![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserI was going to do this post at work tomorrow, but I don't feel like going to bed yet, so here it is now.
Saturday: Almost totally uneventful and boring. Farmed lots, though was bored most of the time. I did all the offline stuff I wanted to (watched the new Bleach ep! Yay!) and had tons of time left, so logged onto the game and just farmed for lack of anything better to do ... and because I needed the money. *cry* I had just gotten to the point where I could start looking at Thick HQ pieces again, then noticed what happened to bomb core prices. (I'll need one at 63. Need it, it's not a toy like a HQ thing.) The price had been 300K when I made my shopping list many weeks (months?) ago, but they were now nearly 600K. For an item (ammo) you can throw if you're not careful. *cry*cry*cry* I got mine for 590K, but that was more than half the money I had. I spent most of the day grumbling in my head about it. (Okay, +12 attack will be nice, but if I had gotten it long ago I could have saved so much! But I suppose you can say that about most armor, at least on Midgar.)
The one high point of the day was that I went into Oldtown... um, that moblin city zone. It was my first time entering the zone (other than just stepping across the zoneline to hear the music). I didn't go far because I had no map, but still! It was highly highly highly cool and I want to go back sometime.
Sunday: It's been a long time since I've had so frustrating of a day. I missed Escort static because fricking Comcast decided that I didn't need an Internet connection for that hour. I really needed the XP, so was especially sad. I'll have to try to grab some random people during the week.
But at least I got back online in time for main job static! For those who don't know our group: We rock. I hate to sound that way, but we do. We've been working together for 60 levels now. We rarely get a death (maybe one a month, often less). We get outstanding XP/hour. We're usually ready for XP grounds before the recommended levels.
Today none of that mattered. Never, ever, ever before had we ever had a full-party wipe, but we had TWO today! Gah.
The first wipe was annoying because it was 1) preventable, and 2) muchly my own fault. We were leveling on Toramas (coeurls), and while the XP was darned good, the fights were really hard for us.
Then our puller (Kawaru) saw that Ose was up! (Non-players: He's a NM coeurl that has a really, really nice drop.) We put in a call to our LS, and high level folks came out to kill him. We decided to take him and tank him till they got there. (Or at least some of us did. I was a big 'Yeah! Let's try it!" excited voice.) Waru pulled Ose (Look! A good picture of a NM! I never usually get a good one!) but another darned torama popped on top of us, and it was too much. Waru's Last Stand -- we all died. And nevermind that our high level people arrived and were killing the non-NM kitties to keep Ose from linking, a damned HNM LS swooped in and stole him from them. (Edit, next day: To prevent wrong impressions, it was two people from that HNM, not the entire group.) Grrrr. (Edit: To be fair, at the time of the deaths I wasn't upset at all. I repeatedly said (in my head) that it was worth it. We got to fight another NM! Might not have killed him, but we battled him and I got screenshots of it! It wasn't until the day continued that my memory of it soured.) (Edit3: See the many comments on the whole "stealing" thing.)
So after we scooped ourselves up, we started XPing again, but things went really bad. A cat behind us, a cat ahead of us (close enough so that we were invisible to keep from aggroing them both), then a cat popped in camp. We escaped, but not before Ashn (taru NIN tank -- he had a "fun" time with the cats) had another death.
Now, RL me is rarely angsty. I try to keep other people happy and smiling, I try to be entertaining, but this had been the very worst party we've ever had. And since I'm the group's leader (today making me question that even more than usual), I was feeling rather responsible for the whole mess. While the mages went to rescue dead Ashn, I sat alone and thought about stuff. I really like that picture, as well as the moment I had there. The waves were washing up around me, all I could hear was the sea and the wind, and I thought about what we were doing wrong.
We decided to move and try something new. Either chain the heck out of VT mobs or to go and try antlions in A-whatever Chasm. The Chasm was close, so we tried there. The antlions were much, much, much better for us, but far from perfect. Conning them was very hard (one IT- could be much harder than another IT-), and once more we ended up all dead again (non-players: The monster is that big round brown thing in the upper corner. Antlions look like massive, ugly, horrible ticks).
Somehow I got an odd camera angle, and got a really nice shot of Eadwyn. I was trying to get a picture of how detailed things are (his eyes have multiple shades in them!), but that shot doesn't show it well. I should post the full-sized version, but even that doesn't show it as clear as it was in the game.
In more weekend-depressing-FFXI news, my Guillotine moves were just so totally embarrassing. I did more on a crit hit and some normal hits! I mean seriously, they did as low as 82 and 86 against both the cats and the antlions. I was seriously WTFing over it. On our very last fight I was bad (the first time I was bad the whole XPing day, so it was okay!), I told Cehra not to panic, then SE+TA+Guillotine'd. Yay! Finally a damage number like I had been seeing on the Friday night eye-hunt!
On, and one last screenshot, for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zubis. Remember how, after you asked for a D2, I told you not to blame me for what was happening? That I hadn't said anything bad? Well, here's proof! See? It was all Ead's doing! ;)
So anyway, back to serious stuff: I had been fully confident that we would hit 61 today (I needed under 10K XP, and we always easily make more than that!), but we didn't even get close. We made 5K in 4.5 hours. Horrible, horrible. (That's so bad it almost seems like my math must be off. 2:30-7:15 = 4 hours and 45 minutes. I started 5,555 into level and ended ... 10K in? No, I guess 12K in. So I guess 6.5K then. That's still a really low per hour figure.)
So no wearing my yagudo hat this week. Hopefully next week. We're going to go back to the Chasm and stick with the VT lizards there.
Such a depressing weekend. Hopefully the work week will be better. (Ha ha.)
Saturday: Almost totally uneventful and boring. Farmed lots, though was bored most of the time. I did all the offline stuff I wanted to (watched the new Bleach ep! Yay!) and had tons of time left, so logged onto the game and just farmed for lack of anything better to do ... and because I needed the money. *cry* I had just gotten to the point where I could start looking at Thick HQ pieces again, then noticed what happened to bomb core prices. (I'll need one at 63. Need it, it's not a toy like a HQ thing.) The price had been 300K when I made my shopping list many weeks (months?) ago, but they were now nearly 600K. For an item (ammo) you can throw if you're not careful. *cry*cry*cry* I got mine for 590K, but that was more than half the money I had. I spent most of the day grumbling in my head about it. (Okay, +12 attack will be nice, but if I had gotten it long ago I could have saved so much! But I suppose you can say that about most armor, at least on Midgar.)
The one high point of the day was that I went into Oldtown... um, that moblin city zone. It was my first time entering the zone (other than just stepping across the zoneline to hear the music). I didn't go far because I had no map, but still! It was highly highly highly cool and I want to go back sometime.
Sunday: It's been a long time since I've had so frustrating of a day. I missed Escort static because fricking Comcast decided that I didn't need an Internet connection for that hour. I really needed the XP, so was especially sad. I'll have to try to grab some random people during the week.
But at least I got back online in time for main job static! For those who don't know our group: We rock. I hate to sound that way, but we do. We've been working together for 60 levels now. We rarely get a death (maybe one a month, often less). We get outstanding XP/hour. We're usually ready for XP grounds before the recommended levels.
Today none of that mattered. Never, ever, ever before had we ever had a full-party wipe, but we had TWO today! Gah.
The first wipe was annoying because it was 1) preventable, and 2) muchly my own fault. We were leveling on Toramas (coeurls), and while the XP was darned good, the fights were really hard for us.
Then our puller (Kawaru) saw that Ose was up! (Non-players: He's a NM coeurl that has a really, really nice drop.) We put in a call to our LS, and high level folks came out to kill him. We decided to take him and tank him till they got there. (Or at least some of us did. I was a big 'Yeah! Let's try it!" excited voice.) Waru pulled Ose (Look! A good picture of a NM! I never usually get a good one!) but another darned torama popped on top of us, and it was too much. Waru's Last Stand -- we all died. And nevermind that our high level people arrived and were killing the non-NM kitties to keep Ose from linking, a damned HNM LS swooped in and stole him from them. (Edit, next day: To prevent wrong impressions, it was two people from that HNM, not the entire group.) Grrrr. (Edit: To be fair, at the time of the deaths I wasn't upset at all. I repeatedly said (in my head) that it was worth it. We got to fight another NM! Might not have killed him, but we battled him and I got screenshots of it! It wasn't until the day continued that my memory of it soured.) (Edit3: See the many comments on the whole "stealing" thing.)
So after we scooped ourselves up, we started XPing again, but things went really bad. A cat behind us, a cat ahead of us (close enough so that we were invisible to keep from aggroing them both), then a cat popped in camp. We escaped, but not before Ashn (taru NIN tank -- he had a "fun" time with the cats) had another death.
Now, RL me is rarely angsty. I try to keep other people happy and smiling, I try to be entertaining, but this had been the very worst party we've ever had. And since I'm the group's leader (today making me question that even more than usual), I was feeling rather responsible for the whole mess. While the mages went to rescue dead Ashn, I sat alone and thought about stuff. I really like that picture, as well as the moment I had there. The waves were washing up around me, all I could hear was the sea and the wind, and I thought about what we were doing wrong.
We decided to move and try something new. Either chain the heck out of VT mobs or to go and try antlions in A-whatever Chasm. The Chasm was close, so we tried there. The antlions were much, much, much better for us, but far from perfect. Conning them was very hard (one IT- could be much harder than another IT-), and once more we ended up all dead again (non-players: The monster is that big round brown thing in the upper corner. Antlions look like massive, ugly, horrible ticks).
Somehow I got an odd camera angle, and got a really nice shot of Eadwyn. I was trying to get a picture of how detailed things are (his eyes have multiple shades in them!), but that shot doesn't show it well. I should post the full-sized version, but even that doesn't show it as clear as it was in the game.
In more weekend-depressing-FFXI news, my Guillotine moves were just so totally embarrassing. I did more on a crit hit and some normal hits! I mean seriously, they did as low as 82 and 86 against both the cats and the antlions. I was seriously WTFing over it. On our very last fight I was bad (the first time I was bad the whole XPing day, so it was okay!), I told Cehra not to panic, then SE+TA+Guillotine'd. Yay! Finally a damage number like I had been seeing on the Friday night eye-hunt!
On, and one last screenshot, for
zubis. Remember how, after you asked for a D2, I told you not to blame me for what was happening? That I hadn't said anything bad? Well, here's proof! See? It was all Ead's doing! ;)So anyway, back to serious stuff: I had been fully confident that we would hit 61 today (I needed under 10K XP, and we always easily make more than that!), but we didn't even get close. We made 5K in 4.5 hours. Horrible, horrible. (That's so bad it almost seems like my math must be off. 2:30-7:15 = 4 hours and 45 minutes. I started 5,555 into level and ended ... 10K in? No, I guess 12K in. So I guess 6.5K then. That's still a really low per hour figure.)
So no wearing my yagudo hat this week. Hopefully next week. We're going to go back to the Chasm and stick with the VT lizards there.
Such a depressing weekend. Hopefully the work week will be better. (Ha ha.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 07:31 am (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 07:36 am (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 01:55 pm (UTC)BTW, toramas dont link.
Yeah, you're right. Sight aggro. They were probably clearing them so we could get our party up sooner. I hadn't asked; we had had bigger things on our mind at the time.
Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 01:56 pm (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 02:23 pm (UTC)And yes, Jaten and I belong to Valor.. but saying "a damned HNM LS swooped in and stole him from them" makes it sound like we took our entire LS down to Ose just to steal it from you or something. It was me and a buddy killing an NM.. Oh and if I am not mistaken, your "high levels" never once touched Ose, so again, there was no stealing involved.
Now, this is your LJ so I'm not going to tell you what to write in it because people like to give the typical "just dont read it" mumbojumbo, but it is really low writing garbage like that.
Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 02:26 pm (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 03:05 pm (UTC)There were several times we were offered the chance to grab an unclaimed NM after the people taking it were wiped. Did we? Nah. I'd give them a poke and ask if they were going to reattempt.
Fair game if unclaimed, sure.
But again, I liked playing FFXI with a sense of honor. :)
Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 03:07 pm (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-15 03:16 pm (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 03:22 pm (UTC)Honestly if you got upset over that, you are in for a real disappointment if you ever want to participate in end game activities.
Actually, I'm disappointed now. I'm really sad that it takes this kind of thing to take part in end-game events. While I'm not in a HNM LS, I hear plenty of stories from others who are, and those stories make me ashamed for the people involved.
Personally, I'd rather be a kind player, one who "plays well with others". It's really very unfortunate that that (along with my job) would likely keep me out of most HNM LSs.
And yes, Jaten and I belong to Valor.. but saying "a damned HNM LS swooped in and stole him from them" makes it sound like we took our entire LS down to Ose just to steal it from you or something.
After your first comment I went back and reread my post and I saw how it could be read like that. (And then I snickered at the thought of all of Valor needing to storm in to take down little Ose.) My wording of it was poor, and I'll toss in an edit of the post now.
Now, this is your LJ so I'm not going to tell you what to write in it because people like to give the typical "just dont read it" mumbojumbo, but it is really low writing garbage like that.
Anyone is free to comment on any of my posts at any time. My goal isn't to spread lies or incorrect impressions, but what I write is very much from my own point of view. I was angry that our own high level folks made the trip out for nothing (others had been coming, in addition to the two already there), I was sad that our THF (who works so hard and does his job so well) doesn't have Ose's drop to wear. To my POV, you two arriving and taking Ose wasn't fair, but by the rules of the world you live in, it was a perfectly valid thing to do. We disagree on that, and in my LJ you're always free to remind me of that... just don't expect me to agree with you.
Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-15 03:32 pm (UTC)Yeah, and there was a party already camping there (the HNM LS XP party, in fact).
Yeah, they were really dodgy and hard to hit. When my absorbs (DEX, AGI) stuck it was a little better, but they were resisted more than half the time. And their specials? I think both our WHM and NIN ended up bald!
I didn't even know there were lizards in Attowa that you could exp on, can't wait to hear how it goes for you guys next week. =)
From the few we killed yesterday, they were really good for us. Not great, but chaining them worked out. (Non chains were like a little over 100 XP, but with chains we got up near 200.) Plus there are a few IT-- lizards running around, which helps with the chaining. The main problem is that lizards pop in camp, and as linky as they are...
Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 03:37 pm (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 04:13 pm (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 04:16 pm (UTC)And when you wrote your LJ, what makes you think we had any idea you made an attempt at the NM? You could have wiped entirely from the Toramas that you said popped on your group, and those "high levels" could have been on their own, looking to kill the NM for themselves. You didnt know anything; you assumed. Nobody said anything when we pulled it. I'm not saything that even had you asked us to back off that we would have, but nobody even made an attempt.
Also- Had you guys killed it, we would have been in the same boat you ended up in: people making a long trip for nothing, and without an Assault Jerkin. We needed it just as much as the next guy. There are a thousand people all wanting an item and you cant blame them for doing what they can for it. Honestly, dont give me shit about common courtesy. You obviously dont have experience with NM camping in this game if you truely expect someone to let you have extra shots at an NM just because you were the first ones to die to it.
Go watch a few Fafnir camps.. people dont even wait for you to all die.. they just take it when it looks like you are going down. This is how things just happen, and you have unrealistic expectations.
Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 04:33 pm (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 04:48 pm (UTC)It's always easier to complain than compliment, and I know I'm guilty of that too. Just remember that everyone has bad days, and that it's possible to be annoyed with someone for a short while without bearing them any sort of lasting grudge.
Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 04:50 pm (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 04:51 pm (UTC)Yeah, we knew we couldn't kill it, we were just intending to hold it till our friends arrived. Until the pop in our camp we were holding our own against him.
And when you wrote your LJ, what makes you think we had any idea you made an attempt at the NM?
Because he was standing on our dead bodies? :P Or a more serious answer: You could have asked us. You saw the other high levels (Beanie and Merlee) fighting there, right? You could have /telled either them or one of our dead party members to find out what was happening.
You could have wiped entirely from the Toramas that you said popped on your group, and those "high levels" could have been on their own, looking to kill the NM for themselves.
Yep, or someone could have trained on us, or GMs could have struck us dead, or any number of situations could have happened. A simple /tell could have cleared everything up. 'Do you guys want him or can we try?' Something like that.
Nobody said anything when we pulled it. I'm not saything that even had you asked us to back off that we would have, but nobody even made an attempt.
Two things on that:
1) We knew who you were, what good would it have done to ask a HNM LS member to leave a NM alone? (I'm tempted to add "that's not meant as an insult, though it probably sounds like one", but it probably doesn't sound like one to you?)
2) Related to #1, our LS tries very hard not to fight with others. We do not like drama. We do not want to get into flame wars with people. We try to be mature. We try not to hurt others. We try to be good players and good people. If we had commented to you two, what good would it have done? At best, we would have gotten into an argument.
You obviously dont have experience with NM camping in this game if you truely expect someone to let you have extra shots at an NM just because you were the first ones to die to it.
I know, I'm really expecting too much from people. It would be the nice/mature/kind thing to have let Beanie and Merlee try first, since they were there first (and not just "died to it", they were alive and there), but "nice" isn't what this game is about to some people. And that's so so so so sad. And it makes me even sadder that you don't see that as sad. (Insert the "that's not meant to be an insult, though it probably sounds like one" line here.)
Remember when the Friendship Quest first started? And how (surprisingly) people actually (for the most part) waited in lines for their turn? Could you imagine how bad things would have been if everyone followed the HNM LS mentality instead? 'Screw everyone else, I'm going to rush in and take what I need, just as fast and as hard as I can'?
Go watch a few Fafnir camps.. people dont even wait for you to all die.. they just take it when it looks like you are going down. This is how things just happen, and you have unrealistic expectations.
I know. I expect people to act like adults. To play fair. To treat each other like thinking, feeling people. I know that, especially in a situation like FFXI, that is unrealistic. The game is full of teenage boys who want nothing more than a pair of Mithra breasts in their face and some rare sword on their belt. But there are people in the world and on the game who aren't like that, and I'll keep playing in the way I do so that when I encounter those other people we can recognize each other and team up. That's how our LS grows. That's how our LS stays true to what we believe in.
It makes me very sad ("sad" isn't a strong enough word to describe it) that it takes a HNM LS's style to do the end game stuff, but I know that that's the way it is. For the most part, my world almost never crosses the HNM LS world, so I can keep playing my way and you folks can keep playing your way. That will have to be good enough.
Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 04:54 pm (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 04:58 pm (UTC)What was your point of doing this? So nobody else could have a shot at it while your friends get there. You could have waited for them before you pulled it, but you knew it was a desired NM and wanted to take your chances so nobody else would be able to grab it. That is the whole point of holding, so dont give me that crap.
Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 04:58 pm (UTC)But to be fair, I have no idea how they found out about this post, so it's possible that whatever caused them to see this one was not in place for them to see that good one.
Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 04:59 pm (UTC)Re: steal?
Date: 2005-08-15 05:04 pm (UTC)