Phayte

In my experience, even if a game is great, it's nothing without a good community as well. I've been in your shoes and just go way too much into the non-RP aspect. I'm attempting to get more into RP as well. I've tried other things since FFXIV 2.0 but I keep coming back because of the people here. As to your questions, here's my take on a few of them: 2. Like others have said, it's not completely necessary, but it's really good to have at least a general personality of your character, a few bits of history in mind( like why they're in the current city or where they live), and what their current role is. I use this method because I'm not good at trying to sit down and has everything out. But one thing you do need to be careful is fabricating too much on the fly to the point where your history seems very disjoint or too ludicrous. 3-4. I think some people try to incorporate too much of the game's mechanics and single player story into their RP. Some people enjoy the authenticity of the feeling of it, but I don't think everyone should be bound by it. There's no merchant, barmaid, or dancer class, but people roleplay it anyway. Not everyone player possesses the echo even though they've played through the storyline. There's abilities people have that aren't programmed into the game either. I think if you try to abide by game mechanics too much, you either won't enjoy the RP or you won't enjoy playing the game. So long as it's not completely lore breaking, I think whatever you do is fine. I have almost all my classes leveled, but none of it is part of my RP because I want to play another role but also want to enjoy the game. I know some people who play 1 class per character to stay IC but it enhances there experience, but I personally would hate it. Use game mechanics to enhance your experience, not handicap it. Choose which style you like, it's a game, you should enjoy it in all facets!

Geez... I'm doing the wrong type of grinding then!

Thanks for the words Warren! I know the community is great here and very accepting, but the feeling just nags me that a majorit is thinking "Oh, it's one of THOSE miqo'te again." I'll of course always keep things as tasteful as possible in public, just seems sort of common sense. And if things can be done better, I'm always open to feedback! I'm definitely looking forward to getting more involved, life allowing.

Since everyone else is doing it, I figured it's time to come out of my shell and put something up (long time listener, first time caller). MMORPG Background: I've been playing MMO's for a while, my gateway MMO being Everquest (or a MUD called Dragon's Gate back in the AOL days). Since then, I've dabbled in several other MMO's like Lineage II, SWTOR, LoTRO, etc. EQ, WoW, and now FFXIV are the one's that have kept my interest and I'm seeing myself on FFXIV for a while (so long as I can keep playing MMO's). RP Experience: Typically I'm a light to medium roleplayer, only because sometimes I can't pull my head out from trying to make progress in the game's PvE content. MUD's always seemed a little more conducive to roleplay, since I guess community run servers have a way of enforcement and let's people freeform more without the restrictions of hard gameplay mechanics sometimes. Since there aren't any visuals like clothes or environment, you so have to go more into detail. (I don't think I do a very good job describing things, but there are so many talented writers I've come across that just blow my mind away.) Either way, I've been around the RP community in various areas for a long time, but still consider still super novice. Character Ideas/Info: One of my biggest reservations is the character concept I want to play. In the roles I have played, I've been mostly good aligned. I really want to try something different and go more chaotic or evil. As I have things now, Phayte is a courtesan by trade and I'm just afraid that may come off the wrong way to other in public, but I do have ideas of other dimensions to her as well. Rather it's an IG or OOC stereotype of miqo'te to play the role, I actually have seen too many PC's take up the role and though it might be interesting. I haven't been that close to the community so I may be wrong. Either way, I just hope the community doesn't get offended by this. The other foreseeable challenge is how to balance the public nature of this role as I want to be respectful to everyone around. My OOC'ly very shy in a public setting and this is definitely in my un-comfort zone. /end-ramblings Other: As I mentioned before, I have a tendency to get my head stuck way to deep in PvE to set aside time for RP. I'm hoping I can kick my butt to get more into RP and development my character, meet new people, and stop grinding so much. But that also means that if you're like to party up for duty roulette, raids, dungeons for books, primals for relics, etc, feel free to PM me! I'm more than happy to help and can fill any role (except battles where you need to tank swap). Also my other warning is that I do have a family, a mischievous little boy and another new unknown terror on the way. He of course takes priority so I usually only have time to seriously play the game after he's asleep (8-9PM CST), and even then he does wake up with nightmares and such. This is also one of the reasons I have reservations with RP and stay away from the larger affairs because I don't want to be one of those characters who have epilepsy and need to zone out when I need to step away. I feel to make other characters wait or halt the flow of RP. So I apologize in advance for anyone I interact when I have to step away unexpectedly but definitely appreciate if interact with me despite the risk! Phew, that was a lot. Thanks for reading! *Hides back under a rock.*

I haven't formally introduced myself here, but welcome to Balmung! I've just been getting my feet wet in a little RP, but you'll find plenty without trying very hard and the community is very helpful. If you have question or need help, feel free to send me a PM me in game.

Unfortunately for that particular scenario, there's nothing that can be done to modify the behavior of the ingame client and physical logs written by the client are unreliable. The OP was hoping to make tools for something that wouldn't violate the ToS by going into the memory to extract the data. I'm still tempted to make an attempt at this For anyone who uses ACT or FFXIV-APP, it's pretty much already doing the same thing. Instead of parsing battle data, you'd just be parsing character speech data.

I'm curious what you mean by versatile textbox? Since yesterday, I've been thinking about it more and thought for those who play in windows mode to have like a scratch pad that always on top of the window. When you say more versatile textbox, I think of a glorified notepad that will allow you post past the regular chatbox's limit in game, and automatically break up your paragraph into the appropriate size so you can copy and paste.

It'd be pretty neat to have a tool like this thinking about it more and it would be awesome if it promoted more people sharing their stories to the community. I haven't looked into the logs closely, but there's quite a bit of garbage in there. In addition, I think what gets logged to the files also depends on your chat filters as well. If a user use needs to copy the chat log from the game window into another application, it's still miles ahead of having to hand format/delete stuff for public posting. Just curious, what technologies would you be using? It would be fun to lend a hand if you'd want it.

Having reread the post again, figured I should actually contribute something on topic. One thing I know most people find tedious is cleaning up logs to post stories. It's a pretty tedious task to clean up everything even on the most basic levels (get rid of other OOC chatter from players, systems messsage, etc). Not sure if it would be borderline against ToS, but a non-realtime tool to use the log files. But I know it probably wouldn't be too hard to right an application that would read in specified logs and do so automated cleaning. Some features would be like: - Filter only things said/done by certain characters - Remove all OOC comment (i.e. anything between your typical (( )) ) - Add formatting for quoted text - Add formatting for whispered text (i.e via tells) - Some wiki template format to copy and paste for posting Those would probably be easy to do in regex. I may actually try this myself just for fun actually. Edited: Just saw Coatleque's comment, and I've found it to be the same where not everything may get dumped so this may not be feasible directly. However, if someone actually copy and pastes their entire chatlog into the application, it's still doable. It's just slightly more manual.

I've found chat logs inside one of the folders in the My Docs -> My Games folders. It's very-very-very convoluted and it requires some deciphering but is for the most part readable. I've actually tried dabbling in something with an addon and the logs probably won't work even if you parse them right. ACT use to try and do the same thing, but the data isn't real time (delay between in memory cache and dump to log files) and there's only so much data you can extract from logs. I think many people are skeptical that any mod tools will be released anytime soon. The only real feasible way is to scan the memory for signatures, but that feels rather dirty to do and officially against ToS to datamine the game (but that's what sites like xivdb do). I had hopes of attempting to make a better UI for buffs and skills that require triggers, but it's rather tedious trying to find the right pointers and it feels a bit dirty too even if you aren't cheating or doing anything gamebreaking modifying.

There was a thread on reddit where I was trying to gather information. It is true if you know someone who's never paid (but could have used all their 30 days), to use their account to register a code you give them. And actually, if they've let their free sub lapse, reactivating it with a 3 month sub should get you the rewards right away. Instead of game cards, you could get like a prepaid Visa card too possibly. (JUST TO EMPHASIZE THAT YOU SHOULD REGISTER THE CODE BEFORE YOU ACTIVATE THEIR SUB AGAIN).