Isn't it about time to drop the elitism and enjoy the game?

[Balgas]

Originally posted by Pounce
Building your own party is not a magical solution. It doesn't always work, and sometimes it's even worse than the ol' LFG routine.

My success rate with building my own parties vs good ol' LFG is about even.

I agree with this, it's very difficult to start a party, because the tank won't join if you don't have a healer, and the healer won't join if you don't have a tank. You're only hope is to grab whatever you can find in terms of melee DD's and then try to make it look like you've got a sort of good party set up going otherwise nobody joins. But then someone gets tired of waiting and disbands while you're looking for the last person to complete the group, then 2 or 3 people follow the person that just disbanded because they're tired of waiting. It's a frusterating experience, but if you can manage to pull it off you can usually party with the same people the next time, resulting in a sort of semi-static party, until they all decide to do other things like level other jobs, then the frusteration begins again. Oh the vicious cycle. =(

[GSDragoon]

Originally posted by the_governor
You know, the reason you have this extreme difficulty getting a party... might be because you're a dragoon.

Its easier finding a party with my monk than it is finding one with my PLD. If you build your own parties, life is peachy.

Being a PLD and RDM, I fail to see how you can understand what we mean. I have problems with my WAR, THF or WHM too.

Starting my own party can't always happen.

/sea all inv (level range)

I usually see lots of DD, no tanks, no RDM or BRD, JP only players, ect.

If there arn't the right people seeking, no one will find a party.


It all depends on what in need at that time. For a few weeks, I was getting tons of invites out of the blue. Why? Because there was no one to start light.

[the_governor]

I have a 64 monk too.

[Fox the Sly]

Originally posted by Balgas
I agree with this, it's very difficult to start a party, because the tank won't join if you don't have a healer, and the healer won't join if you don't have a tank. You're only hope is to grab whatever you can find in terms of melee DD's and then try to make it look like you've got a sort of good party set up going otherwise nobody joins. But then someone gets tired of waiting and disbands while you're looking for the last person to complete the group, then 2 or 3 people follow the person that just disbanded because they're tired of waiting. It's a frusterating experience, but if you can manage to pull it off you can usually party with the same people the next time, resulting in a sort of semi-static party, until they all decide to do other things like level other jobs, then the frusteration begins again. Oh the vicious cycle. =(

You really hit the nail on the head. I'd make all my own parties if I could manage it and weed out the idiots, but it usually isn't feasible. Man, I want a static...

._.

[LordBiGGs]

i'm just gonna add my 2 cents in here.

1. mages cost vs melee cost
for one thing melee gear has gotten insane lately. yea the prices of a lot of things have risen lately but lets take mnk for example on gilgamesh...brown belt 1.1 million, kote 1.2 million, sniper rings 500k, cross counters (not that i really want those) 3 million. honestly very few players enjoy farming and wish they could get by with average gear. as far as mages go, they can. lets be honest, how often do you /check your mages? how bout the melee? mages wear mostly AF, melees wear mostly incredibly expensive pieces. the only job i consider pretty cheap in the game is pld, but i feel melee costs more than mages.

2. why melees spend so much on the best
like i said above melees get checked constantly. other melees will have the best, so you better compete for that party slot. leaders can see gear before inviting, they cant see skill. and the gear really does make a difference. i was lvl'ing thf tonight around lvl 30. had 2 thf's in the party, other thf wore average gear and got no recognition. i was wearing the best gear and was getting"OMG!"s. now as a melee i hope members will remember or tell others and make me get parties faster. for instance, i used to be anon with my pld and sitting in bastok and get invites to the nest before certain other pld's in the nest already and seeking. also as stated before, a monkey could play most jobs. this game is really friggin easy, i dont see why some people suck so bad, so skill isnt a huge factor, definitely not at later levels.

3. nationality discussion
man, i wish i could switch to another server from the things i'm hearing, cuz let me tell you, gilgamesh is racist central. few to no jp players will be involved in any way with non-jp players. i play mostly during jp time and honestly,very rarely have a jp party or even jp party members

i gotta be real honest here. this game was a lot different before the ps2 release...a lot better...i'm not blaming it solely on ps2 players. SE has managed to mess up nicely as well. with the tp nerf and taxes. time is also a factor. as games become older more things become unlocked, more items become available. i mean each time a rare item is dropped its on the server basically for good. i guess i just miss the days when having the best made you awesome and not having the best didnt mean you were gimp.

[Kailea]

i'm not blaming it solely on ps2 players. SE has managed to mess up nicely as well. with the tp nerf and taxes. time is also a factor. as games become older more things become unlocked, more items become available. i mean each time a rare item is dropped its on the server basically for good. i guess i just miss the days when having the best made you awesome and not having the best didnt mean you were gimp.

Man SE has done fine, they have not "messed up" the TP nerf was to try and balance some classes out and the taxes wherer for gil removeal from the servers.......and if you think you need the most "7331" gear then you need to go and double check your sources, it has been proven time and time again that you do not need the best gear to survive out there, and if you are invited soly on equipment then that PT is no worth it in the first place.

[Feenicks]

Originally posted by LordBiGGs
[B]3. nationality discussion
man, i wish i could switch to another server from the things i'm hearing, cuz let me tell you, gilgamesh is racist central. few to no jp players will be involved in any way with non-jp players. i play mostly during jp time and honestly,very rarely have a jp party or even jp party members

Garbage. I'm on Gilgamesh, play in JP prime time exclusively, and I have no problem getting parties. I haven't been in an NA party since about May 2004. Hell, I'm in a JP linkshell even.

[Macht]

Originally posted by Kailea-D
Man SE has done fine, they have not "messed up" the TP nerf was to try and balance some classes out and the taxes wherer for gil removeal from the servers.......and if you think you need the most "7331" gear then you need to go and double check your sources, it has been proven time and time again that you do not need the best gear to survive out there, and if you are invited soly on equipment then that PT is no worth it in the first place.

Small correction here, it's been proven time and time again that you don't need the absolute best gear. You still do need to choose your gear wisely and focused to the intended goal. So getting at least one extreemly good piece of armor and then having 2nd tier or 3rd tier bests for the rest will still make a PLD a good defender.

Weapons got a little more play but not much you get a 1st tier or 2nd tier and you'll be able to preform you job as a damage dealer well. As long as you are a damage dealer then the focus on defense can be held back as long as you invest in what gear you get wisely.

The 1st tier gear generally lets you focus on multiple improvements, if you can't afford it at the time then pick wisely on what 1 or 2 points you want to improve and do the best to focus on just that 1 or 2 points. If a party can't see your wise development in that then chances are they'll be terrible to be doing an exp party with anyways.

[LordBiGGs]

hmm, first time i've been flamed in a while so lets take it from the top =P

kailea, i dunno if you were around before the TP nerf, but if you were, you would know it was fine. little to no balancing was needed. the only job that fully benefitted from a sam sub with the original TP gain was drg since it could easily shed hate, as opposed to other jobs that would just die. true mnk and sam itself benefitted, but most mnk's still subbed war and most sams still used GS's rather than polearms. drg was already balanced though, since pentathrust is a pretty bad WS compared to other high lvl ones. you can go dig up old forums. i know there are about 30000 posts saying who the best dd's are. it was usually something like 50-60drg, but other than that it wasnt on the list. drk was usually high ranking although drk never even subbed sam, so you tell me if it needed balancing.

also the tax has done nothing whatsoever to remove gil from servers. if anyone can tell me a noticable change other than sky rocketing prices i'm all ears.

ok, let me correct myself, if you have a life outside of ffxi you need the best gear for a melee. i for one dont have time to sit in town seeking party all night. when you have great gear, you tend to perform well. people will remember that and you will get parties much much faster.

feenicks, according to your sig you're a lvl 70 whm. i'm not sure if you've played any melees but its a whole different server. mages will get invites regardless, they are usually needed more desperately. i used to get invites with my pld by jp players all the time. ever since nin tanks become big, my pld doesnt party with jp's anymore. with melee jobs i rarely get invites as well. when making a party and looking for people to invite 50% of the jp players on gilgamesh have (English) (Party) (Thanks for the offer but I'll have to pass.) another 25% of the players dont have it there, but wont party with english anyway. also i've had mage friends seeking party actually get tells from jp players asking if they had certain spells. if they didnt, they didnt get the party. like my whm friend who didnt have erase, or my blm friend who didnt have burn or drown cuz he's never even seen someone use it.

macht, i didnt really mean for my pld, i was more talking about melee dd's. i just used pld as an example for finding parties quickly. pld actually takes some skill, thats why good pld's get invites fast. but a pld should have top quality gear at all times, probably more so than any other job. i dunno if you've played pld gear or not, but until the 70's, gear is incredibly cheap. we just wear sets, no rare drops or anything from nm's. just set items, cheap cheap set items. first big buy is gluttony sword at 57.

[Kailea]

I have been playing since PC release, and DRG/SAM was way to strong, that is why they TP nerfed it, fully understandable, and I am a DRG as youcan see, but I understand why they did it.

[Rilu]

Just a few words on "skill" as it were in this game. If you don't think you can be a skillfull player, then you probably aren't skilled yourself, nor have played with anyone who is skilled. Skilled players push the limits of the party. They don't panic and die if the party gets 2-3 links on pulls. They dont' panic when the tank is in the red, or over cure and get hate, but rather do the right thing at the right time.

Gear is nice, it augments a job and helps the performance of that job. But gear has nothing to do with the skill of a player. Just hitting a skillchain is NOT skill and doesn't determine the skill of someone. I know plenty of players on my server that have godly gear.... I mean +1 everything, yet can't get a party to save their life because they suck as players. Who cares if you go buy a bunch of gil online and buy top notch gear, it doesn't change the fact that you are a crappy player, you just might fool some people for a short while.

Onto the issue of mages and race. If you don't think race matters especially with mages, you're lying to yourself. Can galka and elvaan mages get by? sure they can, any race can get by and be good. But to excel as a mage, you want to be a race that specializes in it. One of the best smn's I ever pty'd with was a galka, but guess what, he would have been even better if he had more mp. Int and Mnd gear does make a difference, if the +1 more int didn't matter, +1str, +1 dex, etc., then why do the HQ gear sell for so much more? thats a simple question to answer, it does matter, might not make the biggest difference, but it does make a difference.

[LordBiGGs]

well kailea...i dunno i really reallllly liked drg's. i still dont think they're really bad. its just before they were so good and honestly i didnt see more people going drg/sam than other dd's and i didnt find it that much better than a drk.

anway. i never said i dont think you can be a skillful player, i just dont see how people cant be skillful players lol. i find most jobs incredibly easy. only thing i had some trouble playing was bst, mostly cuz its just so different. i mean questions will come up and thats fine, ask them someone will almost always have an answer. if not, you're breaking new grounds (Congratulations!).

a little example of what i'm talkin about is last night i was lvl'ing thf in the citadel. melees were war/pld (ugh), sam/war and me (thf/nin). so we're tryin to set up for SATA at the beginning of fight. sam provokes, war provokes ><... so we ask if he knows how thf's work, he really didnt. so we told him, the thf hits the mob from behind with another player between him and the mob, it does a lot of damage and gives hate to that player. all he has to do is let the sam voke then just get behind the mob, i'll take care of the rest. next fight sam vokes, war vokes......we try explaining again and again and he keeps doing it. so i start to get fed up and tell him if he doesnt stop messing it up i'm gonna boot him, cuz it wasnt just at the beginning of the fight, he'd lose hate in the middle, i'd get behind me and ready SATA then he would voke right after. so he gets mad and disbands then starts shouting about me and saying he's gonna tell his ls's about me being an asshole (he was rank 2, said he was in TK and bastok guardians, people on gilgamesh will find that funny lol). so we get ourselves a pld, sam vokes, SATA on pld mob takes loads of damage. so so simple...

moral of the story: this concepts in this game are really easy to grasp. all you have to do is listen to your party members. if theres something you dont know how to do one of them will probably be able to help. most players expect party members to be skilled. i rarely hear LS members saying omg this guy is so awesome. i only hear omg this guy sucks. its not because they play with a lot of bad players, its because being skilled is/should be the norm.

[Gman]

Theres "skill" and theres "knowledge"

I've sat here and read these pointless threads till I'm blue in the face, and never once have I seen anyone EVER make that distinction.

No FINAL FANTASY XI absolutely does NOT require skill to play. It requires you to have a brain. It requires you to be able to learn, and grasp concepts. It's always been about knowledge, never skill, which is why it cracks me up to read threads about player skill.

Getting back on topic, knowledge cant make you hit a mob with more accuracy. Gear can. Knowledge cant make a mob hit you for less damage, gear can. (for a PLD) Knowledge is taking the game mechanics and applying them to best suit the needs of your party. A PLD who knows when to flash, use provoke, sentinel, rampart, etc is much more valuable than one with all the best defensive gear who never uses a cure spell and loses hate all the time.

Say it with me.. "knowledge" not "skill"

/rant

[Halato]

Just a few words on "skill" as it were in this game. If you don't think you can be a skillfull player, then you probably aren't skilled yourself, nor have played with anyone who is skilled. Skilled players push the limits of the party. They don't panic and die if the party gets 2-3 links on pulls. They dont' panic when the tank is in the red, or over cure and get hate, but rather do the right thing at the right time.

Go ahead and flame me for saying this... But I find most people who make this comment are trying to justify the amount of time they spend playing or doing forum research.

Most jobs in this game have a total of 5 useful /ja's and a total of 5 spells they use per battle... Most have 1 to 3 roles they fill.

Those things are neither hard to do on a timely basis or make the decision when to use them. Making 5k to 7k an hour is never hard with the proper party set up, against the correct mobs. Most people that have a static built on efficiency see this- skill takes a back seat to repetition.

Regardless of your attitude or personality, having the analytical skills of a 6th grader is all you need in FFXI to be a "Skilled player." Mobs are predictable, agro ranges are constant, and parties tend to spam the same skill chain for hours, or even weeks on end.

We can fight about it if you want, but here's what will happen: You will name off about 10 things that skilled players do, and every single one will be an incredibly simple task that a 10 year old could learn to do flawlessly in an afternoon.

There's a lot to *learn* in this game, but memorizing a skillchain chart doesn't make you more skilled than the guy 3 states over that has one printed out beside his computer. Knowing that pugils are weak to lightning doesn't make you skilled player when you consider a mob's elemental weakness is easy to find, and chances are the other 5 people in your party are going to tell you stop casting stone.

Honestly, most people that think there's a great amount of skill in this game are usually the ones that blame other people when a party doesn't gel and gets 3k an hour. Those things happen, there's always extenuating circumstances. Some BLM may have a faster reaction time, remain cooler under pressure, have an IQ of 190, and helped design the battle system of FFXI... But I'd choose the BLM that didn't spam Dia to cap his enfeebling because I know he's not going to waste my time.

It's very comforting to convince ourselves that there's something in FFXI that requires skill, because it means we've learned something useful, and haven't wasted our time. But newsflash: It's a game designed mostly to waste our time. Examine the time you spent doing mindless genkei, time spent mindlessly farming, time spent mindlessly repeating the same unchallenging BCNM, time spent mindlessly hunting coffers and keys, time spent mindlessly killing crabs.

Square DID NOT design FFXI to sharpen or hone our minds. It's a very dangerous approach to think of this game as ANYTHING but an entertaining timesink. If we all spent this much time playing Chess, we'd walk away with enhanced problem solving skills and the ability to process extra actions at once... this much time in FFXI, however, teaches us to suppress the urge to say "LOL" in real life instead of actually laughing.

[Pounce]

Here's an interesting example I've seen.

In a FPS, you control your character. You decide what action your character performs, and then your own 'skill' determines how effecive that action is.

Your ability to accurately place, and keep, your crosshairs on a moving target determines whether you miss, hit and wound, or hit and kill.

In a MMORPG, you command your character. You decide what action your character performs, and then the game engine, not you, determines how effective that action is. The most you can do to affect the outcome is equip gear/use items that might raise the odds in your favor, but ultimately its a bit of invisible code working behind the scenes that determine the results.

You can't do anything directly related to your personal ability to hit a mob more accurately. All you can do is say, equip +Acc to increase the odds in your favor. You can flail your arms about, do jumping jacks, poke the mob on your screen with your finger, etc - none of it will affect your character's performance.