Increased isolationism

[Daemonxel]

Anyone else feel this way? Really miss that right knit togetherness and accomplishments you felt back in xi ad well as some other mmos. I don't know maybe I just need a change of venue but seems like I am just solo playing these days since most of my friends left before 3.0 and everything issue of savage can be accomplished by duty finder and party finder. Maybe just Excalibur, but would give anything for that group feeling from back in the day.
And was wondering if anyone else laments the old days as well.

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[Raldo]

Uh, is this a new feeling for you? This is how the game has felt for well over a year now.

[Kipling]

Some Free Companies try to recreate this atmosphere of togetherness, it's just not common. When you only need 8 people to raid instead of needing to maintain 18-36+ active people at all times to do events it changes a lot. I think they intended us to cluster in free companies and use linkshells for raiding.

[The Stig]

I agree, but I also like to point out the irony of saying this and having Gendo as avatar/sig

edit: To expand a few:

- No benefits in doing stuff with friends/in a group (none raid)
- Roulette system forces you to queue solo except Expert/High Level
- No one really wants to redo things besides to help, there's little to nothing (beside exp/glamour) in it for them
- Forced entry of 4/8 (current content) really limits a lot of people
- Crystal Tower/Void Ark series could've fixed this, but ... nope. 24 or nothing. And it's really easy content, little sense of progression

[Destinye]

It really has to do with the way the game is designed. You get conditioned pretty quickly that you're "solo" and the community only matters largely through Duty Finder, least on NA/EU datacenters.

[Silenka]

Yes accessibility in MMOs nowadays means you can get most of your shit done solo and there's very little reason to do most things in groups. Shit sucks.
Then again on the other hand XI was often used as a glorified chat channel which I think people just got used to. How many times did you sit in your MH doing nothing for hours except chatting to your friends? You can do that outside the game easily enough but I feel it's more immersive ingame - too bad it doesn't really happen anymore.
And how many times in XI did we moan about the player search system and wanting something like PF when we were creating groups for shit? Now we have it and people hardly even use it/need to use it. How many times did we wish for many things to be instanced? Now they are and Duty Finder erases your sense of identity.

I'm not saying the community isn't broken beyond belief, it is and I feel it all the time. But we do have some of the tools now that would have been super nice in XI. We just don't...need them as much in this game. All of those things they finally gave us ended up erasing the need, more or less, to lean on each other to get things done. The FF fanbase has mostly grown up and is full of people with jobs and lives outside of MMOs. In a way, being able to get shit done solo is a boon to those of us who have other things to do for most of the day. It's no longer stressful just to level up - unfortunately instead it's boring and repetitive. No more need to beg for help through story missions or whatever the flavor of the day content is. But all that means we're ultimately playing alone.

[Alistaire]

It certainly has the potential to go the other way since you can belong to 9 social groups at once, but I think it's at least partly people's mindset that's changed and not so much the game.

[Prothescar]

Won't get a sense of togetherness or mass community accomplishment/working together to achieve a purpose outside of something like GW2 these days. MMOs have been retargeted to mostly solo and extremely low man content for the casual market and very few succeed in including large scale combat or events, aside from GW2 (I'm sure there's others, but I haven't played them).

[BaneTheBrawler]

Duty-finder is the biggest obstacle. Instanced content is fine, but the thing about those in XI was that you had to build your own group. KS30 {Do you need it?} etc. Party-finder is great because it's a tool to help you do that. Duty-finder is what fragments the community.


Also, I still sit around in-game doing nothing but chatting to people for hours on end. Just gotta find the right group.

[Sho]

The problem with FFXIV is, the dynamic and meta behind the game is completely different from XI.

To start off, dungeons are instanced in XIV. In XI, the dungeons were all open world. That game the game a much greater sense of danger -- consider the fact that the mobs not only went up massively in difficulty (for a single character) beyond a "Decent Challenge" and also chased you completely throughout the zone until you zoned out, killed them (all), or they ran you over. These dangers actually fostered a culture of party creation -- for an effective party, you had to be sociable and learn the area surrounding for effective EXP farming. Contrast this with FFXIV, a game which has monsters that barely beat you to death, even 5+ levels above your character, but also runs back to spawn radius as soon as you run far enough. This and the fact that dungeons are all instanced -- there's no sense of togetherness for that 15~45+ minute party, as you will very likely never see those players again. This in turn created a non-sociable and "solo" game play culture, simply do to the fact that the game pools from the entire data center to create instanced dungeons -- you'll always find people to party with if you wait long enough.

Not only this, but FFXIV is exceptionally forgiving to most players with successive patches over the months. Contrast that with FFXI -- a game that rarely gave many updates that would give a particular advantage to the relevant content, outside of obvious level cap raises with Abyssea that invalided most lvl 75 content. The gear obtained was based on a horizontal progression system, so ultimately they offered no real large benefit overall -- yet another dynamic that lends itself to forming LSes with decent players.

Finally, there's no real mid-core content that exists in FFXIV that players can get their feet wet in (sans this new Diadem content, which is ironically just a free-for-all for 150/180/210 gear). Everyone has to immediately leap into hardcore content once they get lvl 60 and a decent iLvl, or wait 1-2 months for an update that provides a sub-par mid-core option with no challenge.

[Alistaire]

I don't really think community builds that much from "dungeons" though. Community builds by/thru endgame. And the endgame, while instanced, still has the most cutting edge stuff in a format that needs you to network to an extent, whether static or pugs.

The real difference is the size, there's lots of little 8-man "communities" vs the much larger numbers you originally needed for stuff like dynamis, or even the more frequent use of 18-man endgame vs 8. And the connections between people raise exponentially as you grow in numbers. (Simply meaning there's only 1 "connection" between 2 people, go 3 and you've got 3 connections, 4 = 7 connections, 5 = 10 connections etc)

So you get your 18-man thing going together and some of them have their tagalong friends etc. And it's also the other difference that keeps 18-man content bringing in more than 18 people, the lockouts. 8 ppl in xiv can't/won't as easily sub in people, xi it was a joke. So your 18-man could easily be 36 semiregular ppl.

[Fondue]

The worst part for me is just the sheer number of free companies, and on this server it seems like the decent people cloister up in their respective fcs and dont really venture out much even into linkshells to do activities

I would love to add a bunch of people to this fc but why would they want to join? we have HM diadem/a house/whatever anyone else has (EXCEPT A LARGE NUMBER OF MEMBERS?) but nobody is going to leave the fcs they're already in so how the fk do I find people to play with outside of the same 50 fairly shit people who join every pf group

[Toshi]

Funny enough diadem is actually helping that for me. I've been doing FC hard modes with people's friends from other FC's. No lockout, can bring 24 people if enough FC ships and no other real barriers. Now to hope yoship fleshes diadem out more

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[Sho]

I don't really think community builds that much from "dungeons" though. Community builds by/thru endgame. And the endgame, while instanced, still has the most cutting edge stuff in a format that needs you to network to an extent, whether static or pugs.

In terms of FFXI, I cannot agree with you 100%. Yes, community builds through endgame, agreed, but also through the midtier and leveling content as well. You could probably ask anyone here and you'll get at least one story from each person that tells of forging long lasting friendships and moving on from being lowbie noobs to actual static partners at endgame through growing together. It's something that isn't as well created in FFXIV at all. Not saying it cannot be done, however it's that much harder to raise people up in an FC -- they will be more prone to bounce or quit as soon as they reach endgame.

[Destinye]

Shit I met my SO through XI lol - I couldn't imagine that in a game like XIV or any other MMO in the style of XIV. Ragnarok even I could imagine, because when you're in the shit in Thanatos tower, nothing is hotter than a healer who can actually handle it.

Seriously though, it is true, XI you could build up from that first time you ask: "how do I move?" or "how I mine for fish?" to end-game, it was just extremely community oriented, which is why I like playing with Japanese players even if playing with english players helps my English in the long run. I mean, even the new vertical progression style of XI is far more organized. It's a bitch to get into if you join long after the fact, but when is that not true in a true MMO that actually evolves?

I don't think XIV will ever have a real community even if they do all they can because people are just so god damn spoiled and "THE GAME HAS TO MEET MY 1 HOUR and 15 MINUTES A WEEK I CAN PLAY. I HAVE TO BE ABLE TO BE ON THE SAME FOOTING AS PEOPLE WHO SPEND ALL DAY ON THE GAME. THANKS."

[Silenka]

To expand on what Sho is saying, I staticed with someone shy throughout almost my entire XI career, which left me creating 99% of our xp parties. I learned almost all the names on our server very quickly, and I was usually aware of who was good and who was shit. You can't call xp endgame content (unless you count merit parties, which were the same kind of thing) but that was more or less how I met and befriended most of the people on the server. Another big inlet for making lasting friendships was definitely midtier content - missions that needed 3+ people to clear, nyzul, etc. I joined most of my linkshells through meeting people in such content, rather than endgame.

In XI there was a huge barrier between the average player and endgame content due to needing to be in a linkshell that ran such content, and for that you had to know someone who invited you to their ls, start your own, or apply to one and hope you get in. Sure, once you were in, then you could start making more connections, but if you spent a lot of time outside that tier of play you'd already have a pretty solid group of friends just from doing other content.

@Destinye: I met my ex on XI (it didn't work out obv lol) and my current SO in XIV - but to be fair he was part of a group of XI friends I already had, he just didn't play XI. I gotta wonder how many people met their SO/marriage partner on XI/XIV here...

[Neon_Sea]

In XIV I met the most people on my server from doing primals. I wish there was more midcore content to get to know my server better. Most of the time it is either faceroll DF or back breaking static game play.

[Niiro]

Currently the only midcore content in the game period is Thordan EX.

Unfortunately I was lucky enough wat to get my weapon on my 5th clear and thus have no reason to ever do the fight again.

....except to help my other static members get their weapons, who are coincidentally the only people I've been doing the fight with anyway.

[missybee]

I don't think you are alone in the way you feel. I used to enjoy logging in and shooting the shit with my relatively large FC, but even after the release of Heavensward, it hasn't been the same as it was in 2.x. I thought that 3.1 might bring a few stragglers back, but no...super duper lonely. Makes me want to follow suit and stop logging in myself, but I don't want to lose my damn house.

[haroldsaxon]

The only thing i've got left to do in this game is AS4. Everything else is either boring grind (Diadem and probably relic), or facestompingly easy.

If my raid group falls apart then i'll stop my sub and go elsewhere. Its the only thing keeping me playing the game at this point.