Khadan

One of the things I've found over the years of RP and reading fiction (both 'fan' and published author, alike) is that no two people write out a fight scene the exact same way. People develop personal styles from the overwhelmingly detailed and accurate description of each footstep to almost abstract and elegant descriptions of stances countering other stances. I guess if I were to answer your question as concisely as I could I would give it my 'catchall' mantra for roleplay and writing in general: "If you want to write well then read well." I.e. read other authors who write combat and are even known for it, no less. See if it lets you visualize a fight while avoiding too many 'anime-esque' tropes and so on where physics and bodies move unlike normal bodies and physics =P Personally I'm a detail-oriented writer when it comes to combat. I want to 'see' the fight in my mind as it's been described to me so it's more like a movie than "John punched Wilson in the head, Wilson groaned and took a few steps back". In reality you don't typically just "Punch someone in the head" or "slash your sword at their chest", you take a stance, you prep yourself, you launch your attack and depending on the simultaneous reaction(s) of the opponent it may or may not land home but even if it doesn't hit there's an action and a reaction and those are equally as important as simply hitting someone or them 'dodging'. One thing if you want a really good exercise in writing combat is to challenge yourself to write out a combat scene from an Asian Martial Arts film, like Ong Bak or even Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It sounds ridiculous, right? But imagine the effort that it took to choregraph that fight, someone somewhere has already written it thus you can as well =) Write out every detail as if you were the author of the story and rewrite it until you can stand to read it without going 'ugh!'. At that point you'll probably be more competent than most people who consider themselves "Lords of the Dance" when it comes to "RP Combat". Think of it as 'writing action' and you're already ahead of the game.

Well all unwarranted judgmental attitudes aside, the thread has veered into the oncoming lane of off-topic. As per the OP, I'm glad to see some 'validation' from SE on Dragoon. I mean I personally always figured that the aerial strikes were precise, lightning fast, and above all: as lethal as it is effective. The major proof in the pudding for me is the sequence of derplander on the bridge as the dogdragon gets its first hit which moving so fast that you can't see anything but a streak of light that parts clouds like a sonic boom, literally almost doubles it backwards with the force of the blow. The subsequent strikes, each accompanied by a brilliant flash of light and a resounding impact, force the massive beast to falter and die, it's organs pierced and ruptured, its bones shattered in several places. This ain't no joke, kids. Dragoons are serious business because the threat they face is equally serious. I've had many a discussion in the past where, admittedly, most of my points are conjecture and based off other cultures or similar circumstances but the premise is generally that if you are a nation of warriors, with a warrior god, and constantly at war then you're not going to be breeding pansies. Most Ishgardians are probably like Spartans at this point. Even their nobility are likely competent if not skillful fighters. Their children likely begin training as soon as they're old enough to hold a spear and so on and so forth. (Which ties into the age judgements in RP as it pertains to Ishgardians, at least). Regardless, I'm stoked for Heavensward. It's nothing but huge massive boosts for my character's development and story which has always been a struggle since the launch of 2.0 as an Ishgardian in exile in a land of people who don't share his values, his beliefs, or his outlook on life. Having the chance to return home has been great and there will be many more great things to come I'm betting. =)

There's also likely demand for resources only found in Coerthas. Both in mining and botany you'll find things like Jade, spruce lumber, Darksteel ore (rare), and as per mining leves "Blue Mythril". There's also an Ixali daily quest for miners to harvest "Furite", a key component to making the alloy known as Ishgardian Steel. Many many others, as well. =) I imagine in just Coerthas alone, there's a treasure trove of trade commodities for export that Gridania, a veritable 'bread basket' nation, would willingly trade their foodstuffs for.

Have a fishing quest dialogue =) http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/I_Believe_Fish_Can_Fly Firminnant: Apparently them skyfish are edible and consumed not all that rarely =P

I... just like being useful. v:blush:v I tend to lean towards healing classes more than tanks, though, if given the chance. Especially in new content, since it's usually just a matter of spamming heals at people to keep them off the floor. Once I actually know the fights and whatnot, I feel more comfortable taking up the tanking role - which I usually get to do since I run stuff with Gogon (SCH) first before doing them with Chachan (PLD). ... I tend to just queue up as DPS when I'm feeling lazy or I want to try and knock out some other stuff in the wait, like Ixal dailies. Judge going DRK will effectively be Chachan 2.0 in that regard - I'll have cleared the stuff with BOTH Gogon and Chachan at that point... so when I get there with him, I should hopefully know it well enough to get through without any problems. Party badness notwithstanding. Play style choice for me. It helps that I'm pretty damn good at it, too lol.

This can be abbreviated thusly: It's the classic issue with Holy Trinity design: People are intimidated by tanking roles and while they might level it, they won't be using it. Gosh I see tank classes and beeline for them like a fat kid passing the candy aisle. Though I'm hesitating with Dark Knight. Doesn't really feel so innovative to me since we already have a two-handed big-weapon-wielding-tank in the Warrior. I would have preferred to see something that was a bit different. That and my experience with Death Knights means that Paladins and Warriors will finally find common ground in tanking: hatred of Dark Knights.

Ye Olde Banke Cheques Anyway yes I just assume that there's multi-denominational coinage for 'street money', and for truly large purchases you'd be authorizing a bank to make a payment on your behalf to a party, etc. Ul'Dah probably has a lock-down on financial institutions etc given the state of their culture but that's just speculation.

I'd say that it's accurate enough, yeah. You can always cross-reference the posted from the linkshell threads to the rest of the forums. If you don't see their FC leader or members posting around then chances are that they either slowed down activity or simply don't participate on the RPC much. In game is always your best bet, though. You can search up FC's in game and see how many members they have and who's on during your peak times. If you see only one or two people on when you're on then you may wish to look somewhere else. Not much of an MMO experience with one or two people who may not even interact with you =P

I would say that there's a great deal of them still around. Where you find them, of course, is where you may or may not be having trouble. A lot of FC's tend to be very closed off and only interact within the boundaries of their FC houses and wards and/or only interact within their own little micro-communities. That's a pretty natural thing when it comes to RP communities, though. That being said there are many community events going on quite often where people from different FC's gather on the regular. Regular events like Grindstone on Saturdays if that's your thing is a lot of people's "go to" for meeting new people etc etc. I know some other FC's host some fluffy get togethers regularly, as well. My advice is simply look in the linkshell hall under the specific server, of course, and find some concepts that you like then just hunt those suckers down. You'll hit paydirt sooner than you might think!

I look forward to many explanations of how "bigger is not always better" and how a sword through their the lungs and heart is oftentimes just as deadly if not deadlier than the swing of some massive piece of metal that relies on momentum and power rather than finesse and skill =P

Big events and big happenings for the Astral Agency, of late!

I know it's probably been said buuuuuuuuut Paladins getting something better than Flash and Circle of Scorn for AoE threat generation. The main issue is in a situation where you have a Paladin in a dungeon or two Paladins in a Raid, if one is asked to offtank for adds or in a dungeon just AoE pulling etc, the amount of effort expended vs. the reward gained is acutely different. You will work three times as hard for almost no actual guarantee of maintaining threat on those adds. I'm not for homogenization to the degree that Paladin and Warrior are irrelevant as different classes but Paladin simply lacks a lot of tools that tanking classes in other games, and even this one, simply just have in abundance. Hell, if they somehow added magic damage to Flash as a Paladin passive that would go a long way. Though a cone attack like they had in 1.0 would be even better. On top of that Sword Oath should either be scrapped entirely or reworked absolutely. Adding 50 fire damage to auto attacks is just ridiculous. Compared to a Warrior's ability to simply take off Defiance and do, while not equivalent to a Dragoon or even a Monk, pretty respectable damage. This is mostly for solo play and questing, etc. I've no illusions to Paladins queuing as DPS or anything like that, but there's no reason that Paladin's should be "the class that takes 5 minutes to kill things out in the field". Even Conjurers have Cleric Stance as an example of a tool to speed up their solo play. Sword Oath simply just doesn't stack up to the obvious benefits of Cleric Stance or simply switching Defiance off (nevermind the 5 stacks of crit buffs). With Dragoon, my arguably favorite class, I really appreciate the changes made to the class thus far. The only things I could really say I would like to see added might be some way to help the class stack up to Monks in regards to Greased Lightning. I don't think adding a similar mechanic to the class would be a good idea, myself, though I wouldn't mind some kind of debuff to a boss applied by jumping-based attacks so as you jump attack it, it takes more damage up to a lovely amount such as 3 stacks or some such. With regards to jumping, though, the reduction of animation lock is good though it could be better. Completely removing it would be the best bet though, realistically, I would say that the best way to solve that problem would be an invulnerability granted for the duration of the animation, only a second or two tops depending on the animation so that while elusive jumping away from a boss AoE you don't have to factor in Korean levels of finger reflexives to actually use the ability in the way it's meant to be used, i.e. avoiding damage. The CD is also way too long on that one. 30-45 seconds would be preferable. One minute at most. Also the long CD on Dragonfire Dive is far too long for the small amount of damage the ability does. Either the damage needs to go up to account for such a long cool down or the cool down needs to come down so it's more in line with Spineshatter Dive. Lastly how about some silly fluffery? Falling damage reduction =P They do jump hundreds of meters into the air and land without any damage taken; It seems to make sense that a 30 meter drop shouldn't even phase them! That's all my rambling for now and I didn't even include crafting/gathering classes yet lol

Ha ha... one day I'll actually add the history section of mine. At first I was seriously worried about metagamers and such as it had been a large problem in WoW. Here I'm not so concerned with it, tbh. I should just jot it down and be done with it, though I think my motivation tanks with the feeling that wikis tend to be unread most of the time. It's hard to balance between what you feel is noteworthy vs. what you feel may be a waste of effort. =X

Not that it's totally unrelated but I suspect, also, that there might be just as much-if-not-more slurs referencing one's allegiance or place of origin than just their race. Such as Lominsans not like Ul'Dahns etc.

If I was a mage standing in the back and flinging spells I'd be guaranteed that every sharpshooter in the area would find me the most tempting of targets. Having a nice layer of metal between your heart and incoming arrows could be quite the insurance policy.

Have I, or have you? You definitely have. Which part of any of the above dialogue was supposed to be useful to this conversation? If people want to host these tacky money-grabs on a regular basis, that's their prerogative. If people want to publicly discuss aforementioned tacky money-grabs, that's their prerogative. That was actually my point exactly. I even personally feel that some of them are indeed tacky, lol.

Have I, or have you? You definitely have. If $people wish to hold $events with any kind of regularity be it spaced out or all at the same time then that is their right and choice to do so. No amount of not-so-subtle cajoling or insinuating that $people should do $things a certain way is ever going to be appropriate. The one and -only- caveat here is that IF people choose to communicate about their events amongst themselves to greater spread out amount of RP happenings so that others can participate in more things then that is splendid and I encourage that wholeheartedly. IF your intent is to actually encourage more communication along those lines then by all means continue.

You've missed the point entirely.

see that doesn't actually matter. If people want to do five date auctions in a row then that's their prerogative; not yours. The community doesn't need to be told what to do or how to do it. It doesn't even need to be suggested at, either. If everyone does their own thing then none of it really matters. If five date auctions happen on one weekend then fine! Social Darwinism will settle it out accordingly.

Just kind of echoing Berrod here on this and to add in my own two gil. The main thrust of this whole thing seems to be a case made about "whodunnit first" and then kind of add in some ideas so that "people can do other things without stepping on the 'firstcomers' mojo". This is inherently flawed. There are no original ideas, no unique thoughts when it comes to fundraising. Everything has been done before and no one is special for having done it first or doing it 'better'. In that vein people should do whatever they want to do. If you want to run a gil-paid fundraiser event then by all means, do so. The -only- thing that separates a good gil-paid event from a bad one is the amount of gil earned and even that is arguable; realistically it's whether or not people enjoyed it. Anyway, if you've a mind to run a charity event, date auction, brothel service, paid stage play, treasure hunt, or what-have-you then you should do it and have the ability to do so no matter what 'popular opinion' actually is. Do what you want cuz a pirate is free, I guess :thumbsup:

*slowly chants 'dragoon, dragoon, dragoon'* Yas betch yaaaas :lol:

"Hey guys, I'ma borrow this for a bit." "Alrighty, we'll just stand here guarding an empty room while you're gone..." Well let's be fair, if someone who outranks you by not just a few levels but by -leaps and bounds- 'relieves you of your duties'? You just damn do what they say. As written in the Charge of the Light Brigade and something any soldier knows well: "Ours is not to question why; ours is to but do and die". It's really not that much of a stretch in logic, more like a reach over to the coffee table to scoop up that big gulp.

Posting here as well! I'll be looking for an invite as soon as I can =)

even if the Holy See pronounced him "dead", obviously Alberic isn't convinced of that at the end of the Dragoon quest. He even flatly states "I can only hope that Estinien is still out there", lo and behold he is. Final Fantasy has always been a case of habeas corpus when it comes to not only your comrades but your enemies. Unless there's a body clearly splayed out on the dirt for you to prod at then never believe that someone is dead. As for how Estinien simply "walked out" with the Eye? Well if he's the Azure Dragoon then we don't know how far that authority carries or what the limits to it, if any, actually are. He could have fought his way out, simply picked it up and said "this is mine, now" and because lolazuredarguun status the guards had no reason to stop him, or most likely since he knows how it was stored and who or what was guarding it, he was simply able to steal it with minimal effort. As for as him showing up POST lvl 50 Dragoon quest, if that is in fact how the timeline is going to place it, then I would simply say that Aymeric is the type who is obviously willing to bend the rules to get what he wants. Overlooking something like "misplacing the Eye" for a few days wouldn't be beneath him. Especially if he can bring the power of an Azure Dragoon to bear against an overwhelming Dravanian Horde.