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

[XooZQ]

So we can have r50 Tanks who can't tank, and r50 healers who can't heal? Good job.

^ 100% That.

[Forerunner]

DEAR LORD STOP THE TRAIN.

I think I just found some logic.

Logic, on these forums? From someone whose account only displays them as being r20? Impossible.

Also, thats going in my sig.

[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.

[Felis]

The quests for now are : go there find that, kill those, walk for 1 hour for a low reward : no fun no thanks I really enjoy killing things with ls mates instead more.

"Go there, kill 2 wolves, go back and get 38k Sp" isn't enought? (R42 story mission)

[SniperRifle]

Grinding on the same monster quick and efficiently for the best sp/hr was repetative like a game of hockey. Don't eat til the group is done or if party agrees to take a break. It's not completely mindless, but most people were so well practiced at it that it just appeared to be mindless. Where as had someone who had never played FFXI or a similar class role before would have noooo idea what to do during a grind party in 11. This is where skill came in... Those who lacked in skill hurt the parties overall sp/hr. Dat's whurr teh replay valuez at!! It worked VERY WELL in 11, but the most apparent problem in 11 was not the leveling curve, but the time spent waiting for parties. NOT SAYING I HAD PROBLEMS, but everyone is different, and it seems everyone who tried 11 and didn't like it was fed up w/ logging on and waiting 2-3 hours to party for 1.

There were other problems w/ 11 but they are irrelevant since the game succeeds still today...

I know what OP is trying to say, we shouldn't mimic 11 because nostalgia won't make an MMO survive (in this case 14)... But idk if grinding is the problem either. Doesn't matter what is put into a game; quests, grinding, HNMs, BCNMs, raids, heroics, PVP, whatever it may be. So long as it's fun and scales well (aka, people are still getting better and having fun and noticing positive progress after copious amounts of time spent playing the game), everything else doesn't matter.

As we've seen in 11, PVP can suck balls. But it was fun in WoW? Grinding was fun in 11? But sucked (mediocre at best) in WoW? And I know noooooooooooooo one is going to say PVP in 11 was fun. PVP? Yea it's that thing you do when you play multiplayer FPS. Games LIVE off PVP, games like CS Source. It all just depends on 2 things I listed above (fun and scaling)... How to execute this? Only a game designer would know.

But if an entire game can live off it's PVP factor why not just use the same amount of mechanics to create an equally skillful/well balanced PVP system, as just an ASPECT of a game... Instead of throwing in some horse crap PVP system for the sake of saying, "PVP HAS ARRIVED!". Do the same w/ end game, leveling, storyline, zones, economy, UI, character customization.

Then, people will gladly not only pay money for your game monthly, but people will stop playing other games permanently, just to play your game... Not just the diehard fans.

[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.

[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")

[Betelgeuzah]

The future is finally here!

Just kidding.

[Sypherblade]

hate to bring up wow....but take its dungeon finder utility. U put if ur a DD, tank, healer then get grouped up with people and run an instance....fun right? until it gets too easy...then its boring....this is where wow fails.

soooooOoOooo.....

do the dungeon finder....make a crap load of instances.....group ppl up really fast...but make the instances challenging each time and random it up a little bit...so its just like "grinding" and there is "story" and there is "strategy"

take FFXI's besieged! one of the best things i loved about FFXI! Just make it instanced instead of everyone and their mama joins in and the whole zone turns into lag city! ppl loved besiged. ppl got pumped for besieged at one point in their FFXI lifetimes. It was "random" big bosses that showed up...and ppl be in the shouts "Like oh #$#$# its that guy! we are all ##$#" or "Oh we got off easy! its just this guy! woo hoo!" people worked together and got butchered...it was fun.

SO make leveling kinda like this. Get ppl together fast...so casuals and hardcore can level up at the same speed per hour... just hardcores get more hours to invest...Its repeatable so u can grind the hell out of it...but its not "lets find the easist mobs in the game and kill them over and over and over..." instead its a variety of mobs that get thrown at you...some are cake...some are not....some poison you...some do burst damage...some have insane DEFENSE that you have to tear into...VARIETY VARIETY VARITY!! not...easy button!!! lets kill little pink birdies that turn into poofs of pixie dust when they die!

Am i way outta line here?