New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I had plans to get back into endgame this summer, that is, until I landed a new job. A really good job. Pay is good and in these times, you don't see jobs like open often right now. Making fiber optic cable wasn't my dream job, but I can't say no to the money or the overtime. 12 hour shifts and after training, I'm moved to 3rd shift.

This not only puts me out of NA primetime, but posese a difficulty in joining Dynamis shells. There are things I want from Dynamis, as much as I hate the content itself. Its just the scheduling of this job is really wonky. Sometimes I work three days in a week, sometimes four with overtime and then I'm off for three or four days a week, too.

Any time I could play on the work days, it would be in the hours before I had to go back to work. I'm east coast and coming home at 7am, waking back up at about 2 or 3pm to go back to work at 6:45. I might just forget doing FFXI on these days entirely, that's not much time and I'll need the sleep.

I could do endgame stuff on the days off, but I'd think it would be best to keep the sleep pattern in mind, Either way, I'm kinda baffled. Maybe my time with FFXI is just up?

Limbus, Nyzul, Stronghold NMs and ZNMs are more ideal targets given my schedule, still, there's just a few things I need from Dynamis and that's a bit frustrating.

BTW, I helped make 200 miles of internets this week o.o/

[ShepardG]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

Ah yes, so you've became the little spider that helps build the interwebz! I like it!

As far as dynamis and funky schedules... having experienced life on Valefor, and their lack of any serious dynamis schedule, such as the one phoenix has, i have to say that lot 2 win 1 pickup groups are the way to go. I rolled into dynamis beudeuine *sp* and I got my first piece of Pup AF, and i had never ran with this LS before. it was awesome. I don't know how things will go with your new schedule but maybe all you need is a server change, with an ingame schedule that isnt' so tight.

[Feba]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

Ah yes, so you've became the little spider that helps build the interwebz! I like it!

Finally, I can put a face to the anger whenever there are problems with the tubes. And it's a face I already love to hate!

BBQ, not sure if I've told anyone here, but I've been in a similar situation. Basically, I live in 25-26 hour days, instead of just a teeny bit over 24 like most people. Which means that I rotate around the clock; for example, I woke up at around 5:30 PM on Friday 'today', last week I woke up at 7:20AM Saturday for the same 'day' in the 'week'.

I didn't have a ton of trouble with JP parties, although your mileage may vary. One bit of advice, if you can make friends with a Japanese player in a party, especially one that speaks English well enough to explain things to you, it becomes much easier to get into parties at odd hours-- especially if they're someone who makes parties.

In terms of playing on the weekdays, if you're not interested in leveling, you might just want to find an in-game hobby, like fishing, farming, doing old quests, HELMing, NM hunting, etc. That or you could try to form or find an LS that suits your hours better-- depending on what hours you're comfortable playing at, UK, AU and NZ all have English native-speakers that have a similar time finding good hours. Asking around your server to see if there are any such shells, or if anyone would be interested in joining such a shell, may help. Might be possible to befriend Japanese players and try to join their shells, although it would probably be a hard sell if you can't at least read 日本語. Of course, there's another option; learn Japanese, install JP client, 日本語で話します and join a JP shell, but that might be a bit more hassle than you want to go through.

If you can't find a shell that suits your hours, and don't want to just do events on the weekend while spending your time in other ways on the weekdays, you could try to find a way to work towards those goals, or other goals, while you're not actually doing dynamis, and then see if you can change your shift later. Only thing I can really think of in terms of dynamis would be saving up currency, but I don't think you're going for that. Still, if you can just farm for points in whatever way and bide your time until you're at a better position in real life, you could make it much easier to obtain those things later on.

[Susurrus]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

Just remember irl>game

If you want to play when your schedule permits, that's cool, but don't schedule life around the game.

[Feba]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

don't schedule life around the game.

Why not? People schedule their lives around their hobbies all the time. MMOs are not so different.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

Well, I'm not too worried about the whole RL > Game thing. I don't really plan to play on the days I'm working. Really, outside of crafting, I'd probably just play something offline that day if I played anything at all. Might log on to craft or NM hunt, but that's about it.

Job-wise, I have no problems for EXP levels. BST solos, WHM is PT-friendly. That's all the job work I have on the docket for now. And finish some subjobs.

I may play it by ear. Once I get a new PC, that will make things a bit easier on me and I'll have a bit more freedom in which what I play FFXI on. I may eventually defect to DCU Online or The Old Republic when they come around, depends how I feel after they do the betas (if I can get in one, anyway)

[Feba]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

Whatever happened with that MegaTen MMO?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

Its still around and in Beta. Its free so I'm not worried about a commitment there, its just going to be casual play.

[Murphie]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

Doing Dynamis in NA times might be a bit rough. Unless you joined a shell where 100% participation (like, one run a week would be ok) wasn't as much of an issue. Except of course that it would take you considerably longer to get points if that's the system they use, and of course there's also the problem of the runs you can go to being the ones that drop things you don't need or want anymore.

If you could find an EU or EU Mix shell (NAs with a schedule more like yours, or who just work nights) that might be your best bet, since their runs tend to be earlier in the day. But I don't know what the situation on Odin is in that regard.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

It doesn't sound like you have time for an Event ls at all. Like you said, wonky work times really will make it hard for you to attend and these type of ls's have set times to do things. I'd say just log in and do what you want when you want and go with the flow or cancel your Content ID's for a while and see how things are down the road. Sometimes its nice to take a break.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

I think I may ultimately just come and go from FFXI as new mission and quest content arises. Its really the only thing that's fun to me in the game these days. The forthcoming MMOs that pique my interests are kinda following WoW in the more streamlined design. Not that FFXI is lacking in this respect, but I've never really jibed with the FFXI endgame community, as good as my psychological treatments have been, there are personalities there that ride on my nerves.

Like I was going take Aniero and Kallo up on an offer to join their LSes a while back, then I got to see more of their LS's leader on the LBR forum and BG... this dude is pretty much batshit insane. AV rage and all that, yelling af FusionX for not raking the Community Team over the coals on PFA and all. In other words, your usual BG tool. I've had the horrible luck of always winding up with people like this ever since Everquest.

Plus I have to admit I've missed offline gaming. Ever since I got my hands on Persona 3 FES this time last year, I've been finding myself playing offline a lot more. FFXI put me out half a generation of PS2 games and already ate up two years of current gen gaming. Current gen is just about ready to start hitting its groove.

[Lmnop]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

28-hour day=Feba?

[Illuen]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

If you still want to go for Dynamis, I'd recommend you find a nice EU linkshell. I worked third shift for about five years, until about a month ago, and I found an awesome EU endgame LS. Most events started about 2-3pm EST which was just about enough time for me to wake up and get a cup of tea and something to eat before settling down into the game. The only problem I ran into (and I was lucky that my shell was understanding because of my situation) is that you'll need more sleep while working night shifts than you usually do. Another thing to keep in mind, looking at your schedule, it seemed to me to read that you think you'll be coming home from work and jumping into the bed to fall asleep. Now, you may be able to do that, and if you can, good for you and feel free to ignore this, but I know that personally, if I tried that, I'd not get the best sleep. I always tended to take about half an hour to surf the internet, and just wind down before getting in bed.

Shift work is much harder than most people realize, and most of that is with the "normal" schedule of life. I truely hope you find something that works for you.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

If you still want to go for Dynamis, I'd recommend you find a nice EU linkshell. I worked third shift for about five years, until about a month ago, and I found an awesome EU endgame LS. Most events started about 2-3pm EST which was just about enough time for me to wake up and get a cup of tea and something to eat before settling down into the game. The only problem I ran into (and I was lucky that my shell was understanding because of my situation) is that you'll need more sleep while working night shifts than you usually do. Another thing to keep in mind, looking at your schedule, it seemed to me to read that you think you'll be coming home from work and jumping into the bed to fall asleep. Now, you may be able to do that, and if you can, good for you and feel free to ignore this, but I know that personally, if I tried that, I'd not get the best sleep. I always tended to take about half an hour to surf the internet, and just wind down before getting in bed.

Shift work is much harder than most people realize, and most of that is with the "normal" schedule of life. I truely hope you find something that works for you.

Ya my son once worked at UPS 3rd shift. Before he got it, he had it all worked out in his head. I tried to tell him that 3rd shift was different and harder on you but of course he knew better. Well first off he couldn't go to sleep right away after he came home. He thought he was going to be able to but nope. Now his bedroom is sandwiched between my grandson's room and our room so him putzing around at whatever time he came home just didn't work. (He didn't have set hours and could be home at 3am or later..or is that earlier? lol) So since he couldn't get to sleep right away, his wake up time wasn't what he thought and because of that he wasn't able to get all the stuff done that he had planned. It's just like domino's, you screw up one thing and all the rest topple. One thing he did say after leaving UPS was that it was a nice place to work but he'll NEVER work 3rd shift again.

[Feba]

Re: New RL job, FFXI impacts obvious - how should I approach endgame now?

28-hour day=Feba?

I wish it were that well organized. Would make things a lot easier.

Sleep Log: The Excerpting

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It sucks. It really does.