Why are Statics so difficult sometimes?

[Vhailor]

We set times in which we could meet (95% of us are working adults), annnnnnnd people would skip out or had an appointment or fell asleep or grandma died or grandma revived. This happened many times typically with the same people. Grandma must have died at least 16 times.

FFXIV places a tremendous burden upon statics given its combination of 8-person content (as opposed to 6 for most content in FFXI), and its utter inflexibility in terms of group size. It means everyone has to be there, at all meeting times, for eight people, all of whom have to juggle the various demands of life.

This is where 'midcore content' should factor in more heavily: content featuring a moderate grind, moderate challenge, and group size flexibility in that 6-7 people could work in a pinch. Eureka has the potential to provide this if the content is augmented by additional things to do, farmed force-pop NMs a la Abyssea or some such. Maps are good. There's not much else, though, besides catch-up Mount farming from old unsynced EX trials. The relative lack of mid-core, flexible content then pushes people into harder stuff with inflexible party member requirements, and... then it's just done, from what I've seen.

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I'd also point out that running the hardest content with SPs is dicey, especially from the get-go. It takes time to form chemistry, familiarity, trust - from a gameplay perspective. Attempting Savage content before that stage is hit is dicey. Maybe everyone was there already, but given the problems you ran into, I suspect the group cohesion hadn't yet reached an acceptable level. I'd suggest easier content in the future for starting out, like running 24-person Raids as one of the full parties, running current Trials (NM and EX), etc.

[MicahZerrshia]

Honestly there is little reason to do anything outside of saying you did it or just because you enjoy it. The treadmill is way to fast and gear is way easier to get by alternate means (aka tomes). Even primals, the drop rates are super low for mounts that you will maybe use briefly. So it's hard to dedicate hours of your time to it.

Coil was different since the story was locked behind it and omg was it a good story, esp for us legacy ppl, compared to the meh alex and omega (so far) story. XI was different too, we had a static that lasted over 5 years in XI because it felt like you were doing something worthwhile and you had a large variety of things to do, all of which were relevant in one way or another. This also made us great friends who I still play with today (in ESO cause none of them want to bother with XIV).

Here, I haven't had a static last more than a month tops and even within that month you only get to run things 50% of the time because that's the only time 50% of the static shows up. And pugging is tremendously horrible. I stopped pugging primals at Sephirot because getting 1 successful kill was a miracle, much less farming it.

Endgame in ffxiv can be summed up by "more frustrating than fun". Honestly if I wouldn't have been here since beta v1 and gotten invested, I prob wouldn't sub anymore. I only log in for dailies at this point anyway and I really only even do a couple of them before wondering why I even bother and logging out so I can log into a different game.

Don't treat the static as your family, or as your FC, or as your friends or anything. You are all there to do a job, if you as part of that static cannot perform your task, then you need to leave.

Yikes. I beg to differ. Best statics I have ever had (see above) were with friends, good friends who became like brothers and sisters after years of playing together and chatting even while playing other games. It's when we brought strangers in that things got messy. Because you don't want to let your friends down, who cares about randos you will never talk to again.

[HyoMinPark]

Don't treat the static as your family, or as your FC, or as your friends or anything. You are all there to do a job, if you as part of that static cannot perform your task, then you need to leave.

I disagree. The best groups I've done high-end content with have been groups of friends. If I join a static full of strangers, and develop no bond with them, then I develop no loyalty to them. I also don't like treating raiding as a job or a chore. Yes, I aim to clear, and I aim to prog fast. But if I'm not having fun, I'm not going to be satisfied, and I'm going to look elsewhere. If I'm not enjoying the group, I'm going to be apathetic towards the entire situation, and apathy is not a good state of mind to have when you're doing hardcore stuff like Ultimate, or even Savage.

I don't consider this advice as good advice.

[Yeol]

It all comes down to the mentality of the players and how good their leader is. If people are going to act childish and the leader does nothing about it, things are going to get bad. You don't want to have people with bad attitudes in your static no matter how good they are at their job.

Also, when having a static set your rules/goals, you'll eliminate unwanted people. People can still lie to get into the static, but a good leader can handle it just fine.
Some things are better said in private. You can always contact your static leader privately if something is bothering you. Talking badly to a static member in front of everyone is just disrespectful. You don't want this to happen to you, don't do it to other people.

I've met some of my best friends in-game by joining a static filled with strangers who with days became good friends. It was by far, the best raiding experience ever for me. Turning your static members into friends is good for long-lasting static.

[Bacent]

Don't raid with friends or significant others.

Befriended the people who are in my raid group from just being in the FC for over a year, as well as my Fiance well before being in the raid group. We have fun doing it, we communicate up front about everything, we're lenient when someone was running a bit behind, and we've only had a couple days in our months or raiding together, that someone couldn't suddenly make it (Like when I had rolling brown outs here for a few days in a row).

Saying not to raid with certain people honestly feels like you're preventing becoming better friends with them possibly. And if they're the one(s) that are holding your group back and unwilling to take blame for things, then you know who's whom.

You need to know who's actually dedicated from the get go. But as other people have said in the thread, things need to be handled in a personal business (I.E. talking to someone one on one). And if they freak the hell out over you on that, talk with the raid group and see if people agree or not that someone should be booted.

Personally, I think the key thing is to be straightforward about it. If they're not serious about raiding, then they're not fit to be in the raid group. Saying to ignore friends/spouses on that just sounds ignorant.