Do people really favor an FFXI grindfest format?

[Anty]

This seems to be the trend of today's MMOs lately. It's no longer the journey that people enjoy, but the destination. In that sense, why even have levels at all?

You're right, people want to have to pay attention. The current system is so incredibly boring, largely due to the broken combat system. I for one haven't touched DoW or DoM since getting 50 PUG for that reason alone. I'm doing the boring stuff now (crafting mostly) in hopes that playing on the battlefield will be more fun than it currently is in the future.

For many of us, FFXI's party system did this pretty well, especially if you were a healer or a tank. But that's not the only reason we prefer the party system over others. Many of us hate to solo, period. Many like to travel around the world and fight different mobs as they progress in levels. Leves do this a little bit, but it's still very restrictive. Many of us like to constantly meet new people as they progress through the game.

Whatever the reason, leves will never offer what exp parties did in XI, for those that enjoyed them.

true, but i don't think that people really want mmos to be that way. Since looking at all those mmos, they get boring and frustrating faster then any offline title. Mmo developers chose that way in hope to create a game for everyone.
They just missed the point that mmo is just not for everyone and so they keep failing and for some reason they don't
seem to think about it. They rather make it even faster.

Taking away the level-grind (only the level grind) and make a game level-less is a good choice, so you can focus on acutal gameplay, gear-improvements, skills etc. (if done right). But keeping the levels and making them no challenge from 1-X is
stupid and retarded. I think nobody really wants that.

My main reason why i liked ffxi parties was - meeting new people - reacting on new peoples strategies (sometimes you really had great fun just testing out something unusual, which you don't if you play with the same people every day).
This is what is missing in ffxiv.

I did a classic xp-party ffxi-like with friends 2 days ago and it was much more fun then leves, but there are just not enough mobs around. The better xp mobs are almost camped, so no need to bother sadly.

The missing of chaining, and skillchaining as form of a reaction, rather then BR spamming was also much more fun and
was rewarded with nice animations as well. I miss reacting a lot in this game... The only way we are having fun is with 3-men parties and no tank so things get out of control more often, so we have to kite, react, sleep, etc.

But as soon as we have 5-8 people ... damn this gets all so boring and easy... I so hope this is goin through a big change,
if not then this game is nothing but a content-less mmo clone with the best looking character models...

[Nero]

I did a classic xp-party ffxi-like with friends 2 days ago and it was much more fun then leves, but there are just not enough mobs around. The better xp mobs are almost camped, so no need to bother sadly.

There are enough Mobs around. <_< Tons of camps with lots of Mobs for each levelrange.. What you want more? You want them beeing carried to your feet?

[Gasher]

It seems like everything is tipping towards shooting up to max rank/level and grabbing all the gear you can as fast as you can, all under the guise of "being the best". I guess maybe it takes a certain kind of player to understand, but once you get there you will realize... It's not having a maxed out character with awesome gear and reputation that makes a player feel satisfied, it's the journey you took to get there. If your entire flight was on auto-pilot, then have you really learned anything, or can you truly say you've experienced an adventure?

You hit the nail in your head here. (wait... what?) Anyways... this is what I think I forgot to mention in my initial post on page one. Well said. +1

[Snuf]

I'm all for a game's purpose being the journey and not the destination, but there isn't much of a journey in FFXIV to begin with. At the start I do some rank 10 leves, at rank 13 I do some rank 20 leves, at rank 23, rank 30 leves and so on. Sure there are some nice story/class quests scattered around but they're few and far between.

In the past week we've had several people in our linkshell try the popular "raptor parties" for grinding at the higher ranks and all of them found it to be so sub-par compared to the sp gain in a leve group it just wasn't worth the time or the effort.

I don't care if the primary way in a game is grinding to level, but when you have leves and you have kill grinding and the gap between them is so vast, it just makes no sense. Though if kills were worth so much, no one would do leves right? But that just screams poor system design.

[MeowyWowie]

I'm all for a game's purpose being the journey and not the destination, but there isn't much of a journey in FFXIV to begin with.

There's even less of a destination.

[AngryNixon]

To answer the OP and not speaking for anyone else, for the time being, yes, it was better in my opinion.

I think though that the "take away" message, for me anyhow, from this gifthorse thread is that there is a good consensus on the fondness people have for the XP chain system. I second that. It was very enjoyable and (I could be mistaken) I don't foresee much opposition to dumping it into FFXIV somehow. Someone, naturally, will contradict me now and write a wall of text as to why I'm stupid and completely wrong but that's fine, I still loves me some XP chains.

[Shikaree]

All I do when I get on are leves, I rarely outside grind. I think there's a second culprit to this and that's the fatigue system.

Maybe I want to craft grind for hours? Ok, I could do that and then slam my chances down and have it still there so I have trouble with that next leve that could maybe give me guildmarks. Gather grind? Ok, I'll do that down to full fatigue as well and then I'll have trouble for the next 10+ hours and with a collect 3x material leve if the reward is right. Exp grind on DoW/DoM? Who wants to grind outside of those fat SP leves and then get fatigued before we can do them again?

I'd like to say fix leves for soloers or solo play activities. Fix it so the experience gain is decent for a soloer but doesn't match up to party play for slaying higher leveled mobs as a group. People shouldn't favor a once per 36 hour method for leveling, they should have the option open anytime for wherever/whatever they want to do.

Before the leve method became popular I've seen people more often go into Cassiopeia Hollow or Cedarwood, Coerthas even. There were world parties, and no one sat in Ul'dah all day. SE needs to bring back the exploration to this game.

[JackDaniels]

In FFXI grinding fests, there's many many possibilities. For instance each level group usually has 3 solid areas to choose from to grind, but you could also go somewhere just a little bit lower and grind more mobs/h to get the same exp/h. FFXI allows you to think outside the box (what elitists don't do, unfortunately the majority is elitist).

Also, the composition of the party can make or break the party's steady exp income. There's an unreal ammount of different combinations of weapons skills ~ magic bursts, when you use your brain and everyone is involved, there's a unanimous sence of accomplishment.

____________________________________________________________________________
FFXIV is pretty simple, even now with 8 man groups. The hardest part about FFXIV is organizing a group of people to have the same 8 leves at the same time every cycle. As long as you have a half-ass tank and a curing hybrid or two.. then you're good to go.

SE is addressing all of the issues that make FFXI > FFXIV, i don't even know why this thread exists, or why I'm posting in it. I guess my opinion is come back to FFXI, more specifically the Quezacoatl server ^^/. Rerolling has been a more than pleasant experience. The only thing that hasn't picked up pace in vanadiel is getting hero's fame :P

All in all, boring game is boring, quit FFXIV for a year (to play whatever, obviously it's a gap that needs to be filled), you won't regret it!

[Nipa]

In 2011 the average player expects multiple ways of leveling, including grinding in party, chaining dungeons, questing in solo, questing in a small group and public questing in a large open group.

It's not a matter of what's your favorite way, or what is the most efficient way, it's a matter of having all of them available.

[Rowyne]

In 2011 the average player expects multiple ways of leveling, including grinding in party, chaining dungeons, questing in solo, questing in a small group and public questing in a large open group.

It's not a matter of what's your favorite way, or what is the most efficient way, it's a matter of having all of them available.

Well said.

No matter how you level, it's a grind. The best thing is to give people a choice of ways to do it so you disguise that grind behind something that's enjoyable.