Are static groups simply the now accepted reality for endgame progression?

restricted progression sucks when done in this extreme. i hope they change it because it needs a little more flexibility.

I can't tell... is OP really imputing that running statics for content is in some way new? Statics were de rigeur all the way back in EQ. In ffxi statics were the best way to level and people frequently did endgame events with the same people every time.

hell, with sky/sea you had no personal progress. One or two designated people would hold the keys for the next tier of content.

join an ls that's looking for members for a static group. Adhere to their schedule. ???. profit

Coil is impossible with pug. The level of coordination makes it not possible.

The content is beyond Duty Finder where it's luck of a draw if you get competent teammates.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bluefox

Currently what I'm seeing in my current community is the officers are full darklight / titan weapons, while the other lv50 members are struggling to get any darklight and some are having trouble with garuda, but because of them not being in the little click of 8 people within the guild, the higher geared members are not helping them at all.

This current system is toxic to a community style of play and only allows people to pick 7 friends to play with threw all of endgame, why even have a guild system in-game if you only design content for 8 people. (Square raise the text cap srsly.)

---

This is nothing new, this happens in every single MMORPG, no matter what you do, there will always be clicks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

This is nothing new, this happens in every single MMORPG, no matter what you do, there will always be clicks.

---

While this is true, clicks are always a thing. What isnt helping is that the endgame supports this, over allowing the players to form a community to help each other.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

This is nothing new, this happens in every single MMORPG, no matter what you do, there will always be clicks.

---

You are right they exist in every game, but a good guild should be able to remove them. That would be the hallmark of a good guild. A guild should not be A group, B group, C group. OR Raid Group and rest of people who are not good enough. A guild with its officers decked out in BIS gear or a world first means honestly nothing in terms of overall guild progression and skill... it is how good the guild is as a whole.

XIV is forcing this bad mentality on people, which needs to stop. It shouldn't have to be a choice between good progression or guild involvement. It MUST BE BOTH... not even a should it must be for guilds to exist and thrive. I should be able to incorporate all 45 people in my guild into an event in some way. Not force 8man statics which butcher scheduling if 1 person has a RL commitment that day.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

Coil is impossible with pug. The level of coordination makes it not possible.

The content is beyond Duty Finder where it's luck of a draw if you get competent teammates.

---

First off, the op never said anything about PUGS. The point was being stuck with the same 8 forever, and thus destroying the larger community.

Second, people say coordination isn't possible with PUGS all the time.. But I have been with perfectly organized PUGS, where nobody knew each other, but they all knew what they were doing and took the time to make sure everybody was on the same page. In fact, I find this to be true at least half of the time. So.. As I have found I enjoy the randomness of it all, I disagree.

In fact, I think it is perfectly possible to get thrown together with a good group, run with them for a week, then disband. And isn't this where the new party finder feature is supposed to come in? To allow this very thing? Ultimately it will still be a random pickup group, just a self-formed one from the same world. I love the idea. And hey, maybe if you really liked them you can join up with the same group again later, maybe you never do. That is the point here. If you get stuck with the same group forever, you get locked out of meeting new people, and the overall community of the game. And if you don't care about community, why bother with a social game at all? Anyway just my opinion. Take it as you will. :)

I don't mind the fact that it requires guilds to beat end game content. That is fine the problem is with how the guilds are rolling now. They run less than 30 members it seems and created this elite end game that is very hard to catch up with unless you have a guild.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this as I've yet to start the coil. It seems to me though that you're limited in your group choice for a week at a time.
I think it's unfortunate and I'd rather players could join a group up to the highest level they have personally reached but I'm not convinced that it's a huge problem.
The static group you put together in your FC need not be the same static group every week if progress is reset. I think it's perhaps more of an issue now than it will be when we have more content to keep us busy, but it does seem a mystifying decision to impede progress in such an artificial way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

Coil is impossible with pug. The level of coordination makes it not possible.

The content is beyond Duty Finder where it's luck of a draw if you get competent teammates.

---

Coil 1 and coil 2 are definately puggable, but they do require bards who(for silence) They are honestly more forgiving then titan hm in non af gear. As long as you have silencers, decent gear and possibly voice chat for ADS.

I think a lot of people reading your post don't exactly get what you mean, based on many responses it seems they are assuming you want end game content to be easy enough for random duty finder to work. What you are talking about is old school mmo end game playing where you build an elite guild of like 100 players, which forms about 12 good parties and you easily can interchange core guildies with newer guildies in end game dungeons so that at the same time (roughly) everyone in your guild is completing the content together even when split into smaller parties. Heck games of the past you could just have your whole guild run into the dungeon at the same time and once inside the dungeon then form your parties out of the guildies that are there. With the way todays end game is you are saying that this style is not viable correct? In that way yeah we are probably living in the past and i feel you brother :)

*edit*
In other words a true end game guild in the past would have been when you had over 100 people who were all geared and experienced at the same time rather than todays end game guilds which can have 100 people but only 8-10 people who actually know what they are doing.

I always ran endgame with the same ~12-18 people in FFXI, after the initial years of HNM stupidity. Of course, you could do super large linkshells if you wished but there was little point to it, especially during the pinnacle Abyssea years. Nothing in Dynamis besides Lord required more than 18 competent people, either.

So I guess I'm not sure what old-school MMOs we are talking about, but running the same content with the same people is how I've rolled for the last 10 years.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bluefox

While this is true, clicks are always a thing. What isnt helping is that the endgame supports this, over allowing the players to form a community to help each other.

---

... over allowing the players to form a community to help each other?! This thread does not compute. Everything that the OP and others seem to be calling out as problematic seem like overwhelming positives to me.

They have been for like 9 years, where have you been?

I haven't made it to end game content yet, so please feel free to ignore my opinion, but...

I am ok with content that requires statics as long as that is not the only thing to do at the end game. I don't think every piece of content has to be open to every game play style. As long as they add stuff for FC's and soloists at the end game as well, let the statics have Coil.

I realize that since the game just released, there might be a limit to the amount of end game content available. So I will reserve judgement until a few expansion packs come out and we can see if they are attentive to the other MMO game play styles.

The entire reason this is even a discussion is because Crystal Tower didn't make it into launch. If it had none of this would be an issue.

Yea I want to be able to rotate FC members in and out and I do. Coil is no different then ANY other raid in any game. They have lockouts just like every other game. Yet in every other game people are rotate around to get into the fights see the content and get chances on gear. I don't really see your points. You want what, no lockouts? So you can run it over and over and farm you and everyone elses gear? If they did that people would be Best in Slot geared in a week.

I miss the endgame style of XI. Big LS's where people took turns, and you ran content as often as you could farm the pop-items. Frankly, though, the only way this was a viable system was because the drop rates were abysmally low. It took a couple months of farming Sky to get even close to a proper gear-set, even with showing up to all the raids.

The only other MMO I've played is SWTOR, and it sucked having to maintain a static for the 8-mans, and near impossible for the 16's. Maybe we just had bad luck, or maybe it was the SWTOR community, but I don't think there was a single week that we started on time because someone was always late, missing, or there weren't sufficiently geared PUGs available. It also divided the guild between the "good" players and the "other" group. It was occasionally... awkward :/.

This is the collective experience of a static party: |--------|
And this is for an inclusive and organized FC: |-----------------------------------------------------------------|

If you had access to both of those methods, which would you rather work on progressing in end-game content with? Content like this that penalizes people for not doing it as part of a static party seems to only be good for people who can't find/make an inclusive and organized FC, while spurning those who put in the effort to maintain one.

If the only purpose of the over-bearing lock-outs is to limit an individual's equipment progression, then why not just limit that person's loot rights?


I just think that lock-outs for single-party content, especially regressive lock-outs if you skip turns, is silly.

You really think easing restrictions would result in what you're wanting? It wouldn't, instead people would just run their same static group over and over and over and have all the best gear within a few days and have all content cleared.

The reason these restrictions exist is to keep this from happening.

We currently have 2 groups progressing in coil within our FC, and are in the works of making a third. If some people absolutely need a particular group of people to get them through the content then maybe Binding Coil isn't the place for them? Isn't it more satisfying to go in with a group of new people and doing it yourself? For me personally I would think so.

The system is fine how it is.

People really don't get what OP's issue is.

It's not "The content is too hard". Neither "I can't DF it", nor "I want to put anyone in my PT and do it." His issue is that, right now, you can't do anything of the following:


"I want to practice / run specifically turn 1. No need for loot, exp, mytho, anything!"

You can't do this unless you purposedly wipe whenever you might win.


"One of my static members can't login today. I want to get a replacement without locking him out of earlier turns."

You can't. Either you don't run it, or you find someone who doesn't mind being locked out of earlier turns.

"It's Saturday. I want to do a fun FC wide event where we just gather people around to do Coil."

Well, you sort of can. Just hope enjoy doing turn 5 (and locking people out of earlier turns) with people that are still struggling to do T2, for example, with no chance to actually to do the proper turn for them and help them with anything. Have fun!


"I can't play at the same times every day, so it will be very hard to find 7 other people who can always play at the same time as me and form a static."

Enjoy never doing any decent progress on Coil ever, regardless of your skill / FC availability.

No one is saying static parties are a bad thing. It isn't. But Coil specifically forces you to static it and punishes you and whoever you want to play with if you ever try to bring someone not on your static for any reason at all.


Personally, I believe that just changing the party turn to the PT leader and locking people who beat a turn to get loot from it would help a lot, without it affecting the difficulty of it at all.

Yoshida and team deliberately excluded Coil from the Duty Finder because they wanted end game to cater to 8 man setups and for those who roll deeper than that they have in store Crystal Tower which is 24 man raid content. Once Crystal Tower is implemented they also intend to update both Coil and Tower in a alternating fashion. If I recall correctly from Yoshida's Game Watch interview he basically lays out that as content gets harder and harder he wishes for players to realize that they'll need to form groups if they want to see any progress beyond the HM Primal Fights. He even says how this should become apparent to players by the time they reach Titan HM if not earlier, essentially that the higher up the content ladder you go the more the grouping training wheels come off and it's up to you to find or start a static-esque group.

I suppose the above is neither here nor there though as the OP is concerned about people who are inevitably cut from Coil runs, assuming you will roll with 24 people anyway to do Crystal Tower runs. Or catching up friends who are missing a specific turn win. In the latter case though I thought you entered a Turn based on your Party Leader's progress couldn't you simply make party lead the person in question that you want caught up? I'm nowhere near the point to do endgame at present so forgive me if my last point was addressed.

It's becoming clear that my FC/LS will have a short supply of healers for end game content (I don't mind I'm currently one of the only scholars). We're still probably 2-3 weeks out from starting Titan and progressing into Coil. It will be very difficult to decide who will be able to progress beyond Titan and who will have to sit out. They need to come up with a better system (personal lock outs?). I doubt the DPS/Tanks that sit out will be able to get through the content in a PUG or find another FC/LS willing to give them a spot.

I'm all for keeping these fights outside of the Duty Finder but they need to give LS/FC more flexability here. Not all LS/FC have 2 sets of healers and 2 sets of tanks to form multiple 8mans. We're not a mega-guild; we have around 12-15 active (dedicated) players.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sebastianaru

It's becoming clear that my FC/LS will have a short supply of healers for end game content (I don't mind I'm currently one of the only scholars). We're still probably 2-3 weeks out from starting Titan and progressing into Coil. It will be very difficult to decide who will be able to progress beyond Titan and who will have to sit out. They need to come up with a better system (personal lock outs?). I doubt the DPS/Tanks that sit out will be able to get through the content in a PUG or find another FC/LS willing to give them a spot.

I'm all for keeping these fights outside of the Duty Finder but they need to give LS/FC more flexability here. Not all LS/FC have 2 sets of healers and 2 sets of tanks to form multiple 8mans. We're not a mega-guild; we have around 12-15 active (dedicated) players.

---

You're overlooking one very key feature of this game that would help your situation immensely..and that is the fact that you can level all classes on the same character. If you need a particular class, and aren't willing to recruit more, then some of you can level that needed class and have it on stand by. What you're asking is for SE to do this work for you, which defeats the purpose of making new friends and finding a strategy unique to your group to get through the end game content.

Sometimes I feel like people disagree with things just so they feel smart by having an opinion.

You can have 100 people in your FC and make sure there's multiple groups doing the content. You turn a great method of endgame, which IS in WoW and every other modern MMO, into some world shattering problem. Some people just love to be miserable I guess.

Sounds like content that is meant to be cleared weekly by Free Companies. Don't see what the big deal is. Clear it once a week with your FC. If your FC is big enough, they can work on it nightly and replace people who can't make it that night with people who can.

I find it amazing how far people go out of their way to avoid properly socializing in an MMO.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mishakai

Sounds like content that is meant to be cleared weekly by Free Companies. Don't see what the big deal is. Clear it once a week with your FC. If your FC is big enough, they can work on it nightly and replace people who can't make it that night with people who can.

I find it amazing how far people go out of their way to avoid properly socializing in an MMO.

---

i dont think you understood what the OP said.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bluejay

I haven't made it to end game content yet, so please feel free to ignore my opinion, but...

I am ok with content that requires statics as long as that is not the only thing to do at the end game. I don't think every piece of content has to be open to every game play style. As long as they add stuff for FC's and soloists at the end game as well, let the statics have Coil.

I realize that since the game just released, there might be a limit to the amount of end game content available. So I will reserve judgement until a few expansion packs come out and we can see if they are attentive to the other MMO game play styles.

---

I agree - if Coil's the end game content for people who want statics then that's fine, no issues with that. But if static's is all there's going to be then we've got a problem on our hands!

What's odd to me is that 95% of the game is about solo or DF play... it's like they say "You know all that stuff we taught you to expect? Those things we encouraged you to do? FORGET THEM ALL!" XD Err... basically, Coil sounds like a complete change in attitude towards the fundamentals of the game compared to how you play the story, FATEs, DF groups, etc. This is rather worrying for someone like myself, because the pre-Coil content by and large suits the free time I have available very well, but "no static=no progress" doesn't at all :S

I really hope each expansion "resets" what's required of players, in the sense that people can jump into pretty much any story they wish and progress post-credits onto hard/extreme/static-style content, rather than adding end game onto the end game onto the Relic onto... etc, etc.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lucroarna

Sometimes I feel like people disagree with things just so they feel smart by having an opinion.

You can have 100 people in your FC and make sure there's multiple groups doing the content. You turn a great method of endgame, which IS in WoW and every other modern MMO, into some world shattering problem. Some people just love to be miserable I guess.

---

Wee 100 faceless people in an FC to draw your static groups from. What a "community".

It used to be different, that's great for you guys who only had WoW as a reference point, but some of us remember when endgame communities actually were full of friends you played with week in and week out and progressing together many people (enough that you still know everyone unlike modern guilds, but not a single static group either). They were not just pools of random people. But you are right that is the type of FC this kind of content promotes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AdvancedWind

People really don't get what OP's issue is.

It's not "The content is too hard". Neither "I can't DF it", nor "I want to put anyone in my PT and do it." His issue is that, right now, you can't do anything of the following:

"I want to practice / run specifically turn 1. No need for loot, exp, mytho, anything!"

You can't do this unless you purposedly wipe whenever you might win.


"One of my static members can't login today. I want to get a replacement without locking him out of earlier turns."

You can't. Either you don't run it, or you find someone who doesn't mind being locked out of earlier turns.

"It's Saturday. I want to do a fun FC wide event where we just gather people around to do Coil."

Well, you sort of can. Just hope enjoy doing turn 5 (and locking people out of earlier turns) with people that are still struggling to do T2, for example, with no chance to actually to do the proper turn for them and help them with anything. Have fun!


"I can't play at the same times every day, so it will be very hard to find 7 other people who can always play at the same time as me and form a static."

Enjoy never doing any decent progress on Coil ever, regardless of your skill / FC availability.

No one is saying static parties are a bad thing. It isn't. But Coil specifically forces you to static it and punishes you and whoever you want to play with if you ever try to bring someone not on your static for any reason at all.


Personally, I believe that just changing the party turn to the PT leader and locking people who beat a turn to get loot from it would help a lot, without it affecting the difficulty of it at all.

---

Exactly, as far as I'm concerned they should make it far more difficult and time consuming, just ease up on some of the restrictions for who we can play with.

I want to do events with my FC where I can freely choose who I want to play with (even if you DID limit my loot somehow), not be forced into a static because the design of this content pushes it on you.

Also people keep bringing up statics in FFXI, I'm sorry but that was far from the case most HNM weren't even player capped. You were rarely forced into single group statics for endgame progression, that is simply a problem for communities that want to change who they play with within that community from day to day.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Murugan

Wee 100 faceless people in an FC to draw your static groups from. What a "community".

---

I've run multiple guilds that did this, and we all knew eachother quite well.

Just because you're unable to communicate with people in an organized fashion doesn't mean the rest of the world can't handle it.

It's called a progression LS/Guild/FC, and many, many people can do it.

They just don't spend time whining on the forums about how hard the entertainment, err, I mean GAME is. They're in the game, winning fights.

Your complaint has no basis other than the fact that you yourself are not a leader, or a good team-player.

Like I said I'm all for making sure the duty finder gathers dust a few months into the game. I am however against being able to play with anyone on your server in all the content that they have access too.

But I also sort of understand where they are coming from, the thing has it's ups and downs but overall I'm happy because anything that discourages the duty finder gets a A+ in my book.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lucroarna

I've run multiple guilds that did this, and we all knew eachother quite well.

Just because you're unable to communicate with people in an organized fashion doesn't mean the rest of the world can't handle it.

It's called a progression LS/Guild/FC, and many, many people can do it.

They just don't spend time whining on the forums about how hard the entertainment, err, I mean GAME is. They're in the game, winning fights.

Your complaint has no basis other than the fact that you yourself are not a leader, or a good team-player.

---

What does splintering into an 8 person group have to do with teamwork? Teamwork would be gearing your entire FC, progressing your entire FC simultaneously.

Not having your little progression static with a bunch of groupies. The truth is you probably benefit from many people who simply exist to support you when your static falls through for some reason, but other than you don't care about them you aren't tied to their progression in anyway because you have your little static and they are all that matters to you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Murugan

snip

---

Again, you entirely miss the point and go back to your single argument. Please use your brain and not your anger. The Dark side is bad, mmk?

Anyways, when you have 50+ people who are good players, and have known each other for many years, it's very easy to set up multiple runs on the same night. We had 4 groups of 10 doing Karazhan once a week in The Burning Crusade in World of Warcraft. Each group went into a separate channel on vent, and it worked just fine.

Clearly you are probably a victim of a guild/fc/ls that was heavy on favoritism, but unfortunately for you, and your argument, not every guild/ls/fc is led by people who are like this. You cannot create stereotypes based on a single isolated incident. It's important to remember you are not the only person on the planet, and just because your experience has been negative, it does not mean everyone's has.

w ok?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lucroarna

Again, you entirely miss the point and go back to your single argument. Please use your brain and not your anger. The Dark side is bad, mmk?

Anyways, when you have 50+ people who are good players, and have known each other for many years, it's very easy to set up multiple runs on the same night. We had 4 groups of 10 doing Karazhan once a week in The Burning Crusade in World of Warcraft. Each group went into a separate channel on vent, and it worked just fine.



Clearly you are probably a victim of a guild/fc/ls that was heavy on favoritism, but unfortunately for you, and your argument, not every guild/ls/fc is led by people who are like this. You cannot create stereotypes based on a single isolated incident. It's important to remember you are not the only person on the planet, and just because your experience has been negative, it does not mean everyone's has.

w ok?

---

What a load.


Bunch of anonymous people in your "guild" is what it sounds like. You don't know anything about community if you are going to sit here and claim that you can be close to 100 different people while doing content like this that limits you to 7 others per week (with the rare exception of substitutions).

I also love that out of that 100 people in your guild that you know and are so close with, only 50 of them are good now. I wonder how many of even those 50 that are "good" you even bother playing with for your own personal progression, my guess is the number is far smaller. It's just a name and a website and a chat channel, a ventrilo server seperated into different channels, but to some people they want to play with their whole FC while progressing in endgame content.

You

Can't

Do

That

Here

Now.

I wish your kind had stayed in first person shooters, your idea of a community is just no where near my own. To me if I can't even progress at endgame alongside my guildmates then it is simply not a real community. This is a game for small group statics right now, and I don't see where I can get my endgame fix coming from games where these communities hooked me on the genre. If I was a fan of this style I'd join some "gaming clan" and go play first person shooters, or MOBA's, or Diablo together (either in what are basically PUGs because of how little connection there is between most members, or a rigidly set static if I wanted to be competitive).

Would rather have a roster, sometimes people can't be available

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Murugan

I'm a loser

---

You know, when someone presents you with actual fact, and you decide to ignore all of it and supplement your own reality, you make yourself out to be a clown.

You're right on one point. You'll never find a good guild/LS/FC. You're the type of person I avoid 100% of the time.

Let's get this straight a free company CAN still progress together through content, the way it works now just means key members wont be able to go back and limp strugling players through to the higher teirs.

Or on a less pessimistic note.

The one guy who tanks for your free company wont have to run the same damn turn 50 times in one night to progress the DD heavy community, likewise with healers. If anything this is another move by SE to encourage people to play something other than DD, less tanks means less abillity to progress I'm sure a few guys will take up the healers wand or tanks shield just so they don't have to stand in line with 50 other guys waiting for a tank to show up.

It's a smart if not a tad mean of a move, again I see where SE is coming from but I'd just rather a bit more freedom with who/when I play.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jynx

snip

---

If you actually only have 1 tank in your FC that is your problem. The point of FF11 and FF14 is the ability to play many roles. Encourage your team to level other jobs, and this issue is gone entirely.

all i got to say is: WHAT IT DO!?

Apologies in advance for not reading the entire thread but...

To me, it seems like this entire issue could be solved in a very straightforward manner if the Development team were to introduce this measure:

You can only be eligible to lot on a particular boss's drops once per week. This way, guild members can go back and help their other guild members without getting a second crack at loot. This will make it much more PUGable, since you could technically join a group that's further behind if you had confidence they would go all the way. Finally, an entire guild won't find themselves suddenly stuck if a RL emergency claimed a member away from the game for an extended period of time.

Or am I missing something?