Before you power level noobs

[Keith_Dragoon]

I see PLing as an "easy way out". it makes challenging battles or even battles that are normal, even more easy. And to the point, no one has to try. Granted, I'm still fairly new to FFXIV even though I've had it for a while (kind of on and off). In FFXI, if there was a PL, the tank didn't have to learn to keep hate, the WHM didn't have to learn restraint and how to balance MP, The Puller didn't have to be careful with links, and so on. In some rare cases, parties were made up of nothing but random classes, no healer and relied heavily on the PL. Didnt always work as planned. Now I agree that it takes common sense to use your character effectively and some research too. (I did a lot of research to play a THF well with the right gear.) And PL isn't such a horrible thing, but to me it feels like people being lazy. And if you're PLed all the time, then you can become "spoiled". I saw a lot of that in FFXI, I would actually turn down invites because people would think that if they had a PL, they could take on anything and not need a decent party set up. I just think people should not rely on PLing too much.

This is all true but in FFXI leveling content was equally spread out you just needed people who could learn from their mistakes and work as a team. In FFXIV the leveling is mostly solo until 30 where you grab seemingly random classes and pull/aoe mobs until 50. When leveling Monk in groups I might aswell been PL'd because i barely got to hit a mob before the mage/archer storm killed them. Leveling has no structure its just the same with and without a PL only difference is it goes from 2-3 people doing all the work to just 1 person doing all the work.

There is little learning involved in XIV's parties which is unfortunate and hopefully fixed one day. When leveling conjurer I went 1-50 playing the class like a BLM because there was nothing but Conjurers seeking and we just stonara/aerora everything down in seconds over and over until 50. How does this teach me how to heal CC/AV/Moogle/Ifrit/Garuda/DH?

[Lacard]

I agree. Though I had no idea the battle system was so poorly constructed for parties. How does one fight in a coordinated manner? Is it just plain do whatever until it's dead? It seems kind of all over the place. Same goes for small things I have done in this game (like behests). Just seems really sloppy.

[Masamune1004]

I agree. Though I had no idea the battle system was so poorly constructed for parties. How does one fight in a coordinated manner? Is it just plain do whatever until it's dead? It seems kind of all over the place. Same goes for small things I have done in this game (like behests). Just seems really sloppy.

Welcome to FFXIV!

[Keith_Dragoon]

I agree. Though I had no idea the battle system was so poorly constructed for parties. How does one fight in a coordinated manner? Is it just plain do whatever until it's dead? It seems kind of all over the place. Same goes for small things I have done in this game (like behests). Just seems really sloppy.

There is none until End Game, all parties consist of agroing as much as possible within a undefined limit (until party suffers lots of deaths or wipes) and then proceed to slaughter said mobs in a chaotic flash of magic, arrows and maybe a few hits from a melee or 2. most mobs last less then 10 secs and are pulled by the 3s-6s and sometimes more depending on level and ammount of mages in group and mob repops.

I JUST got out a party on my 19 MRD and all I did was run around voking mobs linking them then bringing them to a central location and our thms and conjs nuked them in 2 shots, repeat until 25. I felt totally useless cept for the few times I was able to pull a mob away from aoe and solo it down on the side.

[Teia]

When leveling Monk in groups I might aswell been PL'd because i barely got to hit a mob before the mage/archer storm killed them.

When I was leveling Monk 40+, the party decided to go to Natalan, which lags me unfathomably badly. The end result was that I'd routinely target a mob and try to engage it, only to discover it was already dead. Like you, I might as well have been PLed just based on how little I actually contributed—not that I'd have fared better even if I wasn't lagging, since the BLMs did most of the killing anyway.

Then again I don't really use MNK for much outside of running around town because of Fists of Wind. But I'm reasonably confident that if the situation called for it, I could pick it up and play it competently in short order.

[YuriSan]

I remember when:

-Yuri San: Dude i don't want to be PL'd sorry man. you guys go ahead without me.
-Dude making a pt to go get PL'd: Don't be a snob, all high and mighty Yuri!

Now:

-Yuri San: Alright guys listen all MNK use Keen Flurry and Quelling Strike & Blindside before doing Howilng Fist
If you go in red or even yellow hate do Chameleon, make sure to heal yourself too with Second Wind, don't expect WHMsto allways get you to 100%, Oh and start with Invigorate often, understood??

-Guys that used to make pts to go get PL'd: HUH!? *scratching their heads crosseyed*

And thats how peeps get stuck in parties with PL'd noobs in which they will need to do 85% of the damage till mob is dead while the rest "lolDDs" share the other 15%
(Not to mention PL'd tanks lmao)

Cause well... knowing the skills is one thing, knowing how to move and what to do when is another.
To get to know a job very well u need to get comfy with it,
AND!!! Thats exactly what insane amounts of grinding will do for ya.
You will refine your actions and movement during the grinding sessions.

[Teia]

See, with me it's the other way around:

Person: No, I don't want to be in this party if there's a PL, because PLing makes bad players!
Teia: Well, suit yourself.

Then fast-forward a while...

Teia: Okay, everyone here has Keen Flurry, Sentinel, Quelling Strike, whatever?
Person: How do you expect me to get all that? Leveling takes so long!
Teia: Well, what about this other class? Can you switch to that?
Person: How do you expect me to have more than one class? Leveling takes so long!

And then they just kinda gimp up the run because in the time I could get multiple classes to 50 and still be a decent player, than got one class to 50 and wound up subpar because they thought events were like leves. But at least they know how to kill trash mobs from all that unnecessary extra grinding time.

I figure if you get your hilariously one-sided skew, I get mine.

Clarifying edit: In all seriousness, I don't care if someone gets PLed or not. Being PLed is an independent variable from being a good player. What I care about is that the people I'm playing with know how to perform their roles, nothing more (at least in terms of raw gameplay—keeping up with my banter is an art form unto itself). What I don't like is when people try to shove one or the other down people's throats like it's the One True Path(tm) to being a Good Player(tm), and the above is meant to illustrate that it sounds just as silly going the pro-PL route as it does going the anti-PL route.

[Raikki]

To get to know a job very well u need to get comfy with it,
AND!!! Thats exactly what insane amounts of grinding will do for ya.
You will refine your actions and movement during the grinding sessions.

This is what anti-PL crusaders actually believe.

The truth is that no part of grinding in this game requires enough skill to learn anything. A lot of jobs you could successfully level 1-50 just by running up to mobs, switching to active mode, and waiting for auto-attacks to kill them. You can throw in a few weapon skills if you want to speed things up since pressing a weapon skill button isn't exactly a "skill". Yes, it'd be a little slower than knowing how to play your class to its fullest, but the fact that our baseline for "skill needed to hit level 50" is this low means the extra abilities employed by people to speed it up don't actually need to be performed skillfully to succeed.

The solution is simple. Make actual skill barriers in leveling beyond 50 when the cap is increased. Until then, let's stop pretending that PL'd players are missing out on some kind of learning experience. The people who learn how to play are the people who actually read the descriptions of their abilities.

No, I wasn't PL'd, and I can almost guarantee that I put vastly more time into grinding than anyone here who's complaining about PL. If you're a reasonably decent player, the fact that the leveling process had nothing to do with making you a good player would be obvious to you.

[YuriSan]

This is what anti-PL crusaders actually believe.

The truth is that no part of grinding in this game requires enough skill to learn anything. A lot of jobs you could successfully level 1-50 just by running up to mobs, switching to active mode, and waiting for auto-attacks to kill them. You can throw in a few weapon skills if you want to speed things up since pressing a weapon skill button isn't exactly a "skill". Yes, it'd be a little slower than knowing how to play your class to its fullest, but the fact that our baseline for "skill needed to hit level 50" is this low means the extra abilities employed by people to speed it up don't actually need to be performed skillfully to succeed.

The solution is simple. Make actual skill barriers in leveling beyond 50 when the cap is increased. Until then, let's stop pretending that PL'd players are missing out on some kind of learning experience. The people who learn how to play are the people who actually read the descriptions of their abilities.

No, I wasn't PL'd, and I can almost guarantee that I put vastly more time into grinding than anyone here who's complaining about PL. If you're a reasonably decent player, the fact that the leveling process had nothing to do with making you a good player would be obvious to you.

Ya you can kill stuff with auto attack OR! you can actually get to know what can kill it better and faster,
you can evolve into a player by yourself without anyone telling you what to do via grinding.
As you mentioned reading the descriptions is key. the vast majority though does not (sadly) do that.
All they want is to get to 50 and be able to wear that shiny af gear or whatever, be cool looking and pose in the city
(thats endgame enough for 'em)
What happens in reallity tho is that they have all the 50s in the world but they know very little about them. They are then tyhrowing themselves into primal battles along with expirienced players and screw up 99% of the time.
Thats understandable though cause they never practiced that class.
All they did was get something to 50 then rushed to get another thing to 50 without getting to know the first thing they leveled. Just jumped from one 50 to another.
They never really played the class for a good amount of time.
What? they gonna practice DRG or WHM in a primal battle or a dungeon?
Thats not practice. thats either lying dead on the ground throughout the whole fight while the expirienced players beat the boss. or (if they lucky) having a person that really cant do any more tutorial runs and just wants to farm the boss.
Now you think a person that never played a class knows it well enough as a person that played it for a month straight?
Cause as i mentioned PL'd peeps just rush through jobs. not really playing them or anything. just standing adding and ousting someone while watching Family Guy and slurping cereal.

It would be awesome if people actually did what you say.
Read the descriptions and investigate for themselves.
But that is far from the truth.

Also you arent doing pickups, you got your group. and thats just amazingly awesome.
However start doing pickups via /sh....
Then we will talk again about what PL is doing to people.

Teia Rabishu guy. don't brag, there are exeptions too and i am happy t say i have come across some of them. if you are one good for you

[Keith_Dragoon]

When I was leveling Monk 40+, the party decided to go to Natalan, which lags me unfathomably badly. The end result was that I'd routinely target a mob and try to engage it, only to discover it was already dead. Like you, I might as well have been PLed just based on how little I actually contributed—not that I'd have fared better even if I wasn't lagging, since the BLMs did most of the killing anyway.

Then again I don't really use MNK for much outside of running around town because of Fists of Wind. But I'm reasonably confident that if the situation called for it, I could pick it up and play it competently in short order.

I was puller in my Natalan party cause that was only way i could land a hit on stuff. I pulled and before I got back to camp BLMs had already killed what I pulled and we continued this until 50. I learned how to run around agroing stuff if that helps in end-game.

@Yuri: again those people would have been lolDDs with or without PL. Most of what you posted about the abilities fall within the common sense category.

Example: A friend of mine whose character was shipped off to Ragnarok remade another one on Hyperion. I PL'd him to like 36ish and that was higher then his first character ever was. Him and his fiance hit 50 while I was out of town, he did Ifrit with us last night for his first time. He listened to the run down, and ran 2 flawless fights, never got hit once outside of his blowback move.

After he left we replaced him with a random who was claiming to be a Ifrit Vet, came in start trying to call the shots (full LS run) and in the end he died about 3-4 times while NOBODY else was hit by anything. He lacked common sense and cooperation. My friend on the other hand had this and even though he was PL'd over halfway to cap he performed better then most at his job, using the right skills at the right time, stacking buffs and comboing all which you claim can only be done by people who don't PL.

Bad player will always be bad regardless of the method they choose to level.