Block first timers from Party Finder!

[saber_alter]

i don't believe that a function like this is necessary, but believe what you will.

[Malevicton]

i don't believe that a function like this is necessary, but believe what you will.

Most features aren't necessary.

[WinterLuna]

i don't believe that a function like this is necessary, but believe what you will.

Necessary to what? Because I assure you the majority of things in this game aren't necessary.

[Phireblast]

i don't believe that a function like this is necessary, but believe what you will.

I'd really hate to start a farm party to have one or more players who want to be assholes and join and waste everybody's time without consent because last time I remember, the party wasn't listed as a learning party. Once we enter that instance and we see the new player bonus, me and possibly other players will be generally annoyed and just leave, going back to step 1. Worst but common case scenario, the party collectively disbands. Either that, or the party goes "idc", kills the boss, then the new player gets the loot and bails to shit up the next party(and my blacklist). It's pretty much why I stopped hosting pony farms.

Now, if the player simply asked, maybe, just MAYBE the party would be okay with taking them along depending on the content. Pony farms are easier thanks to unsync, but you're still at the mercy of mechanics in fights such as Ifrit. Since fights like those are generally easy, parties might not mind giving the new guys a rundown since it won't take much time if they speak up. However, if they don't and keep wiping the group, they're just going to think the player is a general asshole that only seeks to leech and hate your guts. Our annoyance is pretty much directed at the people who try to leech off of others.

This whole idea may put up a seemingly elitist(when it's not) front at FIRST GLANCE, but it's more of at the convenience of everyone that isn't a person out to waste people's time.

[Noxifer]

So how am I supposed to show a proof of clear when I don't have the item I desire? The only thing someone can do is secretly check the player's lodestone, but most people have their achievements private by default. If we're speaking strictly 3.0, we COULD show a totem, but it wasn't so simple in 2.0.

Not to mention that even if you don't have one... you can just right-click a totem someone else has linked and link it from that -_- and if people go "link me in a /tell" to prevent that, the first-timer can still ask a friend/FC-mate to link them a weapon or token or something ("I just want to see what it looks like! :D" or "Can't find mine on my retainers >.< need to Search for it") and link from that. And we're back to square one again =/

I've also run into times when I've decided not to join a PF listing due to them requiring linking a drop, and while I've done the duty two or three times, I haven't gotten 'my' drop yet, and I haven't won any greed rolls either. So while I'm not new I don't have the loot to show for it, and... yeah. (This was before they allowed you to link from the chat log, mind you, but it's also what made me very quickly realize why the 'link drop' doesn't work.)

i don't believe that a function like this is necessary, but believe what you will.

What? O.o I don't use PF that often, either through creating or joining, but the times I have, I've seen plenty of sneaky newbies, some who will say nothing to the question of who brought on the "new player bonus!" message, and some who will outright lie and say they're not new, only to get the achievement at the end of the fight (at which point they've either been dead for 20% of the boss's health, or have double 'rez sickness'). This one guy in Ifrit who kept running around like a lunatic, hugging healers and bringing eruptions to the tank, ignoring tethers and mostly ignoring nails... In a farm party. And just a short while after that, I saw him starting a primal farm party of his own (Levi, I think), and I thought to myself, "Really? Really now?"

And if that kind of thing (though maybe not quite as extreme) has happened in at least half the PFs I've been in... I shudder to think of what it looks like to those people who regularly do use the PF. Sure, I might have been just unlucky, since I only have a small sample size to go on, but even so... It shouldn't be something we have to 'learn to live with'.

How would an optional system that would block new-comers from joining into a specific PF listing not be preferrable to no such system and leaving the PF leaders to weed those new-comers out manually through trial and error, interrogating everyone in the party once the bonus message comes up, demanding drop linking which is easily circumvented, searching for party members on Lodestone and hope their achievement list isn't hidden from view, and after all that time (which probably took as long as 3-4 farm runs or longer) hope that the rest of the party is still interested in going? How? O.o I... fail to understand how people would prefer the second method.