Archive for June, 2009
After getting a full stack of KS together finally, I decided to organize a KSNM99 wyrm run with SecretFellowship. I was surprised of how well people signed up to help, we actually got 18 members together quite easily. Unfortunately, having to reschedule the run a couple of times, a few people had to cancel, but in the end we did have enough people for it anyway. We used the following setup:
Tank party: 2xPLD/NIN, RDM/DRK, WHM/SMN, BRD/WHM, RNG/NIN
BLM party: 3xBLM/WHM, WHM/SMN, BRD/WHM, RDM/DRK
Extra party: BLU/SCH, SAM/DNC
The strategy was pretty simple. Stun and run to feet, then take it to 68%. At this point we rested full and then BLM did a timed nuke to get the wyrm in the air. This was the most dangerous phase so we tried to take it back down as fast as possible. The rest of the fight was pretty much just trying to keep the BLM alive / trying to stay alive and kill it.
I don’t know how much our SAM and BLU could actually deal damage. Neither of them had brought sushi with them so that affected quite a lot. Also, the SAM should have had another sub now when I think about it (he didn’t have NIN leveled though), maybe even /WAR would have been more useful. Also RDMs subbed DRK for pretty much nothing, so next time we’ll have them use /BLM.
Only a couple of us had done this fight before and most people had never fought wyrms before (outside from CoP Ouryu), so it was quite of a learning experience. On first orb we had some problems with staying at the right place and stuff like that, but it went pretty well anyway and we succeeded to kill it. The first orb was mine, I had offered to use it because I was organizing the run and had made the setup, so if it hadn’t worked, I would have been the only one to lose seals. We decided that the orb trader got to choose one item from the drops after they had dropped, and the rest would be sold and money split to everyone who was attending the run. I wanted the Wyrm Beard of course, but unfortunately it didn’t drop on my orb. I got 230k from the Dragon Heart that dropped, though.
Next orb went a lot better since we already had some experience of the fight. Also, we got the most awesome treasure pool ever:
Zomg the Speed Belt DOES exist! And in the same treasure pool than Wyrm Beard!
Of course the orb trader chose the Speed belt for his item, so all MNK75 lotted for the beard. Too bad I didn’t win. 
Well, maybe next time!
The third and the last orb was just crazy. Our RNG got d/c and for some reason our tank party WHM couldn’t enter the battlefield. The wyrm also did some very annoying Hurricane Wing spam which succeeded to wipe half of us. In the end we got it down to 1% HP and it stayed there. For minutes. We just couldn’t kill it. I have no idea if it was a bug or not, but in the end we wiped and our time ran out before we succeeded to kill it. It was really weird.
Anyway, I had such a good time doing this KSNM! It was very fun and exciting, and I love that I have friends who want to do stuff like this with me. I’m so thankful to everyone who came there just to help!
17.6.2009
I got a summer flu and haven’t been able to play FFXI at all between being ill and working. I did log in yesterday, however, to check Mog Bonanza results. Me and my husband bought 60 marbles together (all random, numbers chosen by moogles) and we got one rank 4 prize and three rank 5 prizes. I’m really happy, the only thing I’m a bit disappointed about is that my main character didn’t get any rank 5 prize so I didn’t get a cute statue in my Mog House.
Talking about Mog Houses, I redecorated mine a bit a couple of days ago. It’s still a bit plain and boring but I haven’t gotten the inspiration to do anything big about it.
21.6.2009
I had three days off from work so I spent yesterday mostly playing FFXI. We did a really nice Nyzul Isle run, after which most our static members are either on floor 90 or 95. We also got Denali body drop which Alixia passed and let Lary lot it. Congratulations!
After Nyzul I helped three LS members with ToAU missions. We started from mission 12, where we had to farm Ameretats, and then we killed the fomor NM and did the boat fight. It was really nice to adventure in ToAU zones again! I had such a good time, especially when we took the ferry from Whitegate to Nashmau and went outside to see the landscapes. It was the kind of moment I’ve missed in FFXI.
Lately I’ve spent quite a lot of time on different FFXIV forums. I’m really excited about the game! I’ve been following the discussion about the things players want and don’t want from the game, and it has been quite interesting. Here are some suggestions posted on Eorzeapedia.com forums.
Top 5 best ideas:
All the suggestions I’ve ranked “the best” would make the characters more customizable and the world more alive for players.
1. A larger, more explorable world with a lot of interesting details and variations
There have been several threads and individual posts about how to make the world more interesting.
“I hope there are better variations between night and day. I think someone else already said that, But it would be nice if at night the entire ecosystem for an area changes, Some monsters only being active durring the day (mandragora) and some only active at night (wolves)” Post by MidgardZolom in the thread Landscapes…The World?!
“I want to be able to walk through a town and see clothes swaying on an overhead clothsline, people hustling and bustling through the streets going about their business, and that busy dock that has a dozen or so boats, ships, etc coming and going. Maybe even some weather effects in the towns. You’re strolling down the street and people start running for cover from the down-pouring rain. Ok, so maybe its high expectations, but I think it would really add to the atmosphere.” Post by Evangeline in the thread Landscapes…The World?!
Personally, I’m hoping that the FFXIV world will offer me the feeling of exploring and adventuring. I’m hoping for breathtaking views, small but interesting details, variations between different seasons, weathers, days and nights and so on.
2. Character interactions with the environment
For FFXIV to truly be the NextGen MMO it has been advertised as, there has to be interactions between player characters and the environment.
“What i mean by that is say you’re in a snow field, when you move around in the snow your character should move slower as you walk around deeper snow, or say you’re by the beach and decide to go in the water (hopefully you can swim in ff14) and as you go deeper you cant move as fast like in real life. Maybe based on the terrain, it could effect the way you battle. I’d also like to see different ways your character reacts in battles like say your hp is in critical low hp, your character should be tired and out of breath” Post by echizen20 in the thread Character interactions with the environment.
“Would be interesting if they had conditions for extreme weather patterns. Like maybe you have to go into a canyon with incredible winds that come and go and you have to do the good ole hide behind rocks till it lets up to advance. Or if a Tornado or major sand storm forms up near you and your party accuracy might decrease slightly. making it so you have to keep an eye out on your surroundings. Don’t have the effects be any major detriment, but just enough to where you might go “ugh… storm coming”. Maybe sand traps that just have a slight pull towards the center.” Post by Synikal in the thread Character interactions with the environment.
“Wouldn’t it be interesting if detection worked in Final Fantasy XIV like it does in Fallout 3? For those of you unfamiliar with the game, enemies won’t detect you on the other side of a wall, they’re less likely to detect you when you’re either moving very slowly or standing still, and are also less likely to detect you when you’re in a shady area.” Post by Stammer6 in the thread Monster Detection: The Expansion.
In my opinion, having mechanics like these would take the gameplay to a whole new level (at least compared to FFXI). My personal hopes are that the position of your character will also affect to how much you deal and take damage in a battle (I got the impression this might be true from the trailer, but we’ll see), that you could for example use your body as a human shield for your party members, that you could use the terrain to block monsters attacks and so on. It would make the battle mechanics a lot more variable.
3. Addition to player-driven economy: commercial district
This suggestion is number 3 on my list just because I love it so much!
“I was thinking about how economics should work in FFXIV and this thought came to my mind. Since there will probably be a mog house -like system for player housing, why not use the same principle to make player run shops. Basically add a same kind of entrance that you have for residential area now in FFXI, but there you get to a menu where you can see the shops in the district. The shop owner could choose under which categories the shop will be shown and add some info on what they’re selling and what ever fancy stuff the game engine allows. Basically this would just be a more elaborate bazaar system. Naturally you could add furniture and things like that to your shop and hopefully even put some of your wares on display. Add in a monthly fee (in gils of course) to run the shop so that any empty ghost shops will drop out.” Post by Tahvo in the thread Idea: Commercial District.
“It would be amazing, especially for crafters, if we could decorate our own little shop. To put the merchandise on display, there could be furniture type of items, for example, if you want to sell certain pieces of armor, there could be mannequins wearing that armor, and if you want to sell iron ingots, there would be a pile of ingots. When a player enters the shop, they can check the items the shop owner has put on sale to see their price and to have the option of buying it.” Post by myself in the thread Idea: Commercial District.
“I think you would need to do some kind of quest line to get a “Shop keeping license” (kind of like ballista license or chocobo license in FFXI) and then pay a weekly fee for the shop (it could be called “Shop rent” or something). I agree that not everyone should have an own shop, so the weekly fee could be quite expensive even (something like 10K maybe in FFXI). I think shop wouldn’t need to pay taxes like bazaars do (and I think bazaars should have taxes, at least in certain areas).” Post by myself in the thread Idea: Commercial District.
Nothing much to add here. I love the idea! It would be so cool to be able to keep my very own little shop. Of course there would have to be limits. Using FFXI terms, I think player should be rank 5 and level 30 before he can start the quest for the Shop License. Also there would need to be a weekly tax to drive away empty ghost shops.
Of course I understand that this might be very difficult to implement successfully. If everyone wanted to have their own shop, the commercial districts would be huge and no one would be able to find anything from there. One option could be “Linkshell shops”: there would be a public area in the linkshell houses where linkshell could have their shop. All linkshell members would sell their items in the same place and the money would go straight to linkshell bank from where it would be distributed to right people. Ok, I can’t really say I have thought this through as I’m making this up as I type, but something like this could be an option.
4. Linkshell House
This has been a common wish and I really hope they will implement it.
“I’d like to see some sort of large hall you can use as a meeting place/hangout for your LS members, giving extra storage to your members as well as a separate LS bank vault.” Post by Cale in the thread Linkshell Hall/Base.
“All of our linkshell members being together in one place, discussing and having a good time, really made me feel like a part of their community. It was lots of fun. But since you have to pay to get into the Kokba Hostel, its location is a bit out of the way, and there’s no particular reason to use it most of the time, we didn’t get to experience this sort of thing often. FFXIV needs to implement some kind of place for our linkshell equivalents to meet that is easily accessible and beneficial in some way, in order to promote its use.” Post by Alraunne in the thread Linkshell Hall/Base.
5. Character creation
The common consensus seems to be “we want customizable characters, but we don’t want them to be too customizable”. In the poll Preset Customization or Sliders? 50% of the voters wanted Preset Customization, 35% of the voters wanted sliders and 15% of the voters wanted no customization at all but only preset faces like in FFXI.
“With preset faces, the chances of you running into your twin are pretty great. Sliders usually spell out fugly characters for most people (usually people make the eye structure and cheek bones are messed up). Preset customization is the best way to go. Just have a lot of options and the chances of running into your twin are slim.” Post by EorzeaPlaya in the thread Preset Customization or Sliders?
In the thread Additions to character creation people have also suggested several new options for players to choose from when creating a character, for example accessories, voices, handedness and personality. People want to have small details like scars and tattoos that will make their character unique.
Top 5 worst ideas:
1. SE should sell players in game currency for real money
“If all of the game’s currency were to be distributed from the developers themselves, RMT would be out of business. Even if they sold it cheaper, it would always be safest, easiest, and have a wider selection of items. It would also lower, if not eliminate entirely the price per month to play the game. I don’t think SE would get rid of the monthly cost, but if it were made cheaper because of the revenues that the currency exchange brought in, then there would be less need of a monthly fee.” Post by Syphilias in the thread Sell currency to the players SquareEnix!
Well, that one got locked pretty fast after some major flaming.
2. “I want to take my Relic weapon/Salvage set/Swimsuit/Subligar from FFXI to FFXIV”
“I’d like to be able to wear my Maat’s Cap in FFXIV. Ideally it would be a level 1 hat, with no mods, but looks exactly like Maat’s Cap.” Post by Genos in the thread Transferable Trophy Items.
It’s a whole new game. A new game. What’s the point?
3. Instanced leveling areas
“No one likes trying to level when some high level or just a mass of other parties are stealing your mobs. It would be nice to see instanced zones for leveling. Ex. Say in the Dunes you could have a cave to the side that creates an instanced version of it with your own mobs. If rare Item generation is an issue you could simply make rare or ex items, or NMs, unavailable in the instanced version of the zone, if you really want to keep the difficulty of obtaining certain items the same ( I’d personally like to see the items still available, but that could also make them too common and they would lose value. It would cut down overcamping, which would be very nice )” Post by Sendrake in the thread Instanced leveling areas.
What’s the point of playing a MMO if you don’t want to play with other people?
4. Moogles as a playable race
“MOOGLES! are important, integral creatures in the FF universe. Is it not time to give them a chance in the spotlight and become a fully playable race?” Post by Booskiboo in the thread Request- New Playable Race: MOOGLES!!
Definitely a big no to moogle as a playable race. I love moogles, they’re a mysterious and ubelievably cute race that no one really knows much about. If players could play them, they wouldn’t be a distant and interesting race anymore. I don’t want 12-year-old douchebags playing moogles.
5. Making FFXIV a PvP game.
Nuff said.
I’ve been working like a maniac, only had two days off now, so haven’t been online much at all. Yesterday I went to Sky run and we killed Kirin. A couple of really lucky things happened. First of all, my Elegy landed for some weird reason. Never seen that happen before!
Secondly, it dropped 2 wlegs! Drop rate on those sucks, so it was just unbelievable to see two of them dropping from one Kirin!
After FFXIV was announced, my thoughts have been on it pretty much 24/7 (sad but true). I’m so happy and excited they decided to make the new MMO a FF game! I started playing FFXI about two years ago, when the game was already a bit old and most people had already finished all the storylines (excluding WotG of course). The thing I’m looking forward to the most in FFXIV is the possibility to explore a whole new game, adventure in a whole new world where everyone is just as clueless as I am. The best thing is, most of my closest friends from our FFXI LS will be moving to FFXIV too, which will mean I’ll have my best gaming friends to share the adventures with!
FFXIV has made me change my attitude towards FFXI. As I’ll probably be playing this game only for a year or so, there’s only so much I have time to do. There are so many things I’d like to do in FFXI, and so much I had planned to do “somewhere in the distant future”, but now I’ll need to let some of it go. I really need to think what I really want to do in FFXI before moving on to FFXIV. Here are some of the things I’d like to achieve, not in any specific order:
- Beating Proto-Ultima with our SF Limbus group (scheduled for today so I’m hoping for the best)
- Finishing all mission storylines (WotG missions, AN and Bastok missions)
- Killing Odin (my Sky LS Phailure is starting Einherjar soon so there’s my second chance!)
- Getting on floor 100 in Nyzul (I’m on floor 95 now so shouldn’t be a problem)
- Getting Captain rank (I’m FL so I only need to do all the Assaults now)
- Clearing all Dynamis zones (Xarcabard and dreamlands, I’m looking at you!)
- Black Belt
- Clearing all Salvage areas (we’re starting a static with SF)
I decided not to bother with leveling a craft anymore, since it would probably take me a year to get anything high enough to make any profit.
Also, there has been a lot of discussion about what people want and don’t want from FFXI. Here are my lists.
Things I want from FFXIV
A) From FFXI
Storyline
FFXI has mostly had great storylines, both in missions and quests. This is the thing which makes Final Fantasies what they are. I hope FFXIV will have some great epic storylines with beautiful cutscenes!
Grouping
Most of the FFXI content can only be done with a group. This is a very good thing which has made the FFXI community more friendly and mature than communities in some other games. I know I have developed some great friendships while playing this game, so I’m hoping you will make players to communicate whith each other in FFXIV too.
International servers (and auto-translate)
International servers are one of the greatest things ever! It’s really nice to meet people from all over the world and play together. It’s also nice that there are always people online, no matter what time it is in our time zone. Auto-translate is also a great invention and I hope we get to use it in FFXIV too.
Quests and missions without walkthrough logs and NPCs without stupid question marks floating over their head
Please don’t start treating your players like idiots when we’ll move on to FFXIV.
Nice UI
In some games there are so much chat log windows and buttons that you barely see your character. In FFXI the system is so much better, and I love the simple chat log. But I do hope that players can customize the UI in FFXIV a bit.
Being able to change jobs and level all jobs on one character
Please keep this feature, it’s awesome!
EXP loss when you die
Most games don’t have EXP penalty when character dies but I like it. It will make players less careless. I hope we’ll have this in FFXIV too.
Seasonal events
They are mostly fun and the rewards are nice. It’s awesome how cities are decorated!
(Customizable) Mog House
I love it that I can have my own house which I can decorate and where I can invite friends.
Also Auto-Run, Auto-Attack and Crafting system.
B) Outside of FFXI
* Ability to take full screen screenshots!
* Customizable UI.
* Linkshell houses!
* Instanced end game areas.
Maybe not HNMs and such but thing like Dynamis and Limbus, if there are something like that (and I hope there are).
Things I don’t want from FFXIV
Bottable HNMs
The main cause of drama and sadness in FFXI. Please don’t make it so that cheaters will be most successful.
PvP
Please don’t make any PvP, at least outside some special areas / special event (Blitzball!).
Losing chat lines because of zoning
I doubt it will be an issue but it has to be said.
Also, please don’t make it too casual! In every FF game there has been some things that are ridiculously hard to achieve, thus very rare, and in my opinion it’s a good thing. Don’t make it so that every player has access to all gear, despite of how much he plays and is willing to work for them!