Quote Originally Posted by Preypacer View Post
I don't agree with this at all.

It was very easy to do a search, find people looking for a party, send a /tell and get people together. You could have a group together in as little as 5-10 minutes, if everything fell into place. I saw it happen plenty of times.

What made it difficult and timely in many cases is that, at times, there simply weren't enough people with the right jobs, at the right levels, looking for a group to do the same content you were looking to do.

It's all well and good to find 4 tanks with their seek flags up, but if none of them are interested to do what you are, well... don't matter much, does it?

Incidentally... it's the same thing with Duty Finder. Duty finder does nothing but automate that process so people don't have to do it themselves. Even when drawing from several servers, it can still take 30-60 minutes to form a party, because no Tanks or Healers (hardly ever an issue with DPS lol) are currently queuing up for that content.

There's nothing SE can do about that, in XI or in XIV. They can provide the content. They can provide incentives for people to do the content. They can't force people to do it when someone else decides they want to.

Also, a reason why many people "waited hours" for a party, is because they doing just that ... Sitting there, waiting for someone else to start the party and invite them. I was guilty of this, too... until a friend of mine, whom seemed to almost always have groups shortly after logging in, pointed out what I was doing wrong. She asked what I was up to. I said "waiting for a group. Doesn't seem to be any action". She laughed and informed me she'd just assembled a full PT in less than 10 minutes of logging in. Why? She didn't sit around with her Party flag up, waiting. She actively sought people out and invited them.

Did she always get groups together quickly? No. But most of the time, she did. And while others were sitting around, whining about "lack of parties", she was out getting XP with hers.
I don't know I can count many times where we had 3 people actively /telling everyone we could find and still sat there for 2 hours trying to get a party going. It got better when you got to merit levels, but the party finding system in XI was pretty bad. Which is why they did away with it.

Separately, XI was frustrating for endgame for things like HNM's. With large servers and groups competing for spawns sometimes it became a nightmare. It wasn't fun or convenient to sit in a zone and twiddle your thumbs waiting for something to happen.

Lastly, XI's endgame was a very closed community. I came a bit late to the party, around the 3rd expansion, and found even after i got PLD to cap and worked my but off to merit that noone would take me or even teach me endgame. I literally had to start from scratch and level SAM just to even get my foot in the door to dynamis or sky. XIV makes these kinds of things way more accessible to new level capped players in a reasonable time frame.