Wednesday, September 27, 2006

When Good People Go Bad - Vol. 3

We continue on with our look into good players gone bad with an old favorite.

I'm sure many of you are guilty of this crime. Lord knows I've seen this enough times to account for at least half the population of FFXI.

We've all been there. You're trying to form a party, but you just can't find the right jobs.

So you make a slightly unorthodox choice.

And then another.

And then another.

Next thing you know, you've got a Warrior/Ninja tanking with a Dark Knight as your back up tank and the Black Mage is your main healer.

Congratulations! You've just formed a train wreck.

There's something about being lfg (looking for group) that just breaks the minds of otherwise reasonable players. You see all of these other people walking by in their level billion gear and you want to level, too.

And then you snap.

You start to form your own party and you don't really care who you find. You just need five warm bodies to help your get to the next level.

Look! There's a Samurai looking for a group!

Let's make him the tank.

And then the rationalizing...

You will actually manage to convince yourself that this could work. You actually think that maybe every other person is wrong and that this will be an awesome party.

And it will be.

For the three seconds before you all get horribly murdered.

Fun.

This evening, I was leveling my Black Mage through the horrible Crawler's Nest levels.

As opposed to the horrible Garlaige Citadel levels...

And the horrible Jungle levels...

And the horrible qufim levels...

You get my point.

I had been lfg for quite a bit when I got a tell asking me to come to Crawler's Nest for a party. I figured what's the worst that could happen?

Isn't funny how you always ask yourself that right before fate shows you a new definition of the word "worst"?

I warp back to Jeuno and grab a chocobo. As I'm riding to CN, I get an invite to his party. Cool, we can get going right awa...

Why am I the only person in the party with him?

I'm just starting to get worried when another name pops up. Good. At least we'll have a full party soon.

Other names start to quickly appear.

Wait... We don't have a healer.

Or a tank.

And he just invited a Samurai.

I'm confused.

[GM]Dave>> Uhh...
[GM]Dave>> Who's supposed to be tanking?
Leader>> Oh, the WAR/NIN is tanking.
WAR/NIN>> I am?
WAR/NIN>> But I told you I don't tank.
Leader>> Yeah...
Leader>> There are no tanks looking right now.
[GM]Dave>> Then shouldn't we wait for one to show up?
Leader>> Don't worry.
Leader>> This will work.

Note: If someone ever tells you not to worry, it means you should worry.

If there was actually nothing to worry about, they wouldn't have to say it.

[GM]Dave>> So did you find a heal...
[GM]Dave>> Why did you invite a Dark Knight?
Leader>> He's the only one lfg.
[GM]Dave>> Well, that's a perfectly good reason.
[GM]Dave>> We're all going to die because you're impatient.
Leader>> We're not going to die.
Leader>> This is going to work.

Note: If someone ever has to tell you "this will work" more than once, it's not going to work.

If it was going to work, you wouldn't have to say it.

[GM]Dave>> Who's going to heal then?
[GM]Dave>> Did you find a Thief with a White Mage sub?
Leader>> Actually...
Leader>> Could you main heal?
[GM]Dave>> ...
[GM]Dave>> I'm a Black Mage.
[GM]Dave>> Black Mages don't heal.
[GM]Dave>> We do the opposite of heal.
[GM]Dave>> We are main UNhealers.
Leader>> There's no healers looking.
[GM]Dave>> ...
[GM]Dave>> We're all going to die.

Still, if things go bad, I've always got Escape so I can get everyone out.

OR I have warp which will get me out and leave those other people to die.

We'll see what kind of mood I'm in.

Just as we're about to go in, our "tank" sends me a tell.

WAR/NIN>> I'm going to be destroyed. TT

I should probably give him some words of encouragement.

[GM]Dave>> Yeah, probably.

Whoops. Looks like I'm fresh out of encouragement.

Well, damn.

Still, the lure of fresh exp drawing us forward, we hurried into Crawler's Nest to try out this "unorthodox" party configuration.

Exactly three minutes later, we're outside again. One guy is dead, we're all beat to hell, and I just barely managed to get us out of there in one piece.

I accidentally clicked on Escape instead of Warp.

It was perfectly obvious to everyone that this was not going to work. There was just no way that this party was going to succeed.

Leader>> So...
Leader>> Ready to try again?

Well, perfectly obvious to everyone but Captain Optimism over there.

He runs headlong back into CN shouting battle cries, trying to get us going.

And he did get us going.

In the other direction.

Optimism is a great thing, people. It is optimism that drives us to try new things and find new ideas.

Be careful that you don't confuse optimism with delusions.

Optimism allows you to take an uncharted course.

Delusions allow you to take a party into a deep, dark cave and let them get eaten.

See the difference?

10 Comments:

At 11:03 PM, Blogger BenoSmash said...

A few things:

1: I can see "This is going to work" as a macro for some poor RDM tank trying to keep themselves Healzd while the rest of the PT suffers without a real healer to speak of.

2: I can already see the people saying "Crap, I didn't get first post." Who cares? First post is cool and all. But who the hell cares? No one needs to see that waste of space.

3: I would have been super disappointed if I hit the wrong macro in that situation. I haven't experienced that horrible PT combo, but I've heard stories. Every time I think about them I shudder. *Shudders* :P

4: Still liking the blog, keep it up!

 
At 11:03 PM, Blogger Rachel said...

"We are main UNhealers."

LOL

 
At 11:26 PM, Blogger Mikael Lindeman said...

Funny how worlds can so very different :)
Yeah I remember the horrible retard groups which I have been in while levelling (especially my 2nd char). But once you get up there WoW is very different. One of the greatest runs i've done through a 10-man dungeon was done with 6-mages (combination of elemental, frost and fire), 1 priest and 1 shaman for tanking....

And we tore it apart.

I know this blog is not about WoW, though i must admit, that quite a few of the players banned from FFXI seems to magically have migrated to our servers, since many of the incidents described here sound too familiar.

Keep it up [GM]Dave, you make inGame retards bearable to me in daily gaming.

 
At 12:18 AM, Blogger Hawklord2112 said...

i got a random /tell the other day.
Moron>> Can you tank?

i was.. WTF?

>>Moron {{Job}}{{Please Check it.}}

/job
BLU42/RDM21

oh dear.

 
At 6:32 AM, Blogger the fading smile of a cheshire cat said...

Saying a BLM can't main heal is like saying a SMN can't main heal.

 
At 1:34 PM, Blogger Justine said...

I know what you mean! I subbed summoner onto my black mage for 64 levels so that I didn't have to heal >.>

 
At 4:38 PM, Blogger Kite said...

BLM/SMN... odd, but sounds effective. I'm currently trying out BLM/BLU.

Let's see... I have been second and third healer for a couple of times as BLM/WHM. I did got assigned as main healer back in the Qufim days. I was lucky the party was good enough so I could keep up with the healing and throw in an elemental hit so now and then.

 
At 5:56 PM, Blogger WanderingJ said...

Please tell us you fed him to a dragon. The idiot sounds like he deserved it.

PLEASE...

 
At 7:12 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Good Tactics from a good leader can overcome alot of unorthodox parties but if your missing key members your just so screwed.

Bad tank can be compensated by an awesome healer. etc.

You would think [GM]Dave would have bailed on the 'tard party

 
At 1:54 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

ha! I think I was the DRK they invited for that party...was this on Kujata?

 

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