SAVAGE FIGHTS AND PF

[Jeeqbit]

My advice is to join a static that raids Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday, then you can PF Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Monday. That way, you are not depriving them of loot if you PF later in the week. There is a PF boost at the weekend due to weekend-only players.

It can benefit the static for people to practice outside of PF hours though. It gives them practice, that they can then bring back to the static nights and hopefully be better at the mechanics.

As for it not being an MMO to you, that's an anecdotal experience and is typically due to not knowing how to get social interaction out of the game. It is definitely a massively social MMO. If all you do is hang around Limsa and think that's it, that's really just from not knowing where else to look:

• Roleplaying
• Bard performances or other performances
• Venues of various kinds
• Joining an FC that does things together, just need one with hardcore players in that don't take breaks for 4 months, or at least play the game daily/regularly
• Hunt train shout chats, and their conducting communities
• S ranks shout chats, and their spawning communities
• Joining a PF, where you interact with people prior to doing whatever content, including High-End duties
• Cosmic Exploration, just go into the most populated instance and talk in /shout
• Field Operations, similarly just talk in /shout a lot when that releases soon
• Alliance Raids, try actually talking in /alliance. It's usually fun if you bother to banter in it
• Statics (which you're obviously experiencing). While many of them fall out, others become good friends and others even do other activities together.
• Map parties (can join these in PF), usually very social since maps are boring
• Bicolor gemstone farms, usually very social again since FATEs are mindless
• Unsynced farms of old content are similarly very social since they don't involve brainpower
• Hundreds of thousands of discords for this game, usually get into them if you PF regularly or join an FC
• Novice Network if you're in it, or CWLS/LS which you can recruit for via Fellowships.
• The forums, reddit, etc.

I've not been lacking social interaction in 10 years of playing this because of all these things.

[Ayanodead]

Like sorry, I used to work 40 hours per week and have an hour commute through and back. Unless I really devote my life to this game, I do not see this happening. If i based all of my relationships off this game, they would easily fall apart. Currently I used to work like 20 hours plus taking care of household stuff and barely even manage stuff. I know the fights and progged outside of static hours, but I cannot ask anyone else to do this. I lose friends in the process of seeing others want that and I understand why: this game isn't their life. I've never seen an mmo be someone's LIFE before. I am just UPSET that like this isn't available to others who have real life things to deal with. I'm getting sicker and it's sucking more to try to get others or talk to others in game as an autistic person to do stuff with. As someone who would devote their last 3 hours after cleaning and taking care of dinner, this game isn't worth pouring the hours anymore with. It's a general complaint. I'm just sick of it all. I'm done to catering to everyone's bs in spite of my own needs and wants. Im not dismiss what you said but it's not realistic to me. I appreciate you commenting though.

[Jeeqbit]

Like sorry, I used to work 40 hours per week and have an hour commute through and back.

I get that most players are casual players because they have jobs and so on. That said, while many use that as an excuse, there are people who work and still play the game a lot after and complete grinds, participate in social events or join a static. Depends a lot on what they do after work and how exhausting their job is. As I mentioned, activity spikes at the weekend so a lot of people just catch up on things then when they are not working.

Unless I really devote my life to this game, I do not see this happening.

I'm not gonna lie to you. The High-End duties that I see working for someone with a busy job and a busy life is Extreme trials. Contrary to what people on these forums say, they are pretty fun to learn and farm, and it's fun to help others get the clear. They are not as frustratingly punishing as Savage, but they aren't content you can do blindfolded like most things in the game are.

In many raid tiers, you can get the clear on the first and second floors pretty casually in PF as well. Once you get to the third and fourth floors, it starts to make you want a static, even in tiers where people claim the third floor is easier. Usually, regardless of if it actually is easier or not, it also has a steeper DPS check or backloads a challenging mechanic that is bound to go wrong without the sort of coordination you get in a static.

If i based all of my relationships off this game, they would easily fall apart.

You don't have to base relationships off the game, necessarily. I interact socially in the game, but that doesn't mean I have any sort of a deep relationships with anyone. Relationships require time and effort, and it's not always reciprocated, so it's fair to ask yourself if it's worth the effort. My social interaction is as shallow as that of someone who works in retail or reception (I talk to people in passing then never see them again in many cases), and that's fulfilling to me personally.

I've never seen an mmo be someone's LIFE before.

MMOs used to be people's life if they were played. They weren't playable casually - or were difficult to play casually due to being extremely grindy, with rare RNG drops that you need, or asking you to do something hundreds of times. At best, you'd login casually to do a tiny percentage of these grinds each day. Then their endgames would sometimes have very complex systems and/or something resembling raids/pvp that would consume a lot of preparation time. This game has remnants of that but it has moved away from it in many areas, compared to other (especially older) MMORPGs - with features such as /teleport, /dutyfinder, separate instances for each raid boss and limited buffs that trivialize travel and preparation.

Savage or Ultimate can certainly be one of the pieces of content in this game that consume a lot of time to clear due to the sub-par performance of 1 or more of their party members (which may or may not be them, in many cases it's not). Getting a team that is in sync generally is also a factor.

That said, there are teams that are in sync and have been together years and well, they're lucky enough to always be able to clear things fast without it consuming too much time. Not everyone's lucky enough to have found their A-team, unfortunately.

[Kohashi]

Just a general complaint: My static is falling apart due to toxicity and players wanting to be selfish and try to clear stuff by themselves. There are people lying while joining savage fights to clear them and screw others over by not knowing the fight. I am new to this tier and I know I CANNOT clear by myself. I CAN'T get carried as dps either; what happened to people being a team? I thought this was a game to have friends and do stuff with? What happened to the multiplayer aspect of it and not afking IN LIMSA or UL'DAH? There feels like there is nothing else to do that isn't monotonous and boring and now that I have a taste of Savage I don't want to stop. I feel like I AM genuinely not getting my money's worth unless I am catering to unsavory folk or pretending to try to fit in. Even if I want to participating in the SOCIAL aspect of things with others it is always content that gets shortened or can be completed in a months time. It feels like everything can be played by yourself; it doesn't feel like a MMO anymore and probably never has been due to streamers.

1. There is nothing wrong with clearing by yourself as long as you don't interfere with the static loot table.
2. You clearly have joined the wrong static. Understanding what you are looking for and which kind of static works best for you takes a while.
3. Make sure you discuss the loot assignment, expectations, and preparation in the very early days of static.
4. If your schedule is too hectic or you cannot commit to a general static, PF is a very solid choice. However, take PF-ing with a big grain of salt. It has positives and downsides as well.
5. A static is a secondary "job", make sure you understand that. As long as it requires a fixed schedule, joined equal efforts and working towards the same goals, it is a job. A fun one, but still a job because raiding with a static requires coordination and willingness to commit to a bunch of agreed-upon rules.

[AvoSturmfaust]

Like sorry, I used to work 40 hours per week and have an hour commute through and back. Unless I really devote my life to this game, I do not see this happening. If i based all of my relationships off this game, they would easily fall apart. Currently I used to work like 20 hours plus taking care of household stuff and barely even manage stuff. I know the fights and progged outside of static hours, but I cannot ask anyone else to do this. I lose friends in the process of seeing others want that and I understand why: this game isn't their life. I've never seen an mmo be someone's LIFE before. I am just UPSET that like this isn't available to others who have real life things to deal with. I'm getting sicker and it's sucking more to try to get others or talk to others in game as an autistic person to do stuff with. As someone who would devote their last 3 hours after cleaning and taking care of dinner, this game isn't worth pouring the hours anymore with. It's a general complaint. I'm just sick of it all. I'm done to catering to everyone's bs in spite of my own needs and wants. Im not dismiss what you said but it's not realistic to me. I appreciate you commenting though.

40h a Week is a standard norm in Germany and i still find time to raid 3x3h each week, if that is too much for you look for a 2x2h or 3x2h static, and if even that is too much for you, sorry but then maybe raiding isnt anything for you

i mean maybe you should state clearly what YOU expect right now, because everything i read is complaining without stating what you expect what you want, how many hours do you wanna raid? how often?

[Amarande]

40h a Week is a standard norm in Germany and i still find time to raid 3x3h each week, if that is too much for you look for a 2x2h or 3x2h static, and if even that is too much for you, sorry but then maybe raiding isnt anything for you

I don't know about EU, but in NA, such short hours statics in FFXIV are actually depressingly rare, at least ones that are publicly advertising openings.

Meanwhile people will routinely post 4x4 statics, and call them Midcore. (Like I'm sorry friendo, but that's literally enough hours to officially qualify as an actual part time job. That is not Midcore in the slightest. LMAO)

It seems like it is something specific about this particular game; in WoW, even Mythic guilds routinely run hours this short, and that is despite the fact that WoW raids have normally at least twice as many bosses as a XIV tier, plus extensive trash clearing and walking around in complexes that usually look like they were built for a people that would make a 10x size Tauren still look small. (Plus having to have the whole group physically travel to the raid entrance in the first place. Not all were conveniently located. Sanctum of Domination I'm looking at you.)

And yeah, the "MMO as somebody's life" vibe is real when it comes to modern team expectations.

I remember when I honestly thought we'd moved beyond that. In the olden days of MMOs, it was de rigeur to plan your entire life around the needs of getting ahead in the game (one of the big reasons I never got into MMOs before WoW TBC, unless you count GW1, although I did purchase and briefly sub to FFXI and EverQuest before abandoning them almost immediately).

Then we finally started getting our heads attached properly and understanding "dude, neglecting your RL for a game isn't cool." Groups started to reflect that (which is why 2x2 guilds became so commonplace in WoW).

And now we're backsliding. We're going back to "Change your job schedule around the game, not expect players to schedule around RL being a thing." We're getting to the point where planning PTO around expansion and patch drops is nearly expected if you don't want to be shunted into the Ralph Wiggum tier player pool. (This is probably making the game worse objectively as well because it's a lot bigger of a deal if anything gets delayed, so instead patches are more rushed and we get more emergency maintenances and not-actually-hot hotfixes afterwards instead ...)

What happened here? Where did rationality go?