It's your server

[Castanica]

If anyone or OP thinks Square will let any server get to 2k+ concurrent you're crazy, not going to happen. Would be impossible now.

The game was totally different when it had large numbers per server, the amount of people who did engame alone was minuscule. Almost everyone just leveled as 100% of their content. Only the JP players did sky and some hnm and were walking around in osodes with all the NA people thinking they were buck rogers.

[OmnysValefor]

Tenzen and OU, same battlefield, actually have some useful pieces, unlike most HTBF. Tenzen is also easy.

Personally, I like Ifrit.

And yeah, waiting at Ambuscade, or other places happens, but purely by numbers, it has to happen on Asura more.

[Rooj]

This discussion has gotten me wondering if SE has determined the number of instances available on each server by an active population ratio. So perhaps Asura and Odin have a lot more instances available whereas these 200-300 pop servers only have like 1, lol. I mean that would make sense from a development/economic/company standpoint. Cause I've yet to run into these imaginary overcrowding-can't-enter-content problems on what is supposedly the most populated NA server.

It would be quite hilarious if the folks who complain that 300 is too many people to "compete for content with" and are in love with their low pop server are actually screwing themselves out of getting into content quicker LOL

[Zeldar]

Well the system they implemented a couple of months ago for ambuscade seems to have worked out well. I think anyone still complaining is going off of their experience in month 1.

[OmnysValefor]

It would be quite hilarious if the folks who complain that 300 is too many people to "compete for content with" and are in love with their low pop server are actually screwing themselves out of getting into content quicker LOL

As far as I'm aware, there are only three copies of most instances in the game and I never see more than 18 in Legion when I /sea Legion.

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I recently had a 8~ minute wait at the book and it's likely there there were just 2-3 soloers/slow groups in there. It happens time to time, but it's nothing like the first month.

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Something occurred to me. There's lots of hate around here for taking optimum strategies. I have a question for you, what strategy do you take to Ambuscade? There's two strats for fast kills:

2-3 good THFs or better-geared dancers
Extremely overgeared melee leveraging Tomahawk, Angon, Frailty and whatever else they can do.

The first is easier, because it can be hard to find a warrior/dragoon, let alone a really good warrior/dragoon.

Or do you take a strat that deals with 2-3 waves of adds regularly?

And finally, I saw this little tidbit on reddit just now, since we were talking about dragons

I've got good gear and the best spells for AOE setup but with a ring and all ROV KIs I'm only getting maybe 8-10 an hour max. Seems low but no matter where I've gone that's the average. Usually do C cavern or Ravine but is there a better place? Can't do Zitah on Asura as its always full.

[Selindrile]

It would be quite hilarious if the folks who complain that 300 is too many people to "compete for content with" and are in love with their low pop server are actually screwing themselves out of getting into content quicker LOL

Some may be... but I simply do content with my long time LS, I haven't shouted for content since.... I can't even remember, the server population has no effect on that for me, I generally prefer lower populations if I have such an LS, I likely wouldn't without such a thing.

[Zeldar]

I'm in the same boat as Selindrile. If I want to do something, all I need to do is ask my LS. We may already have plans for that night so I sometimes need to wait a day or so, but it gets done. I join pickups sometimes just for fun and to meet new people, but mostly I roll with the linkshell.

As for favorite Ambuscade set-ups, my favorite is with a war.... tomahawk makes this fight easy mode. We usually also use a GEO, no matter what the setup. Other than the WAR, WHM, and GEO, the other 3 slots get filled with anything.
Some other setups involve THF and DRG of course, but you forgot BLU ! Blu can deal all 3 additional damage types rather easily. Our runs last night were BLU, DNC, PLD, WHM, GEO, and SMN. We weren't setting any records but the mob only lived long enough to pop 2 groups of adds. Not as fast as having a war, but we were still killing in under 4 minutes.

[Rooj]

And finally, I saw this little tidbit on reddit just now, since we were talking about dragons

I saw that post, it's just not true. As I said in another post, I'm surprised by how few people I can find at puks/dragons during Gain Exp. Actually, there's Gain EXP right now, let's go look!
Sorry for the volume and quality I don't make videos. https://youtu.be/WP0XwCNHeeo
This is around 7:10 AM CST on a Sunday morning. Not the most active NA time but still JP peak time.
I'm going to assume since you're on a low pop server, that most of the people are soloing instead of teaming up, since that's one of the prevailing mentalities amongst small servers. There's no reason not to team up though, so people are just making it harder on themselves for no reason.
Also I find it funny killing single target just as fast as those who require AOEing, heh. I'll try to make some more appropriately timed videos, not like I can control when Gain EXP happens. And I forgot to show the quest log as proof that it was even active.

[OmnysValefor]

I'm surprised by how few people I can find at puks/dragons during Gain Exp. Actually, there's Gain EXP right now, let's go look! ... https://youtu.be/WP0XwCNHeeo

[I truncated his post]

Now that is funny. I wonder what the reddit poster would say to that. I mean, Asura is the NA server and Unicorn is the JP server but I'd still expect Asura to have more activity at any given time. I would expect Wednesday afternoons and Monday nights to be a bit more packed.

Thanks

[Afania]

Transferring my characters to Asura was by far one of the best decisions I've made in FFXI. I wish I had done it years ago, I'd have probably quit the game a lot less. My old server took a deep nosedive in population around WOTG and it only got worse over time. During the Abyssea/Voidwatch era I basically no longer knew anyone who still played, and my server was small so meeting other players and getting content done was nearly impossible at times. One of the prime issues with playing on a small server I've noticed is that it's very segregated - the communities are already formed and are generally unwelcoming to new or returning players. They have their cliques, and to be fair to them despite my belief that cliquey style of play is detrimental to the game, they probably don't need new players in their LS anyway.
[/B]

Just to chime in and offer some opinion about the above statement. This kind of small groups exist everywhere, not just smaller servers. You may feel bigger server are more welcoming because there are more new groups forming and recruiting, that doesn't mean you can just join any established groups on bigger server as a new/returning player.

There are people prefer to play with close friends, and people who don't mind playing with new people. It's not "wrong" to only play with close friends which has much higher degree of trust and comfort level.

The thing is that with how FFXI works, everyone has different progress in terms of gear and raid progression. Since they need different tiers of content.
Thus isn't not possible for a character with full escha clear + gears from every single tier go back to A.skirimish to pt with a returning player. Same for ambuscade, a character with full escha level of gears that pt with another character wearing same level of gears, will clear the content much faster than someone still progressing. Also it takes time to gear up a new or returning player to catch up on progression, which is often a risky investment because they may quit or join another LS.

I believe those are the primary reason why some groups don't recruit or party with new/returning players.

Your opinion about bigger server is just....opinion based on your preference. There are no "best" server that's suitable for every single player. Asura just happened to work for you. Some people on their server has long, long history, reputation, established connections and trust that they spent years to built. By moving to another server that trust and reputation built over the years are gone and its actually harder to get things done. It's not that much of an impact for new/returning player or if player enjoys shout groups, but it may not work for everyone.

For example if I want to make a pt with multiple AG DD, Idris GEO x2, REM BRD to experiment a new setup or strategy on a T4 NM, my friend with the above job and gear requirement will come and help at least 90% of time as long as they're not busy, that's because those friends know me and play with me for many, many years and we know each other very well, they know that if I theorycraft a setup on an NM it will have a good chance to work. If I move to another server there's no way a random Idris GEO would help a stranger like me for zero benefit. There's no way anyone would reply to my shout if I yell "Melee T4 do you need it, team up? Idris GEO x2, Afterglow BLU x2 can I have it". They'd just laugh, thinking I'm a clueless party organizer and walk away.

And that's the difference between having established group and close friend with high degree of trust, and none close friend people.

I'm not saying bigger server is good or bad, I'm just saying there are pros and cons and it's more important to find a server that works for you, instead of just claiming there's one single server that's without doubt better than every other servers. What works for you may not work for others, it's all subjective anyways.