EXP Parties as an option please!

[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.

[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.

[Sadana]

I was gonna say something snarky about your desire to do FATEs without having to move, but I actually think I get what you're saying finally. You can find this camaraderie at seasonal event FATEs where players have to stick around in one spot for an interminable length of time in order to farm whatever drop there is for turn ins. I've actually had a lot of fun at these (when they're new) since you've got a group of people just kind of derping around. We're trying to make the best of a bad... well, boring... situation.




I think what it boils down to more than just a desire for "exp parties" is for this game to slow down. A LOT. Even making a party to go dungeon with friends isn't quite the same cause you all still need to be actively doing something until you're finished. You can grind stuff, like FATEs, but like you said you're usually always on the move to the next FATE. Amusingly enough, when lulls happen while FATE grinding, people can't stand it and usually spend the time complaining that there's no FATEs or planning to do something else once they're finished in that zone.

That all being said... I'm not sure you can add something like this to XIV without there being a massive torch-and-pitchfork style riot. People are already complaining about not really having the time to do a full run of CM or Prae (for example) due to real life obligations that keep their play time short. It works for seasonal events because they are really optional (or really, you only have to do one FATE in order to actually complete the quest. Sitting around farming them is just if you want all the goodies. I was having lots of fun just hanging around as a Spriggan that I got over 40 eggs. >.>; )

After hanging around that one time, however, I had ZERO desire to do it again for my alts. :/ (I took one other through and just did one FATE for the achievement.) I'm not sure I'd be keen on having this be a regular thing in the game that we actually need for progress. ^^;

[KayoZ]

I dont see a problem with it. Honestly, I think itll be hard finding groups for it as I doubt itll be anywhere near as good as FATE or Dungeon grinding but thats on those setting it up. Only thing is I dont really recall any areas where this type of thing is encouraged with quick spawning elite mobs. As for FFXI grinding, IIRC that game had stationary groups waiting around while the designated pullers brought the mobs in to kill. I doubt itll play out like that in FFXIV, specially with Heavensward speeding up the combat even more (I believe).

Honestly, why cant you just get dungeons groups going? Its pretty much the same thing, killing elites over and over until your eyes bleed. The only advantage I see with EXP parties is being able to grind with any setup. You say people dont talk in dungeons anymore but IMO thats more because of the whole randomness behind it and the fact that you wont see those people again after 30 minutes or so. Setting your own server group whose there to grind out dungeons for hours should be a little more social. Have you tried it?

[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.

[Maikal]

I hate that exp parties seem so unpopular with the vocal minority, because personally, I really enjoyed the xp partying days of XI and 1.0 XIV. It was a simple way to relax and chat with new people(or old friends) while you leveled. Speaking solely for myself, FATEs are a poor substitute for the xp days of the past. Now, huge groups of players just mob up and roll over everything in the zone... There's little to no opportunity to actually socialize. I never really enjoy the atmosphere of the zone I'm in while running FATEs, it always feels like I'm in too much of a hurry to get from FATE to FATE, just so I can land enough hits in time for the completion splash.

It sounds to me like many of the commenters on this thread either forgot about or never experienced xp partying in 1.0 XIV. It was different in some ways from the old classic XI 'camp and pull' parties. In 1.0, the party would pick a general area where nice chainable mobs would hang out and would just roam it, farming xp to their heart's content. It wasn't the most exciting way to level, admittedly, but you got to know other players on the server and it really formed a community within the player base of each server. You got to know who was fun to group with and who was best avoided. Linkshells were always buzzing with conversation and creative, sometimes entertaining and humorous shouts took the place of party finder(though, shouting was certainly tedious at times) The point is that conversation and interaction were the true focal points of the game.

All said, none of this is intended to take away from the success and giant leaps of progress that 2.0 has brought with it, but I can't help but feel that the old 'community' feeling has been discarded for convenience and the absolute laser-focus on efficiency. Maybe it's the instant gratification that other games have instilled into the playerbase. Maybe it's just general laziness. But I can't accept the excuse that someone 'doesn't have time' to do things like level, when those same players spend 8-10 hours a day playing the game daily. It's unfortunate, but these players are now the rule, rather than the exception. It's all good old days-itis, I realize. But I'll always miss the community part of the old XIV.

One more added bonus: Having those xp party farmable mobs in XI/XIV 1.0 solved the problem of not having any kind of threat while solo traveling across the world.

[Nanaho]

I have to say that even though I miss the idea of meeting and getting to know other players through something like this, it probably wouldn't be very popular if they were to add it in.

im not asking for it to be popular i just want the option. if you try to do an EXP PArty these days you get like 100 EXP per mob, it's not viable, i just want it to be viable as something to do when youre tired of Fates and dungeons. running a scripted line pattern for EXP over and over isnt fun to me. running around smashing face of all the mobs in an area appeals to me

[Cutie_McSnuggles]

In 1.0, the party would pick a general area where nice chainable mobs would hang out and would just roam it, farming xp to their heart's content. It wasn't the most exciting way to level, admittedly, but you got to know other players on the server and it really formed a community within the player base of each server. You got to know who was fun to group with and who was best avoided. Linkshells were always buzzing with conversation and creative, sometimes entertaining and humorous shouts took the place of party finder(though, shouting was certainly tedious at times) The point is that conversation and interaction were the true focal points of the game.

Not to be rude, but to me this still sounds like a FATE party. It seems like you are looking for certain types of players rather then certain types of activities.

To clarify, I never got to play XI so I'm genuinely interested in what it is that makes EXP parties something different then what we have in the game. So far the only real difference I've seen anyone use is "People talked more". (I can't say this without sounding offensive, sorry about that.) It kinda makes FFXI sound like a really fancy chat room with a combat mini game for when people run out of things to say.

[Necato]

XP parties were fun in XI. Were they more social than FFXIV's FATE parties ?... Dunno, I feel like the communities are completely different but I stopped FFXI when Wings of the Goddess came out so it may have changed after that.

Yes we waited hours to get that last member we needed to camp Crawler's Nest, hours running in circles in Jeuno, playing dice... but what do we do today ? Waiting 30+ min to get in queue to speedrun a dungeon, hoping secretly to avoid the "first timers" so we can speedrun even more. Rinse & repeat.

The real pain was standing on the same spot for hours because all others good spots were taken, or if we moved too far we could be "ambushed", killed and lose that precious XP.
Who never dreaded the night in Valkurm Dunes when we could read the despair, the fear, the hatred all summed up in one word : "BOGYYYY !!!"

The closest we get in FF14 would be the FATE parties, where everyone minds their own business, no need for a balanced group, everyone can go as PLD if they feel like it. The only FATEs so far to require a bit of teamwork would be Cancer, Gorgimera, Odin & Behemot. 4 out of hundreds...

So yeah, EXP parties might be a good 3rd way to lvl up and to actually learn to play your Job (not sure players really use Leves to lvl up but I could be wrong). And you would meet people of your server
Of course, that would need to be changed to fit FFXIV. Grinding on 300xp worth monsters might kill anybody's sanity

[StouterTaru]

It kinda makes FFXI sound like a really fancy chat room with a combat mini game for when people run out of things to say.

The talking was more due to the melee mechanics than anything else. You would start with 0 TP, and build up with each auto-attack (5-15 or so per hit, depending on delay of the weapon). Once you hit 100 TP, you could use a weapon skill. If someone used a weapon skill a few seconds after, it could chain and cause extra damage, and if a spell or the right element(s) hit a few seconds after the chain, it would burst for extra accuracy/damage.

Instead of using an ability every 2 seconds in combat, melee and tanks would use maybe 3-4 per minute, and they would normally be clustered together.