with this mindset the future looks dim

[Garlyle]

I played FFXI from April 2004 until September 2008 and never once was I expected to research a dungeon or a fight. I was in some of the highest endgame LS's on Pandemonium and people worked together.

That's just it.

You weren't jumping into the highest level content with random players. You were jumping into a party with full expectation among all members that you may very well not succeed, but you'd figure it out and learn it together.

You can still get that. That's what Free Companies, Linkshells, and hell, even Party Finder are for.

Duty Finder is a fundamentally different experience, and while people should be helpful there, people also need to understand that, fundamentally, you all want to get through the content and should have done at least a little diligence towards succeeding, whether simply not playing like a moron in Sastasha or being aware of the crazy you're going to face when you walk into Titan EX.

[Timethiuas]

That's just it.

You weren't jumping into the highest level content with random players. You were jumping into a party with full expectation among all members that you may very well not succeed, but you'd figure it out and learn it together.

You can still get that. That's what Free Companies, Linkshells, and hell, even Party Finder are for.

Duty Finder is a fundamentally different experience, and while people should be helpful there, people also need to understand that, fundamentally, you all want to get through the content and should have done at least a little diligence towards succeeding, whether simply not playing like a moron in Sastasha or being aware of the crazy you're going to face when you walk into Titan EX.

I agree, except that when I joined most of them, they were already established. Kupo was one of, if not the top LS on Pandemonium by the time I was able to join. Caffeine was as well, and Snow was already off the ground. I came in and they showed me the ropes. I didnt' join and have them expect me to have read and memorized every fight.

Same with my Dynamis LS. While we were 2nd or 3rd to beat Dynamis Lord, they were well on their way when I joined and had no problem explaining what came next.

[Garlyle]

I agree, except that when I joined most of them, they were already established. Kupo was one of, if not the top LS on Pandemonium by the time I was able to join. Caffeine was as well, and Snow was already off the ground. I came in and they showed me the ropes. I didnt' join and have them expect me to have read and memorized every fight.

Again, there's a difference between "I joined these people, we chatted, and when it came time to do this stuff they helped me fully knowing I didn't know yet" and "I joined a party of 7 random people all ready to kick ass and clear, but didn't feel like finding out what I was getting myself into".

The experience of a preformed party, where an agreement and understanding pre-exists, and going into an experience with random players, is a drastically different one.

[Timethiuas]

Again, there's a difference between "I joined these people, we chatted, and when it came time to do this stuff they helped me fully knowing I didn't know yet" and "I joined a party of 7 random people all ready to kick ass and clear, but didn't feel like finding out what I was getting myself into".

The experience of a preformed party, where an agreement and understanding pre-exists, and going into an experience with random players, is a drastically different one.

I am not sure what your point is. I was responding to a comment that you had to research in FFXI. I was showing that it wasn't required.

[Tiggy]

I am not sure what your point is. I was responding to a comment that you had to research in FFXI. I was showing that it wasn't required.

It must have been easy not to research anything. Well with all the quest markers pointing you to the next quest object, the well written quest descriptions made it clear what you were supposed to do, and the map markers letting you know which npc's had story quests.


Oh wait....None of that was in the game meaning you had to research just to know certain quests even existed. Saying you didn't research is a flat out characterization of the entire FFXI experience.

[Timethiuas]

It must have been easy not to research anything. Well with all the quest markers pointing you to the next quest object, the well written quest descriptions made it clear what you were supposed to do, and the map markers letting you know which npc's had story quests.


Oh wait....None of that was in the game meaning you had to research just to know certain quests even existed. Saying you didn't research is a flat out characterization of the entire FFXI experience.

I have no idea what FFXI you played, but no, I did not have to go to the Wiki or any other internet publication to play the game.

[Iriadysa]

I agree, except that when I joined most of them, they were already established. Kupo was one of, if not the top LS on Pandemonium by the time I was able to join. Caffeine was as well, and Snow was already off the ground. I came in and they showed me the ropes. I didnt' join and have them expect me to have read and memorized every fight.

Same with my Dynamis LS. While we were 2nd or 3rd to beat Dynamis Lord, they were well on their way when I joined and had no problem explaining what came next.

I played XI too. In fact, I was leading an 8 man Salvage group quite successfully, often doing parallel runs that included boss kills while a smaller party would farm NMs on another area.

We never really asked people to read on strategies with the content, you know why? Because none of the content had 6 different phases where every single party member was required to understand what the hell was happening.

No matter what people may say with rose glasses, XI was not a hard game by any means. The difficulty of the game came mostly from the fact that wiping one single time meant game over until next week's entry, so the amount of tries you could do was severely limited.

How many times did my Dynamis LS wipe to Dynamis Lord before we took him down? I think it was four attempts.

How many times did my first learning party for Titan HM wipe before I could finish it down? Dozens, and that party never made it.

In XI you could enter all content without knowing a thing about it because the dynamics of the fights were much simpler than XIV. It's not that I think XIV is a complex game, it's that XI is and always was a simple game. As long as some key people knew their role, you could be carried through a fight (assuming you knew how to play your job, obviously).

Dynamis is possibly the best example of this. I can assure you almost everyone in any Dynamis LS had no idea what to pull or when to pull it. Many probably never even saw where the mobs spawned from, and had no clue where the time extensions were. It was not required. This information was only needed to be known by the leader, the puller, the sac puller and someone that knew the best order to kill mobs. For the rest, all they needed to know was "Sleepga, make an assist macro, stun avatars if they wake up".

Before you think I'm hating on XI, I'm not. I played that thing for 7 years and quit right before Abyssea came out.

[Clavaat]

-snip-

Kudos to you for making the point I was afraid of making here haha. Besides the simple "Stun this", "Here's the SC we're using", there really wasn't that much I can recall. Kirin was kite, kill, kite kill. Also, you had full alliances for these kinds of things, so if you had a few who didn't know what was going on, it wasn't a big deal. FFXIV is completely different in that regard, although, CT and the expansion of 24-man raid content may change that a little. You can already go into CT with very minimal knowledge except for a few key members and be fine. Anyway, like you said, that's not a bash on FFXI, it was just different then. In some ways, it was more enjoyable because it was more relaxed.

[Garlyle]

You can already go into CT with very minimal knowledge except for a few key members and be fine.

CT is a somewhat special case. Due to the necessity of using Duty Finder to enter it, they can't really afford to put too heavy of expectations on every single player, as there's no realistically feasible way to actually get an "All-FC Crystal Tower" group or manage a gigantic party into it via Party Finder.

Admittedly this is why I'd like to see Binding Coil in DF only be there for ease of entry once you have a party, rather than for solo queueing in. As has been stated in the thread a few times, it's not too bad going into something like Haukke HM with randoms when one person's expecting to be new and the others want a clear, because it's easy to explain and guide them through; but Turn 4+ is just not the kind of content you want players on different pages being paired up with.

[Clavaat]

-snip-

Right, I was saying in reference to FFXI's triple alliance system, in that you had a lot more room for error by throwing bodies at it. I'd expect generally the same from any content greater than 8 members.