The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

[Omni]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

I see what you are saying. That usually happens to me in the earlier levels. Where most players that are usually less experienced. They tend to be real premadonna-ish about everything.

Usually towards the later stages of the game, people understand what it takes to put a pt together, and are pretty patient. Though you still get your lame idiots from time to time.

I have to admit, I dont normally like leading PTs on my own. If I have a buddy PTing with me, I'll do it but I usually dont form my own pts. In doing so, I stare at 40 other people thinking the exact same thing. :p Difference is, I have plenty of other things to do if I dont pt, so no biggie.

[Zamphire]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

I'm {Impossable to gauge!} at creating parties. That's one of the things I pride myself on. Usually a party I put together is a really good party.

[Clever Ninja]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

I don't even wait half an hour. After 5 minutes I start searching to see whose seeking. With the exception of rare occasions, I can almost always make a complete party. And since I have my own seperate list of 'People to not party with' that I started when I first entered the Dunes, don't have to deal with the same bs twice.

If I'm playing a mage class though, I usually don't have to wait 5 minutes. Or 1 minute. Or even have my flag up >_>.

[Murphie]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

Well, at least I don't feel so unreasonble now (not that I really thought I was being unreasonable, but whatev).

[Vyuru]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

I either have the same problem as Queenuma, or people want to be invited when I have 5/6 people in my party, then they join other parties, it gets rather frustrating at times.

I don't think jobs need to be made more versatile, people just need to be more open to new things.

I mean, hey, as drg/rdm with AF helmet, I main healed a party in the Mire fighting Jnun with a taru paladin tank, I can main heal almost anything but tri bats, pugils, spiders, and maybe raptors.

Those fire crawlers that people like to exp on now don't count since I see level 68 paladins with full hp get one shotted on watersday >.>

Also, people need to play their jobs to the fullest, I see FAR too many red mages with "main heal no thanks" in their search comment, or white mages who refuse to party with thiefs, the list just goes on.

Need a dispeller? Grab a blm/rdm. Need refresh? If you need it so badly consider a dragoon/bard, refresh for mages and AoE haste for melees saving the mages that much more mp, I'd be willing to sacrifice some damage to do that for a party.

Besides, mages don't need refresh, grab some cookies, a dark staff, and a blm sub, rest for 20 seconds, you'll have full mp back, exaggerated I know, but it's true, only paladins should have refresh because many use spells to cure themselves and for hate gain, no other job needs it. Any mage can sub rdm for dispel past lvl 64, so needing a brd or a rdm for dispel is a moot point, and in 13 levels of using dispel I have yet to see it ever resisted, I honestly don't think it can be resisted. I don't know about magic finale though.

There, now any party can work without needing brd or rdm, which have been the major hangups in building my parties, but people won't ever go with anything but the "best" setups.

[Aeni]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

If I'm playing a mage class though, I usually don't have to wait 5 minutes. Or 1 minute. Or even have my flag up >_>.

You're just lucky or in an unusual time slot where everyone else is watching Survivor on TV. When I go LFP on RDM, I find 10 other RDMs LFP. Try to form a party and whoops! No wonder so many RDMs LFP... there's no melee at all!!!!

[Kronosan]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

I think some of these veterans minsunderstand. I'm not looking for the work to be easy. I just think that sometimes the work has no returns. And that's lousy. When you log on to FFXI you can end up wasting time trying to get an exp party going. One should be able to log on and get to work more easily. The work itself can remain hard and long and repetitive. That doesn't bother me as much as not being able to even get to work at all.

[Vyuru]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

Well, I don't know if it's we don't understand, because (just using the exp party as an example) if parties were more flexible, there wouldn't be this much work.

Most people want a very specific party grouping, if they don't get it, they won't party, period. It seems to me that what you are complaining about was created by the players themselves.

Should SE change this? Well, I dunno, this is SE's game, and I assume that it is working how they designed it. But I think that SE should also adjust to how the players play the game.

So while I do kind of agree with you, I do think that this is a playerbase fault, and I think SE should focus on other aspects of the game first, especially since there are 4 ways to get exp scrolls that I know of, escort missions, chocobo races, those extermination quests and garrisons. You can also do ENMs for exp. Some of these can be done solo, and some you need a group of people to do, most of those net you neat items and gil as additional rewards and can be done at least once a week. They are all very fun and if I had more time to play, I would be organizing linkshell events around these again like I used to.

If you did an ENM in all of the battlefields once a week, you could get what, 16k exp per week while making gil at the same time? Sure, you need to get to a certain stage in CoP missions to access all of the ENMs, but most of them sound easy, but there is alot of travel time involved.

So I think the exp grind is just fine the way it is, but I'll still complain about not finding any thiefs to party with ever since I got Wheeling Thrust

[Clever Ninja]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

You're just lucky or in an unusual time slot where everyone else is watching Survivor on TV. When I go LFP on RDM, I find 10 other RDMs LFP. Try to form a party and whoops! No wonder so many RDMs LFP... there's no melee at all!!!!

Alright, I'm not gonna lie. It's cause my mages are low level. Highest is 23 RDM >_>. Hades has a shortage of low level mages, so I get rapid invites ;_;.

[Theyaden]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

One more thought:

The experience should more fairly scale to the number of people in a party, A la Diablo II. I think Diablo II was a very successful multiplayer game. Diablo II increased the difficulty and the experience gained by the monsters so that split among the players it was roughly the same as when you were soloing if not better. IT MADE EXPERIENCE A NON-ISSUE. You could worry more about the fun adventure and less about how much experience you were making.

/em huddles in the fetal position
/say nooo... I don't want Godly plate of the Whale at level 1... nooo not another hacked character with 9999 hp and mp trying the blaze me to death.

Seriously though Diablo and Diablo II were so overrun by cheaters PKing people it was seriously hard to enjoy beyond 3 weeks of play. It was improved in II a bit but it was a short term cheaters paradise and the ease of xp left very little feel of accomplishment. I could blaze through levels, kill Myphisto rinse and repeat but it was never a challenge even when you don't dupe/hack exc.

It was enjoyable for when you feel like just butchering an area, but didn't have long term chalenge to sustain a gammer. As much as we may complain about things being tough and anoying to do it's that same ammount of difficulty that keeps us comming back for more. I will agree waiting for pt's can be annoying, but thats a matter of players rather than game mechanics. Short of having multiserver leveling areas that allow access only to those within a set level range say 40-47 45-52 exc I'm not sure how SE would resolve the problem of pt's higher levels. Advertising in your ls for a static pt or linkshell party might help you also.
Best of luck and goodnight

[Blowy]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix could change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

Dear friends,
NOW, I know you can say that this adversity makes the game much more rewarding, but who are you kidding? Not me. I want to face adversity in the shape of a mighty dragon or a boss of a perilous dungeon. I don't want the adversity of making a party. THis is called masochism friends, it isn't healthy.
IF S-E were to just make grinding to 75 a little easier, and a little faster, would it throw a wrench in anything? The end game content and missions could be left just as hard as they are now. It seems the only thing that could happen is more people are unable to resist FFXI's charms. I have no problem with challenging battles, but making a party sometimes is the most challenging and disheartening of all experiences I've ever faced in LIFE!. THe difficulty of the grind is just a big source of so much negative energy.

They reduced the exp required to get to 75 by about 12%.
They increased the amount of experience gained by killing all EP/DCs, in some cases by up to 100%.
They gave us rings which essentially give you a free 1000exp every day.
They increased the cap on exp from 200exp per mob to 300exp.
They added merits to L75 jobs which can make your character much stronger when levelling future lower level jobs.
They added an adventuring fellow to help you solo mobs.
They added easy quests which require 15minutes running to get free exp.
They added a soloable ENM which also gives free exp.

... but if only they'd make things a little easier for us!!!!

(oh yeah, you get a 15% bonus to your exp when exping in Aht Urghan if you use the free sanction...)

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

Needed an advil to read all that (seriously, there's just no need for huge, overly verbose block paragraphs, cut it down a little).

There's a game for you out there, its called World of Warcraft and its ease of gaining EXP solo is utterly misleading to the endgame content you get. You go from not needing anyone for most of the game to needing lots of people at the end of it. FFXI makes no apologies about you needing people and it pretty much does it from the start.

I don't want a game where lots of people can solo, it would take away from the fun of being able to do so now as DRG, BST, RDM, NIN, BLU and THF. People stay away from jobs like BST because they're hard to do and people who enjoy that for the solo like the distinction of being able to do so, for example. If everyone can solo, why be a BST or one fo the other jobs.

And while giving people stackable juices wouldn't harm BRD or COR, it would really damage RDM in terms of invites. We already have Sanction Refresh, Vermy Cloaks and other ways to get it, I'm not a RDM nowadays, but let's not gut the job of its biggest invite incentive. Unless Refresh and Juice Refresh can be made to stack, RDM would get hurt here.

And personally, I think a few subjobs are already broken enough - /THF, /SAM and /NIN. /THF already robs most THF mains of a PT slot, their role in enmity control is taken away from them, Trick Attack should have been job-exclusive. /SAM has had its ups and downs, but the introduction of Absorb-TP has gutted SAM as a main to a certain extent, being able to exploit that further with /SAM's TP abilities hurts SAM as a main now, make it exclusive to SAM.

I mean, why is it DRG is the only class that gets a JA and pet that's totally exclusive to it? Why can't other jobs have some exclusives under sub?

And that leaves us with /NIN. This is where FFXI gets the most unbalanced and also where SE made one of this biggest mistakes - putting Utsusemi: Ni in subjob range. The biggest problem with is that RNGs were punished last year for the same thing WARs and other jobs exploit it for now - damage mitigation. RNGs once unleashed huge damage for no consequences by subbing /NIN. Now everyone else does, but RNG remains nerfed on the damage end. Hypocritical to say the least.

Last year, RNG was also problematic because at high levels there were so few places to EXP. A roaming PT of RNGs could decimate a zone and leave other PTs with tablescrap EXP, all the while not taking much in the way of damage thanks to /NIN. After RNG got their damage cut, WARs just picked up where RNG left off and actively do the same thing.

Just because we have more places to do merit now doesn't balance things out. RNG remains nerfed while other jobs still openly exploit /NIN - big damage with no damage taken in return -either alter their damage too or just suck it up and move Ni past subjob level.

Now endgame tanks are starting to lose out their roles to a freaking support class because of /NIN and another little mistake known as Raptor Mazurka. A useless gimmick as far as travel goes, yet it enrages gods and kings alike. Did I mention the flurry of terrible BRDs now invading the class in hopes of exploting this?

And you want this game to be broken further purely because you can't make the cut for PTs? Sorry, but we have enough problems as is.

[kiffkin]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

Besides, mages don't need refresh, grab some cookies, a dark staff, and a blm sub, rest for 20 seconds, you'll have full mp back, exaggerated I know, but it's true, only paladins should have refresh because many use spells to cure themselves and for hate gain, no other job needs it.

A solo BST here, but the point is still the same (unless Dark Staff somehow works differently for mage mains). At level 51 I got a Dark Staff and, while it did cut my downtime considerably, it was still there, and a lot more than 20 seconds at a go. At 52 I got a Gaudy Harness and (limited) Auto-Refresh. I can now xp for hours with zero downtime. That's zero as in I can be down to 0 mp and red hp and still keep going without missing a beat.

Also, unless things have changed since last time I used cookies (it was certainly the case then, as I tried it), a mage who uses cookies can't use any other food at the same time.

[Oogami]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

Aherm...

Absorb-TP is a Lv 45 DRK ability, unless you're talking about /SAM's nerfed Meditate.

And Dragoon is the only pet class that has no direct control over the pet. Summoners, Beastmasters and Puppetmaster respectively have Assault, Sic, Manouvers etc. to have a semblance of control. Dragoons only get Dismiss. The most control a Dragoon has over the Wyvern is the Healing Breath trigger. A Wyvern is a part of the Dragoon, and is more of a companion rather than a pet.

There is already another class with "exclusive" JA, and they had it way before "Call Wyvern" got changed from a 2HR to a JA.

Beastmaster.

Which ability? Lv 23 Call Beast.
Why? Jugs are Beastmaster only.
(Reading about them jugs makes me wanna play beastmaster...)

Besides, I have not seen many /SMN actually using their Avatars due to the inefficiency. That's already half exclusive if you ask me.

And yeah, you can't eat other food and still munch on cookies. But that's what I mostly eat during XP anyway. The only one time I found myself never having to /rest as a WHM was in Aht Urghan. Lv 55 BRD+RDM+Sanction Refresh is insane. Plus, I had a super PLD tank, so I was mostly casting Haste, Regen and Flash.

[dirtyclown]

Re: The ONE thing Square-Enix should change to make this game the only MMORPG for me

OP, do me a favor. Wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which one fills up first. Changing game mechanics to make the game less strict on party setups is quite unlikely. And what's more unlikely is the playerbase changing their minds without being forced. It sucks that you get rubbed the wrong way but it happens. Nothing you can do about it except maybe find a couple other people with a similar mindset and form a static. As for the rest of you, potshots and "GTFO, go to WoW" posts confirm that the playerbase for this game is a bunch of assholes. Go against the grain, damnit!