Fast leveling in Parties - hot spots

[Arcon]

- "The real game starts at Lv99, everything before that is boring."
Let's start the game at cap and because developers can't keep up in content, players will find standing in town much more exciting.

That's only natural and is the case for every MMORPG ever, and will always remain that way. The longer people play, the more the average level will shift to the upper end, which means that's where the content needs to be. So of course content will be centered around end levels. And the longer a MMORPG lives, the more content will be released for said levels. So if a MMORPG is around for as much time as FFXI has been, a bulk of the content will be designed for high level players. Now the development team has to ask themselves what a person wanting to level a new job will want: do they wanna spend weeks of grinding it through all the levels again like they did five times before? Or do they want it because they saw someone else play it at 99 and thought it could be a fun job? Or maybe even useful for an event?

If it's the latter two, they won't be able to play it like they want to unless they go through weeks of torture. And it gets worse the longer the game goes on, because the higher the average level shifts, the less people will be willing to EXP, meaning it only gets harder to get there. EXPing now with the previous system would be next to impossible because almost everyone who wanted to level a job has leveled it. And casual leveling of another job wouldn't happen, because it wasn't worth it unless you really planned on fully utilizing that job.

- "Grinding doesn't teach you to play your job."
Question asked by a Lv99 Samurai: "Hey guys, is Tachi: Enpi a good WS?"

Quote by a Lv75 career SAM who just got Byakko's Haidate: "Wiki says I can self-SC with Meikyo Shusui, but I don't have that WS."

- "The old grind is still there, you have options you're not taking advantage of."
Almost anyone and everyone who enjoyed the type of game-play FFXI once had have gone because it is gone. The majority of those that remain have little to no interest in going back to it, and therefore the option is a lie.

It definitely is harder, because the infrastructure is worse. That's not a bad thing though. If you can't find five people to level the way you want, then it's a good thing SE removed that option, because obviously it isn't popular.

- "Every LS I join falls apart after a few weeks/months."
A community of players whose primary focus is getting it done via the greasiest rail now available have not the time to form bonds made from extended hours playing together in achieving a common goal. A rolling stone gathers no moss.

First, wanting to level up quickly does not equate to wanting to finish the game as quickly as possible. If people wanted that, they wouldn't be playing a MMORPG. Second, the majority of EXPing did not happen within a linkshell. It was either shouting or flagging up and waiting for random people to invite you. Sure, LS parties did happen, but that wasn't where bonds were formed. It was during static mission groups, doing events daily with the people around you, talking to them regardless of what you were doing, even if you never saw each others' characters. There are still linkshells that have been around for years, and there were a myriad of linkshells that dried out and disbanded within weeks. The only reason you notice it more these days is because the population in general is lower.

- "Just because you enjoy the grind doesn't mean the whole existing community must change for you."
I don't expect you to change. I expect you to walk out the same door you walked in through. Your short-sighted tunnel-vision has degraded this game from a time-consuming tedious adventure experienced throughout all of its areas into a starry-eyed quest for gear and personal glory.

Then you expect something entirely unrealistic. Take a look at FFXIV. Why do you think anyone at all kept playing after that disastrous start? Because they knew the game was going to change. They saw something was worth staying for, and trusted that time would fix the rest. That is the true nature for every MMORPG, they all change with time.

Developers have adopted a wholly contradictory approach to MMORPG's as of late: "Let's get them to the end as quickly as possible, so that when they get to the end, they'll have little reason to keep logging in."

Completely wrong. You cannot get to the end quickly. You can get to the end of EXPing quickly. But the game does not consist of EXP, it never did, and it shouldn't be. EXP is the first step of the journey, and it's one of many.

[Waldrich]

I just got Eyeballed.

[Ceinwyn]

It definitely is harder, because the infrastructure is worse. That's not a bad thing though. If you can't find five people to level the way you want, then it's a good thing SE removed that option, because obviously it isn't popular.

I can aggre on this point with Eyeballed since i loved the lv grind.
It made the game enjoyable because u could always just log in and lv ure favourite jobs.
You was able to meet new people and effectively play with em in a 6 man group.
There was teamplay all the way, every job had its uses and u had something to do,
also there was nothing to hold u back from exploring vana'diel.

Nowadays, u just leech ure job up to 99 like a idiot with a IQ of 10 within few days and then u can hunt
some unnecessary lv 99 gear pieces aka wow style after u've finished ure af gear.
That's what the the game has turned into and it's incredible sad.
And i think they main reason noone is doing old style partys because it's senseless with abyseea out not that it isnt welcome, like eyeballed already said most people who enjoyed the game already left anyway with some coming back sometimes, like me, hoping for a change but i can't see much enjoyable in this game anymore.
I will be glad for clarification if there is content i'm missing who isnt totally senseless and worth the time, where u can play in partys, talk to people, have a challenge with some kind of exploration,progress and just have fun. I think such content has become incredibly rare.

All these resulted useless low lv areas and resulting useless crafts,gear and only a proof to me that SE
1. has got no idea what they are doing to the game or and this is more likely
2. just wants to finish it with some kind of "we have enough of this game, lets just do what we want and see what happens, if it fails, people who dont lke will go to ffxiv anyway and the addicted with no life will stay anyway, lolz" statement

Actually I'm hoping for FFXIV being good but we'll see. I'm hoping for a bright future tough.

[Arcon]

I can aggre on this point with Eyeballed since i loved the lv grind.
It made the game enjoyable because u could always just log in and lv ure favourite jobs.
You was able to meet new people and effectively play with em in a 6 man group.
There was teamplay all the way, every job had its uses and u had something to do,
also there was nothing to hold u back from exploring vana'diel.

None of this is even remotely true. You could not just log in and level, sometimes you had to wait days to get invited to a party. On the other hand, that is possible now, because you get more EXP solo than you got in an EXP party back in the day.

And many jobs were not welcome. BLM were shunned from parties, SMN were only used as healers, and only if nothing else was found, and weak DDs never even had a chance. BST and PUP were prejudiced out of the entire system. It was very exclusive and many jobs did not have their uses.

There was no teamplay, if people sucked the entire party disbanded, idiot tanks moved away from Trick Attack, idiot WARs didn't voke off healers, red mages thought they should DD, everyone just did what they thought was right, and often no one had a clue.

And how is the current system stopping you from exploring Vana'diel? Or are you referring to the camp hunting, because everything halfway decent was taken all the time?

I will be glad for clarification if there is content i'm missing who isnt totally senseless and worth the time, where u can play in partys, talk to people, have a challenge with some kind of exploration,progress and just have fun. I think such content has become incredibly rare.

Then what do you call Voidwatch, Limbus, Abyssea, Einherjar, Legion, Meeble Burrows, and literally every event ever? Every event that isn't EXP, that is, because except for the "talking to people" part, none of what you mentioned applied to EXP. There was no challenge, there was no exploration, you only went to the same camps in Valkurm > Qufim > Jungle > Garlaige > CN > Kuftal/QSC > Birds. Before WotG and Level Sync, that is, afterwards it just because Valkurm > Qufim > Jungle > Garlaige > Birds > different Birds > different Birds > different Birds. At best.

Question to you, have you ever even done anything that wasn't EXP?

Nowadays, u just leech ure job up to 99 like a idiot with a IQ of 10

Reading this sentence feels pretty ironic.

[Eyeballed]

That's only natural and is the case for every MMORPG ever, and will always remain that way. The longer people play, the more the average level will shift to the upper end, which means that's where the content needs to be. So of course content will be centered around end levels. And the longer a MMORPG lives, the more content will be released for said levels. So if a MMORPG is around for as much time as FFXI has been, a bulk of the content will be designed for high level players. Now the development team has to ask themselves what a person wanting to level a new job will want: do they wanna spend weeks of grinding it through all the levels again like they did five times before?

While this might be true for FFXI, there is at least one other newly-released MMO I have experience with that has embraced the same attitude toward minimizing the grind timesink which after a number of months those who were ambitious (most) to complete the content that existed found themselves with caps across the board and shortly after left standing around with their hands in their pockets. You can implement the greased-rail grind in an MMO such as XI that already has a lot of content in place, but you can't do it with a new MMO which potentially needs the grind as a buffer while new content is being created and implemented. An extremely gradual release from the constraints of a classic grind is more in order than going full-throttle from the get-go.

Quote by a Lv75 career SAM who just got Byakko's Haidate: "Wiki says I can self-SC with Meikyo Shusui, but I don't have that WS."

Fair enough, but that sounds like idiocy more so than ignorance. Still don't buy the notion that someone who has relatively no experience at their job due to afk-leveling and other forms of speed-grinding as opposed to someone who's forced to pay attention and invoke every ability and spell in their repertoire holds any equal or greater sway in ensuring the majority of players have learned at least the basics of their job and role. To me, that's just common sense; If all you needed in life was crash courses, there'd be little need to go to school 1/4 of your life learning the basics.

It definitely is harder, because the infrastructure is worse. That's not a bad thing though. If you can't find five people to level the way you want, then it's a good thing SE removed that option, because obviously it isn't popular.

It isn't popular with the current players, which in relation to what I've said, the whole of those players who enjoyed or didn't mind it have gone. To say it isn't popular is skewed to the subject group. Kind of like going into a Japanese sushi bar and asking everyone if they like tacos.

First, wanting to level up quickly does not equate to wanting to finish the game as quickly as possible. If people wanted that, they wouldn't be playing a MMORPG. Second, the majority of EXPing did not happen within a linkshell. It was either shouting or flagging up and waiting for random people to invite you. Sure, LS parties did happen, but that wasn't where bonds were formed. It was during static mission groups, doing events daily with the people around you, talking to them regardless of what you were doing, even if you never saw each others' characters. There are still linkshells that have been around for years, and there were a myriad of linkshells that dried out and disbanded within weeks. The only reason you notice it more these days is because the population in general is lower.

I'll try to be more clear in what I meant by this. People tend to form stronger bonds when they've endured times of struggle and hardship and overcame. The more they are subjected to these instances, the stronger the bond becomes. Granted, for the seasoned player, the grind is more second-nature than learning experience, but also part of the extended challenge is have a weaker player(s) in your group whom you have the opportunity to reach out to and teach to be better - therefore bonding. What when the weak players' inadequacies are virtually nullified because they have been supplemented by the potentials of 17 other people fighting EP mobs?

Then you expect something entirely unrealistic. Take a look at FFXIV. Why do you think anyone at all kept playing after that disastrous start? Because they knew the game was going to change. They saw something was worth staying for, and trusted that time would fix the rest. That is the true nature for every MMORPG, they all change with time.

"Anyone at all" being the operative phrase. It's hard to speculate exactly why so, so many have left the game up to this point, (certainly not because it's changed in the ways that keep people's interest), but I can tell you that both the "for" and "against" fast-grinding groups have seen major losses from both sides. So it's hard to say in that regard. What I can say is, because of the mere fact that respectable numbers from opposing sides exist who argue back and forth, the word "popular" is a bit of a misnomer. Having said that, on to the last point...

Completely wrong. You cannot get to the end quickly. You can get to the end of EXPing quickly. But the game does not consist of EXP, it never did, and it shouldn't be. EXP is the first step of the journey, and it's one of many.

As I said before, you can't really use FFXI as an accurate model for implementing the fast-track to endgame. By the time it became a realization, the game already had loads of content and a Lv75 cap to suffice its existence. In my opinion, raising the level cap and implementing Abyssea-type EXP gains equals no level grind as a timesink, but a new type of grind
known as spammable luck-based content. You're still fighting the same mob over and over and over again, except in this case, the "endgame", this is what you have to look forward to and not the path you must endure to get to your ends. For some reason people contend that it's something new and preferable.

[Ceinwyn]

Question to you, have you ever even done anything that wasn't EXP?

Not much.
Because i enjoyed the lv progress and now where its gone...well...
I'm not a fan of endgame content in generel to be serious.
I like beautiful areas, atmosphere, teamplay, to lv different jobs, do some quests and missions.
I could still do this solo but thats kind of boring without other people.

Maybe it wasnt perfect, maybe not every job was happy like bst and smn or blm because
of the usual colibri in mid to endlv but at last u could still log in and look for group and if u would get lucky u would join a party and kill some vt-it mobs in a low man group and while u look u could do something else.
With a tank, and a healer, maybe a supporter and some dd's.
You would hang around a bit and get a few lvs.
Next day, maybe u go valkurm with a lower job and do the same.
U get the idea, different jobs, no ep kills, teamplay not abyssea la theine the whole way.

Just because some people dont teamplay doesnt mean there wasnt any btw and little exploation better than none SE could have improved this by changing areas or mobs so more are intresting but of course they didnt.

It was a simple changing entertaining party of the game i enjoyed most.
The game took a bad direction in my opinion but i guess some enjoy the actual meta for whatever reason.
There are plenty of better games with more features and the same as ffxi since it headed this direction of speed lvling.

[Prrsha]

You are not alone Ceinwyn. My wife and many of my old LS members feel the same way and I see posts regarding this grow in forums daily.

My take on the issue: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...aiting!/page11

[Chocobits]

I've literally never done a low level GoV. How much xp can you reasonably expect? I usually did Qufim 18-28 averaging 26k/hr with a roaming group.

[Mirage]

Good gusgen mines page 1 is up to 25-30k exp if you bring in ghouls whenever you are out of skeleton soldiers. Limit is around level 25. Exp varies greatly based on how many characters in the alliance have native h2h skill .

Good crawlers nest page 1 is 60-70k if your group is efficient and not stupid. Lasts as long as you have at least one party member below 57 for each party. Highest efficiency is naturally when you have several characters capped to the early 50s instead of early 40s. It is especially nice if you have a soboro sam capped higher than 50. Characters below 40 have limited value as damage dealers, due to lack of gear availability(AH/NPC/CP).

Good Bostanieux Oubliette is about the same as CN if you do bat trios and big bats, but let you skill up your combat skills a lot more, as well as giving you more money and tabs. Additionally, you're no longer dependent on as low a level sync to keep the party going, characters below lv60 have limited value as damage dealers, especially if they suffer from lack of gear availability. Cleaving bloodsuckers in the lower levels of Bostanieux can get you over 100k/h with a half-full alliance where some of them are lv99. Page 1 (bats) ends at level 71, page idkwhat (bloodsuckers) grants exp all the way to lv99.

I haven't done kuftal tunnel a lot, but more than 50k/h shouldn't be hard to get there, if you pay attention and alternate crabs/lizards accurately and at high efficiency. It is probably possible to get 60-70k there too. These also don't have a upper level limit, so anyone at any high level can help out to increase the exp.

[Rustic]

Let's also think about it this way.

Exp alone is not by which FFXI can form a "grind" situation in which people form a party and go out and slap the tar out of the local monster population.

The classic example is relic weapons/currency or mythics, but it's applicable to any new content as well. Put in some new skills and spells that can only be acquired through "bring us X item + Gil". Let's call it Shiny.

Have Shiny most effectively acquired via parties and work like Signet/crystals- if the mob gives exp and you have the expansion buff, it can give Shiny, and the less pleasant it is to kill (relative to your party/you), the better it's odds of Shiny and perhaps even more of it. Ganking the equivalent of colibri? Low odds of Shiny. Chaining down monsters that require a party to be on the ball to deal with the constant stream of nasty debuffs and whatnot? Good odds of Shiny. Beating the heads in of some NM? Definitely Shiny and the usual NM item goodies as well. Heck, we can even make different kinds of Shiny that you'll need some of each for the REALLY good stuff.

Sound familiar? Of course it does, stuff like that is how FFXI's kept people playing in expansions even with capped jobs.