After making a post on another thread about subligar parties, I got to thinking...
"Why are so many mid to high level players such utter noobs when I meet them?"
Well, after a bit of thinking, it hit me. Most exp parties I find, people are generally capable at their job, and they know most of the decent exp camps and zones that are commonly sought after and so on and such.
But, then, you try to get... a mission, or a quest party, and suddenly, you start to see so many higher ranked players who downright suck. They don't know where to go, they don't know their butt from a hole in the ground about a boss fight, yadda yadda...
Wanna know why?
I'll tell you why.
You ready?
Its the "Rush to Lv75".
So many people do nothing but exp party exp party exp party until they find themselves Forced to do something else, its turning people... no wait. Its not "turning" people into anything. My bad. Its causing people to not learn anything outside of exp parties.
I'm not saying everyone is like this... but those of you who feel the game is a rush to get to Lv75 as your chosen job.. well.
Seriously. On the path from Lv1 to Lv75, what do you do?
1). XP the job to Lv30.
2). Do a couple rank missions on the way.
3). Farm/maybe a little craft.
4). Get subjob levelled.
5). Farm, maybe a rank mission or two.
6). Exp
7). Exp
8). Exp
Nowhere along this line, do you Truly learn what the game is. Come on.. you can't tell me that fighting the same mob (or even similar mobs!) for 40+ levels is really teaching you anything. You use the same job abilities in the same situations you've always used. This isn't teaching you advanced teamwork, strategy or anything of this nature, is it?
When you invite a person who rushed to their high level into your party, chances are they probably had little experience with other things. That's why it seems like they suck so bad. It doesn't take all that much skill to ride a chocobo to an XP camp, dismount, buff, and kill the same mob repeatedly for the next 5 hours. It just.. doesn't. Once you learn how to use your core job abilities, you're pretty well set. Especially for jobs like MNK, PLD, DRG, etc. No offense to you guys, but for 5, sometimes 10 levels at a time, you have the same job abilities fighting the same mobs. Its not really teaching you much, is it? Not really your fault per se...
So where am I going with this? I don't know... I guess I'm trying to say that people should 'get out more'. There are CoP missions now, that one can do at Lv30. Several beyond the Promyvions are capped at Lv40.
I think SE did this intentionally. They saw lots of people getting to Lv60 with absolutely no experience or skill in doing anything but standard XP party setup.
So my suggestion?
Do your CoPs early. *grins* I'm doing my CoPs and I'm loving each boss fight. Some of these are hard, they teach you new things. Some of them require you to use jobs that you would have never thought. Like, Diabolos. What boss fight, or mission, would you ever say "gosh, we need more DRKs in our LS..."
Sorry about all of the rambling... hopefully you can sift through this and get the point I'm trying to make...
--Xylia