Order of the Blue Garter: Open Recruitment Season

[Alhanelem]

It's worth noting that it's pointless to take applications from people on other servers at this time, because there is no indication of if or when they'll offer another server transfer.

[AdvancedWind]

You never did CC!? *kicked*
You never did AV? *kicked*
You never did DH? *kicked*
You never did Ifrit, Garuda, Moogle!? *kicked*
How dare you be in a LS other than ours!? *kicked*

An endgame shell not accepting people that never even tried doing endgame content?

Preposterous!

[Yucie]

Even though I have nothing against them personally I remember viewing their app requirements once and it said you had to submit a video of your gameplay and gearsets -- whether that was joking or not it's very offputting for the 'layman' gamer who may be seeking an end-game shell.

LOL. Really? I hope that's a bad joke.. or these people are really far too full of themselves.

In order to inspire a laid-back atmosphere, it should be an LS that is ready to take on new members, and prep those members for endgame in whatever ways they can. Applications are stupid, silly, and not necessary.

In XI, to apply to -any- shell, you pretty much needed an app which could include:
Job lists
Gear lists
Content you've done
Content you've never done
your best-geared job
idle, PDT, MDT, TP, WS sets, etc
list of merits
and all sorts of other stupid shit that was never really necessary to put on an app.
And if you lacked access to certain content.. well.. then good luck on getting access in the shell you're in. More often than not, you'd be left in the dust and you'd have to play catch-up on your own.

Applications are silly.

[Yucie]

An endgame shell not accepting people that never even tried doing endgame content?

Preposterous!

We're losing the primal battles as they are now, which is essentially half of the 'endgame' content we currently have.
Aside from that, the rest is mostly spammable dungeons that you speedrun, and none of them are quite enjoyable in any form.
As I stated previously, a shell looking for a laid-back atmosphere should be willing to accept people who've never done the content. In turn, you teach them, they hopefully get better, and your LS grows that much tighter together.

But no, lets restrict people from content they've never done.. so they can never do it! That's a ridiculous notion.

[Alhanelem]

An endgame shell not accepting people that never even tried doing endgame content?

Preposterous!

You're being sarcastic, but real endgame often proves nearly impossible to break into. If you haven't done it, nobody lets you do it. Therefore the endgame population is effectively capped to those who have "already done it."

I had this problem in WoW. I wanted to get into endgame so I started looking for guilds to join. I needed to do endgame to get better gear than what I had. Guess what though? Every guild sad "sorry your gear score isn't high enough." So I need to do endgame to get better gear, but I can't do endgame because I don't have better gear. (Yes, in WoW, gear has a point value and if you don't have a high enough score nobody will let you do anything. Yet it's impossible to score higher without doing the things they aren't letting you do. It's a massive catch-22.)
I eventually quit WoW because the only thing I could really do was PvP with randoms- and while I do like PvP, I'd rather do it with a group of people I'm familiar with. So not being able to enjoy 90% of the content in the game at the time, I quit.

More shells need to take a fair look at people who may not have done events before, but really want to.

[AdvancedWind]

We're losing the primal battles as they are now, which is essentially half of the 'endgame' content we currently have.

But there's going to be new primal battles and there's a pretty recent interview where they pretty much state that the strategies required to win are going to be pretty much the same (I guess that what they meant is that the actual fighting part will be more or less the same thing.). So, yeah, I don't see how that's an argument against requirement in any way.

Aside from that, the rest is mostly spammable dungeons that you speedrun, and none of them are quite enjoyable in any form.

if people don't like and or don't want to do the dungeons, and don't like / don't want to do the primals....then why would they apply to a linkshell dedicated to do that stuff?

As I stated previously, a shell looking for a laid-back atmosphere should be willing to accept people who've never done the content. In turn, you teach them, they hopefully get better, and your LS grows that much tighter together.

This is something I sort of agree. However, I believe that having minimal endgame experience is not such a weird requirement for an endgame shell, hence my previous post.

Also, being competitive and goal oriented doesn't mean the actual atmosphere inside the shell can't be pretty laid back or fun.

But no, lets restrict people from content they've never done.. so they can never do it! That's a ridiculous notion.

Content they could've done with friends, casual linkshells or other groups like PUGs* before applying for something that requires prior knowledge and experience on them?

*I understand that many PUGs reject people without prior experience, and that indeed sucks. But that's not really relevant for why a linkshell would do the same, it's a different thing.

[Req]

Laid back and relaxed means different things to different people. Fun means different things for different people. For me laid back and relaxed means that we can do <17 minute speed runs, and all the endgame content while chatting in teamspeak and just generally bullshitting around with little to no issue, and even though I really am not all for defending BG I am sure they would probably agree with me here on this. If you are unwilling to put 20 minutes of time it would take to make a decent app to join an ls so they can get a feel to whether or not you will mesh with them then you are probably unwilling to put the time and effort into learning the mechanics of the fights well enough to where they can be committed to muscle memory and every run can go incredibly smooth. This saves both the applicant and the linkshell recieving the application alot of time because an app from someone who doesn't give a damn about what he puts on the app probably doesn't give a damn about joining the ls anyways.

TLDR you all are idiots, different strokes for different folks.

[Sontawila]

BG is entitled to whatever rules they put forward. They are one of the best LSs in the game, one of which that is generous enough to share their strategies so others are in liberty to follow (and most do to the letter). Even tools such as parser are shared and used by all servers.

Most of their members are polite and helpful (Zozor, Twenty) and as for posting in general forums, will, if you are not convinced of their reasoning, who gives a @#$#? We have ppl that spams forums with all sorts of nonsense with a sense of entitlement its sickening (just look at first page).

[Krausus]

We're losing the primal battles as they are now, which is essentially half of the 'endgame' content we currently have.
Aside from that, the rest is mostly spammable dungeons that you speedrun, and none of them are quite enjoyable in any form.
As I stated previously, a shell looking for a laid-back atmosphere should be willing to accept people who've never done the content. In turn, you teach them, they hopefully get better, and your LS grows that much tighter together.

But no, lets restrict people from content they've never done.. so they can never do it! That's a ridiculous notion.

laid back atmosphere and end game shell are not mutually exclusive. Sure they have a tight application process, and they want competent players willing to go the extra step to get end game loots, that doesn't mean the LS atmosphere is all serious business.

Instead of talking shit (the jealousy is frighteningly obvious) if the shell is not the place for you then simply move on.

[Zozor]

I've been in vent with other BG members running through new content countless times.

The core group of BG will be running through new content not just a few, but literally dozens if not a hundred or so times in a single sitting in order to get a world first. Once the content has been beaten it's broken down and perfected over hundreds and hundreds of more runs. This requires enormous amounts of time together as a team.

If the atmosphere during all that were not fun and laid back no one would be interested. We're all good friends. Many of us (including myself) have met other members outside of the game.

Again I'm not an officer, but I think this is what we mean by relaxed atmosphere. BG members take the gameplay very seriously because taking it seriously and having a strong group of players is part of what makes the atmosphere relaxed. Having one or two members holding the rest of the group back causes problems for the rest, which disrupts that relaxed atmosphere.

BG members are extremely selfless. We share everything. It's common for members to trade the most valuable items in the game to other players for nothing in return simply because we understand that the trade will improve our chances of a world first. If we were up tight about our gear or didn't consider our friends to be important this wouldn't be going on.

All of this adds up to what our members consider a fun and enjoyable gaming experience, which is what it's about in the end.