Tag Archives: FFXIV

A Fisher’s Woe

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Dear SE,

I strongly feel that fishers are being bullied badly by your current RNG system.

First off, I must let you know that fishing in FFXIV has always been my pleasure and I found it relaxing, that is until RNG seems to be remarkably working against fisher more than any other DoL classes. I’ve been stuck on Lucis quest for over 6 months because the spawn window for the token (Gigant Clam) is only 3 hours long, and they tend to escape A LOT. When I say A LOT, I mean on some nights I could hook 5 Clams and ALL of them would escape. That is 5 times in a row, at the rate of 100%. And even if I was lucky enough to reel it in, there is no guarantee that it would be the HQ clam.

Recently, I have upgraded my gear and I am now at 500 gathering, with food. So I went back to reattempt my Lucis quest again. The minimum gathering needed for this clam is 375. And guess what, I hooked 3 clams and lost all due to RNG deciding that my 500 gathering is not good enough to get any of the 3 clams. I would understand that the fish can randomly escape when gathering rating is around the minimum requirement. I would understand if I were at 425 gathering, 50 above minimum, and lost the clam 2 out of 3 times. I DO NOT understand, and nor am I happy, to see that I am sitting at 500 gathering, 125 points over minimum requirement, and yet still lost 3 out of 3 clams.

For other DoL, not only that they can manually select the slot to limit their target item for gathering, they also have consistency effect of Gathering rating towards the success rate. If I am a miner or a botanist, and I am 125 gathering above requirement, I’m likely having 100% success rate. Damn, at 645 gathering, which is only 45 points above requirement for Legendary Node (folklore gathering) , my miner is already getting 80% success rate on the item. I then can use skills to boost success rate by 5%, 10%, or 25%.

What does fisher get for success rate? A completely wild random RNG, and no success rate skill.

Please make success rate for fisher more reliable and more rational. It is beyond comprehension when we keep losing a fish when we put so much effore in gearing up to increase stats. If fisher’s gathering rating is going to be so ineffective in dictating our success in hooking a fish, we’re far inferior than other DoL. Not to mention that we don’t even have the Offhand tool to boost stats anymore…. This is so sad.

With love,
A frustrated fisher.

Don’t automatically blame Cleric Stance for your death

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Alright, it took me 2 days to cool down enough to sit down and write about this. I need to be heard. And yes I’ll admit that I’m still butthurt from the incident. I’m now still upset enough to try to hunt down the person and shove the screenshots in his or her face to prove that I DID NOT use Cleric Stance before he or she died. Too bad this person isn’t on my server, else I would personally search for them and send a tell with the screenshot link.

To avoid name-shaming, I crossed out parts of people’s names. But if you are the person’s friend, I am quite sure you will be able to guess who it is. This person is from Zodiark server and has the initials of Y. G. If you know him or her, please forward my screenshots, because when I explained myself, this person didn’t seem convinced.

The day before yesterday, I joined my friend’s party to queue for High Roulette and we got placed into a Pharos Sirius duty. First pull, the tank went to the first corner to get 5 mobs in one pull. It’s nothing we can’t manage, right? So things seemed fine at first.

Mind you, though, that I usually evaluate the party’s tank before I choose my play style. If the tank seems sturdy enough and has sufficient survivability to let me Holy while letting Regen and Medica II work in my stead, I Cleric Stance and Holy a few times. However, if I see that the tank takes too much damage and I’m not confident that they can stay alive while I Holy twice or thrice, I refrain from that and continuously Cure tank instead.

This time I saw that the tank took too much damage and I couldn’t afford the time to cast Holy, so I decided to stick to healing mode. I also noticed that the tank stood in the middle of the group of enemies instead of rounding them up and face them all with the shield. But things escalated very quickly and I didn’t have enough time to comment on that. With this positioning, the tank also pointed one of the mob at me, putting me in a cone AoE attacks. Again, things was crazy and I had to try to keep people alive and didn’t have time to comment on that.

What happened was that the Elbst managed to land an AoE move (I googled later and found that it is Acid Shower, which should be stunned) that put people under the debuff effect “Vulnerability Up” thus increasing damage taken. 3 persons received that debuff, including me and my friend, MCH. I Esuna the tank first. The Esuna cleansed Poison instead, because, guess what, either an enemy has insta-cast poison attack or built-in poison in a physical attack, or the tank ate a poison AoE. I cured and Esuna again, which erased the tank’s Vulnerability Up, but it was too late, the tank went down already.

Note that some milliseconds before that, my friend died, too. And I did not even have time to Esuna myself. The BLM started running to the entrance, trying to kill the rest of the mobs while regrouping with the tank and my friend who respawned. I turned on my Cleric Stance and used Swift Cast Holy to try to stop the mobs in their track and buy us more time to regroup and for me to cure up the BLM after spending my Fluid Aura and Aero to chip at the enemies’ HP and turning off my Cleric Stance.

The first thing the tank said when he or she rejoined us was “Why cleric stance dude?”

At the moment, I didn’t have enough time to read it and just assumed that it was the BLM being mad at me for letting the tank died. So I replied referring to the tank as 3rd person: “Not my fault, the tank ate debuff that increases damage.” “I cleric after he died.”  (I didn’t realize that the tank died before I managed to land a cure BECAUSE the tank stood there and ate yet another AoE attack which induced “Dropsy” status effect, otherwise I would have also added that to my answer.)

The tank replied “Sure” and after a while, I realized that I was talking to the tank, not the BLM. So I added “You have to dodge AoE” referring to the Acid Shower which induced Vulnerability Up debuff.

Along the way, my friend tried to make light of the situation to help us relax and said “It is normal that tank die here” to which I replied “No it’s not normal.” And he said something along the line of “well it’s normal with debuff, that debuff kills people.” Yes of course, with increased damage taken, getting beaten up by 4-5 enemies at once is brutal. Then my friend went on to speculated whether the AoE which gave the debuff was instant or not. I said I don’t know because our tank friend never got it. Probably because he stunned it or the Elbst died fast and didn’t get to use this debuff move.

In front of the door to first boss room, the tank, again, tanked in the middle of the mobs. So I commented on that. Yet, there was no reaction, and further up the tower, this tank kept tanking with some enemies behind his or her back. I didn’t want to bother, so I didn’t say anything else.

Anyway, what I’m mad about is the fact that the tank did not stun stuff (also no stun on the pudding’s Divide and no silence on Banish III from the elemental), ate debuff, ate AoE, yet had the nerves to point the finger at me and my Cleric Stance (which, in fact, wasn’t active until after the tank died) for dying.

In this case, I admit that I had slow reaction and did not use my Benediction fast enough to save the tank. I underestimated the enemies and thought a few cures would get the tank back in shape. However, the tank unexpectedly ate an AoE for 1380 damage before my cure could land, so I totally failed at situation assessment. If anyone or everyone in the party would blame me for not using my Benediction, I would regrettably take the blame. But for the tank to immediately blame my Cleric Stance, that’s unacceptable.

To sum it up:
Tank tanking with back toward an enemy : not my fault.
Tank not stunning AoE : not my fault.
Tank eating Vulnerability Up debuff : not my fault.
Tank eating Poison debuff so first Esuna failed to cleanse Vulnerability Up : not my fault.
Tank eating yet another AoE and died : not my fault.
Cure interrupted from getting splash damage : my fault.
Not using Benediction : my fault.
Tank not using Hallowed Ground : not my fault.
Using Cleric Stance after tank died : not my fault.

FFXIV_Pharos_Tank_b FFXIV_Pharos_Tank_cFFXIV_Pharos_Tank_aFFXIV_Pharos_Tank_d

 

Blacklist system should have an additional function.

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Dear SE,

I’d like to suggest that the blacklist system should have an additional function.

Or maybe just add a separated function, that allows YOU to prevent a specific player’s character from appearing on your screen. 

There are times when I want this really nice screenshot of the sunset, but a person is standing there, AFK or not, blocking the view. There are times when I want to take a pic at a specific spot (like in front of an event’s decoration), but this person is AFK there all day long (this happened during this year’s Little Lady’s Day) so no matter how many times I came back to check the availability, I still couldn’t use the thing for my screenshots.

Sometimes people are nice and when I asked politely, they gladly moved out of the way. But that’s not always the result. Sometimes they didn’t see my request, sometimes they might just not care, and sometimes they purposely tried to be mean. Also, since the time in the game changes quickly, sometimes I totally miss the screenshot opportunity because asking and waiting for response took too long. (For example, the moon already moved and changed angle.)

If I could remove the appearance of a PC from my own screen, this won’t be a problem anymore. And I won’t even need to intrude and make my selfish request to them when and where I want to take a screenshot.

Additionally, there was one exclusive incident when I made a comment in /say about persons who spammed the chatlog with emotes, and they weren’t nice enough to uncheck the “Display log message” in emote menu like I suggested, but instead continued even more notoriously. I moved away so I was outside of the range for the emote to appear, they followed and spammed more. So I moved again and blacklisted and continued crafting. One of the persons in that spam fest went out of their way to follow me and had their character stand so close to my face with their crotch towards me. Which was beyond rude and was also disgusting.

If I could have an option to “unsee” specific characters in the game, this kind of harassment wouldn’t bother me anymore.

On a remotely related subject, it would also be nice to have an option to prevent my blacklisted persons from seeing my character. It is creepy as hell to have a person on my blacklist follow me around doing emotes at me.

There was one incident, back in 1.0, when a TERRIBLE (terrible is an understatement) person – whom I and my friends bumped into during a Behest, had argued with, and blacklisted him – kept following us around doing emotes at us and laughed repeatedly when we were killed in a levequest.

An option to hide myself from being seen by this kind of person would be much appreciated. So that we can take an additional measure against the people whom we decide to blacklist, to prevent them from stalking us.

Also, although it was just me being paranoid about the crotch person mentioned a few paragraphs above, what if they were taking screenshots of the moment? Now they will have pics of doing nasty things to my character. They may upload them and laugh with their friends about me and how they got back at me in those pics . That’s gross as hell. If I have an option to also hide myself from my blacklisted persons, I could feel less vulnerable.

If you would consider adding such function or anything similar, I would be forever grateful.

Sincerely,
Aleczan Knighthill.

My Gatherer’s (DoL) Macros

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With the Unspoiled Nodes in Heavensward’s duration being so short, I can’t afford to waste time looking up on the internet or open a bookmarked link on my browser, I made /echo macro to tell me the slots. Then, realizing I have to head to the spawn spot before it actually spawns, in order to allow me a lot of time to pick the skills to use, I also added where to go.

ffxiv_07172015_010119_cr2/echo ★ ☆ MATERIALS : Unspoiled Heavensward Nodes ☆ ★
/echo  : Falcon’s Nest Chysahl Green [] — Top-left (Dragonspit)
/echo  : Falcon’s Nest Chives [], Prl. Sprout [], T. Leaves [] — Mid-right (Blk. Iron Br.)
/echo  : Camp Cloudtop Hv.Lemon [], Abal.Mistletoe [] — Mid-right (Vundu Ok’ Bendu)
/echo MNR 11:00 Helix Adamamtite Ore [6] — Top-mid
/echo MNR 12:00 Camp Cloudtop Abal. Rock Salt [1], Red Quartz [6] — Top-left (Cold Wind)
/echo  : Moghome Drav. Mistletoe [], Porcini [] — Top-right (Easton Eyes)
/echo  : Idyllshire Cloud Banana [], Morel [] — Low-left
/echo  : Tailfeather Old World’s Fig [] — Top-mid

The 2nd one is for nodes where Collectible items can be exchanged for Scrips. I pair the nodes list with execution of Collector’s Gloves skill as well as changing hotbar 1 to display my COllectible skills hotbar instead. You can manually switch between hotbars by using Shift + the number, or Shift + up/down button.

ffxiv_07172015_010119_cr1

/macroicon “Collector’s Glove” /action “Collector’s Glove” <me>
/hotbar change 6
/echo    Hotbar changed to collectable for Scrips   
/echo  : Camp Cloudtop Hv.Lemon [], Abl.Mistletoe [] — Mid-right (Vundu Ok’ Bendu)
/echo  : Idyllshire Cloud Banana [], Morel [] — Low-left
/echo MNR 12:00 Camp Cloudtop Abal. Rock Salt [1], Red Quartz [6] — Top-left (Cold Wind)
/echo MNR 2:00 Idyllshire Cuprite [2], Light Kidney Ore [3] — Low-right

Monsters Location Maps: The Sea of Clouds

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Made my 4th map for the Monsters Location.

Again, 4 versions, in case some people like cleaner map with less distractions.

This map was truly a challenge to complete, due to the amount of monster’s varieties as well as the cascading pieces of land.
Monsters_Map_SeaofClouds_v1 Monsters_Map_SeaofClouds_v2 Monsters_Map_SeaofClouds_v4Monsters_Map_SeaofClouds_v3After finishing all 6 maps, I will make a center post containing all maps in the same page. But for now, it has to be separated entries.

Monsters Location Maps: The Churning Mists

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Finally got around to making The Churning Mists’ map.

3 Versions, again.

MonstersMap_ChurningMists_v1 MonstersMap_ChurningMists_v2 MonstersMap_ChurningMists_v3

The reason why I made this (despite the fact that there are already monsters maps on the internet that everyone else is using) is that I find things on the map faster with visual aid. Also, on my server, there are a lot of European players, so some of the monsters names are complete different from English names.

Moreover, some monsters drop crafting materials so there might be a competition for kills, so I feel that marking territory of spawn can be useful when monsters become heavily hunted.

The Joy of Having a Flying Mount

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Not only that flying mounts are making an adventurer’s life easier and enabling fast travel, but they are also excellent means for any screenshot enthusiast to enjoy taking pictures in the game far beyond the old capability.

ffxiv_06302015_023925_newffxiv_06302015_223852_newffxiv_06302015_224859_newffxiv_07012015_041349_newffxiv_07032015_182909_newffxiv_06302015_185200_new ffxiv_07042015_203058_new ffxiv_07052015_032629_new ffxiv_07072015_123930_new ffxiv_07072015_124653_new

We can now take a screenshot from any height, distance, and angle. We can take a picture of anything from pretty much anywhere while adjusting the elements in the frame much more to our liking. No more frantically jumping to reach a specific camera angle (and still can’t get it anyway). No more getting angry at how the piece of land ends before we could walk to a spot where we want to stand while taking a screenshot. No more being blocked from the perfect view by a mountain or a boulder.

The only downside? Now my screenshots folder gets about 400 new pics per day on average instead of 200. LOL. (But I expect it to tune down soon when I finish all the quests, because I also take screenshots during quest cutscenes.)

 

Me waiting for Heavensward

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Hibernating to pass the time, lol!
ffxiv_05242015_175700bWell, I haven’t been well this week and didn’t get smooth sleep at night, so I ended up getting very sleepy in the afternoon. So I often crawl in bed and do the time warp thing. Today I was knocked out around 6 PM and then woke up starving when it was almost midnight. ><;;

By the way, PhotoScape is a nice photo editor program. I need a program that allows the use of layers and eraser, like Photoshop, though. Still looking for more programs for my PC.

 

Dear SE, please add “Pause Queue” function to Duty Finder

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Going to send this letter of suggestion to SE through in-game support desk.

 

Dear SE,

I’d like to propose an installation of a new function which could be very useful for FFXIV Duty Finder.

Please also add a “Pause Queue” function to the Duty Finder. My idea is that this button will temporarily put the DF on hold for the player. When paused, the player would temporarily step out of the Duty Finder line, while staying at the same spot in the queue, not moving closer, and not getting kicked out of the waiting line. When the player comes back and “Resume” queuing, the player will get back into the waiting line where he or she first stepped out, as the spot had been reserved for the original owner.

However, if the player executes this function after there was a prompt to commence Duty, the player will resume queuing in the next after next spot. In the event that some other players in front of the pausing person got into their Duty, freeing up the spots at the front of the line, the players behind the pausing person will pass them and go on ahead, as if the pausing person is frozen in the line until he or she comes back and hit “Resume” button.
This ability to “Pause” will be extremely useful for various kinds of situations.

 

Example 1:
A poor Dragoon who finds it tough to get a Duty Finder in Syrcus Tower to pop for over an hour decides that he should also spend his waiting time doing something productive. He changes to a low level job and went to grind EXP in FATEs. In the middle of a fight, while he is tanking a FATE boss, the Duty Finder goes off and presents a Commence prompt.

He cannot change back to his registered job because he is in the middle of a fight.

If he runs away from the FATE to try to lose enmity, there is a chance that the boss monster will reset to full HP if it follows him out too far from the spawn spot. Other players in the FATE will be very upset and will call him out on it. Resetting a FATE boss is also rude and is a waste of everyone else’s time and effort.

If there is “Pause Queue” function, he could use it and stepped temporarily out of the queue, letting the next person in line go in instead. Meanwhile, he won’t waste all the long minutes he had spent waiting for this Duty. He also wouldn’t need to start queuing from the end of the line again, which could be another hour or even longer. He could finish the FATE, change job to DRG, and resume queue and will probably have to wait for 5 or 10 minutes for next chance.

 

Example 2:
A healer has been waiting for a Labyrinth of the Ancients duty for well over 90 minutes. The Alliance is slowly filling up, missing only 2 tanks, 1 Healer and 1 DPS at the moment. She’s been sitting here for so long, fearing that leaving the desk will make her miss the opportunity to get into the Duty, and that she would need to start queuing again which could result in another waste of 90 minutes.

She’s starving. She needs food. She also needs a bathroom visit.

The current DF system means that she has only 3 options, withdraw now and go get her needs fulfilled, run for it hoping to be lucky enough to make it back in time before she’s kicked out from not hitting the “Commence” button, or hold out and make gaming a higher priority in life than nature’s calls.

If there is a “Pause Queue” function, she will easily decide to pause it and run for the bathroom and get food from the kitchen, resting assured that when she returns, she won’t have to spend yet another agonizing 90 minutes to get into a Duty. If she’s lucky enough, she might even get into the same Alliance that she got a spot in earlier.

 

Example 3:
A tank is having a bad luck day. He’s been sitting in the queue for 20 minutes for Expert Roulette. It seems all the healers are asleep or away from home right now, as there is no sign on the healer despite the party’s being ¾ for so damn long.

He went to Gold Saucer to kill time while waiting for the Duty Finder. As if the Twelves were pulling a prank on him, the Duty Finder prompt to commence pops up while he’s in the middle of a Triple Triad duel with an NPC. He threw his cards onto the board quickly without thinking, in order to rush the match to end so he could enter Duty. However, there is a Sudden Death rule, and he happened to score a draw against the NPC, so the NPC wouldn’t let him go and the next match forcefully and automatically starts.

In current system, this tank would totally miss the commence countdown and be kicked out from the queue. He would have to start queuing from start again, which could be extremely irritating. He’s been waiting for this party for over 20 minutes, yet he is forced to forfeit his spot just because he is 1 minute late to click the commence button?

If there is a “Pause Queue” function, once he found out that the NPC isn’t letting him go anywhere, he could have pause it for a while and rush back to resume queuing. Or, if he is smart and plans ahead, he could pause his queue before starting the Triple Triad match with this NPC, and then resume it after the match ends properly.

 

In my opinion, current system is a little harsh and unfair for those who’ve been sitting in front of their screens for over an hour, sometimes close to two hours, waiting for the party/alliance to slowly assemble, only to then get kicked completely out of the line just because they have some kind of emergency in real life and need to leave their chair for just a minute or two – when the Duty Finder decides to be mean and go CHING when they’re AFK. Of course, it wouldn’t go off for the whole 2 hours while they were sitting tight and staring, but would, unfortunately, pop once the person has left to do some business.

With a Pause Queue system, the player could relax a little bit more and pause then resume their queue without much disturbance to other people who happen to be in the same Duty party.

If you fear that people would abuse or exploit the function, you can limit the pause usage to, perhaps, 3 times per real life day for each player.

As for people queuing on DF as a party, make it so the whole party will have to vote whether to activate the Pause or not. It should show the name of the person who initiates the Pause proposal, to prevent griever from abusing it to the party. Once a Pause is activated, any of the party member can vote resume. Again, the person will have their name shown to every member.

Please consider the possibilities of this function.

Thank you,
Aleczan Knighthill.

 

 

Got called a ninja at Hunt (Rank A) today

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Happy story was that today I managed to get a few pics of Vogaal Ja without anyone messing up my Vogaal Ja screenshots :D

Sad story is that I shouted as well as announced in all my 3 hunt/social LS and almost no one showed up. So we had 4 people, then someone who wasn’t in my party (he’s on DF) got impatient and changed to PLD and pulled. I thought it was useless to keep shouting and waiting for nobody to come, so I joined in. The 3rd person (was also queuing in DF) suddenly disappeared, and the only person who joined my party ran away before going offline. (He or she came back shortly after and joined the fight, so it’s all good.)

Angry story started when I shouted 2 more times (first time before that PLD pulled, and then 3 mins after that, according to my chatlog time stamp) and suddenly a huge crowd of people appeared out of nowhere. I managed to get 2 more party members. One of the non-party crowds was a lousy person who took time to type “nice ninja of volgal ja” in shout, which pissed me off badly. Because what? Where the fuck were you when we needed more bodies? I’ve been shouting to no avail and you, who came late to the scene, had the nerves to call me out on this?

So it’s automatically my fault when you weren’t in the damn zone when I shouted and not in my 3 linkshells? I get branded for ninja pull when I was the one who found it and announced it? (Mind you, no one else ever shouted the pos all this while.)

I argued with the person, saying I was shouting for 10 mins and no one came (it’s actually 9 mins since my first paparazzi screenshot of Vogaal Ja, 7 mins since my first shout), so it’s not ninja pulling, but he said “yeah sure that’s why when i shout everyone come ?” which is blatantly stupid I couldn’t even start to type a rebuttal. (He or she was gone as soon as the fight was over, so I didn’t have enough time to argue back anyway.) You didn’t announce the pos, at all, and I have a screenshot to prove it. It was all me who shouted the pos. And just because a crowd suddenly showed up when you shouted  “nice ninja of volgal ja” doesn’t mean that they came because of your shout.

And, more importantly, without me and my shouts, you might not even have a chance to see this spawn of Vogaal Ja. Stop blaming the shouter just because you weren’t there to see the shout. I’m unhappy to have run into such kind of person, always blaming others for their own misfortune.

RAWRRRRRRRRRR!!!! I’m so mad. What a jerk!