Elmer's 10 questions from JP players.

Elmer the Pointy is an awesome dude. The amount of time he spends translating material and working to bridge the gap between English and Japanese speaking players is something people should give him a lot more credit for. Periodically, he'll take opportunities to poll various English fan sites like BG, Alla, etc for questions he can submit to various Japanese fan sites and vice versa. The answers to these questions often times are very interesting. His latest batch is up on his webiste at the moment. You can view them here at JP Button.

I decided today to respond to the 10 questions he plucked from JP forums here on my blog. The answers I felt would be long-winded, so I didn't feel like posting the entire thing on BG.

Here goes:

1. Do foreign players have a lot of interest in joining social Japanese Linkshells? (Especially ones with only JP members) I ask because when I recruit for my shell in Japanese, I get a lot of tells from foreigners looking to join. Personally, I feel like even if they could understand my /shout, it still would be hard to keep up with regular conversation. They wouldn’t understand pop-culture references to old TV shows, for instance.

- I share the same sentiments. Bigger point of this game is socializing and if there's a language barrier, it takes some of the enjoyment out of it until that barrier is broken. I don't have any prejudices against any particular nationality, but it is frustrating to sit mostly in silence and not understand a single thing that's going on in the conversation.

2. Parties that cycle in replacement members seem to be popular amongst foreigners, but a lot of times the party will just disband once the replacement arrives. Of course, there are times when the replacement is contacted before they get all the way there, but there are many instances when no one says anything. There are also many cases where inappropriate jobs are invited and the party can no longer function well.

To me, this is a big reason behind some of the negative images Japanese players have about foreign players. What do you think about this?

- It doesn't always happen that way, but yeah it does happen. I've always felt like if there's a replacement seeking or available and I've been given enough of a heads up, there's no reason to disband a party completely if everyone else has the time and wants to stay.

I don't feel the act of finding replacement members only to have the party disband is a big reason behind ill feelings or perceptions though unless you're the replacement. The key is down time. If you have a long period of time doing nothing while waiting on a replacement, people get bored and want to go do other things. No culture is an exception to this.

To flip this question on it's head, it's no different than a JP player disbanding from the party with a simple {Have stuff to do, gotta go!} and no advanced warning whatsoever. For the record, I don't feel like this is something exclusive to JP players, but in my experience, it's mostly JP players that do this.

3. Why does it seem like many foreign players don’t bother to bring medicines and potions to Missions and BCs? Many Japanese players make sure to have Vile Elixirs, Hi-Potions and/or Reraise Earrings.

I can only confirm that most players are lazy, cheap, or forgetful bastards. I get it when people forget from time to time, I'm guilty of that myself, but after starting up Einherjar runs and after having helped lead Dynamis runs over the years, it's inevitable that a mage will get silenced and make a comment about not having echo drops. It's also inevitable that someone will get KO'd and ask for a raise cause they didn't bring RR. It's frustrating to no end, but having had some JP players in Obsidian during my tenure there, I don't perceive it as something being limited to everyone other than JP players.

4. Sometimes I see foreign pick-up parties recruiting for members using Auto-Translate, but then when I join the party, all the conversation and battle planning is in English. I’ll ask for them to {Please use the Auto-Translate function.} but nobody ever does. If you are going to /shout for help with the Auto-Translator, why not use it in the party? It feels like I was tricked.

This has happened to me in reverse as well. I'll get invited by a JP player using Auto-Translate, but everything else is in JP. I give a party three strikes before I just disband and go do something else. If they can't be bothered to communicate with me in the same manner they invited me, then I have better things to do with my time. If I ask the same question three times w/o an answer, {Good bye}.

5. How many NA and EU players do Campaign? Any thoughts about the recent nerf to Fortifications?

Personally, I dislike campaign quite a bit. It bores me to tears waiting for one to start. It frustrates me to no end when I get out there and spend 10 minutes hitting 4-5 different mobs only to have some one run off with a mob in a remote corner trying to solo it so they can try to get 2k xp while everyone else only gets 500.

I mostly approve of the fortification nerf though. Something needed to be done with it, but I would have preferred SE putting in some sort of homing beacon-like feature on the beastmen themselves that would cause them to migrate to the fort that was being attacked and actually try to defend it.

Same thing applies to the beastman hogging I mentioned too. I wish SE would make it so that a mob generally stays in the area of the fortification a la Lioumere.

6a. What equipment do you think has great stats but horrible looks?
6b. What equipment do you think has the best graphics?

6a - Aurum and Enkidu especially. DRG AF and AF2 pants a distant second.
6b - Homam, Askar, and Ares armor.

7. Outside of your normal party gear, is there any equipment that you go out of your way to get strictly for looks? What are your favorite pieces of casual equipment?

I don't really go out of my way for great looking equipment, but I am a completionist and like to wear complete sets of gear while standing around. Good examples would be the DRG AF2 set, the Askar set or the Ares set. Each of those sets only have 1-3 pieces that are useful to me, but I try to finish the set anyway so that I actually have matching armor on.

Gungnir is my favorite piece of "casual" equipment. :)

8. I’m a Mithra, and I find that a lot of foreigners seem to be into Mithra fashion. They examine me and ask where I got my equipment and such. Do you think male players enjoy dressing up their Mithra in cute outfits?

I never got into the whole Mithra attraction thing and don't understand why people do. To each their own though. I do think there are some males who have an unhealthy obsession with dressing their mithra in the most revealing things they can though yes.

9. I wonder if you calculate the XP/hr of parties, and if so, do you think that Skillchain/Magic Burst or Weaponskill spam produces the best results? Before parsing became widespread, Japanese players used to think Skillchain/Magic Burst was the best.

I actually blogged about this subject a while back. Setting up a skillchain/magic burst in a meripo party is pointless now. I can see using them still in lower level XP parties and producing better results than just spamming WS, but as for end-game, there are very few scenarios where this would out-parse simply zerging. It's a shame too cause I really love setting up and participating in skillchains.

I don't personally calculate XP/hour with any form of a parser, but I do love reading the results from people that do.

10. How come it seems like so many people don’t utilize Search Comments properly? Why don’t they write their camp location for others to see? Also, it’s strange to see so many people seeking without basic information written like available jobs and where they can access. Don’t you want an invite?

Laziness is why. I don't put my flag up very often, but when I do, I put what I'm looking for in my /seacom. I have a habit of overlooking people who don't bother to put information in when I'm building parties. Pretty much says to me that if they can't be bothered to put in a little info, then they probably can't be bothered to bring basic necessities like food.

11. If you know you are going to be busy, how come you don’t alert people at the beginning of the party instead of surprising everyone at the last minute?

This irritates me to no end when I'm putting a party together. I make sure people know if I'm doing some work for my business or if I'm pseudo-babysitting while I'm playing and that I may have to afk randomly. It boils down to consideration of others. NA players, unfortunately, aren't very good about thinking outside of their own box about how poor communication will affect those around them. The past year or so, we've had to revamp our Dynamis/Einherjar shell's rules to enforce stricter point penalties for poor communication. It's not specifically party-related, but it's along the same lines. We set up our rules now to more or less force people to talk to leadership if an issue comes up so that the leadership can be better prepared for organizing the event.

12. Honestly, the largest difference in thinking between Japanse and foreign players exists in the Merit party. You often say 5 DDs and a RDM is so good, but having a single, solitary healer is hard on the RDM. Japanese realize that healers can be in short supply, so we make sacrifices to lighten their burden, like subbing a mage job, or using Utsusemi. I feel like many people don’t show proper respect to healers.

When we say JP ONLY, it isn’t always an issue of language, but the fact that we feel there are other dangers and demerits associated witha non-JP party, stemming from our different play-styles, that we wish to avoid.

This key difference in thinking, more than any race or language issue,is what really sets us apart as players. They are just looking to sit back, relaxand earn some decent XP.

Please feel free to provide your own insight and thoughts.

You won't see me in a party with 5 DD and a RDM. I don't view that set up as the optimal set up. I tend to think the optimal set up is different based on whatever you're xp'ing on. Using Greater Colibri as an example, I found that going with 4 DD, BRD and RDM was by far the best set up we could get. I've gone out there with 3 DD, COR, BRD and RDM or WHM and 3 DD, BRDx2 and RDM or WHM and picked up similar results. Most of the time when I'm xp'ing, the melee are subbing SAM or NIN and aren't the ones really taking a ton of damage unless Third Eye is being stupid or unless Utsusemi timers are down.

A large issue with merit camps are the results. If a main healer can manage to keep a party alive with 5 DDs in it, more power to them, but having 5 DDs in a colibri camp means someone's dying every 20-30 mobs and that we're going to run out of mobs most likely.

13. What type of sushi do you like best?

It might be something different in Japan, but here at a restaurant named Yuki's, they serve a roll called the "Hilltopper Roll" after our local university's mascot and school colors. It's a roll containing cream cheese, tempura flakes, and cucumber in the middle topped with red, pink and white tuna. I don't know what types of tuna are used, so hopefully the colorization will help out.

Damn, now I'm hungry. Guess I know where I'm going for lunch today. :)


Thanks again to Elmer for bridging this gap. Hopefully his work will continue to lead to a better understanding of our playstyles and cultures.