@dev team ->> Thanks for bringing back party grinding, -really-

In party grinding, what is the amount of exp/mob people go for a good grinding pt? What number range?

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Originally Posted by Murugan

Wrong.

In party grinding your XP is entirely dependent on your party's skill and coordination. In guildleves/quest grind your skill gain is determined by how fast you can whack moles, and run between quest givers. Which one takes more skill? The answer is obvious.

It doesn't matter how good a quest grinder whack-a-mole player is at their job, it won't show when compared to someone who is completely clueless as long as that person doesn't get lost running between the moles and the quest giver.

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Grinding monsters in a party is not more skill demanding than killing them solo, because grind parties deliberately look for the lowest risk, highest reward mobs to grind on. Questing, on the other hand, actually forces you into situations you might not be familiar with, fighting monsters you've never fought before, and you're completely alone. You CAN have difficult questing; WOW did a long, long time ago, and so do some typical WOW clones.

Take off your rosy nostalgia glasses for a moment and really think about how leveling went in FFXI. I died less and was challenged less than in any other MMO I've played. The cost of dying or making a mistake was so steep, that people made it a point to stick to the weakest, easiest to kill monsters. Your exp/hour wasn't determined by the skill of your group, it was determined by your gear, your party makeup, and if you picked the weakest mobs to grind on.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

Grinding monsters in a party is not more skill demanding than killing them solo, because grind parties deliberately look for the lowest risk, highest reward mobs to grind on. Questing, on the other hand, actually forces you into situations you might not be familiar with, fighting monsters you've never fought before, and you're completely alone. You CAN have difficult questing; WOW did a long, long time ago, and so do some typical WOW clones.

Take off your rosy nostalgia glasses for a moment and really think about how leveling went in FFXI. I died less and was challenged less than in any other MMO I've played. The cost of dying or making a mistake was so steep, that people made it a point to stick to the weakest, easiest to kill monsters. Your exp/hour wasn't determined by the skill of your group, it was determined by your gear, your party makeup, and if you picked the weakest mobs to grind on.

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No people do that exact same thing when questing. They go for least risk for the highest reward, so your entire argument doesn't work. If you didn't then you simply weren't caring about your xp rate in which case why do you have to argue against people getting good xp for grouping?

The difference is even in a "low risk" situations (which aren't the best XP) good xp is determined by a good party, while soloing grind quests is only determined by one person's capability and quest grouping/ proximity to the quest giver. So even in "high risk" solo questing (extremely rare in MMO's) it is still less risk and effort than it takes doing similar level content in a party. So people should be rewarded for party content. WoW and most clones are just lacking in good enough party content to level on, FFXI had that. A lot of people liked FFXI because that.

i don't post much here anymore, because I feel like my words are generally drowned in a sea of mass hysteria. HOWEVER, I do want to state that I am VERY happy SP grinding is on the rise. I haven't played so much in quite a while :D

Nothing feels my little taru heart with joy more than raking in 32k+ at an Ixali Camp with some of my best buds. Hurry up with those chains guys!! LET'S GO DEV TEAM!

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Originally Posted by Murugan

In party grinding your XP is entirely dependent on your party's skill and coordination. In guildleves/quest grind your skill gain is determined by how fast you can whack moles, and run between quest givers. Which one takes more skill? The answer is obvious.

It doesn't matter how good a quest grinder whack-a-mole player is at their job, it won't show when compared to someone who is completely clueless as long as that person doesn't get lost running between the moles and the quest giver.

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This is somewhat true, but only if your party is fighting mobs like 15 levels above it. The reason I say that is because I can solo mobs 10 levels above myself (even still after 1.18). I can honestly say that it takes less coordination in a party than it does soloing. Definitely less actions are involved. This is especially true for leves if you actually set the difficulty high. The whole point of creating a party is to make things less difficult for better rewards. Go solo a guildleve where the mobs are 10-12 ranks above yourself and you'll see what i'm talking about.

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Originally Posted by Serio

This is somewhat true, but only if your party is fighting mobs like 15 levels above it. The reason I say that is because I can solo mobs 10 levels above myself (even still after 1.18). I can honestly say that it takes less coordination in a party than it does soloing. Definitely less actions are involved. This is especially true for leves if you actually set the difficulty high. The whole point of creating a party is to make things less difficult for better rewards. Go solo a guildleve where the mobs are 10-12 ranks above yourself and you'll see what i'm talking about.

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If you do a r40 5 star guildleve fast enough you already get better XP than you would in that same time in a group, so I don't see your point. However after they revamp party XP in 1.2 and we have XP chains, party camps, and mobs designed not to be complete pushovers in parties for maximum XP that should give better XP because it is more difficult, and the only thing that should compare is a solo player should they be able to accomplish the same.

"Quests" in WoW/Aion/etc have no right to be called quests, they are just directed grinds

it Killed Aion for me (WoW killed itself for me in other ways) I got to level 23 in Aion only grouping once for a mission that lasted 10 minutes, and other than that just spammed these dumb "quests" kill 10 of these gather 8 of these, they are no real difference to any other grind except they are solo, do 12 quests here gain a few levels move to next area do 15 quests gain a few levels move to next area

in XI its basically the same thing kill mobs here, gain a few levels move to next area, the big difference is that in XI you have to group, and grouping saves monotony and builds community

should other options be available? yes (though if i see text box popups telling me to gather 8 items and the game tries to call that a quest...) but grouping should ALWAYS be the most rewarding/fastest path in order for the community to build and prosper

Point: If an MMO does not constantly promote grouping in all aspects then the community dies

as an example, I spent 3 hours grinding in gusgen mines with an 18 person party in XI last night, we spent the entire party chatting and laughing, that alone makes group grinding better than "questing" and I now have three more people on my Flist, in XIV, i don't even have a linkshell yet

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Originally Posted by Finuve

"Quests" in WoW/Aion/etc have no right to be called quests, they are just directed grinds

it Killed Aion for me (WoW killed itself for me in other ways) I got to level 23 in Aion only grouping once for a mission that lasted 10 minutes, and other than that just spammed these dumb "quests" kill 10 of these gather 8 of these, they are no real difference to any other grind except they are solo, do 12 quests here gain a few levels move to next area do 15 quests gain a few levels move to next area

in XI its basically the same thing kill mobs here, gain a few levels move to next area, the big difference is that in XI you have to group, and grouping saves monotony and builds community

should other options be available? yes (though if i see text box popups telling me to gather 8 items and the game tries to call that a quest...) but grouping should ALWAYS be the most rewarding/fastest path in order for the community to build and prosper

Point: If an MMO does not constantly promote grouping in all aspects then the community dies

as an example, I spent 3 hours grinding in gusgen mines with an 18 person party in XI last night, we spent the entire party chatting and laughing, that alone makes group grinding better than "questing" and I now have three more people on my Flist, in XIV, i don't even have a linkshell yet

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then, that in itself, is your issue. if you want to become part of the community then you have to reach out. they are not going to go out and beg you to join them. grinding parties have been happening in xiv since day 1 and still go on today.

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Originally Posted by Finuve

in XI its basically the same thing kill mobs here, gain a few levels move to next area, the big difference is that in XI you have to group, and grouping saves monotony and builds community

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Actually, the big difference is that in FFXI you're standing in one single spot for possibly two, three, or four hours without really moving at all, unless you're the puller, in which case you still only get to move like fifteen feet out from the party's camp, and you're just fighting the exact same mob over and over again ad nauseum. Plus, there's no storyline to experience while you're grinding away in an EXP party in FFXI.

FFXI has a great storyline, but the problem is that it's a totally separate activity from the level grind. In WoW, the storyline is combined into the level grind (which is actually how the offline FF games work as well), which makes the whole experience far more enjoyable.

And no, partying doesn't build community. Maybe on a few occasions it can help, but most of the parties I've been in people rarely speak at all, except perhaps to fire off their skillchain macros and such. But other than that, an EXP party in FFXI is usually dead silent; no communication at all. How can you possibly say that encourages community? How can there be community without communication?

I started playing FFXI at the NA PS2 release, and I continued to play the game for nearly seven years after that, and from what I saw it was Linkshells that formed the backbone of FFXI's community, not EXP parties.

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Originally Posted by captainpicard

Its starting to feel more like a game.

Now keep working on improving the classic camp and pull party setup.

And please delete/kill/eradicate the leve system, and the WoW quests, and the instanced dungeon crap.

Kthx.

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i couldnt agree more !

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

Actually, the big difference is that in FFXI you're standing in one single spot for possibly two, three, or four hours without really moving at all, unless you're the puller, in which case you still only get to move like fifteen feet out from the party's camp, and you're just fighting the exact same mob over and over again ad nauseum. Plus, there's no storyline to experience while you're grinding away in an EXP party in FFXI.

FFXI has a great storyline, but the problem is that it's a totally separate activity from the level grind. In WoW, the storyline is combined into the level grind (which is actually how the offline FF games work as well), which makes the whole experience far more enjoyable.

And no, partying doesn't build community. Maybe on a few occasions it can help, but most of the parties I've been in people rarely speak at all, except perhaps to fire off their skillchain macros and such. But other than that, an EXP party in FFXI is usually dead silent; no communication at all. How can you possibly say that encourages community? How can there be community without communication?

I started playing FFXI at the NA PS2 release, and I continued to play the game for nearly seven years after that, and from what I saw it was Linkshells that formed the backbone of FFXI's community, not EXP parties.

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I don't really think those chain of quests with scrolling text lines of some anecdotal fictional experience about the npc constitute a storyline or lore at least not of the scale that FF fans expect.

Personally I feel the same about the quests currently in the game. The leves aren't so bad because you only have to read them once. Seems to me that most people never read any of that stuff and I'm sure it's their choice not to but those same 'lazy' people will watch a cutscene or read the 50 quest for their class (if there was one).

My point is storyline and lore should occur at significant moments where the player is engaged. I really don't feel like i'm learning anything about the world in these little insignificant quests, even when i read it's just not a significant moment, like a raid or an end-game quest, or a significant main story-line happening in Eorzea.

I agree completely with the OP. I really missed the ability to have a traditional grind party. Before 1.18 everyone did the same leves over and over and over and if you didn't have all or most of them you didn't get invited. Now I just wish there were more grinding spots. Seems like ~R20 everyone takes skeles and 1-2 other spots. Around ~R40 everyone takes raptors. In between there are a few I am sure but there aren't enough to handle a sudden influx of players trying to grind out levels.

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Originally Posted by captainpicard

Its starting to feel more like a game.

Now keep working on improving the classic camp and pull party setup.

And please delete/kill/eradicate the leve system, and the WoW quests, and the instanced dungeon crap.

Kthx.

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I am not sure why you seem to think we can't have all of those things at the same time. I am glad to have gridning back, but I don't always want to do it to level. I like the occasional solo leve. And leveling my BLK from 42-43 by doing side quests and putting the sp gain towards a crafting class is an awsome alternative to just doing the same old local leves. Variety is the spice of life dude.

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

Guild Leves are not like WoW style questing at all, and your claim that they are only proves that you never truly understood how either Guild Leves or WoW style quests actually work.

WoW quests are different from Guild Leves in that each WoW quest sends you off to new and unique areas, has you fight different mobs, you get quests from a variety of NPCs, and most importantly, you're not forced to repeat the exact same eight quests over and over again once every 36 hours. All these things are present in FFXIV's Guild Leves, however, and they serve to make FFXIV's Guild Leve system highly inferior to WoW style questing.

However, you are correct in saying that the more recent Side-Quest system where we get quests from NPCs is like WoW style questing, but it's a half-assed, bastardized version of it. I'm sure the Side-Quests SE adds in the future will be better, but the ones we got so far have felt very shallow compared to similar offerings in WoW.

Yes, a lot of people have left FFXIV, but I guarantee you it's not because FFXIV had WoW style questing, because it didn't until just a few short months ago. The REAL reason so many people left the game is because FFXIV lacked engaging and interesting content, had copy-pasted terrain, had a clunky battle system and a horrible interface. THAT'S what caused people to leave.

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I have played the quest driven MMOs. You are correct that stones are not npc's, and wow quest lines do take you through a some what linear path (this is really bad in AOC and AION) through all the different zones leading up to the end game content. However, its still an endless string of kill 8 of this and bring me 10 of that, and help grandma poopy pants clean up her garden. In the end, they are the same, one you strip them down and look at them for what they really are. A mostly solo grind.

I do not require a NPC to get me to go adventure and explore a world, nor do I need a reward to do so.

What I do need is a group of people to go do it with and have fun with.

As far as your commentary about why people left, I can sum it up since I played through all of it.

Party play at the outset was a zerg with no strategy and unpredictable experience points. The only way to really progress effectively in a grind style party was to do it with 24 ppl or whatever the limit was, its been so long ago now I have forgotten. Once they stablized exp, those grind parties died, because partying at that point was NOT EFFECTIVE for leveling up. That left leve's, which you know where I am at with, and much of the community (as seen in this thread) agrees.

People left because of a lack of a "Fun" way to group together and party.

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Originally Posted by captainpicard

I have played the quest driven MMOs. You are correct that stones are not npc's, and wow quest lines do take you through a some what linear path (this is really bad in AOC and AION) through all the different zones leading up to the end game content. However, its still an endless string of kill 8 of this and bring me 10 of that, and help grandma poopy pants clean up her garden. In the end, they are the same, one you strip them down and look at them for what they really are. A mostly solo grind.

I do not require a NPC to get me to go adventure and explore a world, nor do I need a reward to do so.

What I do need is a group of people to go do it with and have fun with.

As far as your commentary about why people left, I can sum it up since I played through all of it.

Party play at the outset was a zerg with no strategy and unpredictable experience points. The only way to really progress effectively in a grind style party was to do it with 24 ppl or whatever the limit was, its been so long ago now I have forgotten. Once they stablized exp, those grind parties died, because partying at that point was NOT EFFECTIVE for leveling up. That left leve's, which you know where I am at with, and much of the community (as seen in this thread) agrees.

People left because of a lack of a "Fun" way to group together and party.

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you are wrong. parties have ALWAYS been an effective way to level up. you are fooling yourself to believe otherwise. you add things saying zerg style 24 man parties were the norm when you know as well as i do that parties were NEVER allowed 24 people to start with nor was max party size EVER the most effective way to level up. parties since the sp patch back in november people have always had grind parties. groups of 3-6 have always been the best sp. i hate to break it to you, but it is true.

sure you could get good sp off doing leves, but that is only a few hours every 36. people still grinded in between leve parties and worked on their other classes. not to mention you talk about grouping and doing leves is not any different than it is doing the same boring pull and camp of mobs. if anything, the leves were more exciting.

if the majority of mmo gamers felt grinding by pull and spank camping was the most fun route then xi would have been the most popular the entire time it was out. the truth is that it is not the case and that is why it never happened. many people believe many different things is fun to them.

am i saying your way is wrong? no, not at all because you enjoy what you enjoy, but you must realize that other people enjoy other things also. to ignore them is just leading down a path of failure. to have success you must find the things everyone enjoys and find ways to please each group. to me it would be best if i had 10 different ways to level so that if i got bored with one i could do something else. doing any one thing gets boring whether it be quests, grinding, soloing, raids, or leves. no one way should ever be made the only effective way to do anything.

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Originally Posted by Naqaj

As long as killing a mob gives XP, grinding is always an option, no matter how many quests the game wants to throw at you. And whether you grind alone or in a group is completely up to you.

There was no moment in the development of XIV where you couldn't just party up and go grind. There were definitely times where it wasn't the most efficient play, but you could do it for fun nontheless.

People who genuinely prefer mindless mob-grinding for hours always have that option. Providing quests for the other players who don't want to grind takes nothing away from the grind fans.

Not providing alternative content to grinding however leaves the people who are bored of grind in the cold.

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Human's take the path of least resistance. If playing in a group is less beneficial then playing alone, people will play alone thus, your comment that grinding in a group is always an option is not really true, if you can't find a PUG willing to group because they can succeed more effectively alone.

This is a MMO, not a single player game......

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Originally Posted by darkstarpoet1

you are wrong. parties have ALWAYS been an effective way to level up. you are fooling yourself to believe otherwise. you add things saying zerg style 24 man parties were the norm when you know as well as i do that parties were NEVER allowed 24 people to start with nor was max party size EVER the most effective way to level up. parties since the sp patch back in november people have always had grind parties. groups of 3-6 have always been the best sp. i hate to break it to you, but it is true.

sure you could get good sp off doing leves, but that is only a few hours every 36. people still grinded in between leve parties and worked on their other classes. not to mention you talk about grouping and doing leves is not any different than it is doing the same boring pull and camp of mobs. if anything, the leves were more exciting.

if the majority of mmo gamers felt grinding by pull and spank camping was the most fun route then xi would have been the most popular the entire time it was out. the truth is that it is not the case and that is why it never happened. many people believe many different things is fun to them.

am i saying your way is wrong? no, not at all because you enjoy what you enjoy, but you must realize that other people enjoy other things also. to ignore them is just leading down a path of failure. to have success you must find the things everyone enjoys and find ways to please each group. to me it would be best if i had 10 different ways to level so that if i got bored with one i could do something else. doing any one thing gets boring whether it be quests, grinding, soloing, raids, or leves. no one way should ever be made the only effective way to do anything.

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I must beg to differ. When this game came out, experience points were very, very random. I spent weeks testing the waters of partying, and the clear winner for SP/hr gains was to build the maximum sized party (which I clearly state I do not recall in my previous post) and fight very difficult mobs, while an army of mages spammed AOE cures. That was how it was done. I built plenty of 6 man's during that era, and they were very much less effective than the zerg parties. The problem with the zerg party was a zerg is simply not fun.

When they stabilized SP gain, the zerg parties died out. At that point, grouping in 6 group parties was still very ineffective compared to running leve-links, so to say that "people have been partying all along" is a half-truth. Have people played together, yeah. Outside of leve-linking was that the efficient way to level up? No.

Anyone who has used the recruit / search party features in the game from release to now, would be aware that there has been an ongoing severe lack of PUG partying, period.

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Originally Posted by captainpicard

Human's take the path of least resistance. If playing in a group is less beneficial then playing alone, people will play alone thus, your comment that grinding in a group is always an option is not really true, if you can't find a PUG willing to group because they can succeed more effectively alone.

This is a MMO, not a single player game......

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i dont know why people think mmo is only grind???
grind is not effort is boring
i prefer outher metodes for skill up that kill same mob 1000 000 in parties without reward
quest could be good, and this quest you need required pt is good option

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Originally Posted by Finuve

Point: If an MMO does not constantly promote grouping in all aspects then the community dies

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Exactly this is all that needs to be said on the topic frankly. Add sidequests, add other activities, but remember to constantly promote grouping. FFXI was popular for this reason.

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Originally Posted by captainpicard

I must beg to differ. When this game came out, experience points were very, very random. I spent weeks testing the waters of partying, and the clear winner for SP/hr gains was to build the maximum sized party (which I clearly state I do not recall in my previous post) and fight very difficult mobs, while an army of mages spammed AOE cures. That was how it was done. I built plenty of 6 man's during that era, and they were very much less effective than the zerg parties. The problem with the zerg party was a zerg is simply not fun.

When they stabilized SP gain, the zerg parties died out. At that point, grouping in 6 group parties was still very ineffective compared to running leve-links, so to say that "people have been partying all along" is a half-truth. Have people played together, yeah. Outside of leve-linking was that the efficient way to level up? No.

Anyone who has used the recruit / search party features in the game from release to now, would be aware that there has been an ongoing severe lack of PUG partying, period.

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i must beg to differ. when the game came out crab and eft parties were ongoing all the time. i know because i was in many many of them. after sp changes were made to leves, yes, people started running leves in groups. i do not deny that, but i do deny that grinding in a party was ineffective afterwards. you could get 20k per hour easily grinding on mobs in game(many mobs and rank ranges were above that).

if you get 4 hour leve party you get 100k sp give or take a few sp, but that is your entire sp per 36 hours.
grinding you could get 20k+ an hour for the entire 36. you could technically get 720k in that 36 hour span.

if somehow 720k is not greater than 100k then something is wrong.

sorry, but group grinding was always an option. group leve parties was simply an extension of them. we had plenty of times we ran our leve party and then went group grinding afterwards so to say it did not ever happen in game it a complete falsehood.

i don't use the group up search feature, but that's not to say that unless i am either farming mats or grinding crafts i am always in a party. group grinding before this last update you take 4 people to do raptors and get an easy 24k an hour. i don't know how much more it'd take for you to consider it as an effective way to level since you could grind any time of any day.

you also must take into account the amount of parties you see now is alot lower because there's only a handful of people left compared to what we had when it was first released. less people = less parties no matter how you try to justify it.

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Originally Posted by darkstarpoet1

i must beg to differ. when the game came out crab and eft parties were ongoing all the time. i know because i was in many many of them. after sp changes were made to leves, yes, people started running leves in groups. i do not deny that, but i do deny that grinding in a party was ineffective afterwards. you could get 20k per hour easily grinding on mobs in game(many mobs and rank ranges were above that).

if you get 4 hour leve party you get 100k sp give or take a few sp, but that is your entire sp per 36 hours.
grinding you could get 20k+ an hour for the entire 36. you could technically get 720k in that 36 hour span.

if somehow 720k is not greater than 100k then something is wrong.

sorry, but group grinding was always an option. group leve parties was simply an extension of them. we had plenty of times we ran our leve party and then went group grinding afterwards so to say it did not ever happen in game it a complete falsehood.

i don't use the group up search feature, but that's not to say that unless i am either farming mats or grinding crafts i am always in a party. group grinding before this last update you take 4 people to do raptors and get an easy 24k an hour. i don't know how much more it'd take for you to consider it as an effective way to level since you could grind any time of any day.

you also must take into account the amount of parties you see now is alot lower because there's only a handful of people left compared to what we had when it was first released. less people = less parties no matter how you try to justify it.

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On Karnak, one of the most extremely low populated servers.

On Selbina we have 10 times more XP parties than we ever did, even in October/November.

Oh and also the situation you are describing only applies to about 5% of the population who spent that much time leveling their character. I never personally formed/joined a regular grind party after leve-linking parties became fashionable. After 2 hours+ of doing leve-links I was falling asleep in my chair everytime, and when leve-links were on reset unless my LS was killing NM's I didn't even bother logging on because frankly leve-linking burned me out.

I was not alone in feeling this way, and since 1.18 the amount of people playing and not just logging on for leve resets has skyrocketed. So obviously they did something right.

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Originally Posted by Ichi

I don't really think those chain of quests with scrolling text lines of some anecdotal fictional experience about the npc constitute a storyline or lore at least not of the scale that FF fans expect.

Personally I feel the same about the quests currently in the game. The leves aren't so bad because you only have to read them once. Seems to me that most people never read any of that stuff and I'm sure it's their choice not to but those same 'lazy' people will watch a cutscene or read the 50 quest for their class (if there was one).

My point is storyline and lore should occur at significant moments where the player is engaged. I really don't feel like i'm learning anything about the world in these little insignificant quests, even when i read it's just not a significant moment, like a raid or an end-game quest, or a significant main story-line happening in Eorzea.

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WoW style quests may not always be quite as cinematic as what FF fans are accustomed to from the offline FF games, but they're a hell of a lot better than the worthless, piece of shit Guild Leve system that Hiromichi Tanaka and friends came up with.

Plus, you've got to remember that an MMORPG needs to have a lot more content than an offline RPG does, which means the developers need to be able to create large amounts of content in a very short amount of time and with an extremely limited budget. I'm sure we would all love it if every single quest could have a beautiful, pre-rendered cinematic cutscene with voice acting and amazing action sequences, but the realities of game development simply make that impractical, infeasible, and unrealistic.

Besides, if you'd ever actually played WoW, you'd know that there are plenty of quests that feel very significant and really add a lot of weight and depth to the story of the game. Yes, there are certainly "filler" quests along the way that aren't really very important to the overall story, but to say that EVERY quest in WoW is insignificant to the story is just sheer ignorance.

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Originally Posted by captainpicard

I have played the quest driven MMOs. You are correct that stones are not npc's, and wow quest lines do take you through a some what linear path (this is really bad in AOC and AION) through all the different zones leading up to the end game content. However, its still an endless string of kill 8 of this and bring me 10 of that, and help grandma poopy pants clean up her garden. In the end, they are the same, one you strip them down and look at them for what they really are. A mostly solo grind.

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The only similarity between the two systems is that they both have you killing monsters and receiving rewards for doing so. That doesn't mean the two systems are identical. That's like saying all the cakes in the entire world are exactly the same just because they're all made from flour and eggs, or that a Mercedes Benz is the same as a Ford Pinto because they've both got engines, doors, windshields, and tires. Just because two things are both made from the same basic components, that doesn't automatically mean they're going to be of the same caliber or be of equal quality.

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Originally Posted by captainpicard

I do not require a NPC to get me to go adventure and explore a world, nor do I need a reward to do so.

What I do need is a group of people to go do it with and have fun with.

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Well sure, doing stuff with friends can make any activity more entertaining, but let's be honest, playing a video game that has CONTENT with your friends is always going to be more fun and entertaining than playing a game that DOESN'T have content with your friends.

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Originally Posted by Murugan

On Karnak, one of the most extremely low populated servers.

On Selbina we have 10 times more XP parties than we ever did, even in October/November.

Oh and also the situation you are describing only applies to about 5% of the population who spent that much time leveling their character. I never personally formed/joined a regular grind party after leve-linking parties became fashionable. After 2 hours+ of doing leve-links I was falling asleep in my chair everytime, and when leve-links were on reset unless my LS was killing NM's I didn't even bother logging on because frankly leve-linking burned me out.

I was not alone in feeling this way, and since 1.18 the amount of people playing and not just logging on for leve resets has skyrocketed. So obviously they did something right.

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yes, we all know selbina has more people playing than the entire population of the game. you add up every server on the game, including selbina, and there's still more people there. we realize that it is the only server that is increasing in size and that the only reason other servers are getting members now is because se is limiting the number of people that are joining that one server. thank you for allowing the rest of the servers to get a few people.

/sarcasm off

the situation you are describing is exactly the problem. you complain that people never did grind parties, but say yourself you never joined one nor started one yourself so you have no idea of how many were going. i did and even on that low population server there was grind parties going on daily. there were grind parties going it is just easier to claim there wasn't because you, yourself, never joined into them.

yes, a few people have came back to the servers, but i can tell you that my server has lost just as many people that have been playing everyday as the number of casuals we have picked up since. add on top of that alot of us that did alot of battle class before the update have completely quit doing battle and went to full time crafters or just left the game. i guess they did something wrong too.

i am now a full time crafter and i know i am not alone in feeling that way either.

edited: changed my mind. If people aren't getting it by now, they never will

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Murugan

You people (wolfie, dyne, neptune etc.) need to stop pretending like that is in anyway modern, and that grouping to level is an outdated idea.

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I never said it was an outdated idea. Grouping to level is ideal. Engaging in endless battles without any context or story is primitive. For God's sakes, this is 2011 and we have all these tools at our disposal. Can we not get some exciting content to play through as we level? Is it too much to ask?