Please consider reducing the grind for casual content

[Rubeus]

This has degenerated and I'm going to ask you to keep it civil. First of all, I've played this game since U.S. release, so no, I'm not "casual" -- I'm just tired of having to break my back every update on the treadmill of grinding. We're losing players, you should appreciate that we need subscriptions so you have something to play. Also? People are allowed to play however they want. BSTs have formed LSs and played solo since they came out. It takes all kinds. Stop being inconsiderate just because someone disagrees with you.
Also? even if you reduced the grind by half, there's still 22 jobs and a mountain of other things to do. this whole "people would quit the game and i hate it when ppl ask for everything to be handed to them" mentality has GOT to disappear. Realize that reducing the grind by half would still be a YEAR of work for 22 jobs.
Do the math yourself if you don't believe me.

[Protey]

This has degenerated and I'm going to ask you to keep it civil. First of all, I've played this game since U.S. release, so no, I'm not "casual" -- I'm just tired of having to break my back every update on the treadmill of grinding. We're losing players, you should appreciate that we need subscriptions so you have something to play. Also? People are allowed to play however they want. BSTs have formed LSs and played solo since they came out. It takes all kinds. Stop being inconsiderate just because someone disagrees with you.
Also? even if you reduced the grind by half, there's still 22 jobs and a mountain of other things to do. this whole "people would quit the game and i hate it when ppl ask for everything to be handed to them" mentality has GOT to disappear. Realize that reducing the grind by half would still be a YEAR of work for 22 jobs.
Do the math yourself if you don't believe me.

so what. none of it is mandatory. all content has been completed without JP. just because something exists doesn't mean you are entitled to it. you don't have to break your back, just don't get something... zomg the humanity of it all. heaven forbid you actually have to work for something. your mentality is the one that needs to disappear. This is an MMO, designed around group play. is it still possible to solo? sure. are you going to be able to do all content? nope. nor should you be able to. If you want to be so anti-social as to not go form groups to go do content.... why not just go play a standalone game instead of an MMO? If you are in it just for the social concept.... then stop complaining about how things are obtained in the game. The grind of JP is there for a reason. This isn't level 1-10. We are at level 119. It's SUPPOSED to be difficult to progress. and yes, you can play however you want. you can choose to solo and hence progress slowly. just because you choose to solo doesn't mean this game should be catered toward you so that everything is handed to you with minimal effort. You claim to have played this since release, but you sound so much like a person that didn't join the game until abyssea and just burned all your jobs up by sitting in a party while some guy Fell Cleaved. And just so you have my logical reasoning behind all this... what happens when you get everything fast? well SE has to keep coming up with new stuff. Remember when salvage2 came out and that gear was kinda cool? and then SoA came out about 3 months later making the pieces you just got obsolete? yea that kinda sucked. Imagine doing that all the time, over and over again because SE is catering to the instant gratification people. Stop asking to get things quickly, you're just going to make things worse for everyone if you get your way.

[Zarchery]

Realize that reducing the grind by half would still be a YEAR of work for 22 jobs.
Do the math yourself if you don't believe me.

If you're standing around calling it work, you're indulging in the wrong past-time.

[Rubeus]

there we go again with "entitled to it."
I'm talking MOSTLY about Sparks here, not JP. One shouldn't have to go on a job they DON'T want to or HAVEN'T accessed (not my case, but there are other players out there you know) to farm sparks and not get a significant amount of merits or JP in the process. Similarly, one shouldn't have to farm merits mind-numbingly and not receive a respectable amount of sparks in the process. Seriously, making sparks on-par with merits (45 merits = 45k sparks would be fine with me, through rewards, math'd out) would be fine with me.
I understand your point though; you don't NEED 119 gear. just like you don't NEED merits and you don't NEED JP. you also don't NEED an aegis but I guarantee you that a PLD competing for a delve will get passed over in favor of another who does.
you're telling me that getting "level 100" is supposed to be harder than getting i119 gear? because essentially if JP = leveling up, it costs 500k experience PER LEVEL beyond 99?
ok then. You're entitled to your opinion, and I do agree that the "gear treadmill" of ilvl was terrible to salvage.
Actually though I recently server transfered so I don't have an LS and that has a lot to do with it. I don't want ALL the gear and JP right away, but getting a job done a month wouldn't kill the game. If SE can't make anything new in a year, I'm pretty sure the game's over anyway.

[Dreamin]

who takes a PLD to delve now a day???

but back to the point, if you're having hard time farming up sparks fast enough, you need to make sure you're farming the right mobs in the right zones that has all the RoE objectives available to you. If you want to use a non-DD job to farm sparks, that's fine and it'll work. Just use the right Trusts combinations and don't expect to get the same rate of exp/jp/sparks per hour if you were on a DD job with support trusts. there are certain things that are done more efficiently in certain ways. And there are alternatives to those just dont expect every alternative ways to have the same efficiency as others. This is why this game has so many variations.

[Rubeus]

I'll give it a shot.

[Zarchery]

But nothing about farming sparks is even remotely difficult. I get them hand over fist. I get so many that I frequently spend them on skillup tomes for skill I don't even use (like great sword and throwing) just so that all my Combat Skills numbers are blue. For a while in the recent past I was spending them on tomes that I gave away to linkshell members. At the very least you could use starter Adoulin gear and a sparks weapon to do AOE attacks on hordes of Abyssea mobs for "Deal 500+ Damage". Or do the daily objectives and limited time challenges for a fairly easy 1900 sparks (900 for completion + 1 copper voucher for another 1000).

[Selindrile]

That's not completely fair Zarchery, many/all of us indulge in activities we don't enjoy on XI so that we can make the activities we do enjoy more enjoyable.

I don't like farming dynamis, at all, it is job-like and unpleasant, but I do feel cool with my shiny Aegis tanking things I couldn't tank before, etc.