Bring Back Parties.Follow

There are many things in the game right now that need to be addressed, but there is one I think is rather important that I would like to discuss today. Something that is a very easy fix that should have been done already.

Please Bring Back Traditional Experience Points Parties.

As of now, if you are a new adventurer you will likely solo your way up to about 30, possibly getting into a small two or three man group a time or two along the way. Once you reach 30, you can essentially go into Abyssea, stand in one place with no gear on and open little boxes (IF THAT. Some people are invited simply to stand there and do nothing) for as little as 12 or so hours to reach the level cap. This is a major problem.

For those who already leveled up the old fashion way, before Abyssea, it's not such a big deal. But for new adventurers this really takes away both the immersion and personal development they gain from experience points parties and actually interacting instead of just standing around to get to level cap. It also introduces them to many new areas along the way in a much more linear fashion.

People may argue this but honestly, do you feel leveling up in your game should come down to some one simply by standing in one place, doing nothing but opening coffers (IF THAT) to go from level 30 to 90?

Even if this is so, please give people the option to party. You do not even have to penalize or change Abyssea and can make it fun for everyone to do. I absolutely do not think the old fashion rate of Experience Points needs to come back, but partying does!

So what's the solution? It's very simple. Just increase the experience points that non abyssea monsters give while in a party. The bigger the party, the better the gain, all the way up to 6 people like it was originally intended. Leave the alliance experience points parties to Abyssea or higher levels. A six person or less party develops the skills in new adventurers to know how to operate, but it doesn't need to take forever either. Allow for many different job options and combination's as well, so that adventurers are never left out nor feel excluded.

My idea, would be that the experience points on ordinary experience party monsters outside of Abyssea would increase with each kill the higher the experience points chain grew. Previously and Currently, this would cap around 300-500 a kill, so why not simply INCREASE that number AND make experience points chains easier to get across the levels? It encourages people to do their best and focus while rewarding them greatly and making things fun as well.

It's not just new adventurers, but old adventurers like myself really would like some more options aside from simply abyssea. I would like to level up in a party, with fellow adventurers across the many lands of Vana Diel once more, but there's no reason it needs to be slow either.

Make it to where the experience points is comparable to Abyssea, just in a different setting and area, giving people options and letting new adventurers experience how to properly interact and gain the skills they need.

Along with the wonderful Level Sync function, you could breathe new life back into partying and make the game feel much less lonely and take people out of one area for experience points.

Again, the Experience Points Gain rate should be comparable to Abyssea, if not a slight bit less, but very close in the least.

Say you're in a six person party, you're synced to level 52 and battling crabs in Kuftal Tunnel.

Chain 1-10 gives you 300-500 Experience Points Per Kill, chain 10-20 gives you 500-1000 Experience Points Per Kill, chain 20-30 gives you 1000-2000 Experience Points Per Kill and so on and so forth. This is just an example.

Of course, I think the rate in which combat AND magic skills are gained would definitely need to be increased, but as of now they already do. You have people going into Abyssea and standing around from levels 30>90 not gaining the proper skills then trying to catch them up and sadly, it's not really their fault either, for this is what has been imposed on them.

It would make for more diversity in experience points gain, give people more options and REALLY would help out the new adventurers. It would really be a nice change for the veterans as well.

Again, the Experience Points Gain rate would need to be close to that of Abyssea, but at this point when that's all anyone does now all it can do is help the game and breathe new life into the very system that made this game so fun and unique.

So please, implement something like this, for the new adventurers and for veterans alike, to have more diversity, to better hone their skills and for a much better experience than standing in one place opening a bunch of little boxes for hours on end.

Thank you.

Edited, Jun 3rd 2011 1:54am by EndlessJourney

As I said in my post. This can be easily addressed by making sure there is not job exclusivity or a high demand for elitism. Make it to where everyone can get easy invites and have fun. Make the experience points easy to gain, for example Tough and Very Tough monsters would give the best experience points chains even over Incredibly Tough. That could solve the issue entirely. This could let people actually enjoy themselves in a party and not feel so pressured while still teaching them how to preform various tasks.

I think it would be nice to at least give people the option to party instead of FORCING them to open the little boxes and stand around doing nothing in Abyssea. As I said, they don't have to punish that or take it away, just give people the OPTION to party if they want to and make it to where it is not job exclusive and to where it is not gear exclusive. There are ways for this to be done, quite easily. Please look at the big picture, standing around opening little boxes doing nothing from 30 to 90 does not make leveling up interesting or enjoyable and ruins a big part of the game that could be a lot of fun.

Edited, Jun 3rd 2011 2:07am by EndlessJourney

6-man exp parties brought out all the worst things about FFXI. A job had to justify their damage output, direct or indirect, against every other job to even get invites (or to keep them if starting their own party - don't kid yourself that starting is the answer.) Because of the way the game is, the VAST MAJORITY of the jobs failed to keep up entirely. Encouraging a return to these six-man groups would just shut out 80% of the jobs again. This is not a step forward.

People who actually care are going to do it the "hard" way - and not key whore. Many FFXI veterans who are returning on new characters are opting to solo their way up since it's so fast now, and even I've made the decision to not key-leech certain jobs like PUP and MNK where I'll be deprived of those critical guard skillups. A person who re-started just a few weeks has solo'd himself all the way through 50 SAM already!

I like soloing now. I can log in, pop a ring, do a page, and knock out a level without 1. having to seek a party or 2. deal with other people.

Minimum abyssea level 65?

I noticed while screwing around in Crawler's Nest that an entire alliance was taking on bees and crawlers to burn Gov pages, I thought it was a good idea.

Ummm....

Who's stopping anyone ? I still Party, Solo, Duo all the time (when opportunity arises and its appropriate).

I play for fun & more importantly, recognize that others do also !^^

and one mans fun is another mans grind

How exactly is going to reduce the amount of exp you're getting from GoV on an hourly bases a good thing. You want to make it less zergy, fine. But putting a cooldown on it is going to make it go the way of Chocobo racing faster than you can say "spoony bard".

And for that matter, how is restricting Abyssea a good thing? You're a returning player, and yes the game -has- changed. But here's the thing, it's not going to change back and the game is certainly not going to get harder. Get used to how things are not before you opt to restrict something unnessesairy.

Despite what's being said and posted, the only real reason the more vocal forum people are against lower levels getting into abyssea is because they themselves dont want to form a party for it. Or dont get invited unless they do. You'd be hard pressed finding anyone willing to party without someone doing keys and someone who needs a lot of levels taking initiative of starting it.

And let's not forget that there's plenty of jobs that can contribute as early as 50. And for everything else, there's Atma's to compensate.

But hey, if someone can do something you cannot, it's unfair, right?

It's your own damn choice if you want to have a lower level in your alliance or only invite people who are level 90 and have fully completed relics/Empy's. It's more fun to do it with whoever you want to do it as well...

Despite what the masses say against the few, I am in agreement. This is not the same game.

It's like SE put a Fast Forward button on "growing up" in Vana'diel, and made it meaningless to savor everything the game has to offer, and how the game was made to be a team effort. People were GLAD to FINALLY get their gear/weapon/items/gil etc. Seriously, now it's having to spend all your time endlessly in an "end game" environment grinding away for that seal or NM boss kill, or whatever. WHY oh WHY can't this happen outside of abyssea.. why did this have to be it's own place that leaves the Vana'diel I once knew more of a wasteland??

Man, we already DID that growing up stuff. We did it to death. The mystique is gone, man, and we can't have it back. It died long before abyssea came out. That's why there were summoner burns; that's why there were job leveling services; that's why there was power leveling almost from day one. To speed that crap up.

You want to savor? Go savor. All the zones are still there. Have fun camping long-repop NMs with low drop rates for gear that you don't want.

Making party-based XP outside Abyssea comparable to what we get from Abyssea doesn't sound like a bad thing. It doesn't seem to me he wants anything taken away from Abyssea, so I don't see an issue there. I like having more options available. I don't necessarily agree with all the reasoning behind it, but I can get behind the idea.

Nostalgia is always better than reality.

'Remembering the old days'....I just did that. It was good up until the point I realised that my nostalgia was heavily influenced by wearing rose-tinted specs.

Sure I have some good memories, my first 75 (PLD) took a year and I jumped around the room like I'd won the lottery for a couple of mins when it happened. From that point on it was just grinding out the exp in neverending parties. My 2nd 75 (WAR) took 2 weeks and after I'd managed to get that to 75 I was fed up of partying so much that I didn't level another 75 for quite a while afterwards.

I for one don't really want to go back to the old ways of levelling in parties anyway. They were a royal pain in the ass to construct, especially if like me you lived on GMT timezone and there's often not as many people to ask in the first place. I hated doing a /sea all invite 20-75 (screw the Dunes, I swore I'd never go back) for level sync and seeing 8 people total on jobs which you couldn't make a workable party with if you tried. That and there's only so many times I can see "{English}{Party}{No thanks}" in /seacom before I start to realise that building a PT just wasn't going to happen till much later in the day when the NA's logged on.

I far prefer being able to level quickly in Abyssea so I can go and do a ton of other things in my now expansive freetime.

I joined a Level Sync party for Colibri in W.Woodlands recently and realised just how boring and slow the old parties were. Mind numbingly boring. Grinding a job to level cap was about the most boring experience I can think of. I'm glad SE 'dumbed down' levelling because I was fed up of wasting hours trying to put parties together only to finally get to 6/6 and 2 members leave because they'd been waiting 2-3 hours and had to leave, then everyone says they aren't waiting another hour to get replacements and also leave.

I'm done with old fashioned parties. I just don't have the will to put them together anymore no matter how much extra exp you add to each kill.

Edited, Jul 15th 2011 8:09am by Gra

I'm glad about Abyssea because the rest of Vana'Diel is all mine now.

U NO RED GUD.

I said:
With the EXP boosts, parties will burn through camps faster, and I see parties and alliances doing GoV constantly. What I DON'T want is return to the days of sitting in Jeuno with my flag up or having to try to find a healer or a tank for my EXP party. The idea of a party was horrible. This game is not designed well for that. You can limp along without a tank, true. You can make due with odd jobs, true. But very few people WANT to do that.

How is it not worth it? They increased the EXP, plus if you go into a dungeon, like Garliage Citadel, you can do pages while EXPing. Partying goes insanely fast now. But, read my above comments:

PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO SIT WAITING FOR 5 OTHER LIKE MINDED PEOPLE OF THE RIGHT JOBS TO PLAY THE GAME!

You're right, duoing was possible. And extremely slow past level 50. Trust me, my wife and I duo'd all the time. It was insanely slow going, and before the merge, parties were dead on Ramuh simply because people had reached the cap (75 at the time) and no one wanted to level sync just to tank/heal a party with no gain for them.

I don't want to be spoonfed, I want to PLAY. I want to LEVEL. I want to ENJOY this GAME, not go through an ordeal simply to PLAY this GAME.

You know what, screw the rest of your points. You're stuck in the past, feeding yourself tasty nostalgia cake and forgetting the hellhole this GAME was. I remember when trying to solo past 10 was nearly impossible. I don't miss those days in the slightest.

You're KIDDING me. You ENJOYED sitting on your ass at a zone line waiting for a group? HAY I GOT A GREAT GAME FOR YOU ITS CALLED WATCH PAINT DRY!

There is still teamwork. You see, teamwork is still needed for:

- BCNM, KSNMs, KCNMs and HKCNMs
- Missions
- Quests
- Abyssea NMs
- Syngery
- Gods
- Dynamis
- Garrison
- Voidwatch
- VNMs

That's not ENOUGH for you? Who the hell cares about being forced to get 5 other people of the correct jobs together before you can play? Now you can grab a friend or two, or solo, or party. There are plenty of options now, and people seem to have forgotten that ALL EXP was boosted meaning that if you did form a party, you can go through that camp MUCH faster...

Those are the last accurate things you said.

You joined at XBox launch, meaning that the only expansion you were here for was technically WotG. So what jobs did they add? A dedicated healer, and a hybrid healer/tank/dd in DNC. So point one = incorrect.

Soloing is faster than partying? Bullsh*t. ALL exp got a bonus, so parties are now ridiculously faster than soloing. People just don't want to wait for a perfect party. Point two = incorrect

Leeching in Abyssea being abused? Well, first it's only really abusable by people with their level caps done, meaning long term players that have one or more 90's. I consider that a reward for having been there and done that. PLUS if you leech, you get what you deserve: Months of skilling up. It's no faster, you just wind up getting screwed on the back end. Point three = incorrect

Because no one ever quit due to standing around and waiting. You know what, you and Endless should make your own game, and you guys can play it by yourselves. Don't cry when you quit.

Most jobs seems to force you to pick one of damage, healing and tanking. I've always felt that heading out solo and fight monsters always makes me wish I had someone to fill the other two slots if I picked damage since most monsters like to throw blind, paralyze and slow at you most of the time. So you really want a group to level up with in this game so you can combine your powers and fight tougher foes. That's how it used to be at least.

The problem I have with leveling up is that it bores me and there exist other options to work around it (Abyssea comes to mind here). I don't feel any level progression because of level sync keeps me at a certain level so I could fight crabs in Qufim forever if I wanted to without getting the feeling of becoming stronger. I feel that in every update they remove one part of the gameplay while leveling up. The reason why I mention this is that first they removed the necessity of skillchains, then removed the necessity of having a tank, then removed the necessity of enfeeblings and so on. Skillchains were never balanced in parties to favor all jobs as you would end up fighting crabs, flies, crawlers and spiders most of the time and distortion were favored for the most part. Needing a tank would require you to look after either PLD or NIN. Because of they keep making leveling up simpler with each update I feel that I rather want to leech in a fell cleave party rather than killing the same bat 5 times and return to a book and receive another order to kill 5 bats. Not to mention that 90% of my abilities covers dust while fighting easy preys.

I don't think the answer is to put level 90 mobs in starter zones.

This is my first post, so excuse my noobness.
There's lots of good posts here. I'm pretty new to the game, but
I always remember some of my best times on this game where in parties.
Not everybody agrees, but I've only ever played where level sync was part of y
The game. Anyways if any of you guys are on Cerberus and want to duo/party send me a
/tell Kitha.

Because giving "almost the same" exp rate isn't going to revive party play. It's going to require giving a substantially better exp rate to motivate players to endure the hassles of an old school, traditional SC+MB party.

Players didn't sit around for hours hoping for the right jobs to form a decent party because the exp itself was so much fun. They did it because it was the best way to get exp at the time.

And back during the old fashioned exp parties, you were "forced" to level one of the select few jobs people wanted, or you would sit around Jeuno for hours and hours with no invite. The current Abyssea environment is a lot more friendly to a wider variety of jobs, at least where exp is concerned.

And we have a solution for that as well: Allow skillups in campaign. It's a win\win situation. There's already a thread here about it. People can work on their skills, and those of us who actually enjoyed doing things in the past will be able to do them again when the allies actually start controlling places.

It's a better solution than going back to the 6 man format we had before. I'd rather enjoy the game on my terms, in my time, on my chosen job, than have to level @#%^ing red mage again just to get in a meripo. No thanks.

The one thing that I love about this new method of leveling is the pick up aspect. You can literally log in and if you want to party, it's right there. No more waiting for hours with a flag up, only to log off disappointed. No more /sea all 55-60 pld or rdm. No more staring at spinning moogles and listening to idiots in ls chat argue over which beer is better.

There is even a huge influx of noobs - and I mean like real wet behind the ears no clue what they are doing noobs - not returning veterans. And you know what the difference is this time around?

None of them are leaving because they got frustrated and tired of waiting around for one of your old school parties.