EXP Parties as an option please!

[seida]

Right? I'm not seeing what the difference is, either. Maybe you just had to be there?

Indeed, frankly it sounds like what OP is asking for is worse that what we have currently...

I mean, it you want to make a group and kill some mobs for pitiful exp, go ahead? Or is that you want mobs to give more xp? I just don't see the point given we have fates. If it's just that you want to stand in one place and wait it seems incredibly lazy....

[Zumi]

Please forgive me. I still don't understand how it's that different. You can still get together with a group of people (party). You still kill the same things over and over (FATEs). And you still get EXP out of it.

It is different in a couple ways. FFXI you had a camp you pretty much stay in the same spot killed like crabs for example, wait for them to respawn kill the crabs again. While with fate parties you had to run around. FFXI required very balanced party set up having a healer, tank, mp refresher (bard/red mage) usually 3 damage dealer jobs. Fates is invite anyone.

FFXI purists do not like the fact you run around to do fates and you don't need have to have a balanced party to exp. They want to kill the same mobs over and over in 1 spot without having to move with a full balanced party. However this caused issues with certain jobs being very in demand, tanks, healers, support, and dps sat around for hours trying to get a party because they were the most played. FFXI didn't allow you to exp solo at all really you must of had a party which caused a lot of people to stop playing since you couldn't do anything without a group.

Having played both games I would take FFXIV exp system over FFXI any day it could take over a month to cap a job, if you played something like a drg which nobody wanted it would take maybe 6 months to hit the cap.

[Ashkendor]

FFXI purists do not like the fact you run around to do fates and you don't need have to have a balanced party to exp.

Honestly, it's a lot more newbie friendly this way. There's no "preferred" classes as such.

They want to kill the same mobs over and over in 1 spot without having to move with a full balanced party.

This sounds even more boring than grinding FATEs for hours. o.O

[Sapphic]

FFXI purists do not like the fact you run around to do fates and you don't need have to have a balanced party to exp.

It's still the same inregards to jobs in FFXI, before May it was stack THFs and after job changes in May update it's back to stacking SAM for DPS. FFXI is the worst system to hold up as a model for balance. As most jobs are ignored for the FOTM jobs, as everyone wants the path of least resistence. Even many of the "FFXI purists" ignore that aspect. Also what parties where killing dictated what jobs they took do to mob strengths and weaknesses to different damge types/elements. Which alienated jobs also.

Many jobs where forced to xp solo on things like mob pets/summons because they, simply, weren't wanted.

But fortunatelly they learnt from past mistakes and all jobs are viable in 14 for all content. No more, "sorry, you can't do this content as DRG as it is strong to piercing, but don't worry we will kick the other DPS for the next boss as it is weak to piercing and immune to crushing damage"

[StouterTaru]

Please forgive me. I still don't understand how it's that different. You can still get together with a group of people (party). You still kill the same things over and over (FATEs). And you still get EXP out of it.

The mechanics were much different in FFXI. There was no auto-regen on HP or MP; you had to pop a squat and recover slowly. So you would stay in one place and one person would pull mobs to the group, typically one at a time. Roaming exp parties were possible later in the exp grind, but required specific jobs that were in high demand.

[Catwho]

The mechanics were much different in FFXI. There was no auto-regen on HP or MP; you had to pop a squat and recover slowly. So you would stay in one place and one person would pull mobs to the group, typically one at a time. Roaming exp parties were possible later in the exp grind, but required specific jobs that were in high demand.

They were also very rough on certain jobs. I was a bard puller in FFXI, that super high in demand skill set to grab one monster every 30 seconds, sleep it, sing a song, and go run and grap the next mob, not too fast or not to slow, to keep the exp chain going indefinitely. I broke chain 300 once when I had the bird camp to myself. That is about an hour and a half of perfect timing for sleeps, and no screwups from 6 people.

It was exhausting, but at the time, it was the only way to see more than 10,000 exp in an hour.

[GenJoe]

I don't know if this would necessarily be a good idea though..

Even right now, it's hard enough to find FATE parties in most zones other than Coerthas and Costa Del Sol because most players use dungeon as their main means of leveling. If SE introduced more ways to level up with similar efficiency, it'll split up the leveling population even more and you'll have trouble getting parties for either methods.

[CYoung187]

The one thing I do wish there was is an option to queue for your server only in DF parties. It would be worth waiting a little while longer to get in your low level leveling roulette with people you might actually see again. Sure you can with pf, but not everyone looks there and it takes forever.

[Bluevann]

I have met my very best friend in an FFXI exp party (we've been playing together for seven years now. He's the person I've had by my side the longest in my life, save my mother maybe), so I very well get your nostalgia. The story was great, the content was vast and accessible, the houses were free...



However, you have to understand, the gaming community has moved onto a new generation. A generation of "speed players"; people who study this evolution make phone games responsible of this. While phones have approached a LOT more people to gaming (remember when we were "losers" for wasting time on videogames? Now we're the cool stuff), it has also made people used to quicker games, that take less time to complete and entertain.

To appeal to this new generation, old games such as FFXI had to adapt. It went through many severe changes from how it used to be, to the point that some of the oldest players got overwhelmed and left, not recognizing the game they had been playing anymore. Many of us are fond of the memories of meeting new people and establish meaningful bonds with them.


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We were people with a lot more time in our hands. It was always common to find people willing to just approach the random newbie to show them the ropes;



Doing so in FFXI almost always inevitably lead to dreadful results that I well remember...



Assistance from other players in getting a sense of the game was replaced with Help windows in FFXIV, and as many others, it is a sign of a change in the community. A change towards individual gaming. Surely you do notice even linkshells have been turned into something completely optional, and that having so many and with so many people often breaks the closeness among the members, leading to hours of awkward silence on most of your LS channels.



And then, there were EXP parties. They could literally make or break your day, depending on the people you found there. With XIV's system, it is easy to replace unwanted fellows, but in FFXI? If your healer was an ass, you were more than likely forced to chew on your liver and stick with them, because chances are they were the only ones around. To find tanks and healers was very difficult, and some parties had to disband just because one of them had to go have dinner IRL.

In XIV you hear complaints for hours-long queues. In FFXI, it could take days. That is another sign of a drastic change in the MMORPG community.



At the first times, I think it was uh... 2008, maybe? Not sure.. SE introduced Level Sync to try and ease that. And for a while, it did work well.



But alas, it was only a temporary bandaid.

(Sorry, ran out of cool pictures from here)

Not only EXP parties take TOO long to form now, even Abyssea itself is now considered a "waste of time". So SE added Trusts, NPC party members to do your bidding with enhanced AI. They doubled exp from monsters, they made EXP chains bigger and gave people a "challenge log" of sort (it's called Records of Eminence, and it's not even weekly. You can repeat the challenges for as many times as you want), plus so many other buffs to make EXP easier to get: Fields of Valor, Grounds of Valor, Campaign Battles, unlimited EXP rings...

The result: you have your solo EXP party, with your own tank, healer, buffers, and DDs. I still play it so I know, last week I got from 18 Ranger to lv50 in a matter of four hours, all by myself.

It backlashes on making friends in the game, I realize that and I'm as sad as you are, but we have to accept that gaming is evolving in this direction. FATE parties and DF parties are today's version of FFXI's parties in outside areas or dungeons. I'm personally a little disappointed at the cross-server access of DF parties, as I'd like to get to know people on my server and make actual friends, but I realize that without it, we'd struggle to even find people for some content. FATE parties on the other hand, let you meet people specifically of your server, but they have no real mechanics, it's all whack and run, and once you're done, poof, you can leave without so much as a 'bye'. So you can see both have their cons, and neither will ever be what an EXP party was. But alas, it's what the playerbase needs. The newer generation just "has no time", you see? Games that take days to achieve even the smallest thing just do not sell anymore if not to a minority of nostalgic players like you and I, and we'll never provide enough money to gaming houses for them to put us on priority.

Last and not least, doing what you ask would require a great overhaul of the battle system in the open world, from their AI and levels (you can solo any monster at your level, even chocobo companions are redundant), to their aggro and reset ranges, to the exp they provide, not to mention the fact that they link in greater numbers depending on your party size, no matter of how clear your pull is.

With all this being said (I'm not trying to be pedant, just sharing my thoughts because just like you, I have been looking into this and these are my conclusions), as people said, no one stops you from forming a party with friends and 'fool around' for exp.

[Quesse]

At the first times, I think it was uh... 2008, maybe? Not sure.. SE introduced Level Sync to try and ease that. And for a while, it did work well.



But alas, it was only a temporary bandaid.

Nobody said "Looking for Group" in FFXI