Casual XP is better than LFG.

[Aquilla]

There are two threads here asking for abyssea lv cap to be raised, and complaining about how abyssea ruined their xp. Rather than post there about how much I miss the day I quit DRK after LFG for 13 hours waiting on an old school style party, I thought I'd throw my hat in the proverbial ring and say something that needs to be said.

Casual XP beats LFG.

The XI party system is great, and I am certainly not playing a MMO to play by myself questing XP till level cap. SC+MB was fun to execute, and I could spend pages writing about parties I had that worked well. The parties that didn't work are actually relatively rare, and the uncouth oafs that ruined them a rare occurence.

LFG, however, has always been a low point of XI, and it is not something I want to bring back. To illustrate, I'd like to use my crystal ball and look back through time, back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I leveled first.

I played the game with some friends, so I had two of them to make a party with. I was leveling my blm then, and my friends were thf and war mains, respectively. We weren't a terribly nooby bunch. We farmed for all the requisite pieces of gear, taking time off leveling to get hauby/SH/elemental torque, and such. We'd bring food, entertaining emotes and pull macros, and had the skillchain down to a near-perfect art. Sure, there were a few mishaps when the war had to first voke and the thf got distracted by something shiny...but hey, the scars just add to that warrior look.

Three out of six! That's half a party done, right? Well, finding the other three jobs wasn't what I'd call enjoyable or easy. Sifting through all the players who would flag up, and then not answer my question because of either language differences, rank differences, or just plain 'do you have a brd? no thanks' differences, we'd usually end up with a pally, although ninja tanks graced our party a few times.

In the healer department, we partied with more than a few excellent summoners, although in some cases, not getting a whm meant losing our tank. The hardest part, of course, was nabbing that elusive rdm. I'd keep a list of friendly rdms, just so I can /sea them and ask them if they'd like to party, and even then, it was a tossup. More than once, we didn't party for lack of refresher. Occasionally, we partied without a refresher. Some of those parties were good, but that didn't make the partymaking process any easier the next day with a different tank/healer combo.

Finding all six people, no small feat to anyone who ever tried to make a party, meant that we got to find a camp, and there were more cases than I care to count when we would find every viable camp taken. Or, we would get a camp, and then have it taken by a late-coming party.

Still, we leveled. We clawed that xp together bit by bit, over weeks and months. Was it bad? Yes, yes it was.

There are stock answers to this, of course. Some people had highly active linkshells where they could always find a perfect set up. Some people were bards and red mages and never had to lfg for longer than a minute. Some people, myself included, simply tried to match up jobs to level -- as in, I leveled ninja with my friend's drk, and monk with my sister's bard...

I don't miss those days. Leveling like that isn't too bad when you're new to the game, but having played it for a few years I do not want to find myself doing that. If someone hit the magic rewind button and I had to do that every time I wanted to level a new job, I'd probably not play.

Over time, we got different ways to get xp, in order to alleviate that kind of pressure. We got FoV and level sync. Both of these were good additions that made it possible for people to duo/trio in a way that wasn't there before. I got a bit better at playing the game myself, and I could duo/trio reasonably well.

Leveling in an Aby alliance wasn't my cup of tea, honestly. It felt impersonal, it felt somewhat dull and didn't quite have that fun factor.

Then, my sister asked me to help her level her blm up. I went as mnk/dnc, and we did the dhalmel dominion ops in aby altep. You know what? It was fun. She leveled from 35-47 in one evening, and she was able to keep her skills capped the entire time. The lv difference didn't bother us, and we got a few seals in the process. It was a decent clip -- definitely a lot faster if we tried duoing outside aby -- and slower than a fullblown alliance, and just right.

I liked the freedom to be my lv 90 monk, and to use all the skills and shinies I earned leveling that job that high. I liked going anywhere I wanted in aby without worrying about being overcamped or not having a camp. I liked going just slow enough to be able to talk and have a good time without making piddly amount of xp. It was casual, and it was fun.

Do not bring back the LFG or nerf the fun out of aby, SE. There is nothing stopping people who want to form ye olde xp parties, any more than there was anything stopping people from forming sc+mb parties in the ToAU tp burn era. However, game changed and grew. This is a good thing.

Thank you for your attention, to anyone who read this far!

[Runespider]

Do not bring back the LFG or nerf the fun out of aby, SE. There is nothing stopping people who want to form ye olde xp parties, any more than there was anything stopping people from forming sc+mb parties in the ToAU tp burn era. However, game changed and grew. This is a good thing.

Yes there is, leaders will make aby leech parties and not normal xp parties, excluding the other 5 people that they would of invited if leeching wasn't so easy who then have to go do FoV solo. People can't go have fun in parties cause the people that woudl make a pt go leech instead and for everyone else (for who leeching isn't an option at all) they can't even have a 2nd best option of oldschool pt invites. Fyi this covers a lot of players.

If there was a way for every low level to leech or group xp in aby to make use of this min level req there would be less of an argument but the leeching thing in its current state is for the few while everyone else just has to suck it up and solo. On something as important as the only social party system most players can get being destroyed so the few can leech their jobs up it's insane how it is.

This isn't a problem for me since I've capped every job I wanted to level, but watching what my sister went through otw to 90 showed me how bad the current system is for most normal players.

[Greatguardian]

Overworld parties don't need to be an entire 6 players just like Abyssea alliances don't need to be an entire 18. Move to signet areas to see an increased exp sharing bonus in parties under 6 people (these are the areas with FoV anyways).

I'm tired of hearing about "human nature" and about how there doesn't exist a single soul on ffxi who would actually make or go to an overworld party. There are obviously enough people willing to do so to crappify half the front page of General Discussion. Find these people, party with them.

If it's simply that the ever so righteous crowd here doesn't actually need EXP but is super concerned for the welfare of newer players, how about exp'ing with those newer players yourself if it's that big of a deal? A mere two people does a duo make, and a duo is plenty capable of bringing in decent enough exp. Add more as per availability.

And yes. I'd rather throw my character off a bridge than relive the wondrous "24-hours lfg with no invite" sessions of ye olde 'good times'. Have any of these players even been around long enough to remember when counting the days one could flag up on Drg or Whm (heaven forbid Pup after it was introduced) without a single invite was practically an amateur sport? I'm willing to bet that has something to do with it.

[Catsby]

It would be nice to get EXP from sources others than killing things. quests, missions, turn ins for guilds. MMM was a step in the right direction but it's far too centralized and can easily lead to zones shutting down. Abyssea is also what I would call a step in the right direction if only there penalties for standing around and mooching the EXP.

It would also be nice to gain more than 1 level from a source as well. At this point there isn't much of a reason to prohibit players from gaining multiple levels at once. Individual levels of EXP hold less meaning now that the level cap is so high and will only become more meaningless as the cap gets higher. Combine that with current generation light-speed-do everything-quickly MMO pacing and you can see why grinding exp monsters changes from an experience to a chore.

Personally, I love killing monsters for EXP but after killing the 100th monster in a row I'm usually hungry, needing to use the bathroom and thinking about doing something else. If there was an NM system similar to ZNM where the reward was strictly EXP and tons of it I would be in heaven.
Kill NM > get key item > turn key item in for 30,000. hell yeah.

[Aquilla]

Runespider, do as Greatguardian suggests -- try it, it might be fun! I've duoed a variety of jobs with my siblings throughout the years. Alternatively, if you know at least four of those other normal players, get together and xp outside Abyssea. The camps are free now, and even though you've leveled everything to cap, I'm sure that in spirit of socialization you will level sync with them.

Greatguardian & Catsby, thank you for your responses. Both of you touch on key facts about XI. It's an older game, it has changed, and we have changed as well. Killing 1000 monsters gets old no matter how you do it. Also, not everyone likes being a jack-of-all trades and leveling every job to cap.

The reason why Aby is a step in the right direction is that the low-level isn't necessarily mooching. In the proto-aby-alliance, the low level leech could bring keys and be useful to the rest of the guys in the alliance. I believe this is still the case, but like I said, I'm not a huge fan and I discovered that duo is much more fun.

Personally, I'd much rather duo in abyssea than PL someone outside. PLing is abominably boring, both from the PL-er side and the PL-ed side.

I agree that there should be multiple options for gaining XP, but I don't agree with penalizing players. Putting in roadblocks in front of the players to force the leveling to be longer than it needs to be will just antagonize the gaming populace. See, for example, the backlash against XIV's many, many obvious roadblocks to leveling anything in that game.

MMOs are a social experience. I don't advocate speed-leveling or rushing through the content -- on the contrary. I want to take my time. I want to be able to enjoy the game's content without needing to rush, without needing to join end-game uber-shells who will mandate my playtime. I'm okay with not having the best, uberest, leet-est gear, and I'm okay with having to work at having the good gear. Mainly, the game should be fun.

[Ilax]

Mainly, the game should be fun.

It resume enough right there.