Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

After the Eyrils drama over galkas, the image of a slaughterhouse of galkas poped in my mind.

I wanted to draw it but it would never get as good as i wanted.

It was like a queue of galkas in one side, entering the slaughterhouse, then in the other side, acheron shields and prize powders being delivered.

It could be considered kinda gory for some too. Maybe its for the better leaving that image just in my (sick) (disturbed) mind.

Though, the image of a slaughterhouse is kinda a strong symbol to me. Nothing can be só ethically disgusting than living being walking toward its demise after an empty life.

What did the oxen think when entering the slaughterhouse? “Was my life worth anything?” “Why did i born?”.

I guess, maybe from an individual standpoint, it was just a waste of life. But i guess to the universe eyes, living few hours like mosquitoes, living near a century like humans, living a decade like some animals is all the same, an irrelevant light, that disapeared as soon as it flashed.

So, for the universe, you did what you were supposed to do. You moved mass. You dissipated energy. There is no point to complain about a life that didnt happen, its all the same.

So, rest in peace, galkans.

Why did i born

Religious Alcoholics anonymous tonight is confirmed team bowser

yay it finally came

anyone remember these? lol


god i just really want to collect all the vaporeon cards now too... stop 30s crisis, stop

*** tech decks

just came across final fantasy I - III for PC, around 12-18 bucks each on steam, and i bet it's a copy paste of some emulator. what is SE smoking?

So having resubscribed to FFXI... I've decided that I'm going to record a playthrough focused on leveling jobs and doing quests to sort of catalogue things. I'm sure I'm far from the first, and I won't be getting started on it right away, as I have other projects I'm tending to, but I'm gonna get started on it by next month, I hope.

Looking up the current state of servers, seems like it's largely unchanged over the last few years?

Asura is the biggest cheese, then Odin, then Bahamut? I don't really intend to focus on getting to endgame quickly or picking up doing a lot of high end things. Just the stories and the quests, mainly. I'd prefer a server that isn't completely barren, but isn't super crowded. Is that possible, in this age of the game?

I'll probably be deleting this character to make room for the recording character... still undecided on a name.

I thought we put a lot of work into that char?

Don't delete a 99 character, farm dat aman trove every free period!

The whatman trove? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I put a lot of work into all of my characters, but it was dashed against the rocks when they introduced item level ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ow man...

The slum party near my house is playing the music so absurdly high at 4am that i just woke and seriously started to wonder if A) aliens had finally arrived in Earth and started to yell their plans or B) the judgment day has finally come.

Were you angry at the introduction of ilvl? Or Abyssea for that matter?

Just curious.

Item Level specifically. While it's true that both Level Sync and Abyssea impinged on the FFXI experience in large ways, they weren't nearly as large of an impact as item level when all is said and done.

You see, the thing about gear in XI, and you probably well know this, is that as long as gear has a niche use or special effect, then it could retain its usefulness even at level 99 before item level, regardless of its gear level.

Upon introduction of item level, due to the way level correction works, many main body pieces and periphery weapons(elemental staves) lost their effectiveness in all regards to any piece with a higher item level, because item level gear actually boosts your level vs. mob level for all of the damage calculations.

While accessories and capes and belts and such are immune to this, as they don't factor in, it was a large enough change that it basically infantilized all of the gear sets that most of my characters have, as well as gear that took me months and years to get.

I wasn't mad at Abyssea at all when it came around. The first expansion didn't have atma that were so broken that they completely altered tactics, and EXP Alliances were something I found insanely social and novel. Key whoring is something they probably should have thought to nip in the bud, but oh well. They'd already set the precedent that they didn't care when Level Sync SMN burns in Korrolokka Tunnel were taking people from level 24 to like 58 in a single mass pull of the zone.

In the later Abyssea zones, the truly OP Abyssea gear was relegated to AF sets, and inventory was far more limited than Mog Wardrobe 507. This effectively limited how powerful you could get one character to be, by limiting how many jobs they could deck out. The intro Perle/Aurore/Teal sets that caught a lot of players up and replaced some long standing gear from HNM in certain specific slots, but anyone who'd been into endgame for a few years before Abyssea already had better stuff or stuff equal to the Abyssea gear, so they didn't need a catch up just to realistically participate.

Abyssea also addressed LS exploitation of the many for the few. Right, like, sure there were shells that split currency evenly and split Alexandrite evenly and were good people. They were in the minority. Most shells had one or two sponsors hoarding up all that ancient currency, which is why certain people were able to obtain like 12 relics. It wasn't that others didn't have the funds to sponsor, it was literally the leaders not allowing them to sponsor, and the lack of Dynamis instances meant that to go against that grain meant starting your own Dynamis shell and trying to fit it into your servers timeslots or zone jacking. In this way, Empyrean weapons came onto the scene, let people who'd spent years being exploited by their fellow players get a huge leg up. The old relic players were at no disadvantage this entire time, mind you, as they too, could and did make Empyreans.

Now before this wall of text gets way too long, as it's already insufferably long, I'll say that I'm a big boy. I geared up my main in i119 on his WAR and RDM. I've got a MacBain Gsword with like 306 base damage, which is now obsolete vs. some other Gsword but it got me through Cloud of Darkness to finish Rhapsodies back in like 2017 or 2018 whenever it was. I play FFXIV, so I don't mind getting on a gear treadmill, but a huge appeal to FFXI was lost for me when item level came about. Especially considering they continued making fights and gear that still up'd the ante, even for the current highest iLvl stuff. Like, it's just like raising the level cap without actually doing it, making you rely on your gear for your level. Like I don't know the weights. I haven't looked up anything in depth on XI in eons, but I don't think there's much of anything that runs contrary to what I've said. I just know that like, I can't offhand my Joyeuse anymore, Ridill doesn't matter, Kraken Club is fruitless. Maybe they have i119 counterparts by now, but more likely there's just something even more broken that I haven't even heard of at the apex of what the game is now.

This is actually different to how FFXIV handles it, since there is no level correction beyond accuracy and inlaid armor defense (and this correction only applies to your raw level). You can wear lower level gear with pentamelds in FFXIV, and if the substats are consistent with the stat weights for your job, then your reduced item level doesn't matter, the raw math weighs in your favor, and you are reward for your forethought (which is very little because FFXIV gearing is boring). Also granted, the iLvl disparity usually can't be more than 20 iLvls per piece due to main stat weights being pretty dang up there.

Tl; DR -> Nerd mad that things change.

Congrats, PantafernanDoge!

Hour 28 of the 30 hour shift almost done despite being sick as ***
Thank ugglepleh I was able to break halfway to shower because yikes

NyQuil shots shots shots shots in 2 hours woooo
I hate fridays.

Get well soon, ya big ole tall guy!

I've only ever been on Ragnarok, but from the feedback I get it seems to be a mid-range server population-wise. There is typically 800-900 people on, currently around 1300 due to the free play going on. The 2 social linkshells I'm in usually have 30+ people on...currently reaching 40+ due to the returning players.

Once my father asked me why i was so cold toward my family.

Well, I cant help but feel like wishing I wasnt part of this family.

What can I do with a bunch of people that brings nothing but trouble?

The penalty for having a proper control of your life is to pay for all the ***some other people do just because for random chance you were born as son/bother/stepson of someone?

Sounds like the issue my wife faces. She's responsible and has her life together, and somehow that is an invitation to get bullied by family members who don't.

I 'member them but was never into them.

Item level is a really hard thing for me to swallow as well. One of the things that made FFXI really stand out was that it had equipment that was viable until late-game at levels as low as Lv.5 or Lv.7. Now a lot of that is replaced by cheap-as-free Sparks equipment that instantly and completely replaces almost everything in the game. And then after that it's minor upgrades from there.

It also irritates me because iLevel equipment have 24 individual stats on each piece and I can barely compare them. At this point I don't even feel like I'm making informed decisions.

To me that's their biggest misstep. Not to say it doesn't come with some cool benefits. I just think that was the most jarring change to the game.

lolwut, no sparks gear is garbage

It still instantly replaces a lot of what you would have had before and allows you to take on almost anything in the game. Lv.98 I probably would have had a 0% chance to beat Cloud of Darkness solo. One level later I instantly jumped up to Lv.117 and beat it first try. Bye-bye literally all of the (visible) gear I'd obtained up to that point...

Considering most of it is upgradable: no.

For a straight meva set for thf, that mage sparks set was BiS for years

Actually that's a good point. A lot of it became obsolete, but a lot of it can be upgraded. I even like how they allow you to upgrade using fewer materials based on how far along it was upgraded in the first place.