All this talk about community...

[Skander]

Incentivized interaction is not community, it is business. I am in a FC with a great group of people who roll together on all kinds of content and have a great time doing it. I play content that I currently have no use for just to help others out and build stronger bonds with my mates. While I see your point and understand where you're coming from... I think you look at the merits of mutual benefits as a solution to build community, and it isn't. Mutual benefit is what DF and roulette give us. A group of people we can use for mutual gain and then forget about for a week or so. Philanthropy builds community and this is, and always will be a choice.

[Daragust]

Sorry, I mispoke, there is one thing that I do think needs to be made more group-based, and that is crafting. It is a huge problem that everyone can craft everything if they sink enough hours into it. That's the one area where I think SE needs to shift course. You shouldn't be able to gather every HQ mat and make every HQ craftable item in the game, that's a terrible model for an in-game economy. Being a jack of all trades is fine, being a master of everything is just stupid.

Even in some of the most social MMO's trade doesn't make up much of the social environment. As pointed out earlier, if you restrict someone from making the crafting classes on their main, they will simply create alts to craft on. Heck, people have been known to have multiple active accounts just to avoid being reliant on others in some MMOs. If you really wanted to see crafters affecting the social community, you'd need to make them valuable to everyone instead of a select few. Making crafters involved in end game gear would go much farther to add to the community than limiting an individuals ability to craft everything.

[OSUBuckeye4]

I misunderstood that until the post you made that actually showed up when I posted mine haha. My point still stands, you can make those kinds of things happen. People set up raffles and gambling events all the time. That and chocobo races, mazes, scavenger hunts, etc. Yes, it would be nice if the game provided more options for this, and I believe they are (look at Hunts). They made the FC Rankings on the Lodestone, which admittedly, is not very helpful considering it's about GC Points, but it's still something.

As far as FFXI goes, it's not really like it used to be, which is what people are normally referring to. It's actually a lot like FFXIV now, sans queues, so everything takes waaaaay longer.

Just so you know, I am liking all of your posts and I agree with your points.

Perhaps it really just a matter of sticking it out and letting SE catch up to all of the systems that they have in game, which aren't really tapped into (Grand Companies for example).

In the meantime, you're right in the fact that instead of waiting for SE to implement Choco Racing, I could have my FC set up our own races within our district and award prizes.

In the end, you're right... I just hope that SE also sees some of these suggestions and adds some of these types of things in-game. They have the outline, it's just a matter of filling in the gaps.

-snip, point about philanthropy-

^^Also a very good point.



(A few others have made the same point, I agree, valid points)

[Clavaat]

-snip-

All good man, good on you for being a rational person on General Discussion. Frontlines and Hunts look like they'd be right up your alley, so that's just 2 weeks away. Golden Saucer is not too far, either, unless you happen to be in China. But I'm willing to guess you're in Ohio, so shouldn't be a problem :P

[Sairii]

There is nothing wrong with the community or game.
There are always some douchebags. If its IRL or in a Game.
The problem is human and not the game.

[Fizzy]

I believe that this game is what you make of it. It isn't perfect but you, as an individual, can influence the way you and others interact with each other. Case in point, I joined my company through a friend's friend's membership only to watch the original members, along with some of those friends leave one by one. They were all very talented and helpful but tried to do everything at once. Faced with a choice of either switching companies or going down with the current one, my friend and I decided to keep things going while people were gone, only to then inherit the company for doing so. We weren't really sure what to do so we started making decisions based on what we wanted out of the game.

Now, we have brought the company back from the dead and not only have we brought it back, we have expanded and grown. We are still growing. My goals are to not have to use duty finder for raids and to create a casual company that members enjoy helping each other play the game. I put off raiding because I didn't like duty finder. I still don't. Now, I'm constantly running everything to help those in the company. It makes the game fun. But I had to make it like that.

The game isn't broken. It just needs time to mature.

[MageBlack]

That is a very good point, and you are most definitely entitled to your opinions (even if they run contrary to some of mine).

The reason I'm sticking around is because I have hope that the developers are going to put more community based content into the game.

I'm not asking that everything in the game require gigantic FC's to accomplish. This isn't a, "everything is broke, SE needs to fix it all overnight" thread. I just think that a lot of problems that exist within the game are because SE took the path of allowing everyone to do everything on their own (via DF, and the ability to level every class to max)... and then threw in some challenging content that kind of requires a group at the end of it. It's a very conflicting design and I think it's responsible for a lot of the negative threads (well, the non-grind complaint ones).



The only reason I posted this is because its a topic that my FC and I have spoke about at length over the course of the last month, after watching about half of our existing members leave.



I never played FF11...

Awesome, I kinda got that impression from your OP. It wasn't an Doom and Gloom, the game is dead thread. I do hear your complaints and they are valid, right now. But if you look at the just the 2.0 release to now and all the changes they have done and how much new stuff (core systems and gameplay) they have added, you can tell this is still a work in progress. Honestly I'm playing this game right now with the idea in mind "this is an extended beta". That's not to say something is wrong with what we have just that it is not a complete game (They havent added golden saucer, FC summons, Chocobo raising, personal housing, etc. Just some of the things YP has said will be introduced between now and 3.0) If you look at FFXI (not sure if you played that one) it wasnt even released in the west until after their first expansion (rise of the Zilart).

This game is in a unique situation to most MMO's where it was released and bombed, then was re-teamed and rebuilt from the ground up. I've followed since 1.0 beta and poured over every scrap i could find from the dev team so i have a good idea of where the game is headed and i'm not worried in the slightest. I recently came back from a 2 month break and the changes even in that time are excellent. If you are dissatisfied with the game, take a break. Let your sub run out then wait till the next major patch to hit and resub for a month. That way you arent burning yourself out. Also realize that some of the things you want in this game are not compatible with the vision the devs have for the game, after all this is their game we are playing. If you want more open world stuff, try out Wildstar or EQN. Those might satisfy your cravings better than this game can.

Its just a game.

EDIT:
It seems like your issues with the game boil down to "group content" and stuff to do as a group. Its there, all over the place. FATE's, dungeons, Prinal battles, all of it. its all group content. Nothing is stopping you from gathering 4-8 people together and then FATE farming or dungeon crawling. The OPTION is there its just not forced upon us. FFXI was like that, after level 15 you couldnt effectively do ANYTHING without a party and it made you group up with no party grouping mechanics, just the shout chat. (at least it was like that when I played). while it was fun and worked for some people, it was really hard for people who couldnt get into a LS because you were inexperienced. I remember waiting for 4 hours to get a party to get exp to finally kill one monster then party disbanded. This is not fun.

[Sakasa]

Hey look it's my post that lasted a day! :P

But you tried which in essence is enough proof that there is a real community because people try in game as well not just spout stuff in forums we have a LS on goblet 5 for members of the housing district and we go do things or we don't but we are still working together.

I think you can not see the forest for the trees OP, I will jump in and help story runs in PF, will craft people gear for free, even help low level fates doomed to failure all strangers I pass by. I am not the only one because those events would fail if no one else stepped up, and this is on Balmung which isn't massive but no way small nor is the server all casuals or all hardcore. People make a community out of what is around them. And for those that say duty finder is an issue are missing the fact that the community of the game exists.

Reddit galmour community while I am not a part of is there and multiserver, this forums while it is the internet is there. That is what makes a community, firefly fan community was not known by even the crew of firefly but it was and is there. We have mathmaticians, linguistist, graphic designers, programmers, soccor mom's, stay at home dads, and even the accompanying trolls. All have some dedication to game, and the people that are in it (even if there purpose is to piss people off). So the community, the massiveness, the multiplayer is there. But the seclusion and separation of belonging and not isn't. I can't change your mind or how you feel personally about the game but white knight or hater if you look around you see what is there and destorying the community none of the functions are they just allow people to do things even if they aren't apart of the "community". You not ever being able to see them again is no different then me helping you and then leaving with out a friend request or another word.

So lets blame the lack of content that you feel doesn't reward you (force you) to be a community, not your assumption that a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common is not a community if its not also a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

[Clavaat]

But you tried which in essence is enough proof that there is a real community because people try in game as well not just spout stuff in forums we have a LS on goblet 5 for members of the housing district and we go do things or we don't but we are still working together.

That's...actually an awesome idea. I'll see if I can start one up in Mist 3. Joint District Events?

[Cherie]

I agree with the OP. I'm not saying its a bad game (I don't think he is either), but you can do basically everything by yourself and I think that is a downer for the community.

I don't see any point of a massively multiplayer game that can be played single player for basically everything. Yes you have to team up with people for dungeons, but regarding that, allow me to leave this quote from yoshi-p:

In FFXIV ARR we have the Duty Finder so you’ll be able to form a party quickly. When going through contents it doesn’t require much communication so you don’t need to plan ahead, you can play as if other players were NPC’s.

http://www.wutaicompany.com/reddit/1...with%20Yoshi-P

So even for dungeons, it's pretty clear they don't want you to feel like you need to treat them like human beings. It's designed to be a MMO that you only interact with NPCs....

Don't get me wrong, just because it's set up that way, don't think that you *must* treat people that way. But if that is the baseline, what do you think that does for people not as considerate as us?