Partying ...why don't people do it in this game?

[Reya]

Has anyone noticed that in this game at least so far, the lack of active partying or the wanting to party is lacking?

I have had a few very sucessful parties on my Elezen to come to the conclusion that when the leves are dry, this is the way to go. I got to rank 5 on both my CNJ & THR and to PL 9 in one party that was just a little over an hour long. We were 4 manning dodos in the starting area outside of LL and gaining good exp.

Other than my party last night, I have had a hell of a time getting people to want to party. People would perfer to solo on the few lower level mobs in the area or wait on leves than go out and actually kill somewhat challenging monsters.

What gives? What are your guys' thoughts?

 

[Shirai]

Not that it should matter in a Beta test.

^
I've been testing a lot of system related stuff in the earlier betas, now with the open beta I'm taking the time to explore the (now available) world.
Things like partying and worrying about the "Player's" game mechanics is something I will worry about after the game has had its release.
That is if I plan on picking up the commercial release.

 

[Uzor]

I've been partying with my linkshell all the time, doing everythign from leves to beatign shit up. We've been killing orange/red mobs gettign 600-800 exp and 500 skill every kill with no downtime what-so-ever, as I've found a secret spot with no competition

There's also a lot of other benefits of doing things in a party. Exchanging Leves from another city more than doubles the gil reward of Leves, so you can do 4 Leves from one city for everyone, then teleport to another one and do 4 more there. You may ask why this is any different from doing it solo, and I'll tell you the reason.

If you're in a group and someone teleports you to another city (which costs 6 Anima), you'll get the option to teleport with them. However, you don't lose any Anima following someone else - which means only one person spends Anima. If you're 6 people in a group (which also increases the Leve reward as you can do more difficult Leves), this equals out to 2 Anima per person over the course of 6 days doing Leves (counting two teleports per run and having a different person teleporting each time), which is A LOT less than you'd spend doing it solo (12 Anima every 2 days, or A LOT of time wasted if you choose to run between cities).

And for those sayign it doesn't matter in a bet atest - you're right. SE doesn't want our input, and as such, I'm using the beta test as a way to plan out the most effective way of earning gil, building various classes and leveling, as those are unlikely to change drastically between open beta and retail.

 

[Reya]

I can see your guys' points.

I know for myself, I get bored to death soloing after a few minutes. I guess I am thinking more along the lines of using job combos and learning new skills and testing them and the only way I can acheive enough exp is to party. True, that it is beta and those who want to test out the game should do what they want. It just feels like partying in general has some kind of negative stigma attached to it !

I'm using the beta test as a way to plan out the most effective way of earning gil, building various classes and leveling, as those are unlikely to change drastically between open beta and retail.

I like what Uzor just posted ^^

 

[Reya]

It does, for the reasons I outlined in my initial reply to your OP. I'm not saying it's right, but I do maintain that SE is the only MMO-producer out there that feels that partying (in PvE, at least) should be a necessity, rather than a luxury.

I agree with you I wish there was a way to make everyone happy! ;;

 

[Dancingweapon]

Well me and Justin was duoing Dodos and stuff and we were getting good exp. Albit risky :')

I think maybe people don't want to party yet, because they aren't quite sure how the game plays themselves. I think we will probably see more parties (hopefully) by the end of beta when people start figuring out what combination are good.

 

[Uzor]

That is *not* what I said.

What I said was bragging rights should not matter in a beta test. Do not put words into my mouth.

I was not referring to you - I've seen it said on various forums. I also know a lot of people that say playing Open Beta is useless since your character gets deleted.

 

[Raesvelg]

lol open betas are hardly worthless. they're the best kind of market test. however, loads of users and gamers seem to think that beta testing means they (developers) are looking for opinion, rather than technical issues. opinion about a game like "characters look cartoony" is kinda silly during a beta test IMO, and while commentary like that is worthwhile, it's still far lower priority than, say "if I click on this chest, the game crashes/fills my money up with 99,999,999,999 gil/kills me".

Pretty much. Once a game hits beta, they're typically looking not so much for mechanic/style critiques, but bugs. I did my submissions on how well aspects of the systems worked in Alpha, where they actually were asking for that stuff, though they did it in a rather bass-ackwards way, in my opinion. Though they did take at least some of the complaints under advisement.

As far as why nobody is partying, well, it is a Beta. People are mostly aware of the transitory nature of the experience, and a lot of them are simply trying to find their niche rather than fully explore the leveling options. Or trying to figure out how to exploit the game mechanics in their favor, things like that.

 

[Uzor]

This open beta isn't like others though, so you can't compare it to general open beta. For this one, they don't even want bug reports - which companiesgenerally do. They've openly said they don't want any input at this stage. As such, I assume this Open Beta is nothing but a server stress test to see how well the servers handle traffic, in order to do final fine-tuning for retail so that servers can handle the load correctly.

While Open Beta for most MMO's are a stress test, they usually still ask testers to submit bug reports and spelling errors, something SE don't.

 

[Galadrios]

I tried asking around at camps for parties but had no positive replies so far. Actually people don't even say naything which is odd. I would love to try some battle regimen and to try to take some harder mobs. We will see how it goes the next days.

 

[Romper]

I've been partying with my linkshell all the time, doing everythign from leves to beatign shit up. We've been killing orange/red mobs gettign 600-800 exp and 500 skill every kill with no downtime what-so-ever, as I've found a secret spot with no competition

There's also a lot of other benefits of doing things in a party. Exchanging Leves from another city more than doubles the gil reward of Leves, so you can do 4 Leves from one city for everyone, then teleport to another one and do 4 more there. You may ask why this is any different from doing it solo, and I'll tell you the reason.

If you're in a group and someone teleports you to another city (which costs 6 Anima), you'll get the option to teleport with them. However, you don't lose any Anima following someone else - which means only one person spends Anima. If you're 6 people in a group (which also increases the Leve reward as you can do more difficult Leves), this equals out to 2 Anima per person over the course of 6 days doing Leves (counting two teleports per run and having a different person teleporting each time), which is A LOT less than you'd spend doing it solo (12 Anima every 2 days, or A LOT of time wasted if you choose to run between cities).

And for those sayign it doesn't matter in a bet atest - you're right. SE doesn't want our input, and as such, I'm using the beta test as a way to plan out the most effective way of earning gil, building various classes and leveling, as those are unlikely to change drastically between open beta and retail.

So if I group with other people and don't do my native Leves I can make more gil?

 

[Reya]

So if I group with other people and don't do my native Leves I can make more gil?

Crystals and monster drops sell well to crafters. Did I mention crystals sell well?

 

[Valandil]

Welcome to the world of casual gaming where "solo-ers" whine and cry until your ears/eyes bleed about "forced grouping." It destroyed Lord of the Rings Online and it's slowly destroying the MMO genre in general.

 

[Raesvelg]

The difference in this case is that the rewards for grouping remain significant, people are just lazy and prefer to solo.

I blame Campaign.

 

[Valandil]

That's the thing, the "solo only" crowd complains because the rewards for grouping ARE significant. I don't know how it is on the WoW forums, but on the LotRO and SWTOR official forums, it's a massive bitchfest that you can only get the best gear/items from group content. Most of the whiners bring up the argument that they hate PUGs or ninja-looters or having to run something 10 times because you lost 9 previous rolls, etc. With the rise in popularity of the MMO genre that came along with the mainstreaming of WoW, also came an influx of RPG fans who don't quite appreciate the necessity of teamwork in the MMO genre. These are usually the same people who favor item stores too because they feel that they shouldn't be shut out of gear/items simply because they don't have the time to invest that is required to obtain said items, or they don't want to be forced to...*gasp*...work with others. The necessity for grouping, even though you would occasionally get stuck in a shitty group, was one of the things I missed most going from FFXI to LotRO. One of the things I do like about FFXIV is the player-driven economy and the interdependence, at least within a linkshell, that will be required in the game.

 

[Isanien]

Can people of different classes form functional parties more easily than FFXI (I am not on beta)? This was one of the things that made me quit XI. I really liked partying, but it was bloody impossible to ever find one if you had the wrong job.

 

[Raesvelg]

Can people of different classes form functional parties more easily than FFXI (I am not on beta)? This was one of the things that made me quit XI. I really liked partying, but it was bloody impossible to ever find one if you had the wrong job.

Yes. While the jobs are still unique, they're all substantially more versatile than they were in XI, not to mention the fact that cross-class abilities can easily be just as useful in other jobs as they were in the main.

We will, however, probably see at least some kind of iteration of that relentless drive towards hyper-efficiency that led people to declare each other "gimp" over a few percentage points difference. I'd just accept that as inevitable.

 

[Takumifujiwara]

Yes. While the jobs are still unique, they're all substantially more versatile than they were in XI, not to mention the fact that cross-class abilities can easily be just as useful in other jobs as they were in the main.

We will, however, probably see at least some kind of iteration of that relentless drive towards hyper-efficiency that led people to declare each other "gimp" over a few percentage points difference. I'd just accept that as inevitable.

No doubt this.^

I truly believe that the fans of the mmo genres unyielding quest to be the very best(pokemon) is the reason this arbitrary labeling of gimp began. People despised THF in ffxi and DRG too for a very long time because they were not the best possible DMG dealers at the time. I think at the core of this thing, the community of online players is just too jaded to ever not label and insult each other. Were at a crossroads of either showing the mmo world what a mmo can be if you work together, or simply show them how teamwork in general is a thing of the past.

Let me say this. I in all my six year tenure in ffxi was by enlarge more proud of anything I accomplished with a group of people then ANYTHING I did solo. The fulfillment I get from working with others is why I personally play mmo's. If that becomes extinct I suppose my mmo days become the same.

Isnt that the point folks? If we all wanted to play solo why the hell did we ever go online and create these giant games in the first place? To show others our l33t gear that we earned by ourselves? If thats the case, then I say mmo's be damned and we go back to solo titles on consoles and PC's. The internet show-offy community be damned as well for making things this way. Simply stating my opinion.

 

[Eilistrae]

I personally feel that if you want to play a game solo, you shouldn't bother with a Massively MULTIPLAYER Online game... unless its a pvp game lol MMOs are supposed to bring you together with other people all across the globe, if you want solo play, go play a console game And I don't mean you have to party with people ALL the time, there are many instances to solo. It just kinda boggles my mind that someone would want to isolate themselves all the time and not party with others.

 

[Romper]

That's the thing, the "solo only" crowd complains because the rewards for grouping ARE significant. I don't know how it is on the WoW forums, but on the LotRO and SWTOR official forums, it's a massive bitchfest that you can only get the best gear/items from group content. Most of the whiners bring up the argument that they hate PUGs or ninja-looters or having to run something 10 times because you lost 9 previous rolls, etc. With the rise in popularity of the MMO genre that came along with the mainstreaming of WoW, also came an influx of RPG fans who don't quite appreciate the necessity of teamwork in the MMO genre. These are usually the same people who favor item stores too because they feel that they shouldn't be shut out of gear/items simply because they don't have the time to invest that is required to obtain said items, or they don't want to be forced to...*gasp*...work with others. The necessity for grouping, even though you would occasionally get stuck in a shitty group, was one of the things I missed most going from FFXI to LotRO. One of the things I do like about FFXIV is the player-driven economy and the interdependence, at least within a linkshell, that will be required in the game.

Raiding in WoW is exactly like that, but you can still get 5k gs by doing Heroics. You can also get full t10 or I want to 264 if you farm enough heroics daily for like, ever. Grouping at low-levels in wow is terrible. People are retarded and leave half way through dungeons. It's the same shit just different graphics.

Forgot to add PvP/Arena is the same shit. Group with people, work with them, and win you get rewarded. That doesn't stop people from bitching.