FFXI Is Pretty Much Dead

With a post like this, how can you expect anything but the do gooders to reply and say "nu uh, I help random people out". There are still a few helpful people left on the servers, but they are far out numbered by the shady and greedy people that seem to populate them in mass. The people that still play, in general are, grumpy, stubborn, selfish or 100% idiotic. And you wont find them replying to this post to agree with you. Well, save for myself, I agree, FFXI and the kind helpful players are becoming more and more rare.

I helped a group defeat Verdelet when they wiped next to my EXP PT . It was one of the Top LSs on the Pheonix Server (Volume) . They didnt ask , I offered , they accepted . we defeated it . didnt get any drops save for the trophy . An no an Endgame LS isnt just for those who have been playing since FFXI was released . your wrong about that . an Endgame LS is do Endgame things . Not every job can solo the mobs that drop keys for the Maps of Sky . Not every person has enough friends to help do CoP ( The removed the EXP loss and even added EXP rewards to encourage ppl to help , whats that tell you?). You can become 'Endgame' with out doing it . What youre implying is this : Join an LS to help you do these things ; Missions ; area access ; get aquainted with Sky/Sea/Dynamis/Limbus/Salvage/Einjhqqraaaraar/whatever then quit to join 'Endgame LS' . I dunno but that 1.) sounds pretty dumb and 2.) sounds very very rude . I can see where youre comin from with leading people around like sheep and what not , but if you help other help them selves , you create a group that knows how to work more fluidly together . Sybil forbid you help a newer player learn the ropes . If you teach them how to do things 'your way' guess what , they learn it . People learn from mistakes . if a player wipes the group to krin cuz they did something they werent supposed to and its thier first time , ok it was a mistake . If they continue to do tho obviously there is a problem that need to be remedied .
The Dynamis LS i was in on Odin just started doin Dreamworld when i left in Feb '09 . instead of funding it from the bank like Normal Die-in-mass you know what leadership did ? They split the cost between all members who entered since it was a new thing and most likely wasnt goin to be successful the first 10 times . Rather than wipe out the bank learning DreamWolrd , it was a group effort . Thats how a real Endgame LS works , rather just allowing those who 'already know' join and leave the unexpierenced to fend for them selves . Thats just outright selfish and that additude is and will be the decline of this game and its community .

I won't help random people out most of the time for one reason.

Nine times out of ten (at least on Unicorn) they shout asking for help and you agree only to realize that these people expect you to do EVERYTHING for them. I personally research any mission/quest/whatever I need to do before I ask my LS for help so they don't have to hold my hand through the whole thing. I have agreed to help people on certain CoP missions and have had them literally say "OK I just started this mission, where do I go, who do I talk to?" etc etc. and I end up dedicating a whole night to helping this person through the mission just to die on a fight where no one listens to my direction when I was the only one who knew wtf was going on.

I'm not some elitist douche and usually drop everything to help out friends in my LS but I can't take ***like that anymore, that's why I don't help randos.

/rant

We still have the Auction House!

Life is pretty much dead.
I go out and shout on the streets for a hundred dollars and nobody will give it to me.
I have friends that will lend me money, but why won't strangers?

The reason more people helped before, is because more people played; it's not really a difference in the type of player. 4 years ago, if there were 200 people in a zone, and 4 responded, would be the same as 1 person responding with 50 ppl in a zone.

Not enough people to help you with something? Get your friends to help. Not enough friends to help? Respond to other people shouting, help them out, make them your friends. Ta-da! Now you have people to help with things and all it took was helping them.

I don't think you understand what most Endgame LS really are.

Look for a social/event LS to get missions done. Make friends, have them help you.

If your an anti social a-hole that doesn't know anyone and wants to have stuff done for them with no effort given, then quit your complaining.

Well, you're going to get attacked when the name of the thread makes a declaration about a game that most everyone here still plays and enjoys, thus proving it isn't "dead".

And as someone else said, when you start claiming that people aren't helpful anymore, of course those of us who are will stand up for ourselves. I still help strangers because sometimes, you make some awesome friends doing so. Yes, sometimes you get a lazy newb that wants you to do everything for them...such is life. I've found those people almost never last very long, anyhow...which is good for the rest of us. 8)

i've been on since PS2 release in 2004 , so i guess my perspective is probly diffent that someone who has only been playing for 2 or even 3 years . If you make an 'Endgame' LS and only accept those that have expierence , its gunna take some time to build that LS . but you seem to know it all anyway so i am probly just preaching to the choir .

Well there are a bunch of endgame ls that have people with experience already. (because the game has been out for a while).

Why do you think you can start from nothing and immediately go to the top?
Start off with some endgame ls that do cater to new people. (there are plenty of those) In fact try joining one and you'll see why better endgame ls don't take inexperienced people.

On my server at least, some of the bigger endgame ls don't even do sky. So instead of trying to going after the bigger endgame stuff, try the smaller stuff and work your ways up.

just throwing this out there but i still give free retraces when im on blm and ppl are shouting,,,its funny cause they run into range and ill start casting and they hit the trade buttone...but by the time they reach me they are already gone :P (i also *** with ppl in my pt who are on thier way to the AH...no your not! *D2s your face*"oh ***when did you set your hp in the dunes?!?!? :O" <--true story

and i dont really help shouts unless its something thats fast..i really dont like running forever to get to the place you have to do a fight or something. especially when the chance of someone aggroing and dieing is high. but thats just me.

D2s OP! :P

I respectfully disagree. My linkshell WTFWrongTOD was created a few months ago on Fairy. Not to sound like I'm full of myself, but we are easily one of the top linkshells in our server now. We are a sky/sea/limbus/hnm/znm/etc linkshell. About a third of our roster had previous HNM experience. Most of these people came from sea/sky linkshells and always wanted to do endgame but were made to believe they weren't good enough for it.

Imo, attitude > everything. Skill comes from experience and the willingness to be coachable. If you have an ego and aren't willing to accept creative input, then good luck running sky with the same linkshell that wipes to Byakko at 1% for the past several years. I am constantly showing new members the way to Dragon's Aery, or explaining the difference between NQ/HQ days, or how to scan for Dark Ixion.

Quite frankly, I prefer people with positive attitudes and the energy to go out and conquer all aspects of endgame versus the elitist who is sitting pretty on their ridill/adaberk convincing themselves they're too good to grind hnm camps anymore then whine when their hnm linkshells fall apart.

However I will admit, there are always frustrations of dealing with people new to endgame. We claimed 6 Dark ixions last week, and one of them resulted in zero drops because someone decided it was a great idea to get allied tags. It sucks but they didn't know any better. Top linkshells still make the same mistakes (oddly enough) like calling for help on Tiamat. The difference is, they try to act like it never happened and then talk ***when newer linkshells make the same mistake.

I'm not really sure what my point was, I just started rambling lol :x

I got mpked by a rng with k-club going to kitty ; ; Guess he couldn't afford oils...

So like I had snk up and used flee, the rng didnt have snk up and just used shadow bind on a weapon next to me and a bunch of other people trying to get to byakko. That weapon killed me, and of course the rng lived and didnt apologies or anything. I didnt realize WTF happened, cause I was face down before I knew it <.< Needless to say I wanted to hurt him bad, then I was bitched at and blamed for aggroing the weapon, even though /cough when I had snk up....

I help people in my LS on a daily basis. I help /random shouts when I have the time and my shouts aren't filtered. Helped someone get Carby mitts from a random shout a couple weeks ago. =)

I suppose all the helpful and generous, kind people were banned back in January, leaving just the selfish players who only think of themselves, right?

Honestly, the game is the same as life. If you spend all your time crowing over the past and wishing the world was as it was a year ago, you're really going to loathe and despise the present. The actual specifics of whether or not there are more or less selfish people around noways is irrelevant; your outlook is what's causing this, because you wish the game was like it was a couple of years ago.

Your problem, so deal with it. There's plenty of people still playing the game that you think aren't there, it's just your lamenting over the past is coming between you and befriending them.

It's the turn every MMO takes. FFXI is no different.

Tbh, I personally have stopped helping ppl out that randomly shout. It seems like the last few times that I have, it's turned into an ordeal.

Case in point, last time I helped some newer person out with something was with some piece of Blu AF where they had to go to the staging points.

Well, this person didn't have any of them. Not that big of a deal right? Nope, they aggroed and died no less than twenty times during the course of trying to get their happy butts to the staging points. They kept letting snk/invis wear w/o bothering to try to put them back up.

Why did that piss me off? Something that should have took maybe an hour ended up taking 3+ for no justifiable reason. Needless to say, once we got to the last staging point, I warped and dropped pt.

Your thread is based on an argument you yourself render irrelevant. If you never shout for anything how are we supposed to trust your assertion that tragically few people answer shouts these days?

I have to disagree that the older, jaded player base is unhelpful to others as I see people helping each other out when it would server their best interests to screw each other over. For example, the shell I'm in has been after Jailer of Faith for quite some time, and there have been some night when we are dogged by other LSes searching for the ??? pop, compete to spawn the NM, etc. Still, when JoF murdered all the tanks and mages of an LS we don't particularly like and went unclaimed. We held it for them and gave it back once they recovered. When the same thing happened to us in front of another LS they joined our ally and helped us tank/recover.

I don't think the game is dead or dying. You get nice people and *** on every server and it just seems that the higher level you get the more you run into for your "halp". As for the population, from doing a random search the other day Sylph's seems to be roughly what it always has been and I've seen more newbies running around in sandy recently than I did when I first started the game.

Don't let the horrible people get to you or you will become just as horrible and cynical as them. It's contagious, really.

I don't help out random people.

Guess that makes me a selfish ***.

(I'm talking about people who shout for help.)

in reply to the original poster... I started a ls last week for that very reason. its all about building a community of players who remember the old days and want a place to hang and talk and be able to ask for help. we're actually building up pretty good so youre not alone in your feelings

I seen it w/ my own eyes... but i just laughed and kept walking >.>

Death > Tractor > Raise III FTW =P (yes its lazy but at least ur dying on ur own terms)

A lot of times people shout for help with things that I can't help with. Like a Fenir fight or TOAU49859485 or something. Often times to help someone you need SOMETHING to help them with.
Then there are times I do help people and they treat me a certain way forgetting that I'm there to help, or they don't give a thank you. When you get people like that all the time or who are picky with what job you can come as, why bother making the effort to help anymore?

Did a few people say gilgamesh sucks?

I can say the Whitegate shouting on Odin stopped
a little b4 the summer. Its very quiet now
mostly just nyzul shouts, and a few
mini expantion shouts. I remember not too long
ago people were cursing each other out nothing
but drama lmao. There were shouts for almost
anything you would just have to wait around whitegate maybe
15 min and you were almost gauranteed to find something to do.
My advice would just make a small social with about 10-15
people (friends, people who just want something to do ect...)
and you shouldn't have any problems. :)

I miss tele-bots in whitegate. I don't care if you don't believe in supporting RMTs, they were damn reliable when you needed a tele. Can't get a tele to save your life nowadays without practically offering 10k for 45 seconds worth of work. I suppose it's a hell of a way to fund a relic... makin like 800k/hr holding people by the balls just for a tele.

Wow. lol.

This type of attitude is exactly why I don't help random shouters. People think everyone else owes them something.