Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

When do we get Y'shtola doing a Dunkin Donuts rap?

You should have showed them an episode of "Teen Mom" if they get upset at you wanting to protect yourself with a condom hat.

But we have basil, also lots of peppers. They are fairly good about putting lower level ingredients in synths to give lower level gatherers a way to make gil.

Why is Valaineral spamming the crap out of Uriel Blade, just because I'm on Puppetmaster? He didn't do this on any other job I leveled. Can't figure out why, but it's amazingly OP.

Oh yeah, I should mention that he does it even when my Auto isn't deployed. He did not act like when I leveled Summoner.

Is your automaton competing to tank, probably breaking his AI. Uriel Blade is no longer "a ws" for Valaineral (but it still consumes tp)

If anything other than valaineral is being attacked by anything in range that's his immediate reaction basically

he will also do it if he is surrounded by enough enemies

No one at SE plays PUP to beta test it. They just think PUP is MNK with a wyvern pet.

ftfy

Yeah he does this on every mob, whether surrounded or not. I've moved area, so let's see if it continues, lol

Edit: Isn't doing it so much now I leveled a bit. Must be a low level quirk on some jobs.

There's no way to really know what his jank *** code looks like. It could've been any reason.

It's a beneficial coding flaw though, rather he did than didn't and actually has enough dt/def to not instantly die like any other trust doing an aoe. and does it priority one so when you do aggro a pile of mobs they don't just instantly destroy your healer while you're helpless.

I got to Lv40 in FFXIV. I’m convinced FFXI is The Greatest game ever made by SE and if SE keeps chasing after somebody else’s shadow playing 2nd fiddle to the #1 slot of MMO Popularity ( WoW 115 million Subscribers vs FFXIV 35 million Subscribers ) then FFXI will be the Last SE game I ever play ever again.

Monster Hunter is amazing cuz it’s not WoW.
ZELDA is amazing cuz it’s not WoW.
Final Fantasy might not always be that way in the Future.

I much prefer 11 simply due to the Fact that it actually plays like a SquareEnix Final Fantasy game. Been playing FF series since the NES and I’m not into Blizzard’s take upon the RPG / MMO genre. I even remember when before SquareEnix even existed & it was just Square themselves & Enix was Square’s only competition. I like Blizzard’s Overwatch but I’m definitely not interested in anything that plays like WoW.

If you enjoy the game I wouldn’t let somebody ruin it for you. You can always change FC ( which I’m assuming FC is EGLS ) or even change servers. I lost all my friends & everything in FFXI cuz everyone quit or moved on while my old EGLS no longer exists. I’m still having fun solo trying to help myself & someone else whom also quit but recently returned as well duo.

I might even leave my server & migrate to Asura sooner or later cuz I hear there’s still life there. Siren server only ever has 400 ppl online when I’m used to seeing 1k if not 2K back in day or when I was on Diabolos server before it merged w/ Siren.

My free time is limited so I’m just trying to have fun.
I wouldn’t let anyone ruin my enjoyment of the game.

Yeah that sounds like a good time to break and recalibrate to me as well. It'll give the game a chance to wind down from the expansion release and figure out strategies and stuff anyway.

It's cold enough today to do that. -22 (-7 F), "feels like" -30 (-22 F) with wind chill. Last year when the mercury dropped to -30, we ran outside and tried that thing where you took boiling water and threw it in an arc. Maybe this year I should run to the dollar store and buy some bubble mixture so we can do that as well.

Wanna do that thing where you crack an egg and it freezes in the dripping formation. Or make noodles and have them freeze solid enough to bear the fork used to lift them.

I would say just take a break from XIV then, especially with how atrocious the login times are right now anyway. Getting logged in can be taxing depending on when you can actually start the queue.

But yeah, I also agree with the sentiment to just move on as well. I do recommend doing the story yourself though since I feel like it would be better to see from the eyes of your avatar and not someone else's avatar. Just my personal opinion though.

Hard to say if it's the greatest but surely on of the greatest. It's definitely the one I personally have put the most hours into by a large margin!

I like 11 because it's more "sandbox" than these modern MMOs that are far more appealing to the lackadaisical types. However, games like 11 are becoming far less popular as time goes on. We're more of a dying breed... as pessimistic as that sounds. FF11 always had more long-term goals to shoot for, many that can be done alone and in increments without worrying that you "have to hurry!" or else the reward will be completely obsolete next content patch.

Sounds like you need one of those free hugs then.

This is similar to what happened to me, although it wasn't as personal. FC drama, meltdowns, breakups, it turned me off of the whole game. I bounced between three FC's, and they all had major drama. 14 drama is dumb compared to 11, nothing in that game is hard and gil is easy to make. It's all personal strife. Now I just reactivate every couple of years to play the expansion story, then I'm out.
Last time, which was a few months ago now, I was invited to a FC, I accepted the invite but I didn't invest anything. I was there for the bonuses and the occasional conversation. I think I did help them with their mansion, I have like..100m gil in that game. But once I finished the story, I was done.

Years ago, the only people who would ever pay $12 sub for a video game were turbo nerds. Because of this, they made a refined product made to appeal to this niche audience of turbo nerds.

Modern games are not made to appeal to you as an aficionado of the genre, they are made to have mass market appeal to a much wider audience. Marketing has made gaming mainstream and spending money on games cool, there is no stigma anymore and so no need to appeal to turbo nerds.

Older games were better to you because they were aimed at you specifically, modern games are not worse they are just crafted to have mass market appeal and more about casual fun.

It's like a chess player complaining when they go play checkers.

The EverQuest formula was never super popular to begin with. MMORPGs barely existed back in the day. FFXI followed that formula, and was arguably the most successful among it. But then WoW happened and opened the gates to a whole new audience with a new formula that focused on hooking-in new players.

I'm happy FFXI stuck to its guns and didn't completely shift over to the WoW formula, but it would have been really nice for it to add some more accessibility features early on. It wasn't until way later we'd see so much as a free trial, and even later for the (optional) tutorial for new players.

Now FFXI is in a fairly good spot with features such as Trusts and Records of Eminence. But the fact that it follows a formula other than the common WoW one is the only thing keeping it afloat. You could be right that we're a "dying breed", but a part of me thinks that XI could really earn players with a good marketing campaign. If they focused on the people who want to play an online game, but aren't satisfied with games like WoW or FFXIV, I wouldn't doubt we could double the game's population pretty quickly.

A lot of people simply don't even know there are options. Heck, a lot of people think XI doesn't even exist. If they gave the game a proper free trial, removed PlayOnline, and told everyone who unsubscribed from XIV "Hey, if you don't like this, why not try this game instead? It's a very different experience!" it might work. The EverQuest formula playerbase might be bigger than we realize!

That's an interesting perspective.

I've been gaming for longer than many here have been alive. I don't like to toss out the "nerd" term as it more often than not, doesn't end well but you did, so here we are! An observation I've had in my years of gaming is that there are always the people who feel they need to be the bigger nerd. They want to feel superior amongst other nerds. I've seen everything from ones who gained fame/infamy as being superior by making years of empty threats or trying to flex a non-existent bravado to ones who will cheat/plagiarize in order to gain notoriety.

One reason more modern MMOs become greatly popular is due to how you can gain this notoriety with little to no effort. People like logging in and getting things free. They "like" working at something for a week or two and being done but are also the ones who complain when they have nothing to do. It's a slippery slope.

You are right. Modern MMOs will appeal to a larger market. They have everything from faster combat that does not require (sometimes) seemingly excessive research, broader and flashier "glamour" systems, more rewards for doing little to nothing and many more modern QoL things that many XI players use addons/plugins to gain... without the need for 3rd party.

For some, it's hard to move on due to how much time has already been invested. Hours upon hours spent camping, farming, grinding only to think that it's a wash.


Yeah, it's too bad it took years before we got things like Trusts. Trusts were the best addition in my opinion. Sitting around for hours waiting for a group just to level was my biggest complaint. I know several people have their mindset that this is a "multiplayer" game but there is nothing wrong with someone wanting to enjoy content alone.

I wholeheartedly agree. I'd even say they're exactly as balanced as they ought to be: just shy of an actual player, but still competent enough to help you get things done.

It's the perfect solution to a player's inability to solo. Most other games would have gone the simple route of homegenizing the jobs in such a way that anyone could solo. But Trusts allow them to keep the weaknesses of each job and still force a party - even if that party consists mostly of NPCs.

I hope this doesn't sound bad but trusts have been more competent to me than many players I dealt with in the past.

Oh fond FFXI memories of the glory days. Waiting 20 minutes for that guy to get to your party only to find out he's wearing gear that's extremely obsolete, missing key spells, etc.

At least Joachim gives me my trusty Paeon.... wait...

lmao that's fair. I guess if Trusts existed back in 2006'ish, it might have encouraged a lot more players to step up their game. I was never rich enough to afford all those top-tier items like SH+1 or O.Kote back in the day, but I at least maintained my gear.

The strength of real players comes from their ability to act on their own. Like, the other day I was leveling Ninja off of the Manticore and Cockatrice in the Valley of Sorrows when I failed to about-face in response to Baleful Gaze. Before Apururu could cast Stona on me, the other Trusts finished the Cockatrice off. They all stood there, staring at me for three whole minutes while everything was respawning all around me. I very thankfully avoided aggro in that time, but it was both terrifying and awkward.

Heck yes I would. That guy knew his ***.