moody

I do. I just don't make comments about doing it generally because that would just cause another argument

ICly I'll be setting up as a SMN/SCH/ACN (because they all process as branches of ACN magic in my mind.) and choosing one of these to be a 'specialty' but he's not going to be the 'ultimate mage' in any of them. ICly the character's main skills will be as a gatherer and crafter. He's running as a travelling merchant selling his wares and uses summons to facilitate that. His retainers are his staff and he uses the summons for various tasks for the business ( pulling the cart, organizing stock, moving loads of items, etc etc ). So while he'll be strong as a summoner he won't necessarily have amazing combat skills. He'll be good at thinking and strategy to use what he has. OOCly though I plan to play just about every class as the mood strikes me. Right now I'm doing the grind to get his IC classes where they need to be and I'll be involved in RP more once I'm good with that.

I've been seeing regular repeated broadcasts from a few FC and LS looking for members in shout. I've always considered this rude (basically spamvertising like gil sellers) and a good way to ruin your own reputation. I'm specifically referring to people spamming the exact same message every few minutes in a zone over shout. That's the etiquette I was taught and it's always made sense to me. If a group is so non-selective that they're just hoping anyone will respond and say "Sign me up!" then I have to assume they're looking for warm bodies to gather guild cash or to be able to claim they're the 'largest [x] group on the server' rather than trying to build a community. How does everyone else feel about this when they see it?

Now adding backstory element that my Lala's mother defeated Garuda with naught but a rolling pin when the primal interrupted her making pie crusts. >.> (just kidding of course)

Another vote for stories. I very rarely write out a character's backstory except as summaries of 'scenes' or vignettes about the character and things that reflect him/her as a whole. However, once I have 5 or 6 micro-stories around a character I know things abut them I had never planned and have a grasp on their speech, mannerisms, and background in a way that writing out a 'backstory' has never given me. As far as writer's block goes, here's something from Maya Angelou: "What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, 'Okay. Okay. I’ll come.'" Or to put it the way I prefer: A writer is someone who writes. Writer's block is an oxymoron. If you aren't writing then you aren't blocked. You just aren't a writer that day. Some days that's not a bad thing.

They did just add the ability to make sounds in the party; placeholders through will associate a sound with your macro that only your party can hear. However, I don't believe there's any way to make that trigger based on outside conditions. That said, please don't attach them to everything. If you need a macro button to raise a sound in extreme emergency I get it, but they've suggested they will be using the FFXI style 'call' sounds. Those things gave myself, among others, migraines. Shouldn't bother me too much if you do. As soon as the release client comes down I'll set up some blank sound files and a batch file to replace the call signs after every update to make sure I'm not bothered. Most people though, won't do that and having loud noises every time you cast protect or cure is going to hurt people who are sensitive to high pitched noises like I am. For the record, Valk in FFXI also triggered migraines from the bright light and I had to lower my contrast and brightness to play there but I've seen a lot of similar triggery complaints about call sounds.

Crafting is alright... but I have a near Pavlovian response to fishing >.< I think I'll get back into crafting more once the game is fully out. I'm just in 'explore things' mode and sitting in a room crafting isn't fulfilling it. Wandering the world looking for places to sink my lure on the other hand...

I saw you run past me in Limsa earlier!!

Zuzuvichi Momovichi, but it's time for me to sleep. I look forward to meeting people when possible though.

Well, after something like 15 tries and two times creating/customizing my character... nope. Lobby connection. It's a bit ridiculous that it closes the client completely on that instead of just giving a 'retry' prompt or a 'retry in 30 seconds' countdown.

Sonofa... got all the way through customizing and renaming my 1.0... and crashed out on lobby server trying to get into Balmung

I'll be honest. I love having Player 'adversaries' but that doesn't mean player 'villains'. Someone else with goals at odds with mine is excellent. They can even have goals which would be viewed negatively by a majority of players. When it goes beyond that to player 'villains' though... I've had bad experiences 90% of the time or more in most games including city of * where villains were a supported group. Too many people think being a villain means being somehow evil for the sake of evil, and that creates an instantly 2 dimensional character in most cases. I've also noticed that hose who tend to want to make those characters just tend not to be the ones I want to RP with. That doesn't make it wrong, but there's my opinion. I find characters who are 'good' from a different perspective much more interesting. One of the things that I feel a bit disappointed in by FFXIV is that from what I've seen the Garlean empire is just evil for its own sake. I'm personally hoping that some depth and reasoning, as to why this drive to remove the Primals at the cost of destroying a large section of the world made sense to them, is revealed in the continuing plot line because 'to take over all the things' isn't a very good one. Now '[x] is slowly destroying out traditional way of life and in order to protect our identity we have to be able to stop it' is one. 'Primal forces being used by other nations run the risk of not decimating, but fully destroying the continent and great loss against utter destruction is a reasonably cost' would be another. Both are noble pursuits in and of themselves (protecting your culture or saving the world) but the cost is insane from the PC point of view. ;tldr PC villains tend to be done poorly (imo). Anti-heroes are interesting and those with opposing goals can be a lot of fun.

C because "Young, inexperienced, but knows how to pull through when it counts" is almost a trope for female Mi'qote and I'll be happy if I never have to deal with another character who "has some mental issues due to the unusual upbringing". That's almost a trope in and of itself. Now, tropes aren't in and of themselves bad things. What makes them work is the details around them and this character summary doesn't have those. She has mental issues? What mental issues. Where do they spawn from? Is this "I want to act silly?" and then excuse it by "I have mental issues" or is this "The character has PTSD due to [specific] horrors experienced in her upbringing and they affect her like this, this, and this." or is this simply a lack of knowledge about the outside world that presents itself as naivety about social customs others commonly understand and she will get over that lack of knowledge over time or is it simply "She has a learning disability because the priests liked to feed your mi'qote paint chips for sacrament." The above is my personal preference and some people like different things. YMMV, etc etc. Your others seem much more like characters though, while this one seems more like a concept to justify the cute appearance. Edited for clarity.

Both of the character concepts I'm running are using canon naming structures. I admit, I settled on Hellsgard for my Roeg because I couldn't deal with the Sea Wolf names.