Occurance of fire weather

[RAIST]

All of these things have a level of predictability that you can plan for. A 3 month game window where you KNOW fire weather is possible, you can track when this time frame is approaching either by monitoring the date on the game clock, or using one of the many FFXI Timers that are available at various websites. Likewise, the day of the week is the same thing. It took me all of 30 seconds to look up that the next firesday hits at 7:36 PM EST. from a crafting timer:

Day---------------Begins------------Ends---------Moon---Difficulty Range
3 Firesday Feb 27, 19:36:00 Feb 27, 20:33:36 48% FQM -3.46 — -0.46
11 Firesday Feb 28, 03:16:48 Feb 28, 04:14:24 67% WXG -3.84 — -0.84
19 Firesday Feb 28, 10:57:36 Feb 28, 11:55:12 86% WXG -4.22 — -1.22
27 Firesday Feb 28, 18:38:24 Feb 28, 19:36:00 95% FM -4.40 — -1.40
35 Firesday Feb 29, 02:19:12 Feb 29, 03:16:48 76% WNG -4.02 — -1.02
43 Firesday Feb 29, 10:00:00 Feb 29, 10:57:36 57% LQM -3.64 — -0.64
51 Firesday Feb 29, 17:40:48 Feb 29, 18:38:24 38% WNC -3.26 — -0.26
59 Firesday Mar 01, 01:21:36 Mar 01, 02:19:12 19% WNC -2.88 — 0.12
67 Firesday Mar 01, 09:02:24 Mar 01, 10:00:00 0% NM -2.50 — 0.50
75 Firesday Mar 01, 16:43:12 Mar 01, 17:40:48 19% WXC -2.88 — 0.12

Vana'diel Time: Firesday: 1143-09-01 00:00:00
Earth Time: Monday, Feb 27, 2012 19:36:00
(when a day is highlighted, I get this detail on the day)

It told me that that game date wiill be Sept. 1 for the game....first day of the last month of Summer. So, before I even log into the game after supper, I know two things: though it is still summer, chance for weather is scarce--not much point in camping it, but I can check with the weather checker or OP to the jungle to check it with my specs just in case. I also know that if I don't get on at the right time, I won't be able to work on the trial on firesday. Sooooo....I can plan my play session accordingly---either I have a shot to do the trial, or I'll just have to wait to do it another day.

Should also note, that chart was a study taken at a particular point in time, and is not an accurate reflection of how weather actually pops in a zone. The importance of those charts was to demonstrate the SEASONS/MONTHS when you are more likely to find the weather occurrences. Case in point, I hit light weather 5 times last week in the tower...simply because I have tracked the seasonal changes and knew when to watch for it. According to that chart, I had a snowballs chance of catching it in early July, when I in fact got it multiple times during the last week of June and through to the 2nd week of July. The ff11info.com site is usually a great resource for getting weather forecasts in real time (as in, you can check many forecasts before you even log into the game), but for some reason it hasn't been posting forecasts for the last day or so.

So....it takes me longer to get it done. Whoop-dee-do. How long does it take to make a Mythic or a Relic? How much planning and commitment does it take (setting up a group and a date/time to go do do the missions/events, etc.)? Are you or did you put the effort in that is required to make one of these weapons? If no, was it because of the effort/time involved? The same principle applies here. You know in advance that this line of weapon was going to be a time sink, yet you CHOSE to do it. You don't HAVE to do it....it is your CHOICE, and you knew the rules of the game before you made that choice.

Again, it isn't that HARD to make these things. It just takes time. How much time depends on your availability in game and dedication to siezing the opportunities to advance the trials when they approach, and the willingness of other to maybe assist you in getting the kills in. The vast majority of my trials were done solo or with team-ups in the field with others working on similar trials, and the longest one I had only took me about 2 weeks to complete because I happened to be able to get on during JP prime sometimes with some of the more annoying ones (like the manticore lists, man, that was a blast blowing through those in a group).

This debate has already been flushed out by others multiple times in previous threads. There are other weapons you can use that don't require the time you may have to dedicate to making these weapons. Sure, in some aspects they aren't as good... but that is the point. These are an upper tier of gear, and likewise really should require some level of commitment to completion. These things CAN and SHOULD be planned for if you are SERIOUS about getting them done. Else, just like any other grind....if you do it haphazardly in a casual way, it very well may take you "forever" to finish. But again, to some extent...that is your choice, not necessarly a flaw in game design. There are far more important things to request of the Dev. Team than something as trivial (by comparison) to this.

[Kitkat]

Ok, since you appear to be too lazy to check my profile on ffxiah before attacking me like this: I have made scythe, 2 swords, and working on dagger, I've helped cleave for many people when I'm not participating in an LS event since I am a co-leader. I also have a Relic and and emp weapon. My ls actually builds relic and emp for our members. To date we have built 2 daggers, sword, 3GK, 2 shields, scythe, and polearm relic. We have also build 2 gaxe, 6 swords, 5 katana, 3 GK, 1h2h, 1GS and are in the process of harp and dagger.

I am career blu and thf for abyssea and dynamis runs, a vast majority of the time I am logged on (maybe 2-4 hours max per day) is spent helping my LS progress. When there isn't an event, I will be lucky to have time to work on a trial weapon on the str/att path due to the requirement to wait for a day that either A.) Happens when I am asleep B.) Happens when I am out working/taking care of my real life or C.) falls dead in the middle of an event, ends just as I log on, or starts when I need to get to sleep for the next day. Also, my dagger was built prior to Neo Dynamis and took far longer than it does now to make, so talking to me like I have no scope of how difficult to build a weapon is only shows that you are doing just what your signature states: Conjecture based on your opinion/beliefes/self created facts with out any viable source that pertains to the reason why something is requested.

You are not everyone, just as I am not everyone. You bring up the desire to have SE spend more time on development of new content, have you even looked at the recent pile of shit content they have released in the last 7 months? Horrible drop rates that are made worse due to the lack of check systems or are so luck based you would have better chances at winning 2nd prize in the mog bonanza. Fixing content that is already been our for 3 years, but is suddenly too powerful. Fixing old Job abilities, revamping merits, revamping enfeebling that they destroyed from WoTG onward. This would have no impact on the development of current content because they already release the content with significant flaws that take them another 4-6 months to correct while trying to develop even more failure content (IE: Legion) before fixing current content. Personally, I'd rather they stop all development of new content until they fix current content to be more entertaining/rewarding to do instead of dropping in more content that has significant flaws and end up being dead on arrival (IE: WOE) because they want to make it look like they are still working hard on the game to keep it interesting.

So no, planning does not have to do with not being serious about getting it done, it has to do with scheduling conflicts and the fact there is nigh any secondary options to complete it without telling everyone else to go fuck themselves in the process. I have made several attempts to plan things out, but I should also have the option to go to a zone and at least catch 2-3 weather occurrences should the conflict of availability happen.

[Draylo]

Just go to Ifrit's Cauldron, its a volcano so it obviously will always have fire weather since its super hot..... oh wait what, nvm!

[RAIST]

Just go to Ifrit's Cauldron, its a volcano so it obviously will always have fire weather since its super hot..... oh wait what, nvm!

Ifrits is in a tropical region. Being a volcano does not automatically create dry, hot weather. The region has mostly high humidity, thus it's weather pattern is mostly rainy and the drier, hot season occurs mostly only around the summer season.

@Kitkat---not looking up your profile on another site is irrelevant to the argument. In fact you have inadvertantly supported my points. You obviously have a means to plan for the optimal time to work on your weapon. For various reasons, you are not. That is less a flaw in game design and more an issue with how you are organizing your game time. If you are on 2-4 hours a day, you have plenty of windows to work on this. Your problem is more that the other game activities you and your crew have chosen to particiapte in are preventing you from pursuing it.

TLDR: Plenty of opportunities exist....for various reasons, some people just are not taking advantage of them as they present themselves to them. That is NOT a design flaw.

[Raksha]

Just finished my STR g.axe. Took 2 weeks worth of firesdays (playing ~4 hours per day)

By comparison I fished 2 EVA daggers in 3 days (on the weekends), and a PDT g.axe also in 3 days.

[Kitkat]

Raist, you're automatically assuming I see firesday each and every time I log on and this is not the case. In fact, you are assuming a lot by suggesting 2-4 hours per day means every day, when it is more or less 2-4 hours if I can get on at all. This LS has been together for nearly 5 years because people like me choose to help others better themselves over going "me me me." You want to say it is a flaw in planning, when it isn't. Your argument would carry weight if I had 2-4 hours every single day, or had entire free days...but only in minor since it still doesn't address the fact that the weather type is not frequent, or common in any area that should support it. Also, 2-4 hours per day does not mean a person will be on within a window of Firesday when it occurs once every ~7 1/2 hours. This means I would be lucky to hit firesday once every 3rd day if lucky, and if it were the same 2-4 hours every day. What you argue is ideal circumstance, in the information you pulled up I only find myself online for 1/2 of one fireday and ~15min of 2 others. Not one would I be online for the full duration.

If I had no life what so ever, or decided to interrupt my sleep habits just to ensure I get this done ASAP, I could potentially have the weapon completed in roughly a weeks time. Instead I have to spend upwards of a month or longer due to the windows of time I have for the game just to finish a weapon I could otherwise complete in less than a week~week and a half on any other trial path. That is a significant difference in completion start to finish between various paths due to the ability to simply go to an area that has weather as common as night and day.

[RAIST]

The days shift gradually on when they occur--and it is a considerable offset at that--roughly an hour off each day. If you had looked more closely at the sample schedule I posted: 19:36 on 2/27, 18:38 on 2/28, 17:40 on 2/29, and 16:43 on 3/01. That is an offset of almost an hour per day.

I'm not assuming anything more than what you stated---you have a group that plans to do things on some sort of schedule. In most cases, that is a either a recurring thing or set up well in advance so that everyone knows when to get on. You are assuming I am reading more into it than that. By your own admission, you have a group that coordinates things that it's LS members need to do, and tries to accomodate ther schedules to accomplish it. That is half the battle won right there. I'm beginning to get the impression you aren't asking your shell to help you accomplish this goal?

By your own words, your participation in LS events is preventing you from pursuing your own goal. If you are typically logging in consistantly between 8pm and 10pm on the same days, then eventually you WILL hit a firesday. Not only that, but if some of those days are consistently back to back, it is possible you may catch them in the same 2 hour window on concurrent days (liek a Friday and Saturday night, perhaps). Are you honestly saying you never see a firesday coming up when you could take advantage of it? I find that hard to believe that you can't see that it is coming say on a Friday at 8pm, and if that is your expected play window you can't make plans to work on your trial. You CAN track WHEN those firesdays are going to be in your play window, and make plans to capitalize on it. I have done this often for friends that are only online for a few hours a night or a few nights per week. For whatever reason, it seems YOU are not taking advantage of all your available resources to accomplish your goal.

Again... by opting to participate in other content, YOU may simply be choosing not to take advantage of the resources in place that might otherwise allow you to complete the trial. And yes, I do see it as being that simple... a group gathers at a preset time specifically for the purpose of accomplishing goals for someone within that same group, and you don't appear to be using that to your advantage.

[Edit:] idk if you also have access to the game when you are posting here, but just looked it up out of curiosity, and it was firesday in game when you made post #12--started 4 minutes before that post. Hope you didn't miss your chance for that window simply because you were posting here instead.....

[Kitkat]

As I mentioned, the days I can play and the hours I can play shift day to day, week to week. No, I can honestly say I am never online back to back at the same time or see more than the allotted sliver of firesday. Once again, you are assuming a lot by thinking that just because I can post means I am at my PC to play. Welcome to 2012 where there are portable media devices the size of your palm that allows you to access the internet from anywhere, anytime, so long as you have a signal. To quote the age old saying "When you 'assume' you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me.'"

I do take advantage of all of my resources, just because I am in dynamis does not mean I don't use the mobs in the zone to my advantage if possible, same goes for abyssea. Last night when I posted #12 I was on my way home, by the time I walked in the door, booted up the game and logged in it was 20:00 on firesday. By the time I got into the correct zone and map it was 21:10. I logged off after killing a record 20 mobs knowing I had missed any events for that day and that the next fire weather would be up about 3 hours before I had to be up again. The next fire weather happens while I leave for work, the next after that happens an hour before I even get home. The process then restarts again.

It will be another 2 days before I can even hope to be online at the same time as a day to work on the trial, but I help run an LS. Not sure if you have ever been in an endgame shell before, but if the leader suddenly takes off to do whatever they want because it doesn't benefit them, and instead does something that does benefit them....what does that say to you? What if you are the person that is having something built for them and you notice a leader is taking time off from events to do something for themselves instead of helping you, does that lower your self worth to that individual as to your usefulness in the ls?

I know of 3 other people in my LS that have similar issues as I do; they just can't seem to be on during the time that the window is open. I have tried to make plans with these people so that once I am on the same trial as they are to help them complete it faster. On the rare chance I can be on during a fireday, free and clear, you are right...I can kill 100~120 within that day span solo, but that shouldn't excuse the fact that if I have free time otherwise that I shouldn't have the option to go to a specific zone and work on the trial during fire weather also.

One of the individuals I talk about, has been trying to finish his sword for over a month, I have been on the same time as he has only a handful of times. Is it fair to people in this situation to be forced to do the trial only during days of the week because the weather type does not occur frequently, let alone for longer than about 10 min even when in zone? For a game that has shifted a great deal from the 75 mentality of things to support casual/pickup groups, this seems to show quite the opposite. HNM/Sky/KCNM/Abyssea/VWNM/Dynamis/WoE are all geared toward casual/pickup groups these days. No more waiting hours for an HNM to spawn, just do a KS99 for pop items and force pop it, Sky drops more pop items per lesser NM allowing for 2x the number of pop sets to be built, KCNM can easily be done with pickup groups as can VWNM, Dynamis can be solo'd if you so choose, WOE is more a novelty event than anything. Even Nyzul can be done with a simple pickup group on the fly...no need to wait specific times/days to do any of these events like the old days.

All I see from you is situational excuse stating it can be done easily during the day of the week and that the weather doesn't need to be made more apparent for the simple fact you can just plan for it. Screw everyone else, what you want is far more important (feel sorry for anyone of the ls you are lead) and they can wait an extra hour. Who cares if in that hour later they have to log also or made other plans around a scheduled daily event, what you want is more important. You don't need sleep, you're an invincible train wreck on 3 hour intervals of sleep. Doesn't it suck when someone assumes a lot of who you actually are and what you can or can't do because something might be out of your direct control?

The fact of the matter here is that any other trial can be completed in a handful the amount of time a fire path weapon can be due to the abundance of weather/mob distribution in those weather happy zones, but not with a fire weapon. The time it would take for simple changes to the weather patter scripts in the zones that already have fire weather to increase occurrence and duration is about 3 hours worth of work. It doesn't require they add any new mobs, change mob distribution, or even alter drop rates of geodes (this is already determined by a separate script). This also takes into account the change multiple zones, if they only changed 3 zones max it would make the time required less than an hour. This would not, nor could not, make the release of any further content any later/worse than it already is from the development team. They already do a wonderful job of screwing up content and releasing it unfinished as it is. Were that the Dev team capable of releasing content that goes through QA and Test server findings before release to fully functional servers while not requiring any additional changes or being so reliant on luck that it is sickening (and overall destroys the fun factor) then I might entertain your argument that this takes away from precious development team time. This is not the case, they release/postpone disappointing content all on their own and refuse to put more effort/time to making it more enjoyable for the masses because they are already working on the next disappointment.

PS: That is not an assumption on the developers time, if I can write a 1000 line script in less than an hour, they can make changes to a pre-existing script in the same amount of time. It isn't an assumption on their content release either, just look at the forums for any nation/language and read the disappointment.

[RAIST]

First off, I didn't ASSUME anything about when you are getting on vs when you are posting here....in case you missed it, I prefaced that edit with "idk if you also have access to the game when you are posting here". My statements are based on what you have already posted.

And no, I have not been a leader of an LS, but I have been a sackholder for many. And during times when a leader was going to be away in game, certain tasks were handed out to others to take over in their abscence, or someone simply stepped up to the plate in an unexpected absence. Are you saying that you are a complete slave to your LS? Do you not have any officers you can entrust to run events for a short time while you (either alone or with a small group) work on a few tasks seperate from the mainstream activities? Beginning to wonder if the weapons trial is really the issue here......

Anyhoo... lets look at what is going on, see if it can't be tweaked somehow. You get on to participate in scheduled events, which indicates you do have some means of organizing your game time. This means you are aware to some degree of when you can and can't get in the game.

You log in and see firesday up, but are unable to go, or you just missed the window for it---either real life or in-game events got in the way that day. I get that....your personal schedule and predetermined game plans cause you to miss some cycles. Guess what--that happens to EVERYONE. If it is a bad enough problem and they care deeply enough about it, they usually find ways to tweak things somehow in their favor. A day off, a holiday, a stay-cation (which is becoming more common in the current state of the economy). If not, they can look ahead to see if/when the stars do actually align when they will be getting on normally and plan accordingly.

If you get on Friday at 9pm and see firesday is up, you can discern several things. A week from that exact point in time, it will be roughly at the same point on Darksday. You can also determine that tomorrow, at that same time it will be roughly at the same point into Earthsday. You can also determine that in one week and one day at that same log-in time, it will be rougly in the same point on Firesday again. This affords you the opportunity to look at what is going on and see if perhaps you can't get on during the right time frame to hit a Firesday if that is the route you are having to take. If not, try calculating for another time frame. IDK what you are using to find your days, but I usually use the crafting timer at pyogenes.com. I can actually key in an exact date/time, generate a calendar from that time stamp, and then select what day/moon phase I want to find after that. It defaults to the next 10 days, but you can make it a larger value if you want. Might provide you a little more insight into what to expect when/where.

As for weather, the specs and NPC's can be a bit of a hassle to use sometimes. I was using the ff11info weather reporter to track weather cycles, but that data seems to have gone AWOL recently...hopefully it resumes again soon. But even so, you do have a means to check forecasts, and by being able to predict your seasons by looking at the game calendar, it helps you determine when you are most likely to find that weather, so you know when to start checking for it more aggressively if you are wanting to go that route. You might even find that your LSmates might help keep an eye on it for you and let you know it is up. This particular cycle runs strongest for a 3 game month cycle out of 12 (roughly just over 3.5 days in every 14 3/8 days) and is thus predicitable to some extent. Because of the odd ratios, it rotates when it occurs so it isn't always falling only on Friday-Sunday, so everyone can eventually get a shot at it who isn't on only on the weekends. Granted, the shift is small since a year only runs on about a 9 hour offset....but it does rotate and does prevent it from being purely static. But, it also means that if your schedule has some sense of regularity to it, once you hit that peak cycle it may be available to you again during it's next cycle in a couple weeks.

The overall point is that whichever path you are having to take.... days, weather, or a mix of both---eventually, you will be able to get it done if you take the time to plan accordingly to work on it when you can. It isn't like you are at the mercy of the almighty RNG that seems to just want to poop logs into your chest 99.97% of the time.

All this adds up to a simple fact: you can verify well in advance if you stand a shot at working on this weapon in a manner that justifies (to you) the headaches you may face to complete it.

And yet, despite the apparent snowball's chance in hell you are claiming you have of completing it....

YOU STILL CHOOSE TO WORK ON IT.

[Mifaco]

Raist, you're missing the entire point of the post here. The point is that, according to the chart, Fire weather happens extremely rarely and even if it does happen, it's so short as to be practically useless. While people working on DEX/INT/VIT trials sail through them in the appropriate zone with nearly 24/7 weather, STR trial users are limited to scrounging 1 credit kills on Firesday. This is not balanced.