rant warning ;)
other warning: english isn't my first language. I prefer to warn about it before any long post I write...
one other thing I dislike about being able to change jobs whenever, in FFXI:
in any mmo, you need to help people if you want to be helped in return. (coldain shawl #8 anyone?)
in ffxi, too many people go by the philosophy that "if I can't use it, I'm not going". I believe this has a lot to do with the job-change system. ("hey, I'm getting ____ for my brd, anyone wants to help ?" "I would've helped you, but I got mine 3 days ago.") Of course not everyone is like this, and once you've made friends, much changes. But inside any given linkshell, there are many people who think that way. If they would need just a little bit to help others out, they might just discover the joys of it (I am no way talking about people begging for help for stuff they shouldn't be able to achieve at their level, here).
By this I mean: in the MMO I played before, I spent almost as much time in raids for other people as I was xping and the like. And it wasn't a chore or a pain, I had fun doing it, getting stuff to improve your character isn't all there is to the game, even if you're not raising your level, or your crafting, or your gil count, you can still have fun ><
I personally think a few things, including this, made the FFXI player base a generally greedy and self-centered one... (would there really be 12 people camping any given popular NM if the mobs weren't "claimed" as the first person attacked it ? I think not. where is the respect in trying to get a mob as fast as possible before everyone else who is there, no matter how much longer they have waited for the spawn then you did ?)
Edited, Thu Jun 17 13:03:36 2004 by Niji