What Happened Casual PT Shouts..

I didn't say asura is going to be the only server judging refusing someone in their group for not being known or undergeared. What I said is if you're joining a random pickup group, it seemed like the person throwing the group together wanted you to be fully geared and even then they still didn't want to bring you if they or someone they know doesn't know you. I'm sure it happens on other servers, but probably to a lesser extent due to population differences. Asura wasn't for me. I'm not complaining about nor telling people don't go there, just stating my experience there.

The segfarm meta seems to have chilled out a lot in the last 12 months. People seem less irritable about the whole thing and less likely to pitch a fit if something goes wrong. You still see shouts expecting r20+ Nyame for DDs, but I think the desire is less that you have that in every slot and more that it represents you have some verifiable experience doing the content.

I'm sure it helps that between MLs and gear creep, even "bad" farms get 8k. On average with PUGs, I get around 10k and typically closer to 12k+. I can't remember the last time I got less than 8k and we've had some runs go pretty catastrophically bad (Spike Flailed, several people died). Even in these cases where people screwed up, generally people don't get as irritable about it as they once did provided everyone is paying attention and doing the basics of their job (e.g. curing, keeping songs up, erasing, not getting one shot by fotter mobs 3 times in a run). Even then I feel like people usually give someone several shots before they put them on a 'do not invite' list, before it seemed like the smallest mistake landed you there.

I also don't think it's that exclusionary, we PUG a lot and we prioritize people we know or have run with before, but generally will take anyone that hasn't consistently screwed up and refused to get better.

I don't PUG sortie, but I see a ton of shouts for AE farms. I don't PUG Gaol much anymore, but I've seen a lot of shouts for v15-v20 lately. IMO there is more opportunity to PUG this content even if you aren't 100% geared now than there was before. So to reinforce Mell's point, I don't think people are as demanding as it may seem and largely just expect you to do the basics of your job. For content where being maxed out is required, there are plenty of opportunities to do it at a lower tier and work on it. This feels very different than I remember it being a year or so ago.

Also, to be fair, I did say I was on asura in 2016 as well, so that was 6 years ago. Things may have changed in that time so there's also that.

You know you been gone a while when most of the content listed above... you're completely clueless about. I stopped about when new Dynamis just started, and people were still 18 manning Vagary and Omen/Reisenjima was the hottest thing.

As someone who PUGed my entire FFXI life and use it as a way to expand connections I'd say the investment is ultimately worth it. If not I'd stop long time ago.

Not every connection needs to have high level of playskill to help in the community. Some can craft, help with entering dyna D or delve, help with EP leeching, fill up easy content pt, play an easy role like geo, or help with rl stuff:even after they quit.

Further more if the average PUG member's progression increases as the result then ultimately it benefits everyone who makes PUG.

Nevermind the fact that emotional satisfaction of "being a hero" which is the main purpose of playing video game to begin with.

If you expect the only return would be supplying high end players for the hardest raid then it's probably going to be a bad investment because probably 5% of player will become a serious player, you'll feel 95% of your time is wasted this way. Gonna look at more stuff than that.

That's my point. Investment into peers will be hit or miss if you're looking for a narrow result. But if you treat it as a community and acknowledge a variety of people bring a variety of things to the game and to the group, it's more rewarding.

I think a big issues to or use to be that besides there being limited yells sometimes / crazy expectations some people are some people just don’t wanna lead groups and rather wait until someone else shouts.

It goes without saying (it should but doesn't) that yeah, nearly exclusively introverts play mmos.

They're scared shitless to start/run/lead events.

Speaking from years of experience leading linkshells and groups, the issue with PUGs is that leading things sucks. Here are some common issues and tips:

- Maybe some folks love setting things up and do so regularly, but they aren’t organized and have no game plan. They have no experience in the content and/or how to get the best out of each job/player. Therefore, the blind leads the blind, and then it takes an experienced player (if they have one) to step up and tell the leader... "Bro, please let me take over, or we aren’t winning this."

- Several players often (usually by accident) try punching way above their weight. A leader yells for VD Ambuscade, but someone who is only geared enough for Easy responds. You invite them, check them out, and then you have to tell them "Sorry dude... you aren’t ready for this". Many folks don’t want to be the *** who tells someone they can’t play, but keeping them in hurts the entire group. Having to do things like this puts people off setting up events.

- And then there’s learning when, and when not to compromise with job selection. You could aim for that perfect setup, but if you take 3 hours to get it, when you could run an imperfect setup in an hour and get to do something that night? Then you do so. However, there’s also the case that some leaders literally invite anyone on any job and then wonder why they aren’t winning. Draw the line somewhere on both fronts. Be patient, but you also can’t be too patient. People have lives and they won’t hang around forever, yet you also want results, even if they aren’t optimal.

- The biggest hurdle for setting up pickup group content is actually knowing the game and how jobs work. You expect most players rocking up on mastered jobs to tell you how they will play, but FFXI doesn’t always work like that. Each battle is different, and party compositions change what is expected of people. So, you need some basic knowledge of how each job works, or at least have a friend who knows to instruct each player individually beforehand, while you call the shots during. You need to be aware of what your party is doing during the run... on top of maximizing your own performance, so you can tell anybody who isn’t doing what is expected that they should do what they were asked. I don’t use voice chat and have always communicated via party, linkshell, and tells, but I’m a fast typist and I’ve done this naturally for years. If you can’t multi task doing your job on top of typing quickly to your party, and there’s no voice chat... then the group may struggle with having to change things up on the fly, or if the run is time sensitive. It’s not impossible to lead groups via chat only (it’s the only way I’ve ever done it), but it’s not a straightforward thing for most people.

- Temperament and reputation. If you get pissed every time your group loses, people won’t want to join your groups. However, you could be the nicest person on your server, but if your groups rarely succeed, then you’ll gain a reputation of being a poor leader. You’ve got to be firm with folks and have simple instructions, but you also need to LISTEN to feedback. If you aren’t willing to listen to another way of doing things because you stringently want everything done your way, or the highway, then some players won’t want to join that mentality. Trust those who sound like they know what they are doing. They may know more so than you, they just don’t have the patience to lead events.

- And lastly because this post is getting long, you need to learn the strengths and weaknesses of those you run with. Figure out who makes the strongest DD, buffer, debuffer, etc. Sure, this one guy may be an outstanding healer, but if they don’t like the job and you only ever put them in that role, you may log in one day and find they don’t want to play in your group anymore. There may be a guy who loves to heal, but they don’t have the best reflexes and AFK too often, so you can’t rely on them in stressful fights. Getting to know your players and ultimately encouraging them to be flexible, on top of doing your best to change things up when the group needs it, is something that will benefit your group’s playtime. It's a lot to think about. Doing this week in, week out, for years, it becomes part of your FFXI experience. I’ve seen so many grow up following me around who eventually became leaders, and I feel so proud seeing them doing that. But I also understand that many people, especially in 2023, they just don’t want to learn that. They’d rather stand around and wait for someone else to set things up so they can show up and only focus on what they have to do. And I don’t blame them, although I know if I had their mentality, I’d get nothing done.

Everyone is just 6+boxing everything and linkshells members suffice events with multi-boxing. That's why you don't see shouts/casual pt invites. Only hardcore player remains paying hundreds for accounts to get everything done which affects casual players, Private servers are adding major weight as well. My account has been deactivated for 1 year and a half now because of this, Tons of rmt/merc too/rehashed content.

Very very few people are 6 boxing Odyssey... so definitely not everything. While most other stuff is multi boxed, theres still plenty of people doing stuff and teaming up, it's not required so I don't see how it directly impacts you enjoying the game.

It's like what most ppl have already said, most things are done within linkshells/static like it's always been done. PUG was a rare thing in this game outside of small stuff like bcnms, enms etc. Major content was rarely ever PUG friendly until voidwatch. Then after it went back to linkshells with legion and Delve and so on.

People are just bored without anything major, just gonna take another large-scale content to move the era along.

there are actually quite a few pug shouts (Asura), you just need to find a way to filter out the spam and rmt yells. for the last month or two i have joined many pugs and many of them are very good, done stuf like sortie, ambu ody(segment and shaol).

the botters will do all the work while you afk for a few mill is what happened and thats honesty for ya

I enjoy playing with my friends. If I didn't have any Id just stop playing...

Casual parties are fun, but nothing beats shooting the ***on discord and laughing at the bard/cor on voice as he gets 1 shotted by the monarch on the last floor.

I will say it again and again
Its not the Casual PT shouts or the Botts, whenever they add new Relevant content now its all time gated and you can not repeat, Its *** stupid and dumb to add that for casual content, lots of noobs in FFXI not plying the right jobs and asks to join for events without required equipment i don't MEAN REMA i mean like literal sets iv had schs wearing ambuscade armor and what not join sortie,
Casual content should be able to be repeated or Sure if u want it time gated there should be no time limit until u clear all bosses than your locked for a day or 2 that's how it should be, but no Square don't have the intelligent to *** code so people will only play with people whom they know in small groups.

Final fantasy 11 Team is so ***right now they don't even understand how this game works just look at the past videos of them testing ambuscade jesus *** christ.
Also the game changed in a way that you can not play some mage jobs without any addons or LUA gear swaps cant play manual at all and lots of returners/ Noobs like to play mage jobs.

FFXI endgame is honestly brutal for new players, and so it's very anti pug.

A lot of people are so used to XI they have no idea how utterly braindead most other games are today, XI is one of the few games where you can build a group and enter and be destroyed in literally seconds. Even old content like SR is difficult and you can wipe if the healers aren't good.

On most games there is a very high chance of success in content, it's made in a way that as long as you have the specific Ilevel of gear you can beat it near every time. Even if they have mechanics, they make them have a predictable pattern you can learn quickly. As such it's pretty easy to build groups for them, or just hit the "build group" button.

XI is super difficult, has lots of random mechanics, is designed to get harder as you get closer to victory and is just hard to do content in groups on.

Lillith is an example of a fight that would never ever exist on any other mmorpg and is really difficult to just build a random group for.

Anyone who can't play a mage job (or any job for that matter) without needing a lua script, flat out sucks. To say it's impossible for a returning player to go without is ridiculous. Never come across a job or content that couldn't be done manually. Stop implying this is required to do anything in the game. Teach players how to play and allow them to gain experience.

Not talking about addons.

The core game is very difficult to get into at a group level, it's hard to play healer on this game for instance unless you're super tenacious to gear up.

I will add that a certain percentage of the population - not referring to anyone here or anyone in particular - are not very patient with people either new to XI, new to the mechanics of what they're doing, or just new to their job.

On a personal experience, I had a guy have a go at me at Omen card farming for not being able to do the WS dmg objectives on a new job when first returning after a long long time. Dude, it's card farming, lighten up.

Few months later that same job was heavily desired for its WS dmg.

OTOH, another percentage of the population are very patient with new players and don't get upset if they don't immediately get to grips with things.

It does also go both ways. It takes people to have a good look at their abilities/gear and decide for themselves "Can I really do this content?". Just desiring to do it and being able to do it are different things. The progression is there for a reason.

Just depends who you run into and what groups you are able to form. Having people that you enjoy playing with, win or lose, really makes or breaks the game in my book.

Playing healer on this game has always been difficult with the most amount of responsibility. Granted, healing at a sufficient level in 2023 compared to 2004 is a big leap, but you should always be happily encouraging anyone trying to be a healer. Most folks (myself included) avoid landing in that role because it's the least fun for us. Help your healers get better, and until you feel safe that they can do so at the highest level, only use them in lower to mid-range content until they have the gear/experience. You can't build them up if you exclude them entirely. I appreciate healers more than anyone else.

Let me get this straight, you actually legitimately believe that SE wanted to implement a system where you wouldn't lose your tag until you beat the boss, but couldn't figure out how to code that? Second, completely unrelated, question: have you ever played Ambuscade in FFXI?

Little dose of irony here "intelligent" is an adjective so SE can't "have" intelligent.


I play SCH, WHM, BRD, SMN, BLM, and RDM (among others) and don't use any addons, lua, gear swap, and I always play manually. I will grant you that maybe YOU can't do those things, but don't try to pretend like it's a problem with the game being unplayable.

Oh, and if you have content like Sortie with no time limit, the servers would literally die. Can you imagine Asura with 1000 instances taken up by SMN single pulling fomors until they cleared them all, then soloing the bosses with Poison Nails over the course of 2 hours? Avesta would be back, casting poisonga 2 on a pack of mobs and kiting them until they all died.

The idea of having content which is instanced and not time gated (tag system or time limit) is so unfathomably stupid I can't even begin to describe all the problems with it. Can you imagine spending a month grinding all of Sortie, Odyssey, and Dynamis [D] until you had every item you wanted? And then just...quit because there's nothing to do.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that gilsellers would bot the *** out of Dyna [D], Odyssey, and Omen and the economy would go straight in the trash.

I play redmage i dont use Gearswap or lua's than u can explain to me why 70% of scholars suck stop assuming i play scholar

This too for sure its doable but its much slower,

We are paying a monthly Service not only we don't get *** new content we get Re hashed content, + Servers should be *** stable its 2023 For *** sake private server runs better Than *** Live Servers and they cant handle 10 or 20 groups in 1 Area What!? You clearly don't how remember how many people enter Abyssea?
IF THEY CANT CODE IT IT Should be an open world Not instanced.
Also Being saved in runs is an old *** system and should be easily doable we are PAYING MONTHLY SERVICE
*** final fantasy 14 and *** The new Division team run by *** Yoshi *** pee!

Sortie isn't new content?

Abyssea had a time limit

Private servers are not more stable, they regularly get black outs and crashes and need fixing. They also are filled with bugs including the newest one.

This is what happens when they don't announce an expansion. The towns ppl go mad