Chaotic Pellucidity

Abyssea - Sea, Sand and Stress

2010-08-11T11:47:00.002+01:00

Instead of proactively approaching the new expansion of Abyssea, the esteemed leadership circle of my current HNM ls have instead sat on their hands about it and decided to get upset with the ls population when other people provide the framework for runs and it interfers with ls activity as a result.

I have no sympathy for them. Really they should have been more on the ball.

Abyssea is a surprisingly varied and rich environment that appeals across the board, you can do things solo, you can do things in groups, you have to do other things as a team.

It is so varied and there is such a wealth of gear and opportunity that it can be VERY difficult to police it effectively as a group. Again, it challenges the traditional concepts of how you run and divide rewards up in your linkshell.

It has definately been high stress trying to figure this out for our little bunch. Finding a middle ground where if you can't please everyone, then at least you can aim for merely surly rather than outrage and indignation. hehehe.

I think it is always like this at the start of anything new though. Everyone angry and upset and at loggerheads with each other. After its been around awhile and there is a familiar pattern, people deal with it a whole lot better.

BLEH!!!

Eating carrots will let you see in the dark!

2010-08-11T11:15:00.002+01:00

I have been reading this FANTASTIC book called Bad Science

Its written by a very entertaining columinst for The Guardian newspaper in England, well versed and accessible, it casts a bright light on the dark spots of medical science and research that certain people and companies would rather you didn't see.

If you are too cheap to spill for the book but still want a taste of this excellent insight into the world of research myth and fact, he does have his own website that you can peruse and is kept regularly up to date.

The Bad Science website!

Anyway! lol, the reason I decided to write about this is because of an intriguing little fact buried away in the book as an annecdote which I found highly entertaining.

We are all familiar with old wives tales. Things that apparently have no logical sense behind them but people swear by. One of these was the things parents told their kids to get them to eat their vegetables! "Eat your carrots up and you will be able to see in the dark"

If you ever wondered where these things come from, in his book he tells you.

It was a story invented by the British in the 1st World War and spread to the Germans to hide the invention of radar from them. Their explanation for the accuracy of the targetting at night was, our pilots were eating lots of carrots.

I thought that was brilliant!

Something Unexpected

2009-05-08T12:04:00.004+01:00

There are always times in game where you do something that you aren't quite sure will work, and they do, but you are not quite sure why, and it exceeds all expectations.

I had one of those moments the other night.

Salvage time but most of the crew were either MIA, unavailable, dabbling in the heady world of real life or just not around so we went in with only 6 members, and a slightly inventive party.

Dragoon
Dragoon
Thief
Red Mage
White Mage
Bard

Both Dragoons were /SAM. We went and did Arrapago Remnants and took the Soulflayer route.

We killed every rat on every floor we could, we took down the soulflayer, chariot and the boss and we finished the entire zone with 16mins left on the clock.

Dragoons are devastating in Salvage. I had an ENORMOUS amount of fun as well, true this quite possibly could have been because I was one of the aforementioned dragoons, lol and I derive a great deal of pleasure from playing my favourite job but even hardened Dragoon haters like Iceblazek had fun. By his own admission he had to grudingly admit that as a job class the Dragoon has come a long way and no longer deserves or merits the lolDRG moniker of yore.

I guess some people would wonder how you would tank the chariot boss with just Dragoons, and this is one of those nasty bosses where Mortal Revolution can be easily absorbed by shadows that as /SAM we simply didn't have. Agreed neither of the Dragoons are what you could call gimpy, Qtipus is running around with a Gungnir, both of us have taken a lot of effort and time to strive for the best gear and equipment for our job but a lot of that can be removed from the equation in Salvage as gear particularly from Arrapago is slow and erratic to land.

We saved our jumps to serve as provokes for the bard pulling and rotated them instead of using them for tp build, which proved to be a surprisingly effective strategy save the occasional blip where we both went at the same time, although this didn't really cause any real upsets on the whole run.

And we bounced light skill chains back and forth between the Dragoons and the thief all the way to the top. If you haven't experienced it yet, well timed and effective skill chaining in salvage can have a devastating effect on the mobs, they just melt in your path as you push forwards. Of course you can't be sat around constantly waiting for skill chains, but a bit of communication and skill chaining when the tp is available and ready yields some fantastic results.

Elfaria

2009-04-11T17:08:00.004+01:00

People come and people go from FFXI, it is a very transient population. There is an on-going joke in my ls that you never really quit, and that if you say you are quitting (specially if its for WoW) then its met with the "sure sure, you'll be back" sort of retort.

I think how much you immerse yourself in the game, the people you meet and the roads you take greatly influence how much of a draw FFXI can be if you do decide to quit. A lot of the people I have know to quit have come back occasionally and dabbled but mostly stay away, but they also never really got as involved as myself and some of the friends that I have now made.

Of course, there are many many varied reasons to leave, from being served divorce papers, to a change in circumstance that makes your departure involuntary.

One such was Elfaria, who had a drastic change of circumstance resulting him taking a break from FFXI. Sadly this seems to have been a greatly extended leave of absence. There are people who I really do wish were still around, one such being Elfaria.

Crazy, French and Taru! He was just a lot of fun to be around, with his sly remarks which were always spot on, his determination and dedication to his jobs, insane magic bursts or busting out the WS on his SAM he was intense and hilarious and I miss him ooodles >.<

So a toast to those who have gone on and yet still remain in our memories. Wish you were still here. I think a nice red would be appropriate about now LOL and some fine cheese.

Salvage Superstars!

2009-03-16T11:16:00.004Z

The natives are getting restless and to be quite honest this was just such a spectacular moment lol I don't mind if it gets posted twice. Ring can wax lyrical about Izman's Ares Legs finally dropping and a huge congratulations go out to Izman, Mr. Anti-Legs-Dropping himself for finally getting his mitts on these sexy legs.

I know it might come across as kind of smug, but we all agreed there is a degree of satisfaction gaining them before the update is due, we got them the "hard way" although how significant the adjustments for SilverSeas Remnants and Bhaflau Remnants are remains to be seen, all we can do currently is speculate.

Celestria and Blaize have been doing Salvage for a very very long time, and it was down to just 2 more remaining drops, Ares 35 from SSR and Marduk 35 legs from BR so we have been doing a LOT of both zones. With Izman's success in SSR we were just down to spamming the heck out of the Bhaflau run, with poor Blaize being a class act every single time on the timed gears floor.

We have been through so many runs where we got to the floor, and just saw no Peryton at all, and quite frankly I was at the point where I didn't even really think that they were going to drop even if we did get the big bird, we would just be inundated with Skadi bodies, which while marvelous isn't what I was looking for LoL.

ALL that changed!!! With this stunning end to our Salvage run the other week. 8 Perytons not a sniff of a drop from 7 of them, Ring d'cs and an 8th spawns with 60 seconds on the clock. Ring reappears JUST in the nick of time, but we STILL get the "This mission has failed, leaving the area" message when Iz busts out a Raging Rush and boom! EVERYTHING drops, AND POOLS.

What a night! You guys are SOOO cool! I can't thank you enough. I do feel bad that I ended up with the Skadi body when it could have gone to better use, but we will be back! I of course, immediately got lost in the Undersea Ruins in an elated high trying to get back to Whitegate so I could FINALLY go get my Marduk legs made. I have been waiting even longer than Iz has for his Ares pants for these, but I was always unlucky on the lots or it was just a plain old no-show on the NM's. SUPER sexy for bard though. I am thrilled to bits AND I can shelve all that horrible bard af.

Here is the moment, in glorious technicolour!

*dances again* I am soo grateful to all you guys and Celestria for helping me get them, and not threatening to kill me for doing Bhaflau for the umpteenth time!

In a different vein, I want to spend a moment talking about Thazienne. Thaz is a super cool guy for all those who have crossed paths with him, while he won't sit there and tolerate nonsense, if you get close to his fuzzies you can find out what an awesome guy he is with a razorsharp wit. Ah Kallo, you love it really ^.^ Hahah.

Totally selfless in his willingness to come along and help you out what ever it is you need, be it a bit of TH for farming, or some random quest, so it is always fun when I can help him out! And this time we managed to get him his full set of sexy SAM af. This was NEARLY doomed when the quest was blocked by the final mission in the Celestrial Nexus, but I hijacked our ZNM group (Big thanks again to Celestria, Blaize and Izman) to go knock this fight out for him so he could finish it all up. And as you can see he is looking miiighty fine in it all now ^.^ Congratulations Kitty ^.^

Intermission

2009-02-28T13:19:00.002Z

One of the oddest things that struck me when I was at the Fan Fest this year was the prevelance of comments along the lines of "Oh your from THAT server that is always crashing."

It was such a random thing to be told, considering that crashes and downtimes on Odin are NOT that common, after all I have spent 5+ years on the server now, I would have a good idea wouldn't I. Infact it was with some amused excitement we got to witness large chunks of our sever keel over and die on Wednesday evening. Whitegate was the first to go swiftly followed by Xarcabard, Dynamis-Xarcabard, Kuftal, the Woodlands and Arappago that I KNOW about.

Since we experienced this down time, I thought a little intermission might be in order to fill the void.

Normally you would get the "Best of Burt Bacharach" for your intermission, but sadly all I have are these few morsels for your delectation and delight ^.^ Enjoy.

Quotes out of Context Series 9 - 14

MrBooboo's Big Day

2009-02-23T12:40:00.008Z

This is not going to be a particularly wordy post. Shocker I know. I am going to let the pictures do the talking for me, that is all it is going to need.

Aside from 1 hiccup where Boobs decided to d/c right as he traded the coins this all went off without a hitch.

Enjoy these as much as me and not nearly as much as Mrbooboo.

And what do you do after all that hard work? Well...

Dragoon

2009-02-13T14:55:00.012Z

I first started playing FFXI when it was released in North America. I remember it very distinctly. My friend; who no longer plays, by the name Buttons bought me a copy of game and I was over in the US visiting at the time. We set up an account for me so even though I lived in the UK I wasn't squeezed out by the speed (or lack thereof) of the transition into the EU market.

So that is a fairly long time now. I've been playing for a very long time, as reflected by my "Playtime", which isn't "enhanced" shall we say by long periods afk, if I am not playing I log out. Saves any confusion and the long string of missed /t's you inevitably get.

When I first started out I was in love with Ranger class from the RPG world. I had aquired this love after encountering a character called Kivan, an Elven ranger from Baldur's Gate who you can add to your party in the High Hedge. He is just an AMAZING strong character to have on your team, he was graceful, powerful and invariably the top dog in my parties I made, able to carry the most weight and do the most damage.

Armed with my love of rangers I was determined to become a ranger in FFXI. Now, usually when I play RPG's I play Mage classes, just a quirk of mine I guess, I always have, lol when I first created my Baldur's Gate character I had NO clue at all what I was doing and created a Sorcerer with 11 INT and no VIT. Took me a year to complete the game with him, a stiff breeze would kill him and he failed every spell learn at least 6 times before the load in the game that was in my favour. LOL.

He was a terrible character, but even with his horrendous build by the end of the game, he was able to blast things very satisfactorily. *chuckle* This time! I was determined to break the trend and started off as a Warrior. I even remember my glee when I finally got all my Scale Mail gear and looked "menacing" hahaha. Of course it only lasted a short while till I got fed up with the lack of party invites and went and leveled White Mage instead.

I think if I recall correctly, the first time I ever knowingly was aware and saw a Dragoon class was in Jeuno, back when seeing someone in AF was a big deal. I was just coming out of the moghouse and I got a fleeting glimpse of it and was immediately captivated. I remember babbling to Buttons about it, who had gotten to a higher level before me and was somewhat amused at my excitability.

Of course that was really about it, a flash of purple armour and an expression of delight and not much else for quite a long period of time. I was focused on leveling WHM to 75, and this was back in the day before the update that turned a Dragoon from the laughing stock of melee to one of the best damage jobs in the game.

My first real encounter that sparked it all though, was from a player called Cuja. We used to hang out and chatter and such and he would spend a lot of time seeking and planning to take over the world with fish. I think watching him play, observing the innate grace of the job was the time I became totally smitten with Dragoons.

Then I sort of fell into endgame, with my first sky ls Equillibrium which led to Versus and that is probably where my obsession for the Dragoon job class started to manifest itself, long before Versus became known as a linkshell in its own right, even before people had any idea I might be the leader of said linkshell it was known as "That ls with all the dragoons in it" for I ran the sky ls to go to if you wanted to be involved in the action as a dragoon.

I would insist that any dragoon come in their full AF LoL it was fabulous, At one point I managed to have 5 dragoons and me all in 1 party at the same event all in their AF. It was so funny although perhaps I think my ls watched my giddy insanity with a sort of benevolent amusement at my antics.

Of course the inevitable step was taken and I embarked on leveling the job myself. It took me the better part of a year to get t to 75, struggling against the flow of opinion that Dragoon was a weaker class due to our inability to do any massive spike damage, Penta Thrust was our strongest weaponskill and that was so hideously unreliable you could range from 0 to 700 if you were lucky, but still we existed as a peculiar brotherhood of dogged persistance and resiliance. You instantly felt kinship with any other dragoon because they too understood the struggle against the tide of popular opinion.

Over the time you spend playing FFXI, you inevitably level more than 1 job to 75, and in the midst of all those jobs and classes you end up with just the one job that you really love, while the others are either retired as jobs you loathe, or used as practical jobs for the events and needs of the group. Thus it is for me, I love Dragoon, but I am mostly always to be found on bard or white mage simply because those are the classes I am required to use the most. I am hardly ever on ninja because there are plenty of career tanks in Versus that I am never needed as that job, and it is fun to play but not an all consuming passion for me like Dragoon.

I try to be economical with my gear, while I strive for the best, if I can do something just as efficiently in 1 piece of gear instead of 30 I will go for the former, I just don't have the inventory space to accomodate vast sweeping gear swaps even for the mere 4 jobs I have leveled currently. Dragoon is the exception, if there is something that only improves my dragoon by the smallest margins I want it, I pour all my time, energy and effort into making a well rounded job class that has everything and anything it needs to perform at the top of it's class.

Some of my upgrades may seem like a fools errand, but I am an extremely persistant person and once I set my mind on something I invariably get it if I want it badly enough.

I am starting to run out of gear improvements to get for my dragoon although I can still see a few places for improvement.

My set-ups for Dragoon -

TP
Weapon - Thalassocrat
Grip - Pole Grip
Ranged - Smart Grenade
Head - Walahra Turban
Neck - Love Torque
Ear1 - Brutal Earring
Ear2 - Assault Earring
Body - Ares's Cuirass
Hands - Homam Manopolas
Ring1 - Raja's Ring
Ring2 - Ulthalam's Ring
Back - Amemet Mantle +1
Waist - Swift Belt
Legs - Homam Cosciales
Feet - Homam Gambieras

Now, as much as I dislike the appearance of it, I think an Askar head would be better for me than the Turban, and at some point I really think I should get a Forager's Mantle instead of the Amemet I have been hanging on to for some time now. Other than that the most intrinsic change left for my TP gear (ignoring any future updates) is changing my Thalassocrat for Gungnir, but that will be something that is on going rather than immediate, short term I would like to switch it out for the Skyraider and the Supremacy Earring, but that swine of an Orc in La Vaule will not drop it.

Weapon Skill
Weapon - Thalassocrat
Grip - Pole Grip
Ranged - Smart Grenade
Head - Ares's Mask
Neck - Depending on WS Light Gorget or Darkness Gorget
Ear1 - Brutal Earring
Ear2 - Triumph Earring
Body- Ares's Cuirass
Hands - Ares's Gauntlets
Ring1 - Rajas' Ring
Ring2 - Flame Ring
Back - Amemet Mantle +1
Waist - Warwolf Belt
Legs - Ares's Flanchard
Feet - Ares's Sollerets

Now, WS gear becomes a much greater spot for flexibility, I COULD "improve" my gear to hecatomb, but to be honest, with all the benefits and bonuses I get from having a full Ares set, why would I? I much prefer my WS set up as it currently is, I don't really miss very much and I get some extremely satisfied with my damage output

Ok yes yes, Salvage isn't always the best test, but it is still authentic and a WHOLE lot of fun, you might as well say that Qutrub don't count because their DEF is so low. Anyway that's my arguement and I am sticking to it! /grin

When I do get to play Dragoon it is thrilling, I love it, it is so much fun, completely exhilarating. Everyone should level dragoon and stop pretending that they don't want to be part of the class of top dd's in the game!

Versus

2009-02-01T16:26:00.004Z

It is snowing. In Central London... /disgusted. Snowing!!

Yes yes, I realise the world thinks that we are a grey, cold and overcast country, but it isn't always the case, London is quite warm compared to the rest of the country and it rarely snows, even less likely for it to stick, and today it is doing BOTH!
HUMPH!

So an incident last night along with general rumminations have prompted me to do a post about my linkshell. The incident in question was an impromptu change in the schedule to do a Jailer of Love instead of a Kirin that I had hazily thrown out there. This caused a rather unexpected amount of resentment amongst the ls members who voiced complaints about the unnannounced change and bothered me enough that I did consider just throwing in the towel right there and then and just finishing all events for that day. But, I am stubborn and persistant and I have wanted to pit the ls against the new version of Love for a while, but it can be so incredibly hard to get everyone to show up at the same time, on time and I wasn't about to let this opportunity pass me by because of a few gripes over nonsense things.

As with most of these things, it is perhaps better to start at the beginning...

Versus is a sleeper ls, people know about it on the quiet. It isn't one that is trumpeted from the hills. We don't have the notoriety of Ressurection, we don't have the ground-breaking-headline-news-making fights of LimitBreak, and we don't have the dramafest of BBQ. Infact, I think our general reluctance to ever enter into the HNM fray; and fray is a very good word to sum up the poor attitudes and greed that tend to come with the highly competative HNM scene at end game, has meant that we generally tend to be under the radar when it comes to new people hunting around for an end game ls.

How we DO maintain our membership is through word of mouth. This is an extremely powerful tool in the Versus arsenal. Ex-members will constantly refer people to Versus if they are looking for that ls that isn't quite the points-driven environment of some of the other ls', and yes I appreciate that we have been used as a stepping stone more than I care to admit, we have a great core membership that are dedicated and loyal to the linkshell.

Time and time again, I have had people say the same thing to me or to my other members, that while they may have gone on to bigger and different things, nothing was ever quite like their time in Versus, love us or hate us there is something quite unique that we have managed to capture in the spirit of how the linkshell works.

Since we started around 5 years ago, we have had around 300 different people pass through our little community, all bringing their own interesting facet to the linkshell, some have polarised opinion, others have brought the linkshell to its knees but we always manage to get back up again and pull together through the leaner times till we are once again at the top of our game.

After casually talking to people about what they do end game wise in their ls, you never quite really comprehend how much we do as a team. We are constantly working together, getting under each others skin and heckling from this end of sea to that end of sky as we go along. As it stands at the moment, through the linkshell we offer Sky, Sea, Limbus, SCNM's, ZNM's, any forced spawn NM within reason, KS99 runs, Assaults, Einherjar and Salvage. All of these events across a 7 day spread, where we only really have no events scheduled on a Wednesday because most of us have Dynamis and Saturday because it is a PAIN to get ppl to show up to events on a Saturday, its the weekend and everyone wants to go hang out with the girlfriend or read Bible stories to their nan some such thing for those people who profess to have a real life LoL.

One of the great things about Versus is the sense of communal spirit, short of food, someone will shore you up, forget those silent oils, here have mine. There is no real resentment and no sense of permanent IOU's filling the spaces inbetween, we are simply working together for each other as well as to better our own interests.

I have noticed that you tend to get things done more efficiently when you are not just being completely self-indulgent about the matter in this game. Sure there are plenty of people who have come before who will use up and toss aside to gain something, but that is such a short-term temporary attitude. If every person in your linkshell didn't think about themselves but worked to further someone else's goals everyone would get what they wanted. Of course this is not Utopia, we have our disagreements and foilables but that is a natural state of existing in a unit, it would be somewhat unrealistic to assume otherwise.

I do find it hard at times running the ls, I am increasingly beginning to wonder if the more someone gets things from the ls as a whole, the more they begin to resent the fact that I do not facilitate the gaining of what ever it is that is left for them to obtain. Of course this is not strictly speaking true, I am not out to "get" anyone LoL, but I do have to maintain a balance and there are a lot of people now who only really need one or two items left from the ls before their store of goodies is complete as far as the ls can take them, attendance at that point becomes wholey for someone else. I think that lack of progress towards what you want can wear down your spirit and let those little niggly demons sneak in.

The BEST thing about the whole linkshell is the banter. I have said it before and for us it still stands true, if you aren't getting heckled, you most likely are not fitting in. We thrive on the double entendres, the play on words, the sly wit, the innuendo and the raucous humour that is rife in the linkshell. You need to come prepared to have a bit of fun and not get too uptight about our rather cavalier attitude. We are a flamboyant and funny group to be around and you really should never be above sending yourself up, it's all part of the fun.

If there has been one thing that has remained the same in the history of Versus it is our ability to be accomplished at what we do, but always with a light step and a smile while we do it. And that makes it worthwhile for all that hard work and effort.

In Demand

2009-01-31T15:35:00.003Z

There are days when you do nothing at all. Time trickles by a drop at a time and you find you've spent the entire day on your own, with barely a peep out of the ls. Invariably on those days you are sat wondering what to do barely able to motivate yourself at all to do anything even though you know there are about 10 different things you COULD be doing none stimulate you enough to actually make the effort and go out and do it.

Then there are those days where you just can't get a second at all to yourself. LoL not that this is a bad thing, but quite unexpected and a bit of a pain in the neck if you have set up to do something fairly complicated and inventory dependant, such as crafting.

Last Wednesday was one such day. Having nothing to do I had decided to embark on a bit of crafting, in my spare time between events I had accumulated 5 stacks of bone chips to turn into scorpion arrowheads, all I needed was the time, motivation and a lot of on-site crafting as scorpion claws do not stack.

I cleaned out all my inventory and wandered off to the Crawler's Nest as DRG/WHM. Iz and his friend even came out to help, I was there for all of 30mins before I got a /t from Samuraisoldier asking if I would be interested in doing a Nyzul Isle run floor 95-100. Pondering I was, SURE why not! Lets go. At that point he didn't have the 6 people required for the run, so I thought cool, I can stick around and do more crafting. Nooooo.

3mins after the /t from Sam, I get a /t from Coejus saying would I be interested in a quick BC fight. Considering I thought it would take a little while for Sam to get the 6 people together for Nyzul I agreed, only to slope back to town and empty my inventory from crafting. So much for THAT idea! LOL

One quick Superman style change and voila! I am WHM.

1 hour later, voila BRD for Nyzul.

3 full job changes in less than 2 hours. It's exhausting! The more jobs you have at lvl 75 the worse your congestion in your storage spaces becomes. I am maxed out in my moghouse, my mogstorage, my moglocker and my gobbie bag. I don't even comprehend those who haven't upgraded their gobbie bag to 70. It would drive me insane. I am struggling as it is currently and I only have about 9 slots free!

Quotes out of Context - 6 & 7
These two compliment each other so well I just couldn't bring myself to separate them, I am so bad. Teeheehee. Of course, in keeping with the theme of being out of context they are not related AT all.

But I digress! LoL
Back to the matter at hand. Zipping off the the bc which I found to be The Buried God out in Beadeaux_S, I thought it would be a breeze. Error, Error! Never ever assume anything will be quick in Final Fantasy unless it's your death, in which case it will come far swifter than you desire.

I felt terribly embarassed that I held up the Nyzul group for an entire hour doing this bc with Coejus! Of course, I have to turn down Coejus for a lot of things when he asks, either the timing is just not right or I am knee deep at events. This is one of the few times I could say yes and so I did.

This is Coejus! His hobbies are hat collecting and sitting in people's laps. He is a really really cool guy, although beware his mewp mewps !! They are addictive and will ensnare you in their cuteness before you are aware of it. His tarutaru-ness will inviegle it's way into your concious mind and you will be forever addicted.

As a side note, I have to say going in the past is one of the few times I enjoy taking Chocobos. They are not expensive and very easy to obtain with Allied notes which are equally easy to earn. Plus! They look SUPER cool!

This Past SCNM fight is not one I have done before, I was quite pleased to be experiencing it first hand I thought it would be great to get some relevant action experience for when I took Versus to do the fight.

It is a very small BC zone, with a super shiny Quadav, and his 4 minions 2 BLM and 2 WHM. The set up was predominatenly mages, with SMN, RNG and BLM being the main damage dealers, a BARD, SCH and WHM as the main healers, 2 PLD and I think maybe 2 DD? I can't remember, I remember Coejus being there SAM lol as he had to peel an imp off me as we were huddling against the corroded gate.

It is extremely easy to kite the main NM in this fight around a small patch of wall at the top and on the left of the bc area, while everyone else takes out the Quadavs in Supertank mode. Meaning you have your PLD aggro everything and kill things one at a time while they all beat on him, it really was not hard to keep Aable alive and once they were dead even the main NM wasn't hard as a straight tank fight.

Hate was re-established pretty quickly after each reset and it was just whittled down until death. As it appears with all these fights, once the "aura" of each NM vanishes, they actually become very easy. The auras are often incredibly debilitating, gravity from the Yagudo, slow from the Quadav and flash from the Orc, along with a huge boost to its defense.

Most of the fights seem to be endurance and survivability until you can get rid of the aura then bring out the big guns and mow down the mob before it reapplies its aura.

This was a very successful run with the silly hat and the GA dropping. Some very satisfied customers left LOL and I got a new snazzy title to boot. I can't wait to do this with Versus, I think we should be able to handle it quite easily.

Controversial Conflictions

2009-01-23T17:06:00.007Z

Quotes out of Context - 4

My journey to work in the mornings is fairly simple. Considering my habits in game, my work life is really compatabile with my virtual existance on EST instead of GMT. I set off around 11:30am, and work till 9pm, get home and log on, it works out brilliantly.

Today was one of those days that just makes me roll my eyes. This is pretty indicitive of every single weekend I work at the moment (and I work all of them), it drives me insane, so finding it happening on weekdays is less than thrilling.

I have to take 2 trains to get to work most of the time. An overland train from The Back of Beyond to The Outskirts of Civilization, and then I switch to the Underground to get into central London and into work. All in all takes about 45mins if the trains are being kind. Today I reached the change in my journey only to find that "The Jubilee line has been suspended between Waterloo and Finchley Road" apparently due to a power failure at Green Park. Much grumbling ensued, LoL fortunately it is very easy to correct my journey at that point, and I just hopped on the District line for two changes to the same destination.

While waiting for the train, an announcement boomed over the tannoy explaining that the line had been suspended due to... a signal failure. Ok. Story has changed again.

Board the train, and get yet a different reason "A serious passenger incident". So three different reasons as to why the line is closed and there are delays, possibly correlated, possibly not. Who knows which is the truth and what the bigger picture is here, all we are getting is a series of confusing and potentially conflicting dribbles of information that affect your journey.

I am sure after regailing you with the facinating tribulations of trying to get into work, you are starting to wonder, umm.. whats the point? HA there is a point, it's sharp and stabbity and finely honed.

Well, maybe not! But I can relate it to the furore that has been going on in game over the weekend. I am speaking of course about the rather direct action taken by SE over the now infamous "duping" ploy in certain end game bc's.

For the uninitiated, although honestly I don't know why now considering how much gossip there has been on the topic, the duping ploy was a method of duplicated ANY drop, be it a humble water crystal or a piece of 35 gear from Salvage. The three zones affected were Salvage, Nyzul and the Sandworm bc's. Through a rather complicated system of disbanding and reforming the parties you could trick the game mechanics into replicating gear, cells and treasure drops which has been monopolised by the end game community under a veil of secrecy so that SE wouldn't find out and fix it.

Well, I say a veil of secrecy, it had purportedly been reported to SE, but I am sure it was one of those "yeah, there's this.. thing.. that's wrong with the thing" kind of reports, where you aren't entirely sure. If you have ever worked in IT you know exactly what I am talking about. Those calls that you dread where someone calls and is as generic as possible for a problem that could be 1,001 things, and you end those conversations with an irrational desire to poke the eyes out of kittens.

So, operating under some supercilious moral imperative that "if you know then you should do, and if you don't then you obviously aren't deserving" whether through a desire to just fast-track getting gear or in an effort to gain a large amount of money, many end-game players used this kink in the programming to their own benefit.

Now a lot of the furore over this has been particularly virilent. We have the Holier-than-thou crowd that you would usually associate with religious santimony, who are quite happy to crow and laugh as the mighty are felled by SE for cheating. Then on the other side you have those who got caught and burned decrying SE for being poor programmers, opening loopholes that obviously should be exploited if they are there and it wasn't my fault, it was their's for not forseeing this kind of attitude. Personally I think both are as bad as each other, there are no black and whites in situations like this.

SE seem to have been fairly indescriminate in their bans, selecting those who they can dicernably recognize as exploiting the loophole and then assigning a punishment dictated by what ever arbitary conditions they have set amongst themselves.

Yes as a community this is shocking, but one can't help but feel that is the point. If you are going for a particular aim, you start with an object lesson and let the fear from that become a forerunner for you, enabling you to exploit that. In the case of SE, this is a very direct object lesson on cheating. These are not RMT, they are the people you know day in day out, they come to your events, you talk to them, you heckle them at the AH. They are your friends and fellow adventerers and now they are gone.

Now, my feelings tend to be, if you cheated you shouldn't be surprised if this happens, but it is such a grey area, complicated by the fact that 2 people who I think the world of got caught up in it for experimenting with the glitch on a water crystal. They didn't get permanent bans, but they did get a 3 day suspension for it which was upsetting.

I can rationalise why it happened, but I don't have to like it, I also don't think that SE are unjustified in their actions on this matter, this was a fairly clear cut case of the players exploiting a glitch that is inevitable in a programming project on the scale of an MMO, in a way that was unfair and exploitary rather than coming clean about it.

It is all about how much information you know about something, it alters your perspective every time. It changes how you think, feel and react to a situation. London Underground have a passenger charter that states if your journey is delayed for 60mins or more, you are entitled to a refund for your trip. A passenger incident is outside their domain of control and therefore null and voids that agreement, but a signal failure is entirely their own fault.

Shifting the blame after getting caught is a childish response, over reactions are inevitable but just as despicable in either extremes, gloating over someone losing their access to FFXI is not funny even if what they did was wrong, and for those who wish to say "It's SE's fault for not making it me proof", grow up.

On to brighter things!

Ring and Iz have been leveling their Black Mages together, kind of. LoL, it seems a more comical affair rather than any really productive leveling effort, whereby they have come together maybe twice that I can think of to gain meaningful exp, rather than just death or disaster in one form or another. It is quite entertaining.

I was invited along, but honestly, I don't really want to level BLM right now, I am quite happy to leave it at lvl 40 for the time being. I could have gone along as RDM, and up till level 40 I did tag along on one of their runs, but again by the time I hit 40 any urge to level RDM had somewhat dwindled and I was back to wondering whether I should save up for the next stage in Gungnir, my Marduk imperial wootz ingots finally, or could I possibly entertain the notion of leveling another job.

Running around farming on my various jobs, which I do quite a lot, I was struck by the ridiculousness of not having THF to do this on. To all accounts and purposes it would be certainly more productive of my time BUT and this was a fairly big stumble in my thinking, I didn't enjoy leveling thief. I got it to lvl 15 under duress simply because I had decided I needed some form of TH in my farming, but I left it there 50exp from lvl 16 quite happy to abandon t he job.

So it is with some puzzlement that I have taken it up again. LoL and am kind of surprised to find that I am enjoying it as well. I don't know why, logically nothing has changed, just my attitude and I again, don't know why. It isn't like I have had an ephiphany of understanding or any dawning of great wisdom. Most peculiar.

I am lvl 26 now, lol I have been running around with ThazCat in various zones and a variety of jobs for Kitty level syncing down to my level. We tried out Fields of Valour, a first for Thazienne and a fantastic way to level up if you can spend the time and effort getting a page.

LoL we have had somewhat mixed results, the chests proving a deadly temptation as I failed to notice Thaz dying as I lay entranced by the appearance of a brown casket OOPS. Heheh. Although generally it has been quite successful and a LOT of fun in the process it is slower than some of the jobs I have leveled, and I do spend a great deal of my time soloing on the job more than being in a party.

Balance

2009-01-17T18:14:00.004Z

A lot of the arguements and conversations that go on over at the BG forums seem to revolve around a cyclic repetition of "you are wrong, I am right" that sucks the intelligence out of you just for reading it, never mind engaging it.

Some people just will not be told, regardless of how right or wrong they are there is nothing else but their opinion and there is no room at all in their way of thinking for anything else at all.

I find these kinds of people extremely frustrating to deal with. Although I also know better than to try and argue with them as well, you might as well be dripping water from a pipette to put out a furnace than explain rational and reasoned thinking to these types of people. The former would be far more productive.

Now, I can understand the notion of doing something one way because you know it works. Experimentation is a difficult thing to know when to do and when to play it safe, as an Ls Leader my own whims suddenly become subject to the fact that I am also responsible for everyone else as well. Questions need to be addressed before you just plunge in. Can we do it, do we have the man-power, or the technical skills to pull this off, can we afford the exp loss, is it worth our time.

I tend to err on the side of caution a lot of the times because I am not just toying with my own exp and time, but everyone elses as well, which means that when it comes to the linkshell, I will be more conservative MOST of the time. I have been know to throw caution to the wind and just trust in blind faith that the ls can carry it through. Winging it like that is so exciting, the ls pulls together because you have the trust that they will unite behind you and achieve the goals you have set out.

Now we have been doing End Game for a long time, the same fights over and over in the same way pretty much with some tweaks here and there. When we first started I was 1 WHM and we had PLD/WAR on Byakko. Now its PLD/NIN and NIN/DRK and far more cure back up, lol I wouldn't ever want to put that much stress on 1 mage for a fight like that, I know it was mind numbing when I did it, but it DOES hone your skills.

MP Conservation, timing and judgement brought together to win. It is when you start becoming blase and casual about things that you lose, when you really really REALLY shouldn't be doing. There is little excuse for people these days to fail fights against certain end game mobs, it isn't hard to research out the basics of the fight, and while nothing can beat raw experience you should be able to adapt fast enough to a changing battlefield to cope with the quirks of a fight that you never read about.

You do need a strong leader for that, it is too easy to lose a fight with 20 voices all chiming in contradictory information turning your ls into a Push-me-pull-you that unravels at the seams and you are suddenly all dead and your WHM is having to home-point to come raise everyone.

There is more to running a linkshell than just throwing your members at a mob, it is a multi-faceted role that requires you to be patient, durable and innovative. It also requires you to be a rock regardless of the turn of events. You are in a position where people will hate you and idolise you. Neither of which are an easy mantle to wear both as damaging and open to chiping away at your humanity to make you vulnerable and bring you low.

MMMmmmmmm

2009-01-07T19:13:00.011Z

So, today is only going to be all about the Moblin Maze Mongers which I had a chance to (very briefly) try out at Fan Fest '08, and slightly more time to try out in game now they have finally gotten over most of the speed bumps that let players use it with any degree of regularity.

BUT, before I digress! Since I have two for you today, I am going to start with this beauty!

Quotes out of Context - 02

OK, now that is out of the way *grin* (Q manages to provide both of the quotes for today LoL)

On to the MMMmmmmmm's. So! Moblin Maze Mongers. New ingame event introduced by SE to tantalise our tastebuds. The trial of it at the Fan Fest was lukewarm at best. About 5mins of effort for a bit of a confusion with a weird selection of jobs to achive the target, which was to kill 1 nm.

The live demonstration was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. First off it broke when they were trying to zone in, so it took about 15mins of surreptitious fiddling to finally get into the maze, with a fantastic "The hand of darkness is preventing you from entering" which sadly they have lost for the general release.

Then the PLD they had walking around doing the demonstration took on a triffid and got flattened, so they got to talk about the remainder of the demonstration with a dead hume in the foreground. LOL a resounding success.

So after that rather limp introduction, my enthusiasm for it was also equally limp. But, as is inevitable with these new additions to the game, someone in the Hive wants to try it out, and I get roped in along the way LOL! Not entirely unreluctantly I have to add ^.^

If you have never started it before you have to go have a natter with 2 goblins in Muckvitz's Junk Shop in Lower Jeuno. Goldagrik and his/her/it's companion Chatnachoq. Goldagrik will provide you with your first maze pouch, and a few basic runes to kick things off with and have a little bit of a play with which SE have had the blessed intelligence to make a key item and NOT something hogging even more space in your inventory.

Having used your precious items and stashed them in your key item pouch, you are just left with the Maze Tabular, which is your building board for creating your maze. As it currently stands there are only 3 voucher types. These dictate the specific goals of your maze, 01 being OBLITERATE ALL to win, 04 is a synthesis run and 07 is an NM run. The numbering suggests there is plenty of room for SE to add a variety of different objectives and goals to the mazes if they want to. After selecting the goal of your maze, you move onto what is IN your maze and this is where the runes come into play. There are 100's of these as far as I can tell, as drops from the chest at the end, or purchasable from Chatnachoq for marbles gained from completing your objectives, like a finite game of tetris you can squash as many or as few of these runes into your tabular as you can squeeeze onto the board to make your maze like a walk in West Ronfaure or an attempt to solo Einherjar Tier III as a lvl 10 THF.

After you have spent 10mins going... "But how do I rotate the pieces?" you can take your completed tabular to the pothole that serves as the Moblin Maze shopfront bizzarely set in the floor of the chocobo stables in Lower Jeuno. First thing that struck me when they announced this was, "wait.. this is .. a tunnel, underground... and under Lower Jeuno is definately Port Jeuno.. so where is this tunnel leading to?" Followed rapidly by the realisation that while other servers may not be particularly busy, Odin has a thriving populous and so the lag in doing anything around this one single target is going to be horrendous.

I am not wrong. You have to spam trade your item to the pothole constantly to get anywhere, and you get tantalised with it negotiating only to find out someone was half a second faster and beat you to it. Since it is a very slow loading time it is kind of frustrating and you do tend to stand around for 10mins twiddling your thumbs while the party leader attempts to get you in.

Once in, your timer starts immediately, you have the chance to fiddle around in a rather pleasant open grotto airly lit and actually rather idyllic in tone. In one corner lurks the moblins who will take you into the maze or sell you temporary items.

It is worth remembering that you only have 30mins to complete the objectives in here just like with Nyzul, and equally just like with Nyzul it is prudent to get your items and get started without gawping too much at the pretty scenery or you are likely to run out of time and fail your objective, particularly with some of the harder settings for the maze.

Even with 6 people it can be quite a challenge on the harder settings. We did a few on the basic settings killing T mobs for about 30exp. They seem squishier than regular mobs to be honest, except the elementals who seem infinately more resiliant. I have not seen how they fare versus magic damage though so I don't have a definitive opinion on this. But just from watching them take down Manticore and greater birds, it is easy to see that these usually high HP mob types were taken down a lot easier than you would have expected for something of the equivalent difficulty outside of the maze. I did win a rune that made everything in the zone IT to the party, and we tried that out. The mobs were considerably harder and we did end up running out of time.

So after getting buffed up and ready to go in, you visit this chap who sends you deeper into the maze and you can begin to wander around. It's the same well lit, airy open cave type inside the maze, and lets be clear here. Maze is a VERY loose term for this. LoL it's not a maze in the traditional "hedge maze" sense with winding paths and booby traps and dead ends, false corners and changing walls.

LoL, I only remembered to take a SS of the first map, but this is what the zone looks like in the first arc.

It is just an inside zone with a series of challenges to overcome peppered with mobs along the way. There is a LOT of space inside between the mobs, I have to say I thought when I watched the demo at fan fest the zone looked different to what I remember seeing in the maze. So possibly there will be different zones coming up? But for now it seems to be the same map and area. There is a passage to a second map on the far East side in the little wriggle that looks like a colon, but that is just a large circular room filled with even more mobs.

If you do get elementals, it will be the elemental corresponding to the day you went into the maze, but it is not always guaranteed you will get them, it can be just two mob types as well. Since we weren't specifying what exactly we wanted in the maze I presume you just have a preset basic list that the maze can generate from. It is MUCH easier when you don't get elementals LOL I have to add.

I love how everything is called the same in this particular tab, we only did the kill everything in your path setup, which is full of "Maze Lurkers" which is the default name of any mob you get in the zone. Lurking with INTENT! *giggle*

INTERMISSION!
*elevator music*

Quotes Out of Context - 03

Q on top form in the last few days *chuckle*

One of the grand delights of doing events is hanging around with your friends, having a laugh (usually at someone else's expense, we heckle a LOT in Versus, if you aren't getting heckled it is more than likely you are not fitting in) as well as doing our events. Events have just started up again in Versus, as I gave the ls 2 weeks off over Christmas.

Now, I know this is a bit unusual, most ls' don't suspend their events or give their members "half-terms" or "ls holidays". But I think it is a productive incentive. It keeps people interested and eager to come to events, you don't feel beaten down because you get a refresher every now and then, and remember how much you enjoy doing events lol and it lets me do something else OTHER than events.

I love hanging out with my ls! It is SO much fun. Hilarity ensues with great regularity, particularly if you happen to send a classic mis-tell to party chat in the middle of Limbus /grin!

Quotes out of Context

2008-12-31T13:42:00.006Z

So, I finally join the ranks of those who have aquired the Tidal Talisman and its in-game counterpart. A very sweet present from Mr. Ringthree /big grin. SE said they intentionally designed the in-game item to look dowdy and a bit plain, non-descript if you will. Certainly the colour scheme lends itself to that with the soft browns and simple edges, however they have released screenshots of other pieces of gear with the same model but different skins looking far more ornate and interesting.

It is a bit of a strange item to be honest, you can't get away from the fact that it IS a gimick to sell on the necklace that comes with it, it's still cool though. LOL, or mayhap I am just easily amused, it is handy as a quick hop to Jeuno if you are in a hurry, every 2 days or something like which is the recharge on it. Sometimes you wish these use once a day items actually had some realistic reuse schedule like once a day. That would be practical. Every 24hours. Not every 64hours. How many times have you only needed to go to Jeuno once every 40hours when exping around lvl 25-40.

Since I am leveling DNC at the moment I fully know what it is like zooming back and forth between Jeuno and my home point in Windurst, yes yes, I know, I could set my home point in Jeuno for the duration of my time leveling DNC to 40, but UGH. Jeuno might once have been the hub of all activity, but the introduction of Whitegate put paid to that and now Jeuno is no longer the most accessible place.

Sure you can warp to it from Whitegate, at a cost. True if you regularly exp 1 silver imperial piece isn't much and you can always take your chances with the random warp taru and his lottery landings outside Jeuno but you have to airship in to anywhere else and while the airship only lasts 3mins if you miss it it is 11mins for another to show up, which is a substantial amount of time sat around twiddling your thumbs gazing into the waters of Jeuno and wondering if they have flotsam issues.

I love being in Windurst, 300g to Whitegate, OP warps right outside the moghouse (finally! That jog was a pain in the neck previously) Convenient access to the maws if it is needed, the only convoluted path is Jeuno. But it is still more of a point from where I can get everywhere quickly than Jeuno. The biggest problem with Jeuno is that there is no Wildcat warp to Whitegate. Now before you all get up in arms, yes I know, SE have finally said they are going to implement the Lure Of The Wildcat warp from Jeuno in an upcomming update, so we might see yet another shift in the population base back to Jeuno. Me? I will still be living in Windurst, with the convenience of access to my moglocker, mog house AND most importantly my mog locker.

What I do find interesting about this body piece is that it finally has a bit of flashy interface, around the actual talisman itself more associative with the furnishings in your moghouse than your gear. Not only does it have the glint on the neckpiece itself, but the graphic for it in your inventory is an icon of the pendant, not a body shaped icon as you would expect which took me by surprise. Possibly as a way to be distinctive in its means and intent to be not really something that serious, more a bit of frivolity or should we go more rampantly speculative and possibly go with the idea that it is a test, a trial to see exactly how such enhancements work within the game, if it does cause any additional graphical lag and such as a possibility towards more gear coming out with similar kinds of enhancements.

Hellzfury, Dragoon extraordinnaire, short-ass hume and all round goblinhumper brought a bunch of his friends from real life into the Hive (CoveredInBees) right about the time his participation in the game began to wane due to the constricts of real life (booo). Ehrii, Raider, Majorshoes and a few others have been getting to grips with life in FFXI and all the fun of leveling your first job to 75.

Most of them are now at the same point in their game career where certain progression hurdles must be overcome such as the genkai quests and most importantly, your AF fights. We have been running around in dribs and drabs getting coffer keys, hunting down the chests and blobbing nm's for the various pieces they all need over the last few days. I have to say I am LOVING the new respawns on coffers for AF. We had the unfortunate instance to have a chest snaked from us by a rather enterprising Taru right after Raider died to a horde of orcs and we were waiting for her to unweaken so she could pop it.

With the new improved coffer respawn only being 5mins for AF and maps (I have never actually seen how it works on gil and items, I am presuming some kind of character block that prevents you from opening any more coffers for 30mins?) it wasn't long before it recharged and we could finish up in Davoi scurrying away with our loot of 2 coffer keys, 2 bits of AF and the PLD AF mobs defeated.

This guy is WAY easier to kill in the present than in Campaign! LOL.

Finally, I have decided to install a new and ongoing bit of fun into my blog. Quotes taken out of context, delightfully wicked soundbites that in the shape and form of whatever it was we were doing at the time made perfect sense, but taken outside their original intent and just randomly thrown out into the wider world you suddenly get some delightfully entertaining or just plain bizzare moments to play with.

Quotes Out Of Context - 01

Obligation

2008-12-24T18:01:00.006Z

How far is our obligation to others in FFXI?

This is not an unsusual or poor question to ask, after all we are part of a larger community here, this is not World of Warcraft. Final Fantasy has elements that allow the player to progress on their own, even Beastmaster is a job that encourages you to level by your own. It is just that the emphasis is primarily on team work.

How hard is it to work together, communication is vital as well as being willing to pull your own weight. It is facinating watching large scale events, they quite often can be less effective and more chaotic than small scale events where you can't hide your laziness in the group. The need to pull your own weight rather than slack off and expect someone else to do it is much more immediate.

Also I believe a certain level of responsibility comes with your job. You don't level a WHM to be a damage dealer, or a DRG to be the healer of your party. The odd varitations come more into play if you are doing something solo, such as campaign, random bc's or some such other activity in which a more esoteric combination is not really an issue.

Ok admittedly it doesn't hurt to play with conventional wisdom, if we hadn't done that we would never have ended up with NIN/DRK and PLD/RDM. BUT! That doesn't mean that all weird combinations work! You don't show up to events as WHM/WAR there is no point, similarly you won't show up to an exp party as DRK/BLM, its just not relevant to the situation. There is no real application for it.

All this rambling does have a point, inevitably I do get there. I was in an exp party, nothing wrong with that other than its randomness as I did get a blind invite from the COR while lurking in Jeuno as DRG/WHM. LOL trust me, that really doesn't happen that often. I am almost always BRD or WHM in parties so the rare opportunities I get to do something on DRG other than farming I seize (This does not mean that going melee to Einherjar is any less crappy, I need 1 med. that I carry with myself anyway on mage jobs, and about 7 different things on a melee job to be considered well prepared BLEH)

So, blind invite whoohoo, from a corsair, with 2 bards, and a red mage, sooo I was wondering a little here, we seem kind of heavy on the support jobs, but corsair is a decent enough ranger type of job and we ARE going to birds, so ok ok pretty good and I had them scoop up Ringthree on SAM for our final job. You can tell this isn't going to be pretty can't you.

On paper, this looks like a sexy setup, ok you only have 2 dd to do the primary damage BUT, those two dd are a samurai and a dragoon who love playing their jobs and so strive to be efficient and excel at what they bring to the party. Then we had 1 bard who came /whm, another who came /sch. Now admittedly there was a mix-up and they didn't realise that there were 2 bard in the party but it did make pulling very hard work as they were constantly getting slept. A red mage and the corsair came /war.

Ok, slightly peculiar but hey we can swing with it, I've been in odd setups before and they have surprisingly worked. The two buffs the corsair decided to give us were a ranged acc roll, ooookay.... and chaos roll. Fair enough. NEVER cast any rolls on the mages the entire party. Far too preoccupied with how much damage they could do against a Dragoon and a Samurai.

Now, when you know a party is being parsed, you cheat. Hedge the bets so you can stack them in your favour, it is not unexpected. This person, who I don't really want to name, was OUTrageous in their cheating. Using food, but making sure they never pulled hate by only using weapon skills at 5%. Since ranger weaponskills are 1 hit, you get a huge spike damage to assist you on the parser and the kill shot. Now you could call this just general grumbliness on the part of being a dragoon. I am not about to use wheeling thrust in exp, and all my other weaponskills are multi-hit, so if I ws at the end of a fight, I am always going to lose out on damage on a parser, showing up an inherant flaw in these devices. But it is a bit of fun and gives you more a representation of average damage rather than perfect damage. However, I am not the only job with strong end game weaponskills that are multi-hit. ^.^ Haha!

The rolls they cast were beneficial only to themselves really, and not really anyone else in the party, sure they gave us chaos roll, but they didn't bother with anything for the struggling RDM, who was patently not used to this kind of mass carnage exp party. When asked about it, their only response was "What's the point when it isn't needed?"

Indeed what is the point, it WAS necessary and at what point were we just there for them to come 3rd in the parser and try and out damage 2 seasoned melee jobs for the sake of saying "Oh I play corsair different from everyone else". There was no sense of team spirit or co-opreation and while we were making decent exp, it really wasnt a fun party. Just kind of sad that you knew not everyone in the party was pulling together to make it amazing.

So at what point should we be thinking about the other people we are working with as well as our own goals?

Knee-Jerk Reactions

2008-12-21T15:10:00.003Z

How do we contain ourselves to not have a knee-jerk reaction? Is it even possible or is it something so basic in human emotion, a primal and uncontrolled need for the first initial reaction to be over the top, angry, emotive and completely irrational. Heavens forbid that we might apply some common sense to a situation when it threatens us, why would we want to do anything so foolish.

Square Enix has announced that they are closing down the World Transfer service to Odin. This is due to chronic overcrowding finally reaching a point where it is affecting the service and performance of the server.

This isn't an unknown problem, SE have said before I think about a year ago, that Odin was overcrowded. They didn't seem to take steps to do much about this at the time, applications for transfer to the server remained open despite it already being a snug fit. Now we are at a point where we are at over capacity.

Not only are they shutting off the applications to Odin, but they are re-offering to transfer people from Odin over to other servers for free. Perhaps you are tired of the constant competition for everything on Odin, or have basically burned every bridge you had in the community and want to start afresh, what ever your motivations people do transfer servers. Some find it much more beneficial and possibly good to get out of the previous environment others just fold up their bags and quit.

This move does seem a shade peculiar to be honest, they have just offered it and now they are offering it again almost immediately after. Essentially it is an extension of the transfer service in a desperate gamble to thin down the ranks accompanied by a strong-arm hussle that if it doesn't work they will consider other options including but not exclusively, physically splitting the server into 2 or forcing people to transfer to different worlds.

I can understand the need to deal with the over crowding, but considering this isn't exactly a new problem, definately an issue acerbated by SE's own inability to deal with the situation in a timely manner, I do think that threatening Odin's player base seems a little over the top.

The response from the other servers player base on the forums smacks more of smirking gloating more than anything. As if to crow how low the mighty have fallen. They wouldn't be so jumped up to offer comment if it was happening to their server, considering the peculiar nature of how much Odin intermingles within it's linkshells rather than being xenophobic. I can't imagine being forced to move somewhere else or having my friends moved away or split up.

It would be devastating to my linkshells and the sense of community and family that we have worked so hard to build up. It is a rare feeling to be a part of and I know how unique it really can be, how hard it is to achieve without the usual backbiting and general nastiness that surrounds end game linkshells.

I already know of people, people who I would be devastated to lose, talking about quitting if SE did actually act out on its threats to do such a thing. It would definately feel like a punishment. I don't know if I would quit over it but I don't know that I would be happy with it, I wouldn't want to play as much for a good while. I have spent such a long time where I am, I don't think it is an entrenched view of inflexiblity or an opposition to change. You don't just throw away your friends on a whim.

The thing is, the situation would have to be completely unsalvageable before I could ever see SE taking such drastic steps. While they aren't afraid of the unpopular decision, this is a shade beyond that. It would be a huge undertaking and affect a lot of people. The reaction of some of the longer members of Odin are base and disappointing, the suggestion we should just kick off server transfers and other such people is pandering to the lowest common denominator in intelligence.

All I can say to those people is grow up. You don't immediately single out a group of people as a target to blame because things aren't going your way, nor should anyone looking in condemn us for not all transfering off Odin enmass just to fix the problem. It wasn't a problem of our creating, merely one of circumstance and lack of reaction.

*sigh*

Community Whinging

2008-12-20T16:06:00.010Z

What is wrong with the Final Fantasy Community? Maybe it is just the need to complain or the mistaken belief that you have some divine right to have the universe revolve around you and the overinflated ego you carry around with you but there are times I really don't understand the reactions of the online contingency. Specifically those who post on the forums.

Such a vile and vituperative outpouring of reaction regarding the effect of the Mythic weapons, the fixing of the Salvage glitches, general tweakings of the game, updates, content. It never ceases to amaze me just how indignantly unjustified people can be when SE start twiddling with the game.

I am not sitting on a high horse here, changes implemented by SE have had devastating effects on my linkshell. The adjustments to zone aggro let the RMT into sky and their domination of Ullikummi virtually destroyed my ls till they "fixed" it with the (ultimately) diorite solution. I do not however, sit there white knuckled and pale-faced plotting the downfall of SE (an entity) or any of the designers who work tirelessly on the game. It all strikes me as a knee-jerk reaction whereby a temper tantrum gets thrown and all the toys get thrown out of the pram.

All this speculation specifically arises from our very first completed Mythic weapon by an NA gentleman who goes by the name Jackyl from Garuda. Who has successfully completed the Burtgang sword for PLD. He started a thread on the Blue Garter forums showing his preliminary testing results from the weapon and its Aftermath effects.

Burtgang
DMG: 46 Delay: 265 Enmity +10
Physical damage taken -10%
Reduces Enmity decrease when
taking Physical damage. "Atonement"
Aftermath: Increases Acc/Atk.
Occasionally attacks twice
Lv. 75 PLD

Now, just taking a look at the basic weapon ignoring any of the aftermath effects, it looks like a good weapon for a Paladin. It could potentially replace the Earth Staff for damage reduction if you were keen on a sword and shield build, it could easily replace the Macuahuitl +1 (and look better unless running around wearing a rusted chainsaw blade appeals to you) with much better enmity and enmity effects. It has a high base damage, for all you meleeing, non-tanking, damage dealing Paladins out there (You know who you are!).

It's the aftermath effects that everyone is mainly interested in though. Jackyl does detail it out in his post, but just as a recap.

The Aftermath effect lasts 60/90/120 seconds for Lv. 1/2/3 respectively.

Level 1 (100% TP) is an acccuracy bonus.

Level 2 (200% TP) is an attack bonus.

Level 3 (300% TP) is a double attack bonus.

The bonus for each level is unique and does not stack or combine.

You can progress from Lv. 1 to Lv. 2 and from Lv2. to Lv. 3 by using the Mythic weapon skill with enough TP for the next level. (100% TP> Aftermath 1>200% TP>Aftermath 2>300% TP>Aftermath 3)

You can refresh/overwrite the Lv. 1 Aftermath but you cannot do the same with Lv. 2 or Lv. 3.

Weapon Skill Damage remains the same.

In this particular case, the Paladin is using Atonement so the damage is based off his enmity levels and not the usual modifiers. This is never going to be a perfect or definitive test for anything OTHER than the weapon in question, the Burtgang. Complaining about how it will affect any other weapon other than in the most basic of fashion (such as how long the effects last and at what levels they kick in) seems nothing more than an excercise in bitter futility.

Personally, I rather like the whole concept. SE have always maintained the position that they were not going to make the Mythic weapons any stronger than the Relic ones, as well as hinting at the prospect of going back and tweaking the Relic weapons to improve the performance (Go go taking the AGI modifier off Gungnir please! It really doesn't make any sense...) This definately confirms that position and gives you a weapon with some interesting effects.

To sit and complain that it doesn't do all three at the same time just seems more than a little ridiculous, SE are not about to go around destroying the balance of the game that they spend a long time trying to maintain. This is an inventive and refreshing take on a system that has been the same since they started doing this many moons ago.

In the spirit of good will, Versus has in the past helped out other linkshells or players who don't have the man power or an end game ls to achieve what they need to do end game. Ranging from doing Optical Hat runs for people to lending out our man power for Omega runs. It isn't loaded with provisos. Generally I am willing to do it if we know the person well and they don't have an end game linkshell, I don't demand they join Versus not everyone wants to get into the whole cycle of doing things at end game.

The deal I have with Omega runs is slightly different but only because I do ask my members to pay to get into the fight, we have in the past just gone out to help other linkshells such as BrandNameClamato who needed the extra bodies just to defeat the robot. I like the spirit of co-operation and communication. In this instance I set up a deal with Celestria from Rakuen. They frequently do low man Apollyon runs for chips and af crafting materials and by low man I mean looooow. Unfortunately that means you can collect chips but with all the will in the world you probably aren't going to kill Omega with the 2 of you. Has Avesta even tried? LoL

Through random chatting, we agreed to a mutually beneficial setup between Rakuen and Versus. We pop their Omega sets, they get a priority on 1 piece of their choice and a 50/50 random on the body with a member of my ls IF it drops (and that is a big if). Plus a random on the extra chips that drop against myself. We get the rest of the drops to share out in the ls. It has worked out pretty well so far, although Blaize definately had more luck with his choices of drops than Celestria has so far sadly but we will keep trying till they drop for her.

Omega is definately one of those fights that people can be entirely too casual about. When done well it is extremely easy, if you are sloppy it will destroy you. People take certain content for granted because it has been around for such a long time, relatively speaking. "Oh it is only Omega, it's CoP, pfft" It is interesting to watch such dismissive attitudes. It MIGHT be older content, but it doesn't stop the gear being heavily used still by the jobs that can wear it. Byakko is positively ancient and people still want the haidate because there is so little to replace it, even Usukane isn't always a better upgrade depending on the job or gear combination.

It also doesn't change the fact that being old doesn't always mean it is just easy or should be dismissed. There may be more complex fights, different challenges and new ways to deal with the newer content in the game, however if you don't go into some of these older fights with a bit of respect and attention you are going to get your rear severely spanked. Everyone knowing how to kill something doesn't always equal everyone being able to kill something. Skill is not the same as knowledge, it is the application of knowledge to an effective end.

I still love the design of this creature. He is such fun to look at, Ultima is much uglier and skeletal, Omega seems so much more graceful and elegant in my mind less a blunt instrument and more a finely crafted machine of death and destruction. This fight was a little rough to start with but we were working with a few unfamiliar members to our ls so you have to allow a bit of leeway for adjustments and things settled down quickly enough.

While things were not working out well for Celestria, I did finally get the last piece of Homam I have wanted for my Dragoon. I have been running around in Dusk Gloves for this slot in the mean time and never really felt the urge to lot these over people who didn't have dusk gloves, that struck me as a shade unreasonable. When they went free lot however I was ALL over them! Of course Ninjafox was SOO bad and knew I wouldn't go for them if anyone else did so deliberately played me so that I would lot. BAH! LoL *huggles for Foxy* I much prefer these over the Dusk for Dragoon because I like doing things /WHM thus making the MP on them far more useful than the ATK from the Dusk piece. PLUS! Yay I can run around at normal speed again without having to switch gear. Only a few more pieces needed for my Dragoon now before I can consider him "complete" for the time being.

On the topic of hands, Zebra Zachary finally put out for Izman and Quigglypus in Salvage. Ramaparts are so frustratingly random, that was one of the good pieces of news to emerge from the fan fest, the fact that the development team are looking into tweaking those and the Silver Seas Remnants drop rate. There seems to be three stages of ramparts. The ones that just don't spawn, if by 50% they haven't popped they seem very unlikely to want to pop, the ones that spawn dead nm's, ie they don't drop anything at all. Then the ramparts that spawn NM's that drop like crazy. This puts Izman at 3/5 on Ares, with the mask, body and hands piece, and Quiggly on 4/5 with the mask, hands, feet and body. Legs of course being the bane of Izman, one day! One day!!!.

Elite Einherjar

2008-12-19T13:35:00.018Z

Another day, another post. It's been surprisingly busy at work in the last few days so I haven't had the chance to sit down and actually write this post out. I have had the pictures lurking around though *grin*

With the reduction in numbers in Versus, we have had to suspend certain activities that we did previously, not through choice but necessity. It is one thing to strive to better ones self through challenges, but it is something else entirely to just throw away pop sets, exp, time and effort in a futile attempt to win something that you are seriously undermanned for. Unfortunately one of the casualties of this thinning down of the ranks was Einherjar.

As a linkshell, when we were doing Einherjar we were surprisingly successful at it. Despite doing it with the low man approach, we were consistent and as a team we worked well to adapt to the ever fluid settings and challenges unique to each chamber in Einherjar. Our stumbling block became a lack of man power at the tier 2 range, just an extra body on one or two runs could have been the difference between the win we didn't achieve or the loss through time out that we got. Admittedly we only did Tier 2 a few times before Einherjar got pulled from the schedule for the time being.

Fast forward to about a month later and we are now working on a very productive partnership with Obsidian and Versus. The Versus members propping up a thinning memberbase for the Obsidian Einherjar runs meant suddenly Tier 3 wins were becoming extremely easy and the popularity of Einherjar exploded. Where as it wasn't all that long ago they barely could get over 20 people to show up, it is common to see people queuing to snag a valuable slot in the event.

This has lead to our very first Odin attempt. Excitement at doing this was definately at a peak in Versus. Although there were some rather sarcastic (when are there not?) comments about going in to lose lots of exp with enthusiasm! Not only did we win, but it was an extremely smooth win at that. *smirk* And I didn't die once!!!

So, we now all have a snazzy new title, that no doubt will be erased by some slightly less sparkley title such as "Crawler Culler" and the satisfaction of knowing that on our very first Odin fight we won. Not to demean the efforts of other people who have gone before and laid the groundwork for our strategies and approaches, but reading knowledge can only take you so far. The rest comes down to how well your members react, pay attention, adapt and respond to the fight itself not to mention the myrriad of of random effects and consequences that can happen in any large NM fight.

I have to say it is quite an interesting experience zoning in. It's so quiet and you expect there to be background music until you engage Odin. Not to mention the heightened tension about finally being in the fight itself, the wait is over its full commitment now to win or not at all. Although there was a bit of faffing around at the start as 2 ppl who had signed up for the run realised they couldn't come into the fight. A shade shoddy in the preparation, it would be better if people knew what was required to get into fights, mistakes happen I understand that but they didn't seem to have a clue at all, and it was mages who were locked out, which are in general not a healthy job to lose suddenly because of a lack of foresight.

He is gorgeously impressive when you get up close though. If you have done all the missions for the Aht Urghan storyline, you know how exciting it is when he pops up from time to time in the storyline but getting THAT close to him in the fight is something else entirely, even as an Elvaan I felt tiny. Interestingly I never got that impression when fighting Alexander. Possibly because he is all bulk and whirling machinery, where as Odin is sleek and elegant astride Slepnir.

Maybe we were just extremely fortunate in the attacks and moves he decided to use, but I never really got the impression that anything he did outside of Zantetsuken was really a devastating attack, just more of an annoyance to be dealt with. As long as your mages were on their toes and ready for the various status effects that he could inflict upon the tanks. The biggest hazard to the fight was definately the valkyries. Their randomness for spawning and the devastating effect that ALL of them at once on a single tank has means you really need a good claimer ready to peel them off and kite them as soon as possible. His moves are so rigidly dictated by % health it is easy to prepare and adapt to what is incomming than if he had been a more fey being with much more erratic behaviour.

I would definately agree with the opinion held commonly that the chambers preceeding this fight are far more complicated to deal with, it is almost something of an anti-climax. Not entirely a bad thing though, you know you will always get something from him if you can win and considering the general dearth of drops that come with anything from Tier 1 to 9 of the other chambers it is a welcome change and something to look forward to. Could you even imagine how bad it would be if you had no guarantee of a drop like Kirin and his 1 wind crystal. It would be pretty demoralising hehehe.

By the end of the fight I know I was really getting into it though, perched on the end of my seat, watching it hit 10% for Zantetsuken then the surge to burn down the last few drops of his health for the win, caught up in the combined effort and fervour of knowing we were so close but the clock was ticking a heady moment of thrilled exhilaration where you barely dare to hope but strive to succeed. It's such a great feeling, and even better for knowing that you are sharing it with everyone else in the chamber who is just as keen as you to be there, at that point with those people winning.

For anyone who wants to be blase about wins like this, I say for shame. It's fights like these that lift moral, inspire the linkshell and forge the bonds that keep your engaged and interested in what is going to come. It rises you above the drudgery and the hard work and fills you with elation and delight at a job well done.

Riding on the excitement of our first win, you are never going to be too disappointed with the drop pool, that jaded complaining sets in on the second fight when you haven't gotten what you wanted. LoL Such a strange attitude, an incredible amount of impatience.

Regardless, it was exciting just to get the point of getting a treasure pool, although some people were a little panicked that people were not passing fast enough, SE were generous enough to give you an extra 5mins after the chest was opened regardless of the time on the glass so you can distribute the treasure which I think had been forgotten, qualms aside everyone got what they wanted without hitch.

I think Izman has a strange affinity for hats, particularly the variety of hat that no-one else wants. A peculiar twist of fate and a bidding war over the Vahallah body piece meant that Izman won the lot on the helm for a mere 6 points, AND it dropped. In a repeat of our first Omega where no-one wanted the Homam head piece and Izman stepped up to fill the void, he now has a (very silly) nice shiney new piece of running around town gear.

I have to say, it looks FAR better on Odin, although as a Hume it does look better than on a Taru.

All in all a throughly exciting and worthwhile experience! Can't wait till we go again. ^.^

Attack of the Quigglypus

2008-12-16T15:47:00.010Z

Introduction!

There we go, now we have that out of the way ^.^ We can get on to the proper stuff. The ramblings of my mind.

Not entirely sure if this is ever going to be relevant, but it is some small diversion, after all we take such great stock in the opinions of others don't we. Whether it is based on our own self perception or just the simple opinion of others. How others think and react on and around our own interests enlarges our own understanding of what we like and dislike.

I have no real idea of when I will update, or what I will write about, generally things that pique my interest, or possibly a daily record who knows. Maybe even sometimes I will write merely for my own edification or understanding. It does help to lay ones ideas out from time to time, you can gain a fresh perspective on a niggling issue or see the blatantly obvious that you were missing.

Me!

In theory looking intelligent and pointing LoL, not at anything specifically I don't think, possibly a guilded gatway as I was lurking around waiting for Salvage (more on this to come in future posts!) Skulking around as 75 bard in this particular instance, although I do also have Dragoon, White Mage and Ninja at 75. Not a huge amount of jobs for the time I have spent playing this game but I am not obsessive about exping constantly, it is fun but it can get tedious. I don't mind being driven when I want to level a job to 75, but it is not my sole preocupation with playing FFXI. I am very busy with running Versus most of the time, it is not uncommon for me to log on solely for events before going to bed again. It is quite hard work running an EST ls on GMT time, particularly when you work the next day, *grin* at least my job favours my slightly bizzare sleeping schedule with a nice afternoon start giving me time to sleep in, rather than turning into a zombie. Not that the folk at work don't already think I am crossed with a Vampire *chomp*

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of experiencing the highs and lows of exp in game. The first was definately a low. It wasn't that it appeared to be bad, Mephistopheles, a rather brave Japanese Taru NIN invited me into a party the second I threw my flag up, so I said yes, he then proceeded to pick up a party of Europeans.

Now I know and I appreciate, that Great Britain is part of Europe, we have been a member of the EU since 1973 when it was still known as European Economic Community. We meddle in affairs in Brussels and are happy to throw our weight around but there is something about British aloofness that still creates a divide between us and the continent. Possibly because we are an island and so not part of the traffic that flows through continental Europe, maybe just that old British Imperialism that refuses to die, who knows but one thing is for sure, we tend to dabble rather than commit to the EU and being considered a European. We are instead... British.

As such, when I am in game, I do have a tendency to think of myself as British and everyone else as European, particularly if I don't know the person. Which is funny as I am definately NOT a patriotic person in any way, shape or form.

I digress, so these Europeans were Germans I believe, I can't remember all their names, and I wish I could, there was a DNC who insisted on trying to solo every single link we got, a WAR who was generally allergic to provoke a SAM who was constantly afraid of repops and a RDM who said his keyboard was dying and so had a tendency to let people die a whole lot. I was starting to have deep reservations about whether I wanted to be in the party or not after we all wiped, barely even able to clear out the corridor in the northern end of the Mamool lands staging point. I was saved by the Japanese ninja (and this IS only speculation) finally getting tired of dying constantly, it must have been his 5 or 6th death I am sure he spent at least 85% of the party resting while weakened, just mijin gakured and disbanded the party, which I was MORE than fine with. So dismal, I barely scrapped together 3k exp in the tormented hour and a half of exp. *shudder*

The second party was just sheer sexiness! You know it is a good party when you can chain with the wivre.

True to form of the best parties, it was formed from members of the ls, or people I knew. We had the fortune to secure the first tier of birds (while 2 parties competed for birds on the lower tier bizzarely enough) with 2 Bards, Myself and Bubbly, Izman on WAR/NIN, Tohmane on SAM/WAR, Foxy (Ninjafox for the uninitiated) on RDM/WHM and Qtipus (Now known as The Quigglypus) on DRG/SAM. Just over 50k in 2 hours, it was SUCH a contrast the the dismal party earlier and so so much more fun. I had the super easy job of Madrigal, Minuet and Ballad, so it was quite entertaining to run back and forth singing songs and discussing the rise and fall of Lady Macbeth in the linkshell. Good times!

The Quigglypus In Action!