The question for Monday: Why do you need your clear asap?

[NorthernLadMSP]

Yeah, I'm sure I'm forever screwed out of doing Nidhogg EX at this point - because when the patch launched, I was way too interested in the new raid, the new dungeons, the MSQ and, especially, furnishing my new house. Now, all I ever see is farm parties. I suppose I could try and make a learning party. Who knows if I even consider it that important at this point.

[Iromi]

Because after a while, very few people tolerate "learning" groups anymore (as in, you'll have a hard time getting anyone except the truly altruistic people to join), and if you haven't gotten at least one clear you basically become like Pig-Pen, constantly surrounded by that "100 esos" dirt cloud that causes everyone to leave duty because no one wants to be around that.

Lol and people try to say ffxi was soo "toxic" and "wah I got excluded"

Not like this you didn't. This kind of treatment is way worse. Fights go obsolete too fast in this game and expectations are ridiculous.

[Ryel]

a few? a few?
Try seeing this patch after patch when trying to clear it. Try getting it finally done only in time for the next content to rush past you, leaving you stuck in earlier phases while you are trying to learn tethers.

Oh I've seen what it is when pugs are the only thing you have to turn to. night after night after night.

I've been here since 1.0 and it seems my experience has obviously been very different than yours.

There are both good and bad pick up groups and sometimes you just end up having a bad night of runs, it happens. More often than not in my experience I've walked away from parties that I've put up for learning being better at the fights coming out of them than i was when i started, even if the party as a whole did not make significant progress. The experience also allows me to change the conditions of the next PF I put up.

I'll ask myself this question:

Did I consistently get past "x" phase of the fight with the previous learning party and now know well enough to perform in it?

If so then I'll put up a party for the next phase of the fight and repeat this process until I've learned the fight in it's entirety, at which point I'll change the party from "learning" to "clear" and after enough consistent clears I'll change it to "farm" and repeat this cycle with each new update / encounter.

Once again the key is to not get discouraged and to not give up, either that or find a group of players you mesh well with and join a LS or FC that runs this kind of content so you can avoid using the PF and DF altogether.

In fact as I type this post there is currently a clear party in the PF right now on Excal for Nid Ex and i usually see quite a few during the course of the day.

[Kallera]

I understand that it looks like people just need to "just make a party", but there's a lot more to the issue. Its less stressful than what I made it out to be, but that it eats at people is still a thing that happens. there a difference noticed betwren a party that is finding its way through and a party that knows what to do, and only one gets rewarded by the game.

[Lone-wolfe-02]

I'm one of those people who wanted a clear as soon as possible because i knew if i didn't i never would. Thankfully i did.

[LineageRazor]

This is not entirely accurate. The party leader is still expected to direct the team, so you *do* need leadership skills and a general knowledge of the fight, especially three weeks to a month out from the latest primal. There's an expectation that you've "watched a youtube video" and can lead the team.

Then dispel this expectation. Make it clear in the party finder that you're as green as green gets. You will STILL get folks wiling to join. Other folks that would like to try the content blind. Mentor-types who want to show the newbie the ropes. Bored folks who are just looking for something exciting to do.

As long as it's clear in the party finder description what folks who join should expect, any mistaken expectations of this kind are on the heads of the folks joining, not the one who organizes it. It still won't stop some folks from blundering in without reading the description carefully enough, but I don't give them much consideration and neither should anyone else.

Above all, avoid simplistic descriptions. I joined a party that just said "learning" not too long ago. Nothing else. We got a variety of folks who were expecting all kinds of different progression stages - and unsurprisingly, most left when they realized how fresh a lot of the players were...

[vp_cmc]

If you create your own learning party, and you are doing it alone, almost nobody joins it, and making a group takes a couple of hours. Some people join, other quit. And even if you got 8 players, someone will inevitably quit after 1-2 wipes. I have no idea, why they do this, but it happens.

If I see a learning party in pf with 1 member (especially when it has title "help for a friend" lol), I don't join it, because I know that I have to wait there for 2-3 hours, and we may even not enter duty after that, and if we enter.. see above.

Of course, the best solution for this is static. And I have a static, because it saves me a lot of time (this is to those people who says that they don't have enough time for it).

[Souljacker]

Then dispel this expectation. Make it clear in the party finder that you're as green as green gets. You will STILL get folks wiling to join.

Yes, you will. And you will still get that one jerkface who joined to "teach other players" and either ragequits after leaving you with several "well-intentioned" insults, or is just abusive throughout the whole process and you end up disbanding anyway. I know you are trying to be helpful but I've been doing this mmo thing for a long time, and I've never see players as horrible and abusive to other players as in this game. Our server is particularly harsh, as is Balmung. Places like Excalibur seem to be nicer. I hear the entire JP community is laid back.

NA players are some of the meanest, most elitist, most obnoxious players in the game and after years of trying, I'm at the point where it's not even worth my time. I'll wait until it makes it into duty finder and clear it there with strangers from other servers. There's no way I'm putting up a PF on Gilgamesh.

I've been here since 1.0 and it seems my experience has obviously been very different than yours.

You are on Excalibur. That server seems to be the most decent of the lot. Even when hunts first landed there were few to 0 complaints coming from people on that server. Balmung on the other hand...

You just got lucky and picked the right server. So yes, your experience has probably differed DRASTICALLY from others.

[Ryel]

You are on Excalibur. That server seems to be the most decent of the lot. Even when hunts first landed there were few to 0 complaints coming from people on that server. Balmung on the other hand...

You just got lucky and picked the right server. So yes, your experience has probably differed DRASTICALLY from others.

Maybe, but the person i specifically replied to on this page at least is also from Excalibur. I can't speak for Balmung but as it's also one of the highest pop servers regardless of the fact that it's primarily an RP server i can't imagine it would be impossible to find at least 7 other like minded players who are interested in clearing content.

[Archaell]

My today's PF experience with Nidhogg was kinda expected but... sigh.

I decided to make a PF group for "fang+claw" and waited 2.5 hours till the party got together. Alright, it is probably the weekly reset and people are doing other things. When we finally got in there it was clear that the people were not experienced enough and instead of training the "fang+claw" the group disbanded after finally reaching the phase... great.

I felt really disappointed by that and decided to fill the last spot in a new group for the fight, on top of that even being mostly non-english. Of course my new party members were dying even more than those in the previous group... but that was the point of the party so it was fine. With that in mind I spent a whole hour explaining the fight while helping them to train it. Eventually we also got to the fang+claw phase! The huge difference being that this run was actually enjoyable and put me in good mood, instead of sucking life out of me.

Now, I just finished another run to which I got invited. "After towers training group" it was called. It was not. People were getting hit by the charge, we were wiping on the adds! Fun. It got even better when the party leader admitted there were people lacking experience, but according to them "it's fine to fail in training groups... it's after towers training because I finished fang and claw phase". To make this even more "hilarious" she had problems with an offtank who was doing mistakes and was not supposed to be there, but her friends had free pass to fail coz it was "training". Like really? And this comes from a person who is constantly crying how bad the players are in farm parties...

No wonder PF has such reputation with people like this and it is both sad and annoying. If people I know can't understand the issues with naming parties incorrectly and the need to practice the early parts first how could random players do that. >_>