ArmachiA

*Looks at quote* *Looks at avatar* "Everyone else"... eh? I'm on to you.

That's pretty much my biggest problem with bending lore to play a WHM, it's really really hard to do and it gets murky really easily so I tend to avoid it. There's basically a bunch of reasons why you can't, constant hurdles you have to find your way around (Oh, it's forbidden, oh only the padjal know it, oh the Elementals guard the succor and they say no, oh, only a few people even know what a white mage is, etc etc) it just doesn't seem worth trying to do the mental gymnastics it would take to A. Explain it, and B. have it explained to me plausibly. Especially when a White Mage is really someone who dedicates their life to the Shroud and the Elementals and you can easily be just as an effective healer as a very strong Conjurer and it wouldn't change your story. I've expressed a lot of dislike about WHM ICly over the years, but I actually think most of that comes from the fact you can be the EXACT same character without needing the White Mage thing. Most people don't play servants to the Shroud, in fact a lot of people who say they are WHMs (Who I've seen) don't even hang in Gridania. There's nothing wrong with just being a Conjurer in this instance and - to a lot of new peoples credit who I have talked to - most people agree once it's explained to them in such a way. VERY few get the "I do what I want so eff you" attitude. As someone stated above, a new player isn't going to know White Mage is gated so heavily, and may just call themselves that simply because "Well, it's Final Fantasy, that's what healers are." It's good that, to a lot of veterans credit, people don't mind explaining it over and over and over again (Just look at how any threads there are on the subject) so new players understand. Informed decisions are much better than "Well, you go do whatever you want." without any explanation. I'm pretty stringent on this, and I'm in a guild that is also stringent. If you say your a White Mage ICly, my character won't know what that is. And if you try to explain it's what the Padjal do, my character will flat out not believe yours. I'm with everyone else, EVERYTHING can be explained well enough if you do your homework, and if your reason is plausible - if your able to clear the many hurdles it takes to be a White Mage - then I'll probably still rp with you. I'm stricter on White Mage then I am on most things in this game, but I won't refuse to rp with you unless you get all uppity about my preferences on lore.

I don't think your OOCly level is that big of a deal if it's been agreed upon by everyone you RP with that is doesn't matter. For instance, I play bad guys for my FC, but all of them have only been level 23 or so. It was agreed by everyone to treat them to be at a certain power level. For instance, my Garlean was pretty strong but mostly relied on Garlean weaponry to survive while my Voidsent was VERY powerful. These were bad guys though, so it was good to get the FCs permission first. For player character, I personally never look at a characters level. To me, there's a big difference between the world of FFXIV and the "Meta-game" of FFXIV. The Meta game is, of course, levels, being able to play any job, Fantasia potions, raiding in Coil, the Lightning Event, things are are there for ooc purposes and mechanics, while the "World" of FFXIV is how the characters live in it. Those are two very different things and I think they need to stay separate.

Old thread got moved to inactive, so I had to make a new one. Will update information shortly!

[align=center]Power. [/align] [align=center]In this world, in any world, it's the only thing that matters. [/align] [align=center]Once, we were Treasure Hunters, looking for the next big score to make us rich; make us feel important.[/align] [align=center]That was before the Calamity. [/align] [align=center]Wealth did nothing; our vast collection of artifacts didn't stop the destruction. They turned to ash, became worthless at our feet.[/align] [align=center]We know now, it was all meaningless. [/align] [align=center]The only thing that matters is absolute power. The power to protect Eorzea from any threat it may face is worth more than gold or jewels. [/align] [align=center]And we intend to get it, at any cost. [/align] [align=center](For more information, please click on the tabs)[/align] [align=center][/align]

-snip-. This is admittedly why I got a little anxious in things like the pet peeves thread or in other threads when it sort of feels like people might be veering towards "my-way-or-the-highway" / "you're doing it wrong" land, because it makes me worry that folks are bringing that old "everyone has to RP the same way FOR THE GOOD OF THE COMMUNITY" vibe over to FFXIV. ... Umm, where was this attitude last year when several of us got slammed for running an rp event that was meant to be a large, fun thing and, instead, were accused that it threatened -server wide- consistent rp by an -elite- few? Just saying, lets not forget the past so easily. It was once policed. Now if you want to say, it's nice how the community has -evolved- into a community that -now- allows people to have their own types of rp and acknowledges that all these different stories and types of rps are okay and can exist in the game, that I would agree with. Community has become more open minded this past year, no doubts there. To jump in, I was one of those "Elite" few, but it should be stressed that I was criticizing the decision on a forum where criticism should be -allowed-. I don't think I ever once said you need to stop doing it because I said so. Criticism of a thing is NOT telling someone to stop doing a thing. It got a lot of criticism from a lot of people, because a lot of people didn't agree. They are allowed to disagree. They are allowed to say they disagree in a public forum. You are allowed to ignore them. If you put stories out there, expect people not to like them. And tell they don't. I run stories for my guild and get criticized a lot on different aspects of those stories. You take the criticism, decide if it's valid, and decide if you want to change your story. Criticism is NOT evil, we all need to stop treating it like it is. The evil comes from the part where people think you should change because of the fact they disagree. EDIT: And Teirgan is right, server-wide events are a completely different bucket of oysters since they require people to agree on a specific ruleset - which I am of course against. That would need its own thread to be discussed.

The thing that I love most about the people I RP with is the fact that we can sit down and discuss scenes of the story we're playing out like it were a novel or a TV show. We can do this FOR HOURS. Sitting around and discussing the value of a certain scene, what happened between two people, why some people are fighting, what decisions were made, etc, etc. No one gets offended if someone says "I really didn't agree with the choice made." or "Man, I'm not sure that will end well for ." We understand that disagreeing with a character doesn't mean we disagree with them OOC and we understand that we are not our characters. We, of course, say lots of positive things too, but it's nice when the players don't get mad at each other for what characters do, and even better when the players can discuss each others characters' motivations and decisions without getting offended if they disagree. One of my favorite things to do is to talk shop, discuss whats going on with characters and discuss scenes - even when I wasn't even around for them. I really value that I'm able to do that with my group and it makes the story feel... more epic. We're talking like it's not just roleplay, but an overarching story and that's pretty cool. The community in general? I think my favorite thing is how there are many, many, many different kind of groups on the Server. Some that follow lore strictly, some that don't, some that have super powerful characters, and others who play weaker ones. Since this is a large community and there are so many different opinions it's EASY to find a group that has your personal roleplaying style. I can tell you, in certain games it was never that easy, generally having to follow the ruleset of the small rp population. Here though, on Balmung, there are so many different kinds of RPers you WILL find a group that shares your views on roleplay if you try hard enough. I like that the server has no specific ruleset on RP or what it should be. RP is different for everyone and it means something different to everyone. People aren't to agree on what "real" RP is and that's okay, as long as theirs a place for everyone to build their own sandbox. I've not heard of a lot of harassment related to RP Styles, and I think healthy debate on the forums is important and necessary to keep the community honest. I think Balmung does a lot of things right where a lot of games have done them wrong and FFXIV is a testament to the benefit of a large RP server. And its nice, too, that most of these different groups can co-exist with very little drama on the game.

The two characters I play the most are a Midlander and a Highlander Hyur. I'll be adding Au Ra to it.

I actually don't have that many, aside from the usual fair (Godmoding, Metagaming, Not sticking to lore, etc etc) ~ I don't mind if someone wants to write this like a novel and state their entire mental state and thoughts and feelings in a post. It's easy enough to ignore from my characters point of view and as a player I don't mind reading it. It bugs the hell out of me when they do that and the only thing the character then says is "Yeah." How the hell am I supposed to respond to that? You just wrote a huge paragraph about the inner workings of your character and all you wrote for my character was "yeah." Not. Helpful. ~ When it is obvious, so so obvious, you are only roleplaying to be in a romance. Look, we all like Romance - My character is even in one. But if your walking into a group of characters and scoping out which one your character can fall in love with, it's almost insulting. Some people go so far as not even wanting to RP with you if your character is taken or not of the gender they prefer. You don't care about my character, you only care about their sexual orientation/relationship status. And I'm not talking about people who leave their characters open for romance later down the road. I'm talking the people who immediately crush on your character first meeting, make proclamations about love in a week, flirt with a bunch of people just to see which one sticks (Not flirty characters, different thing). You all know the type I'm talking about. It's frustrating, because friendships and familial ties can be just as important and some people take "I want to see where it goes in the story." as an insult. Please don't treat my character as a potential love interest, treat her as a person. That's it.

Agreed. It says more about the state of MCH/BRD (My two main jobs *cries*) then it does tanks. Tanks having a viable DPS offspec is sort of a boon, considering how some raids didn't even require an offtank and we'd have our WAR also gear DRG just in case.

Even with a long drawn out application, bad people will slip threw. I have stories, I have so many stories of people we thought were decent, didn't raise any red flags and eventually were shown to be incredibly manipulative or drama filled. On the other hand, really, what your FC puts out could be seen very differently by very different people. My FC is well known for being lore compliant, which we think is a GOOD thing. There are people out there though, who believes that makes us babysitters and elitist. People's perceptions of your FC will be marred regardless. We put a lot of work into making people in the FC feel welcome, and we've gotten more than a few "You guys are way friendlier and inclusive then some people told me." All because of my posts on here about liking, and following, lore. Controlling your FC rep is hard to do, you can't watch your members all the time and you have no idea who's going to end up ruining the reputation of your guild. As an FC leader when you hear "One person can ruin your FCs rep" it is INCREDIBLY stressful because it feels like I have to police everyone in my FC all the time and I don't like doing that. I am one person, trying to control the actions of 70 others is nearly impossible.

if you need any help with lore just ask, there are a bunch of us to know a bunch (Sounssy is our own wiki man), you can do a lot within lore, a lot. If you want to ask in private, you can shoot me a pm and I can try to help If I can't I'll just send you to Sounssy

There's a lot of different Roleplayers on Balmung that will fit your play style, a lot of us like to argue lore on the forums but we generally don't harass each other in game if we disagree. If you're looking for lore compliance you'll find it, there are plenty of us (My FC has a lore compliance rule for instance - where it has to be either be in lore or just explained well enough in the grey areas using lore) and if you're looking for non-lore rp well thats here too. Balmung has a lot of events and can easily get intra FC rp going, I've seen it a lot and been a part of it myself. I wouldn't say there's a giant organization of it though,. it just Fcs who feel like working together. There are problems like any community, and like any community the problems are different to each person. It really depends on who you talk to what they think the problems are with rp on the server.

I just have to show off this Screenshot from our resident inventor/mad scientist when we got our workshop

switching over to MCH as my main, I can already feel that MCH needs a buff. It feels slow as a dps. However, I don't expect the new classes to come in balanced with the other classes, so I expect fixes within the next couple weeks. I'm used to BRD as my main so DPS only really feels a little low for me, but I can definitely feel it.

^ Welcome to the tribe Brother >.>

Oh my God, The Warrior of Light is the Slayer. Maybe it'll turn into Season 7 of Buffy and all the "potentials" will wake up someday.

Noooooo, I was so close to 36 on my MCH ; ;

I feel like I need to boot up the old launch meme's.

hahaha funny, this is the front page of the NB forums right now

Kha isn't up there T_T

Is this a private group or are you welcoming others to take part? If people wanna join us they're welcome to! Also names: Lanhli Kha Arato Kha Ile "Ellion" Kha Philomele Kha Iron Rain (Real name: Sugar [pronounced Sooghar!] Kha) Masaki Kha Jousuke Kha Sanzashi Kha ..some others who haven't committed to a name yet. As you can see, some people didn't want to let go of their Japanese-y names, so Kha works because Raen influences make sense for them.

Me and mine are going with Kha. There's about 8 or 9 of us.

My group is going with Kha, mostly because it seems like them branching out and learning about Eorzea to take back to their home clan totally seems like something the Kha would be okay with.

I am so excited that they went with Mongol naming conventions! I was really hoping they would from the moment they said warring tribe and not something vaguely Japanese. My group is deciding on their clan now.