Back when I first started playing FFXI, the game was hard.  Not just a little, but really hard.  Old school, grind you into mush, hard.  SE softened it up a bit, and the game suddenly turned into a fun challenge.  Combat was interesting because monsters were hard, and the skill-chain & magic burst system provided a deeper interactive feel.

Then World of Warcraft (WoW) came along.

Don’t get me wrong, I played WoW and enjoyed it.  What WoW did was provide players a MMO didn’t need to be a grindfest, or a LFP time suck.  Every day Joes could play WoW and make it to level cap solo, or in group.  People flocked to it as a game and social point — every other MMO suffered with a population dip because of WoW.

SE reacted, in part, by engineering to the Treasures of Aht Urghan (ToAU) expansion so that FFXI could offer some of the same softer gameplay features that WoW offered it’s audience.  That was shame, because FFXI’s strength was in the deep, more complex game play.   Beyond that,  ToAU completely unbalance the game.

While reading the Dream’s in Vana’diel forums I came a thread which starts:

I’ve been playing for almost 2 months and in my entire time I’ve only seen one skillchain, and I often hear posts saying things like “I haven’t seen a skillchain in months.”

I’m curious why? It seems like it’d be a fun and tactical part of battle, but I don’t see them used, are they only used at higher levels, or is there a reason why people aren’t doing them? Maybe it’s because I usually play backline jobs?

Here are some of the best replies:

Y’see, before that expansion was released, Skillchain/Magic Burst parties were common at all levels of play, while the “TP Burn” play style and mentality were limited to King Ranperre’s Tomb, behind the Moongates in Ro’Maeve, or in the deepest reaches of Tu’Lia. Everyone built parties around finding the proper jobs that wielded the correct weapons that made the right Skillchains that the Black Mages in the parties (yes, BLMs got parties back then) could properly Magic Burst off of, for maximum damage on pre-determined camps.

Then ToAU came along, and more specifically, Colibri and Imps.

Today’s generation of DD, a lot of the old school stuff is lost, like back-up tanking, link handling, line up of SATA, Skillchain, several capped weapon skill for SC, alternative tanking gear, pulling without killing the party, etc.

For a DD, the first step of SC is report TP consistently:

/p TP @ <tp>

Sigh… it used to be very fun when exp. as DD, instead seeing those who draw the weapon out and then watch TV.

I really wish S.E. would step back, look at ToAU and see it for the mistake it was.  I feel badly for all the new players that I see in FFXI, they’ll never know the deeper aspects of the game that make it so much better than many other MMO’s.

Fortunately, I have my static.  We Skill chain still, and it’s a valuable asset.  If we had a Black Mage, we’d certainly Magic Burst too.  But we’re a mutant group of players;  we actually fight things that are hard, use subjobs that compliment our main job, and gear ourselves for our role.