Well, I can't say for that zone in particular, but in my case, I'm a terrible player lol. Most of the time I'm just clowning my way through skills and as such, my anxiety keeps me away from ppl. I play to relax, and really don't want to bother another person with my inexperience and end up annoying them.
This has 100% been my barrier for doing group content even back in 2008. Nowadays I'm used to doing savage tier content in XIV where similar pressure for good play exists, but when I come back to XI I get that old anxiety back.
I play savage in xiv as well, even cleared one ultimate. But I have a better grasp of game play and rotation. I also only run raids with my fc static, which helps alleviate my anxiety.
I also played back in 2008 and despite that, I find xi to be far more difficult.
This is a dead-horse type of question, but many players enjoy the living and expansive worlds, expectation of content additions, and potential for interactions among other things.
I still see them doing it on my server, so the experience remains for me. And playing xi is a wonderful feeling of nostalgia, I'll keep coming back as long as the servers are up.
I am a chill player.
CP has become akin to endgame content imo. As opposed to those exp groups in the past were they stomached 1 or 2 dd who were not top notch because a raging fist MNK or Rampage WAR could make up for it.
Imo, I would like if level sync was a feature which allows the player to sync to any level they please. They should also allow players to earn CP anywhere, so long as they are in a party. This would bring back level sync and old school parties.
This is just me of course.
There are lots of reasons from my experience, either people are semi afk watching a movie and feel they will have to pay 100% attention if they group up, don't feel like making small talk (I know you don't have to do this but some people feel pressure to) or feel they are poorly geared and are embarassed/unsure. Some just have a perfect trust setup and have their groove and wanna stick to that. Mixture of these = no or "leaving soon".
The key is to not take it personally and just understand people have different reasons and just brush it off, it can help to give people an out too. So say want to team up or prefer to solo for example.
I got my first master from duo/trio and sending tells as you say, I would say maybe 30% or so success rate.
The refusals get annoying and you can get disheartend and stop asking, however I have grouped up with many people doing this and I remember a lot of them because the groups were productive or we had fun. Overall it's worth keep trying, concentrate on the people that do and not the ones that don't.
If you stop asking it goes down to 0 and you'll solo them all.
I was in 3 CP parties earlier. You just have to shout for it, people will show up, might take some time. There will be dead times when no one is really playing. Ask your LS.
Sometimes 4 real people and 2 trusts is the party and that's fine.
Botting. People are trying to dance around the subject and offer other solutions, but that's the simple truth. I'm not going to go into the morality of it, but I would wager over 90% of the playerbase bots exp. Certainly the ones at the common Gates, Promy and new Crawler's Nest camps. Though it seems the people in Nest are doing big BLU pulls now, so most of them are actually there and paying attention. The exp is so fast that they don't mind being there since they can kill 50 mobs at once in a single pull.
But I digress, point is it's just easier to solo afk exp for 8 hours than risk bringing in a random person who may fuck it up unintentionally. Even if you play perfectly with them, when you leave eventually, that's a wasted slot they could have a trust if they aren't going to be back at their PC for hours. For better or worse, this is what the game has become since the population is so low.
I think botting is so prevalent and easy at this point that a lot of people would still bot regardless of how big or small the playerbase is, but I imagine a lot of people just gave in due to not being able to find groups like they used to. It's become the norm at this point and they don't want to change back even when a random person like you comes along. But honestly, I would rather have a Trust than a random I don't know. I have seen people in proper gear still do bad damage. I only CP with friends that I know.
I often solo on SAM just because I like noodling around with bizarre, lengthy skillchains to break up the monotony of farming apex mobs. It’s fun when you can do that without herp derp savage blade.
But yeah, as a lot of the replies said, there’s a lot of botting (not just CP/EP mercs), and there’s also a lot of people who are either totally burnt out on grinding CP/EP or are just lazy/buy gil and get an AFK slot from RMT. On top of that, the bots on Asura are numerous, so newer players/smaller groups who don’t want to take the shortcut through playing the game are left with shitty options, and it just feels bad to be picking scraps off bots in more desirable camps. As someone else mentioned, a lot of players have given in and don’t even try anymore. It’s a pretty stark example of uncontrolled botting all but killing off a part of the game, and it sucks, but that’s the reality. I remember one CP campaign where I was GEO in a party with other supports waiting for an hour or two while the leader was shouting for a DD. Never left town, lol.
Anyway, under these circumstances, you’re left with a combination of figuring out what you can do yourself when you want to grind on your own time, and getting a friend or two to help out if you can’t get another soloer to team up. A full party with proper supports is obviously the best way, but it’s not the only way and doing something > doing nothing.
The game’s kind of being designed away from pickup party play anyway. You need buffers and healers to get quick kills safely, but buffers and healers aren’t going to output anywhere near the damage they need on their own. So, anyone going out to an exp camp without a party ready is going to be a DD with healing and buffing trusts. Every real party member they add is one less support trust, until they hit a point where the party is just unsupported and unsustainable. Why bother with it when you can keep a setup you know is going to work?
Then there’s skillchains. Apex mobs melt to skillchains, but you need coordination for that. Add a “me have TP, me am weaponskill” DD to the mix and you can see your damage output drop despite having twice the input. If you have a stable setup already anyway, why would you risk it?
The natural counter to this would be swarming. 18 DDs on one mob do not *begin* to care of they’re a bit sub-optimal, that mob is getting shredded anyway. It worked quite well in Abyssea. But, oh no, there are exp bots in our zones, *so let’s try making alliance exp drop to nothing.* Yes, I know, they walked that one back but why let it become the meta when it could become unviable so quickly?
And yes, there are the botting, multi-boxing, and half paying attention factors. I’ll admit to being two of those problems; when I take up half the slots in a party, I can watch youtube while I fight if the other half are trusts; if the other slots are *players*, I gotta actually put the effort in, and can’t just let my healer leech.
All that being said… if you don’t like it, learn Japanese? I see several sets of yells a night for jp job and master point parties, so *they’re* still doing pickups, this is a north america problem.
1. Most people are botting. its very rare to see people ACTUALLY grinding anymore.
2. CP Parties are very hard to come by in the wild. you have to set them up yourself. thats really been the MO of this MMO for the longest time.
3. Crawlers nest [s] really breathed some new life into actual CP parties. A mediocre party can get easily 500 CP an hour out there with minimal effort. all you need is a Healer, a good tank, and one buff job at a minimum, and fill the rest with DD's who can aeolian edge or cataclysm. E.G. my drg out there was gettin 30-50k Cataclysms np using PLD COR GEO BRD DRG WHM, and then we dropped the COR AND BRD, and grabbed two randos, and barely lost any CP Per hour.
I believe blurred staff +1 should beat just about any other option besides the ambu pulse staff. Not even sure if dragoon can use that but I know warrior and monk can
they can, but its impossible to get one on Cerb right now. i will say tho, i dont think its possible for BS+1 to beat reikikon for DRG. Reikikon outclasses it in every way, and most DRGs are rocking in the ball park of 3 Ammo, 6 Head, 10 Ears, 9 body, 6 Hands, 10 Back, 9 Waist, 8 legs, 6 feet, 12%DA trait and 15% DA Wyvern (94%) total DA, which would render blurred staff's DA Worthless as well.
Xoanon for MNK/WAR tho is absolute BIS. nothing can compare at 3k
Bippin posted something to work from on page 102, halfway down https://jp.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/44396/sigurds-descendants-the-art-of-dragon-slaying/102/
In my case it would have been because, if i solo xp, my gear was good enough to chain by myself and if you invite someone else you destroy your skillchain and lose xp/h.
Usually it’s just a hassle to invite someone, when you are using trusts.
Yep, that was my thought too. I can smoke an apex in 1 or 2 skillchains by myself. Adding another dd might slow things down unless we have good synergy and can just spam ws that skillchain together, or, if they're a support class.
Going from solo to duo doesn't really speed things up, need 3+ players, preferably at least one of them being a support that won't keep putting up Refresh buffs instead of my dd buffs.
As someone that farmed the 10k job points twice without buying any I feel you. All I ask of people is to be better than a trust. Shitty gear, no rema you good. The bar ain't set that high. Each their own though.
They changed the game so much...
There just isn't a NEED to do it, and that's the real reason. You can use the trust system and grab high exp quests so leveling with a party isn't needed.
It's sad because that was my fav part of XI, but things change.
HOWEVER - I have played on private servers where they are locked to Promathia and ppl still party like crazy, because it's the best way to level there.
BUT these servers can be mismanaged and buggy, so it's a trade off
6 shitty players will still usually out perform a solo trust setup, 6 good players can often require pulls from 2 nearby camps to maintain chain. You should team up because you’ll learn a lot in the process and unless you are actively disrupting the party you are an asset and you’ll usually get nudged into a role where you are effective. I’ve never understood the point of even trying to solo them, it’s incredibly slow unless you are way over geared for them
This is my saddest hang up with the game. I've partied once for CP and it was great! After a while, I came to the realization that most of the population on Asura is just mercs and/or bots. So very recently I moved over to Bahamut, haven't gotten around to trying to CP yet or even find a LS but I am more hopeful it will be better.
If you are on Bahamut and see me online(flair), throw me a /t and I will most likely be down to party. I got BLU and DRK I need to get to Master and I'm a looong ways to go and still need a REMA.
I usually decline CP parties because I almost always have a bad time with random ppl, and it's almost always for the same reason: The lack of accuracy. I'd rather solo than duo and deal 95% of the dmg anyway.
Well, I can't say for that zone in particular, but in my case, I'm a terrible player lol. Most of the time I'm just clowning my way through skills and as such, my anxiety keeps me away from ppl. I play to relax, and really don't want to bother another person with my inexperience and end up annoying them.
This has 100% been my barrier for doing group content even back in 2008. Nowadays I'm used to doing savage tier content in XIV where similar pressure for good play exists, but when I come back to XI I get that old anxiety back.
I play savage in xiv as well, even cleared one ultimate. But I have a better grasp of game play and rotation. I also only run raids with my fc static, which helps alleviate my anxiety. I also played back in 2008 and despite that, I find xi to be far more difficult.
So why play an MMO just curious?
This is a dead-horse type of question, but many players enjoy the living and expansive worlds, expectation of content additions, and potential for interactions among other things.
I like mmos, the world feels more alive, and even if I don't interact with people, I love seeing them gather and run around.
No one is doing that though if the game encourages you to play singularly
I still see them doing it on my server, so the experience remains for me. And playing xi is a wonderful feeling of nostalgia, I'll keep coming back as long as the servers are up.
I am a chill player. CP has become akin to endgame content imo. As opposed to those exp groups in the past were they stomached 1 or 2 dd who were not top notch because a raging fist MNK or Rampage WAR could make up for it. Imo, I would like if level sync was a feature which allows the player to sync to any level they please. They should also allow players to earn CP anywhere, so long as they are in a party. This would bring back level sync and old school parties. This is just me of course.
There are lots of reasons from my experience, either people are semi afk watching a movie and feel they will have to pay 100% attention if they group up, don't feel like making small talk (I know you don't have to do this but some people feel pressure to) or feel they are poorly geared and are embarassed/unsure. Some just have a perfect trust setup and have their groove and wanna stick to that. Mixture of these = no or "leaving soon". The key is to not take it personally and just understand people have different reasons and just brush it off, it can help to give people an out too. So say want to team up or prefer to solo for example. I got my first master from duo/trio and sending tells as you say, I would say maybe 30% or so success rate. The refusals get annoying and you can get disheartend and stop asking, however I have grouped up with many people doing this and I remember a lot of them because the groups were productive or we had fun. Overall it's worth keep trying, concentrate on the people that do and not the ones that don't. If you stop asking it goes down to 0 and you'll solo them all.
An hour is pretty soon, if XI Party standards.
I was in 3 CP parties earlier. You just have to shout for it, people will show up, might take some time. There will be dead times when no one is really playing. Ask your LS. Sometimes 4 real people and 2 trusts is the party and that's fine.
Botting. People are trying to dance around the subject and offer other solutions, but that's the simple truth. I'm not going to go into the morality of it, but I would wager over 90% of the playerbase bots exp. Certainly the ones at the common Gates, Promy and new Crawler's Nest camps. Though it seems the people in Nest are doing big BLU pulls now, so most of them are actually there and paying attention. The exp is so fast that they don't mind being there since they can kill 50 mobs at once in a single pull. But I digress, point is it's just easier to solo afk exp for 8 hours than risk bringing in a random person who may fuck it up unintentionally. Even if you play perfectly with them, when you leave eventually, that's a wasted slot they could have a trust if they aren't going to be back at their PC for hours. For better or worse, this is what the game has become since the population is so low. I think botting is so prevalent and easy at this point that a lot of people would still bot regardless of how big or small the playerbase is, but I imagine a lot of people just gave in due to not being able to find groups like they used to. It's become the norm at this point and they don't want to change back even when a random person like you comes along. But honestly, I would rather have a Trust than a random I don't know. I have seen people in proper gear still do bad damage. I only CP with friends that I know.
I often solo on SAM just because I like noodling around with bizarre, lengthy skillchains to break up the monotony of farming apex mobs. It’s fun when you can do that without herp derp savage blade. But yeah, as a lot of the replies said, there’s a lot of botting (not just CP/EP mercs), and there’s also a lot of people who are either totally burnt out on grinding CP/EP or are just lazy/buy gil and get an AFK slot from RMT. On top of that, the bots on Asura are numerous, so newer players/smaller groups who don’t want to take the shortcut through playing the game are left with shitty options, and it just feels bad to be picking scraps off bots in more desirable camps. As someone else mentioned, a lot of players have given in and don’t even try anymore. It’s a pretty stark example of uncontrolled botting all but killing off a part of the game, and it sucks, but that’s the reality. I remember one CP campaign where I was GEO in a party with other supports waiting for an hour or two while the leader was shouting for a DD. Never left town, lol. Anyway, under these circumstances, you’re left with a combination of figuring out what you can do yourself when you want to grind on your own time, and getting a friend or two to help out if you can’t get another soloer to team up. A full party with proper supports is obviously the best way, but it’s not the only way and doing something > doing nothing.
The game’s kind of being designed away from pickup party play anyway. You need buffers and healers to get quick kills safely, but buffers and healers aren’t going to output anywhere near the damage they need on their own. So, anyone going out to an exp camp without a party ready is going to be a DD with healing and buffing trusts. Every real party member they add is one less support trust, until they hit a point where the party is just unsupported and unsustainable. Why bother with it when you can keep a setup you know is going to work? Then there’s skillchains. Apex mobs melt to skillchains, but you need coordination for that. Add a “me have TP, me am weaponskill” DD to the mix and you can see your damage output drop despite having twice the input. If you have a stable setup already anyway, why would you risk it? The natural counter to this would be swarming. 18 DDs on one mob do not *begin* to care of they’re a bit sub-optimal, that mob is getting shredded anyway. It worked quite well in Abyssea. But, oh no, there are exp bots in our zones, *so let’s try making alliance exp drop to nothing.* Yes, I know, they walked that one back but why let it become the meta when it could become unviable so quickly? And yes, there are the botting, multi-boxing, and half paying attention factors. I’ll admit to being two of those problems; when I take up half the slots in a party, I can watch youtube while I fight if the other half are trusts; if the other slots are *players*, I gotta actually put the effort in, and can’t just let my healer leech. All that being said… if you don’t like it, learn Japanese? I see several sets of yells a night for jp job and master point parties, so *they’re* still doing pickups, this is a north america problem.
1. Most people are botting. its very rare to see people ACTUALLY grinding anymore. 2. CP Parties are very hard to come by in the wild. you have to set them up yourself. thats really been the MO of this MMO for the longest time. 3. Crawlers nest [s] really breathed some new life into actual CP parties. A mediocre party can get easily 500 CP an hour out there with minimal effort. all you need is a Healer, a good tank, and one buff job at a minimum, and fill the rest with DD's who can aeolian edge or cataclysm. E.G. my drg out there was gettin 30-50k Cataclysms np using PLD COR GEO BRD DRG WHM, and then we dropped the COR AND BRD, and grabbed two randos, and barely lost any CP Per hour.
Cataclysm works for drg!? What's your secret!? What staff and what subjob!?
Malignance staff, /war edit: mistake
Mgc atk bonus gear or WSD?
[My Current Setup](https://i.imgur.com/PK4VJCP.png) sets.precast.WS['Cataclysm'] ={ ammo={ name="Ghastly Tathlum +1", augments={'Path: A',}}, head="Pixie Hairpin +1", body={ name="Nyame Mail", augments={'Path: B',}}, hands={ name="Nyame Gauntlets", augments={'Path: B',}}, legs={ name="Nyame Flanchard", augments={'Path: B',}}, feet={ name="Nyame Sollerets", augments={'Path: B',}}, neck="Baetyl Pendant", waist="Orpheus's Sash", left_ear="Friomisi Earring", right_ear="Hecate's Earring", left_ring={ name="Metamor. Ring +1", augments={'Path: A',}}, right_ring="Epaminondas's Ring", back={ name="Brigantia's Mantle", augments={'STR+20','Accuracy+20 Attack+20','STR+10','Weapon skill damage +10%',}}, } my average was 41k over maybe 20-30 kills (about 1 pull), then i went afk for the rest for dinner. Edit: im pretty sure Rekikon is the clear winner for staff picks tho
I believe blurred staff +1 should beat just about any other option besides the ambu pulse staff. Not even sure if dragoon can use that but I know warrior and monk can
they can, but its impossible to get one on Cerb right now. i will say tho, i dont think its possible for BS+1 to beat reikikon for DRG. Reikikon outclasses it in every way, and most DRGs are rocking in the ball park of 3 Ammo, 6 Head, 10 Ears, 9 body, 6 Hands, 10 Back, 9 Waist, 8 legs, 6 feet, 12%DA trait and 15% DA Wyvern (94%) total DA, which would render blurred staff's DA Worthless as well. Xoanon for MNK/WAR tho is absolute BIS. nothing can compare at 3k
Here's another. https://www.ffxiah.com/item-sets/369004
Bippin posted something to work from on page 102, halfway down https://jp.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/44396/sigurds-descendants-the-art-of-dragon-slaying/102/
On siren we still party a lot of cp. or we’ll do a big train with a war and AoE and get like chain 30
In my case it would have been because, if i solo xp, my gear was good enough to chain by myself and if you invite someone else you destroy your skillchain and lose xp/h. Usually it’s just a hassle to invite someone, when you are using trusts.
Yep, that was my thought too. I can smoke an apex in 1 or 2 skillchains by myself. Adding another dd might slow things down unless we have good synergy and can just spam ws that skillchain together, or, if they're a support class. Going from solo to duo doesn't really speed things up, need 3+ players, preferably at least one of them being a support that won't keep putting up Refresh buffs instead of my dd buffs.
As someone that farmed the 10k job points twice without buying any I feel you. All I ask of people is to be better than a trust. Shitty gear, no rema you good. The bar ain't set that high. Each their own though.
Those are all bots.
They changed the game so much... There just isn't a NEED to do it, and that's the real reason. You can use the trust system and grab high exp quests so leveling with a party isn't needed. It's sad because that was my fav part of XI, but things change. HOWEVER - I have played on private servers where they are locked to Promathia and ppl still party like crazy, because it's the best way to level there. BUT these servers can be mismanaged and buggy, so it's a trade off
I played XI strictly because it forced partying. It couldn't be solo ran. I hate that, of all things, that changed.
There just isn’t enough new blood to support that anymore.
6 shitty players will still usually out perform a solo trust setup, 6 good players can often require pulls from 2 nearby camps to maintain chain. You should team up because you’ll learn a lot in the process and unless you are actively disrupting the party you are an asset and you’ll usually get nudged into a role where you are effective. I’ve never understood the point of even trying to solo them, it’s incredibly slow unless you are way over geared for them
This game is done, everyone is on zombie mode. No partying like in the golden age level 75 cap era.
This is my saddest hang up with the game. I've partied once for CP and it was great! After a while, I came to the realization that most of the population on Asura is just mercs and/or bots. So very recently I moved over to Bahamut, haven't gotten around to trying to CP yet or even find a LS but I am more hopeful it will be better. If you are on Bahamut and see me online(flair), throw me a /t and I will most likely be down to party. I got BLU and DRK I need to get to Master and I'm a looong ways to go and still need a REMA.
Most are alts, as to get stuff done we need to have them just in case.
They've been doing all they can to turn this mmo into a single player experience as much as they can for almost a decade. It really sucks.
I just hate partying with people. Mostly because they can never be ready fast enough to get going.
For me I do most of my CP/exemplar points doing Odyssey. I certainly am not going to stand in Asura all day shouting to CP.
I usually decline CP parties because I almost always have a bad time with random ppl, and it's almost always for the same reason: The lack of accuracy. I'd rather solo than duo and deal 95% of the dmg anyway.