I'nhalki

((Updated—so sorry!))

"Oi," the hyur said. "Surely you don't plan on going around stabbing people without introducing yourself first..." I'nhalki looks to him, momentarily puzzled, then remembering the situation. Her tail bristles in panic when suddenly she finds a plate of fish thrust into her lap. She looks up to the roegadyn girl's face, squinting. There is a scratching there in her mind—the uneasiness that comes with the feeling of forgetting. The mixture of sternness and kindness on the girl's face reminds her of someone, but who? None of this matters the moment the delicious smell of fish arrives. She begins to eat wolfishly, looking up mid-bite to see the hyur's cool but expectant expression. She remembers the question through the extreme relief of having a proper meal. She replies, looking away from the pair with shame. "I'm I'nhalki." She looks down at the fish, ears flat. "Thank you for this." She mumbles. She looks back to them, anxious, before she continues to eat.

After a few weeks of off-tanking Ravana and being super judgy of the healers who couldn't stay out of the way of the rotation I healed it last night and am never ever ever going to judge a healer in my head during the rotation phase. >_>; Reposted from tumblr (couldn't find artist!)

The miqo'te squirms weakly inside the jacket, trying to flip herself around in the direction of the fish's scent. She becomes acutely aware of her cracked rib while doing so, growling at the reawakened pain. She hears the hyur and roegadyn begin to talk despite her swaddled ears. Scattered context trickles back to her in her dazed mind. She gives her head a quick shake and her ears a twitch. Those two. Still here. I can't fight like this. How...? So hungry. Did I almost drown? I was on a ship... What is Khyran? She winces and manages to tip herself over on her rather insistent belly. Before her the roegadyn and hyur are engaged in a conversation, and beyond them, the fish cooks over some fire crystals. Nhalki stares at the fish's bubbling and crackling skin. She tries to lift herself up, but remains unsuccessful. She knocks a few La Noscean oranges off the cart as she makes the attempt, sending them rolling toward the nearby pair.

I think you make a really good point. It made me think: the people who end up complaining are the ones who cancelled their subs before and will again, and may just be in the game to quickly max out content, not to truly enjoy it. In this way, by deterring these people who add negativity and don't actually enjoy the game, gating really should be something the developers stick to. Also, small sample size, but I played through much of the content my first time through with two other newbies who were strangers to me. We were all intimidated and sometimes would gripe about the content being so seemingly endless, but in the end we were so caught up in the story and had built some kind of camaraderie from the experience of being annoyed at the Whiskaet fetch quests and such. I think the slowness of the content actually creates friendship somehow in its slowness. I of course can't speak for every new person, but I kept seeing this phenomenon with other newbies again and again.

I looked over a few of your previous posts. You seem to have this feeling a lot, and I really understand--I started here about two months ago and had similar observations about how 'closed' the culture can feel. It can be hard some days. I went through a lot of character concepts and fantasias trying to think of what kind of character would "fit in" with the RP on the server that I wanted to be a part of, and wouldn't attract the kind of RP I wasn't looking for. At the end of the day I realized I just had to stop worrying about "the community" and do what made me happy. When you make yourself happy and stop relying on others, you spread happiness everywhere. So, the only advice I can give you is that you need to change your perspective. You seem to feel like the community owes you something in terms of interaction. You should instead start considering what you can do to offer something to the community. Are you inspired by your character? What story do you have to tell? What do you want from the game? How can you make Balmung a better place? I guess, just be the change you want to see. Unless you start embodying the positivity and welcoming attitude you wish to see, you probably won't find yourself happy even if you make a friend or two over the next couple of weeks. You are responsible for your own happiness and outlook in a game like this where there is so much to do and it's something others come to in order to have fun and share.

Personally, I enjoy the gating. As someone who started playing around a week before Heavensward launch, sure it was tough to see everyone so very far ahead of me, but I was never lonely for long. Lots of people seemed to be in the same boat, and it provided a good way to learn my job to a level that made me competent--not just for the content, but for my senior players. This game, no matter how well I seem to think I know my job, requires a huge amount of situational awareness and positional practice that I am amazed with. When I run content I ran only a month ago it feels a thousand times easier--not just in how my better gear affects my play, but in how my overall ability to predict, execute and move as my jobs has improved through the design of the content. It really is humbling to feel just how easy something has become and how bad you must have seemed to other players when you began! It amazes me how kind and patient 99% of my fellow players have been while I've learned my jobs. This community comes out of the slow and arduous process of mastery this game requires. For every elitist there have got to be ten awesome people who are just as good but so humble and kind because they know that they started in your position. I feel like this amazing community would be damaged if new players could somehow take a shortcut in to new content and we would mess up the skill development curve. I think this philosophy and approach is a big part of why the game succeeds as is does. It would be a bit sad to lose the continuity! At the same time, I have faith that the team would do it wisely. There are, after all, plenty of ways to circumvent challenging yourself via FATE farming or other methods. I simply worry that ungating content would make some players be a bit meaner or exacerbate the elitism situation towards new players due to a perception that they haven't 'earned' their place.

Brainstorm with us! What kinds of IC events would you like to see in Limsa Lominsa and La Noscea? Q'molosi's Four, the linkshell I run with my friends, is just getting started but we have a conceptual structure set up currently where each of our four members is aiming to run a different weekly event out of Limsa, Aleport or Swiftperch to keep it newbie-friendly. We intend to design events that run for an hour with an additional social hour tacked on afterwards. This would give us four events a month, which would be a mix of open world and ones requiring sign-ups. I wanted to share what the four of us have been cooking up in our spare time as ideas to bring more RP to the La Noscea/Vylbrand region. I'nhalki (me) will hold a monthly fishing tournament on the first weekend of the month. She might also lead some IC FATE groups in Halfstone because she loves to eat hates Sahagin with a passion. Bylgrael (our resident femroe badass) will run a monthly pirate hunt (IC run of Sastasha/Sastasha Hard) on the second weekend of the month. Aldred (our resident comic relief drunk) will run a monthly social event at the Aleport tavern or Drowning Wench with drinking contests/bar brawls (unstructured/casual fighting tournament kind of thing). We're thinking quick-and-dirty rolls with a much more free-form style of combat than you usually see in public matches. Bernard (our resident cook/magic/fancy/classy person) will run a monthly cooking contest (kind of like an Iron Chef thing) in Limsa Lominsa at or near the Bismarck. We REALLY want guest judges for this. This would be a comic relief event for the RP community, for the most part—and for RL cooking nerds. We all used to play together in XI and WoW, so we have a long history of RPing together. Bylg's and Bern's players are currently on Sargatanas on their legacy characters but are hoping to either transfer or start over on Balmung in September. Aldred has never played XIV and just made his character on Gilgy to learn the game while he waits for Balmung to open up next maintenance. As I said, we are still very much in the conceptual phase but we felt it would be good to say hi and explain what we have planned since our linkshell page is so damn cryptic. We also wanted to open up our brainstorming to the whole community once we had an actual direction going. Here's to bringing more RP to La Noscea! Till Sea Swallows All!

Ki likes to eat Sahagin. When you're trapped in beastman territory for days at a time fighting fishbacks you discover just how tasty they are raw. I wonder if there is any lore about Sahagin sashimi.

I'd be more than willing to volunteer my character to work as a hired axe if your FC ever needs an escort through La Noscea (though shipping from Ul'dah to Limsa makes a lot more sense going through Vesper Bay). Just let me know should you ever need that sort of NPC/guard/escort and I'll be there!

Hey Calli, I'm no lore expert by any stretch, but the wiki for V'alka seems solid. Is there anything in particular you're unsure about? The only question that really popped in to my head was why not be a Gridanian lancer/Wood Wailer or just a straight adventuring lancer? The Dragoon aspect seems somewhat tacked-on for a group that has so much clout in Ishgard. It also seems like something that may unnecessarily limit your RP mobility. From what I understand from quests, Dragoons would be expected to stay in Ishgard to maintain defense of the city. A Dragoon scout would probably be mostly concerned with scouting missions in to dragon territory rather than south toward the other city states, I would imagine. In my own head it just doesn't make sense to send someone who's specific role would be to gather information on and fight dragons during wartime would be sent off to another part of the realm to develop themselves. Maybe she has a personal reason to leave? Maybe she doesn't approve of the war? Lots of room for character development there. That said, I'm firmly for RPing what you want to RP. I would develop her role and history as a Dragoon in Ishgard a bit more. Maybe someone with more Dragoon lore knowledge can hop in and offer much more detailed advice than I can. With the way each job's story is handled in a kind of special snowflake way, I think it's generally safer and more RP-flexible to go with one of the base classes as an IC specialty. That's just my two gil in the topic. I think the WHM discussions that have cropped up recently touched on that a lot, too. Edit: I haven't done the 3.0 Dragoon job quests yet, but I do know from the Warrior 3.0 quests that I have done that your trainer has begun to spread the techniques of the Warrior job among soldiers of the Maelstrom. I was just thinking that maybe the 3.0 Dragoon quests may open up the Dragoon lore in a similar way. Again, maybe someone who mains Dragoon can hop in on this.

This would be awesome! I'd be down to organize a La Noscea/Limsa Lominsa event for the tournament. I love the fight from the Marauder questline down at the Salt Strand in the shallow water there. That might be a place with a good balance of easy accessibility and beauty.

My favorite Eorzeanism comes from (I think?) the Lv25 fishing quest from Sisipu. English: "One man's trash is another man's treasure." Eorzea: "One man's marlin is another man's mudskipper." Not a lot of flavor there—seeing as we do have marlins and mudskippers on Earth—but I am really fond of it.

z7PvywDUz1o Especially when I am playing Ninja. >: D

<3 All I will say is that we could use another healer and tank! Though somehow I doubt RDM would end up as firmly in the healer/support role in XIV as it did in XI.

We do have confirmation from the Raen naming convention post that there is something akin to a samurai-esque noble warrior class in Doma, so her background should be at least plausible.

Welcome to the forums! Hurray for another Limsan character! Hope to see you around Eorzea—happy travels.

Check your moogle mail! I don't know if the grand prize winners have been announced yet... I think that's later! But if you submitted, your item should be delivered! Congratulations to all of the other entrants who got their drawing/painting/thingy in on time. I think I turned mine in right on the deadline. >_< Yay!

Playing on PS4, there are times I just want to lean back and not be hunched over my keyboard some evenings when I play, so I keep typed communication to a minimum and just use emotes. It's not too tough to use the controller keyboard, but it can be irritatingly slow. I would bet a lot of people who don't say hi in lowbie roulette dungeons are just lazy PS4 players like me! I always wave or /welcome, though.

My first time running Brayflox normal still makes me feel cringy. It was the first example of a true "speed run" I had seen. I was a Lv32/33 or so fresh WHM and had a WAR tank who began the dungeon by stating he was going to see if he could tank while drinking his coffee. We began and he pulled the first three groups--he died a small way in to the pull and began to berate me. Our NIN pointed out that he didn't have Defiance up. He laughed it off. The entire remainder of dungeon he continued his speed run pulls, ignoring his cool downs and relying on what I assumed he thought was gear that would carry him through on its own. He would stop every time I was drained of MP and point out how I couldn't keep up and we had to keep waiting on the healer. This run taught me, especially now that I main a tank, to be a lot more considerate of each individual party that I get. I always start out, much like Graeham did in the post above, by popping my cooldowns prodigiously during our first few trash pulls just to get a feel for how the healer is keeping up. I have found nothing to be more painful in this game so far than tank-healer animosity. There can be a lot of vitriol and cross-blaming. I'm sure my 'test the waters' tanking method has annoyed some groups who are looking for the blistering speed run every time, but I feel it's nice to keep in mind that there are new people left when you're running leveling roulette. Even higher level content, too, because someone may be returning after a long time.

My childhood basically plays as a timeline of the games I played, when I look back. My dad bought an NES the year I was born so he could have an excuse to own something my mom considered a toy, so I grew up with Nintendo and then Sony consoles every year of my life. Gamer dads are awesome. It's cliché as all hell, but Ocarina of Time was my formative game. I was honestly far too young to appreciate the earlier Zelda titles. Ocarina of Time was the first game that made me cry. It had themes about the bittersweetness and loss of growing up that I still get chills about looking back. I still get choked up when I think about seeing Saria again as an adult--I dunno why it hit me in the feels so much, but it did. The technical and thematic sophistication of that game really stood out to me for the first time as a kid the same way my favorite books and movies did. Other than that, my formative gaming memories are social ones from elementary school and with my dad--trading Pokémon with buddies at school, inviting friends over after school to play Rogue Squadron or Mario Kart on the 64... Trying to get 120 stars before my dad did on his save file in Mario 64... And then the more solitary memories of the PS1 and PS2 RPGs and horror games that I came to love but didn't have anyone to share them with (somehow all my friends became Counterstrike and Halo zombies in middle school). Growing up with video games is awesome. It's really like having a whole vast array of beautiful places to explore and play in as a child. If my husband and I ever decide to have kids, I'm definitely following my dad's example. : )

This really stood out for me: "This is a game. Respect the other players. Respect the story, and act in service of it. Respect that you will not always get your way, and that not getting your way can be interesting." Something I'm constantly criticizing myself about in RP is how passive I tend to be. My biggest fear when RPing is wasting someone else's time. Being respectful of the time of your partner(s) and groups is paramount, especially in MMOs where someone's time may be even more limited due to unplanned play times. I try to remind myself during RP, or before RP: do I have a story to tell? Does my character have a purpose in this? Am I being a lazy role player? These are important questions, because without this structure the RP session ends up reflecting at least one player's whims at the time, or, at worst, becomes blatant self-insertion or IC/OOC bleedy if no one has an idea where the story is going. Sometimes these fears can be really crippling, though! Especially with walk-up RP. But, in the end, I feel it results in RP that is much more respectful of the other player's time and intelligence.

Looking forward to watching both my first full Grindstone event and first pilgrim event this weekend! Thank you for all of the love you put in to organizing these.

((Going to ponder some of the finer implications of having a chunk of memories converted, hehe. For tonight I'll make a small post and follow up with a bigger one on my lunch break tomorrow! Feel free to fill in the time I'nhalki is unconscious or skip ahead to where I've had her wake up.)) I'nhalki collapses along with the mage, a screeching pain in her head now accompanying the mounting ache of her ribs. Her thoughts are jumbled but sharply drawn. Unfamiliar images surge through her mind, but she recognizes the horrible feeling of water filling up her lungs. Then, suddenly, the barrage stops. She faintly feels her body on the wet ground, but the rain has slowed to calm patter. Warmth surrounds her as she drifts in to the deep sleep of utter exhaustion. Her makeshift tomahawk can still be seen wedged in to the road-strewn wheel. It seems to be fairly sturdy for a weapon obviously crafted by an amateur. The axe head is tied to a piece of strong driftwood with what looks like a very strong variety of beast sinew. It appears sufficiently sturdy to hitch together something even as large as a cart wheel. Bells later, her eyes creak open to gentle sunlight overhead. The rain has, at least temporarily, abated. She looks out from under a massive overcoat that has mysteriously wrapped its way around her. She then sniffs the air. No thoughts enter her beleaguered mind save one: Fish!

You'll make it, Red!