Let's have a round of applause for bringing grind parties front and center in FFXIV

[Wolfie]

Man, I really wish people would stop saying that grind parties promote skillful play. There was nothing demanding about FFXI's grind parties. All you needed was the right items, right job, and following a guide someone posted on Campistarus. All of the mobs picked for grinding were the least dangerous mobs, in the least dangerous camps. TP skills were spammed at will, few people used utility/enfeeble spells, and people stocked up on bard, red mages, and other buffing classes so that they wouldn't have to deal with MP management and whatever.

People had that s*** down to a science. Ironically, the only time leveling in FFXI demanded skill was when you were playing one of the solo classes.

[Cichy]

Man, I really wish people would stop saying that grind parties promote skillful play. There was nothing demanding about FFXI's grind parties. All you needed was the right items, right job, and following a guide someone posted on Campistarus. All of the mobs picked for grinding were the least dangerous mobs, in the least dangerous camps. TP skills were spammed at will, few people used utility/enfeeble spells, and people stocked up on bard, red mages, and other buffing classes so that they wouldn't have to deal with MP management and whatever.

People had that s*** down to a science. Ironically, the only time leveling in FFXI demanded skill was when you were playing one of the solo classes.

Not many things in XI involved skill in general. Almost ever fight was tank and spank, kite, or melee burn. All came down to paying attention. Like you said soloing was one of the things that required something extra. That and properly playing an endgame whitemage.

[Chain]

Not many things in XI involved skill in general. Almost ever fight was tank and spank, kite, or melee burn. All came down to paying attention. Like you said soloing was one of the things that required something extra. That and properly playing an endgame whitemage.

Thank you for saying what needed to be said. Very little "skill" is needed in XIV as well.

Generally anyone that claims it did was probably from those late 2007 linkshells that decided lolzerging everything in the game with 10 kraken drks and warriors was strategy. So ironic =p

[Pyrix]

Not many things in XI involved skill in general. Almost ever fight was tank and spank, kite, or melee burn. All came down to paying attention. Like you said soloing was one of the things that required something extra. That and properly playing an endgame whitemage.

White mages forever! I still kinda miss my little dude Pyrix :3

[DarthTaru]

Well... I don't really think it's the grind system that's so horrible. I think it's this grind system that's horrible. I suspect the roaming party is to blame but i'm not positive. Something just seems out of place.

Take a one player game like... Mass Effect II. I can run around killing enemies all night and enjoy myself, so why do I despise doing it in FFXIV? In XI I could grind for hours before needing to call it. In XIV I feel pretty much over it after the first ten minutes.

A few days ago I grinded 180K SP on Raptors in about 4 hours. Maybe 4 and a half. I was surprised I didn't want to hang myself but I really wanted to finish the job. Admittedly, it wasn't AS bad without surplus hanging over me like a dark cloud, but it wasn't exactly enjoyable, either.

One of the points that's come up is the community benefiting from XP parties. I agree that it benefited greatly in XI from grind parties but in XI you were camped. You could socialize and lul it up in between pulls. In XI you could socialize and lul it up while fighting because the chat window didn't wipe your text for every possible reason.

XP parties are just too taxing in XIV to be enjoyable and / or a time for socializing.
Everyone is in voice-chat because communicating ingame is too janky.

I don't know... I don't want to see people getting 30,000 SP just for completing a quest but I don't want to want to claw my eyes out to get 10K on raptor parties, either.

I think camped parties over roaming ones would go a long way in making this less brutal. I took some time off leading up to 1.18 and missed my leve runs and now have 2 jobs still in the mid 30's and i'm not in any way looking forward to bringing them to 50 via raptor roams....

[Tsukino]

XP parties are just too taxing in XIV to be enjoyable and / or a time for socializing.
Everyone is in voice-chat because communicating ingame is too janky.

I agree with this. One of the things that made partying in XI fun was, like you say, that you could socialize during the whole thing a bit. In fact, it's one of the reasons I didn't like "TP burn" merit parties later on in the game's time.

But it does seem like they might get a little better. Auto-attack has freed up a lot of button mashing already, and the development team has said that they'd like fights to take longer, around 40 seconds apiece, in the future. That could mean the ability to camp instead of moving around because you've already cleared the area.

I'd also expect that if partying for SP does take off, they will need to make other adjustments to mob density and such, but that's pure speculation.

[Chain]

XP parties are just too taxing in XIV to be enjoyable and / or a time for socializing.
Everyone is in voice-chat because communicating ingame is too janky.

Well part of the reason are the drab battle animations. (hopefully 1.9 will add more revisions of these)


I don't know how it is for ranged, but the mob pathing makes it just... frustrating for melee. I've seen mobs just randomly run back to their spot, stay claimed and just hitting us from range with no way to pull it back without grabbing 3 adds.