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

[ViolentDjango]

Progression through the game (leveling) by way of a large number of solo quests based on a few archetypes is exactly what WoW brought to the MMO world, and that is what the OP is suggesting FFXIV do now.

Quests existed before but were used differently in other games at the time. Dungeons and raids are entirely irrelevant and no one even mentioned them but you, because you're trying to paint everyone who doesn't want solo, quest-based progression as a blind WoW hater.

This entire argument is asinine.

One. They've already said that they feel leveling in an MMO should take longer than it does in an offline game, which is indicative of the fact that you'll NEVER be getting 30,000 SP from a single quest. Which is good.

Two. All MMOs have a learning curve -- you have to learn how to deal with the lag between the interface and your internet connection and understand how that translates into timing and actions in a party setting. That is something you learn to feel out through time -- steamrolling through to Rank 50 won't teach you that. That's why grinding is a good thing, just like in FFXI, FFXIV is shaping into a game where timing and watching for cues are a vital element of effective play and you can't reasonably expect someone to learn all of that if they can hop to max level in a week.

Three. From a game design point of view, learning when and where to use an ability is a subtle part of a learning curve that people disregard. When you're given a new ability, your tendency is to use it over other abilities, but as you encounter new situations with each ability your understanding of how they correlate to preexisting abilities expands. This is an important thing to consider when you're trying to determine how fast someone should level, because each decrease in time equals a decrease in opportunities to learn the outer rim subtleties of strategy and the nuances of your job.

I'm not against leveling up through Quests, I just feel that party SP/EXP should ALWAYS be better, because the cornerstone of the game and your development as a player in an MMO is the community. Like it or not, FFXI's EXP grinding system fostered a much more connected community than its current level 30~>90 in 5 hour leveling system does. Suffering, for lack of better phrasing, brings people together and that togetherness improves the quality of team activities and effectiveness in End Game.

If not for the grind system in FFXI, Ninja would have never become a tank, for example, and a lot of other crucial abilities for end game would have taken significantly longer to surface.

You can rant and rave about grinding being bad, but there are definite, notable benefits to it as well. And there are plenty of people complaining about "running around" for EXP/SP. There's no reason doing 15 minutes of quests should yield you more EXP than 2 hours of grinding, and there's no reason people who invest time into building balanced parties (Which will likely be required for EXP/SP chains to work efficiently) to get less EXP/SP for their effort than people who run around solo. Making solo EXP/SP more efficient than party EXP/SP just separates people out and disconnects people from the community. 80% of the most renown linkshells in FFXI were very likely full of people who met each other during grind parties (outside of people who knew each other irl), because it was an opportunity to scout someone's abilities and understanding of the game. Who's going to party if you can make double or triple the progress solo?

That aside, its simple logic, one man building a house will always take longer than 2 men, and 4 men will always be twice as fast as that. Grind Parties should get more EXP/SP -- purely out of the amount of effort it takes to organize a balanced one. They should just have to fight higher level monsters for that EXP/SP.

[Verecund]

From a game design point of view, learning when and where to use an ability is a subtle part of a learning curve that people disregard. When you're given a new ability, your tendency is to use it over other abilities, but as you encounter new situations with each ability your understanding of how they correlate to preexisting abilities expands. This is an important thing to consider when you're trying to determine how fast someone should level, because each decrease in time equals a decrease in opportunities to learn the outer rim subtleties of strategy and the nuances of your job.

Sadly, World of Warcraft and other MMOs/games did this little bit about a thousand times better with a feature called 'PvP'. (and to a somewhat lesser but still-apparent extent with "dungeons" and "raids")

[ViolentDjango]

Sadly, World of Warcraft and other MMOs/games did this little bit about a thousand times better with a feature called 'PvP'. (and to a somewhat lesser but still-apparent extent with "dungeons" and "raids")

They've already said that FFXIV is a PvE game, and that all "PvP" content will come in the form of competitive PvE based events. You can't compare a predominantly PvE game to a game that readily hurls the PvP mechanic at people and expect to come back with decent parallels. Additionally, as someone who played WoW for a time and had planned to get into its competitive scene -- PvP is so ridiculously different from PvE, there are tons of different builds on either side and seldom do they completely overlap.

Raids are a different thing, and largely fall under the cover of "End game" even though some of them were lower level, typically because the higher level ones are the ones where a certain amount of skill is required, and in my experience with WoW raids -- people weren't very pleased to have to explain to you what you should be doing. Which takes me back to my earlier explanation of why end game content isn't a very good place to teach people how to play the game.