No static, No gear

[fanservice]

You're right, it is... Which is strange, because it caters to people who only play exclusively with 7 other people.

A group needed in order to do something challenging in an MMO?!

mind=blown

Not even sure who gave you those likes and why.


The idea that a static group of the same 8 people is needed to progress is how the community views it, when in truth it boils down to a lack of trust in anyone else. I stand by my statement that this is an MMO. There's just people who make the choice of picking the same 7 other people (vast majority of the player base). Square isn't outright telling you that is how the game should be played, or how the social features of an MMO should be used. I'm not saying the method of picking the same 7 other people is wrong either, or people should do it another way, but if anyone here wants to say it's a design fault with the MMO, it isn't; it's how our community is.

This is largely a cultural thing.

Japanese players would mostly be embarrassed by being the one to bring a group of random people down, and so they practice in groups of people they know and then take what they've learned to the Duty Finder and "pickup" groups. English speaking players, on the other hand, tend to believe you should play more seriously with people you know, and that the only way to really get things done is in statics, Free Company groups, etc. Both methods work fine, but when there is a heavy bias toward one way it sort of forces it to be the only way to go (i.e. a large number of people believe only statics can clear things, so all the best people join statics, thus making it so only statics can clear things).

This was also true in FFXI. NA players firmly believed endgame content like Dynamis and Salvage was designed for tight-knit groups to work on, but if you looked at shouting and search comments during JP prime times they were doing those all in pickup parties.