RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Parvacake · **09-01-2016, 09:31 PM**

You're not the first person I've seen with this frustration.

Honestly, on Balmung? You'd have a better and more fruitful time gathering people up who share this interest and have these requirements so making an FC is a good start. Most people I know who do content more regularly or who raid after have groups and people they do it with on established schedules or when all are assembled and online.

As for voice chat, there's a large number of people who actually aren't comfortable using voice chat. Sometimes due to privacy, sometimes because of their home situations, while others just don't have a mic and can't afford one.

But they're out there though! Hope you find them!

Kage · **09-01-2016, 09:47 PM**

Keep a lookout for pugs in PF as that and static recruitment sites are where you will get the most bites.

You're more likely to find a PVE focused group or FC which has no one give a fuck if people RP. In fact, I don't think you'll have issues finding an FC is lax about it unless you are looking to join the Top 5% of raiders on Balmung.

I don't know of an FC that is FC-RP focused that also has dedicated content runs, especially a progression static for raiding. I know of RPers that DO progression raids but I don't know if say... there's an actual FC group'd static that has cleared or is progressing through A8S/Midas 4S.

I used to sorta be in this until I just stopped caring about being in fc and just finding groups or LS for it. (And then I stopped progression raiding)

Caspar · **09-01-2016, 09:53 PM**

Don't worry. There are definitely some RPers who are progression-focused. I was one of those while I still had a raiding static-just not on Balmung. Balmung itself has a lot of PVE play, but you don't need to be in an FC with those players to find a good group of players. Getting through hard content has been fairly easy for me for a long time now on my other server with my PVE only character, just by being in an LS with lots of PVE players. I would suggest looking through PF or hunting for a PVE LS to find your way to a raid group.

In my experience, it is extremely rare for an FC to contain enough players with the same exact availability and motivation to clear hard content. The group I was in contained a scattering of players from at least four different FC, and one who was not in an FC at all for quite some time until he left our static to form his own. Guess he was allergic to free buffs.

While RPC is an RP focused site, there's still a lot of RPers out there who are interested in PVE. Maybe not a ton of them here perhaps, but they exist. I definitely think a balance between PVE and RP can be struck. For a person like me, who enjoys the game for what it is as well as likes playing make-believe, I have to make a serious effort to get the most out of the whole experience or I feel like my money is wasted.

Lutra · **09-01-2016, 10:55 PM**

I can understand your frustration. Had I not created my own FC, I probably would have run into this issue myself. I have known people from all over the spectrum, but honestly Balmung seems to be a very healthy mix of people who love RP/character focused stuff and those same people also enjoy the game. Maybe not in a static, maybe not pushing-edge endgame, but progression enough that they do the new primal fights/raids/etc.Â

With honesty, I can say my FC does do both, though we always prioritize fun > everything. We have a weekly raid night where we tackle a wide variety of things, but usually it is reserved for whatever raid we want to do. This week is Nidhogg EX, for example. And we will probably take the next several weeks learning and eventually clearing the fight as an FC. I know not all FCs do this, so I can't generalize. But we've done it consistently since nearly 3 years ago when I started up AW-RP, and the weekly event has served us well in the long run. Scratches most people's endgame itch, so to speak.

It's all about finding the type of group you want and really getting to know their likes/dislikes and schedules so that you can fit in with relative ease. However, if you don't find what you're looking for, it's perfectly viable to start your own. I wish you luck!

g0ne · **09-02-2016, 12:49 AM**

Well, reading through all the comments now.

...

Okay. So you want to RP and you want to raid. Do both!Â

But here's the thing. Finding an FC thay will do both is rare. You will either have an FC that prioritizes RP, or you will have an FC that prioritizes raiding and progression. Because, to be honest, both of the things require a lot of attention and a lot of work. I'm not saying there are no FCs out there that do both, there might be, just ask around, use PF, Balmung is a big place, I'm sure one can find it.

But expecting an RP FC to be progression based is a little unfair, when it's clearly stated that it's an RP FC, meaning RP is the core reason for its foundation and existence. It's only natural that RP is what will be more available there, maybe even exclusively RP. Despite that, I've found RPers to be super duper fun to run stuff with.

As for myself, I've never had issues with both RP and raiding. I raided for a while for the first time in my life, and I joined a static, found it in PF, and here's the interesting bit. Hardly 2 of the people, if I remember correctly were from the same FC, and the rest were from other FCs.

I've noticed that progression is more of a static based concept now, and even though you may be in a raiding FC, chances are high you won't end up in a full 8 man party with members all from the same FC. You'll have people from all over the server, from completely different FCs.Â

Don't let all that disheart you, because you can still do both! And quite easily in fact. There's lot of RPers out there who raid as well! It's just a matter of using different sources to search. PF is extremely helpful for that, as it's in game and not restricted to asking on a specific forum of sorts.Â

Also note, this is an RP forum. I don't think people are going to post a lot of threads abut raiding because well, it's not a raiding forum, it's an RP forum.Â

Note: I typed this from my phone. Ignore any silly typos I might have missed.Â Bouncy

Valence · **09-02-2016, 04:44 AM**

I have seen plenty of statics on Balm. Light statics as well as very serious ones.

They tend not to mesh well with RP FC because usually when you start gathering people, it's already hard enough to find either raiding people with the same level and ideals, or hard enough to find RPers that fit your own RP habits and views and needs. So, both at the same time?

But yeah, I know people that RP AND PROGRESSION raid perfectly fine. They just have their raiding schedule some evenings that can't be disturbed, is all.

So if you really are into ligh hearted raiding, you will be fine. =)

Oyuu · **09-02-2016, 04:54 AM**

If you got a lot of time on your hands, you'll be able to raid and RP just fine. It depends on your RP style of course, I mean, I could probably manage a sorta midcoreÂ group right now if I really put my mind to it (only cockblocked by EU timezones, really and the fact I can't be bothered to raid).Â

I would recommend going for a raid-focused FC rather than a RP-FC, especially if you're aiming for mid/hardcore content. From myÂ experience of trying to form a progressive group within a RP-FC, it is very, very hard considering most of the players there aren't ready to commit to the intensity of raid even if it's just a few hours a week. They are there for RP first and foremost, so you can't blame them really. For your FC, it's probably best to head to party finder, state the times and dates you intend to raid, what content to tackle and the jobs you require. You will filter out the serious raiders from the 'Oh, I guess I could help. Double white mage is fine, right?' people.Â

In my opinion, it's easier to find a decent RP group than a raid group that meets your requirements and if that's important to you, please use resources like the recruitment redditÂ and party finder etc. There's a big saturation of RPers on Balmung, whereas raiding requires finding people with a similar mentality to content and a good time schedule and speaking as a former raid leader, that process can be very difficult lol. Good luck!

Arcian · **09-02-2016, 06:45 AM**

'Progression' and 'nothing hardcore' generally don't go in the same sentence unless the phrase 'is totally different than goofing around and doing' is between them. The former implies significant time investment in the form of research, practice, and optimization. The latter is what most of the playerbase does (there's nothing wrong with that. They're just very, very different approaches).

Based on what you're asking for, you seem to be in search of a light RP FC that also spends time on relatively casual content. There are a lot of those. Step into Ul'dah and you'll trip over a dozen.

With all due respect, I'm inclined to believe that no, you did not look hard enough.

Tl;dr - Join a roleplaying FC and look in PF if you want to do midcore content, or find/form a static if you're feeling more ambitious once you get to 60.

***GhostlyMaiden*** · **09-02-2016, 10:29 AM**

Mod Note:
The thread has been cleaned up a bit. Just a friendly reminder that to please keep the conversation civil.

Thank you!

Lydia Lightfoot · **09-02-2016, 02:24 PM**

The trouble for most players, I think, isn't a lack of interest in both gameplay and roleplay, it's that time becomes a resource for the player - and it's a resource with increasing rarity for most players the older they become. We have college classes, work, relationships, non-MMO hobbies, keeping our homes clean, and so forth, and as our lives progress further we add children, maintenance of a home we own, maintenance of vehicles... as time progresses further than that, the kids start having after-school activities we really should be attending to support them, and... I could go on.

So to use my brother as an example, he gets home from work around 4:30 to 5 PM, Monday through Friday, and with the arrangement he and his wife have, she handles most of the housekeeping and he handles the cooking. It's usually about 6 PM by the time he settles into the game, depending on the evening, because he cooks and then eats dinner. Sometimes we might see him as early as 5 PM, if he got lucky with traffic on his way home and if he picked up junk food for dinner, but he tries not to do the latter very often (perhaps once a week).

In order to be up in time to get ready for work the next day, have breakfast, etc, he logs out for the night most nights at around 9:30 PM on average. This gives him a typical window of in-game opportunity - assuming he has nothing else he might want to do with his evening, such as playing a board game with his wife for an hour - of about 3.5 hours.

Assume for the sake of discussion that Saturday and Sunday he doesn't have significantly more time to play, because a lot of the time he doesn't, between handling errands, enjoying other hobbies, and enjoying activities outside the house with his wife.

Now examine the time commitment needed for raiding even for a player who only wants to do it casually. They'll be expected to keep their gear aimed at BIS, which changes every month or so as new patch content comes out and adds something else (the "treadmill", as people say). That usually means spending time grinding on some content in order to get a daily allotment of some manner of doodad, for which the allotment is limited by the day (or if not limited, soft-limited, such that once one's dailies with the high rewards are done, one could keep going with non-daily content but the doodads-per-hour rate drops off a cliff) and due to the daily limit he couldn't, if he wished, just allocate one weekend day per month to a hard grind and be good-to-go on his gear.

Dungeons with a decent group usually take 20-30 minutes depending on the dungeon, trials with a decent group take 10-20 minutes depending on the trial, I mean you know the times on this stuff I'm sure, and it's not unreasonable to say if he's keeping up on it all to ensure BIS, then for a substantial amount of time after the drop of a new patch he'd be sinking 1.5 to 2 hours a night on that. That's fully half of his available time most nights.

On top of that, he'll also need to... y'know, participate in the raid group. That's another couple of hours at least a couple nights a week if the group ever expects to actually learn the content and progress smoothly through it. Or, if he's not spending that much time actively running the content, he'd have to make up that time by watching YouTube videos to familiarize himself with it in advance and to try and memorize the patterns and indicators outside of first-hand experience. So if he has to spend 1.5 to 2 hours grinding on grind nights, this means he probably would need to use the rest of his free time towards raiding on raid nights (or watching raiding if he isn't actually participating). Granted, like I said, that's not every night.

Now the question becomes... how much RP can he actually accomplish in the 1.5 to 2 hours he has left on the nights that aren't raid nights? Is that enough time to A) discover among his friends where the RP exists that he can join into; B) set up a scene if one isn't already underway; C) contribute significantly enough to the scene that his character is a memorable presence to the others who were there, and D) advance his character's personal story arc in a meaningful way?

The answer there's a hard maybe - and the determining factor would undoubtedly be the extent to which he and his friends' roleplay had depth of writing and, I guess, "substance". If they mostly are writing quick snippets of dialogue bantering back and forth, then in that time they could possibly have some development of a story, sure. But if they start getting descriptive, emotive, or even if just dialogue, they begin delving into a deeper discussion which requires paragraphs... now one person is waiting on the other's reply before they can begin their own, and that delay time adds up. If there's more than 2 characters present, it could add up even further if they're going in a "turn order" to keep the scene flowing smoothly. If they aren't, then it could still take more time because there'd be a lot of back-and-forth as characters switch who they're responding to due to the overlap of the messages.

Raiding is intentionally designed to be a time sink. That's important to remember! It's designed by its nature to keep subscribers busy so they don't log in, check out the new patch content for a day, nod their head, log out, and unsub until the next patch. Or perhaps the patch after that, if they just weren't that drawn by the promo hype of the current patch. Some players out there have lots of time to play, maybe they're unemployed or they don't have a relationship or kids or whatever, I don't know. For players like that, they might be able to raid and also roleplay to an extent that stories can actually develop.

But for most players, especially as their lives advance... it's just not practical to try and balance it. What my brother does instead is, he just doesn't focus on current content. He and I, we've been around the block and we know the pattern. A couple months after the current content gets replaced by new content, the developers will lessen the requirements on the old current content. Suddenly instead of needing 100 doodads you only need 10, and maybe there's a crafted version of some of the stuff that's a comparable item level to what you would've had to grind for previously, or who knows. Suffice it to say, the content becomes more accessible to people who aren't willing to make it a time commitment. That's when people like my brother consider checking it out if they have time, but it still isn't a priority. If he misses out on doing his dailies because some friends wanted to RP, it just doesn't matter to him. The content isn't going anywhere. It'll still be there whenever he happens to get to it.

Recently, he's been talking about wanting to run through the entirety of the Binding Coil to get to experience that and have some fun with it. Given that his character is level 60 and wearing Eikon gear (or whatever the equivalent name is, but you get the idea, the crafted stuff of that item level), he can go and do those with zero grinding needed. Just form up a party with some friends, sync down, and go have fun. That's what a lot of players who focus on RP do, because for most of us, we really don't care if we get a "server first" or if we do some new instance within the first couple weeks it was out and we wiped 17 times trying to figure out the boss but we finally triumphed, that's no bragging right to us. To me, my bragging right comes from knowing I have an awesome group of RP friends and a really great venue for the community to enjoy for RP. :3

Anyway, I do hope you'll be able to do what you want to do, of course! Just please don't let it frustrate you that a lot of others might not be able to... everyone's life is different and for many it may just be more or less literally impossible to do both effectively.

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Feeling a Little Frustrated

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