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

[zaviermhigo]

Party grinding isn't about killing the same mob over and over again in the same place, its about learning the class you're playing, and learning strategies to do with others. If fostering better relationships with other players becomes boring to people then why even play an mmo?

[Wolfie]

Party grinding isn't about killing the same mob over and over again in the same place, its about learning the class you're playing, and learning strategies to do with others. If fostering better relationships with other players becomes boring to people then why even play an mmo?

Bringing up FFXI again, but sorry, nothing in FFXI's party grind taught me how to be a good player.

As a BLM, the only spells I ever cast were Blizzard and Thunder, and it was on magic bursts. I had no reason to cast enfeebling spells, the only food I used was INT food (marron glace was it?), and I only ever sat in one spot at the back of the party waiting for people to bring mobs to me. Enfeebling and everything else was brought by the red mages, white mages, bards, whatever. Didn't have to deal with MP or hate management because things died fast and couldn't kill me anyways. It wasn't until I was already at end game that I was forced to learn the intricacies of BLM, like kiting, proper enfeebling, using different spell elements, cookies vs MP food, full out gear swaps, hate management, etc.

There was never any real challenge thrown at people while leveling in FFXI. Grinds of any kind are always, always reduced to the easiest and fastest ways to do something. It's the complete opposite of challenge, sprinkled with a lot of tedium.

[ViolentDjango]

Bringing up FFXI again, but sorry, nothing in FFXI's party grind taught me how to be a good player.

As a BLM, the only spells I ever cast were Blizzard and Thunder, and it was on magic bursts. I had no reason to cast enfeebling spells, the only food I used was INT food (marron glace was it?), and I only ever sat in one spot at the back of the party waiting for people to bring mobs to me. Enfeebling and everything else was brought by the red mages, white mages, bards, whatever. Didn't have to deal with MP or hate management because things died fast and couldn't kill me anyways. It wasn't until I was already at end game that I was forced to learn the intricacies of BLM, like kiting, proper enfeebling, using different spell elements, cookies vs MP food, full out gear swaps, hate management, etc.

There was never any real challenge thrown at people while leveling in FFXI. Grinds of any kind are always, always reduced to the easiest and fastest ways to do something. It's the complete opposite of challenge, sprinkled with a lot of tedium.

As time progressed, the elements of learning curve for FFXI were slowly phased out due to popular demand. Skill chains and magic bursts were a big deal in the beginning, SE just never kept their damage and effect high enough for them to be practical as the game progressed. That's why BLM fell out to the wayside to begin with -- Melees effectiveness and the general ability of more and more classes to Self-skill chain outran the inefficiencies of resting MP. If MP recovered as quickly in FFXI as it does in FFXIV, there SE could have redesigned the system to allow more functionality and skill to be learned by BLMs, but it just didn't work out that way.

Meanwhile, one important thing grinding DID teach was MP awareness and moderation. It wasn't an easy thing to keep your MP and DPS up if you didn't know what you were doing, and early on, it was easy to note a good mage from a bad one purely based on how their MP looked after a 4+ chain.

SE just made a lot of mistakes and phased out most of the important elements of the game in favor of making melees arguably too strong and independent.

You never learned end game as you progressed through levels grinding -- its like high school.

You never learn how to do your job in high school/grinding, you learn the nuances and key elements of getting things done while dealing with people you may or may not like -- which ultimately helps you be more effective and valuable when you finally start learning the specifics of what you'll be doing for the rest of your career (i.e. in endgame/college).

You learn to be familiar with elements of what you need to do in a group, as well as the intimate details of your own abilities and skills and how to apply them in a group setting. That's an important thing, especially if they're going to push for a more skill-oriented play mechanic. Abyssea is a perfect example of how annoying the community gets when it has to teach people how to do things on the fly -- I don't how much needless passive aggression I got when I first got back and started trying Abyssea, we really don't need that kind of counter productive behavior in the late game content in FFXIV.

On the issue of waiting for parties -- learning to build and manage long-term parties is a valuable tool for any leader to develop. I don't know how many Abyssea (FFXI and Abyssea coming up because they are relevant examples from a similar game many of us have experience with) leaders I've run into who have no idea how to manage a group and constantly complain when people leave after 2 hours like 2 hours isn't a considerable time investment (sorry, but in the real world, it is.) A large amount of the issue with waiting for parties was people not being willing to actually invest in building one -- I managed to get Puppetmaster to 75, pre Abyssea, in less than a month and anyone can tell you that PUP is probably the last job anyone would invite.

Countless times, I've had to save parties by using the management skills I learned building my own PTs for Puppetmaster to get alliances back to 18 members after leads fail to properly appeal to and invite additional members. I can think of several instances where people said yes to mind invites immediately after saying no to our alliance leaders', just because I did it more politely.

One last thing:

Grinding tends to reduce things down to being incredibly simple because it focuses skill sets. EVERYTHING, even bosses, is easy when you focus skills into the right place. If it isn't, then it is typically designed against specific skill sets/play styles, and is likely ridiculously difficult without a painstakingly honed strategy and set up, which isn't the kind of thing you want in an MMO that doesn't foster group cohesion.