"Content Finder" - Please be careful

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

Honestly? I think people are completely exaggerating the number of jerks that are in DF groups.

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Exactly. Count the number of people who are being jerks in all of the parties formed by a dungeon finder and then find all of the people who aren't being jerks. I bet you a million dollars the non-jerks will outweigh the jerks by an extremely large margin.

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Originally Posted by Cycloptichorn

Gear is always secondary to skill, especially gear that you can buy. I've definitely encountered the frustration of playing with a badly undergeared teammate - I've been that guy a few times too - but if they are good at playing, it usually doesn't matter all that much.

What's even worse, to me, is playing with a Fred; some dude in every top-level piece of gear out there, who for some reason won't get out of the fire...

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This is absolutely true, though. Even good gear won't salvage a player who won't put in enough effort or is just hopelessly incompetent. A very good player can also do a good job of overcoming a gear gap by playing well, however, it's very difficult for you to tell exactly how good someone is and especially so before having played with them. Gear is something you can gauge, however, which is why it's a good starting point.

I didn't play WoW past TBC, but if a situation where you need a group to get gear but can't get a group because you don't already have gear emerged, then I do agree there is a problem. As far as FFXI goes, though, all the good gear you could reasonably expect every player to bring was available to anyone who wanted it enough.

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Originally Posted by FestAkos

Exactly. Count the number of people who are being jerks in all of the parties formed by a dungeon finder and then find all of the people who aren't being jerks. I bet you a million dollars the non-jerks will outweigh the jerks by an extremely large margin.

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To me it's not so much about having to face total jerks but the diluting effect DF has on a server's community. In a rural village most people are familiar with most other villagers, in a bustling metropolis nobody knows anyone they meet. Combining all servers with a cross-server grouping tool will turn the villages into a metropolis.

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Originally Posted by Frein

Gimps can play with each other for all I care but in a team game you have to pull your weight or you will (and should) be eliminated as the weakest link.

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lol - agree.

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Originally Posted by Frein

This is absolutely true, though. Even good gear won't salvage a player who won't put in enough effort or is just hopelessly incompetent. A very good player can also do a good job of overcoming a gear gap by playing well, however, it's very difficult for you to tell exactly how good someone is and especially so before having played with them. Gear is something you can gauge, however, which is why it's a good starting point.

I didn't play WoW past TBC, but if a situation where you need a group to get gear but can't get a group because you don't already have gear emerged, then I do agree there is a problem. As far as FFXI goes, though, all the good gear you could reasonably expect every player to bring was available to anyone who wanted it enough.

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The problem with FFXI is that the "You need this quality of gear to participate" rule applied to everything you did in that game when really it should have only applied to dungeons, raids, and end-game crafting. Expecting a Hauby or Kote or a Purple/Brown Belt or whatever else from someone is appropriate when the content you're planning to tackle requires that kind of gear, but hunting crabs for experience/merit points should not have been a part of that, and was terrible design on SE's part.

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To me it's not so much about having to face total jerks but the diluting effect DF has on a server's community. In a rural village most people are familiar with most other villagers, in a bustling metropolis nobody knows anyone they meet. Combining all servers with a cross-server grouping tool will turn the villages into a metropolis.

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Those same rural villages can be equally as terrible as the people in a bustling metropolis simply because of their own social norms shunning, excluding, or outright driving people out of their communities due to differences in opinion, religion, music, sexual orientation, and all that other lovely shit that can make conversations at the dinner table unpleasant. They're also just as willing to shelter assholes so long as the asshole is recognized as "one of their own", because it's okay to hate or be intolerant of others so long as you share the same tastes in music. Don't try to paint them as perfect little slices of heaven, because they're just as flawed and fucked up as the rest of society.

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Originally Posted by Frein

Yeah, I think you should get kicked out of a group if you decide it's ok that everyone else has to carry your poorly geared ass. Showing up to a group as a DD with no haubergeon was a no no, but I don't think that's unreasonable at all considering everyone else went through the trouble of getting one. Sure, it was expensive but not prohibitively so like many other items that people (surprise) didn't expect you to have.

I want to know beforehand if you're gimp or not (or just a known douchebag/terribad), which is why I oppose any kind of automated group building.

The FFXI player search was almost perfect as it let you easily and quickly see potential group candidates and allowed said candidates to post information about themselves in order to attract group invites.

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This more or less proves my point.

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Originally Posted by Frein

Yeah, I think you should get kicked out of a group if you decide it's ok that everyone else has to carry your poorly geared ass. Showing up to a group as a DD with no haubergeon was a no no, but I don't think that's unreasonable at all considering everyone else went through the trouble of getting one. Sure, it was expensive but not prohibitively so like many other items that people (surprise) didn't expect you to have.

I want to know beforehand if you're gimp or not (or just a known douchebag/terribad), which is why I oppose any kind of automated group building.

The FFXI player search was almost perfect as it let you easily and quickly see potential group candidates and allowed said candidates to post information about themselves in order to attract group invites.

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I'll go one step further and say that any future search implementation should include room for gear setups. It'd have saved me a shit ton of time, gil, and exp in FFXI to know everyone's gear setups or lack thereof in FFXI; as one of the few 75DRGs to solo 10k/hr exp with Greater Colibri from back in the day, I especially refused to party with any DRG that didn't have capped accuracy and as a DRK, yes I rather hated any DRK wearing Plastron when fighting.

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Originally Posted by Quanta

The problem with FFXI is that the "You need this quality of gear to participate" rule applied to everything you did in that game when really it should have only applied to dungeons, raids, and end-game crafting. Expecting a Hauby or Kote or a Purple/Brown Belt or whatever else from someone is appropriate when the content you're planning to tackle requires that kind of gear, but hunting crabs for experience/merit points should not have been a part of that, and was terrible design on SE's part.

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But exp party efficiency was almost as reliant on gear as BCNMs and end-game encounters. If you brought poor gear, the performance of the party was directly affected negatively and I think it's extremely unfair for someone to expect others with significantly better gear to carry them. You simply have no right to leech other people's exp. A lot of people like to demonize demanding people as elitist pricks when in reality it's the complete opposite: those elitists simply want to make sure they aren't slowing down their peers by showing up unprepared.

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Those same rural villages can be equally as terrible as the people in a bustling metropolis simply because of their own social norms shunning, excluding, or outright driving people out of their communities due to differences in opinion, religion, music, sexual orientation, and all that other lovely shit that can make conversations at the dinner table unpleasant. They're also just as willing to shelter assholes so long as the asshole is recognized as "one of their own", because it's okay to hate or be intolerant of others so long as you share the same tastes in music. Don't try to paint them as perfect little slices of heaven, because they're just as flawed and fucked up as the rest of society.

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The only instances of driving people out of communities I ever witnessed in FFXI were when someone would repeatedly burn all bridges available to them. We had some of those and they pretty much got what they deserved as far as treatment from the rest of the community goes. In WoW you can pull this type of shit with no fear of repercussion.

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Originally Posted by Blarp

Tossing players out of a group or berating them for wearing bad gear or, worse yet, not inviting them at all based on the "wrong" job is the exact same thing as tossing someone out of a group in WoW for doing terrible DPS, and it happened pretty regularly in XI. LS leaders and officers jacked LS banks and transferred. If a merit group was going bad, people would bitch and moan and point fingers or simply leave without saying a word. I think it's you who wears the rose tinted glasses.

Those type of people will exist with or without a Content Finder.

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I may be totally wrong here, but I think both of you are saying the same thing...

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Originally Posted by Frein

But exp party efficiency was almost as reliant on gear as BCNMs and end-game encounters. If you brought poor gear, the performance of the party was directly affected negatively and I think it's extremely unfair for someone to expect others with significantly better gear to carry them. You simply have no right to leech other people's exp. A lot of people like to demonize demanding people as elitist pricks when in reality it's the complete opposite: those elitists simply want to make sure they aren't slowing down their peers by showing up unprepared.

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Right, and I agree that it's unfair to have one dude slowing down the rest of the group, and that so-called "elitists" are often just trying to bring people who will be able to handle whatever you're doing, and that exclusion is often nothing personal. My argument is that mobs used for experience point parties should not have been so overtuned in their difficulty that having a group of people with top-notch gear was a requirement to maximize gains; the goal instead should have been to ensure people in average gear can maximize their gains, with gear requirements coming into play when it came time to do dungeons, raids, and HNMs. FFXI didn't do that, hence the poor design decision.

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The only instances of driving people out of communities I ever witnessed in FFXI were when someone would repeatedly burn all bridges available to them. We had some of those and they pretty much got what they deserved as far as treatment from the rest of the community goes. In WoW you can pull this type of shit with no fear of repercussion.

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I wasn't even talking about the game, I was talking about life, but yes, it is a lot easier to become a ghost in WoW than it is to become a ghost in FFXI, unless you did something that would raise obvious red flags, like steal a relic/legendary. Few guilds would stay quiet if someone ran off with something like that, and other guilds would be suspicious of a dude with an extremely rare item and seemingly no prior guild history.

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Originally Posted by Quanta

Right, and I agree that it's unfair to have one dude slowing down the rest of the group, and that so-called "elitists" are often just trying to bring people who will be able to handle whatever you're doing, and that exclusion is often nothing personal. My argument is that mobs used for experience point parties should not have been so overtuned in their difficulty that having a group of people with top-notch gear was a requirement to maximize gains; the goal instead should have been to ensure people in average gear can maximize their gains, with gear requirements coming into play when it came time to do dungeons, raids, and HNMs. FFXI didn't do that, hence the poor design decision.

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How would you go about to implement this, though? I can't think of anything else than a hard cap on how fast you can gain exp (which would be horrible). If you make the enemies weaker, you simply increase the exp rate of the highly geared party in the same proportion and you're back to square one, only the little challenge there was would be gone.