Do people really favor an FFXI grindfest format?

[Joeking]

Grind = Skill.

Chinese game = Grind = Skill.

/thread.

[Zangetsu]

Maybe Grand Companies of Eorza will be another variety to gain SP, but i am sure people will have problems with anything just for the sake of argument.

[Rowyne]

Grinding a la FFXI has actually driven people I played with away from the game. When they saw XIV might head in that direction, they said "screw this" and left here as well. I'd like to be able to get my buddies to give this game a shot again, but standing in camp and grinding mobs away is not going to lure them back.

Absolutely. Being forced into a certain direction doesn't tend to sit well with players. Mindless grinding is something that most of my friends find to be a chore, and there are plenty of other games that offer them the option of leveling in ways that are much more fun. The forced party mindless grind of FFXI is something that conjures up bad memories with many gamers I know.

And for those who think that anything other than old-school grinding is the only way to spend large amounts of enjoyable time with a party, it's not. There are other ways. They just have yet to be implemented in FFXIV.

Again, we need more leveling outlets in this game to offer something enjoyable for everyone. Quests, dungeons, leves, grinding... give us the choice! SE is a AAA developer. I know this isn't beyond their capabilities.

[Peregrine]

Hopefully the R30 dungeons are a good way to get SP, and the R50's when the level cap raises.
Right now I am so sick of leves.

[mmk]

the leves are like grinding, but alone. i like playing with people, i never really got bored of playing in parties with people in xi.

i think the leve/behest system is much more of a grind than the partying system in xi was. i can only run 6 miles and kill the same monster so many times before i decide enough is enough. i just want to play with people

[Mugiwara]

grinding as a main mechanic of leveling is a bad idea, but grinding as an option is a good idea. I think a good balance would be mini event sp, (like leves and extensions of that, challenge mode battles, survival etc), grinding overworld mobs should also be feasible, dungeon sp, and story sp/quest sp (especially job/class related quests/trials) basically the more sp options the better,
i think leve linking sp needs to get nerfed, or limited, maybe 2 one links worth of bonus, or diminishing bonus per link, grinding needs to be improved slightly, maybe via chains, dungeon should offer comparable sp to grinding, maybe slightly less, quests should offer a little less sp, but still be a viable means of leveling overall. To leves they should add more complex interesting and challenging leves, like challenge modes, or survival or time attack, maybe some puzzles.


essentially the more paths to growth the better, you should be able to pick your different path to leveling based on how you feel, and what you do, but there should definately be more of a final fantasy feel to these events, design dungeons and bosses on the level of an offline game, make class quests an interesting story with interesting mechanics and happenings. Make the game a final fantasy game, within the framework of multiplayer experience.

you can't level without "grinding" in any rpg... I guess all the rpgs throughout history all had bad mechanics.

[Grey-dex]

All the rational people left long ago. Kind of like, when you wash out a pan how afterward there is still some grime in the bottom.

Get a wire brush or a non-stick are my suggestions.. or just stop burning your food.

[Zangetsu]

I think with addition of jobs, class, and overall battle adjustments people will want to party more since we should have more unique abilities to set apart each job/class. Right now all classes feel somewhat the same when attacking so people do leves vs. partying because it just isn't that exciting to play classes yet so they just go for the best possible SP. Monster HP being so low also discourages party play since they die so easy. You dont really HAVE to do cool things like Blindside+ferocity+cadence+Maim in a regime to knock a mobs HP down so you can defeat mobs at a reasonable pace.

I expect SE will make wonderful a adjustments to get the feel of class uniqueness as they said they will. I don't like to compare this to XI since this is not XI but, if they get the classes and jobs to feel completely different like they were in XI I will be very satisfied.

We need to support SE in what they are doing and be a bit more positive. Just from the targeting they implemented you can see how they work. They could have left it with just the one target mode but they went one step further to improve it and add multiple targeting modes so every player type would be happy. If thats a sign of how they will follow up with all content then we have nothing but good things to look forward to.

Thank you for your hard work SE and try not to let the negative people get you down. ^^v

[TomCarroll]

I play MMOs to socialise and talk to people I would otherwise not be able to, FFXIV does not fulfil that. Me and my friends are still logging into XIV every few days to do the guildleves we have the same for Wells and roll them over to the next reset, because it's the only way we can play together for an extended period.

You know, just because you don't have to seek for 3 hours until a tank or a healer pops just to gain any sort of reasonable experience, doesn't cheapen the online experience. People who use this as a deflection to justify playing the old way are ignorant as to how another system would work. Ultimately, your interactions with other players would come by means of PVE content spread across all levels, rather than just a rank 30 dungeon and a rank 50 raid. Your leveling could come entirely by this means or you could quest for XP or grind until your eyes fell out of your sockets.

There's no reason SE should implement their previous, arbitrary system because part of this community wants to play FFXI-2. FFXI was a massive rush to level cap, quite simply because there wasn't anything worth doing until endgame, and for that reason it lost many subscribers early into its life. The system alienated jobs that weren't as useful as others, and generally, more than half the time you were grouped with idiots who either didn't know how to gear or just were plain stupid about how they did it.

SE can balance the system, but they don't need to pigeonhole players into playing one way because it would appease a minority.
TL;DR - Go play XI if you want to level in groups.

[Physic]

you can't level without "grinding" in any rpg... I guess all the rpgs throughout history all had bad mechanics.

If by grinding you mean any activity that gives you exp, then no. if by grinding you mean fighting things because they are there and they give EXP/SP alone than yes you can have a game without grinding, in this context i was referring to ffxi mob grinding as the stated in the OP.

now if you mean ffxi type grinding is necessary, i disagree.
Most Rpgs were designed so that you didnt have to fight extraneous battles to be high enough for any battle, while you had the option to walk in circles and get agro to be overpowered, in many, the reward would diminish the longer you stayed in the same places, and it was totally uneccesary to complete the game or enjoy the content, while i understand that some people enjoy it, and its a viable way to play in an open world, i dont think it should be the sole way of leveling or the main way, just an option. Build more fights into quests and stories, reward exp, or whatever, but generally in an rpg progression isnt based around killing mobs, in fact if you dont reach milestones in the story, you are usually limited in what you can achieve.