Need Vs. GreedFollow

Nothing. It's an honor system.

We can either hope people will be 'honorable' or try to make an agreeable decision with all players prior to moving through the instance.

If an item can be converted, you bet your *** I'm rolling Need on it.

One of my favorite topics. If you're in a pug, anything goes. I don't go for everything, but unless you talk it out first don't expect people to lay off the greed button.

I remember seeing loot drama and people bailing on DF groups because they didn't get what they wanted during phase 3 beta. When things were getting wiped anyway...

I've been lucky, but I like to think the luck was helped out by the fact that I was equally as fair as the rest of the players in the past 2 groups I was in.. I know what I want, and I know what I am. I'm a Student of Hamon Holyfist. All I want is PUG/MNK gear. You can have the rest. If any is inferior to my current gear, I will pass it.

My problem is things like DF are meant to BUILD community. Hopping around from MMO to MMO with your "friends" is all fine and dandy but it's actually isolating 'community'. I have the foreboding impression that mine is an unpopular opinion but I stick to it. "Join a FC" is not an excuse to be selfish amongst strangers and peers.

This genre used to have a lot more tact.

Just being around people is meant to build community. There is no limit to how many friends you can have and there is no limit to how many deep connections we can have here. Only you can make it isolating. Maybe you have five friends who hop around with you or maybe you have 500 friends who hop with you or maybe 5,000 friends.

Shin, your impression is not unpopular. Most people want to form connections. We just let our emotions or beliefs stand in the way of creating connections. There is no excuse for being selfish amongst strangers, there is no reason not to be friendly with strangers unless it's a fear of death. I was just telling him that people are different and they won't always do things you like them to do. The only thing you can control is how you act or feel.

I don't see how that could be true. At present, there's no way to keep in touch with anyone you meet inside a DF mission aside from exchanging personal information (which I wouldn't recommend). The best I've done to work around this was to literally form a group with the people waiting outside a dungeon with me on my server and add them to my friend list. But once you roll the dice on anyone joining from any world to complete the mission, the goal is no longer community but personal achievement.

That said, considering you have to work together as a team to make progress, you should try to get along with everyone there as reasonably as you can. Every group is different, so being adaptable helps.

I really thought for awhile, that if everyone in the party passed on an item, that the item would get put in to one of the pt members inventory without the bound to you restriction that you get when you need or greed it. That is not the case though, as the item gets destroyed if everybody passes. With this knowledge at hand, I pretty much greed everything that I cannot need on. The only times I don't need on items that I can, is when I already have that item in my inventory (in which case the game will force you to pass), or when I am in a lower level dungeon and the gear drops are virtually meaningless to me. I rarely ever click pass.

I ran Brayflox a lot within the last week or so, and one pug I was in told me DRG/LNC armor in the dungeon would not allow him to click need on it, but I could. The more I ran it, I noticed another set that I couldn't need on that seemed like it would be geared for him, and not the aforementioned gear set that he claimed should be for him. I believe that maybe people are misinformed about what roles they play, and what gear they are looking for when going into a dungeon. It would be nice if there was a menu in-game for each dungeon, and the possible loot that would drop that you can need on for any given class. Like to say, if I que for Sashtasha as a CNJ, a list would come up before hand stating which gear set is for you, and which bosses are going to drop it.

I know there are quite a few websites in which to look up information like this, but I have this feeling that most of the people playing this game might be doing so blindly. Would be nice for people to have the info right there in front of them, without having to look up third party guides. I think it would cure a lot of the confusion up in terms of people not knowing what gear is for them, and what is not.

Edited, Sep 8th 2013 6:31pm by supermegazeke

Dungeon finders might be a great way to create a community, and they do work. However cross server dungeon finders to the exact opposite.

Problem is no one wants to wait for a dungeon, and issues arise when new players join late...if you don't cross server it. However it completely wrecks the community bonding that may occur because chances are youll never see those people again.

Before I played a cross server dungeon finder game, that had a dungeon finder, it was great. You met people, developed relationships either positive or negative based on their actions and performance in the dungeon. People earned reputations, good or bad. Eventually you knew who was good, and you kept track of those people until you didn't need the dungeon finder you just PMed all the good players you met in the finder.

But because of above mentioned issues with dungeon finders...cross server finder became the norm. All the community interaction was with random people on other severs...hell I don't even know who is or isn't on my server using the duty finder. Its like, wow we just had an awesome run you guys are great...*poof* gone forever...which is good when things go awful...I guess.

I agree with your sentiment quite strongly, but I don't think that cross-server auto-group systems are designed to build community -- quite the opposite -- they're designed explicitly to circumvent it. I've been saying it since this duty finder was announced: systems like this are designed for efficiency and they sacrifice all meaningful, long-term interaction with others to do so. One can suddenly party with strangers from another realm, perform as badly as one pleases, take everything for oneself, clear the dungeon, and repeat the process instantly. Without any need for it, a community ceases to exist.

Ironically, most everyone touted this duty finding system as an end to long wait times, citing their experiences with FFXI as proof of the failure of a party-based system with one's own server population. Well, now the DF has come and DDs still face long wait times, on one hand, but also rude, apathetic players on the other. You're lucky to receive so much as an emote from another person in these situations.

Ultimately you can't have both a community and a system of anonymous cross-server grouping. Such a system could have worked for PvP, but it pulls the guts from PvE content. The closest thing to community interaction FFXIV will ever have will come in the form of casual chat with one's company or linkshell, in the form of brief mercantile trades between a gatherer and a crafter.

Until now I didn't think there was any PvP content whatsoever, so I can't speak to that. But with regard to the raids you mentioned: you're saying there's content that can't be queued up in a cross-server auto-group? If so, then that's very good news to me, and I agree that such a place is an avenue for some kind of community and camaraderie to form.

It is Impossible to do cross server raids unless you dumb them down to absolute garbage.