Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

[Romyro]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

Of my two 75 jobs, there was really only one piece of Relic AF I was after. The rest was pretty much junk...kinda like the normal AF for my jobs.

Sometimes I wish I could say the same…At least 3 of the 5 pup pieces are pretty solid. Infact they all have uses…

Smns too for that matter.

[Vevau]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

The expansion has been out five years, lots of people have gotten sea. Its not because they had a the right jobs or better linkshells, its because they were more organized, more helpful and more competent that the player that have sat around waiting for the last five years.

Conveniently the expansion has been out a bit longer than I have been playing, in that time I spent god knows how long trying to organise, organising and even occasionally being picked up for 1-2/1-3. I levelled war just for them as I didn't want to do rng or smn and only had nin or rdm at the time - that's how stuck I was and wanted to get to sea.

Eventually with a lot of luck and persistence (not organisation!) I got to 6-4 a few months ago, since then I don't want to know quite how much gil I blew on RR earrings, CCBs and meds. I spent several days shouting in WG and never got a group together in less than 4 hours. That was with at least 2 friends online and able to be coerced into helping most of the time and between myself and any of those we could fill tank healer and kiter spots easily.

Every run of the Airship I did was organised once a party to do it was together, so that knowing what to do was never an issue nor was how to do it. The huge problem was getting the bodies in place to do it, that and the time limit.

Fortunately I can stop whingeing about that fight as the new shell got through it and I'm sat on 8-1 as I passed out after we got into sea. For all those who want to refer to a lack of help and/or karma I have helped with every fight in RoZ to DM (still there and Suppa calls) and CoP upto chapter 5 and I haven't been past there for long enough to have been roped in.

Of all the problems I will agree organisation as it extends to what to do and how to do it is crucial, but frankly once you have 6 people set up reasonably that is a non-issue as getting that across is not difficult - if it is then you need to replace someone. Luck is still an issue thanks to SE's worship of the almighty PRNG.

Organising people to do fights is the real problem and unless you are lucky and sociable enough to have 5 good friends ready and willing to spend time and gil getting through these missions with you. Sadly for those of us who levelled slowly and insisted on meandering around quite a lot and always ending up the 'experienced' one helping out that has been a royal pain.

PS, been trying to get to the end of this thread before replying but after the second iteration of this idea just had to!

PPS, anyone have any idea what a decent time for beating 6-4 is?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

Conveniently the expansion has been out a bit longer than I have been playing, in that time I spent god knows how long trying to organise, organising and even occasionally being picked up for 1-2/1-3. I levelled war just for them as I didn't want to do rng or smn and only had nin or rdm at the time - that's how stuck I was and wanted to get to sea.

RNG is dirt cheap until 51ish. Everyone has an excuse to not level RNG, but its assets to CoP missions - Wide Scan, Barrage, Status/Holy Bolt and eventually Slugwinders - cannot be denied. And unlike SMN, the starter quest is one of the easiest and most painless. Getting started on SMN is a whole different story. Getting the celestials and people in EXP PTs expecting you to at least have Fenrir is too much advance work.

For the majority of my CoP Missions, I did go RNG on the first trip to Sea. The expense of the job was nothing compared to what I spent on polymer pumps on the Airship fight alone.

Eventually with a lot of luck and persistence (not organisation!) I got to 6-4 a few months ago, since then I don't want to know quite how much gil I blew on RR earrings, CCBs and meds. I spent several days shouting in WG and never got a group together in less than 4 hours. That was with at least 2 friends online and able to be coerced into helping most of the time and between myself and any of those we could fill tank healer and kiter spots easily.

Every run of the Airship I did was organised once a party to do it was together, so that knowing what to do was never an issue nor was how to do it. The huge problem was getting the bodies in place to do it, that and the time limit.

And every time, you had a group you probably knew little about and had no chemistry with. You might have had one or two friends join in here or there, but knowing how they function doesn't really help you with the other three or four people are total strangers.

I knew my team well and if we had a spot open (which sometimes happened because I did remove people that held the majority of the group back), I called on friends I knew I could count on to fill that spot.

Advance planning and knowing who'd be an asset was really all it took. That and a willingness to take the lead.

Of all the problems I will agree organisation as it extends to what to do and how to do it is crucial, but frankly once you have 6 people set up reasonably that is a non-issue as getting that across is not difficult - if it is then you need to replace someone. Luck is still an issue thanks to SE's worship of the almighty PRNG.

I had connections, but I'd say having people skills was more important because the people I took on the second time around were still mostly strangers at first. But I started as far back as I needed to to help them, so they were not strangers after a few missions in.

That was a big stipulation for my static - those that started with the group started with the furthest member back or they didn't join the group at all. And I also made it know that those that became a burden or showed up unprepared would be dropped.

My final stipulation was that the static was a promise to get Sea only. I only promised this because I know how some people are in this game. Get them sky and they ditch the group. Get them Sea and they'll ditch the group. Some stuck around for other missions, some didn't.

Organising people to do fights is the real problem and unless you are lucky and sociable enough to have 5 good friends ready and willing to spend time and gil getting through these missions with you. Sadly for those of us who levelled slowly and insisted on meandering around quite a lot and always ending up the 'experienced' one helping out that has been a royal pain.

Making or being a leader friends has little to do with luck. You make friends depending upon how you conduct yourself. Anyone can become a leader through the willingness to organize and take action.

But as I said before - no one likes being a leader, at least, very few people enjoy it. Being a leader is work and people don't want to do the work. I hate being the leader, probably because I knew that means I have a greater obligation than my own needs. Some leaders do forget that and make it all about themselves, others know its about looking out for others and knowing someone's going to hate you no matter what you do. Usually the people that want something for nothing or can't get it together.

[Vevau]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

For those who can't be bothered reading the wall-o-bullet-points:

- Ignore me loving my RNG, I beat CoP with it.

Spoiler

I have played an elvaan RDM from day 1, everything else has been a distraction of some level of enjoyment (blm, nin, drk) or necessity (whm). For reference I've now taken pld, blm, rdm, nin, blu and war to various Promies all of which are useful.

- I had a static and helped them out and we won!

Spoiler

Have you tried to organise a static recently!

- You failed because you had no chemistry with your pickup players

Spoiler

I'll agree with this one on 6-4, and a number of Promy runs. The rest everyone pulled their weight and we weren't presciently aware of what everyone was thinking but got the job done in no more than three runs for all but the named fights.

- Leading is hard

Spoiler

Yep, and that's just getting the fights done. If you can get the people for a static good on you.

Having just seen your suggestion to advertise on the web for people I did exhaust that angle with absolutely no luck.

If anyone still has major issues getting people for fights it may be worth mentioning FFXIAH.com's advanced player search allows you to find people by mission.

So nothing wrong with what you said but was there any point reiterating it?

[EternalMalachi]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

(1) You post an announcement on forums people will frequent

Well, this is pretty much the only FFXI forum I frequent, and the Sylph server section is dead dead dead. I suppose I COULD have tried to track down people over at KI, FFXIAH, Bluegatr, but not quite sure how grouping w/ strangers I find on forums would be much different from a pickup assembled in WG.

(2) Be willing to retread. If you do a mission for someone that you don't need yourself

Oh I have. I've done Mea/Dem/Holla about 2 dozen times when I was getting my friends and my LS through. I have also done the Minotaur section about 6 times for the same reasons. Unfortunately the LS pretty much fell apart shortly thereafter. From then on I decided to static with my friends, which has me stuck at the Ouryu fight simply because we can't all find the time to be on and get it done.

(3) Prepare, prepare, prepare. This is not stuff you just do on a whim. You need to have a plan - that's the biggest problem of all - most players don't have a plan, they just want to do the mission

Again this leads to the time issue where either you shout for hours to find people and fail because everyone is either impatient to get the mission done as you said, or they are impatient to get the mission done because they've spent their whole play time shouting for people and have to log soon, or perhaps someone in the pickup has an event soon, or whatever.

(4) Be willing to be the leader.

I usually am. I spend time out of game lookin for strats and set ups and the like trying to figure out the best way to do whatever it is. Sucks when it fails because that falls on my shoulders, but whatever, I'll keep trying. Whats worse is when I do try to organize a pickup and things fail because of poor players, or because we lose some at the last minute to whatever, and everyone gets the let down.

A lot of your tips rely on finding a set group, say, like a static, so that people can go get their cs and prep items and whatever and be ready to go when you schedule the run. Thats great for an LS, or a static of people who play often. Not everyone has that, however, which is the point I was trying to make. The reason a lot of people don't already have CoP done is because they don't have an LS who they can organize with to get these things done, and so they are stuck either shouting in WG for help, trying to organize with strangers, or just giving up and missing out on the CoP line entireley.

That is why I am glad that they are releasing the level cap on these areas, because it'll be easier to either solo or low-man some of these runs. Without the level caps people might be a little more willing to help out BECAUSE it won't be as difficult to go through now as perhaps it was for them. And perhaps a group of friends will be able to go through together without having to worry about spending weeks leveling jobs that they need for the run.

[Satori]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

I've done up until the mammets so many times. I've lost count how many promy's Ive attended just to get people through,
I have no time for pickups as they generally fail and not worth the effort, time and gil invested. Saying that I've been stuck on the savage for ages. Not stuck per say because I've never entered the battle. Getting the people together who have the time to do so or jobs ready for a decent setup is annoying.

[Varistor]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

Alot of people are still assuming with the removal of the level cap, that you can just go solo/duo w/e these and there is no proof yet of what SE will do with the increase other than they said they will increase the level of the monsters and add new tougher ones. Knowing SE, they will remove the caps, increase the lvl of the monsters so they wil now con the same at 75 as they did with the lvl cap so you still have to have the same group to go through it. TBH, i would still rather take a merited 75 through those than a capped job. Gogogadgetspeculation. I wish it would just hurry up and get here so we can all get on with it.

[Neverslip]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

i would still rather take a merited 75 through those than a capped job. Gogogadgetspeculation.

{True Strike}

Yes... I've thought of what you're saying, however I didn't want to jinx anything. But I totally agree on rather taking a fully merited 75 or group thru than a GD capped job.

[Ziero]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

Because if there's one thing this game needs more of, it's 75+ only content.

[Varistor]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

Believe me guys, I agree with you. I am just saying if they are going to up the strength of the mobs so they con T-IT at 75 as they did when you were capped, my survivability goes up taking a 75 dnc thru those areas then it did a 40 dnc or whatever. That is all i am saying. Whether we like it, loathe it, whatever... it is going to happen so all we can do is accept it. Only other alternative is to just not go there at all if one hates it. I like the cap being removed from the areas, but i am on the same side as those that hate that they are removing the caps from the fights as well. I do agree with BBQ about the challenge of the fights. It really forces you to think and plan the fight b4 you go in. I did enjoy that aspect of how it felt to win the different fights and how it felt to accomplish that. I don't think they are going to leave the mobs at the same toughness and you can just take a 75 in there and kick arse. But again, the survivability does go up of a 75 versus a 40 or 50 cap job.

[Feba]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

Luck is still an issue thanks to SE's worship of the almighty PRNG.

/mycontribution

[Losrase]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

I think if they wanted to make the content more accessable, they should make it so you can "low man it." Keep the cap but instead of needing 6 decently skill/prepared players to win with right jobs, you only need 3 decently skill/prepared players to win with right jobs and add more "right" jobs. I say they make the bosses weak to SC + MB or SCs that increase one tier with each WS.

I remember leveling SMN to 30 only because I wanted to get in groups for the promies. BLM(50 at the time) being my first job and only have /WHM(28) or /RDM(28) as subs didnt give me many invites to the promies.

I always like the level cap on CoP because it was something you did as you leveled.

[Tickmeoff]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

Sweet, I was going to re-sub for the summer anyway since I'm not taking any summer classes and this is icing on the cake. I've always wanted to get CoP done just to actually experience the storyline but at this point in the game nobody actually wants to try and work through all the level capped shit.

As long as they don't actually change all the mob levels and make the entirety of the expansion 70+ content this will be awesome.

[Elwynn]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

We'll find out what exactly they did in two weeks.

As I was logging out last night I noticed the top announcement on POL: June 10 for a data-only update (presumably to stagger the update bandwidth load), then the new content hits on June 22.

[Tipsy]

Re: Chains of Promathia Areas Unfettered! (05/24/2010)

Solo'd 3-5 (Diabolos) as 69 NIN, with ease.

>_>b