PVP!

[Dauntless]

You are penalized in both.

I agree that you should be able to sign up for Ballista (Ghelshba) with Gil at this rate, and for them to please remove the OM matches from the Brenner schedule.

Menu's could be streamlined, but menu's in FFXI suck anyway.

Hmm perhaps my memory is foggy but I fondly recall being able to gearswap in Ballista, although I mainly did the sign-up Ballista held in Ru'Lude Gardens. Ah well, you're probably right.

[Harukusan]

Just because there are ways of dealing with something, it doesn't mean there's an imbalance. it its *more difficult* on average to counter a BLU than it is to counter most other jobs. It doesn't mean you CAN'T counter it, but it requires more skill and effort on the non BLU's part. That's when you can identify an imbalance. Something doesn't have to be unbeatable to be imbalanced. It's not a crippling, staggering imbalance, but it's enough of a problem to notice.

You just contradicted yourself... The fact that BLU is not unbeatable means that it is not overpowered and therefore there IS a balance to it. If you haven't found the way to create that balance yourself, then it's obvious your problem is your lack of forethought to a typical strategy that a BLU would follow.

I challenge ANY BLU to take me on, I will prove that you are likely weak. I know that I may not win every challenge. If I did, a bunch of people would say there is an "imbalance that exploits BLU's weak points." And that would be called a contradiction.

I challenge every and all people to explain their point or prove to me that there is a problem with the way things are. But don't get disappointed when I KICK YOUR ASS.

[Vyiv]

What's with all this talk about "balance"? It seems as though the primary reason why people complain about the "balance" of the game is because the general misunderstanding that Ballista is based on "one on one duels." Perhaps the job "randomness" during official matches skews the game to favor one team (i.e. one team with a RDM and the other without). True, that happens all the time and offsets the so-called "balance" of the game. However, as mentioned several times before, Ballista involves strategy, which most people don't apply. There are still ways around it, and even if you don't win the match, at least put in some effort and make it a good game.

That job "randomness" during official matches is what makes the game fun. There's no definite way to predict who will be on your team, as the Herald shuffles the teams with the "auto-balance" feature, which isn't always successful (as in the RDM example). That "randomness" is one aspect of the game that makes it fun and unique. However, there are ways to form further "balance"—so to speak.

Another "version" of Ballista that our Ballista community plays is Diorama. I would say that the typical misunderstanding of Diorama being a "colosseum" reserved only for "duels" is quite prevalent amongst the general public. As mentioned by both Urteil and Harukasan, Ballista can be synonymous to chess.

... I enjoy the slower pace FFXI provides, where many battles are like a game of chess...

I like to picture Ballista as a sort of version of chess.

That kind of thinking is what we need. Of course, in a game of chess, both sides have the same pieces, and in which case, our Ballista community forcefully organizes the participants' jobs to mirror each other—even subjobs are mirrored—to eliminate that "randomness."

For instance, in this screenshot, from left to right, we have SAM/WAR, WAR/SAM, MNK/WAR, RNG/SAM, RDM/BLM, and WHM/SCH.


We typically play games of 5:5 (with the "auto-balance" shuffle feature), but if more people show up, we can extend it to 6:6. Despite the turnouts, we never exceed 6:6. The usual job setup for a 5:5 includes 2 healers and 3 front line jobs. In the case of 6:6, either an extra healer or DD can be added. It really depends on the job availability of the participants. These events are usually hosted 1-3 times a week during JP hours, but if we have more NA participants, we can surely host our own in-house games like such.

So what about the "balance"? What "improvements" do we need? A better question yet, when was the last time that anyone here played legit Ballista? I don't want to hear any "one on one" nonsense either. What sort of "gain" or "reward" do we get out of all this? We simply play for fun. That's the way Ballista is and should be. The game is fine the way it is. Moreover, the Ballista community is still strong today, but you'll just have to find [valid] sources to stay updated. People can complain, preach, and cry all they want while my friends and I will be enjoying our Ballista on Lakshmi.

[Alhanelem]

The fact that BLU is not unbeatable means that it is not overpowered

Um, no, there's no contradiction. "Not unbeatable" does not mean "balanced." Blu is "Harder to beat," not "unbeatable."

[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]

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.