Swinging

Back into things.  Get your minds out of the gutter.

So I was sent home again today.  I'm fine as long as I don't try talking too much or exerting myself with actions such as walking up / down stairs.  I tell you, being sick is not fun in the slightest.  So, after coming home, taking medicine, and making myself go to sleep for awhile...I signed on.  Not surprising, eh?

Anyway, things started off pretty slowly as I stood around Port Jeuno.  I searched through my inventory and found some +2 items that I could turn in and free up a bit of space.  After that, I started reading FFXIAH and looking at various forum posts while checking the shouts to see if there was anything I'd be up for joining.  As it turns out, Keyoku happened to be in the midst of a Meeble Burrows shout.  I had seen a couple of them and decided to pass since I had already done the Adjunct level before I left.  Little did I know, because I didn't read, that the new Batallia Downs edition also had an Adjunct level, which is what people had been shouting for.  Fail on my part.

So I hopped into Key's party and off we went.  For the most part, I enjoy Meeble Burrows.  It's fairly quick, with each mission only giving you 15 minutes. I'm thankful that the party I was with didn't make me wait forever while they gathered and they weren't slow while completing the objectives.  We did have a couple of objectives that were just flat out stupid, such as this deal where you have to run around the map, mine one stupid piece of ore, then run all the way back to the entrance to hand it to an NPC.  All while avoiding enemies because you're penalized if you aggro anything.  Of course, your party has to turn in 9 of these ores in order to fully complete the objective.  Sometimes, I think SE just puts together bullshit missions because they don't know what else to do.

I also got a chance to taste the new Embrava nerf.  Sure, we weren't getting the awesome TP boost that we got before, but it honestly didn't keep us from winning the fight either.  I might be speaking ahead of myself, but it really doesn't seem that bad.  I think we have just become too depedent on the easy-mode button that Embrava has given us.  Yes, I'm speaking blasphemy by suggesting such a thing, but I don't give a damn.  I don't feel well and I'm tired.  Two reasons to basically not give a shit.  It's awesome.

After the fun with the Meebles, I had a couple of NM sets on me that I could use for my latest Empyreans.  Key was more than willing to help out with getting those done, and we may even team up to duo the rest.  That would be nice.  We didn't stay out there for long, but I did manage to get a few more items, and I even have a Glavoid set ready to go.  To end the night, I happened to see a shout by Ephexis for Ig-Alima.  I have no idea how useful it is, but I am still hoping to one day own a Borealis.  The name sound cool, and the sword glows.  If it's pretty, I'm interested.  Enough said.

My hopes are that my time here in Vana'diel are as productive (or at least as eventful) as today.  If so, then coming back might not be so bad after all.  I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Also, I need to take some screenshots.  This blog isn't nearly as pretty without pictures. =/

That didn't take long

What day did I come back here?  Saturday, I think.  So it's Monday morning and I'm already having panic attacks.  Damn this game, I swear.

Last night, I was invited to hang out and help with The Hills Are Alive KSNM.  As luck would have it, I also needed the egg from that fight and just happened to have exactly 99 Kindred Seals left to my name.  So I switched to Dark Knight in order to help out with skillchains (Samurai would've been better, but I was lazy) and headed to the battlefield.  We didn't do many fights...4 total, I think, but we ended up going 2/4 with the eggs.  As it turns out, I was one of the two lucky winners.  So now I have all three items to get a black belt for my Monk class that I have sorely neglected.  Yay me!

Hoping to skip past the nonsense of the purple and brown belt quests, I borrowed a brown belt from Bey and ran to Neptune's Spire.  Of course it couldn't be that easy.  Head held down, I walked out of the spire and looked up where all these stupid NMs spawn.  Due to my packrat nature, I had most of what I needed for both belts.  I was just missing Nue's Fang, Malborger's Vine, and a Rampaging Horn.  Off to Nue I go, I suppose.

I didn't spend much time out there before it spawned, and I was lucky to go 1/1 with it.  That made me happy.  So next up was that damn Marlboro.  After spending what seemed like an hour just to reach the spawn location, I was somewhat thankful in the knowledge that no one could possibly stumble upon this NM by accident and kill it out of boredom.  To reach this thing, you have to want to find it.  I arrive at the spawn location and notice it isn't around.  Son of a bitch.  Who the hell thought it was a good idea to come kill this thing when I want to do my quest?  People are so inconsiderate.  Looking at the spawn conditions, I realize this isn't something I'm just going to sit and wait for.  21-24 hour timed spawn.  Yeah, screw that.  However!  It was 10am and we had an impending update coming.  I figured maybe we'd have a server reset and the NM would spawn when they came back up.  I let myself time out there during maintenance and hopped on as soon as the servers were back.  To my dismay, no NM.  So I'm back to being flustered.  Next I decide to run out and find this Rampaging Ram.  Naturally, I've been out here for 2.5 hours with no spawn.

The frustration level was rising, and I'm already recovering from the flu.  Added stress isn't something I should be pursuing.  While doing all this, I'm watching some chatter in an LS that I'm visiting (I don't consider myself a memeber right now).  Of course, by no fault of their own, it's the usual "x event is so easy, I can solo such-and-such NM, look at all my shinies" conversation that takes places everywhere I try to avoid.  Chatter like that directly hits my self-esteem for whatever reason, and compound that with the frustration over this quest and I began to feel myself slipping away into that void of self-doubt that I seem to find myself in more often than not.

Before I let myself go completely, I zoned out for a moment.  I have to stop doing this to myself.  The reality of it is that I truly am trying too damn hard to keep up with people.  That's where I'm wrong.  I don't have to keep up.  What I have to do is be me.  That is what got me to the point where I am today as a player.  Of course, this doesn't mean that I will give up my desire to have nice things.  That's stupid.  I am still going to work on my Empyreans, and one day, I will have a relic.  I want to join a Neo-Nyzul Isle static and get awesome gear from there, as well as do the new Einherjar and Limbus.  By no means is this is a declaration of living contently with what I have no and relinquish all desire to improve.  It is; however, a realization that if I don't stop swatting the ghost of my own iniquity, that I am going to cause myself serious pain.

Over time, I have come to develop that elitist mentality, and I am worse off for it.  I have a saying in my bazaar, "You are what you believe yourself to be."  It's true, and I am becoming a victim of such thoughts.  I believe that I am not a good enough player to be considered among the upper echelon of people.  I have had numerous people say things to the contrary, but my self-esteem doesn't allow me to believe them.  I've run parses and have come out on top or within the top 3 during several fights.  I am not some incompetent person who operates without a clue and just "lols" through every screw up.  I learn from my mistakes and always strive to improve.  I have blogs written about me by my friends.  I don't know what I've done, but I must have done "something" right in my time here.

Sure, my name my never appear in the FFXIAH listing, and I might live my entire FFXI life without more than a handful of people who know who I am.  However, those who do know me have stated many times that they enjoy my presence.  Hell, some of them even adore me, and I adore them.  That means something.  Will I ever reach the ranks of the top-end players?  Probably not, and I have to learn to be ok with that.  Chasing the love of those who don't know me while shunning the love of those next to me will inevitably leave me a very lonely and isolated player...as well as a person.

So, I'll continue my farming of these stupid ass NMs and slowly make my way to having another Empyrean weapon.  I'll work on the rest of my projects and finish what I can in the time that I can afford to give them.  If hanging out with my friends means that I don't get whatever awesome item is out at the exact moment of release, that's ok too.  What matters is that I don't lose myself in the process, and that I keep those precious few friends of mine close.  Ranking be damned.

Of course, saying this is easy.  Making myself believe it and stick to it will be the challenge.  I can do it, right?

I don't even know what to say...

Yep.

I did it.  Again.  Again.

Heaven only knows why.  Actually, I think I might know too.  History says this will be a short return, but whatever.  So I've been away from here, living this thing called life.  Working more hours, doing instruction, bought a car, etc, etc.  Played some different games and have been generally enjoying myself.  Well, not really.  Still stuck in the single life, which is a whole different brand of depressing, but truly...I play videogames and have a personal blog about it.  Even E-Harmony couldn't find a match.  Another story for another time.

So here I am...back in Vana'diel.  All I can say is...what...the...fuck.  Why?  Why the hell am I here?????  I signed on last night after realizing my time with Borderlands has become nothing more than farming and fighting the same damn boss over and over again in the hopes of getting a rare weapon that will let me kill another boss over and over and over again.  Of course, I miss my friends in Vana'diel, but it's not as if coming back here is suddenly going to make them all gravitate to me and want to hang out.

I saw some familiar faces, and was even greeted with excitement by a few.  Several "Welcome Backs" and even got flirted with a bit.  Oh, I was also told to write about how awesome Swk is, so...let everyone know that Swk is awesome because I'm saying so.  Don't argue with my words.

It was great to see Regan, Lillie, Alerith, Garn, Dierdren, Swk, Darkdestroyer, Keyoku, Doccan, and several others.  I even got invited to a pick up group for Neo-Nyzul Isle.  You know I was excited to do that because I couldn't get that even when I was in a top-tier linkshell.

Anyway, back to why I'm here.  I don't know.  Nothing has changed.  Drop rates still suck; people still dual-box the hell out of NMs and apparently not having a relic means you're a shitty player and should live a life of shame.  Granted, I've only been here for a few hours since last night, but I haven't seen anything that makes me think Vana'diel is any different from several months ago.

They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same action under the exact same conditions while expecting a different outcome.

I suppose that means two things.  I either need to change the way I view and play this game so I can enjoy it like so many high-end players, or just accept the fact that I must be insane and continue to drive myself to boredom and insanity while standing around Port Jeuno...hoping for something different.

The third option would be to just walk away from this game, but we've seen how well that worked out.

All together now

I had an interesting moment of reflection a few days ago. I saw Alerith online, hanging about in Abyssea-Attohwa. Since I didn't feel like trying to gather the massive amount of +2 items that I have partially completed, I figured I'd go so what he was up to. Well, I actually just volunteered myself and ran out there.

What I found when I arrived was a rather funny, although pitiful, display of people fighting Blazing Eruca. I'm sure we can all agree that figuring out the trigger methods and purposes was a pain in the beginning. Not only were we clueless, but we were also much weaker than we are now. Empyreans at every turn, new weaponskills, better armor, and just a deeper understanding of Abyssea makes most of these fights pretty simple. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for this group.

Anyway, I'm only going to focus on one person for this. The Ninja. I made the joke of her "pinking it up" since she was in full Aurore gear. Personally, I don't care and I'm not going to argue the merits of Aurore vs. Empyrean. She was fighting the NM to get seals, so obviously she didn't have the Empyrean yet. I just like saying "pinking it up." During the fight, she was using Blade: Ten to attack. Based on Blazing's HP bar, that attack wasn't doing much. People started asking if she had Blade: Jin, but she never responded. A couple of fights later, she began using the attack. Progress! Then we had a fight where the trigger was water spells. Ale used what he could, the BLM cast his spells, but nothing happened with the Ninja. Some asked if she tried the spell, but again...no response. Then she states "I don't have the tools for that."

If this were several months to a year ago, before the universal tools were introduced, I'd understand that. Or at least, I'd be more understanding. Carrying all those tools back then was a pain in the ass, and definitely a reason that I had very little interest in leveling Ninja before. That's obviously not the case now. One stack of tools is all you need. Thankfully, Ale had some and gave it to her. So that was one more issue resolved. We move on to another fight, but now the trigger is wind. Once again, Ale does his thing and so does the BLM. When it's the Ninja's turn, she casts...but she casts Huton: Ichi. We tell her it's the wrong spell and she needs to use Ni. As you can guess, she responds by saying that she doesn't have the spell. Now the rage within begins to come out of me. Yet, before I could lash out with a bunch of rude statements that had been filling my head, I had a flashback of when I first started.

I was BLM without a clue, and I happened upon a fellow BLM in Windurst who, out of sheer kindness, gave me a large sum of gil that I immediately and stupidly blew on spells from a vendor instead of the auction house. Regardless, he helped me. I have had help from tons of people over the years, and it was their help that has got me to where I am now. Does that excuse this Ninja and her lack of preparedness? Not in the slightest. At the same time, it made me think. How often do we see ourselves or other people criticizing and calling other people out on their mistakes or "improper" gear choices? I personally see it every single day. Someone out there is an example of "urdoinitwrong" or however people say that silly phrase. However, we rarely ever reach out and show these people the right way, or at least something better. We could argue that this game is old and you can find everything you ever want or need to know with some forum crawling, but does it really hurt you that much to take some time out and help someone else? Even if what you're helping them with is a 10k Huton spell on the Auction House, help is always remembered.

One of the common phrases you see in this game is that it's dead or dying. This game is not dead. There are still plenty of people signing on and doing things. There are still plenty of shouts going on in Port Jeuno and Whitegate. We don't sign on to empty servers and wish that other people were around. What *is* killing this game is people's reluctance to interact with others that they don't already know. It's like joining a linkshell now. When you join a shell, you should be a part of that group. Included in what they do, and feel like a part of something bigger than yourself. Instead, it's "Hi, welcome to the shell. Go get all of your gear upgraded and augmented on your own, build your own Empyrean, and basically do whatever you want by yourself or get people outside the LS to help. Once you have that, come show up for our events. Enjoy!"

When we refuse to help others, we are isolating them. When people feel isolated, they lose their drive. When you have nothing to strive for or you feel that you can't connect with anyone, then why stay? While FFXI is not incredibly difficult in many aspects, it most certainly is a group-oriented game. If all we have are cliques that we refuse to open and bring others into, then we are definitely dooming this game. As people leave, and they will, who is left to fill in the gaps? The people you once refused to help? Good luck with that.

A Method to their Madness

So I got bored last night and decided to spam a quest for fame in Misareaux Coast. While doing so, I naturally got some seals for a few AF3 pieces. Luckily for me, I'm one of those people that aren't affected so much by the random distribution of seals because I can use nearly all of them. It's more a question of will I bother with them when it's all said and done.

Not everyone is in the same boat as I am though. I notice a lot of people complain about making these quests easier, or increase the drop rate of the seals based on your job, being able to trade them to others, etc. I can imagine the frustration of someone spamming these quests and getting seals for every job except the one they want. That would piss me off too.

While all of those suggestions would be great, what if we're the ones bringing this misery on ourselves? Admittedly, I'm among the first people to call Square-Enix stupid with the things they do, but maybe this isn't one of those things. Well it is, but not in a blatantly obvious way.

Most of these quests are easy. Ridiculously easy. In some cases, it takes more time to actually get to the NPC and activate the quest than it does to complete it. Because these quests are so simple, how much of a reward are we truly entitled to? We already get cruor and fame for virtually nothing, and you can repeat several of these quests too. I checked my fame and am considered the Jewel of Misareaux Coast, yet all I did was repeatedly give a guy some sausage to eat. So when I get some random seals for a job that I don't particularly care about, I can't really bitch about that when everything else I got is taken into consideration.

That still doesn't answer the question of how to obtain the seals we want though. Many people are getting "useless" seals and it frustrates them. Maybe there is another answer, but has little to do with quests. You guessed it; I'm talking about the NMs in the area. Is fighting an NM more difficult than spamming meat delivery quests? I'd imagine so, but think about the rewards. You get experience points, possible gear, atma, key items, AND the chance at seals. Sure, there's always the possibility that seals will drop for a job you don't have or want but, if you take a group with you, maybe someone else can use them.

That method isn't nearly as fast as quest spamming, but it does have greater rewards. On top of that, haven't people realized that Abyssea is a group effort? There's plenty you can do by yourself if you're really that hung up on it, but you simply cannot get everything you want if you do it alone. Maybe you can, but you won't get it quickly from what I've seen. I'm going out on a limb by saying that perhaps SE wants us to realize that as well and look for the more challenging and group-oriented way to obtain these seals. There's always the incredibly high possibility that I'm wrong, but it is something to consider.

You almost did it.

Oh Square-Enix, why must you do this?

You were so close. Ohhhh, you were so close.

When you first introduced Abyssea, there was much joy to be had by all. Granted, there was equally enough to bitch about as there was to celebrate, but that wasn't entirely on your head. With that update, you had broken a curse that took hold of Vana'diel for a long time. Even longer than I had existed in this world.

Mages were welcome and actually sought out in parties...constantly. Alliances of all types were more than willing to bring anyone and everyone along to level and hopefully enjoy the spoils when all was said and done. You introduced the beginnings of what could be the next epic storyline, just as Wings of the Goddess has done.

Now, this next update bring about even more changes. Newly designed armor that actually makes sense for the most part. (Except Puppetmaster...what the fuck were you on? The only one to sport a jester hat and look cool is Harle, and PUP is nowhere near as cool as she was.) We have three more redesigned zones, more weapons, and so much more potential.

Potential which went right out the goddamned window.

Where's the story with Abyssea? What the hell is going on with these alternate dimensions and cavernous maws popping up all over the place? Are WotG and Abyssea intertwined now? I'm guessing so because, for some reason or another, there's a damn Veridical Conflux involved in one of the WotG quests. How the hell did you guys justify that move? Did Atomos swallow Lilisette and spit her ass out in Abyssea-Vunkerl, forcing her to exp and gain enough cruor to activate a conlfux and warp out?

You make these new zones and dangle the AF3 in our face, but naturally you do so with a catch. You couldn't just make shit simple like you did with the Perle, Teal, or Aurore sets, could you? No, we can't just earn all the cruor we need and buy all the base pieces. Of course not. You had to make it so we can buy some pieces, but the rest comes out of golden chests. Can you people please be consistent? Is it really that damn difficult for you?

Let's talk weapons. For years, you gave these relic holders a feeling of accomplishment once they completed their upgrade line. Not only did they have an awesome weapon, but they had a weaponskill that was completely their own. No one else but a relic wielder could use it. That was the whole point of the journey for those people. Not anymore. Congratulations to everyone, now anybody can use the relic weaponskills, provided you meet the latent requirements. While the latent might be ridiculously narrow and situational, I'm willing to bet that they won't be nearly as difficult to fulfill as the previous relic upgrade quest was. Thanks for tossing a big middle finger to everyone who went through that process.

My favorite of all is design. I'm sure I've already bitched about the whole recycling of zones and whatnot, but that's not my issue this time. I'd say it's fairly obvious that it takes a lot longer to create an entire zone than it does to create a new enemy. With that being said, how about something new now? This is supposed to be the second coming of FFXI, right? So why are you still using old ass character models? You've come up with a few new designs, and that's awesome. You know the sad part about it though? No one bothers with them. When's the last time anyone did a Limule or Clionid party? Other than the first time anyone entered the zone, I'm willing to say that answer is never. Know why? Cause you populated the zone with old shit that everyone already knew how to fight.

You took the challenge away before anyone even realized a challenge was there. Why go fight these new, harder enemies when we've got some beefed up lizards a short distance away? Screw Limules and Weepers, we've got Mandies. Why bother with Wyrms when there are bats? It's no wonder that everyone breezed through the first of these expansions. You gave people the easy way, and naturally they took it. Oh but now, my dear friend, you just opened the Pandora's Box of Easy Street.

Abyssea - Miseraux Coast. EP just told me what he saw and I died inside. Literally, I'm dead. This is just my soul manifesting rage through my computer right now. Of all the enemies that exist in Vana'diel, you just had to do it. I am so angry right now I'm depressed.

Coastal....Colibri.

Why not just hand people levels with the update? Everyone who buys the latest expansion gets an automatic five levels with the download. Could you make this shit any easier? Whoever thought this was a good idea was downright fucking stupid. Ever since the introduction of Colibri, the entire leveling scene has been custom tailored to decimating these birds. Every other camp and enemy type in the world of Vana'diel became completely void as long as there were some Colibri to kill. I don't care how awesome the other enemies were or how pretty a new zone was designed; if Colibri weren't there, then it wasn't worth going to.

For awhile, that mentality was put away. Of course, you just had to go backwards and put these silly ass birds back on the map. I don't know if they cast magic back at you, but it's been confirmed that they're back to eating your food.

Christ, SE...is it always one step forward and seven miles back with you guys?

EDIT: Of course, many people don't care about any of this sort of thing. They just see new shiny shit and are more than happy to chase after it while foaming at the mouths. It's no wonder these free online MMOs do so well. Toss out some new shit every now and then and people never stop playing, no matter how stupid the game might be.

The Sound of Music

Actually, this has nothing to do with music, but it does deal with sound. More specifically, the sound of voices.

I suppose you could say that a voice is similar to music. It can be the most wonderful thing you've heard, or equally annoying. I'm sure no one here is new to Ventrillo. For awhile, I was. I started using it when I was in a Nyzul static. Of course, I never bothered to speak; I simply listened.

Then I left it alone and never bothered again. Until recently. SoV uses Vent quite a bit, and every now and then I sign on and lurk in the channel. Just like with Epic, I rarely say anything in LS chat. You wouldn't peg me for the silent type, especially since I ramble on forever on this blog and while at work.

Moving on. Last night, for whatever reason, I decided to hang out in the SoV channel while most of them went on to do other things. The more that I just sat there and listened to them talk about non-game topics, the more...personal things became. I don't mean personal as far as conversational content, but the overall feeling while I was there. It was relaxing to say the least. I didn't feel odd like I normally do. I still never said anything, but in my room, I was laughing and smiling along with the rest of them.

Well, surprisingly enough, Epic turned on their vent channel tonight as well. So, since I had a good time in SoV's channel, why not try this one? Besides, I've "known" Epic longer, so it should be a fairly simple ordeal. It was as if I never knew them before. This was a great thing, because any impressions that I may have had before were completely cleared. Really, it felt pretty awesome. I was more inclined to chat in the LS, and even made a few jokes. Of course, one joke was about Jesus and chain letters while we were doing an SCNM fight. I guess the NM didn't like the joke, and I found myself on the ground. Quadav take religion seriously, it seems.

Right now, I'm listening to same streaming game music over vent with the LS. It's fairly understood amongst us gamers that we have some similarities. Yet, when you are able to move beyond the keyboard and actually hear the person you spend so many gaming hours with, it's amazing at just how similar we really are.

I might even buy a microphone.

EDIT:

We did the Buried God SCNM tonight, and let's all say HELL YEAH! I got my groovy ranger hat! No sense repeating a post already made, so click that link for the details on EP's blog. Damn, it is the ugliest piece of gear besides the goliard saio. Still, I'm damn glad I got it. Improving my jobs, one piece at a time. ^_^