There just isn't that many people to play FFXI with anymore.

[FrankReynolds]

I have been on around 5PM~9AM EST. Admittedly I play at weird times, but the majority of what I do with large groups happens between 4~midnight EST.

I had the shout page from FFXIAH up yesterday pretty much all day on my server while I doing dominion ops in altep in order to PL my mule (went from 30-68). I saw one guy try to get a group together for Jeuno tier 5 and 6. He was shouting for 4.5 hours.

I saw one Toji run that took a little over an hour to form (they only wanted 3/4 song bards as usual). They also specifically said "No Monks please".

I saw one NNI shout for floor 100 wins... he was selling them at 10,000,000 per run.

I saw 1 plasm farm group (didn't pay attention to how long it took).

I saw 1 guy offering to pay someone to help him enter salvage.

I saw a guy trying to get people to help him farm +2 items from alfard... He wanted everything but the fangs.

I saw the same guy looking for people for the same worm party several times throughout the day.

Everything else was basically just people shouting to sell items.

Cerberus is a Dead zone for those not in a good LS.

[Demon6324236]

Could someone clarify this for me?

Drops an Ingot which only comes from a few specific NMs in VW and Legion, no one does Legion and its not exactly shout-able still so people do the VWNMs for a 1% shot at it.

[Eijii]

Yeah not that many at least for me on Carbuncle.. everyone on carbuncle is mainly EU or JP so being an eastern player there isn't really anything going on 7pm est - midnight in terms of LS outside of the 2 main NA LSs.

[erish]

Coming from someone in one of the few big shells still about these days.

I agree with alot of whats been said here but to show the view point of those still in these shells. Most of us are hurting for members big time, its not due to lack of people wanting to join its simply getting people good enough to join. There was a comment in here that Abyssea created alot of people with big attitudes and honestly i think thats a large part of the problem with the community all around.

Many people are trying to skip content and push themselves forward without clearing the content they really need to make there jobs worthwhile. As an example we have had members who were let in because they said they had a geared RDM, event time rolls around and they dont have any af3, phalanx2 or even refresh2 ( if your a cerb native im sure you know this taru whm lol ), needless to say they didnt last. This seems to be common place these days with people wanting to apply to the endgame ( i use this term losely ) shells.

That being said its also alot to do with the design of these encounters, one mistake such as a missed stun or melee not using there DT sets correctly can basically cost the run, The margin for error is pretty slim and extremly punishing should you mess up. Add to this that alot of these fights are also on time limits, DD are required to push the NM down quickly and if we are honest most peoples gear is not good enough to accomplish this. Again there are many reasons for this but its just one of those things that contribute to people not getting invited into linkshells/delve bosses w/e really.

I dont think there is any real quick solution to this but its not something we should ignore and hope it goes away.

[FrankReynolds]

Coming from someone in one of the few big shells still about these days.

I agree with alot of whats been said here but to show the view point of those still in these shells. Most of us are hurting for members big time, its not due to lack of people wanting to join its simply getting people good enough to join. There was a comment in here that Abyssea created alot of people with big attitudes and honestly i think thats a large part of the problem with the community all around.

Many people are trying to skip content and push themselves forward without clearing the content they really need to make there jobs worthwhile. As an example we have had members who were let in because they said they had a geared RDM, event time rolls around and they dont have any af3, phalanx2 or even refresh2 ( if your a cerb native im sure you know this taru whm lol ), needless to say they didnt last. This seems to be common place these days with people wanting to apply to the endgame ( i use this term losely ) shells.

That being said its also alot to do with the design of these encounters, one mistake such as a missed stun or melee not using there DT sets correctly can basically cost the run, The margin for error is pretty slim and extremly punishing should you mess up. Add to this that alot of these fights are also on time limits, DD are required to push the NM down quickly and if we are honest most peoples gear is not good enough to accomplish this. Again there are many reasons for this but its just one of those things that contribute to people not getting invited into linkshells/delve bosses w/e really.

I dont think there is any real quick solution to this but its not something we should ignore and hope it goes away.

I think it's due to an overly optimistic attitude from the devs.

See they think that if they make really hard content that only large groups of well geared people can beat, then people will be motivated to step up their game and form large shells to get the necessary gear / jobs and beat it.

Wishful thinking.

What actually happens is: A few LS actually do beat the content regularly, A fair number of people use gil they have made on some other event (and / or just buy the gil) to pay the big LS to do it for them because they don't have the time, jobs, gear, desire, or w/e to do the content properly, and a another large portion of the populace just up and say "Screw it. I guess I don't get to have nice things. Why do I play this again?". The longer this goes on, the bigger the gap between the haves and the have nots becomes.

Is it the people's fault? Yes and no. People do have shitty attitudes. That is their fault. The devs could do a lot to prevent those shitty attitudes from ruining the game though. Programming is far easier to do than changing the attitudes of thousands of people.

[Kojo]

I dunno, I'm not here to make a scene or whine about quitting or anything, but I cancelled my sub. I've just lost interest, I'm not interested in the grindy events in SoA. I've been testing XIV and it seems more doable, for me personally, I can either sit playing from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, or I can play and walk away. I don't hold hatred for XI, XI provided me with entertainment for years and quitting was actually very painful for me, but I just needed to do it. I think alot of people are like this, they just aren't interested in the new stuff, though many currently playing are, the FFXI population has been spoiled by Abyssea, Abyssea killed the HNM days and replaced the camping with pop items. I quit end game before Abyssea so I saw Abyssea as enjoyable, but after Abyssea, this new content in SoA is... well, not so attractive on an aging community who now are in serious relationships, living their lives, in college, married, have kids, etc.

That's my take on it, disgree if you want, it doesn't really matter to me anymore. But I wish you all luck in XI and hope you enjoy whatever is to come. It's been a fun 9 years for me, and I'm grateful for them, but I'm moving on.

[Vivivivi]

Not disagreeing with the OP necessarily, but things are changing for sure. All of my previous social linkshells have dispersed into Delve or other event shells. I don't consider myself has "hardcore" about the game as I once was, so I'm not interested in a delve static. As a result there are a lot less random fun things to do, since typically the majority of shouts you'll see on my server are to fill a spot from a static group with specific requirements.

I think Delve is great content overall, but it's not very pick up group friendly unless you're doing a mediocre plasm farming run, which then becomes very boring. I've been on a few runs with attempts to fight all of the NMs and by contrast, that was insanely fun, but again since it was mostly a pick up group, we could only progress past the third NM. Additionally, being a pickup group, there was no opportunity to "learn" from our mistakes because that same group of 18 people won't be doing it together again.

I think it's clear the days of 18 person static groups are over. I don't think 18-36 person content is bad in the games current state, I enjoyed most of the wildskeeper reives I did, VW mostly worked also for this.

[Zumi]

In a 12 hour period I saw this in the yells/shouts

-someone wanting to buy Ocelomeh head, Mustela Feet
-Plasm farm morimar fields, need dd whm brd cor, sac
-shouting for a group for jewel and stone of voyage
-a shout to sell HMP for 70k
-Another Plasm farm needing Sac, cor brd and whm
-A guy wanting to buy Itzapopatol Pops for 500k each
-Someone wanting to buy all dynamis currency for 3k / 300k each
-A guy wanting to sell HMP for 80k each
-Trolls attacking 1/5 generals, gather together al zahbi
- Yet another Plasm farm morimar fields wanting monk and cor
- A shout for EXP party on abyssea frogs.

Any given day its something similar to this. Why do I even bother playing this game anymore? Its so boring without a endgame linkshell, your stuck pretty much with your choice of morimar plasm farms, abyssea exp, or random seal/+2 farm in abyssea.

[Demon6324236]

So make a group for something? I made my groups for Meebles, took about 20 minutes last night to get my party going and we did a T1 run. I doubt you would have a hard time getting together a group for events few people do since few people do them, everyone does plasm so everyone is burnt out on it, no one does Meebles, so a lot of people want to try it or need things from it. If you just wait for shouts, expect to be disappointed.

[Frankbrodie]

As a gamer since about 1976 it's my opinion that people just change.
In regards to playing habits I mean.

Over an 11 year period (this games life span so far) you're going to see massive changes in people's attitudes. And what they want to, or are prepared to do.

The massive mistake I see happening on all the online forums that I visit to read about FFXI, is that because the average person who uses the forums is a dedicated hardcore player, they assume that that is the norm within the game.
- It's not.

Probably 80-90% of the people playing FFXI just play it for something to do. As a 'game' if you will.
Dressing up and running around thumping big monsters sort of thing.
Crafting because it's something you can do if you can only log on for 10-15 minutes at a time.

No one would sensibly go back to 35 years ago when we sat in our living rooms watching Commodore 64 games take 20 minutes to load a game from a cassette tape.
But these things happened. And they changed over the years. To the point that I can now load games in an instant a lot of the time if I want to play something offline that loads quickly.

And FFXI changed too.
And like it or not, the devs in my opinion do know that the vocal minority of 10% of hardcore players, are NOT the ones that will kill the game if they all leave. It's the 90% of casual bumming around players like myself that they are trying to keep most of all.