Fulcrum

I'd say it's not for the house per se, but for the associated benefits, like crafting stations, chocobo stables, etc. I remember in Aion some people would buy an house ad leave it completely unfurnished and undecorated, because they only cared about the bonuses one gives. At this point I'd almost rather housing be just cosmetic, eh.... Yeah, they're just after all the bonuses that the FC housing gives. There's supposed to be a lot of them as time progresses, from buffs to quality of life things like the crafting stations, vendors, auction house boards, chocobo stables/breeding stuff, and more. From what I understand, some perks are going to be furniture related, so they'll have to decorate some, but yeah, it's more than cosmetic. With the way they've done it beyond that, it's also a huge status symbol so...yeah. Non-RPers are going to want it just to show off how awesome they are on top of having all the perks. We saw some of that in Aion too - though those people tended to decorate a bit.

Don't you mean it's bigger on the inside? Or also comes to my mind.... Because she's really just a Timelord too...

It's smaller on the outside~. At least it seems that way.

Been thinking about this today, and I think our FC is going with the idea that the main storyline quests have occurred as of 2.1 up through the post-credits cut scene over the course of the uh...five months since launch, and the original Chronicles of a New Era are sort of a "happening right now" thing, where basically a bunch of groups keep being sent into Binding Coil to investigate/conduct research, because we're just getting to Binding Coil as a raid group here after the holidays. Certain parts of 2.1 are similar - the new primal raids, the new dungeons, the beast tribe dailies, etc. Possibly Crystal Tower as well. They're all happening now, as they're things that multiple groups can be involved in frequently, if RP'd properly. The details with the Scions themselves are a bit trickier. While currently non of the Embers are members of the Scions, their presence is acknowledged as a sidelong element of various members RP. Their "coming out of the Sands" (announcing themselves to the world) and moving to Mor Dhona are pretty big things, and we're still trying to decide if that's something that should be kept current, or held off till the main story receives an update; given the fact that Mor Dhona's received a huge facelift, we're likely going to go with the idea that the announcements and move have taken place in the world setting, and leave it at that. We're all still going through those quests, though.

That's really odd. Gridania had way more than five districts up when I was there, though I'm no where near it at the moment so I can't tell you exacts. I had a huge screenful of wards to pick from though, so I'm going to say more than fifteen.

Ya, but the end of an Umbral Era is supposed to be marked by a significant time of peace. And that's not happening here, which is why it's just so...odd. :dodgy: Exactly. There's obviously not going to be that long period of peace just yet, which is why I'm kind of hoping the leaders go "We jumped the gun...". I did notice the Scions are still calling themselves Scions of the Seventh Dawn, so I'm kind of wondering if there is going to be a point where someone does say "this is not the Astral Era". Though that might just be them sticking to an established name.

Well, Yoshida said early on that they didn't expect the amount of people they've gotten playing the game to be playing, and they may still be having issues with the executives at Squeenix at large in getting funds for rapid server expansion. It's not cheap to buy entire servers, and even if FFXIV is doing well numbers wise, they may still have to fight for each and every instance server they get; they may still not be "back in the black" as far as their executives are concerned. Whether or not Squeenix is willing to re-allocate funds from other projects is unclear as well, even though in the long run, it would be wise of them to do so. EverQuest II did not have that issue (because they faced that demon when EverQuest I ended up being so wildly successful, so they planned their metrics around the idea that EQ2 could potentially have as crazy of a success), and the executives at SOE threw a lot of money behind the game initially and were willing to throw more money at server expansions as needed, though as the game aged, they've had to fight for certain funding, I'm sure. It's hypothetical, but largely, the expansion if servers technically isn't up to the development team, as much as they'd like it to be. That's all still got to be cleared by executives who are outside the process, and management tends to not be as nice as anyone would like them to be. -.-

[align=center][/align] Over the years since the Calamity, although she didn't initially realise it, Claire has slowly formed a small company from the ashes left in the wake of Bahamut's fury. At first, there were just two people working together - one dealing with the mundane paperwork the one in the field generated; unfortunately, that one man paperwork machine was terrible at housework, so a pair of Lalafell housekeepers moved in to keep the rest of the place in order. Neither of them were good with the grounds, and after an incident with a rampaging plant, a Roegadyn gardener was brought on board. Then a familiar face from the past arrived, and began making connections for the group in other city-states, just as she had for another organisation before the Calamity. Not long after Lane Ealdwine's arrival, it became clear that the creatures that Claire was hunting were becoming more than one well-trained woman could handle. For a time, Lane joined the swordmaiden out in the field, but it wasn't long before their targets were becoming almost too much for two well-trained combatants to deal with. Finally, Lane was able to convince her friend that perhaps it was time to admit that they had reached the point where the group needed to officially branch out, and after an unsuccessful attempt to rejoin the organisation the pair had been a part of before the Calamity, Dark Embers rose from the ashes of that disastrous meeting. Lane Ealdwine began travelling between the three city-states, not only to keep their connections with the Grand Companies and militias alive and well, but to start scouting for talent. Claire wanted skilled hunters to continue tracking, incapacitating and scanning, then eliminating creatures that were severely twisted by aether along with researches to evaluate the data so it could be sent off to various organisations they had contracts with in a more timely manner. It was not long after this that Lane discovered N'aoma Tierell, the defacto leader of a small group of adventurers who had recently broken ties with their former company after finding its leader refused to let go of the past, resulting in his own death and nearly costing a few of them their lives as well. Tierell was a season hunter, having survived the Battle of Carteneau as a member of the Twin Adders, who spoke highly of her when Lane questioned them about the Miqo'te woman. At Lane's behest, N'aomai met with Claire, and the two worked out an agreement that brought the remnants of the other adventuring group into Dark Embers; to ensure the merging of the two parties went smoothly, Claire made N'aomai her equal so that both groups would feel that they had equal representation. The free company continued to expand, taking on some members who stayed on for longer term contracts, and some who were only temporary workers. Currently, there are around twenty full time company members, and six part time company members aside from the staff who keep the company hall and paperwork in order. While there have been some rough patches, the company has overcome a number of challenges, including facing down four Primals and a number of unexpected enemies, as well as the personal conflicts that have come back to haunt its members. Despite their successful growth, the company still seeks to expand, as Lane and others reach out to find new members who might call the company home... [align=center][/align] We currently have two strong plot arcs for the free company in place, so we're also looking for role play allies to do joint free company events with. From small scale, relaxed events to plot-focused, long term role play events, we're interested in spreading our wings and joining the community as a company. Role play allies can join us as individuals, linkshells, or free companies. Currently, individual RP allies can just apply through our recruitment application, just like someone applying to join the free company; the application will adjust when the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Ember Alliance option is selected. Linkshells and Free Companies interested in the Ember Alliance will need to send an Enjin message to Darkfae or Lin Celistine to discuss alliance options.

Welcome. It was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the lore conflict. The process of cognative behavioural therapy is to start integrating first with others who share mutual conditions (PTSD, borderline personality disorder, and bi-polar can share CBT groups, for example) like the lore based Bronze Lake is set up, before moving on to a controlled mixed group (if possible, not all clinics have the option for this) as suggested, and eventually moving on to completely public areas, which would basically be returning home to their city states. Not that it's possible to do it that way exactly any more most of the time, but from what I've read in the books I've gotten my hands on, that's what the original process was meant to be. The clinic I go to can't afford the middle stage, at least, but the people who came up with these kind of treatments in real life wanted them to work that way and in some extreme cases, they still have to be done that way but that's more on an individual basis, I believe.

I actually think that's another part of why they've divided the instance servers off again into even smaller groups. My guess is that the housing is instanced off based on those groups as well; they'll probably divide them further if there continues to be an issue, but I think we'll only see one more divide before they say it's too small of groupings.

We'll see if they don't retract that. It seems like most of the eras lasted a lot longer than this, and that their decision of calling the end of the Umbral was waaaay too premature.

Dark Embers is going to be plot driven, but it's just recently formed; we're still crafting it. We also use a unique device to pull pieces of our members' personal stories into the FC plot over time (a completely optional device, so the amount of personal stories weaved in will be variable), so it's an ongoing process. We're going to start with one FC plot, and move on to another, taking elements from the game story and connecting it, but only in a small way. Plot events will be every other week, we also have a casual RP event once a month, and will have an "open" casual RP event once a month where prospective members, FC allies, and current members can socialise. Members are welcome to make their own personal plot events on other nights. We also do progression raiding two nights a week. We just opened the site to recruitment. Myself and the other co-leader are finishing up the IC write up about the Free Company for the site and for the RPC listing. It's been a bit busy here, so it's taking a bit longer than we planned. Almost everything else is up though. Edit: Got our write up done during the 27th hour of server downtime. Also added our RPC listing.

That's not actually true. There are plenty of people who go through those things and can't just up and go to a pub or club or large social situation and just party the night away like normal people, and it's definitely NOT 99% of the people out there who go through the above. If that were the case, we wouldn't have such a huge number of mental health clinics and they wouldn't be so hugely booked all the time helping people get back to the point where they can hang out with a moderate sized group of friends, let alone a huge group of strangers.

This actually makes me wonder if they're looking at their US markets closely at all. Cus these are more like the US hardcore gamers, and the typical Japanese gamer; I could be mistaken, but from everything I've seen and been told, the average Japanese FFXIV player is much closer to our "hardcore" FFXIV player - they are the ones who grind out a whole bunch of dungeons every night and get in their time in Binding Coil every night, and min-max their five - ten hours online. There's fewer casuals over in the Japanese markets, because their playstyle is just different than ours is, making it almost the reverse of what it is here. They're not taking the casual gamer market into consideration like...at all. On my good health days, I can play a lot of FFXIV, and I'll do a lot of dungeoning and if I get lucky with item drops, I might make the kind of money they're talking about...but I can't do that every day, and I do like to do more than just grind out dungeons and such. But yes, a casual gamer - which is likely a lot of their US market, maybe not most but a good chunk - isn't going to want to do that every day; and that's not just RPers, I'm talking the casual gamer crowd across the board. People with jobs, school, or both and people with medical conditions that just can't game that much even if they can't go to work or school, plus whatever offline social obligations/desires people in general have. I do think they've gone about the situation inaccurately, if this information is true. But it may be another one of these instances where it was a cultural difference that created the perspective, and something got lost in translation. They really need to start recognising the differences in playstyles, if that's what's happening (again), and analyse things a bit differently from all the angles...

The point of Kym'a's existence is to be adorable. >.> And yeah. I had no idea how short the range was till I tried to RP with Merri one night, and discovered he couldn't see the emotes I was making at him at what I thought was a decent distance. In every other MMO I've played, that would have been more than close enough for him to see. Since discovering this, I've sort of had Claire in particular prowl around a room before ever sitting down so I can see who all is RPing and what all is being RP'd when I enter an area. And yeah, I totally just made that text huge so people just skimming caught that. It is so vastly different from other MMOs, especially if you're coming here from GW2, where you could hear the /emote from the other side of the god damn map...

Here's an idea... ...maybe they're there to help these soldiers start integrating with society again? A lot of soldiers in RL suffer from varying forms of PTSD and other mental health issues, a lot of which go undiagnosed, and in some cases, untreated because they're stubborn mules. Maybe a bit of a turn from the original idea and a bit of a turn from the lore could be done, where the group setting this up brings in outsiders to socialise with the vets, and the outsiders get to have a relaxing day at the facilities? While the outsiders know this is what's going on, they're asked to act as normal as possible? Another option would be to move it away from the sanctuary itself, possibly to one of the other areas of the zone that's not got a lot of mobs? As for the quests, you can look at the completed ones and it will give a general synopsis for each one. If the servers weren't down, I'd jump in and attempt to take a screenshot of those, because I recall the same info that Naunet's brought up about the area...kinda was creeped out about rubbing the one guy down with oil though, not gonna lie. >.>

Even though I'm trying to keep some optimism about the situation, I want to throw out here that the talk of huge FCs being the bad guys is kinda baseless. A few days ago, I was speaking to someone who is a member of an FC that has almost 400 people in it, with at least ~100 those 100% active, likely more; at the time, I didn't ask for exact numbers, because I didn't care. I looked at their FC on the Lodestone, and I knew how many active Binding Coil groups they had. As an FC, over the past few months, they only pulled together just over 30m gil - I don't think they played the markets the way Ashren and his group did before they crashed. Sadly, I've been watching the markets for the past week or so, working on flipping Philosophies for gil, and the market is steadily getting lower as more people reach fifty, grind dungeons or grind out gathering professions and sell the materials which was the other profitable market I was watching. I'm guessing more and more people were doing such things in anticipation of getting FC housing and getting furniture made. I think there were a few major flaws in how Squeenix came to their numbers. The largest, most glaring one in the hours before the servers came down for maintenance is that I don't think they did another huge purge of gil sellers and bots before running their final math crunches to create the numbers they posted. I had a very hard time maintaining any sort of conversation in tells tonight because every third or fourth tell seemed to be a damn gil seller offering me a Christmas special; the frequency has nearly tripled, it feels, since the patch notes were posted. It's like these "companies" have been sitting on this gil just waiting for these metrics to be announced so they could try and lure the desperate into purchasing their wares - if an FC had everyone buy just a little bit of gil, it might be harder to trace, right? *rolls eyes* I also think their maths may have been off in general. I'm hoping it wasn't horridly basic, such as flat out amount of gil in circulation/active accounts=average amount of gil player possesses. This doesn't factor in players who may have quit the game but had bought larger chunks of time, or forgot to cancel their subscriptions, etcetera, and aren't actually part of the active population. As mentioned before, if they didn't do a massive bot/gil seller purge, this means the amount of gil in circulation was inflated to begin with, and it also gives skew to the number of active players, because they're not really players. Hell, even if their maths weren't as basic as that, there's a chance they didn't look at these things and still ended up with skewed numbers! Jokingly, I've been saying they did their maths in Yen, and if they'd done it in USD, we'd all be fine. Oddly, someone challenged me to give them actual numbers in this, and the results were kinda disturbing. If Squeenix had used USD for their housing cost maths instead of Yen, the cheapest small house would start at 194,460 gil while the most expensive large house would start at 3,038,438 gil. With a competitive auction system, these prices would be great, and we'd still see a ton of gil drain out of the economy because people would be fighting over houses, and it would be glorious and the way the Twelve intended. *coughs* >.> That aside, I do think they messed up somewhere in their economic equations. If even the Japanese servers are bitching, they did something wrong, and they're going to realise it sooner or later. Especially when people just don't use the one thing they've put the most effort into the past few months (okay, it might not be the one thing, but it seems to me like they've dumped a ton of time and effort into the housing zones). I do like that idea better. Staggering out the costs a bit more, though 50m for each service is a bit much. General staggering would have been a much better idea overall, rather than tossing all of the money down on the lot from go. It would have given FCs more options about how to handle the situation rather than making us have to sit here and go "Okay, so how do we come up with these millions?" and figure out a timeline that's much longer than any of us expected. As much as I'd like to think the changes to the various quests and such are going to give us more gil...I don't seeing it being enough to handle these costs for FCs. Not for casual FCs, at least, and maybe not even for hardcore FCs without a lot more work than they already do. It will help, sure, but I doubt it will be enough to go from being able to make a couple million in a few months to tens or hundreds of millions. Ultimately, I hope they adjust the pricing of the plots. Either by just making them more affordable, or by going to a staggered system like Kieron suggested. My FC is still going to actively work on making money, even though currently there are only a few of us, with the idea that we'll look at where the fund is at when the 90 day decay marker hits; hopefully, we can look at it sooner because Squeenix realises it's mistake and corrects it.

The picture they showed for that was such a tease. I want to see more of what it looks like, damnit!

I play two different kinds of anti-social characters, though it never really occurred to me until stopping at this thread. I'm not sure what that says about me... So, first we have Kym'a. He's very shy, perhaps to the point of it being painful for everyone around him. He generally won't initiate contact with other people, so I have a few different ways of initiating it for him. The first and foremost way is that he is a total klutz, so I'll literally just have him fall into RP situations -tripping, accidentally hitting someone with his tail, dropping things in the way of himself and others, etc. He's a SCH, and I actively role play both the ACN aspects and more recently the SCH aspects. I also actively use the pets in role play, something I've done since table top games with my necromancers and their summoned pets, and such. His Emerald Carbuncle is more of an active hook, as she's a bit of a bitch and will sometimes be the cause of aforementioned falls or will outright push him towards people, or she'll go initiate contact with people, because she's very vain and a bit of an attention whore. Macha's a lot like a cat, really...if cats were mafia bosses, because she's a bit more cunning than your average cat - she's put Kym'a into some awfully strange situations to get him to do what she wants, or get her what she wants. The faeries are a bit more of a passive hook. He mostly brings Althea, his Eos fae, to events. Even though she can't talk, she does use a lot of body language, and has a very clear personality (based on the fact the SCH quest faerie had a clear personality in the cut scenes). People usually start talking to Ky just because the faerie is there, and their curious, or they'll see Althea actively instructing Ky on healing and watch them work and get curious. This forces him to talk and interact. Needless to say, all three methods take a lot of emoting, because I do all of my pet interactions via emotes. Even after the talking gets rolling, the pet actions are still done via emote so that they're clearly not part of the talking conversation. Anti-Social number two is Claire, and her brand of anti-social is the more classic brooding anti-hero kind. I think. She's just not one for using energy for excessive amounts of words or actions. She doesn't really show much in the way of emotions in public, and her humour is generally dead panned in presentation if she bothers with it at all. She's seen a lot of combat, and thinks like someone who focuses on fighting more than anything else, and she has a very clear cut set of goals in life. There are, however, a number of things about her that do draw attention that I emote as RP hooks; not all of them are things people notice, so I do put sort of clauses on the ones that need them. She rarely keeps her back to the open, usually keeping it to a wall or some form of solid structure. Something people familiar with combatants will notice - when she enters a room, she always takes a moment to analyse all of the room's occupants, gauging their combat strengths and weaknesses based on their body language; she also tends to keep track of where people are in a room in relation to herself. If she ends up not immediately engaging with people, I will continue to emote what she's doing from time to time to let people know that I am an RP, and hint that she might be approachable. Like if she's reading her book, she'll glance up and look around, take a drink or eat something, look at specific people, etc, before looking back down at the book. There are hooks that will draw her attention, though. Having reverse hooks for anti-social characters kinda does help too. (Like Kym'a's reverse hook is languages!) If people start talking about combat, or mention the front lines, or talk about the Maelstrom, or aetheric creatures, she'll usually find a way to draw herself into the conversation; she immediately finds a way to join the conversation or will become a super-active eavesdropper if someone mentions specific monsters or persons (but that would be telling). So...yes, high levels of narration like Azalea noted, and like Sae said, manipulate your environment into responding to you, along with having some sort of reverse hooks that always draw your character in are pretty solid ways to make RP work as an anti-social character

As far as the Scions thing goes, and unfortunately non 1.0 players aren't going to know this, but Minfilia ran a rather large organisation called the Path of the Twelve in the first iteration of this game, and it sounds like those people merged with the remains of the Circle of Knowing (Y'shtola, Yda, Papalymo, Thancred, and Urianger) after the Calamity, so there's probably a lot more to the Scions than what we're seeing; it's probably not too far fetched for people to RP being a part of that organisation, especially if they were in the Path during their time in 1.0 - I really don't see Minfilia giving upon gathering people with the Echo together, even if it's not quite as stigmatic as it was back in the 1.0 era, and the story did support the idea that they were expanding from go. Pretty much the basic idea has already been stated, and I support it - making things out to be that a character was in one of the assault teams at a certain event, or part of a group that went after a Primal one of the times it was up (especially Ifrit, given that from go, they talk about the fact he's been summoned several times already, and the Ul'dahns lose people to him often), dealing with some sort of corrupted idiot Ishgardian in Coerthas that's not the same Inquisitor, even up to being one of the teams investigating/clearing out the Binding Coil isn't a bad thing. Even having some contacts in various organisations you run across in the world and in the story isn't a bad thing if done tactfully and not nearly at the level done in the storyline quests as long as it makes sense isn't terrible either. It's all about finding a balance and not forcing it down another player's throat, really. And not being afraid to ask about it and get feedback, then using that feedback is also a big stepping stone a lot of people stand at and never get past. :thumbsup:

Small 10,000,000 - 12,500,000 Medium 37,500,000 - 46,875,000 Large 125,000,000 - 156,250,000 Those are the prices with the 90 days taken into consideration. While ten million gil is a big chunk of change, there are several average sized FCs that pulled together around that much over the past two or three months for their housing funds, or close to. While small FC houses might not be what everyone wanted, it may be obtainable if FCs work at it. So the project may still be possible, and the FCs that did make around that much may be able to get medium houses at that point too. I think when they find that their math (done in Yen, not USD or Euros, clearly) doesn't add up, and that the player population isn't happy with the situation because the majority of FCs can't afford the housing at these prices even after the break at 90 days, we're going to see an adjustment from Squeenix. So perhaps rescaling the project to a 90 day project is still worth it, rather than just giving up and entirely canning it.

Well, Dark Embers is going to continue to work on earning gil to purchase a Free Company house, though we're going to probably go for a Medium once we go take a look and compare them to the large ones. We will also likely be waiting until the 90 day mark, unless we have some sort of miraculous funding drive efforts happen. Perhaps we should consider this a more long term project?

Ended up having to do a bit of an adjustment to Claire's wiki page due to finding out some info about the starter quests in 1.0 (and promptly wanting to get on a plane and beat some devs) that I had thought were mostly trivial tutorial/setting fluff...that weren't. Also ended up adding some starter rumours, and switched the Dramatis Personae section to a relationship chart thing that was posted ages ago in another MMO's RP community.

Outside the Drowning Wench right now on Claire Brea. May move around Limsa, but still in Limsa.

Yeah, the downside to that though is that you're paying for two server transfers, which is a lot more than what they're probably going to charge for name changes, whenever they get around to having that service. It's not like they don't have a the system. When there were some issues around launch, 1.0 characters were offered a free name change, we just had to fill out a special form, and then after a particular patch, we had the option to change our name once. So the system is there...they just have to put it up as a paid service.