Recently returned but having trouble getting into post 99 content, please advise ...

[Afania]

There is no "culture" about. All you need is people willing to chat. Active people.

"Culture".

I've met more than one people who consider "yell" or "shout" conversations impolite and noisy. There are even forum posts about people asking why yell conversations isn't a thing in FFXI like other MMO, or people ask for functions to turn off yell channel back when it was implemented.

If majority of people shares same opinion about "yell shouldn't be use for chat", then nobody would use yell as conversations tools. And vice versa. Yell conversations became a thing because people's point of view about yell channel changed.

And if they happen to see them what happen exactly? If they don't need shouts, they can carry on. If they do, then a low pop server is even worse worse for that person because sometimes there are 5 hours between one shout and another. Heck, by your own admission you can't stop looking at Asura chat.

Again, you're trying to make a generalized statement about people's preferences. What if that person just don't care about shout, or PUG? Then that person has no reason to choose Asura.

What happened here is that you clearly prefer a more active yell channel with more PUG/conversation going on, I'm not telling you you're wrong. But what you're doing here on this forum repeatedly, is that you're telling anyone who prefer a quiet server with less shout is wrong. And that's the issue.

It's not an issue unless you try to make so. Stop trying to make a negative every issue to justify some stances. Not finding every mandy outside of Adoulin is also an issue if you want, but it's not one worth making and certainly not one that is worth trading for all the plus everyone indirectly benefit from having 1000 players.

Once again, you're trying to apply your own personal preferences on every individual that has different taste, preferences, opinions from you. Surely people are allowed to prefer a 50 people server because he wants all the mandies. While you pop on the forum and scream "HOW DARE YOU PREFER MANDIES OVER PARTIES".

No, it's not. You are talking about SERVERS. It's where people LOG TO PLAY. Compare it to real-life culture is downright... I don't know, completely not a good comparison.

All those characters are played by real people. Of course they behave like real people. What'd you expect? People log on to a FFXI character then suddenly they're not human being anymore?

You have extremely narrow definition about the term culture. Look it up, this came from google.

Culture(n):
"the attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group"

As long as you have a group of people that got together, there's culture. Party to party, LS to LS, server to server, MMO to MMO, classes to classes in schools irl, companies to companies irl. All of these could be defined as social groups and behaves differently depends on groups.

[OmnysValefor]

I'm glad you stick around Omny even though it's a net negative because you make other people quit.

It was one guy ; ;. As Jack Nicholson said, he couldn't handle the truth.

[Diavolo]

It's like you're throwing everything you can at a wall until something sticks, Afania. You agree that bigger is better and yet keep trying to rationalize why someone would prefer staying on a smaller server. That's fine, but at the end of the day those people, regardless of how well they're doing, are losing out on a better experience. Remove the technical hurdles from the equation (no fee, names that don't meet a certain criteria released, more ??? locations, no server lag, etc, etc) and the servers would eat themselves alive until there was just 1 or 2 left because as much as someone might enjoy what they're doing with their 5-10 LS mates the complete lack of bazaars and barren AH, among other things, would soon make them miss those other, annoying people.

It is indeed an unrealistic scenario to have one server's pop go beyond 2K concurrent players under the current circumstances, that's why it's pitched as a theoretical. This game is always changing, so don't limit yourselves to the line of thinking that just because the game is the way it is today it can't evolve into something else. I doubt anyone here ever entertained the thought of FFXI becoming so solo-friendly back in 2003-2004.

[Jin_Uzuki]

Again, you're trying to make a generalized statement about people's preferences. What if that person just don't care about shout, or PUG? Then that person has no reason to choose Asura.
What happened here is that you clearly prefer a more active yell channel with more PUG/conversation going on, I'm not telling you you're wrong. But what you're doing here on this forum repeatedly, is that you're telling anyone who prefer a quiet server with less shout is wrong. And that's the issue.

No, I actually don't care for /yell culture. It's not even good to talk because of timer. You can prefer a quiet server, sure, but I do wonder what about shouts riddles so much. It's hard to take serious anyone who has few issues about people saying some things in /yell in a MMORPG much because the way you act, you are talking about it being a life changing experience, while at the best it's a minor hurdle not worth trading all the benefits more active AH for example. (Unless you NEVER use the AH or interact with other players)

You know what happens to all the people who don't like yell on Asura? Nothing, they move on with their life. Because it's, realistically, not an issue.

If Ragnarok had 1000 players active all the time, I can assure you that all it would take for someone to start a /yell conversation was to... yell and people would answer.

Once again, you're trying to apply your own personal preferences on every individual that has different taste, preferences, opinions from you. Surely people are allowed to prefer a 50 people server because he wants all the mandies. While you pop on the forum and scream "HOW DARE YOU PREFER MANDIES OVER PARTIES".

In a MMORPG? No, not really. I mean, he's allowed, but no one would ever take it seriously.

[Diavolo]

All those characters are played by real people.

They're owned by real people. They're not always played by people.

I can't publicly post what I want to here without opening a set of floodgates, but I would be impressed if, after years of playing alongside multiboxers, you haven't witnessed third party tool use to automate secondary accounts, both for short term and long term objectives.

[Afania]

No, I actually don't care for /yell culture. It's not even good to talk because of timer. You can prefer a quiet server, sure, but I do wonder what about shouts riddles so much. It's hard to take serious anyone who has few issues about people saying some things in /yell in a MMORPG much because the way you act, you are talking about it being a life changing experience, while at the best it's a minor hurdle not worth trading all the benefits more active AH for example. (Unless you NEVER use the AH or interact with other players)

You know what happens to all the people who don't like yell on Asura? Nothing, they move on with their life. Because it's, realistically, not an issue.

If Ragnarok had 1000 players active all the time, I can assure you that all it would take for someone to start a /yell conversation was to... yell and people would answer.

In a MMORPG? No, not really. I mean, he's allowed, but no one would ever take it seriously.

If someone(not me, you kept implying it's me that's having an issue, but it's not) have an issue with yells, then realistically, it will play a role when he makes a decision because people play the game for fun etc.

Again, you keep emphasis why YOU make a decision to prefer a server, but that's irrelevant to how others make decisions. You only come out as "my preference > yours" in this discussion because all you talk about is your choice, and subtly hinting others either makes bad choice, or being a drama whore about yells.

It's hard to take serious anyone who has few issues about people saying some things in /yell in a MMORPG much because the way you act, you are talking about it being a life changing experience,

In other games yes, public chat channel is used for conversations. In FFXI not as much.

I remember back in the day when I started, one person(I forgot if he's JP, probably is) told me chatting/trolling in public shout is considered impolite. Sometimes when a conversation started in shout/yell, there's often one person that'd step up and said "Take it in tell please". There was even one LS on Bismarck had a rule "don't troll in public channel".

Compare with other MMOs, FFXI player definitely chat in public channel a LOT less often than other games. When you have played a game for years, and followed this unspoken rule for years, only to find it somehow changed in recent years, of course it could be a big deal to some people.

[Jin_Uzuki]

If someone(not me, you kept implying it's me that's having an issue, but it's not) have an issue with yells, then realistically, it will play a role when he makes a decision because people play the game for fun etc.

If couple of lines on a screen that only pop when you zone into town play a big role and remove every advantage a big server has, then, honestly, I don't know what to tell you.

[Afania]

If couple of lines on a screen that only pop when you zone into town play a big role and remove every advantage a big server has, then, honestly, I don't know what to tell you.

You kept mentioning this "advantage a big server has", how could I make you understand that for some people out there faster character progression/faster gil/easier gears/more PUG etc simply isn't what they play the game for.

[Diavolo]

You kept mentioning this "advantage a big server has", how could I make you understand that for some people out there faster character progression/faster gil/easier gears/more PUG etc simply isn't what they play the game for.

They don't have to in order to enjoy the benefits of a larger server.

[Afania]

They don't have to in order to enjoy the benefits of a larger server.

So what if someone pay $13 a month just to chat with 3 person on server, enjoys quiet server, hates politic talk in yell, and don't play the game to grind gears?

I mean, I'm talking in circles now. I support bigger server because I think it'd benefit more players as a whole. And in the end of day majority still > minority. But at least I'm well aware that nothing makes everyone happy, there will always be some of people out there that's not happy with server merge. Back then when FFXI had server merges, there were drama/unhappy people etc.

At least I'm aware of the fact that everyone is different and nothing is perfect, unlike some people in this discussion aren't, then just assume everyone will be happy ever after with merges.

I mean, my stance is, server merge is great, and some smaller server definitely needs merge. But I don't think is super big zomg kind of deal if it doesn't happen. There's always an option to transfer, after all.