Cost of Courtesy

I sent the club a wire stating, Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.
--Groucho Marx

A thought has crept into mind about dealing with people in Final Fantasy. There is no doubt that there is a requirement to deal with people, at least if you want to get very far in a reasonable amount of time. Yet what is the cost of such a thing? How much are you willing to deal with in order to progress, for the sake of progressing.

I thought about the good experience parties I have joined, and what made up the good ones and what made up the bad ones. There were always exceptions to the rule, but a common theme came about. The good parties were started by people who were polite and showed they had a plan. They would send tells before hand with information about the party and where they were going and so forth. Last night, one such tell informed me that I had to decline because I would have been in a place with mobs too high for me--for some reason people are doing this a lot lately--and I found out by asking questions first. And whats more is.. good parties worked together.

Then I think of bad parties... and yes, I have known quite a few. Bad parties seem to start off with either a blind invite--oh I hate blind invites--and a person who acts as if they are doing me a favor by condescending to invite me to their little grouping. More often than not, these people tend to be short tempered know-it-alls who will criticize everything I or others did in the party. And of course, the most common thread of all is that bad parties were populated by people who never knew the meaning of the word "courtesy."

So what is the cost of demanding such things as.. common courtesy.. when I seek out experience parties. For the most part it would seem, I miss out on many groups. Yet, when it comes down to it, I ended up in one party that degraded so fast that a dragoon was made tank, and 80 xp every five minutes was considered good. So maybe I am not missing out so much as it may seem.

I know for my part, that while I am seeking for a party, I am never doing nothing. I have discovered to my utter delight that using my beloved NPC, I could take on some even match to weak tough monsters solo, and earn more xp in the same time than many of the "bad" parties I had spoken about.

Maybe the cost is too high for some; but the coin of my realm remains as always good maners and common courtesy.