6370 CS Grr.... FF Grr. There, not so gr.. friends not gr at all.

[scottobear]

CS is going on vacation starting tomorrow.... good thing, as he was getting on my last nerve by end of day. Though on call, I'll take comfort in being home for the next couple of days. He just pisses me off, because he seems unable to comply with any request I put to him. Today, I just asked that he copy files to the network, so we have some sort of back up, and he gave me annoying sass and crap over it. I seriously doubt that he'll last very long, at this point. If he cops the same stupid attitude too many times with the kahuna, he'll get bounced out of there. He just can't seem to get it through his skull that there is a time and place for innovation, and another for grunt work, and yet another for fun.

Friday, I get to Train MM some more, and put the Georgia and Florida Newsletters on the site... that should be fairly peaceful. I think I'll increase the size of the 51, too.

I'm going to try playing a little FFXI with the PGM crew tonight, if I can. Sammy & D will be good guides there. I'm going to be connecting to the Bismarck server, if anyone wants to look for a Galkan warrior. I'm going to shoot for a name similar to Scotto, but not sure what to go with, as yet. I'm sort of fond of the Tarutaru, too. You can tell this game has it's origins in Japan... cat girls and all pseudo babeage. I managed to avoid everquest, but FFXI has the allure of people I know playing.

[update] - If I didn't have friends there, I might not give it a second chance. I think you need some sort of degree in game dynamics to leap into it immediately... it's the first game I've ever *needed* someone to show me how to move, talk and act. I'm sort of annoyed that I will probably have to actually read the manual, because the interface is not Scotto-intuitive at all. The short time I was there, it was fun, and very pretty. I will continue to fiddle with it and see if I get better at the interface. If you're on the Bismarck Server, and you see a big galkan named Scottobear, say hi! Meanwhile, I think I'll play some more in There. (New client for there at - downloads.there.com/download/there_tla5.exe ) a mere snip at 101 megs. Maybe my bad attitude was influenced by my end of day mindset with ACIM. I'm a little tired of things defying me.

Comments

[egofood.livejournal.com]

The first time I played Everquest I was hopelessly lost. (The tutorial did not include the lagmeter which I mistook for a compass--which was mysteriously spinning wildly. That it was raining heavily and my ranger began life in Surefall Glade instead of in Qeynos like the character creation screen suggested only made things worse.) You might consider creating a throwaway character just to experiment with the interface for a day or two until you get comfy enough to play for "real". The ranger was my throwaway before I started up Harf, who suffered (and still suffers as he's now my usual initial character in any new game) from my cluelessness (a Halfling WARRIOR???). Still he muddled through and eventually became an elite Leatherfoot Raider.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

Is the interface for EQ really hard, too? I don't know what it was, but I was feeling like a retarded chimp in FFXI.

Hooray for Halfling warriors!

[egofood.livejournal.com]

After I got used to it, no. But I used the default interface for a few weeks (which had the player's view in just a portion of the screen) and was clicking buttons instead of using hot keys. After a few weeks though I tried the fullscreen view with the transparent keys and started experimenting with where to place the controls on the screen. Then about a month or so into it I had a system of macros set up. I also had about 8 characters by then, so having the interface and hotkeys and macros consistent helped. The macros are vital. When I switched to Dark Age of Camelot they had two default keyboard settings, one of which was similar to EQ. I set to that default, then tweaked it further to match my EQ settings and arranged the interface windows to a similar pattern to my EQ days and I was quite comfortable with that game in less than a week. Of course when I loaded up EQ for a "please come back and try us again" free week they had completely redone the interface from when I had played before and I hated it so much I've never gone back.

But beyond just the interface there are the game mechanics to learn. What classes do what, the strengths and weaknesses of your own class, the impact of the rules (such as in EQ a quest mob will just drop one item so there's either a camping list or a free for all while in DAoC the mob will drop the item for everyone with the quest leading to people showing up at the spawn site and grouping for the kill). If this is your first MMOG then it will take some time to get in the flow as they are constantly changing (especially if you play in pickup groups rather than a regular group) not just because of content updates but because your fellow players will tend to level at different speeds and new tactics will get passed around from one player to another. Try to avoid the power gamers who will have a hissyfit if you aren't doing things to min/max perfection and just have fun exploring. Definitely spend your first few days though experimenting with tweaking the interface settings until it's comfortable. It helped that I already had a friend in the game so we would play short sessions then camp and chat about what happened so I could ask about stuff that was confusing. Watching other players is also useful to get an idea about tactics.

[scottobear.livejournal.com]

ah, sound ideas and options all. Thanks for the info! my only experiance with this is paper and pencil RPG and MUDs The FFXI world is beautiful, and I am very fortunate to have some patient and helpful folks with me to play in there, too.