PVP!

[Harukusan]

Well said, Vyiv. You make me want to sign over to Lakshmi after this pointless server merger that will occur in the near future. I'll just have to wait and see what Ragnarok is like before I make that decision.

Alhanelem: you've made some good points earlier and you've said certain things that make my head hurt. I'm almost ready to give up my belief that you ever actually played Ballista legitimately.

[Vyiv]

To further inform the uninformed, Bis, a well known Japanese Ballista player, used to conduct research to keep track of the cross-server Ballista population and occurrences with multiple mules and communication through friends. Unfortunately, he quit a while ago, leaving us with his population chart during late August of 2010:


He took those last cross-server statistics during an anarchic Ballista time, so I would say that even that chart is not completely accurate. Despite that, it provided us a basic idea how the Ballista population spread was at the time. Cross-server Ballista players immigrated to Lakshmi in packs (my group from Siren included) for several reasons, but I won't go into too much detail here. When I server transferred to Lakshmi in mid-October, there were a few other servers, primarily Gilgamesh and Sylph, that were fairly populous, but even those players immigrated to Lakshmi, as well. Currently, Lakshmi's Ballista population is undoubtedly the largest, which is a controversial matter, I would say. Nevertheless, I can guarantee that the Ballista community is still holding strong.

A few friendly notes for anyone who's interested in Lakshmi Ballista—or rather the current Ballista situation as a whole:

1) The Ballista player these days are insanely skilled, so it would require a lot of effort, devotion, and sacrifices to catch up. When I say sacrifices, I mean sacrifices. Come on, if a guy keeps track of cross-server Ballista demographics, he has to be hardcore.

2) Understand that the entire Ballista community is practically Japanese. There are only a couple of us NA players within the Japanese sea of Ballista. In such case, people will need to understand that the JP treat the game like a religion and need adapt to "their" game. I'm just going to quote my own blog entry on this one:

"Most NA perceive Ballista as WoW or any other hardcore PK’ing game, but it’s far from that. It’s a game that requires teamwork and scoring—almost like a virtual sport. Instead of promoting good sportsmanship, the NA bring “PK’ing ethics” into Ballista. Because of the typical NA style of play, which may include cursing, vile-mouthing, or even the absence of skill, the JP tend to belittle, scorn, and show little to no respect toward foreign players."

I'm sure that we see disrespect amongst NA players all the time. For example, given two "good" NA players, they would say things like, "lol u suck" or "i fucking own u" without acknowledging each other's skill. On the contrary, given two "good" JP players, they might insult each other but—at the very least—will acknowledge the other's skill. The bottom line is that Ballista is just a friendly competition, not some bloody war.

Anyway, those are some things to consider if anyone is serious about returning to Ballista.

[Sovereign]

seriously, fuck PvP.

That's the absolute largest downside to Warcraft in my opinion, is the world PvP they've got going on over there. You cant even turn the shit off, cause it just turns itself back on when you enter certain areas. I cant even explain the amount of time I've wasted porting into an area while questing only to be ganked by like 6 other players and have to spend the next five minutes finding my corpse. It's retarded on all levels.

Now, if you could completely turn off PvP, that'd be a different story. You cant attack other players, and they cant attack you. Grats on being able to go about your PvE business without interruption. Oh right... FFXI totally did that by making PvP zone specific. God I love this game.

Now I guess there are enough people interested in PvP that working changes into the system could be beneficial. I really liked the idea of Ballista, and the idea of nation versus nation PvP for conquest control over zones. It'd be cool to have a reason to participate in team oriented PvP. But it definitely needs to be something you choose to do, rather than something that can just happen to you.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

You need to keep in mind that thit is a coop game, now a faction game. In layman's terms, we're not WoW.

[Alhanelem]

you've made some good points earlier and you've said certain things that make my head hurt. I'm almost ready to give up my belief that you ever actually played Ballista legitimately.

I've played ballista as often as possible since it's release. I'm sorry that you for some reason don't believe that; I can't figure out why, but whatever, there's nothing I can do about that. Just because you think balance is fine and I don't, doesn't mean that I haven't spent many hours doing ballista.

I'm not sure what's making your head hurt- Things don't have to rise to the level of "impossible to beat" for there to be a possible balance problem. Balance is not absolute- perfectly balancing games is virtually impossible. There will always be some minor issues. Some of which I have mentioned previously have actually been addressed, if indirectly (e.g. PUP getting KOed no longer screws him over for 1/3 of the match thanks to new ability added last update). BLU I feel is one of those minor issues. I quite simply feel it has a bit of an edge that makes it more tricky to deal with than any other job. That doesn't mean it's unbeatable, just a problem.

Right, but this is still a game that wsa design to work together, not kill each other.

And you DO work together in ballista. Ballista is not a free for all, and teams with no cooperation will lose. This is also why Ballista is designed like a sport or minigame. You're not "killing eachother." It's more like tackling the other guy in football. It's a completely viable concept and the fact that there still exists a ballista community proves it. We, like anyone else, treat it as a sideshow, but it's a side show we enjoy and should not be denied. Games do not have to PvP only to have PvP.

[Teishi]

We

@__@

treat it as a sideshow,

@______@;

BLU I feel is one of those minor issues. I quite simply feel it has a bit of an edge that makes it more tricky to deal with than any other job. That doesn't mean it's unbeatable, just a problem.

Not going to try to argue about balance. But one of things I find really fun about ballista is when things aren't "balanced". With strong (=smart) players, that "imbalance" just becomes part of the strategy(working together to cancel out that "imbalance").

If your server has some great blue mage that is dominating the scene, you should talk more with your fellow teammates about dealing with that person as a group.

[Alhanelem]

But it definitely needs to be something you choose to do, rather than something that can just happen to you.

I can assure you, no one in the Ballista community wants free-for-all PvP, or any kind of PvP that isn't opt-in voluntary. We just want what we have now to be tweaked and improved as necessary, both to improve the experience and increase popularity.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

I can assure you, no one in the Ballista community wants free-for-all PvP, or any kind of PvP that isn't opt-in voluntary. We just want what we have now to be tweaked and improved as necessary, both to improve the experience and increase popularity.

Right, but this is still a game that wsa design to work together, not kill each other. It's just not a viable concept and dead ballista proves it.

[Faule]

I would have a more compassion for those sharing their views against FFXI's PVP system if they remotely had a solid argument. But they don't, so I don't.

[Alhanelem]

There are only a few jobs that I couldn't beat and they are: BLU,

What a shocking suprise

RDMs and PLDs are the two toughest to kill, but not as hard to survive against. Two PLDs 1v1ing eachother can last indefinitely

WHM is a job you never see people fight with (outside of the classic white mage burn party from years past), but I've never understood why- They can actually be pretty strong if you gear for it, and you're still able to cure. fighting WHMs are a suprising threat in Ballista. It's one of the fun things about playing it- you often see a lot of unexpected combinations that you don't see in PvE.