Cultural Differences, North American Strangers

[sasakusaku]

I apologize for generalizing all NA players (me being one of them) as mostly mean spirited/selfish; I have met many nice people for sure but one must admit that per capita there is more of those types here than on say JP servers.

[jcw005]

Actually, if you've played the endgame at all, I'd say the Duty Finder encourages static party play, if anything. The kind of people you'll encounter in DF at endgame makes finding a good group/FC to run things with essentially a necessity.

[kollwitz]

playing MMOs for over 10 years now, last played at around 2007...
FFXIV is the first MMO where i felt lonely in the field even with dozens of players around.
no need to form parties in the field, no real need to form parties with people from your own server, no need to talk really.
feels like playing a single player rpg with simulated players..

i joined a LS because i just felt so lonely and was getting sick of that empty chatlog.
what's going on with MMOs these days? :/

[Orophin]

playing MMOs for over 10 years now, last played at around 2007...
FFXIV is the first MMO where i felt lonely in the field even with dozens of players around.
no need to form parties in the field, no real need to form parties with people from your own server, no need to talk really.
feels like playing a single player rpg with simulated players..

i joined a LS because i just felt so lonely and was getting sick of that empty chatlog.
what's going on with MMOs these days? :/

I think there's a lot of people that want to experience a game that changes occasionally through updates but want to do it from a single player standpoint. This shift occurred with MMOs starting with WoW and most other ones released after that point.

[Sixmp]

Regardless of cultures i would say this in one respect is accurate. If you are a powerful hero you would not need help walking around outside populated areas. Therefore no need to group. If something did happen while moving around in these areas you would group together in the way of FATEs. You wouldn't be forming a party, you would be rushing to each others aid.

I played FFXI and it was fun for a while but then i began to question what is or is not fun, was i really having fun killing 100s of mobs over and over with a group of six people for exp? I realised the fun had nothing to do with the people i was with personality wise, it was all to do with numbers. If the exp was really fast i was having fun, if the exp was slow i found myself becoming bored.

I then realised that it was not actually a fun thing to do. (for me at least)
The same thing applies to other aspects of MMO game play. I then started playing BST (solo job) on FFXI. I found myself having more fun than i ever had in any game, i was not playing in parties i still took part in the world in other ways.
I saved many parties from wipe by pulling mobs off them, would have a chat with them while they recovered.
I would raise people or give directions to lost people, i found myself actually feeling more part of the world playing solo than i ever did playing in parties.
To me that was taking part in the world far more than the 6 man party grinding mobs for exp.

[Kantide]

The grouping aspect of the game starts primarily at 50, earlier if you want it to but by no means are required.

Where do most players spend most of their time? Level 50.
Where is most of the content requiring groups? Level 50.

I am not seeing the point. 90% of the groups I have run at 50 have been made from friends or people on my server, not the Duty Finder (mainly due to most of the players using DF being toxic, not that all are, but this is probably the reason they have resorted to it being unable to make friends on their own server due to bad attitude).

Contrary to this, I have found a few people in DF on my server who I had join my FC because they were AWESOME people. It takes all kinds.

[Dastard]

I read every post.

(I lied)

But...I think you're over-thinking this.

[LiadansWhisper]

Here in America during Hurricane Kattrina we had people robbing stores and stealing tvs, noone cared about anyone.

While I agree with the general tone of the post, I just want to let you know some things that you're apparently unaware of.

During Katrina and afterwards, thousands of Americans - both from outside of Louisiana, and from within our state - converged upon the greater NOLA area to help.

There were fishermen who brought flat-bottom boats into New Orleans under the aegis of the Lt. Governor to search for survivors. They were actually turned away by FEMA, who had no boats to go do searches of its own. The Lt. Governor overruled them and sent the boats in anyway. These weren't people paid to do anything. They volunteered out of their own kindness.

In Baton Rouge, where I was living at the time, the entirety of LSU made room for not one but two hospital facilities, one of which was an urgent care facility. These were staffed primarily by volunteers, including myself, who worked 12 hour plus shifts, unpaid. I spent over 56 hours the first week volunteering in the hospital that was set up. I let multiple people use my personal cell phone to try to contact their relatives, as the cell phone towers were down but the text services were still running (on battery power, which later gave out).

In Downtown, there was a red cross shelter that set up in the Convention Center. Nursing and Medical students volunteered countless hours of their time, as did local Red Cross volunteers.

In my home town of Shreveport, there was a shelter that existed for several months in the Hirsh Coluseum. This was staffed, again, by volunteers.

Texas, Arkansas, and several other states took in thousands of refugees, made sure they were fed and clothed and housed for as long as it took to get them back home. Even though some of them had no homes left to return to.

When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast this past year, my hometown raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in both cash and food/necessities that were shipped to the victims to try to help out. Our local Red Cross offices sent several hundred volunteers to help.

Don't tell me that Americans "don't care." Don't tell me that no one cared during Katrina. We cared, even if it didn't get on the news.

[Terius]

snip

You misunderstood. OP likes anime and Japan, they are perfect and anyone else is bad.

So many posters with this attitude. "Omg guys Japan are so much better in every way!"

[Renkei]

Nice People do Exist in this country(USA); As much as i hate it here... They just happen to be pretty damn rare... It just so happens that the Majority of people here are disrespectful and take advantage of the anonymity of the internet; and treat everybody terrible because of there own EGO's.

I'm pretty sure its a fact that the Majority of America is really a culturally Messed up country, Think about it, Does our society even have a culture? we Kind of had a unique culture in the past, but does any of that still exist?
If you think about The United States Of America....
We Aren't Exactly a country built on hopes and Dreams...