This game feels like they are just constantly dumbing it down. Removing stats which were already pretty dumbed down and even not letting you mix stats seems like they are either lazy or trying way too hard to make everything as basic as possible to balance (which will never be truly balanced anyways). Throw in stuff like story and level skipping items and their constant re-skinning of their main 2 types of endgame i'm confused as to why people love this game so much.
I noticed how scripted/linear/repeated everything became back at the start of HW and could not get myself to continue the terrible ladder gear climb where of course content/gear all become completely irrelevant every other patch. It was such a shift from XI that did the complete opposite and handled thing like the story missions with competency by not forcing you into it, but putting great insensitive to complete it (access to special areas or great gear). So what the hell happened here?
Maybe people are starting to take notice, but i see how the comments for posts about this game went from just about everyone praising this game and calling it the best MMO out to now a pretty mixed bag.
Not sure where I should get started on this one. Though I'll note that anyone who has played this game seriously has already noted that there are -- like most games -- spreadsheets of the best stats available for every class. When it comes to tanks Vitality is the clear winner as it provides both HP and Damage, making strength completely obsolete. So there was no reason to have Strength accessories other than cheesing the system and tricking people into thinking you had a higher item level than you actually did by using DPS or Healing gear as a tank (which the system will no longer count in Stormblood). In fact, they said that they intend to make strength a useful stat for tanks again during their live letter, so I'm not sure where any of this is coming from. Aside from that, they're getting rid of a few relatively useless stats and replacing them with ones that could be of use. Parry, for example, will take the form of Tenacity since Parry was never useful to begin with and people gimp themselves for thinking it was good because of the namesake, if they never looked up how to properly play a class. One could say that having such useless stats to begin with was bad, though it's quite the opposite when they are replacing them for the sole purpose of making them useful -- far from what is being discussed in the first paragraph. But I'd like to actually wait and see than spout too much rhetoric about something.
As for story skipping, it comes from the constant complaining that people don't want to play the game -- whether they don't have the time anymore or whatever. It is curious to me that this move is criticized in the first paragraph where the focus is a complaint about "dumbing down", and then that criticism is criticized in the second by complaining about the story again. I've noticed so many contradictions in these types of posts that its becoming ridiculous. Don't even get me started on FFXI. All that game was about was standing in Jeuno with a LFP sign up and potentially waiting 5-7 hours just to get a group (if you didn't static), travel to a spot for thirty minutes to an hour and then stand still for another 5-7 hours for chain experience. Or waiting 18 hours for a rare spawn. Not to mention there being no gear sync for the longest time when it came to the so called story and it turning into just a game to pay others to complete something due to it being so annoying. "Power level you with one of my 75 healers? Hang around Valkurm to raise people? Sure. There's nothing else in this game to do!" You may not believe it, but pretty much everything is an improvement over that. I think the point you're trying to make is that it would be a better experience is they just make it so you could enter any at-level or below dungeons or raid without doing story or side quests to unlock. While it may harm a story's continuity -- or provide spoilers in a lot of cases -- this may be a good idea, especially since people are now allowed to skip it all in the first place. Though the best way to level your main class and acquire that 100% boost to secondary class is through the great Exp. one acquires from the story. Otherwise you'll be doing at-level dungeons, FATES, PotD, Hunts, Class Hunts, Roulette, various systems you unlock as you level, etc. until you get to certain content, and by then you could have already been max by simply doing the story. You'll no longer need to level secondary classes to unlock cross class skills now, as well, since you are given the choice of choosing five out of 12-15 skills that are role specific. Is this "dumbing down" or is it something to get you to the "latest game" faster? I have a feeling, if one was true, you'd just pick the other to complain about for the sake of it.
When it comes to what its actual community thinks, comments are still pretty positive on reddit and community outlet pages. On pages not dedicated to such, comments have been better than usual with the ability to skip straight to Stormblood if they like. As for adding UI elements to help players manage massive rotations and a host of other things -- and applying feedback from heavensward -- this is a quality of life change more than it is dumbing down. In fact, with most classes, you now have something extra to worry about as they added new things to worry about on said UIs so that every class has one. There are archived discussions on Twitch's stream of the live letter of people laughing when they mentioned making classes more approachable and saying it's "dumbed down", only to then say "This is what they call dumbed down? LOL! It's more complicated now!" Though when you get 100,000 (between 42k in twitch and 70k on niconico at 2 AM on a stream that traditionally only speaks japanese) viewers in one place, things are bound to spread to anarchy. The biggest issues of late have been them optimizing servers, the jump potion and what those who play now think and the PvP changes of which those who didn't play think they're good, and the 12 that did are complaining (I actually PvP every now and again, so I had to make this joke).
Due to frequent travel in my youth, English isn't something I consider my primary language (and thus I obtained quirky ways of writing). German and French were always easier for me despite my family being U.S. citizens for over a century. Spanish I learned as a requirement in school, Japanese and Korean I acquired for my youthful desire of anime and gaming (and also work now). I only debate in English to help me work with it (and limit things). In addition, I'm not smart enough to remain fluent in everything and typically need exposure to get in the groove of things again if I haven't heard it in a while. If you understand Mandarin, I know a little, but it has actually been a challenge and could use some help.
Also, I thoroughly enjoy debates and have accounts on over a dozen sites for this. If you wish to engage in such, please put effort in a post and provide sources -- I will then do the same with what I already wrote (if I didn't) as well as with my responses to your own. Expanding my information on a subject makes my stance either change or strengthen the next time I speak of it or write a thesis. Allow me to thank you sincerely for your time.
This game feels like they are just constantly dumbing it down. Removing stats which were already pretty dumbed down and even not letting you mix stats seems like they are either lazy or trying way too hard to make everything as basic as possible to balance (which will never be truly balanced anyways). Throw in stuff like story and level skipping items and their constant re-skinning of their main 2 types of endgame i'm confused as to why people love this game so much.
I noticed how scripted/linear/repeated everything became back at the start of HW and could not get myself to continue the terrible ladder gear climb where of course content/gear all become completely irrelevant every other patch. It was such a shift from XI that did the complete opposite and handled thing like the story missions with competency by not forcing you into it, but putting great insensitive to complete it (access to special areas or great gear). So what the hell happened here?
Maybe people are starting to take notice, but i see how the comments for posts about this game went from just about everyone praising this game and calling it the best MMO out to now a pretty mixed bag.
Not sure where I should get started on this one. Though I'll note that anyone who has played this game seriously has already noted that there are -- like most games -- spreadsheets of the best stats available for every class. When it comes to tanks Vitality is the clear winner as it provides both HP and Damage, making strength completely obsolete. So there was no reason to have Strength accessories other than cheesing the system and tricking people into thinking you had a higher item level than you actually did by using DPS or Healing gear as a tank (which the system will no longer count in Stormblood). In fact, they said that they intend to make strength a useful stat for tanks again during their live letter, so I'm not sure where any of this is coming from. Aside from that, they're getting rid of a few relatively useless stats and replacing them with ones that could be of use. Parry, for example, will take the form of Tenacity since Parry was never useful to begin with and people gimp themselves for thinking it was good because of the namesake, if they never looked up how to properly play a class. One could say that having such useless stats to begin with was bad, though it's quite the opposite when they are replacing them for the sole purpose of making them useful -- far from what is being discussed in the first paragraph. But I'd like to actually wait and see than spout too much rhetoric about something.
As for story skipping, it comes from the constant complaining that people don't want to play the game -- whether they don't have the time anymore or whatever. It is curious to me that this move is criticized in the first paragraph where the focus is a complaint about "dumbing down", and then that criticism is criticized in the second by complaining about the story again. I've noticed so many contradictions in these types of posts that its becoming ridiculous. Don't even get me started on FFXI. All that game was about was standing in Jeuno with a LFP sign up and potentially waiting 5-7 hours just to get a group (if you didn't static), travel to a spot for thirty minutes to an hour and then stand still for another 5-7 hours for chain experience. Or waiting 18 hours for a rare spawn. Not to mention there being no gear sync for the longest time when it came to the so called story and it turning into just a game to pay others to complete something due to it being so annoying. "Power level you with one of my 75 healers? Hang around Valkurm to raise people? Sure. There's nothing else in this game to do!" You may not believe it, but pretty much everything is an improvement over that. I think the point you're trying to make is that it would be a better experience is they just make it so you could enter any at-level or below dungeons or raid without doing story or side quests to unlock. While it may harm a story's continuity -- or provide spoilers in a lot of cases -- this may be a good idea, especially since people are now allowed to skip it all in the first place. Though the best way to level your main class and acquire that 100% boost to secondary class is through the great Exp. one acquires from the story. Otherwise you'll be doing at-level dungeons, FATES, PotD, Hunts, Class Hunts, Roulette, various systems you unlock as you level, etc. until you get to certain content, and by then you could have already been max by simply doing the story. You'll no longer need to level secondary classes to unlock cross class skills now, as well, since you are given the choice of choosing five out of 12-15 skills that are role specific. Is this "dumbing down" or is it something to get you to the "latest game" faster? I have a feeling, if one was true, you'd just pick the other to complain about for the sake of it.
When it comes to what its actual community thinks, comments are still pretty positive on reddit and community outlet pages. On pages not dedicated to such, comments have been better than usual with the ability to skip straight to Stormblood if they like. As for adding UI elements to help players manage massive rotations and a host of other things -- and applying feedback from heavensward -- this is a quality of life change more than it is dumbing down. In fact, with most classes, you now have something extra to worry about as they added new things to worry about on said UIs so that every class has one. There are archived discussions on Twitch's stream of the live letter of people laughing when they mentioned making classes more approachable and saying it's "dumbed down", only to then say "This is what they call dumbed down? LOL! It's more complicated now!" Though when you get 100,000 (between 42k in twitch and 70k on niconico at 2 AM on a stream that traditionally only speaks japanese) viewers in one place, things are bound to spread to anarchy. The biggest issues of late have been them optimizing servers, the jump potion and what those who play now think and the PvP changes of which those who didn't play think they're good, and the 12 that did are complaining (I actually PvP every now and again, so I had to make this joke).
Your first paragraph proves my point that they dumbed down primary stats to the point that there is no reason to even list them. Stats like parry if done well could be useful and an interesting way to mix up ways of tanking or a general defensive stat but they basically tossed it away for simplicity's sake and replaced it with more basic and simplified things.
Gotta love that second giant paragraph where you go off on XI with the most tired excuses of a game that came out 15 years ago when my comparison with it to 14 had nothing to do with all of the complaints but purely about story structure.
Also the reddit of almost anything is overly positive...just saying. 100k viewing on a games major info stream where anyone who focuses on an MMO will try to watch feels meh especially when people feed to the notion this game has millions of subs.
Your first paragraph proves my point that they dumbed down primary stats to the point that there is no reason to even list them. Stats like parry if done well could be useful and an interesting way to mix up ways of tanking or a general defensive stat but they basically tossed it away for simplicity's sake and replaced it with more basic and simplified things.
Gotta love that second giant paragraph where you go off on XI with the most tired excuses of a game that came out 15 years ago when my comparison with it to 14 had nothing to do with all of the complaints but purely about story structure.
Also the reddit of almost anything is overly positive...just saying. 100k viewing on a games major info stream where anyone who focuses on an MMO will try to watch feels meh especially when people feed to the notion this game has millions of subs.
XI and XIV are very different games. One was built on the EQ model and the other on WoW. To me both had their problems but over all both are good games. XI had more depth and freedom with a focus on grouping while XIV is a more simple stream lined game with a focus on story and higher encounter mechanics. Honestly I would like to see a kind of marriage of the two but no dice unfortunately.
Same, FFXI had plenty of flaws but its pretty much a different game now and SE is focused on 14 which I keep trying to like but I can't. It almost felt like the end of 1.0 was getting to that middle ground of the two, but it pretty much tossed it in favor of following today's standard design which disappointed me. Sadly we will likely not see another FF MMO for a long time if ever which makes it worse.
I main a SCH so the combat changes aren't going to be that drastic for me, but I did level BLM and DRG to 60, both those classes have a pretty punishing rotation, Enochian and Blood of the Dragon aren't easy to keep up due to a variety of things in game, AOEs, tanks moving the boss etc. This caused dps, especially BLM to, rather than move out of AOEs they'd just eat them rather than lose Enochain....so hoping the combat changes will give BLM some much needed room to breathe, they are pretty much a turret class at this point. DRG and MCH's openers are crazy, I think more people will play MCH now, also Bard is losing the cast times, so yay.
As for stat changes, tanks are going back to STR and they are adding Tenacity, which is replacing ACC and Parry. It looks like it will decrease damage taken, buff your damage in general and increase block and parry. Not sure if that will effect healing criticals.
,I'd suggest reading the Live Letter translation notes to better understand what is going on. The presentation was four hours, so there is a lot of information.
Don't even get me started on FFXI. All that game was about was standing in Jeuno with a LFP sign up and potentially waiting 5-7 hours just to get a group (if you didn't static), travel to a spot for thirty minutes to an hour and then stand still for another 5-7 hours for chain experience. Or waiting 18 hours for a rare spawn. Not to mention there being no gear sync for the longest time when it came to the so called story and it turning into just a game to pay others to complete something due to it being so annoying. "Power level you with one of my 75 healers? Hang around Valkurm to raise people? Sure. There's nothing else in this game to do!"
In a word... Nonsense.
All you're doing here is regurgitating the go-to, unoriginal, canned strawman that *many* who don't like FFXI goes to. In every case, it's complete hyperbole at best, outright lies at worst. Or, perhaps, you just never bothered to learn what the game actually offered you, because you were one of those people for whom the only reason to log in was "race to level cap ASAP" - in which case, your experience was your own fault, not the game's.
I played FFXI for almost 8 years, on one of the quieter servers (Pandemonium, before it merged with Asura), and rarely spent more than an hour getting a group together, and that was only when it was a really quiet time of the day. I never had a static group. The problem with people "waiting for groups" for any extended amount of time always boils down to any of three things:
1. They looked for groups during dead times of the day/night when few people were around, while failing to realize that it was, in fact, a quiet time of day/night.
2. They weren't pro-active in assembling a group, but instead sat around *waiting* for the invites to come to them.
3. They'd developed a bad reputation on their server as being a jackass, and no one wanted to group with them.
If I had a gil for every time I'd do a /sea for people looking for groups and see enough to form several groups, across multiple level ranges, with all roles covered, I'd have been a lot less poor. The problem is, all those people were sitting there waiting for someone to invite them, rather than taking initiative.
A friend of mine would log in and have a group together and be at the location ready to go within 45 minutes, almost without fail.
For myself, I knew when the quiet/dead times were, and so spent those times doing other activities, stories, side-quests, crafting, unlocking outposts or what-not. I didn't "sit around for hours in Jeuno with a party flag up". It sounds boring as hell, so why the hell would I willingly do that? Oh yeah, because I choose activities that wouldn't bore me. I don't do things I clearly wouldn't enjoy... and then blame the game for "making me do them". Personal responsibility... crazy concept, I know.
Speaking of people doing nothing but "standing around in Jeuno waiting for a group" - Idyllshire and Ul'dah say hi.
By the by, I've sat in queue in FFXIV for over an hour waiting for a group to pop as well, many times. Know why? Because a group finder doesn't magically "make more people available", even when it's cross-server. I've also had the "pleasure" of sitting in queue for over an hour, only to have the party immediately disband because someone didn't like the dungeon they got, or someone didn't like that there was a first-timer in there that might "slow the run down", and so on.
There've been plenty of times in FFXIV that I gave up on doing a particular dungeon because it was no longer "popular" and so the queue times were insane... hours long. So let's not pretend long waits for a group are somehow unique to FFXI, or any MMO for that matter. They're certainly quite common in FFXIV.
All a Duty Finder does is automates the process of finding and bringing people together, something they'd otherwise have to do themselves by, you know, being social and pro-active and actually seeking and communicating with fellow players. If there aren't enough people to group with, then there aren't enough people to group with, and it's going to take time to put one together - group/duty finder or no.
If you didn't like xp camps, well... that's personal preference. It's not a problem with the game. I loved xp camps and hated to see them end many times, even hours later. That's not your thing, okay fine. But again, don't try to spin it as some kind of flaw in the game.
"Wasting 18 hours on a rare spawn". Another thing I never did. I would find out when the NM's last time of death was and then would show up around the time its pop window would open. If I didn't feel like waiting, I'd go and do something else. I never spent more than an hour waiting on any given spawn. Ever. If it spawned and someone else got claim, okay fine... I knew the ToD and would come back around the next one, wash, rinse, repeat until either I got the spawn/drop, or decided to do something else instead.
Standing around in Valkurm raising people "because there was nothing else to do". Nothing else to do. In FFXI. Yeah, now I know you're talking nonsense.
If you didn't enjoy FFXI's approach to gameplay, well, besides raising the question of why you apparently played it for any amount of time, then that's fine. From what you said, I get the impression you're yet another example of the type I alluded to above... you'd do things you clearly didn't find fun, for extended periods of time, and then try to blame the game for it.
Comments
Not sure where I should get started on this one. Though I'll note that anyone who has played this game seriously has already noted that there are -- like most games -- spreadsheets of the best stats available for every class. When it comes to tanks Vitality is the clear winner as it provides both HP and Damage, making strength completely obsolete. So there was no reason to have Strength accessories other than cheesing the system and tricking people into thinking you had a higher item level than you actually did by using DPS or Healing gear as a tank (which the system will no longer count in Stormblood). In fact, they said that they intend to make strength a useful stat for tanks again during their live letter, so I'm not sure where any of this is coming from. Aside from that, they're getting rid of a few relatively useless stats and replacing them with ones that could be of use. Parry, for example, will take the form of Tenacity since Parry was never useful to begin with and people gimp themselves for thinking it was good because of the namesake, if they never looked up how to properly play a class. One could say that having such useless stats to begin with was bad, though it's quite the opposite when they are replacing them for the sole purpose of making them useful -- far from what is being discussed in the first paragraph. But I'd like to actually wait and see than spout too much rhetoric about something.
As for story skipping, it comes from the constant complaining that people don't want to play the game -- whether they don't have the time anymore or whatever. It is curious to me that this move is criticized in the first paragraph where the focus is a complaint about "dumbing down", and then that criticism is criticized in the second by complaining about the story again. I've noticed so many contradictions in these types of posts that its becoming ridiculous. Don't even get me started on FFXI. All that game was about was standing in Jeuno with a LFP sign up and potentially waiting 5-7 hours just to get a group (if you didn't static), travel to a spot for thirty minutes to an hour and then stand still for another 5-7 hours for chain experience. Or waiting 18 hours for a rare spawn. Not to mention there being no gear sync for the longest time when it came to the so called story and it turning into just a game to pay others to complete something due to it being so annoying. "Power level you with one of my 75 healers? Hang around Valkurm to raise people? Sure. There's nothing else in this game to do!" You may not believe it, but pretty much everything is an improvement over that. I think the point you're trying to make is that it would be a better experience is they just make it so you could enter any at-level or below dungeons or raid without doing story or side quests to unlock. While it may harm a story's continuity -- or provide spoilers in a lot of cases -- this may be a good idea, especially since people are now allowed to skip it all in the first place. Though the best way to level your main class and acquire that 100% boost to secondary class is through the great Exp. one acquires from the story. Otherwise you'll be doing at-level dungeons, FATES, PotD, Hunts, Class Hunts, Roulette, various systems you unlock as you level, etc. until you get to certain content, and by then you could have already been max by simply doing the story. You'll no longer need to level secondary classes to unlock cross class skills now, as well, since you are given the choice of choosing five out of 12-15 skills that are role specific. Is this "dumbing down" or is it something to get you to the "latest game" faster? I have a feeling, if one was true, you'd just pick the other to complain about for the sake of it.
When it comes to what its actual community thinks, comments are still pretty positive on reddit and community outlet pages. On pages not dedicated to such, comments have been better than usual with the ability to skip straight to Stormblood if they like. As for adding UI elements to help players manage massive rotations and a host of other things -- and applying feedback from heavensward -- this is a quality of life change more than it is dumbing down. In fact, with most classes, you now have something extra to worry about as they added new things to worry about on said UIs so that every class has one. There are archived discussions on Twitch's stream of the live letter of people laughing when they mentioned making classes more approachable and saying it's "dumbed down", only to then say "This is what they call dumbed down? LOL! It's more complicated now!" Though when you get 100,000 (between 42k in twitch and 70k on niconico at 2 AM on a stream that traditionally only speaks japanese) viewers in one place, things are bound to spread to anarchy. The biggest issues of late have been them optimizing servers, the jump potion and what those who play now think and the PvP changes of which those who didn't play think they're good, and the 12 that did are complaining (I actually PvP every now and again, so I had to make this joke).
Your first paragraph proves my point that they dumbed down primary stats to the point that there is no reason to even list them. Stats like parry if done well could be useful and an interesting way to mix up ways of tanking or a general defensive stat but they basically tossed it away for simplicity's sake and replaced it with more basic and simplified things.
Gotta love that second giant paragraph where you go off on XI with the most tired excuses of a game that came out 15 years ago when my comparison with it to 14 had nothing to do with all of the complaints but purely about story structure.
Also the reddit of almost anything is overly positive...just saying. 100k viewing on a games major info stream where anyone who focuses on an MMO will try to watch feels meh especially when people feed to the notion this game has millions of subs.
Same, FFXI had plenty of flaws but its pretty much a different game now and SE is focused on 14 which I keep trying to like but I can't. It almost felt like the end of 1.0 was getting to that middle ground of the two, but it pretty much tossed it in favor of following today's standard design which disappointed me. Sadly we will likely not see another FF MMO for a long time if ever which makes it worse.
As for stat changes, tanks are going back to STR and they are adding Tenacity, which is replacing ACC and Parry. It looks like it will decrease damage taken, buff your damage in general and increase block and parry. Not sure if that will effect healing criticals.
,I'd suggest reading the Live Letter translation notes to better understand what is going on. The presentation was four hours, so there is a lot of information.
In a word... Nonsense.
All you're doing here is regurgitating the go-to, unoriginal, canned strawman that *many* who don't like FFXI goes to. In every case, it's complete hyperbole at best, outright lies at worst. Or, perhaps, you just never bothered to learn what the game actually offered you, because you were one of those people for whom the only reason to log in was "race to level cap ASAP" - in which case, your experience was your own fault, not the game's.
I played FFXI for almost 8 years, on one of the quieter servers (Pandemonium, before it merged with Asura), and rarely spent more than an hour getting a group together, and that was only when it was a really quiet time of the day. I never had a static group. The problem with people "waiting for groups" for any extended amount of time always boils down to any of three things:
1. They looked for groups during dead times of the day/night when few people were around, while failing to realize that it was, in fact, a quiet time of day/night.
2. They weren't pro-active in assembling a group, but instead sat around *waiting* for the invites to come to them.
3. They'd developed a bad reputation on their server as being a jackass, and no one wanted to group with them.
If I had a gil for every time I'd do a /sea for people looking for groups and see enough to form several groups, across multiple level ranges, with all roles covered, I'd have been a lot less poor. The problem is, all those people were sitting there waiting for someone to invite them, rather than taking initiative.
A friend of mine would log in and have a group together and be at the location ready to go within 45 minutes, almost without fail.
For myself, I knew when the quiet/dead times were, and so spent those times doing other activities, stories, side-quests, crafting, unlocking outposts or what-not. I didn't "sit around for hours in Jeuno with a party flag up". It sounds boring as hell, so why the hell would I willingly do that? Oh yeah, because I choose activities that wouldn't bore me. I don't do things I clearly wouldn't enjoy... and then blame the game for "making me do them". Personal responsibility... crazy concept, I know.
Speaking of people doing nothing but "standing around in Jeuno waiting for a group" - Idyllshire and Ul'dah say hi.
By the by, I've sat in queue in FFXIV for over an hour waiting for a group to pop as well, many times. Know why? Because a group finder doesn't magically "make more people available", even when it's cross-server. I've also had the "pleasure" of sitting in queue for over an hour, only to have the party immediately disband because someone didn't like the dungeon they got, or someone didn't like that there was a first-timer in there that might "slow the run down", and so on.
There've been plenty of times in FFXIV that I gave up on doing a particular dungeon because it was no longer "popular" and so the queue times were insane... hours long. So let's not pretend long waits for a group are somehow unique to FFXI, or any MMO for that matter. They're certainly quite common in FFXIV.
All a Duty Finder does is automates the process of finding and bringing people together, something they'd otherwise have to do themselves by, you know, being social and pro-active and actually seeking and communicating with fellow players. If there aren't enough people to group with, then there aren't enough people to group with, and it's going to take time to put one together - group/duty finder or no.
If you didn't like xp camps, well... that's personal preference. It's not a problem with the game. I loved xp camps and hated to see them end many times, even hours later. That's not your thing, okay fine. But again, don't try to spin it as some kind of flaw in the game.
"Wasting 18 hours on a rare spawn". Another thing I never did. I would find out when the NM's last time of death was and then would show up around the time its pop window would open. If I didn't feel like waiting, I'd go and do something else. I never spent more than an hour waiting on any given spawn. Ever. If it spawned and someone else got claim, okay fine... I knew the ToD and would come back around the next one, wash, rinse, repeat until either I got the spawn/drop, or decided to do something else instead.
Standing around in Valkurm raising people "because there was nothing else to do". Nothing else to do. In FFXI. Yeah, now I know you're talking nonsense.
If you didn't enjoy FFXI's approach to gameplay, well, besides raising the question of why you apparently played it for any amount of time, then that's fine. From what you said, I get the impression you're yet another example of the type I alluded to above... you'd do things you clearly didn't find fun, for extended periods of time, and then try to blame the game for it.
Im gonna main ast!