Newer Players Need To Step Up Their Game

Look I'm not trying to gatekeep here, everyone wants the community in this game to be the best it can be and that means helping beginners evolve into veterans.

However, I saw this thread on Reddit today about WoW and it really reminded me of my experience in FFXI lately: https://old.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1fl6az3/wow_has_a_problem_where_everyone_wants_to_do_hard/

"WoW has a problem where everyone wants to do hard content but only 5% of those people want to put in the absolute bare minimum amount of effort required to do that content"

I feel like this accurately describes modern FFXI as well. The last few linkshells I've gotten into that actually did events, it was roughly 3 or 4 veteran players who knew what they were doing and had a solid spread of jobs with adequate gear and knew how to play them, then 10-15 somewhat newer players who have absolutely nothing except one or two DD jobs which they claim are "pretty well geared" but are actually rocking a Kaja weapon and fulltiming Ambuscade armor. These players go quiet the moment folks mention that we need a COR, BRD, GEO, WHM, etc in order to do the content they're wanting to do. Same when directly encouraged to level a job that can contribute at events without top-end gear, they just kind of go quiet and weeks/months later they're still doing the same thing: asking to come on their crappy NIN because they "need to get better gear." (Hint: DD jobs need better gear than anyone else in the group. Literally ANY other job will be easier to contribute with than the one job newbies all want to play which is DD.) These people are trying to dive into Odyssey/Sortie/etc (the hardest content in the game) to get the more advanced rewards while still being unable to contribute in intermediate content that they regularly get carried through. It's completely out of order!


New players: We want to help you. We really do. But carrying dead weight gets old pretty fast. This game has a progression, it doesn't "start" once you reach the peak of performance. It basically starts when you hit Lv99. If you're 99, you are IN the prime of the game. Be patient and build yourself up brick by brick. Enjoy the journey.

Research the content. Research what builds people are doing the content with. Level and gear more than one role so that a melee job isn't the only thing you have to offer. Research how those jobs are played. ASK QUESTIONS, don't just quietly join and assume all you have to do is wack stuff with your weapon. Ask about strategy if you don't know. Ask what your job needs in order to be "good enough" for that content if you don't know.

Yes, you'll get some elitist pricks who just don't want to deal with you. Don't let that discourage you, you still did the right thing by outing yourself as a beginner. FFXI also has a fantastic base of extremely helpful players who will spend hours helping you and ask nothing in return, but we're going to lose interest pretty fast if you aren't proactive about trying to contribute. So don't take advantage of helpful players; try to find ways to make it easier for them to help you, most importantly by having a job that can support them in some way while you're with them.

FFXI players, for the most part, love helping people and are some of the most awesome and helpful MMO players around, but if you make helping you as difficult as possible then you're going to have a harder time finding willing help.

Thanks and God bless
-Perg