Whatever happened to Camp Etiquette?

[Aysha]

So, we have another Capacity Point campaign going on, and it just seems that people have no empathy nor care for their fellow player anymore.

I'm an older player, who's been around since Pre-Promathia days, and I've recently come back from a long hiatus, and my how people are outright rude these days.

Yes, I get that a lot of you people have ridiculously overpowered 119 gear from Ambuscade, Geas Fete, and other similar stuff and you can take on 20+ Lv110 mobs at once, but could you guys please stop walking all over the people who are lesser geared?

It used to be that when someone was camped in a room, you'd leave that room alone because they were there before you. I remember the days when there was some actual etiquette and "social rules" that people followed. If you got to a camp, and found it taken, you looked for another camp nearby if possible. There were occasional squabbles, but they were eventually usually sorted out.

Well, today, as per usual, I was in Cirdas Caverns near the Enigmatic Device, trying to get in on that sweet Capacity Point Bonus (I wish the CAP gain was like this all the time, lol) and of course everybody and their brother zooms through multiple rooms, including the two of mine and pulls EVERYTHING and nukes them all down with AoEs.

Seriously?

There's probably 30+ rooms in Cirdas Caverns, and you gotta take the two that I'm trying to level in? Why can't you go to some other room and do that?

How about leaving some rooms for the lesser-geared people who are just trying to get a few job points or skill up?

Yes, the mobs spawn in ~2 minutes, but yet when some blue/black mage or someone using trusts with AoE attacks romps through, that's 2 minutes you gotta stand there to wait for something to spawn.....and then someone ELSE charges through and nukes everything down yet again.

There's not very many camps that are friendly to newer players (near a teleporter, mobs that aren't annoying to fight, etc), but yet with the ridiculously OP gear some of these people have, they could take nearly anything. I'd think, that if I had gear like that, I'd go to somewhere like Kamihr Drifts, Ra'Kaznar, etc... but if you go there, you'll find hardly anybody there.

No, everybody floods into Cirdas. The zone is so ridiculously humongous, but of course all the highly geared players are trying to take the areas near the entrance and the Enigmatic Device.

Couldn't you people please go to places where there aren't low-geared players trying to level up?

[Domille]

So yeah, at some point these new players lost all respect for camps. I don't know when it happened, but it's not a thing anymore.

It doesn't matter where you are, what you fight, how long you've been there. Some jerk off will come through and camp right on top of you. There could be literally 2 people in the entire zone, you + him, and his camp is now in your camp. It's disgusting.

That being said, if they're still aoeing in cirdas they're scrubs and won't have any etiquette at all.

Also, cirdas is a terrible zone regardless, you should find a better suited camp. I don't know your scenario, but cirdas is a bad option no matter the circumstance.

[Aysha]

Also, cirdas is a terrible zone regardless, you should find a better suited camp. I don't know your scenario, but cirdas is a bad option no matter the circumstance.

Where would you suggest as a replacement?

We need a zone/camp that has mobs that do not spam deadly AoEs (because we've been using these places to level low-level jobs lol), places that are not hard to get to (that don't require key items/lots of reives to get to), and mobs that are at least 105.

And lastly, it needs to be accessible (which is why we don't use Moh/Sih Gates), and it must be a "dungeon" (and not an outside area).

Cirdas Caverns is the only place that fits this bill that I know of. The mobs in there are perfect: Acuexes have an AoE but it doesn't do very much damage (as long as you turn the mob away from the lowbie), Mandragora are wimps, and the Funguars' AoE are all cones, AND these mobs respawn so fast.

I don't really know of any other place like it. I'd love to hear about it, if there is such a place. The Gates have mobs, but I haven't seen any camps quite as good and there's no teleporters to there (I don't want to be trekking a Lv50 character all across Ubulka trying to get them to a camp, for example).

So basically the situation is, we have 1 lowbie character idling, and 1 lv99 killing the junk with a couple trusts to help out (healers, Kupofried, etc) and the XP is usually rather good. A 50 can get to 99 in like... 4-5 hours? with Echad/Caliber/Emperor Rings.

Unless, of course, we got a bunch of rude people AoEing mobs, lol.

I have found, though, that Ra'Kaznar is decent for our two mains tho and I definitely want to go there soon. Hopefully before the end of the week. We just got access to that place literally yesterday, lol.

[Domille]

Ok, you're PLing each other, that's a little different, but still cirdas is crap. For that situation, and those precise conditions, then yeah, cirdas is "your" best option. Ra'kaz is excellent. Too bad every good camp will have a Bot in it. I would always recommend Rakaz over cirdas, if you can get a camp with no bots.

[Aysha]

Ok, you're PLing each other, that's a little different, but still cirdas is crap. For that situation, and those precise conditions, then yeah, cirdas is "your" best option. Ra'kaz is excellent. Too bad every good camp will have a Bot in it. I would always recommend Rakaz over cirdas, if you can get a camp with no bots.

Definitely considering a trip to Ra'Kaznar, yeah for our mains. I don't have the Reive KI from there yet so I need to farm that up (tho I suppose I could buy the items from AH but still). Any camp that has 4+ mobs that isn't taken will do for me.

HOWEVER.....

We have a little side-project going on: we want to level our mules too. Getting them to Cirdas is easy, you just Spectral Jig them all the way to Cirdas while the main clears any Reives in the way and then touch the Conveyor. Boom, easy access. Ra'Kaz, however.... requires Watercrafting and Climbing, which requires a whole load of other junk, lol.

I suppose we'll just have to wait until the end of this campaign to do our mules, then the number of people in Cirdas should drop off bigtime, back to the way it was before this Returnee Fiesta started. We're on Slyph, and usually there's <5 people in the whole zone, and very few people touch the rooms near the Conveyor usually.

But it's annoying! lol. We wanted to PL our lowbies AND get decent CAP on the 99 while doing it.

Ah well.

I suppose Ra'Kaznar's waiting for us this week lol.

[Nyarlko]

Party etiquette died along with leveling parties. :( We learned how best to behave in the old days because a large chunk of our time was dedicated to the grinding process while in a group for hours at a time. Now, not only is exp gain ramped up high enough that "exp camps" are nearly an obsolete concept, but we have trusts to replace those other five people that we used to have to learn how to interact with. It really doesn't help matters that the absurd "group exp penalty" still exists, which makes it not only simpler to solo with trusts, but also more efficient since you are not lowering your exp gain by including real players. (The Level Sync system does not address this issue at all btw. You are still subject to the penalty.)

It's a lot harder to comprehend something when you are not exposed to it at all.

I'm pretty sure that at this point, a lot of players are getting their first experiences in actual parties only when they attempt to enter endgame/119+ content, and even then, it's rather likely that they are going to continue focusing on what they know how to do (soloing) whenever possible. The amount of practice in social skill usage is a tiny fraction now compared to 75cap days. Unless a newbie is picked up by a good social ls, they simply never get a chance to be taught how to get along with others. (This is part of the reason that I have a habit of picking up stray newbies whenever I run into them :3 This IS a multiplayer game after all. We should be playing with others. XD)

[Aysha]

I guess this all had a silver lining in the end -- yes, family member and I were forced out of Cirdas but this caused us to go experiment with Ra'Kaznar, we did a whole Trizek Ring worth of CAPing which got us a couple JP, and then I convinced family member to do those RoE quests involving Skirmishes and then I said "what the heck, why not try the Ambuscade too?"

We actually successfully won the Ambuscade and even did another, lol.

So I suppose something good came of it afterall. It might not sound like much, but we discovered we can actually reliably duo Yorcia Skirmish (and as such, we have access to the armors it drops) and I hope to try Ra'Kaznar Skirmish, hoping we can get at least the Primary Objective done to get the Transmelange so we can upgrade that stuff, lol.

But yeah, I miss etiquette to be honest. I understand that people don't know anything about how to group with others, but surely it's common sense that you don't kill all the mobs near where someone else is camping? I mean, come on... you don't need party smarts to know that. It's common simple courtesy that applies anywhere, even IRL -- when someone is busy somewhere, you don't get in their way. It isn't rocket science, or something you only learn by spending 500 hours camping mobs.

But then, IRL, common courtesy is an oxymoron anyways, so I suppose I should not be surprised. It's just that this game being as old as it is, and WoW and FFXIV being as popular as they are, I (wrongly?) thought that most of the players in this game are loyal vets that know better.

[OmnysValefor]

Guys, even in 2007/8 when I started, I was in parties that muscled us out though we were there first and I was in parties that muscled others out. I never liked being on either side but good camps were golden and if two parties wanted it, you shared if there was enough for the kill rate.

There was a specific path for leveling and few alternatives along the way.

Bounce around dunes->Qufim til 25->Yuhtunga->Yhoat->Crawler's Nest->Garlaige (my favorite camp in the whole game)->Altepa/QC->ToAU(50~)->I can't recall.

There were other mobs like crabs but the defense boost sucked, giraffes but their evasion and healing sucked,, skeletons but aoe blind/hp drain aoe sucked..

[Aysha]

Sure, there were some people that were rude that butted in on your camps, but my point is... it was a lot less common back then and if you did this often, you'd get a bad reputation for it.

And back then, when you had to LFG for 2 hours at a time as DD jobs, especially the ones nobody wanted, the last thing you wanted was a bad reputation for being rude and inconsiderate. Of course, this didn't stop some people (especially bards.....), but again, today, nobody cares it seems.

Camps don't seem to mean anything at all.

And what's worse, is you send one of these people a /tell, even a polite one, and you just get silence. They can't even be bothered to respond whatsoever.

[Secondplanet]

This happened to my wife and myself while JP farming, someone came in right ontop of us with their "I'm a bst and i'll pull the whole zone" attitude and we just asked for them to leave some for us and they just came out and said Camps don't exists, never existed and we're noobs for thinking that camps were ever used.

Another time we asked someone if they were using the camp as they seemed afk and they told us that they were insulted that we asked. No other explanation over why they were insulted just they were insulted by the concept of a camp.

But all around etiquette is deader then dead on this game, While i try to respect a persons camp moments later they get bored of theirs and try to take mine, i actually got yelled at for giving someone a raise cause they should just hp and come back and don't forget how people will treat you if you don't play a cookie cutter job and playstyle cause by playing the game differently you're somehow insulting all their ancestors and defiled their graves.

[Nyarlko]

I am one of those pull-the-zone types and even so, if I see others soloing singles, I tend to try to leave some pops alone near their camp. What bothers me is when someone runs past the ones I purposely did not pull to chase after me and try to take my pack. -_-;; Then try to pull the "don't see your name on them" BS, then threaten to report me to GMs when I start doing smaller/faster pulls so they aren't able to take them... Rudeness exists because players are human, humans are jerks, and it's not in our nature to be altruistic/benevolent by default. No harm is done by following the old rules of etiquette though, so let's all try to take the high road whenever we can. ^^

Note about non-cookie-cutter jobs... I got laughed at a lot in my ls in the beginning for always going /blm while leveling. They stopped laughing once I could prove that I could grind out a 2nd+ 1-99 faster than non-aoe PLing. XD Ignore the haters if you are soloing. If you want to play as SMN/PUP, you have every right to do so and no one has any right to berate you for that.. as long as you are not expecting to group up with others. If you are trying to get into a group w/ that tho... honestly, you deserve to be laughed at. XD (BTW, /PUP actually can work surprisingly well. Just not with other pet jobs since we can only have 1x pet at a time.)

[Fae]

I've made less than 16 gm calls in the 14 years or whatever since the game came out. But about half of them have been over people not willing to share.

Basically, this is the procedure I follow.
1) Kindly ask if they could leave your camp to you since you were there first. If they start arguing or ignore you and do it again, go to step 3.
2) Negotiate with them and be friendly. If this doesn't work then...
3) Call a GM, it sucks to have to do it and I'm sure the GM has other things they'd rather deal with too but without someone with authority to keep things civil, civility gets thrown out the window very quickly with some people. Note that whoever you call a GM on will probably "rage call" a GM on you in revenge so there's more than one reason not to do this if you don't have to. The GMs I think have access to the logs as well, so if you were civil and followed the SE player guidelines in that you are not supposed to negatively affect the experience of others and be considerate then it will be pretty clear what is going on. If you do this and weren't there first they'll know that too.

I don't like to feel like I can't solve my own problems but sometimes you need a GM and the service works well and they're always very nice to talk to. If I do GM call I leave the camp after the report because I don't want it to seem I was using a GM call to get what I want. Plus I'm usually upset at that point and my faith in humanity needs time to recover. :/

[Secondplanet]

I've made less than 16 gm calls in the 14 years or whatever since the game came out. But about half of them have been over people not willing to share.

Basically, this is the procedure I follow.
1) Kindly ask if they could leave your camp to you since you were there first. If they start arguing or ignore you and do it again, go to step 3.
2) Negotiate with them and be friendly. If this doesn't work then...
3) Call a GM, it sucks to have to do it and I'm sure the GM has other things they'd rather deal with too but without someone with authority to keep things civil, civility gets thrown out the window very quickly with some people. Note that whoever you call a GM on will probably "rage call" a GM on you in revenge so there's more than one reason not to do this if you don't have to. The GMs I think have access to the logs as well, so if you were civil and followed the SE player guidelines in that you are not supposed to negatively affect the experience of others and be considerate then it will be pretty clear what is going on. If you do this and weren't there first they'll know that too.

I don't like to feel like I can't solve my own problems but sometimes you need a GM and the service works well and they're always very nice to talk to. If I do GM call I leave the camp after the report because I don't want it to seem I was using a GM call to get what I want. Plus I'm usually upset at that point and my faith in humanity needs time to recover. :/

Got nicer GM's then Asura, I called a GM on 2 bsts who were collecting the entire area i was trying to jp farm in and the GM told me what they're doing isn't nice but not against the rules even though between the two of them they were clearing out over half the zone each time leaving only odd repops for me to kill, The GM told me to leave the zone and find another instead of doing something over a broken mechanic of the game. Personally i think they should limit the kill count back 2 back like how they kill it to 5, would kill their parties and make them only collect groups of 5 at a time as more would be pointless.

[Triffle]

There is a reason you get kicked out of that room which I find completely understandable. There's a bunch of places you can JP, but you decide to JP in the one spot that drops Mandragora Sprouts. That's a high level cooking ingredient for Bubbly Broths that can only be found from those mandragora in that one room.

I have myself booted people JPing out of there for that reason. There's plenty of places you can go, I'm not gonna stop farming for you.

[Aysha]

There is a reason you get kicked out of that room which I find completely understandable. There's a bunch of places you can JP, but you decide to JP in the one spot that drops Mandragora Sprouts. That's a high level cooking ingredient for Bubbly Broths that can only be found from those mandragora in that one room.

I have myself booted people JPing out of there for that reason. There's plenty of places you can go, I'm not gonna stop farming for you.

If you were on my server and you asked me nicely, I would just give you the stupid sprouts if I was JPing there.

Seriously, I vendor 5-10 stacks of those after a good session. I'd be more than happy to give them away. For free.

But instead of butting in on people, you could, you know, ask? Politely? They might just give you what you need if you let them alone.

[Triffle]

Your server must not be very competitive then. I have to fight fellow cooks for the same spot as well as JPers. I don't differentiate between any of you anymore and I prefer to just steamroll since many of you do the same thing.

On our server we have people who JP and then try to upsell stacks of the sprouts for 5x the AH value. Crafting is a competitive business and I'm going to get my stuff for free instead of paying up the nose for mats. Kudos to you if you want to offer yours up, but that never happens on Asura.

[Aysha]

People say how "awesome" Asura is all the time, but you know what? I like the lower population server. Sure, it is hard as nuts to find things like Blurred weapons on the AH, but at least we don't have to put up with that.

[Shiyo]

People show up in escha-zitah and run into mobs aggrod onto me just to intentionally hit them instead of the 10+ mobs all over the place. It's actually disgusting.

[Nyarlko]

People show up in escha-zitah and run into mobs aggrod onto me just to intentionally hit them instead of the 10+ mobs all over the place. It's actually disgusting.

Pop an AoE or two to make sure that they cant simply steal agro, then switch targets to the one they are targeting to boot them off the claim. I've seen others try to Provoke mobs off of me after my BLU/BLM did a Firaga and fail to get claim immediately, it's definitely possible to retain claim from jerks. I also tend to kill my pull if I see another group heading my way to make sure that mine are not stolen, and that I don't accidentally steal others' pulls. Only time this tactic fails is when I lag just enough for everything to appear on my screen to be {Over there.}, when they are actually {This way.} and inside my AOE range. ^^;; Usually only happens when someone else brings in a pack of 20+.

[Shiyo]

I pull the entire camp to the zone entrance, sleep the mobs and afk there for 30-60m.
Much better alternative.

[Nyarlko]

I pull the entire camp to the zone entrance, sleep the mobs and afk there for 30-60m.
Much better alternative.

If I saw someone obviously griefing like that, I would probably drop a BLUnuke or two and wipe the entire pack other than the 1-2 that were rednamed. Purely on the principle that what you are doing is intentionally being a jerk to every other player in the area. ^^ I'm sure there are others who'd be happy to do the same, regardless of motivation. lol