Coeurl & Heavensward

[Mahes]

Hey guys I have a proposition for the upcoming expansion of Heavensward and our server.

I am not expecting to sway everyones minds but a few would be nice.

Currently our server is small and some would argue shrinking due to the fact of groups and FCs transferring to other servers; I have a theory of why this is. On our server we have 3 groups of players

• Casuals-The casual players generally end up doing lots of crafting, gathering, and getting their tombstones capped for the weeks before they log off.
• Mid Tier Players-The players who want to raid or do endgame content but can't find a group or don't have the proper skill required to do this.
• Endgame Players-The players who are pushing for server first and spending a lot of their time raiding.

With the expansion we will all be placed in the same group. We will all be new to the content that is coming out and we will all be learning new stuff that we need for our classes whether it be a current DoW/DoM or Dark Knight, Machinist, or Astrologian.

The reason of this proposal is that we have sometime for our raiders to get gear or get what they need done before Alexander is released.

Timeline

What I propose is that as a community we all work as one to help our server start to thrive again.

Step 1.
I propose all the Free Companies who would be willing get together whether its 1 leader and 1 officer or just a delegate or a group to say they can help on x days to help with x content.

By doing something like this we can help get Free Company/Friends/Family members from not only our personal Free Companies but from multiple FCs from around the server.




Step 2.
When it comes to helping, randoms in pf or shouting for help we invite them if we have time to do so and help them. I have done it as well as several other people i know on our server.

Even if we are not able to help right then and there. We should work as a community to help them whether its Bismarck or even a Dungeon needed for the story.

*Note* I am not saying that you should drop everything on your plate to help them but if you’re free you open a willing hand.

Step 3.
I am not expecting everyone to be willing to do this but creating guides for their classes or linking guides that they found on the forums or to people to help benefit their ability to play their class. For instance for FCoB I mained bard and I used this guide to learn about my class but ended up modifying what I do to be slightly different to benefit my group due to song placement or lag.

Now I am not talking about telling someone off and saying that they are playing their class all wrong and that they should be doing this instead of that. That is not my intention of this. My theory behind doing this is strictly to benefit the server by taking those who are willing and giving them an additional way into helping them become endgame players.

Understanding your own class is a good start but to take it to a whole new level by learning the other classes in your party makeup and how they benefit your group as a whole. For instance if you’re a healer and you know a large amount of damage is about to go out and you have a class that had Mantra (Monk, Dragoon, Ninja, Bard, Warrior) in your party you should see them throw the ability up that way it takes less MP to get the party topped off and ready for the next big burst of damage. Another instance could be as a Black Mage in a Shiva party if you see another player who recently died and still has the weakness debuff and you know that Absolute Zero is coming out. The Black Mage can throw Apocatastasis on the person who died to help reduce the damage they take.

There are little things and various scenarios are out there but if you can learn to play your class to the fullest and if you can teach yourself how to react to situations you can turn you bad group into a better ones.

This is not for e-peen purposes. Meaning don't use this as a way to boost your e-peen by making them show you their rotation or finding out the numbers they pull and then flaunting that you do better than them as well don't go out to a target dummy and say hey if you want to learn how to play your class ALL YOU DO IS THIS ROTATION. By helping others on this server with their rotations and giving them different scenarios to think about and help them understand their class on a more intimate level.

Epeen is a term used when one wants to declare that they are vastly superior to others.
-geekdictionary

Step 4.

Sell Parties and Carries these are two of the hardest things to let go of when you are apart of them, but if we want to see a change in player skill and more we need to stop. I know I won't sway the main people who do sell parties but maybe I can open their eyes to something that they probably haven't thought about. When creating a Sell Party they get as many people who they know can down content together and pull high numbers that way they can tell the person who is they buyer to run into a wall or go kill themselves. That way they don't have to worry about the buyer wiping the party due to not knowing the mechanics of the fight. I am guilty of being apart of this, I have sold and been apart of someones party who sold, but I was faced with overwhelming evidence here recently that a lot of people who have made it past Second Coil of Bahamut Turn 4 or Turn 9 cannot play their class to the fullest and that's putting it a good way. My goal is to find ways to better our server and obviously sell parties are not doing any good.

Another issue is Carries via Free Company or just friends helping eachother out.What I classify as Carrying through content is taking a person or group of persons through content and having them die or not participate in the majority of the fights or during the more difficult phases of the fight. I understand that there is a lot of content for new player to do before they can get into more recent content but each turn gives the player some sort of skill they can add to their repertoire. Think about it in Binding Coil of Bahamut Turn 5 the biggest skill you can take from the fight with being vague is learning to dodge. Divebombs if you mess up could kill the party, Twisters if messed up could kill the party. Go on to Second Coil of Bahamut Turn 2 (Turn 7) The biggest skill you can learn in the fight in my opinion is how to work as a team to accomplish something. You had to communicate who has Voice or who has Shriek on them or you would wipe the group. Another issue with Carrying people through content is you get people who have been carried through the turns and don't have vital abilities for their class, aka a Black Mage without Quelling Strikes or a Bard without Blood for Blood, things that should not happen

Step 5.

This, in my opinion is going to be the hardest to keep up.

Two weeks after the release of Heavensward raiders will start doing so again and some like myself will hit this full speed plowing through the content as fast and as furious as I can; some pushing for bragging rights like being known as “Server First” and others will go more casually just wanting to see the final product of the content SE has given us.

The goal with this last phase to help the newer group of raiders get groups together. Any advice on this would be great but i'm not sure how to do this. The only things that I can think of to do this is set them up with other players you have helped and that are looking for the same content and using these Forums as a central hunting grounds as well as the facebook group that Poutine Ma'bouche has put together.

Step 6.

I want to strive to make our server not known as dying but known for being some of the most friendly and helpful players out there given our size. People will always act the way that they want and there is nothing we can do about it to change that, however given a solid group of willing people and people to give up a little bit of time each we can make a change for our server. That being said One Person can't make a difference. It will take the whole server trying to help one another out to actually gain what this server needs to thrive again.

My Final thoughts

I know I am asking a lot from people to try this, but this server has been my home since beta and I want to keep this server as my home for as many more years as I have to play this game.

I know “Elitistism” is a big thing on our server and I wont deny being one of them however that does not have to be a bad thing especially if we work as a group to help people out with learning content and there classes. However Elitists may run rampant on our server but what is killing it and taking control of it is the size of players e-peens.


We have several players who like to make sure they keep others on our server “in check” and the only way we will thrive as a community is to take our entire server and do stuff to fix it. Taking Free Companies large and small, Progression based and casual to turn things around.


"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."
~Henry Fords

[Truefaith87]

Most likely not the topic you were asking for on it, but lumping together career crafting as "casual" is quite a misguided concept.. Crafters put tons of time, money, and energy into reaching the highest possible points to benefit others than just themselves, usually. Perhaps rewording the term in that light alone would change a few outlooks on it. On your primary topic, it does make sense, but it would require a large scale community effort to put together, as well as hold together. It is for sure not something 1 person could do alone, let alone a single leader and 1 officer. Delegating the choice to a leader and 2 officers would share the burden on each some, but another issue is that there are so many small, fragmented FC on Coeurl, that it is rather difficult to get people to work together. We have tremendous amounts of "just friends" FC, which are very splintered in the scope of this idea. Do some smaller FCs look into the idea of "befriending" the larger ones? Yes, but in the end, it really harms them because they still feel a bit excluded in the grand scope of things. These are just a few of my own thoughts on the matter at hand. Do my comments mean I'm NOT interested in the idea? Not in the slightest. Inside STAB!, for example, we have at least 1 extremely skilled player of each class, who knows rotations, gear valuations, stat requirements, and so forth. They come to that person with class questions, and if for any reason its not a question they can answer, it escalates up into the higher tiers. It may not be exactly what you're looking for, but its at least a groundwork idea for it.

[sciondar]

I think this is a nice and ambitious idea. I'm like TrueFaith87 described and lead a small guild that just has my and my friend's characters in it. I have 1 character that I've completed the story all the way through but haven't started raiding with and another character who I've completed the 2.0 story with and have been taking on the crystal tower with to get her geared up. That being said, if an extra tank is needed to complete main storyline content I'm willing to tank it. My character I'm doing CT with is a dragoon and I'm open to helping as best as possible with any content I've unlocked with her. I'm typically on in the evenings and weekends and all of my characters share the same last name of Biolith. Hope we can create something to help everyone.

[Lulu89]

Our server is not small, I've played on a "small" server before for 9 weeks and it was hell... It's the same 50 ppl everywhere you go at endgame, the same 50 names everyday in Towns ...the same 3 PFs up at the same time everyday lol...YES, our endgame is small due to many of them moving to bigger servers. But for the over all pop of coeurl we area Mid-pop server. We have many players just not a heavy active endgame much any more is all you're seeing.

I know this is just my point on this.. But I'm more of what's "the bigger picther" when it comes to looking at something not just the small ones that make up less then 1%-5% of our server ...aka FCoB.

[RoyalAtlas]

Hey Mahes, I have a lot of respect for what you are doing here. I want the same thing you do. White Gravity is very willing and able to help with Step 5 - we ask people to fill out the Raid Static Recruitment Form on our website (link) so that we can fit them with a group of their current skill level. We have multiple spreadsheets set up to map out all this data so that we can match people. We've been able to get 3 new statics raiding and are assisting them to the best of our ability. It's a lot of work though - if we continue making statics in this way we may run out of resources/willing players who can teach and assist. People's schedules fill up quick and there is only so much they can give while still being able to play this game for themselves. But yeah, our long term goal here is to have more statics on Coeurl ready to go for Heavensward.

This is a huge goal but I don't think it's impossible. It's going to be a lot of effort to pull together. Let us know how we can help. Maybe we can put an LS together for interested parties?

[ClaireAbigail]

Crafting has its own end game. Server firsts needs crafters to back them up for crafting gears and melds. Who do you think made those crafted gears worn by people who cleared final coil in the first few weeks? Crafters have their own "server firsts" when it comes to making the latest stuff. Please don't segregate the crafters and the raiders. They will need each other.

And about the topic you are proposing...idk what to feel about it. It feels like something the fc "PACT" would do back then to try to organize something like this. Although seeing them preaching about "saving the server" then leaving for another server left a hypocritical taste in my mouth.

And as you can see other fc are taking advantage of it already like mr crush leader up there with the famous I'll help you but join my fc first pitch.

Look, what you're doing is good. It's noble to think that way but to be honest, there's alot of people in our server that are just too greedy or too entitled or whatever to be helped. We can sit here and talk all day lomy how to fix the server but in the end who will actually take the initiative and help? Or are we gonna all point fingers, poach fc members and blame each other? When are we all gonna stand up and actually care for our server rather than saving our own asses? Lemme know when people wanna start that and I'll even bring it up to my fc and even try(no promises) to make them join this cause.

[gorezilla1]

Our server is not small, I've played on a "small" server before for 9 weeks and it was hell... But I'm more of what's "the bigger picther" when it comes to looking at something not just the small ones that make up less then 1%-5% of our server ...aka FCoB.

Even if our server isn't small (and I disagree), it's still shrinking. Now I'm well aware that the expansion with inject it with new life, but I think the point of the OP is that there are steps that can (and should) be taken to make the experience as close to optimal for as many players as possible. Regards of what specific niche people fall into, the fact still remains that actual combat content is necessary for a great many things. If after we consistently tell people they need to get certain abilities from cross-class, or give advice on things that need to be done and they don't listen, they get written off as bad. I'm guilty of writing people off.

You are most definitely right about end-game being small. Many people who can actually complete said content and lead people to victory insist that they are bored, and when challenged to help insist on staying bored. If however we are able to to expand the number of people able to do they activities, our options will grow. I also seriously doubt that <10% of the server is interested in FCoB. The fact remains that it is content and so people want to do. Sadly, some people are stuck on t5. Others t9. As such they don't have access FCoB. If after we consistently tell people they need to get certain abilities from cross-class, or give advice on things that need to be done and they don't listen, they get written off as bad. I'm guilty of writing people off. However, I'm also open to the idea of improvement. Very rarely will a random listen to advice from strangers. At that point, it's the FC lead (or supervising agent) who needs to show they the right path.

My point is that to increase the size of end-game challenges tackled on a daily basis, we need to increase the number of competent players. We don't need to be harsh, just truthful. I kicked a whm from 11 for consistently wiping us, rather than disband the party. A few days later, the whm told me she'd improved and you know what? She had. We wiped and the sch tried blaming the whm because of her history, but the whm was pretty close to flawless. It was the sch who murdered us. The whm, on the other hand, had accepted her short-comings and worked to overcome them

Almost everyone who plays this game is over 18. Sure there are lots of people who are under 18 but really, there's no reason to coddle the average player. We are adults. Teach us what we need to know and we can make progress. However, the most important thing is to be truthful to those closest to you. When you know your colleagues aren't performing as well as they should be, but insist they are doing well, they tend to disregard the wisdom of an outsider.

[gorezilla1]

snip

I agree with you about it being a grossly optimistic goal. But when it comes to initiative, Mahes has volunteered. The thing to know about our FC (him and I are in the same one) is that while growing is a delightful idea, it's less than secondary to us. And as such, people needn't join the FC to get help. We have time before the expansion we can spending laying down the foundations of how the issue will be tackled. I have an idea I'm working on (seperate from this), but it only pertains to FCoB. That said, all you've said is that it's won't work. That's cool. And your opinion. I would however like to ask you, if there was some advice you could offer for making it work, what would it be? We have you feedback, now we want your advice.

[Lulu89]

Even if our server isn't small (and I disagree), it's still shrinking.

Shrinking yes.. Small no.. Play on a small server and then we can talk more about "what a small server looks like" go 18 hr a day with no more then 1 or 2 PFs up ... For weeks on end.. That is a small server inactive. I can't see how ppl can mix the server and the endgame up so easy lol endgame is not what makes a server bigger or small the players do.

Also most ppl forget that endgame make up less then 10% of the over all game play.. And less then 5% of the players that play this game make up the endgamers. That's over all not just our server.

But on a said note yes there needs to be "More of a push" to make endgame more fun and active on our server and I feel the same as many. That we as FC leaders need to be the one to work together to make this work. I have alrdy team up with Royal's FC on this and have been pointing even a few of my FC member his why to help them get coil teams.

But at the end of the day we need to do less fighting over dum crap and more helping the server as its leaders. To make our server even better right?

[Mahes]

Most likely not the topic you were asking for on it, but lumping together career crafting as "casual" is quite a misguided concept.. Crafters put tons of time, money, and energy into reaching the highest possible points to benefit others than just themselves, usually.

I see where you are going with this and I agree to an extent. We had/have a few career crafters on the server who really only put there time into crafting and if that is what makes them happy in the game that is what they need to do. That being said a lot of our server crafts casually, I do and several other people I know do. I personally love to craft my Leatherworker and my Alchemist are my two loves. Here recently I am assuming because of the pre-expansion lule a lot of people have turned to crafting to fill the downtime. That is why I placed it in the "Casual" group.

We have tremendous amounts of "just friends" FC, which are very splintered in the scope of this idea. Do some smaller FCs look into the idea of "befriending" the larger ones? Yes, but in the end, it really harms them because they still feel a bit excluded in the grand scope of things.

I completely agree with this hands down. Our server has so many FCs that are "just friends" FCs and though I see why they do it I see why it hurts them. I am 2nd in command of Abel's Vengeance and I have noticed that a lot the "just friend" Free Companies vanish in 1-6 months. The largest issue I see from small FCs is the fact that they play with only there friends and don't meet new people and then when they want to get content done and they cant the either leave the server or they just stop playing the game. My personal number one thing when playing any MMO is if you aren't having fun figure out a way to have fun. What I see benefiting the entire server as a whole if the smaller FCs talking about merging with a larger one and creating a LS for their friends. It can server the same purpose the current FC is doing and it will allow them to meet new people and venture further into the game then they thought.

I think this is a nice and ambitious idea. I'm like TrueFaith87 described and lead a small guild that just has my and my friend's characters in it. I have 1 character that I've completed the story all the way through but haven't started raiding with and another character who I've completed the 2.0 story with and have been taking on the crystal tower with to get her geared up. That being said, if an extra tank is needed to complete main storyline content I'm willing to tank it. My character I'm doing CT with is a dragoon and I'm open to helping as best as possible with any content I've unlocked with her. I'm typically on in the evenings and weekends and all of my characters share the same last name of Biolith. Hope we can create something to help everyone.

Alright now I have a question for you, Have you tried to raid if so how successful have you been?

Another question I have, Have you had any questions about your class and not be able to figure it out do to not being able to talk to someone and actually fine tune your rotation?

These are little things that i want to do to help our players on the server. Back when A Realm Reborn (2.0) had come out. I experienced one of the most friendly and helpful communities than in ANY OTHER MMO I have ever played. When I hit 50 on my White Mage there were people wanting to help others with CM and Praetorium there were people who had Cleared Ifrit HM and Garuda HM coming back and helping people just to help them. There were people helping others with class rotation stuff and willing to give up their own free time just to benefit the community and now we have people trying to sell other people the "Tips and Tricks" they learned from raiding, and selling clear carries just to make money.

Our server is not small, I've played on a "small" server before for 9 weeks and it was hell... It's the same 50 ppl everywhere you go at endgame, the same 50 names everyday in Towns ...the same 3 PFs up at the same time everyday lol...YES, our endgame is small due to many of them moving to bigger servers. But for the over all pop of coeurl we area Mid-pop server. We have many players just not a heavy active endgame much any more is all you're seeing.

I know this is just my point on this.. But I'm more of what's "the bigger picther" when it comes to looking at something not just the small ones that make up less then 1%-5% of our server ...aka FCoB.

Our server you can argue is Mid-Pop I wont deny that especially with the influx of new players we are getting on our server, but roughly the amount of people that come on can't outweigh the amount of people who are transferring off due to the fact they can't get content done on our server. Also I have been approached by people from Large FCs and Small FCs to help them get through content, since I created my Community Help LS.

Right now the issue on our server is that people aren't willing to help others with things that they need. Now I'm not talking about helping someone atma farm or dungeon atma farm, because anyone who as done that will agree with me.. IT SUCKS, but through Extreme Mode primals, Coil or even other trials.

The community is what needs to be kickstarted and fix the ideals of player that have the mentality of "Why should I help them, They are apart of my FC" is terrible. We have a large number of people on our server who want to get through content such as T9 and on and there are only a handful of people willing to put the effort forth and helping them.

Hey Mahes, I have a lot of respect for what you are doing here. I want the same thing you do. White Gravity is very willing and able to help with Step 5 - we ask people to fill out the Raid Static Recruitment Form on our website (link) so that we can fit them with a group of their current skill level. We have multiple spreadsheets set up to map out all this data so that we can match people. We've been able to get 3 new statics raiding and are assisting them to the best of our ability. It's a lot of work though - if we continue making statics in this way we may run out of resources/willing players who can teach and assist. People's schedules fill up quick and there is only so much they can give while still being able to play this game for themselves. But yeah, our long term goal here is to have more statics on Coeurl ready to go for Heavensward.

This is a huge goal but I don't think it's impossible. It's going to be a lot of effort to pull together. Let us know how we can help. Maybe we can put an LS together for interested parties?

Royal I want to help as much as I can with whatever you need. Ill get a LS Created and we can figure something using both of our Free Companies Resources. ^.^ Any other FC that is willing is most definitely able to join!

Crafting has its own end game. Server firsts needs crafters to back them up for crafting gears and melds. Who do you think made those crafted gears worn by people who cleared final coil in the first few weeks? Crafters have their own "server firsts" when it comes to making the latest stuff. Please don't segregate the crafters and the raiders. They will need each other.

And about the topic you are proposing...idk what to feel about it. It feels like something the fc "PACT" would do back then to try to organize something like this. Although seeing them preaching about "saving the server" then leaving for another server left a hypocritical taste in my mouth.

I wont deny that crafters have their own version of "Endgame" but like I stated there are a larger number of Casual Crafters than Career Crafter.

Moving on to what Pact tried to do; they were trying to do the same thing in principle but going about it a different way. They wanted to spur community activity by giving incentives such as raffles, and other events like that. I am wanting the Free Companies to work as one to help the community by helping those who want to learn to better themselves in ALL ASPECTS. If eventually as a community we want to start up a raffle or scavenger hunt or something along those lines cool but to start with that is not how I want to spur the community to work as one. As well I see why PACT ended up leaving, they tried to get people to do things and people kept turning their shoulders the other way and avoiding it. If I had more time to give at that point I would have definitely thrown my hat into the ring to help what PACT tried to do and I would have done everything in my power to steer it the way that I am trying to do now.

Lastly I don't want any credit thrown my way or towards my FC I want to spur community growth and activity. I want players to start working towards helping one another instead of shitting on each other. I want Free Companies to take it upon themselves to help everyone not just there Free Company. It would be cool if crafters helped one another with learning rotations and work together on the economy since they are the frontlines in it, some could argue more than other players.

there's a lot of people in our server that are just too greedy or too entitled or whatever to be helped. We can sit here and talk all day lomy how to fix the server but in the end who will actually take the initiative and help? Or are we gonna all point fingers, poach fc members and blame each other? When are we all gonna stand up and actually care for our server rather than saving our own asses? Lemme know when people wanna start that and I'll even bring it up to my fc and even try(no promises) to make them join this cause

In all honesty though I do need to say something with this comment. In almost every forum post I go to that you have commented on instead of giving changes that could be done to help whatever cause it is you attack people or are really negative.

I have been and can be really negative too but it seems like a consistant thing when it comes to your posts. Maybe you don't mean it to sound that way but it comes across.