Food For Thought

Also to me debating and arguing are different things.

The entire point of this topic was to consider how we could be more accessible to newer players. Just shrugging and saying "Unless you've played semi-weekly for the last 4 years you're never going to be DD kbai" is not doing so. You were correct that it's hard to get to take along DD status in T6 runs, but there's still plenty of things to do until then and it's more accessible than you think. I hold NNI runs every few days for people I know need to catch up. They aren't ideally geared, but by god sometimes it works. You can catch up and be pro DD just doing the same things everyone else did, by not being a total ***. Make a reputation for yourself. With the servers as small as they are now, word of mouth is powerful (like you said above with that guy on your server who's a ***, apparently)

I also shout to fill spots, and I'll take along someone not ideal as long as during the "How to NNI" briefing they don't come off as a complete idiot.
I still don't think checking people shouting for old events is really as much of a thing as that. I mean sure, you'd drop a group if the shouter gears completely derp, but you really can't be too picky when you're asking to do old *** content.

Wasting time in FFXI hmm no one has ever done that...

Look up, above your head you should see the point flying.

I see a debate as a civilized discussion of facts, and an argument as something kids have on the playground. Regardless, you should really not expect anything you say to be taken as fact on any forum. Support your side with facts, experiences, and most of all composure. If you're right, that's what the conclusion will be. If you're not, you should be willing to consider that possibility.

I've never said it's impossible to catch up with help. That's a key point. As earlier stated, my friend rolled blank characters 3 months ago. He now has 3 that are better than any DD in the competing linkshells here. That's a product of dedication, support from myself and our linkshell, and the lower time requirement for new content. It is not, however, a typical experience.

I've done 5 runs thus far(6th this afternoon) where I took 10 randoms on whatever jobs/gear they could bring to get their delve clears and did all 6 of the lesser KIs. I've talked with these people. Many have no mage job, some don't enjoy mages, others just never catch a group. The game is far from accessible. Making a shout doesn't guarantee interest in that shout, and the people who have the gear and resources to easily clear content have already done it and are often unwilling to return.

If more players helped each other, it would be a good step. However, a few isolated cases such as ourselves do not make it an accessible game. For every person you've brought to nyzul, there are another 5 struggling to find a group.

/yell NNI 100 5/6 {/tell}

>.>

Trying and failing is better than sitting around and whining you need someone to make a shout for you. If there are this many people that need old *** (and there are) they need to get together and do it. If not, stop being derps.
Some of us didn't start this game with friends, some got around completely by word of mouth. I'll quickly admit I wasn't one of those, but I have made friends helping newer people with no connections get their first things in game (tele crystals, chocobo, job unlocks, ect)
You have good points though. This can be a discussion of helping newer people without turning into a hostile debate.

Anyone who thinks the game is accessible needs only to look as far as the top threads feed on the official forums

Above all, the amount of melee used in ideal situations does not match the proportion of players that like melee. This is something SE needs to address, more than players. I cannot count the amount of situations where I was going to do something and an additional melee would be a clear downgrade, see example from yesterday:

I have a party of MNK MNK MNK BRD COR WHM. A second party is SCH SCH SCH PLD. We're planning on doing some legion. Another linkshell melee wants to come.

Do we:

A) reform the parties as such
MNK MNK MNK DD COR WHM
SCH SCH SCH PLD BRD

and rotate the brd through the WHMs slot, resulting in a period where the DD have no healer, 3 parties for the BRD to handle songs for, and overall much more hassle for a negligible gain in speed

B) reform the parties as such
MNK MNK MNK BRD COR WHM
SCH SCH SCH PLD DD

and let the DD get marches easily, but be unable to receive curaga

or

C) tell them the setup doesn't really fit

I offered to do B, but only under the condition the melee brought his WHM mule to cure himself. I don't want to kill the main melee party trying to cross-ally heal a single melee. Whether that's something people would agree with, I don't know. What I do know is that I was in a position where adding an additional melee without an additional mage would be a clear downgrade to my alliance structure. This is not something that should exist in a well-designed game. The lack of dedicated tanking is a clear contributor.

@Mel: Just because 6 people on the server need nyzul does not mean they are all on at once. You can only shout to no avail for so long before you quit and move on to another game. That DOES effect the people playing, no matter what you'd like to think.

Do people honestly believe new people are being attracted to XI?

At this point in the game,the game is not newcomer accessible.

Is anyone surprised?

New people roll all the time. Old players return all the time. They aren't vast quantities. They mostly quit, due to reasons discussed in this thread. Do you have anything useful to contribute, or is it just your usual negative one-liner?

Actually i agree with almost everything you've said so far. Typing on a phone sucks though

gotta agree there :( posted before your edit came up

I agree with you about this. There is a disproportionate amount of melee oriented people as opposed to support/magey types. I kinda wonder why that is. Maybe I'm just weird for liking mage jobs? The only DD I've ever enjoyed is RNG and you don't see too many of those either, at least here. Well, and BST, but that's a bit different.

Thorny, I'm sure there are more than 6 people on at any given time that need Nyzul. You know what my point there was.

My point was that it's not as easy as just shouting. Some people don't have the knowledge to organize a run. Some don't have the confidence. Some have already tried a dozen times and lost their motivation. If it was as simple as getting 6 people and going, all we'd need is a dungeon finder. However, it isn't and anyone who's been there should know that. I highly doubt anyone went into nyzul1 knowing exactly what to do and executed lamps flawlessly, there's an element of cooperation and repeat members help a lot.

yeah once i posted the "easy" opinion (like I said,was on phone at the time) I realized once you replied "***,people are misunderstanding what I'm trying to say"

It all falls back to the same basic idea.

People willing to help others is minimal in this game. These are the "1%'ers". I keep my Mentor status on 24/7 and I get random tells all the time asking for various help and if I'm not right in the middle of something, I will go help. About 2 months ago, I was getting ready to take my kids out for snowballs and saw someone shouting for CoP Airship fight. They needed help on it. Their shout said they wiped twice already and couldn't solo it. I left, took the kids and got the snowballs, and got back about 3 hrs later (I live in the boonies of Louisiana) and what did I see? The same person shouting for the same thing. 3hrs and not 1 person could help? I sent them a tell, popped my Tav ring, and soloed the mission for them on BST. Took me all of maybe 20 minutes to do, but not 1 person on Asura could offer the same help across the 3 hours I was gone.

This is the current mentality of FFXI. Most people are unwilling to help others, regardless of how much effort said person has put into trying on their own.

Something similar to this happened to me before I quit. I was waiting on JP midnight (it was maybe 10 mins away) and I saw a guy shouting for feet seals. The spider NM Ikatomi or w/e. I had pretty much only logged on,but his shout said that he'd been shouting for nearly 3 hours to get people,and only got 1 person. He was offering gil and everything. It broke my heart,and I said that in LSchat,that the game/playerbase was at that point. There were people arguing in jeuno about having nothing to do. I even told the LS,that were I not waiting on JP midnight for my own salvage group,I'd have gone to help him for free because I honestly felt bad for him.

It seemed like he was in the "just joined the game,I know no one" pool of players and was having a really hard time because of it.

the other week people were arguing in jeuno about SE giving out free atma, some saying its completely unfair, others who wanted atma

i took my war nin whm chars and filled the remaining 15 ally spaces with randoms, then went to do RR GH MC MM VV and threw in a couple zone bosses at the end

it took less than 20 minutes to find 15 people that still needed atma, on a quiet *** server

These Korean threads.

Glad some people understand it and are taking actions.

Remember before CoP nerf people complaining that nobody helped them with Promyvions? That's because most of those who completed that part had gone back and redone it for others so many times that they had enough. Same thing with aby now, we've all been doing that for 2 years or whatever that was, got what we needed and went back to help others getting their stuff too, but at some point you just have enough of redoing the same thing again and again. Once you've helped a lot of friends going back and redoing everything for them over and over you don't feel like helping a random stranger anymore. That's why you need friends in the game, it's not like people are ***, they're just bored of redoing it again for you when you are 2 years late to the party.

Help is help, bro. Spend 2hrs a week helping a random player in need would go a long way in this community. I'm not saying to devote all your free time or play someone else's character for them but someone helped you when you were new. Pay it forward.

I've helped a lot of people, bro. But abyssea is boring, I just don't wanna do that anymore.
Make friends and they'll offer you help.

If I have nothing to do in game I go afk, I don't sit here staring at my character wagging her tail.

There are lots of people in the "just joined the game, I know no one " pool they just need to make a linkshell together and help each other simples.

The old people helped you when you were new line..... I think everyone will have given the help back and a hell of a lot more. Hell I used to lead CoP runs for people who missed them, avatar runs(back at 75 when there wasnt 1 million ways to get from A to B), run people to past nations and get them started and probably a lot more I cant remember.

My first time doing avatars..... level 20 solo fights finally got help at level 60.....

Past nations me and a friend got ourselves there....

Got myself to jeuno.

im not sure if soloing stuff for people who are having issues is the right approach either :s

It has been a couple of years now, but there seemed to be a few behaviors, which when you throw them together, you get a perfect storm of crap.

a. not understanding the basic concepts of how to play a particular job
b. not understanding basic concepts of gearing
c. attitude of 'this is how i'm going to play the game', regardless of experience or advice

Not having the best gear is a problem that can be addressed over time, particularly since you may have other reasonable options. (A) and (B) can be addressed by taking the time to educate them, and either demonstration or teamwork in lower-consequence situations.

The worst players were generally those that had point (c), both to play with and interact with. They didn't want advice, help, or anything except to be able to play whatever they wanted however they wanted.

Well, if you play any other kind of team-based game like that (bridge, board games, tennis, whatever), people will get fed up with your ***, and stop playing with you. Same thing in FFXI.

Unless you screw up spectacularly, people generally are pretty forgiving about an occasional buggering-up of something. But when you have a bad reputation people remember, and it is a pretty evil hill to climb to get over. And *** are easy to remember.

It's kinda 50/50, helping someone with stuff gets them progress but doesn't always fix the underlying problem.

To elaborate making friends is important in the game and often times rather than shouting for 3 hours to find someone for something a person could simply find a more socially inclined shell, spend an hour making a couple friends and get the help from them. This also puts them in a position where when they hit their next road block they have a network they can draw from first. Getting help from a random person just drops them in the same spot of having to shout for hours next time they can't solo something. Unless of course that random person is also extending an invitation to join their group of friends.

On the other half of it sometimes that random help can be enough of a boost to get them going.

It's the difference between giving someone a fish then sending them on their way and giving them a fish with a rod and bait to catch more fish. Helping a new person with a mission fight doesn't do too much to truly help them, helping them get Atma/abyssite however lays them a foundation they can build off of.

Oh and another thing.... ive seen on some "elite ls" websites under applications it says that the player must have windower, spellcast and all this other third party crap its a joke that people have to cheat to get into an ls. There are some lses on odin well known to the player base for botting.

Hurry, light the Starcade signal!

i haven't seen him shouting about me lately, i think he might have moved on

There's way more than just Aby to help with. What about carrying/teaching people how to do Skirmish? Salvage/V2? Einherjar? NNI? Sky for augmented gear? I try to bring people to my salvage runs for gear that would otherwise hit the floor. Hell, when was the last time you shouted or joined a shout for an outside NM you didn't need just to be helpful?