Raise the minimum allowable job level in Abyssea from 30 to 70+

[Starcade]

For bad players they simply DON'T deserve the fast xp just like every other hard working players.

And it encourages more of them.

It really gets back to the problem that you have a bunch of FFXI players who don't deserve to be here and deserve to be with the immature little window-lickers who play WoW.

[Greatguardian]

And it encourages more of them.

It really gets back to the problem that you have a bunch of FFXI players who don't deserve to be here and deserve to be with the immature little window-lickers who play WoW.

You know it's bad when BG posters are advocating people playing however they like and Starcade is talking about players who suck too much to deserve the right to play.

mind = blown.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

So instead of Abyssea burning, we will be stuck in East Ronfaure [S] and Qufim? Or Astral Burning?

People are using Abyssea to level because the old way SUCKED. Trying to change it is just imposing your nostalgia on others. If people loved levelling the old way so much, they would.

No, they did it because they were lazy and wanted instant gratification. Abyssea gave everyone access to quick leveling, not just the people who happened to know a couple of SMNs and RDMs, or the people who had the money to pay those people.
Though I agree with a cap increase, it would inevitably turn people away fromt he game since it has already made itself the staple. On the flip side, a game without midgame content is lacking. We're already a game for complainers, just live with it the best you can and ride that train. Next stop FFXIWOW.(Oh wait, that was FFXIV. lol)

[Starcade]

You know it's bad when BG posters are advocating people playing however they like and Starcade is talking about players who suck too much to deserve the right to play.

mind = blown.

I'll take your blown mind even a step further.

Many of those BG players are exactly the kind of twits I'm talking about.

All BG was ever good for, to me, was fodder to send to the Special Task Force.

[Greatguardian]

For what, exactly?

I know what I'm getting into, but I dare say this might be worth the lulz.

[Starcade]

Let's see:

Admitted bot usage
Admitted RMT (on both sides of the equation)
Illegal 3rd-party program usage on a WIDE scale

and that's just for starters.

But, again:


"Fraud is generally defined in the law as an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage. Fraud may also be made by an omission or purposeful failure to state material facts, which nondisclosure makes other statements misleading."

[browolf]

if they can manage to make campaign battle attractive again that could be a reasonable stop-gap between 60ish and 75 and would support a cap on abyssea.

[Fiarlia]

I agree, to this much, to an extent. Someone who's chronically on one extreme end of the spectrum will likely stay there. However, people are not made of extremes.

I tried to clarify this in my followup post. In the context of this debate, I'm grouping anybody not on the extreme end of stupid in the "smart" category. But I still don't believe that the middle-ground people need to level the old fashioned way in order to learn their job and apply themselves. I will admit that the learning curve may be more severe for them due to this, but this is irrelevant as the argument being made is to contest that Abyssea leeching breeds morons. If you want to get into this, I will admit that middle-ground players could stand to gain something from traditional parties, but I assert it is nowhere near necessary, nor will it have a hugely negative impact upon their overall performance, especially in the long run.

This is where we diverge. The real issue up for debate that I and obviously others strongly believe (and I realize this is a subjective personal belief that neither of us can provide any evidence for) that the current situation is much more conducive to, well, the furtherance of idiots.

I'll admit it's easier for idiots to level. Yet at the same time it's easier for the smart players (again, in the context of this argument I include average and even slightly below average in the smart category, because it applies to these people just as much as the well above average players) to gain levels as well. For example, there's many derps that have a bunch of levels that were easily obtained. But now that awesome RDM you know has leveled WHM too, and possibly even a DD job if mostly mage-oriented people in your linkshell (hypothetical) are on. Maybe he's better at WHM than he was RDM, and quite possibly the only reason he leveled it was because of the ease and painlessness (subjective, I'll admit, but there are obviously people who feel/felt this way) of leveling.

You cannot seriously try and tell me that practice of leveling does not have some positive impact in the development of skill in an averagely skilled player. You just can't, it assumes people are incapable of learning.

I admitted to this above. I will concede that it can help to an extent to the average player. But you cannot tell me that not having this experience will have a permanent negative effect on the same player. An average player should, reasonably, be able to learn and adapt, through whatever means he or she chooses, regardless of the trip that got them to max level.

Furthermore, do not even dare attempt a package-deal fallacy here. Just because some gimps will always be gimps does not mean that adjustments to game balance and difficulty encouraging players to develop skill has no impact on any of them.

We must have different ideas of what constitutes a gimp. I'm not speaking of an average or even somewhat below average player who may not know the formulas and may not know that certain drops even exist (I don't expect everyone to read as much as I do). I'm talking about the people who are frustratingly bad, and either don't care that they are, make up an excuse as to why they are (such as not being able to make gil, when simple improvements could be made for less than 100k), or think that they're right, and that full teal is super awesome for nuking, or who wear STR backs on a mage job, or who fulltime dual Balance Rings and then defend their gear vehemently. The people who absolutely will not change. These are the gimps I'm referring to, and the statement stands.

Again, another bunch of fallacies. No, jobs themselves are not hard. Situations in which skill is required to play said jobs correctly can be hard. Practice improves this skill level in reasonably skilled players. Are you trying to tell me that there is nothing to be gained from practice?

Depends on the person and the job. Have any casting job that occasionally (or constantly) gets hate? You'll likely already know how to time spells between mob swings, be it for shadows, sleeps, binds, gravity, or whatever. Been a mage or a tank? You'll likely understand the value of ensuring monsters stay off the mages, though the applications of how you'd pull hate back may differ from job to job. Auto-attacking is pointless to discuss. If you're any of the higher end DD's, you'll likely understand how hate works. It's not like playing a job will only get you experience and knowledge for just that job. Many skills (player skills, not character skills) carry over, overlap or just plain become apparent by having played the game at all in any reasonably intelligent fashion. I will, however, admit that some subtleties can only be gleaned from first hand experience. In this matter, however, I will refer to an above point: any reasonably intelligent person will still be able to pick up on these nuances even after burning to cap.

Then why even play the game at that point? What would said player even be seeking to accomplish? Compare;

I got my PLD to 99, hooray!

To:

There, I finally leeched PLD to 99. Now I'll do BLM.

Doesn't sound very rewarding, does it? Why even bother making it a game? Seriously, this isn't a rhetorical question. Why play a game if you don't actually want to be challenged on some level? Guitar hero wouldn't be popular if you could win just by pushing the start button.

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v

Sure, it doesn't remove all challange from the game, but you sure can't deny it removes a portion of it. The significance, being very relative person to person.

I've done enough jobs to cap the traditional way. The only challenge to me is getting parties together with good players and hoping to find an open camp. I enjoy endgame activities, but the old way of leveling, were it the only option for leveling, is simply unappealing to me. I find literally zero challenge in beating up birds or crabs for hour on end. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. However, I also acknowledge that there are many who do not feel this way, and would prefer to level the old fashioned way. I have no problem with this, and I don't think anyone does. If someone wants to go level that way, have at it. I also realize that the exp gained in that fashion does not compare to Abyssea leeching exp. I'm all for buffing the exp obtained from other areas, in whatever way(s) would work. Make mobs give more exp (again)? Cool. Extend chain timers to make it easier to maintain chain and get more exp? Awesome. Drop the mob level requirement for getting chains in the first place (to Decent Challenge and above)? Sounds good to me. Buff FoV exp rewards (regardless of whether they touch Tabs/Gil)? I'm all for it. I have zero problem with people leveling the way they want to, and also have zero problem with making changes to enable these methods to being more equal. But the way I want to level is by leeching. And what irritates me is the people who campaign and bitch to take that ability away. Make it fair to everyone, that's the way it should be anyway. Obviously there's enough support to warrant a retooling of old-style exp.

Correct, Abyssea leeching is not the problem. The imbalance it creates is. Trust is totally irrelevant to my point.

I don't see it creating an imbalance. There's just as many idiots playing now as there were years ago. And it is relevant, since if there is any imbalance, nobody is making you participate with these people anyway. It's like the people who bitch about being /checked and refuse to turn on the filter... if you think it's that big of a problem.. filter it out. Getting yourself a group of trusted friends will effectively reduce any interactions with the stupids of the game to a very minimal amount. Don't join an Abyssea /shout exp group that's going for 18, go get a few friends, like maybe 5, and have yourself a single exp party. Despite the huge desire and trend to do exp alliances, I can assure you it's not needed. My group that goes on Sundays only has 3 people actively killing the mobs.

Furthermore, if you agree that Abyssea leeching is not the problem, you're agreeing that it's ultimately the idiots that are the problem. Where we differ is whether there is an imbalance created by by the idiots because of the leeching. Regardless of which one of us is right, the problem itself still lies with the idiots, not the leeching. Simply cut out the problem (the idiots) from your gaming experience and it honestly doesn't matter which one of us is right. Even if you are right, and there's suddenly more idiots than there used to be, so what? Don't play with them and the problem is solved.

[Fiarlia]

That's a matter of perspective. What you call forcing, I call game balance. The historically carefully maintained game balance is one of the largest appeals of FFXI and one of the highest valued by it's player base. The sheer number of these topics should be a clear demonstration of that.

This is not something that ruins the balance of the game. If any part of your argument, or the millions like it, are correct, it only creates an imbalance in the players. I still disagree with you on this point, but that's irrelevant to this point. I'll admit that game imbalance is an issue, but this has nothing to do with leeching. PLD is essentially worthless, nearly everything can be duo'd by a MNK and a WHM, and if you're soley after Abyssea procs you only need MNK+WHM/SCH+BLM/BRD+BLU/NIN for grellow and blue (blunt time). Need Red, throw in WAR+NIN. Then there's the whole topic of Atma/Cruor/Brews as well. This is game imbalance. Player imbalance, whether or not affected by Abyssea, has existed throughout the history of the game and is honestly not something that can be handled by SE. Leeching does not create any imbalance within the game itself.

Irrelevant to the discussion.

Incorrect. Check the topic title again. People want to abolish Abyssea leeching, or at the very least limit it to level 70-ish+. That's kinda been the basis for most of the discussion, and the initial point I raised that you contested was that nobody was trying to force anything upon us (those against the abolishment/restriction of leeching). Soo.... yeah, people want to make leeching stop, but nobody want to make traditional exp parties stop. Sounds like a one-sided deal to me, and if it did come to pass, would be forcing the people that don't want to exp the traditional way to exp the traditional way.

If you want something irrelevant, I'd like to state that it was Level Sync that initially killed traditional exp parties. Or you could make a case for ToAU and its bird camps.

So you haven't actually experienced the changes from the update, but you believe it's not enough anyway?

I'm not quite sure where I said I hadn't experienced it. Done an exp party the old way for hours as a means to actually level up? No. Did it to see how the values were changed with some friends who were curious? Yep.

Do not appeal to consequences, no one is trying to suck the fun out of the game for you. They are in favor of maintaining game balance.

Being forced to level the old way when there's a current way that I very much prefer would be sucking the fun out of the game for me. Regardless, it does not create game imbalance. Leeching did not make PLD suck. Leeching did nothing to game balance. If it created any imbalance whatsoever, it would only be with the playerbase. And frankly, I don't see it as possible. Not like FFXI is getting vast amounts of new subscribers and they're all idiots, or everybody that quits was a smart person. No, generally, the same people play the game that used to, maybe a few left, maybe a few joined. The same relative amount of idiots remains, and they'd have all made it to cap anyway. Perhaps it seems like there's more because most people don't play with them. Or because the gap between having 3 lunar abyssites and good atmas and not having them is so ridiculously huge that it seems that there's more, or that they're worse than they used to be. Or possibly because many people join larger groups, and more people usually means more idiots.

Really?

Yes, really. Since you seemed to think it meant that I thought it was a valid argument against leeching (or pro-creating imbalance, or whatever), let me clarify. It's an argument that people are making. It's also true, and valid. But, it's irrelevant towards the point they're trying to make. Here's the part that comes immediately following the line you are trying to make into a contradiction by taking out of context:

Though, I'll ask in return: what difference does that make? They'll be terrible whether they have one job at max level or all 20. They'll just have more flexibility when it comes to grouping with other terrible players. Again, so what? If it takes 18 terrible players to do what a group of smart players could do with 2-6, then hey, at least they can get some shit done for themselves.

Yes, Abyssea leeching gets idiots more jobs at cap than they'd likely have had before leeching. And again, so what? An idiot is an idiot, regardless of the amount of different jobs they have. This is what makes this particular reason for getting rid of leeching bullshit. The argument itself may be valid, which it is, but the application of it is not.

We all know that stupid players exist. Using them as a crutch or scapegoat to abolish Abyssea leeching is just bullshit.

[Ilax]

And it encourages more of them.

It really gets back to the problem that you have a bunch of FFXI players who don't deserve to be here and deserve to be with the immature little window-lickers who play WoW.

Those immature little window-lickers as you call them allow a company like SE to create content that you enjoy to play, same as those people that pick up your garbage every week in RL, allow you to not deal with it. Everyone they world, as far i know, there no obligation for you to invite them, and if you join an abyssea PT just because you too lazy to make your own, then sorry buddy but you have to deal with it.

No matter how many job 90 anyone have, i am never looking at this when we plan invite someone in my LS that is btw very successful, and while we at this, i also never invite people just because they have good gear, all this mean nothing to me.

As side note, just keep in mind that probably the main reason WoW is more popular and more successful, they don't close the door to anyone... (even the immature little window-lickers as you say)