago, I really believe they’d be in a far better place now in terms of subscriber numbers. I hope they carry over what they’ve learned here and implement it from the get-go into their next MMO. In the meantime, I’m having a blast with FFXI again, and I’ll keep on playin’.

Tags: casual gaming, final fantasy xi, massively multiplayer, square enix

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.