EXP Parties as an option please!

[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

[Tiggy]

Grab 1-7 friends. Goto an appropriate area for your level range (keep it tight), and accept battle leves. All of theme. Do the ones that you all have, turn it in accept everything again, wash rinse repeat. Crazy fast exp, with friends, in a grindy sort of way. This is a version of an exp party. Leve-chaining is really underestimated.

[Catwho]

So what you were seeing in chat was not necessary more conversation, it was also macros.

I get that having a perfect SATA + Distortion + Magic Burst combo was beautiful and elegant in a way that XIV's individual weapon skills were not. Oddly enough, that kind of coordination rarely translated over to the {sky}/{sea} era endgame fights in XI, where maybe 2 people out of an 18 man alliance are the Chosen DDs who got to perform a weapon skill, the black mage is relegated to Blizzard IV constantly, and the THF was allowed to tag the monster once and then kicked out the alliance to make room for another healer.

4-man seal farming parties in Abyssea brought back some of that elegance, too. One THF/DNC tank or WAR/NIN, one WHM/RDM, one BLM/BRD, and one BLU/NIN or BLU/RDM if there was a WAR/NIN. Of course, the number of jobs THAT setup locked out was depressing, but it was brutally efficient and quite lovely to see in action.

[StouterTaru]

There's a lot of fun stuff from FFXI that I would love to see translate over, but exp parties isn't on the list. Limbus/Dynamis, open world enemies that you run around because they can do worse than hit you with heavy, gear that remains relevant for years, convoluted maze zones where noobs get lost on the way to fighting big monsters, people committing suicide to get a tractor/raise rather than navigate through those maze zones...

[Cutie_McSnuggles]

It does sound like one of those, "you had to be there" type of things. My current opinion is it doesn't matter one way or the other if they put it in or not. But I'm not sure I'll ever really understand it. The way most people are describing XI in this thread it sounds like a terrible game that I'd hate. But I know I'm not getting the whole picture. It would be like me trying to explain to someone why I love Dark Souls so much if all they ever hear me talk about is those times I had 500K souls and got one shot by a boss and then fell off a cliff on the way to pick them back up.

[Maikal]

It does sound like one of those, "you had to be there" type of things. My current opinion is it doesn't matter one way or the other if they put it in or not. But I'm not sure I'll ever really understand it. The way most people are describing XI in this thread it sounds like a terrible game that I'd hate. But I know I'm not getting the whole picture. It would be like me trying to explain to someone why I love Dark Souls so much if all they ever hear me talk about is those times I had 500K souls and got one shot by a boss and then fell off a cliff on the way to pick them back up.

Oh, Dark Souls, the game that had me simultaneously throwing my controller and singing it's praises.... You've pretty much nailed it with the analogy- it's a lot like that, I think.

XI and XIV 1.0 were both slow, methodical games that required a ton of patience that more modern gamers wouldn't tolerate. However, the things I loved about them had nothing to do with their slow battle systems- I love the faster pace/feel of ARR combat! Just not the hordes of faceless, mute players piled on top of every wimpy, toothless, nil-threat mob in the game.

[AreeyaJaidee]

I agree with the OP and what Maikal is saying/asking. A lot of ffxiv feels like a solo game.

Nostalgia aside, FFXI, hate however much some ppl here obviously do, it got one thing right in its vanilla years and up to Abysses: it found ways to force strangers to build chemistry. You had to rely on other ppl, a progression linkshell was a big deal, and just something as simple a EXP parties played a large part in that euphoria.

Now, for ppl against this, the common disdain will be:

- this isn't ffxi <-(no shit sherlock: this also isn't WoW but SE obviously copied a lot from WoW)
- you can already do that in FFXIV: not really, what's being requested here is that open world be made a bit more dangerous (which tbh might actually happen in new 50+ zones), also the reason for the danger increase is due to making open world mobs tougher (ai,skill, and hp wise) and give more exp on death. This is one of many methods to get ppl travelling in groups (which the game does need IMHO)

Leves suck, dungeons got old because you always knew what to expect, and fates are just derp. <- these are just my opinions so don't waste your time flaming me for them, I won't care.

[Zumi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiXdeDM1_hE

This is a video I took of me killing robber crabs in kufta but I was over leveled. I was doing relic great sword trail kill 3000 crabs with a ws. I used my healer npc to help kill. See how there is a camp of crabs and you pull them one at a time. Also notice the combat. It takes me several auto attack swings to get 100 tp to use my WS.

A exp party was bascially this with 6 people.

[AreeyaJaidee]

Amazing post Kiara.

You hit the nail on the head. XIV needs this, back in the day it was what made logging in so fun, you never knew who you would meet, or what craziness would happen. Made a lot of friends just lvling jobs.

XIV is already a step ahead in that we already have lvl sync mechanic in place. All SE has to do is tweak mob density, location, HP(increase), and EXP(increase).

Even though I have everything 50, I'd even lvl sync to help others lvl if it meant zones being more exciting and camps were a thing. Otherwise its back to shout convos in mor dhona and DF groups full of mimes and bots repeating the same stuff ad infinitum.

It would be a well worth it additional option to pre existing lvling options.

[SanjuroXI]

I miss exp partys,but people on this game don't have the attention span to pull it off in this game. The lvling in this game is dull and requires very little focus it would be cool if ffxi style pts were a option,but i think itd be hard to fine the people whod be able to keep up at that pace in this game.