What ever happened to...Follow

After playing for quite a bit recently I've noticed that none of the parties that I've been invited to even try to setup some sort of skill chain or magic burst. Back in the day, every single party relied on making these chain combos while throwing in a magic burst to quickly dispose of the enemy. All that I see now are groups completed filled with DD's being followed around by powerlevelers, with little or no regard for any group dynamic.

What ever happened to the good ol' days, FFXI??

Anyone else miss anything about partying back in the good ol' days?!

Edited, Sep 5th 2009 2:47pm by Bahaumut

It happened around the time when somebody replaced our yoyo's with kittens.

Colibri

Actually had one of these parties last night in Kuftal tunnel. Me (rng) and mnk would set up a SC. Blm and rdm would both burst on it. We were taking down crabs at a pretty good pace.

normal exp pts do NOT get 35k an hour, merit pt does not = normal exp pt.

Losing EXP in Chains of Promathia BCs. Actually scratch that, all BCNM fights.

Dragoon being able to call a Wyvern only once every two hours.

5000-6000 EXP an hour parties.

No Solo content.

No Blue Mage.

No Besieged/Campaign.

Losing more than 2400 EXP upon deathwarping on a wipe.

Raise II and III costing more than 150 MP.

A time when White Mages didn't have Scholar as a subjob option.

_

I don't miss the old days at all.

Yes, yes I do.

The game has been about for many years now and these people with their "parsers" and stuff have worked out what gives the most xp per hour.

It's got to a point now that people just want to get xp as fast as possible and it seems using weapon skills as soon as they are available is the best way to do this.

Hence the WS "burn" parties. Which perform better with BRD's, COR's or RDM's.

It's a shame, as I too used to enjoy the actual gameplay of setting up skillchains and magic bursts. It was fun and exciting and gave a sence of achievement when it all went to plan.

But alas you will be hard pressed to find anyone who still plays for the fun of doing this as its all about xp/hour nowadays.

Miss the good old days? Yes. ;)

How you get 20k an hour at 36? I'm not criticizing just curious. Also, is it ever alright to fight mobs that start off giving your party 100 xp only so that you can chain them?

Err... what? /SAM? Have you even seen most merit/xp parties these days? Most of them are /NIN, even the Samurais! And "Managing group hate"? No one cares! They just let the mob bounce around like a mexican jumping bean. Doesn't bother them since they have shadows and the mob will get bored and go hit on someone else next WS, not like it's going to live long anyway.

There is no "deep tactics". There's wailing on a mob with everything you've got to kill it as fast as you possibly can. How can anyone possibly call that tactics? Theres no timings, there's no special requirements, there's no inherent knowledge required either other than basics of your job. Even an averagely geared DD can pull off these 'tactics' so it's not like you have to pile on specific equipment either.

The "good old days", as previously mentioned, actually had some hate control. Paladins who tanked instead of gearing for DD. Ninjas who actually dodged attacks! Dragoons who could actually sub Warrior and Double Attack! Dark Knights who could barely last more than 20 seconds without needing cure spams. Bards who actually sang buff songs instead of spending every waking moment on their next pull! We fought monsters who weren't total wimps! In areas that could be genuinely dangerous!

I won't insult your intelligence and pretend XP was better back then, but it required a lot more skill than it does today and, I daresay, a bit more fun. There was more variety for a start. More places people were willing to XP in, which spread things out a lot better. Now there's only a handful of merit places anyone's interested in and they're almost invariably overcamped. Give me a competant team and Lufaise Meadows and we might not get 35k an hour, but im willing to bet we'll have more fun doing it.

It didn't require "more skill" to skillchain or magic burst, unless you want to boast counting to three is a skill. "Determining which skillchain to use" is a non-issue, because there was only two results. Distortion and Light. If you couldn't do those, you were considered useless and exiled. Speaking of grouping, if your party didn't have a Ninja or Paladin (1 slot), a Bard or Red Mage (1 slot), a White Mage or Summoner (1 slot), and a Black Mage (1 slot), your party didn't go anywhere. Keeping count? In a game that is MELEE HEAVY, parties required 4 of the slots to not include them, and when it did include them the two had to be compatible. The 5k/hr vs. 20k/hr doesn't even take into account that back then it took MUCH longer just to get parties started, and getting to camps that could accommodate those sorts of parties at all. Add the ten minutes or so once you get to the camp where you discuss which weaponskills to use for which skillchains. As one of those two melees, there was never anything more frustrating than being in a party where the other damage dealer was a full AF Dark Knight with level 36 DEX rings and no other discernible accuracy gear at a time when accuracy food didn't exist. Then you have the mages who ended up casting maybe two spells a fight and being AFK the rest of the time. Yes, you can make the argument that "not all mages were like that," but the same argument can be made about "melees no longer know how to skillchain."

I don't know how any of that can translate to "more skill" or "more fun," unless you were one of the mages who only cast two spells a fight and afked the rest of the time. There was more job seclusion, more wasted time, more frustration, more gimps, and even after all that you still ended up with little to show for it. A part of being a skillful individual is knowing how to get the most out of the least amount of work/use of resources. Saying that it was "more skillful" in the first two years of the game than now is a sign that you're a skill-less individual.

Just because you can't do it doesn't mean it can't be done. And just because Rog can do it doesn't mean everyone should be able to. It depends on how on the ball everyone is and how well you match the mob respawn timers. I could mention doing 17.5k/hr in Crawler's Nest, but since I've deleted all my screen shots now, I won't play that card.

Personally, having played in both eras, I've only cared about two things: Is the party I'm in having fun? Are we making decent XP/hr? If I can answer yes to both questions, then it's a good party. For instance, I tanked from 37ish til 50 on WHM. Went WHM/WAR and had a blast. The guy playing the PLD went /NIN and had a great time using two swords and getting SATA'd by the THF. Did I get a lot of crazy looks? Yes. But, I made 50 faster on WHM than I did on any other job I've taken to 50. We were getting great XP/hr and we were having fun at the same time. THAT's a winning XP party.

If you want a party that focuses on Skill Chains and Magic Bursts, build it. Go out and have fun. Just make sure everyone else in the party agrees that you're having fun with it and you'll do fine. Maybe it won't be as fast as everyone else, but who cares? It's your party.

Blm was mine first job and I remember how usefull stun was against enemy tp moves.
Goblins in bibiki bay could kill the whole party if blms was two seconds late with stun. The same can be said about dolls in Ro'Maeve. And at last, how I helped nins with stun when they had to cast Utsusemi: Ichi.

Before did also many blm have whm sub, and that time wasn't whm a gimp sub. It was actually a sub that could be usefull in the party. Helping the whm or smn with curing was always welcome. Poisona was used, and mine favorite, spamming cursna to remove doom up in Uleguerad Range. And the use of Erase when we killed statues up in sky, there was always three people that got bound if not more.

I guess my experiences with pick up merit parties are much different than yours. In 90% of my experiences, the DD show up /SAM and do a good job of having 3rd Eye up when they pull hate. As a WHM at both mamool and colibri, I've gotten great xp and had plenty of fun without resorting to curebombing. I have had a few lousy merit parties where people did sub /NIN, but that shows me the difference between DDs who are sloppy need 7 shadows to do 10k+/hr while competent DDs can rely on 3rd Eye and do 25k+/hr.



The tactics is in understanding the math that determines your damage, and picking out from the huge inventory of gear at your disposal what will benefit you the most. Maybe that is a higher DMG weapon, or a different delay to maximize TP gain, or maybe you need ATTK or ACC instead, or maybe you can get more out of crits and DA. The tactics is in refining yourself so that the party overall benefits. I'd argue that carefully timing two poorly-geared WS shows less tactics than spamming two independent WS that maximizes their damage and regain.


And you did it 5 miles uphill in the snow too right?