Thursday, July 9, 2009

Outta the way, Peck!

I was reading some comments on a slashdot article yesterday and got to thinking how FFXIV might be different from other MMORPGs. Of course, this is entirely speculation because SE still refuses to comment at all on the battle system for FFXIV and won't even really say much about the job and level system. ("We cannot talk about the battle system at this time." "we are trying to implement a lot of new systems that other MMO’s haven’t used in the past." "We will expand the job system to make it fairly different from the one in FFXI." etc....)

I don't know of any RPG system where, the more damage you take, the less effective you are at your job. Like, if you have 1500 HP, and you're currently down around 100 HP, that actually would mean that you are almost dead and probably would feel like crap... so you shouldn't be able to hit mobs as strongly as you normally would hit them at full HP.

Along those lines, when you "level up", why should you get so much more HP upon leveling? You should basically just be able to defend better against weaker mobs, but not realistically "have" more HP. Know what I mean? Then again, to counter that thought, I guess having drastically more HP means you can survive weaker attacks better anyways... so your HP % is actually what remains unaffected (eg. your pain-tolerance threshold is effectively higher.)

I kinda hope that FFXIV really IS different from other MMORPGs in that they honestly have found a different approach to levels/skills.

Why CAN'T a new WHM just sit in town and constantly spam Cures on everyone that walks bye? So much so, that he would effectively be able to gather enough experience/skill in curing that he'd be able to eventually learn a Cure IV spell. Actually going out and killing mobs shouldn't be necessary for a skill like that. Think of it like teaching yourself how to program in various software languages at home, rather than getting real-world/corporate experience writing applications.

I dunno. Just random thoughts I was having yesterday.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Freefalling

I have passed a milestone that not many (in the grand-scheme of things in FFXI) have done: I have created a Linkshell.

Relentless, formerly known as lolFail, has been repearled again and is now known as Freefall.

The LS voted me as the new leader, but all that really means is that I now hold the linkshell. I also get the final say in any executive decisions regarding members, points, rules, etc... but hopefully it will never really have to come down to that. I plan on keeping everything the same as it has been for the past 9 months, because it works. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?)

The past few days have been running relatively smoothly with the much-appericated assistance of Lilmama, Cbassx and Altimaomega, my sack-holders. (uh huh ahuhuh huh. I just said they hold my sack.) Lil still takes care of selling gil items (via Puntaru) and passing out the weekly payouts. Cbass and Alti help organize the various farm and god-kill sessions and point out things that I miss from time to time. (ie. "Dude, we really shouldn't be doing Suzaku without a RNG up here") Alti has also been a champ in getting us new members because we have gotten like 10 new members this week. Unfortunately, we haven't done any extensive background checks on these people before giving them a pearl and allowing them to join us on runs. I have already recieved several /tells about 2 of these new individuals that I "should keep an eye on" due to other people's previous experiences with them.

What has NOT been running smoothly this week is that Kirin has just NOT been cooperating with drops for us. All 3 Kirin's we did this week dropped us a total of 2 Kirin's Poles and 4 gil items. That's it! No N.Body (which we STILL have not seen drop since 4/27/2009). No W.Legs (which, as always in sky shells, is one of the 2 most desired pieces of gear). Not even a stinkin D.Body (which used to fall like rain to us)! Alti actually called a GM after last night's run to ask about this. The GM looked in to it and said that the "drop rates seem to be working fine" and, simply put, "our luck just apprently sucks" and there was nothing he could do about it.

Well, at least waters dropped for us quickly last night. We got up to sky and I think we got our 1st water on the 3rd pot. ^^ So, we popped 1 Olla (from a water we got a few days earlier) and before we could even pop the 2nd Olla 15 minutes later, we had already gotten a 2nd water for the evening! After those, we quickly ran up and took out Zip, which ended up giving us 3 full Genbu popsets.

After taking out those 3 Genbu's, we are now sitting on about 5 or 6 full Kirin popsets... so hopefully now that we have more members showing up, we can hopefully get back to popping Kirin twice per night, like we used to. :-D


On a more personal note, I haven't really felt like I've accomplished much in-game lately since my last post, but at least I'm making SOME progress:
- FINALLY beat CoP 3-5... which was kind of funny. we ended up beating Diabolos on what was supposed to just be a practice run. we hadn't taken any food, or used poison pots. we just wanted to make sure we had our stun order down correctly. next thing we know, he was already down to about 55% hp and we were like "uh... so um... should we just try to kill him NOW? or is this still a practice run?" lol
- Guard Skill is now up to 150
- I got my A Hands last night (which now means after I get my W Legs, I can spend my points on N gear and I'm done with sky!)
- I got my Melee Gaiters from Dynamis - Bastok, which should help out a ton with Guard skillups (guard skill +12)
- I got my Melee Cyclas from Dynamis - Beaucedine, which has been nice for just healing up a bit between fights, whether while resting or running
- I attended Khrone's first Dreamlands which was Dynamis - Buburimu last Wednesday and already got my Melee Gloves -1 (woooooooot!)
- incremented my STR merit up to level 3
- leveled PUP up to 46

... huh. I guess I actually HAVE accomplished quite a bit over the past few weeks. And this is all still while I'm attending sky basically 20 hours per week too. ^^ Go go Tattooface!

The next couple days (4th of July weekend) will probably be spent abusing Screamin as a PL to help me level my guard just a bit more before Treu gets back from vacation.