TeeBeeDee

This sounds good. I love running group content and wouldn't mind a resource that helps doing that outside of DF. Can Tzain Nival get an invite? Thanks.

Yeah, the original idea I had for White Mage job (and I've basically abandoned it in favor of the "Red Mage using White Magic to heal") was this. While in haukke manor (the once home of the Seedseers), Tzain finds a well preserved book. Inside the book are pages of almost incomprehensible ideas. Imagine one of those really trippy self help things written by someone on way too much lsd. Tzain keeps studying it however and starts to figure out the concepts inside. Concepts that teach white magic. Turns out the binding of the book has a soul gem in it, the soul gem was made by the author of the book. So the White Mage book acts as a trainer and the soul stone acts like a decryption key. Allowing the reader to slowly interpret the spells as they become acclimated to the white mage soul gem. So the unique thing about the reader isn't so much "super special potential" as it is "curiosity", which may appeal to someone out there. I'm not going to use that idea, so I'm leaving it here in case someone else wants it. Also, thank you for the tidbit that a Red Mage *could* tap the land in an emergency. Adds an interesting little nugget. Now at some point I'll actually put this all together and RP again.

Ok, so I'm not stepping blindly into a minefield. Good to know. Thank you!

Hi, I started playing my character, Tzain Nival, for the first time since before patch 2.1. When I returned i got the expansion and really fell for the Red Mage. Tzain was already a 50 White Mage and a 50 Black Mage. But when I was antiquating myself with the Lore I was reminded that being a White Mage or a Black Mage and NOT being the Warrior of Light (Which i have no intention of claiming to be in RP terms) is essentially illegal. So my thought is, What if I was a Red Mage all along? And on occassions when I'm playing white mage healer I'm really just utilizing the Red Magic skills to enhance my conjuration. Basically, I started in the Conjurer guild, then studied at Thaumaturgy. Then had the bright idea of using all 6 elements. The Red Mage trainer finds me, thinks this is hysterical given how I'm going about it :geek:. And decides to show me how it's really done. In the process showing me White and Black Magic. Learning the spells of White Magic and having a background in Conjuration would make me a pseudo-white mage. Although I think that I should act like doing it without balancing with black magic is a strain over time. Anyway, does this sound feasible with the lore? The description of Red Magic only says it allows me to accelerate my aether to cast spells using my personal reserves that would normally require elementals or tapping the land. Or Maybe I just haven't followed the questline far enough, I'm just barely started on that. Thanks muchley, Tzain Nival - Balmung

I'd have to do some hands on testing, but rarely have I had non-failfest dungeons run the entire time length. 90 minutes is a long time for one dungeon assuming your not dying. Once completed, the timer stops if I remember correctly. Take a place like WP. It's not like you'd be stopping to smell the roses. A Tonberry is actively stalking you and trying to stab you in the throat. Normal IC reaction would be one of fear and panic. Or Haukke Manor, it's basically a haunted house. Sneaking through like the Scooby Doo gang would be within reason. And if we're being serious, wiping on a run would be basically losing. So IC wise, you'd all be limping out of the dungeon with your tails between your legs. EDIT: Not that I'm dismissive of the idea. I think it has some merit. However there are some existing technical hurdles that have to be surmounted to make it work. For instance, if you ever DF and use the "join party in progress" there are a ton of empty zones that are still alive even though the original group abandoned them due to failure. Maybe if the timer was removed if you entered without using DF? ~Tzain Nival

heh. I think I just nominated myself to start organizing something didn't I? :geek: I'll figure out something. ~Tzain Nival

So I've been out of the RP scene for a while now. It had kind of lost it's magic. However two nights ago I joined a Satasha group and the decision was made to run the dungeon In Character as a bunch of random mercs hired to clear the caves of monsters. Admitedly rusty as all heck, I jumped in with both feet (I think I may have called too much attention to myself, something to work on :blush: ) but it was, quite possibly, the most fun I've had in this game to date. I find that there's a bit too much "sitting around" RP for my taste as a gamer, but IC dungeons were basically what got me to start back in EQ1 all those years ago. So I'm curious, are there any resources or groups of players out there that have a similar slant? I wouldn't mind making contact with like minded individuals. ~Tzain Nival Balmung

^^ I never said I had a problem with making it a passive buff. I completely agree with what you say. I personally didn't see the need to increase enmity or the 5% increase healing in defiance at the time based on personal experience but no one plays like I do or like anyone else so experiences differ. I'm just happy that I won't be a pain to my healers anymore and feel bad since they're making warriors a proper tank.. Now.. I will enjoy watching the increase of WAR pop and giggle at the silly stuff I'll be expecting on the tank forums. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insinuate that you did. I was just putting my own perspective on the changes. I thought the advantage of another outlook would be helpful. ~Tzain Nival

In regards to Defiance, here's the outlook from a white mage. Existing Defiance is set up that I have to work harder to heal your hp than I do a paladin. Each Wrath stack you put on makes me work less, ultimately at a full stack I am now working AS hard as I would when healing a PLD. If you use your stack for whatever reason, I now have to work harder to heal your added HP. The new defiance makes it so that the moment you gain the extra HP, you gain the added Healing, so the moment you turn on defiance, healing you is equally as intensive (from an HP to HP standpoint) as healing a PLD. The change isn't so much for you, it's more for me! I am no longer paying a cost for your use of Wrath, which reduces the usefulness of "sitting on wrath stacks" and incentivizes actually using abilities that utilize them. As for Inner Beast, The existing inner beast makes you and your healers step on each others toes. If you take a big hit, I'm loading a big heal, if you load a big heal as well (inner beast), chances are between the two of them overhealing is going to happen. By changing it into a % dmg reduction it effectively makes it so that my actions no longer nullify your actions and vice versa. All in all, I'm looking forward to the changes. ~Tzain Nival

A shame I missed this, hopefully if you plan on having another one I can join then. On a plus side, my account on this site finally works again and I can now login! ~Tzain Nival

Still havent had much luck on the grouping (trying to hit that elusive level 18 THM for the debuffs before I switch back to Gladiator). Any particularly good targets to hit at those levels? I tried the Bloodshore Bells, which had whupped me good solo, but they now conned blue with a partner and didnt do much for sp gain. I was afraid to go after anything much tougher for fear that the gladiator I was with would be beaten down faster than I could heal. I kinda miss having mobs seperated into Solo category and Group Category. Seems the vast majority of players are so obsessed with leves that they dont do much of anything else, and the few that have strayed off the leve path are....a little anti-social?

Necessity is the mother of invention. I suppose the real question is which one to sign up and keep up with. both Pro and YG look great.

I admit, I did not play FFXI. By the time I got around to that game it had become a mountain that I didnt particularly wish to climb. So if that lack of experience is hindering me, hopefully I can catch up. I have a major dislike of grouping in this game thus far. I find it chaotic and lacking any form or semblance of design. I've tried leve groups, I've tried duos. The one thing I noticed is that everything is over so fast that any form of tactics are essentially rendered moot. Players and monsters both hit way too hard. I was at an area, competing for spawns with another player, eventually we were both bored and decided to go after some harder enemies. My damage, as a gladiator, was finally going to result in a decently long fight, perhaps 2 minutes or so....until he hit me and took half my health away. So to find a decent fight with a partner in my opinion was not going to happen. Next I tried leve questing. Even at 5 star, most of the leves were a complete joke to a group of 6 level 9-14s. I was a THM at the time and healing with sacrifice was an exercise in hell given the mosters agro jumping, the massive dmg intake by everyone, and the speed with which everything died. I cant help but wonder how I am suppossed to function as a healer when I gain nothing in the way of rank points for casting a self based AE heal, which is honestly the only way I've found to deal with the incomming dmg to the front line fighters, let alone the archer who must be coating their arrows with a potion designed to entice any enemy into humping their leg (I assume thats just a bug), I'll be trying Cure from now on in the hopes that it works a bit better. Obviously, I must be doing it wrong. Thus, I am here to get some idea of what I'm doing wrong, I figure most of the players I run into are likely FFXI players, and perhaps I simply dont get the mentality of players zerg rushing back into the fray with the weakness debuff still on them. So, how does one group or duo successfully?

I actually think that for a first week review of an mmo just out of beta, this was decently accurate. I have to agree, the game is beautiful. The cutscenes are acceptably well done (I do have one giant glaring ommission on the uldah one where you are accused of evesdropping....while standing in the room....next to everyone....for about 5 minutes. And really? Silent protaganist? C'mon.) The faults they poke in this review are not "bugs" but rather ommisions or design flaws. The leve system is a poor excuse for not having legitimate quests. But since there is nothing out there other than the camps, it almost makes a twisted sort of sense. The retainer system is a disaster in so many ways its almost frightening, no I am not talking about the lack of AH, I actually kind of like the flea market bazaar, but not forcing everyone to set up at a stall with a little speak bubble over their head with a description of their wares is like asking for a big pile of Fail. Oh and, no renaming the nickname? really? Crafting is amazingly in-depth and wonderful.....but the gear created is a semi permanant fixture of the world once crafted. Gear made today could theoretically still be used by low rank characters 4 years from now, it simply needs to be repaired and its either 100% or 75% as good as the day it was made. I expect eventually most of the work of crafters will be repairing gear rather than creating gear as the sheer amount of gear available will force prices to the floor. Mix and match classes, great idea, cant complain, but why bother having a physical exp level if it essentially means little to nothing? I would have been perfectly content with rank levels alone and have gear make up the difference in regards to stats. As for the Rank leveling system....random is bad. you can use Variance, but random is just bad.This is especially true when the best possible way to gain said skill points is to spam the same default rank 1 ability repeatedly interwoven with the occasional heal or TP based move. As for the UI, what can I tell you that you dont already know. First of all, I've heard that the UI is processed Server side, this would explain the lag and also means that the lag will never go away. I can only imagine that such a horror of a design decision was made to fight botting which usually uses hacks that speak directly to the UI processing client side. I could go on a tangent for 10 pages on the word "bot" but I'll spare you. The chat limitation is so stupid its mind boggling. It was also likely one of the first things noticed in beta and alpha....yet its still here. Targetting is abysmally slow and far too reliant on line of sight considering the camera line of sight doesnt always match the character....who stands at an odd angle which makes it difficult to quickly ascertain what ability will or will not work. Considering that plus the agro hopping monsters my heal spells are usually met with "target is not in sight" halfway through the cast. I had a whole section here just for grouping, but I'm going to turn it into more of a discussion than a rant and post it elsewhere. So, I agree with the Gamespot review, much like FF13, I find it visually striking and developmentally stunted. Can it be turned around? yes. The question is if the turn around will be fast enough or big enough to make us care and keep our monthly subscription.

Well, they do need to do something. And its funny that you mentioned Gladiator since I'm leveling up that and THM. Seriously, if you thought Gladiator was bad for skill ups.....dont touch THM. First off, half your dmg spells are DOT spells, and the DOT aspect doesnt even give the chance for skill ups. Which leaves you with spamming your basic attack and trying to keep your health from dropping too low. I just dont understand why game designers think Random = Good. I know they will tweak the system, but I dont think tweaking is going to help. Random is Random. I'm fine with Variance, or taking your actions into account (play more skillfully, get more skill points?)...but when the best way to rank up is to play badly (spam the same default attack over and over again) something is horribly out of whack. On the plus side though, I really like the way the ability and cross class abilities work, I also really like the Stamina system and the lack of autoattack.

I totally agree with the Pro comments made, but I'd like to add some more Con: The world feels very empty, This is especially true in Ul'dah where you can literally walk for miles before seeing anything other than a rock. Mobs are repeated. A lot. And finding things that are somewhat around your level is a excercise in futility as many times the mobs that are just the right level for you will share spawn points with things that either waste your weapons durability or kill you with a strong glare. Leveling up your ranks is essentially spamming you're basic attack over...and over...and over. Unfortunately the system favors repetition over efficiency so if you know that you can kill that squirrel in one massive fireball of doom due to your stat allotment and its elemental weakness....then the fireball of doom is the LAST thing you want to cast as you wont get jack for skill points. Advice: If you are planning on playing on a gamepad the default key mapping is horribly limited, especially given the games lack of accurate targetting. I'd suggest picking up a 3rd party mapping program such as Pinnacle Game Profiler (30 day free trial, $20 US to purchase) or Switchblade Pro ($2/month license fee) I've also heard good things about Xpadder but I havent used that myself. Anyway, the point of this is to remap the keys the way you want, including mapping traditional mouse controls to one of the analog keys and using a "Switch" trigger to make them do different things depending on if the switch is held down. To give you an idea, I used to do this in other MMOs that werent gamepad compatible and on a regular xbox controller I got 36 button combinations to work. You can also use both the program and the default gamepad controls, if you're sneaky.

Oh well, ill just keep it in mind on the off chance that something shows its fanged face and stoic Guyon goes flying off into a rage filled killing spree.

New question, same general idea. Is there any known history or lore regarding the existance of Vampires or a similar creature? I ask this not to be one myself, only that since his inception a decade ago one of the few character traits that Guyon Delsho keeps from form to form is a hatred of all vampires, a hatred not unlike the burning of a thousand suns. It's a fun little nod to his original character that no one will ever know but me.

Well at least there's some sort of system now as oppossed to the cluster-fun of just throwing everything in the main pot. (Really? Who thought that was a good idea?) I think of the market wards as a flea market, those things work quite well, except for one major difference, you need to have stalls, and you need to have a sign describing what you are selling. Having random NPCs standing in packed groups selling god-knows-what is just....well it just seems lazy to me. As for the RMT arguement, dont cut off your nose to spite your face. These guys are in it for REAL MONEY, which means whatever design SE creates they will find a way to exploit. There is nothing stopping them from using seed money to buy up every item in a ward and resell at their chosen price with or without a search feature or tax incentive. You can fight them, but remember that you still have to serve the customers who arent breaking the rules. My solution, simple. Every sellable item has an inherent value (cause the vendors know to buy it at a certain price) Players, when selling that item apply a markup or markdown percentage to the base price. Want to move 12 copper ores fast, put it at half price by attaching a 100% markdown, Are you the only source of wind shards in all of Ul'dah? 200% mark up baby! Sound familiar? its how the real world works. And also, you think they figured out yet that having food without a description of what it does is a bad idea yet? :frustrated:

non-unique linkshell identification as the only form of ID.....Yet another example of SE cutting off its nose to spite its face. Sometimes being different isnt a good idea unless you have a better way on how to answer the same question. Still, I like this idea, Perhaps a page with the following tree format listed [symbol] - LS Name and if you expand it, theres the published info? just an idea

Think thats bad? I've got the code, I've applied the code, and I dont get a onion helm or goggles. Unfortunately these things only work for new characters, if you created the character before applying the code you get nada. I contemplated remaking my character for it, but truth be told its so goshdarn ugly I couldnt stand wearing it. Unless I totally missed something, I think I'll just be going without the clown hat.

I want to say, thank you for this. I know that this is a mostly thankless thing you are doing hosting the files for us to get. I cant imagine how many hours you have saved the community in download times. Thank you for this. Sincerely. :cheer: :cheer: :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:

small size harps and horns, I think harmonicas are within the realm of plausible belief then. I was just zoning out listening to some old school blues tracks and suddenly it hit me, I could use some of this.

Ok. Adding another question, same reasoning. Are there musical instruments in the world, and is there a general equivalant of the harmonica or guitar?

Oh thank the gods. Finally something today that works without extra hoops to jump through. Much obliged.