to Yoshi P. (Please read)

[Biggs]

Do you know why grinding was actaully a good thing people? I think many of you forget one important thing when you talk about how much you hate grinding. Grinding taught people their jobs in a party dynamic. After hours of playing as a bard in different party setups (or tank, or healer, ect.) you learned what sort of things to expect with changes in party line ups. Your a healer that just had a drk join your party, then you know from experience to prepare regen spells instead of bombing out cure 3's. Your tank is a ninja instead of a paladin, then you eased up how much you spammed cures to allow him/her to hold hate better.

Listen, I am not for pointless time synchs. I think random number generators for gear is inexcusable. I have little desire to spend hours upon hours just grinding off of dodos or crabs or other weak ass mobs that no one would really learn anything meaningful from by killing a million times. But there IS a happy medium between people that hate the grind and people that understand its purpose. It was a medium I was hoping SE was going to bring to XIV which they sadly have not. And thats making grinding FUN. HOly freaking crap, the cats outa the bag. But how do you make something that we are all going to have to do a million times throughout the course of the game fun you say? Frankly I don't see how this is actually that hard to see, but clearly people at SE can't seem to grasp this concept, so hopefully (but doubtfully) they are paying attention.

In order to make grinding fun over and over again, (deep breath), HAVE US GRIND OFF THINGS THAT ARE EXCITING!!! News flash SE, grinding off fat birds, or crabs, insects and sheep isn't fun. Even in the cases where we are grinding off something cool, like raptors or the occasional beastmen, IT ISNT FUN WHEN ITS 6 on 1. There is little strategy required in 6 people taking one thing down for xp (unless its a giant or dragon of course ). Provoke, stab, heal repeat: BORING. Aren't there pirates in this world? Isn't the country on the verge of world war? Why can't we grind off a party of Garleans? Lets see how my party of 6 homies does against a trio of Garlean special forces dudes coming at us at the same time. How about starting a fight with a solo pirate you find only to have him pull out a whistle or put a shot in the air that calls up 4 of his buddies to join the fray? What about stumbling across a cave full of mithra thieves? These are the types of fights we all read about in books we love and these were the types of fights the characters in fiction we grew up with overcame to become the heroes we know and love. These are the experiences we search for when we buy games like this, and frankly, the technolodgy is clearly there to make these things a reality, and believe me, the desire is there on the part of the players to want to play this way.

So people that hate the grind, stop begging SE for quick and easy xp, and instead, start demanding a smarter game that challenges the conventional ways we have been doing things for years now. It was my understanding before this game came out that thats what they were trying to do with this title. Instead they chose to give us a dog and pony show with a new name and look that just disguised more of the same.