Suggestion: Server Without the Duty Finder

[ElHeggunte]

Forgive me if this has been asked before. What would you think of having a single, new server in FFXIV with the Duty Finder removed?

I think it would be the kind of thing people who have a hard on for the nostalgic past would try for 10 minutes and immediately ask for a way back to the old servers when they're given a harsh reminder of why pre-DF games sucked in a big way.

Sure I don't use it now(as a cross server match-up anyway), but everyone else is; tempted by the shorter wait times.

Of course. Because it's not fun potentially waiting hours for a group if you're not playing a FotM class or you aren't playing during prime time. The lack of DF also tended to make parties an organizational nightmare even if you filled one of the more popular roles during peak hours.

I miss the old days of stronger, closely-knit communities where it was easier to make friends and people had reputations to uphold if they wanted to get in groups. If there was no DF, then everyone on the server would be using PF and/or communicating more. Don't have time to wait? Stay on the rest of the servers with DF.

This is a common "argument" and it's a wild exaggeration and misrepresentation of what old pre-DF games were like. Friends are just as easy to make now as they were back then. You mean to say you were forced to make friends with people, for better or worse, before DF became a common thing. Personal reputation also typically meant very little. You could easily be considered by some to be the biggest asshole on the server and you could still find groups just fine. For every person who thought you were a dickbag there would be five more waiting around the corner who didn't give a shit about what someone claimed you did. It may have been general consensus among your LS/Guild mates that Muscular Manny should go die in a fire, but the rest of the server never cared enough to completely ostracize him.

In my personal experience (especially with FFXI), pre-DF games were even less social than what we have now. Your Guild or Linkshell or Clan or whatever the game called it may have been tight-knit, but because competition for mobs and resources were so much greater (because everything was open-world) I found that if someone wasn't part of your clique they were usually considered an enemy and you were constantly at each other's throats. It was a bunch of tiny isolated communities at end-game instead of the big Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood people like to remember. Naturally you still had friends outside of your LS and you often were on friendly terms with other Linkshells, but when push came to shove it was always every man for himself and trying your best to throw someone else under the bus was common practice.

Thoughts?

I think nostalgia is dangerous thing.

[Coatl]

Why would you want to go back to prehistoric times of MMOs where you had to shout at players standing outside of a dungeon, just to form up enough people to get inside said dungeon. Of course you would make friends if you had to stand by the same people for days at a time. You should ask for your server to not have PFs either, to get the true, classic MMORPG feeling.

[LandricFrey]

You can do this right now. Go ahead and recruit people from all servers and build this community.

Wait...you cant? Not enough people to sustain this?

Basically, if you cant build this idea on a current server, you wont be able to get it to work on its own server.

Trust me, I've already had such fantasies. My guess is I'd get only a small fraction of the server to join in and no it wouldn't be enough, though if I had that fraction from every server, that may just add up to a nice populated world.

And I agree the DF needs to remain in game, (a MMO today couldn't compete without it. I understand that most people want it, and want it now!) I just think it would be fun to have one server without.

[Valaska]

I think its most important just to galvanize yourself in your actual servers community by crafting, talking in shout with each other, and your own free company. Foster friendships between companies too!

[Nadirah]

Removing the duty finder may not be the right course of action. The problem is that MMOs have become increasingly anti-social. Most games u go from 1-max lvl without ever talking to others.


So while you may think someone wanting to remove the duty finder is silly, keep in mind the reason they request it is because the growing isolation in MMO communities.

And forcing players to be joined at the hip to accomplish anything outside maybe crafting is also bullshit and the wrong way to go about it.

[Nadirah]

The developers have streamlined everything to a point that you don't need to interact with the community anymore so most people just don't.

Well, for starters, there's no general, server wide chat channel.

Or one across cities.

You get... shouts. That's it. Way to get people to talk to folks.

Most of my friends in games came not from actually doing things with them, but by having general discussions with them in public channels, which leads to tells and eventually group and guild invites. Limiting chat to one zone at a time, and even then not necessarily the entire zone, is pretty much not a very friendly thing to start with. It's almost like they don't *want* you to meet people.

[Averax]

Ah, i'm reminded of when wow did not have a dungeon finder.

Me: "I want to do a dungeon "
Me: *spams LFG chat for a 30 minutes*
-A person is interested, and joins the group-
Me: *spams LFG chat for another 30 minutes*
-First person gets bored and leaves-
-I get a second person requesting to join, but they see it's just me in the party, so they also leave-

Ah, but when i did get a group, the bonds i forged that day lasted about a month.

[raela]

Using voicechat fixes all this, save for not speaking English. I'm no fan of voicechat, but I used it during endgame content in ARR. Teamspeak is pretty accessible (you can even get it on your phone), and Discord is free. True, others will have reasons for not really wanting to do this...but I think that learning to socialize with different types of people and growing past people's awkward/stunted social skills (or growing past them yourself) is a very good thing to do.

That doesn't help with anxiety, and voice chat can be an utter mess without a goal (like clearing content). Nothing like the new guy to the guild lusting after that girl he heard! Everyone loves the drama.

Before I was here, I was on a MMO without DF. First month, DPS could get a party. Next month, took some waiting but was doable. After? You had to beg guild mates to power you through.. And then not even tanks/healers could get in. No thanks.

[jomoru]

I doubt it will ever happen, but it seems like something that would be easy to implement.

why do people think "Server with unique code" would be easy?

[Xanikk999]

Seems like a waste of resources. This server would be so dead it wouldn't be worth the effort for Square Enix to use it.