Am I a horrible person?

[Teritia]

I recently started playing this game because a friend of mine bought me a cheap copy. He is quite new to MMORPG's and started playing because his uncle, who has apparently played a lot of FF games, got him interested. He also encouraged a co-worker of his to start playing. The four of us have a linkshell to communicate but otherwise have little interaction with outside players. We don't all live in the same time zone or have the same schedule, but there are a couple of hours a few days a week when we're all (or mostly) online at the same time.

[con't below...]

[Teritia]

I appear to be the only one of us with any significant MMORPG experience, and frequently utilize the Duty Finder to progress through the Lite Party dungeons. The others range from highly resistant to flat out refusing to party with outside players. They are at various points in their story quest, the most advanced being my friend at one or two dungeons behind me. Whenever "the group" is present and wishes to run an dungeon, I gladly run it with them, as PuGging doesn't give one much of a chance to experience the story or dungeons themselves. Therefore, I was taken aback by what happened earlier tonight:


[con't below...]

[Teritia]

I was running Haukke Manor via Duty Finder when my friend's uncle started GOING OFF about how "this is what always caused drama in the old FF's" and how people are "too impatient can't wait for everyone else." Apparently, it is immeasurably discourteous to progress in the story quest at a rate faster than others in my loosely-defined "group," regardless of my availability for group activities.

These are not RPers. In fact, the upset person had previously told me he just "clicks through" the dialogue "as fast as he can" without reading it, so I'm really at a loss here. I've only played Rift and WoW (and one Final Fantasy game a reeeeeeally long time ago, like 90's here) so maybe I'm missing something about etiquette and need to be educated. Am I crazy? Is he crazy? How should I have handled this? I tried the whole "people play the game different ways and your way isn't my way" but I still feel like I'm the bad guy here.

[Zakalwe]

Sounds like this is an issue for you to work out with your friends (if they still are that after this public posting) rather than ask for random interventions from other Forum posters. But I do wish you all good luck in sorting out these differences in play styles/expectations.

By the way, you can avoid the posting text limit by editing your first post and cutting and pasting posts #2 and #3 into #1. It is really odd how SE limits the length of an initial post but not the length of an edit.

[Teritia]

Sounds like this is an issue for you to work out with your friends (if they still are that after this public posting) rather than ask for random interventions from other Forum posters. But I do wish you all good luck in sorting out these differences in play styles/expectations.

By the way, you can avoid the posting text limit by editing your first post and cutting and pasting posts #2 and #3 into #1. It is really odd how SE limits the length of an initial post but not the length of an edit.

Weird, thanks for the tip.

I posted here because I am not familiar with MMO games with a dedicated central storyline and was wondering if there were unwritten rules about it that I clearly didn't get the memo about.

[Nash20]

Umm.

You could leave one job at the level of your RL friends, level what...7 others at your leisure. That way you can enjoy the game at your pace and help out your RL friends when they are on. You will be same level as them but much more experienced and can help them through dungeons/story.

Or you can say F em and play the game the way you want to play it.

Either or.

[Darkwerk]

It is not common to try and hold another player back unless it has been plainly agreed upon,so you are not missing anything. However the friend seems to have a misconception about what your group means. Is it a "static group" meaning we do everything together..or is it just a LS that helps each other and provides company. Just talk it over and make sure everyone is on the same page. New players can get distressed if they feel they might get left behind.

[charlemagne]

Your game time is your game time and you should spend it as you like. You didn't start playing the game to hold his hand and should progress at your own pace not his. There are hundreds of thousands of people at different stages of the game, meeting and playing with some of them is one of the big attractions of an MMO, your friends uncle may do well to consider this.

[Bladeglory]

It seems like Uncle had the impression that you were going to keep your characters grouped together. Think back and try to figure out why he might have come to that conclusion.

I'd suggest simply apologizing and stating that you weren't aware that he wanted to keep your characters in a static party. You'll also want to think ahead to when you have to have eight people in a party to progress. Thankfully there will be Duty Roulette by that point, but you'll still have to PuG...

Is he talking about XI? Crystal Chronicles? I'm not really sure what other FF games were multiplayer...

Regardless, I have to disagree with what you quoted him on. The most drama-causing action (besides just not caring about your fellow man) is not communicating. A lot of drama can be avoided (or at least minimized) if you make your intentions clear before you act. I can't say for certain, but it seems like your group needs more communication.

I see you're a fellow Balmung player. Drop a line if you need some help.

[Galactimus]

Every single dungeon level syncs you for a reason; so you can level up ahead of your friends and still be able to stop and help them whenever they are online.

"The only people that should ever get upset at you out-leveling them in this game are waifu's." And even that's debatable.