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Leveling is too fast to be social
Grailer
Member UncommonPosts: 893
I remember playing EQ and it took months to level up . In that time I would find a lot of friends who were similar levelling speed as myself and play with them a lot .
However in this game it appears that levelling is so fast you can get a level in a few hours easily .
FATES are pretty much anti social as well mostly . And super newtasically easy xp creating some of the worst gamers ever when they dare to set foot inside a dungeon .
Kinda sad in some way this game could've been really something special if they made it a lasting experience from 1 to 50 instead of a slam bang thank you maam type game .
Comments
Sorry to hear that. My experience so far has been different.
It depends on how you level. On your first toon, your story line will slow you down.
But :
1) your story line will make you solo.
2) Duty finder kills the community.
Honestly, while I feel leveling is a bit fast, groups over-all have been pretty social for me. A lot of people chit chat in the down time and its been over-all enjoyable talking with people. Odd that it can have a fate zerg akin to GW2 yet be a lot more social. I think its just how the fates end up pacing things out that it causes such to happen.
Still, it wouldn't be bad to have leveling slowed a bit and more party chances to happen outside fates or dungeons.
Because the game forces you to play it in such a boring, uninspiring way right? The +10% exp per hour that you get is just too good to pass up. It's really important that you get to level 50 fast by all means necessary because then you are level 50 and that is so much better than being level 24 or 31. You can't enjoy the game at level 24 that is just insane.
It is not only the leveling that makes this game not social it is also a lot of the people I have never seen a gaming community that is so uptight. If things don't go their way people start to complain and start putting up temper fits to a point people leave groups, if someone dies once you also have people running like little scared rabbits as though they never died in a MMO before.
I really have tried to find the enjoyment in this game but I just have not the free companies seem to be the only way that you are going to really be social with any amount of people but outside of that I don't see it people are just trying to fly thru content and that seems to be there only goal.
It is a problem that almost all levelbased MMOs have today. The old problem was that some content became almost impossible to do after a while since most people were high level which hurt newer players.
There are fixes, like GW2s leveling down, scaling, making the power gap between levels lower or scrap levels altogether but so far are most games using old leveling with faster and faster speed. There are probably even more good ways to allow people to play together with their friends and I hope future games will experiment with this some more.
Also gold sellers kill the community , I have over 50 gold sellers blacklisted and they just keep on coming like a bad disease.
They practically destroy chat . Im to the point where Im going to disable shouts soon .
OP: It is too soon to openly bash the game. (by bash, I mean saying anything negative about it at all). People are still mesmerized by the novelty of it.
Not a bad game, but really not different from WOW, RIFT, SWTOR, AION, etc. etc.
Leveling in those games is just as fast. If you like the game and aren't playing it just because it is something new, join a guild or w/e they call it and meet people. Random Fate's are not the best place to fulfill your need for idle chatter.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Levelling slowly feels like an accomplishment the first time with the first wave of players on release, anything after that is pure inconvinience for new players joining the game to play with friends and alt characters.
IMO I think there should be no or less levelling as the main event for a game and focus more on "meaningful" content for players to enjoy with eachother after the basic tutorials.
I think the point of slow levelling increasing social interactions can be boiled down to shared challenge instead of mere the act of levelling itself.
As for the community itself well there is very little developers can do, you can lead a horse to water and what not.
Well, with the removal of downtime mechanics and the faster paced combat, (and voice chat too) there really isn't much time or reason to spend chatting while playing, especially in PUGs, it really is all about playing the game instead.
It would appear this is the design many (if not most) gamers favor, because they keep purchasing one MMO after another that employs this design with sometimes record setting results.
True, they don't stick around long, but that's not bad, MMO's are being delivered these days to consumers who are using to buying a game, consuming the content in short order and moving on to their next game.
Those who favor longer term experiences are far fewer, and if you look carefully, almost every major MMO has their fans that stick with them over the long haul, at least for a reasonable time. (especially if the F2P model is employed at some point)
Developers are apparently making money with this model, perhaps not what they had hoped (which is to recreate WOW's success) but they haven't seen an alternate model that might entice them to change much.
Unless we get lucky and some mid -tier Dev house manages to release something different and it turns out to be a break out smash, we're not likely to see this change.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I have to agree no game mechanic has made me engage in socialization at least for now it's a very solo experience. I remember also EQ2 and SWG took a lot of time to lvl and some quests were hard forcing me to group.
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I am not making any statements about this game, since I haven't played it, but I did play its predecessor FFXI:
it achieved more than any other MMO had for me in that respect.
I still haven't found a better community than there was in that game and that was due to the game forcing you to group with others to accomplish leveling past 20 or so.
The irony is that it didn't even have the amazing tools that some of the recent games have at release (or at least my memory tells me so.. correct me if I'm wrong) with respect to group finding etc.; they accomplished it all through incentive mechanics.
'Would such a game hold up today?' is the question. I am honestly not sure. With the increased risk aversion due to the global recession and millions of Euros/Dollars worth of risk in question, I doubt we will see any triple A's going that route anytime soon.
Strange, I've been playing since beta 4, and I'm still only level 36. Probably because I don't run around grinding fates all day like content locust do. Lots of people are leveling slowly in this game. I can't deny that the game levels faster than older games, but still, if you don't play the game with a rush to endgame mentality, you will level slower.
I've primarily leveled through dungeons, and main quest line. When I cap out my main story line (can't progress further), I start doing more dungeons. Bonus is that I'm always decked out in full greens/reds. I'm also leveling botanist while I'm leveling so that slows things down a lot too. And I've joined a few fate parties here and there to get seals to apply for promotions and such. But all of these have been pretty social, the dungeons, the fate parties....I'm not sure what you're talking about.
I guess if you just grind fate parties all day.....well yes, you will get bored. But that's just your fault.
What's funny is the common perception is that the f2p games have the gold sellers and the p2p ones do not, but I have found that actually to be very untrue.....I have seen more gold sellers in p2p games than in f2p games.....I think part of that might be the thinking that if a player is willing to pay for a game or a sub, they also are willing to pay for gold.
Maybe you talked to a few more people but the games mechanics are still same. You can't deny it with a simple one liner. You should have just said it's not the games fault it's yours. Which again is bullshit.
I roleplay and craft.
So you substitute user provided game play to improve socialization in lieu of actual mechanics provided by the developers to encourage it.
It's a good idea, and will let you socialize more than those who are solely relying on a Developer's solution, but it isn't for everyone of course.
Does help to explain why your experience would be quite different than others though.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The main story forces people through dungeons so they know how to play them. If you get terrible players in your groups it is just because they are terrible and clueless, not because they grind fates.
Also, why is it the developer's responsibility to make people social? It is your job to find friends to be social with. I found a great Free Company easily where we chat and group all day long.
The gamespeed has something to do with the reason people aren't as social in fates. When the actual fates are up people rarely talk but in between them I've found people to be very social. Another thing I can say I've done during fates is not really pay attention to party chat if it's not concerned with fighting because I am chatting with my FC members on mumble.
Many people might not think the gameplay in this game is fast but for people like me who played ffxi for over almost a decade it's extremely fast. About 5x faster or even 10x faster. That doesn't leave a lot of time to chat while you're fighting stuff and spamming abilities ever 2 seconds.
Trust me, crafting is in no way in danger of losing meaning in FFXIV.
Much like a slider for a "Hard" or "Insane" game difficulty I wouldn't mind an experience slider so that I could really slow down the exp gain to stay with friends or ramp it back to normal for alts or for those who simply want to gain levels.
Let me have some control over my progression.
In some games I am gaining so much exp while crafting that gearing and combat experience take a back seat. Not to mention the fact that I am missing content on some levels. Sometimes I wouldn't mind staying around the mid levels for a while just because some of the content really speaks to me.
Of course this might be abused in terms of over gearing for certain level plateaus or in terms of pvp but those problems can be addressed separately and in various ways.
Edit: Perhaps even a title or two for those who take the long road (and appreciate such things)
Trust me, these people take the square WoW template and forcibly attach it to the triangle FFXIV mold.
Hurrdurr similar UI, quest icons ==> everything is WoW