So anyone else tired of grinding tomes weekly for gear?

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Originally Posted by Whiteroom

Tbh, I liked the idea of quests for gear, like the level 45 class quests, or the original relic quest. Of course the class quests ones were a bit easy, but that line of picking up armor would be cool for them to slide in once in awhile.

The tome grind is a bit boring since it has been going on so long and is such a treadmill. The way it's laid out also hurts the whe "Alt friendly" thing.

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it doesn't do wonders for the community either. df is designed with the social aspect nigh pointless, so you'd be hard pressed to network well in there.

which leaves pf as the likelier place to meet with people on your server in terms of content. And unless you have a lucky streak a mile wide, the majority of those experiences are going to be wipes and disbanded parties without success.

I dont mind grinding for gear, but I like a bit of old WoW's token system mixed with an idea from the very early days of a MMO (I cannot remember) had.

This would be where you would do dungeons, quests, and raids to get pieces to forge a piece of gear together for a specific class. (I know, this will be a very hard strain on the inventory at the moment.)
Then you would have crafters (or a very high fee with NPCs) to meld materias to gain specific boost to certain skills. This could be things such as high proc rates or longer timers on certain dots.
Finally, you would grind tokens to be able to "upgrade" your gear. This would be adding on secondary stats of your choice. You could improve the parry or have more vit or higher crit chance.

I feel that it is more rewarding to be able to upgrade your hard earned effort while also allowing us to be able to customize the gear too. I am not against the current grinding, but feel that as a mid-core player, I find myself replacing the hard effort and getting no where.

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Originally Posted by Anienai

Were you ever in the all BST LS on Phoenix?

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No I was not, though I knew many many of the BST's that made it up and founded it (and it's many predecessors) I was leader of my own shell, and it never felt right to me to take it off for another when I played, so I tended to stay in touch with the BST community via friends list and tells. And I was often about and doing things with the other BST's that I 'came up with' to 75. We all knew each other in the pre Abby days. It was a small community, and we all tended to know what was up with the others.

Just to keep this On topic, 11 had grinds that make 14's look like kindergarten. Leveling a BST to 75 in the pre-abby days being one of them. So it's why I don't often feel overly troubled by the 'grinds' in 14. 11 was a game in a specific time and era, and it did things that couldn't (and wouldn't) be accepted today. As a result it caused different results. One was community formation. The grinds in 11 really did build community. All of Phoenix's 75 BSTs KNEW each other, and while they might not interact, you tended to be aware of how they were and when one quite you found out. And it was because there was no way that you wouldn't encounter them as you solo ground away in some camp to add a few K exp to your totals.

Grinding in 14 is mostly a dungeon thing, where you are tossed in with a server group's worth of folks that you can't really connect to. It doesn't really advance community much. If daily roulettes were limited to just your own server, odds are you'd come to know folks and make connections. But you'd also have huge periods where getting a duty to pop would take a bit. A trade most don't want to make. So we get a grind that ONLY ends in gear, not connectivity.

I'm fortunate in that I have a great shell of folks whom I do my grinding with. We run a dungeon or three as a group, and joke about and chat as we do it. It's fun. But I also know it's not a situation that everyone has, and how isolated many players feel. And why the grind burns folks out and they leave or take breaks like many in this thread speak of.

The ability of a game to form connectivity between players is a subtle but often overlooked aspect of its success. I feel it's why XI is looked back on so fondly by many here today. XI was a BRUTAL game in so many ways, starting with time eating, and there is a lot that I DO NOT remember fondly. But the fact that it allowed connections to be made (I'm with the same shell of people in XIV I played with back in 2005 in XI) is what people key upon.

I feel that XIV would be well served by things that encourage server communities and connections. How exactly that can be done is a topic that can be of much debate, and goes beyond this thread :)

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Originally Posted by Kallera

it doesn't do wonders for the community either. df is designed with the social aspect nigh pointless, so you'd be hard pressed to network well in there.

which leaves pf as the likelier place to meet with people on your server in terms of content. And unless you have a lucky streak a mile wide, the majority of those experiences are going to be wipes and disbanded parties without success.

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With the way the servers are set up though, DF is it's own necessary evil. I'm not a fan of it myself, since it lends to the whole anti social mmo thing. It would be nice to see the game play well enough for mega servers, but I doubt that, at least for awhile.

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Originally Posted by Myriads

I feel that XIV would be well served by things that encourage server communities and connections. How exactly that can be done is a topic that can be of much debate, and goes beyond this thread :)

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It's tough. As you allude to, the reason that those of us who made it to FFXI's end game all formed communities and connections was that it was more-or-less impossible to make any meaningful progress without doing so.

There's a lot of things in MMOs that are at odds with one another and hard, if not impossible, to balance in any way that's going to satisfy a majority of the player base. Convenience vs community, difficultly vs participation, reward satisfaction vs effort involved in acquiring them, etc. I certainly don't envy anyone whose role is to try to find the sweet spot on any of those scales.

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Originally Posted by Myriads

I feel that XIV would be well served by things that encourage server communities and connections. How exactly that can be done is a topic that can be of much debate, and goes beyond this thread :)

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You say this, but I feel the primary reason I am currently playing is because of connections formed with other players on my server.

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Originally Posted by Kaurie

You say this, but I feel the primary reason I am currently playing is because of connections formed with other players on my server.

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It's certainly possible in FFXIV (and it's great if you can find it), but it's not a necessity like it was in, say, FFXI.

If someone wants to play the game entirely through DF, about the only thing they're unable to participate in is Savage, and there's plenty of avenues through which to advance their character without ever setting foot in there.

Yes, I'm pretty tired of the same process of grinding tomes each week. After doing this for 2 years+ it has become pretty stale and boring.

As someone already wrote here in the forum: Why bother with savage or getting any gear at all? Its only a matter of time, how many weeks you can throw at it and how motivated you are to grind lore. I mean 7 weeks for a 230 weapon? Its literally one of the cheapest ways i've ever seen to keep someone playing.
Getting a 200 weapon already took 3 weeks, which was also annoying, but far more reasonable.

And even then? Even if you finish midas savage, or sit there in full 230-240. Whats the point? Most of the content is and will probably be doable with 210-220 anyways.

There have been multiple solutions on the forums for this, so many good ideas to breathe some life into the game and even if midas normal and seph was amazing. Its the only thing we're going to get for the next 2-3 months? Pvp is also pretty solid sure, but as it stands at the moment? I'd rather sub every 2 patches to maybe play some catchup, but playing this with an active sub? It gets stale and dull very fast and even if some dont mind, I do.

There is more to this game then "jump the rope" and "dps racecar", I easily know that SE can pull it off and as time passes it seems like the XI team was lightyears ahead of the XIV Team. Sure, not everything was perfect then, some of the things were so rough at release or didnt make any sense at all at the beginning.

But at least they tried, they've tried far more then anything from what i've seen in the last months in xiv.

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Originally Posted by Damona

I easily know that SE can pull it off and as time passes it seems like the XI team was lightyears ahead of the XIV Team. Sure, not everything was perfect then, some of the things were so rough at release or didnt make any sense at all at the beginning.

But at least they tried, they've tried far more then from what i've seen in the last months in xiv.

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They also didn't jsut give up on successful content because they had to move on to the next tread on the mill. Everything in FFXIV seems unfinished because they don't give themselves time to fully realize any of their ideas. It's sad.