Ultimately, the age-old elitists vs casuals debate, as far as FFXI is concerned, comes down to people who are able to recognize that FFXI was designed for a collectivist culture, by members of a collectivist culture, and thus is at its best when played in a collectivist fashion, and those who, having been born and raised in an individualist culture, are unable or unwilling to accept or recognize that issue. I'm not saying there are no elitists, that would be incorrect. I'm saying that in order to enjoy a game designed around group play, one has to, well, enjoy group play, and be willing to be a team player.
In solo-heavy games, the argument can often be made, "We all pay the same monthly fee, so we all have an equal right to content!" However, in FFXI, which is the exact opposite, such argument holds no water. Instead, it changes, "We all pay the same monthly fee, but since we need 18 people to pull this off at all, everyone has to pull their own weight." or to say it in a more straightforward manner, "The cost of one player's monthly fee does not outweigh the collective monthly fees of the seventeen other players he's @#%^ing over by trying to be a super special unique snowflake and thus not pulling his own weight."
Now, obviously, I'm not saying the super-special-unique-snowflake jab is always the case, or that this necessity doesn't lead players to do stupid sh*t like "in order to do this content you must have already done this content before and have gotten its rewards." What I am saying is that I'm so @#%^ing tired of people ******** about elitism when elitism has been the @#%^ing backbone of this game for as long as its been online. If not for elitism, no one would have been able to accomplish sh*t in the early days. If not for elitism, the vast majority of the game's mechanics would still be a big mystery to the playerbase. If not for elitism, we might still be stuck back in the days of "HOLYsh*tGUYS! WE'RE GETTING 5K EXP/HOUR! THAT'S AWESOME! GO PULL ANOTHER IT++ CRAB SO WE CAN SC/MB AGAIN AND GET MOAR OF DIS ******* EXP!"
Not that such parties weren't without their charm, mind you. That's where you met the other players, made friends, connections, and just generally socialized, and now in an era where we don't have any of that left, newer players are left out of the cohesiveness the community used to have (as we'd all suffered together through a common grind). However, it's hard to say the players aren't at all responsible. We definitely dropped the ball on that one.
That said, though I can't speak for RoZ/CoP, I'm damn sure that other major expansions have resulted in nearly the same general feeling from more casual players. ToAU's TP burns were the elitists @#%^ing over the casuals. Abyssea became "you can only do sh*t if you have atma." Various endgame events were always pretty rough to start if you weren't fairly well geared going in, unless you found a generous shell. The only real exception was WotG, which incidentally became a rather ironic inverse, where campaign gave casual players too much freedom to level their jobs without actually learning how to play them, thus becoming the ire of elitist players everywhere.
Thus, waffles > pancakes. QED.
Edited, May 27th 2013 12:17pm by Jinte
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Theytak, Siren Server, FFXI [Retired]
Amerida Baker, Balmung Server, FFXIV
LOLGAXE IS MY ETERNAL RIVAL! Reiterpallasch wrote:
Glitterhands wrote:
Am I the only one who clicked on this thread expecting actual baby photos [of Jinte]? o.O
Except if it were baby photos, it would be like looking at before and afters of Michael Jackson. Only instead of turning into a white guy, he changes into a chick!