Zen

Thank you for the interest. I'm going to close this thread and focus on those that contacted me. This doesn't mean I'm not open to meeting other RPers! If you're reading this and have interest in meeting Sondie, feel free to contact me in-game. Cheers!

[Closed]

Thank you so much for the replies; they give me food for thought - especially for the direction of real-world history of cameras to research in lieu of a lore-related item. I'll rummage around google and see what I can put together. Thank you again!

Hi there! I've been searching around and haven't been able to find anything pertaining to cameras in lore. So far I've only seen references to painting and I saw references to magazines in the game. Since those magazines have pictures, I was wondering how those pictures got there. Is there something like a camera in lore? Or is it assumed that they could exist in Eorzea? Maybe I just don't know the terminology to search. Any help is appreciated!

It's really going to depend on perspectives on the importance of this topic. I've been RPing over 20 years and my roots are purist, in that I find it most enjoyable to use roleplay to find roleplay. Around 5-6 years ago, more communities moved into using OOC communication via forums, while the new generation of RPers at that time desired to know someone OOC before they RPd with them. This nearly killed my enjoyment of RP. I enjoy winding up a few characters, tossing them on a stage (so to speak) and see what happens when they start interacting with others. That's my joy and too much OOC kills RP, IMO. I tried the forum thing for about five years and grew to hate enjin since so many used it as a platform for passive-aggressively attacking each other. That's when I lost all interest in interacting with people on RP community forums for any depth. I also learned in this time that if I want to meet people that share my RP style, I need to engage in that playstyle. Mateus is the first RP community I've come across in a while where I can organically seek out RP and interact without needing to "sell myself OOC" in order to get people to RP with me. When I was brand new, I used these forums to figure out the pulse of the RP communities. When I learned Mateus had a Discord and healthy Tumblr community, I was happy. While I rarely post in the Discord, I do use it to find out about events. It was a weak point for the Mateus community for a while. Several people have come up with working solutions and are trying to find a way to keep events updated. We now have an event Discord. I haven't joined that yet either because at the end of the day I still have a strong preference for using RP to find RP... sort of thing. I use Tumblr for creative expression and have some 30+ blogs I've created over the years for various characters, guilds, and OOC interests. Discord and Tumblr are both on my phone. Being old school, now that the opportunity is there to get away from "OOC selling myself", I jumped off of forums and enjin quicker than a bee is attracted to honey! That's what works for Mateus.

With the tools Maoilmhin posted, there are also events posted in both of the Mateus RP community Discords. I usually rely on the Mateus Tumblr calendar as they repost events people are running, and on the watching the two Discord event channels. The google doc isn't updated much, outside of regular running events, from what I can tell. I would love to see a Discord bot, or some sort of feed that brings the entirety of Mateus events together into one place, but once you know the places to look, it's easy enough to find them. (Totally didn't mean to quote you, but couldn't figure out how to undo it! )

I have a few friends who play on Balmung. I still remember earlier this year when I decided to take the jump and transfer a set of characters when I started up. Since there was a 3-day wait for new characters to be established for transferring. There was a game downtime of over a day and was going to transfer right after that, and that is when they locked Balmung down. Friends scampered about, and we settled on Faerie. I lost interest at that point due to not finding the type of RP I enjoy. Fast forward five months or so and friends dragged me to Mateus. On an OOC level, I'm a bit of an introvert (not shy, but easily drained by too much interaction), so joining an FC is a major decision, of which I still haven't joined one. I'm happy with this because the server is largely open to walk-up / organic RP, and my character has become embroiled in several storylines. Fast forward and all but one of my friends moved on from FFXIV, but it's okay, because so far I've found RPers to be an approachable lot, and open to RPing with strangers. For someone who enjoys an immersive, organic RP experience, Mateus has been wonderful. I do wonder if this playstyle has been cultivated due to our community being tucked away in a Discord environment. People post character profiles, looking for contacts, events and guilds in the Mateus RP channel, but I don't see people as reliant on it as with forum communities. Over the years, I've become disheartened by the trend of RPers desiring lots of OOC communication and needing to know the people, and their character's stories, before they'll roleplay with them. I just -really- like being able to RP without needing to "sell myself" and delve into a lot of OOC networking on forums to get my characters noticed. I will say that if Balmung ever does open up, it will probably end up problematic for me, as many of the people I know have characters on both servers and I fear they may move back, forcing me into a decision of staying or leaving if that happens. I try not to get ahead of myself! But I do enjoy Mateus RP in its current iteration.

I adore any RP that caters to character development and it's what I seek, honing in on characters of depth like a heat-seeking missile! It doesn't matter to me if I find it through an adventure, an event, tavern, random OOC tell, or out-in-the-world. I'm open to it all on an OOC level, and if it fits my character's story to be somewhere, I utilize that to full effect to meet new characters that I can learn about, and have my character grow with. Since starting FFXIV about two months ago, my character's best friend was met in the Quicksands, she gained employment by attending an event, and has gone on adventures with random characters that have approached in walk-up RP. I also created a family connection with my character through someone that placed an add, which is something I rarely do, but just really enjoyed the thought of this character having a family.

It was purely and simply an act of rebellion toward my husband, and a celebration of "I do what I want" when we separated. I became fascinated with watching others RP in Ultima Online, tried it out with someone holding my hand, and then tried to get my husband interested in it. He didn't understand what RP was all about and ended up trolling the RP events I brought him to. It caused him to lash out further: When I refused to stop and was at work one day, he deleted my characters, my ICQ account, and canceled my sub. Fast forward two years: We were separated, I moved out and got my own place and began thinking of all the things I wanted to do that he wouldn't let me do. I went straight for Star Wars Galaxies, made an entertainer and started RPing hardcore, drinking up the RP scene as if coming off a long drought. I never looked back; on many levels!

I. Basic Info Characters: Sondie Seabrooke, Zen Ares Primary character: Zen Ares Linkshells: Primary RP linkshell: II. RP Style Amount of RP (light, medium, heavy): Medium with heavy leanings. I keep a solid division between what I enjoy playing OOC and what my character would do IC, thus I'm not always IC. Roleplay is the first preference I have, so I'll leap out of gameplay and come running to RP. I thrive on character interaction, collaborative storytelling, and writing and I enjoy growing as a RPer, so I'm always pushing at some personal comfort boundary or another as I go. (Don't worry! These are personal boundaries, not other player's boundaries that I push at.) Views on RP combat and injuries:; Views on IC romance:; Views on non-romantic RP (family ties, etc): I'll sum this up into a single answer: I don't really discern types of roleplay as being separate from one another. My characters are built with their own set of moral compasses, psychological backgrounds and varying levels of self-preservation that drives their motivations, desires, and aversions. Clues to what the character(s) will / will not be involved in will come from interaction and learning about them. My characters are operated on implied consent. While I understand many RPers need constant communication, I'm not the type that needs it and I can find it immersion-breaking during roleplay. I'm happy to communicate for clarification and to help others feel comfortable, but I am not an OOC chatterbox during roleplay. I'm just as comfortable RPing the mundane, violence or adult-focused settings, but I reserve mature levels of RP with RPers I trust can handle the themes responsibly. Views on lore: I work to incorporate lore first, and will happily follow fanon where lore is missing and if it fits in neatly. Due to my preference of preferring immersion, I work to keep OOC chatter down as much as possible while RPing, and following lore cuts down (I feel) on a lot of OOC chatter as I don't need to send tells asking what people are RPing, etc. I feel lore is the glue that brings us all together on a platform we can share with less confusion. It keeps RP more organic, which is my preference. Views on chat functions (/say, /linkshell, etc): Any could be used IC, depending on who I'm RPing with and their preferences. As a general rule, /say is normal voice, /whisper is whispering to someone, /yell is my character shouting and I'll use /party chat at events with chat scroll, huddling in as if to make it that a group is speaking privately in amongst themselves. I leave /LS and /FC chat usage up to the owners and follow along. As a side note, I realize some view the chats differently and I'm happy to comply with another person's comfort levels. III. Other Info Country: U.S.A. Timezone: -7 GMT Contact info: PMs here. Discord information if requested.

Hi there! I followed some friends to Mateus from another MMO. They landed there about a month or two before I did, and they both now co-run FCs and have both personal housing and FC housing. One friend's FC got a mansion last night! They were so excited, and I was excited for them after hearing how hard it is to get housing in FFXIV. Anyway! I'm a little more gunshy and being brand new to the FF IP, I've been learning the lore while crafting a character, and I've already had several strangers ask to RP after reading my status message when running around areas the RPers congregate. I've been around the MMO block a few times (20 years worth) and I have to say this is one of the easier RP communities to step into. Others make you feel like you're pulling your teeth out trying to put yourself out there for RP. So it's definitely novel. Here's the Mateus RP discord link: Mateus RP HUB: https://discord.gg/HPbYNFU And it's very active. I daresay a community on discord seems to work better than going through forums and enjin accounts like past ones. Good luck jumping in!

One thing I've learned through 20 years of RPing is that a red flag in one person may not be a red flag in another person. Human beings are so complex! And there are no two people alike in the world. It boils down to my preferences and perspective as to whether I'll get on with someone, and how our little "crazy patterns" do with each other. For example, I'm a very time-oriented person, so it can be a red flag if I'm RPing with someone who's late or blows off a RP session. That's because I tend to block out my free time and tend to know what I'm doing at a certain time in the near future. I keep calendars to keep track of my appointments, both in RL and in-game, so time is valuable to me. A person who doesn't value time is going to be someone that I won't want to play in-depth with, or commit to. Not because they're a bad person, and not because I'm right, but because we're different people in this aspect. From past experience of trying to make RP relationships work involving this, I know it ends up with OOC issues eventually. On the internet, especially since we're missing face-to-face communication and can't read when a person is joking, serious, mad, depressed, etc (although we can pick up on clues over time), I'd rather recognize this from the beginning and not encourage interaction with a person like this involving times, so that we can remain on friendly terms. It's just recognizing that I have a quirk that doesn't mesh well with someone else's quirk, habit, issue, etc, and moving on from them. It's learning to trust my gut instinct about people the first time it pops up, even if I can't quite place my finger on what it is in the beginning. I always trust that. In other words, what may be a red flag to one person may not be to another, and it's easy for threads like this to delve into personal pet peeves instead of what constitutes red flag behaviors. There are people out there bent on maliciousness, stalking and other sociopathic/psychotic behaviors, and when you come across one of these people, if you're in tune with yourself, you'll get the biggest NOPE feeling crawling down your spine and little alarm bells going off in your head saying, DON'T ENGAGE, RUN AWAY. Thankfully they're not as abundant as they once were, since more victims are stepping forward and naming names. But always listen to that inner voice when engaging people, even if you can't explain it.

Thank you for the replies. Got one of you friended tonight! *Waves at the Star* I'll spot the other friendly one tomorrow. I'm so new to the Final Fantasy IP that I fear if I go into RP right now, I'll get myself blacklisted. But I'm finding my character's voice and been visiting locations in-game between leveling stuff, and little-by-little spinning out the character's background. I'm looking forward to integrating into the Mateus Hive. :cactuar: (I discovered the casino! What a blast that place is.)

I've recently rolled up on Mateus after the urging of some friends. While the game has a huge learning curve for me, I've risen to the challenge! I'm also not a fan of stranger danger on the internet and it took a bit to get over my anxiety of PuGing dungeons for the MSQ, which is why I've avoided FFXIV all these years. I'm not over it entirely, but I've met some of the nicest people collectively on the internet in FFXIV, and that's a huge winning point. So I've decided to settle in and stay awhile. So... hi!