Looking For More Players On Cerberus.

[Shiyo]

You might have a problem finding people, but on my server there seems to be a problem of "No one wants to recruit anyone" and everyone's "full".

Nobody recruiting is a pretty big problem. On my server you can't even shout for content, and not a single linkshell will invite you. You're kinda stuck in limbo of "Wow, no linkshell is recruiting" even though you don't want to force yourself into content or ask to be carried or ask for loot, you literally only want a linkshell for a chat channel to talk to people and join people who are looking for extra bodies for content(and refuse to shout, because NO ONE shouts on valefor they simply only ask in their ls/friend lists which I'll explain why this is a thing later) which means your only way to do the majority of easier content even stuff like sr/ambu is by being in a linkshell which is LITERALLY just a chat channel at this point but they're "full" so I don't even understand the logic behind "we're full" or "not recruiting".

Then you have scaling content which makes people LOSE THEIR DAMN MINDS, they think if they invite ONE other person that the mob will suddenly become impossible to kill and that person will contribute noting so you end up in a situation where everyone's groups are "full" and everyone is in their own cliques/statics.

Stuff shouldn't scale, it makes players lose their minds and completely forget about inviting someone to help them kill faster because "They might add more hp than damage!".

My server also has this one huge linkshell that's full of awful horrible casual players which has completely turned away all good players and made them never ever ever want to shout group anything and stick to their linkshells. Problem is the good linkshells don't invite anyone in their linkshells and at this point in the game and 2017, linkshells are literally the only way to LFG for content and if you're not allowed into a good linkshell you're pretty much screwed forever.

IDK how to fix this games current state, but making mobs not scale would be a pretty great start, even though 1 player will ALWAYS add more damage than the amount a mob scales by unless they're some useless job(another dd) or just flat out bad, but you should be able to easily tell if someone's bad or not. For example, adding a redmage as your 7th slot will increase kill speed dramatically. However, there's a problem of people being stuck in their ways of using only 1 DD job x2 or pet burning or mage burning or ranger burning and if they do invite a RDM they probably won't take advantage of inundation which is the best ability in the entire game so they'll think a RDM is useless, etc.

Small servers are basically unplayable because the only groups doing stuff don't want anything to do with anyone.

[Aysha]

I'm not sure there IS a way to fix it, other than to make content easier to solo/low-man. But Heaven Forbid you should ever do such a thing in an MMORPG, even one that has servers where it is nearly impossible to find groups to do anything with.

They are basically locking a large portion of the game's content out for a large number of the few players they do have, because it is so impossible to find groups willing to take you, and a lot of that is because of unfriendly mechanics. The game seems to be designed around the sole purpose of creating cliques. This design philosophy might have somewhat worked back in the day to create tight-knit communities, but this will eventually stagnate as people slowly leave one by one, and then when the population dips low, we get what we have today, a few small groups that can do the latest content, and the rest are SOL because nobody wants to experiment or take someone new.

Then MORE content comes out, and the people who are SOL get left even further in the dust and this causes people to leave too, which I can't say as I blame them, being in a hopeless situation doesn't raise confidence or interest any. And I can tell you that poor job balance isn't helping anything either, where people are shoehorned into playing certain jobs, and newer players might not know where what job fits in, in the totem pole.

It's just a bungled mess, and I wonder if SE didn't jump ship because it looks it is not salvagable, so they'll just let it flouder and collect the sub fees for as long as possible, maybe?

What SE *needed* to do, they didn't. They needed to make more casual, low-man friendly endgame activities that one could make gradual progress with, that didn't require 6-18 players (2-3 players + trusts would have been plenty).

They seemed like they were heading towards that with Ambuscade, but then they dropped the ball with the monthly reset on points (so you can't do it gradually, you MUST do it all at once!) and some of the months are just plain stupidly unfair for low-man parties (like this stupid marbol that one-shots trusts whenever it freaking feels like it AND has a hate reset on top of that), and the fact there are no weapons or accessories (which are the hardest thing to get ahold of anything decent) other than capes (a huge grind in of itself) and "meh" rings. Oh, and there's severe job discrimination on armor too -- mages get their best sets that can be upgraded to +2 through metals, melees get stupid crappy stats on their upgradeable armor and their best sets cannot be upgraded, and don't have +2 at all.

[Shiyo]

100% of the games content can be done with 6-8 people but people dual/tri box 3-4 of those support/healer jobs so you end up where people are 3-4 manning content made for 6-8 and they don't want others to join because "muh mob is scaled up".

Mob scaling just needs to go away forever and never come back, it makes people HATE bringing more people to stuff and causes them to think silly things. There's also a problem where no one will level supports/healers and you end up where everyone wants to play a DD when you only have 2 slots AT MOST for a DD in any content in the game so you'd literally rather summon trusts or invite a mule support than invite that DD only player.

[Sirmarki]

They are basically locking a large portion of the game's content out for a large number of the few players they do have, because it is so impossible to find groups willing to take you..

People have to realise that they have to get themselves to a good standard solo before they even think bout getting into the higher level/end game content. A lot of [new] people think "Right, I've gotten myself to 99 (via paying someone to PL) now I'm going to join end game... Oh wait, why is no one inviting me in my sparks gear"? People can't just expect to jump into the highest level content with no effort in establishing ones self, when the next person has spent time and effort into being the best equipped for end game content.

[Aysha]

People have to realise that they have to get themselves to a good standard solo before they even think bout getting into the higher level/end game content. A lot of [new] people think "Right, I've gotten myself to 99 (via paying someone to PL) now I'm going to join end game... Oh wait, why is no one inviting me in my sparks gear"? People can't just expect to jump into the highest level content with no effort in establishing ones self, when the next person has spent time and effort into being the best equipped for end game content.

Not everybody is like this. I, myself, have full Ambuscade (mix of NQs and HQs) with the best 119 weapons I can find, and as many Lv99 jewelry that is reasonable for me to obtain solo. The problem I'm having, is I'm running into a wall everywhere I turn. The content is either entirely unreasonable (like there's this decent ring from Abyssea-Altepa... oh wait, you need to fight 50+ NMs to get it (because of all the NMs failing to drop the item to pop the next one)... and it's a LOT of RNG), or everything else is locked behind "GROUP NEEDED" because how dare we use our Trusts to solo stuff.

I'd love to solo more stuff, but I'm running out of soloable content that actually rewards relevant items that would actually make me better.

Heck, I even clawed and scratched my way to 1200 JP on top of that. I'm missing some spells, but some are just entirely unreasonable (like trying to get to the end of Abyssea for Mighty Guard... sigh)

[Shiyo]

If you're incapable of getting an epona's ring or finish abyssea in 119 gear the game is the last thing you should be blaming.

[Nyarlko]

Not everybody is like this. I, myself, have full Ambuscade (mix of NQs and HQs) with the best 119 weapons I can find, and as many Lv99 jewelry that is reasonable for me to obtain solo. The problem I'm having, is I'm running into a wall everywhere I turn. The content is either entirely unreasonable (like there's this decent ring from Abyssea-Altepa... oh wait, you need to fight 50+ NMs to get it (because of all the NMs failing to drop the item to pop the next one)... and it's a LOT of RNG), or everything else is locked behind "GROUP NEEDED" because how dare we use our Trusts to solo stuff.

I'd love to solo more stuff, but I'm running out of soloable content that actually rewards relevant items that would actually make me better.

Heck, I even clawed and scratched my way to 1200 JP on top of that. I'm missing some spells, but some are just entirely unreasonable (like trying to get to the end of Abyssea for Mighty Guard... sigh)

I think you only need to fight 3-4 NMs for Epona pop. Highly suggest TH8+ THF/war since using that has never taken me more than ~15-20min per pop set, and you can do nearly every proc for KIs. Like most things, that does take a bit of time/effort since a lot of lv1 event/cosmetic weapons are needed, but that applies to every job in this case. All it takes to get TH8+ is reforging relic hands and empy feet (109 feet works for this purpose, but no excuse to not 119 the hands,) which are far from impossible to solo goals.

If you're only goal is to complete Abyssea missions, then it can be done in a day, solo, by focusing solely on getting the boss clears using THF/war. Might be a "long day" tho since I can't remember how many gameday waits there were involved when starting from scratch. ^^;;

The wall you're running into when trying to solo group-based content may just mean that you might want to level/gear other jobs specifically to do so. BST works great for this in my experience, (though killspeed was rather slow when I started out) and I've seen SCH solo some silly stuff using zombie tactics, but I've never had nearly as much success when trying to do so as any melee. Partnering up with a BLM will cut your kill time by at least half when compared to solo as well, and open up more NMs that will be killable.

[Shiyo]

Any TH beyond TH3 literally doesn't matter. You should be NIN/WAR and WAR/THF for KI farming, then MNK/WAR and THF/anything(or any job/thf with a th+1 item on for at least 1 enmity action on the boss) for killing the ring NM during blunt blue proc.

[Aysha]

I never said I can't handle Abyssea mobs, I just said that it is very time-consuming and has a lot of luck factor involved and it's annoying.

Not to mention, confusing.

Sure, you can do it in 15-30 minutes if you can remember what pops what and where. But if you're going in with absolutely no knowledge of the place, the overload of information slows a player down, can cause headaches, can cause mistakes where the player has to stop and look junk up on a wiki every 5 minutes because they can't remember the ridiculously convoluted Abyssea system.

Killing the mobs? That's easy.

Finding time to wade through all the crap? Meh.

[Afania]

You might have a problem finding people, but on my server there seems to be a problem of "No one wants to recruit anyone" and everyone's "full".

Nobody recruiting is a pretty big problem. On my server you can't even shout for content, and not a single linkshell will invite you. You're kinda stuck in limbo of "Wow, no linkshell is recruiting" even though you don't want to force yourself into content or ask to be carried or ask for loot, you literally only want a linkshell for a chat channel to talk to people and join people who are looking for extra bodies for content(and refuse to shout, because NO ONE shouts on valefor they simply only ask in their ls/friend lists which I'll explain why this is a thing later) which means your only way to do the majority of easier content even stuff like sr/ambu is by being in a linkshell which is LITERALLY just a chat channel at this point but they're "full" so I don't even understand the logic behind "we're full" or "not recruiting".

99% of time, "We're not recruiting" is just a way to weed out applicants that "doesn't fit in", period.

I know more than a handful of LS that tells everyone "we're not recruiting" all the time, and yet they still invite people once in a while. Some even have officers/leaders reach out in different communities to recruit new people, and yet in public they still have this "we're not recruiting" message everywhere.

Like looking for a job, my advice is to figure out why you wouldn't fit in, by figuring out what kind of people they want. Once you figure out try to change that on your end. Then approach them with a more polite attitude, just like applying for a real job. Do not ever think you "deserve" a spot in a LS, no LS has the obligation to provide a spot to another random stranger. Instead focus on what you could benefit the team.

If you still can't get in then perhaps it's time to move on (server transfer). Not everyone work well together and sometimes it can't be helped, this is life. My in game and rl experience is, as long as you do have your own strength and isn't an ass, someone out there will want you. Even if that group/company isn't in your hometown or your preferred city/server.