I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

[Shrayn_lolsam]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

Thanks guys, i'v been thinking of starting a ls, maybe I will after all.

Icemage, I came for advice, not to be analyzed

[Icemage]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

Thanks guys, i'v been thinking of starting a ls, maybe I will after all.

Icemage, I came for advice, not to be analyzed

If you don't fix the source of the problem, what makes you think it will go away? Running from one server to another hasn't fixed your situation. It's not the people that are on the servers - it's the ones you associate with.

People on servers are, on the whole, similar. There isn't a big red flag saying "OMG people on Ifrit are so much worse never go there".

The difference between the happy people on any server and the unhappy ones ar the friends they make. Whether you like it or not, FFXI is a community-based game. You need other people if you want to get many of the things in this game done, and as such, much of your experience will be affected by the people you surround yourself with.

There's a lot of people that are just out there to leech or take advantage of other players - not all of it is intentional, but that's just the way it is. Those of us that go out of our way to help people have to be careful about who we make friends with; not only because of limited time to play, but because everyone who is nice gets burned at some point by people imposing too much on friendship, and the desire is always to minimize that sort of experience.

If you find yourself surrounded by people who are not grateful, not helpful, or otherwise get on your nerves, then your only choice is to try harder to find the people that ARE helpful and willing to lend a hand to friends (and yes, they're out there - but they're hard to find, because the nice people tend to stick together for mutual protection).


Icemage

[Kailea]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

Thanks guys, i'v been thinking of starting a ls, maybe I will after all.
Icemage, I came for advice, not to be analyzed

I agree with Icemage here.... and besides, do you know how hard it can be to lead an LS? your having trouble now, think how much harder it would be leading an LS. Not trying to be mean, just telling the truth.

Perfect example, Mithra Pride LS on Phoenix broke up twice because of unstable LS leaders. (it broke up a third time, but that was for another reason lol)

[Murphie]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

Personally I'd suggest taking a break from the game. Jumping servers isn't going to solve anything, really. You'll find the same sort of people somewhere else, and you might actually lose a connection to the scattered few people you do like on the server you're on now. Maybe a break from the game altogether will allow you to gain a bit of perspective and enable you to make a fresh start on the server you're on now when (or if) you return.

Basically, you're making it into a bigger issue than it really is.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

nice people tend to stick together for mutual protection

Never really thought about it, but I think this is true.

Nothing attract good people like more good people; if you find one, keep him/her! It'd definitely improve your chances of befriending more.

* * *

If your serious about building a linkshell, you may find an old post of mine useful. Chimrit also has some thoughtful reflections what makes an LS work.

[Jekk]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

It says I posted an url? Maybe I accidentally did a smiley. Oops!

Just stay yourself! If you feel you need to change something do it. It's not wrong to somewhat want someone to depend on to help you if you help them.

Look up on how to keep an LS together. I think someone on the forums actually wrote a little thing about it? I don't think you should make the LS until you've made a few close friends to share the responsiblity with you.

If you ever feel annoyed/stressed just take a break for the day from the game. I'm sure everyone here has had a little bit of an experience where they enjoyed FFXI a little too much (I really shouldn't assume everyone, but it's just one of those games that you can't help but play) <_<.

[Shrayn_lolsam]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

Jekk, it's kinda hard to be myself, because I really don't know what it is, hard to explain.. It's not like I act fake and stuff, but I hve such a small part in rl atm, I dont know if i really am myself in game or not, sometimes i feel i am so. Sometimes i feel like i'm acting a little "too mature", or to quite, and other times, vice versa.

[Icemage]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

Never really thought about it, but I think this is true.

Nothing attract good people like more good people; if you find one, keep him/her! It'd definitely improve your chances of befriending more.

I don't just "think" it is true. I know it is true.

I've seen linkshells come and go, over and over for the past 4 and a half years since I first starting playing FFXI back in June of 2003. In that entire time, I've only heard of less than a handful of linkshells that have remained stable over that time period since they were created.

The only linkshells that stay stable are the ones with nice players. The only ones. Linkshells come together for many, many, reasons, but the one and only linkshell on my server that has existed since beta largely unchanged is a social linkshell with a pretty tight-knit group of friends. They keep largely to themselves, enjoy each others' company, do events and missions together, and just have a blast.

They're not a huge linkshell - perhaps a dozen active members - but they're the one of the nicest groups of people I've ever met in any gaming context, and it's a tribute to just how good they are to each other that they've stayed together all these many years. They're not the most powerful players in the game. They're not the most skilled players in the game, either - though they're certainly no slouches in skill. They know their stuff, they execute strategies well together, and they know how to compensate for each others' weaknesses to the point where they function as well or better than a similarly sized group of players of much higher caliber/gear. This is what happens when nice players congregate.

Most non-social linkshells band together for various purposes; hunting specific NMs, doing missions, doing specific events like Dynamis or sky hunting, or what have you. Most of these events are greed-based. People in this game want things, and they figure the best way to get those things is to team up with other people that want the same things. The problem is, when everyone wants things, it causes a ton of friction - people get aggravated, annoyed, egos get bent out of shape, and in my experience, sooner or later things fall apart when tensions come to a head, causing people to quit or even breaking a linkshell altogether. Unfortunately, I'd say 99% of linkshells fall into this category or are social linkshells that destabilize (again due to greed) because people just don't see eye to eye on what friendship should entail.

The linkshell I belong to is one of the lucky few who have progressed past the "greed" phase. Most of us have paid our dues, spent the time, waited patiently, shared our time and resources, and acquired most of the things we really want. So now we go and get things that members want because they're fun to do, not because we particularly "need" stuff. Sure, it's nice to get new toys, but the atmosphere isn't so much one of competition so much as cameraderie.

I know that if I put up an SOS on linkshell chat saying I need help with a particularly difficult NM, quest or mission, chances are, I'll get the help I need - not because other people automatically just drop whatever they're doing to help me, but because we trust each other enough not to abuse the privelege of doing so. And in turn, I am more than happy to block out time to assist when I see other people on my LS in need of help. By the same reasoning, we all block out time and drop what we're doing to contribute to our LS events, because we know sooner or later, it'll come back around to us, not just in items, but in goodwill.

I guess the moral of this story is that I want to shed some light on what a truly functional and stable linkshell is. It is very rare for newer players, or sometimes even established players, to get a glimpse of what it's like, and some never do, either because of the way they act towards others, or because they sell themselves short and put up with less than the best treatment.


Icemage

P.S. Regarding Kailea's post above; I witnessed the original founding of the MithraPride linkshell on the Cactuar beta server, and even then they had issues (does the name Tigara ring any bells for you Kailea? I believe she landed on your server when retail started up.).

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

People always like to say "Its not the server" but I'm inclined to disagree with that stance because every server does have a unique culture about it.

I won't deny that every server has thier bad seeds and opportunistic players, I know all that too well since my move from Odin to Titan - I've met a few of those players. I've had drama just like I did on Titan, but this time I've had the advantage of some of the psychology behind the drama.

There are people who genuinely join linkshells and are good, well-adjusted people and then there are those who basically want to be a star. MMOs can be like winning that popularity contest you felt you lost in high school and people want that so badly.

I don't why, I can't say I relate to them, but I've seen it.

When the server transfers opened up several months ago, various people who listened to the LBR podcast and visited our forum decided to move to join us. The motivation was either that they were new and found LBR to be an encouraging environment for them, wanted to join up with the friends they made on the site or they were someone who wanted to be a star.

Take a wild guess which ones have caused the most problems?

Yeah, the people who want to be stars. They complain they don't get help when they never help anyone themselves, they complain about not having special titles on the forum. We've started to make a lot of changes in reaction to these types of people as a result of this.

I've told people time and again that if you really want to be a "star" you're gonna have to make a name for yourself. Help others, be polite, share your experience and talents and you will earn the respect of others in your linkshell - its just that simple. Yeah, some people will use you, but most others will rally around you and support you when you get involved.

No star players come out of begging and whining.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

every server does have a unique culture about it.

Er, I don't know about this.

To qualify as a unique culture, a World/server must have identifiable traits which make it stand out from others, as well as have enough cohesiveness to the population to make it worthwhile treating as a unit.

For example, let's say the statement "Ifrit has 2% more Japanese players than Odin" is true. While that would make Ifrit different than Odin and vice versa, it hardly qualifies as any sort of "cultural" observation.

For my part, I stick mostly to my own LS and friends, and rarely venture beyond that besides the typical exp/merit PUGs. I wouldn't know what culture Ifrit has, or even if it has one, much less how it may be different than Odin's. Heck, about the only thing I know for sure is that I'm not really a participant of that culture, even if it exists.

If you're going to declare every World has its own culture, meaningfully different than all other Worlds, I'll have to ask you to list these grand differences and the evidence for them. Otherwise, I'm going to assume the cosmological principle, and say it's much more likely every World has its grab bag collection of subcultures and personality types, and likely differ mostly in percentage than overall characteristics.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

You're taking the term "culture" too literally, I'm talking more of sub-cultures o

The JP on Odin are rather different than the JP on Titan. Titan is a lower population server and thus less Japanese players, so the JP players will put up with PTing with NA players. They will accept being a PT replacement.

Odin JP are very annoyingly "JP Onry." On Titan, no JP would look a gift BRD in the mouth, but if you're an English BRD on JP prime time, you may as well be seeking on a melee job.

Now why would the JP players behave so differently between both servers? One word: Population. Titan is on the low end of the post populated servers and has a larger NA community on it, the HNM scene is western-centric with few JP LSes. If you're JP and want to get anything done on Titan, you'll have to deal with western players at some point and not the other way around.

Titan also have very, very cuthroat, elitist type players in the NA side. If you're in a low-population job, expect many people to be playing at the top of thier game or close to it (with few exceptions). The COR community was very, very small on Titan and practically each COR played to thier best potential.

This is a stark contast to Odin, where just about every COR just subs WHM and gears for MP. In fact, I'd say people on Odin are far less serious about gearing jobs properly - both NA and JP - to the point I find the way a lot of people gear melee and tank jobs to the point they're not even trying. I'm not expecting HQ gear here, just some sign you're trying.

Overall, I'd say people on Titan had a respectable mage community, as does Odin. But when I was told you could get endless manaburn chains on Mount Z puddings, I had to call bullshit on the player's claim because on Odin and Titan, you pretty much have to fight every soloist and rival PT on Mount Z to get chain #11 or #13 there.

But Fairy doesn't have a lot of BLMs, its a much more melee-centric server. A BLM PT can enter Mount Z and just go to town on puddings. That's why they can chain endlessly. It would never happen on the servers I've been on, but my servers have lots of BLMs on them

Finally, you couldn't get a melee player on Titan to stop PTing in Thickets merit camps for anything - players on Titan just won't go to them. Odin is so overpopulated that if you think like the players on Titan did, you'll never see fast merits. Odin players will merit any place a hole can be filled, at least in regards to ToA zones, but then, I even had a Ro'Meave merit PT, which I never had seen since the CoP days on Titan.

Servers are different, population has a lot to do with it - from camps, to playstyle and even attitude. I can't rank Titan's endgame culture against Odin yet because I've purposely been avoiding endgame, but Titan's endgame scene was a pathetic site. Used to be that leaders of LSes would /random for HNM claim and that died sometime when Karasu and Relentless came on the HNM scene on the NA side. Karasu would do what RMT would do in regards to HNM claim - CFH it until thier little cohorts arrived.

I won't go into Faffy camp because there no server is different there, really, but on Titan people from Legacy and Karasu would train UFOs on other LSes to MPK and steal jailers in sea. I've not heard that happening anywhere else.

So, in short, I'll accept Odin's lacking playstyles and lack of elitism when faced with with desparate high-school antics of the "elite" on Titan.

[Restlesstornado]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

I haven’t read anything past the first 15 posts and I have an Idea... there are a few of you that share Shrayn_lolsam ideals... Why not just all of you migrate to the same server and start a linkshell of like-minded people?

That’s what I had always had as an Idea... hell I've had a Linkshell made on my character since I had enough gil to buy one just in case I had met anyone that felt the same way about FFXI. I had only given out maybe 3 pearls in my entire FFXI lifetime because I didn't want to invite people that didn't share the same "priorities" as me. First and foremost, selfless service.

Like I said just an idea~

(Selfless Service is a commonly used term to denote a service which is performed without any expectation of result or award for the person.)

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

Why not just all of you migrate to the same server and start a linkshell of like-minded people?

Because that idea is prone to failure?

(e.g. The unofficial DiV LS, formed on this site to great fanfare, then self-imploded quietly a few months after it began, wasting the money of everyone who immigrated to Kujata for it.)

[Murphie]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

For serious. Mo' money (spent), mo' problems.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: I seek some advice (long story to read :x)

Because that idea is prone to failure?[/

(e.g. The unofficial DiV LS, formed on this site to great fanfare, then self-imploded quietly a few months after it began, wasting the money of everyone who immigrated to Kujata for it.)

Just because one group can't make it happen doesn't mean it never works out.

I think you're going to do better than serving up the DiV LS as an example here. Fact is, its a labor to upkeep a functional LS of like-minded people under any condition, even if you're all originally from the same server. Some people can and have created functional linkshells out of transfers just like the do on servers they started on by default.

In fact, with the ability to transfer and pick your server from the start, its very likely you'll end up with a more pleasing situation than you would had SE still maintained random server placement.

Had SE started out the servers this way like they should have, things like having a Dynamis and endgmae LS would be much less of a headache than it is now.