Note: I am not seriously trying to convince any to not PL, I know if you're on your Nth job through the dunes your objective is to get out ASAP. These are just my (strongly held) opinions on the subject.

Before I get started I'd like to thank Nasomi for making an unbelievably fun server to play on. I started playing In Dec 2003 and played through about September 2006 and these server hits me exactly in the nostalgia bone. I'd long avoided playing on FFXI vanilla servers because I thought their population were in the dozens, making it impossible to get parties and experience any content. Boy, was I wrong! I'm only in the my mid-20s and I'm already enjoying the experience immensely.

I chose RDM as my first job as it had treated me well as my main back in 2003. Leveling was tough due to lack of any funds, but I managed to scrape enough together through quests to buy all my spells and some OK gear and headed to the dunes around 13 and got into my first party. I was very excited to re-live the partying experience and meet new people. Some of my friends to this day are people I met in the the dunes grinding out hard-earned experience.

Much to my disappoint though, after we got to camp one member announced the PL would be pulling and we would sit there while the PL linked all the mobs in the area and would bring them back for us to kill; a veritable buffet line of XP. My heart fell. All the work I had put into scraping together gear was made completely irrelevant as all of us (even the WHM) just meleed the mobs down one after another in silence. There was no discussion about skillchains or mb, no discussion between mages over who would heal the next pull and who would cast what debuffs or who would be pulling. Tanks didn't have to tank and healers didn't have to heal.

After a few chains of this I had a choice to make: continue and keep getting easy, but mind-numbing experience, or drop and try to find another party that was doing it the hard way. Compounding my decision was the fact that I really don't have much time to play games and there was no chance I'd get another party, and even if I did it could be a total disaster. I really was not enjoying myself though so I decided to just drop and take my chances.

Going back to my roots I decided to form my own party. I had typically done this in the past and it was often a rewarding experience. I managed to cobble together one in about a half hour and we were off to kill lizards, and I was hoping that nobody was going to say something akin to "my friend with PL us." Luckily, they did not. Things got off to a bit of a rocky start as half of us didn't have a subjob and were under geared, but we kept going and once we worked out the kinks exp started rolling in. Not only that but we were talking and joking, remarking about someone almost dying, a high damage nuke or weapon skill, and just talking about our experience in FFXI in general during downtime. This was the difficult, taxing and rewarding FFXI experience I remembered and enjoyed. After the party we all remarked on what a good job everyone did, how much fun it was and had friend's list invites worked we would have exchanged them all. As it was I noted down everyone's name and have since partied with a few of them again based on the great experience before.

To me this is the essence of what made FFXI great. Difficulty and the bonds formed while overcoming that difficulty. The excessive amount of PL'ing to me is akin to what WoW (a once great game) has become in its dungeon finder: join up in near silence, grind a bunch, drop without more than a word or two at most. To me FFXI has always been about the journey, and gearing up to be the best at any job at any level, and I really feel like PL'ing robs that experience.

It's the dunes, it's going to happen. People aren't going to stop PLing. If it's any solace, you'll see less of that past level 25.

I couldn't have said it better. The reason I like FFXI so much compared to other MMOs is the grinder aspect. The difficulty, the feeling rewarded for my hard work and getting gear that not every single person has already!

_________________
PM 3-5, Sandy 6-1, ZM 4-1

level a second char it makes the grind that much less and you can assist with heals whenever needbe

You can always decline or leave a party that uses a PL , but it's not going anywhere.

pL is pretty much non existent last 25-30 so you won't need to be depressed for long

_________________
this was funnier before everyone copied me

When it comes to Valkurm Dunes I HOPE the party has a PL. And once a job hits 20, I refuse to synch any lower. I've been through there 12 times on Nasomi, and while I'm glad to see new people that want to enjoy the Valkurm struggle it is NOT that much fun the 10th time around. Especially with the population rising and a lot of the old camps reworked (I assume to make that lizard alley) and Goblins perpetually broken.

The area can't support 120 people trying to slowly grind through on Nasomi like it did in retail where you'd start at Konschtat and work your way north to goblins, crabs at the beach/trees/oasis, then over to flies or sheep, then goblins (again), and finally pugil at one of the beach camps. Oasis doesn't exist - crabs and flies removed. I haven't seen a good cluster of flies anywhere else. Goblin's bomb toss is broken through the entire leveling range and will wipe a full party, barfira or no. There's an OWNM by one good crab camp, and I've only explored the western most beach. That's still a workable alternative, but there's a large swath of dunes that's just not workable here.

Notice there are more phases, also remember that each phase had multiple effective camps, instead of one camp of lizards for lv 12-14, 1 for 14-16, 1 for 16-18, and each camp really only supporting a single party and becoming quite strained with a second nearby.

It's in everyone's best interest (for at least some of us) to get in, get it done, and get out unless something's done to make it possible for a low level party to support itself on more than just those lizards with no PL.

_________________

It's encouraging to note people say PL stops existing a lot past 25 (my highest is only 24 right now). My fear was that it would continue into the 20s and 30s. It's too bad that Valkurm seems so re-worked as there were so many camps there before. I wonder the rationale?

My assumption if I were to hazard a wild ass guess is it was done to make the early game functional. When I first started mob TP ability use was off the charts both in frequency and power. Nasomi has done a few balancing sweeps, and it's more managable. But the frequency is still high, and some still hit like a truck.

Not the perfect 04 Valkurm experience, but it does work well enough to get you through and that leaves Nas free to focus on other things. And it gets closer with each update, so you can see he's hard at work and trying to make it right. But Rome was not built in a day.

_________________

I have to agree pretty much 100% with Benadar.



I feel like you hit the nail on the head with that statement. It sums up why a lot of the new MMO's in the past decade fail to scratch the itch. Nowadays everything is streamlined into making things easier for the player, and many things can be done without interacting with other players. There is little sense of camaraderie and accomplishment.

I know several new players have mentioned Pantheon in their intros, saying they are playing FFXI to pass the time until it comes out, which makes sense given what you'd hope to find coming back to this era of FFXI.

So, props to you Benadar for forming your own party and turning off the cheat-codes

I, too, hope to find more adventuresome parties without PL's going forward! Unfortunately from my experience so far, they still don't seem that uncommon 20-30+