Character creation confusion

Vaen · September 2010

Woohoo, I finally got this game working. Last time I tried was half an year ago, had so many problems and had to give up eventually as they wouldn't accept my payment. PlayOnline must be a spawn of Satan, made of all things evil, it's just hard too see the dark truth behind that mind soothing happyhappy tune and the yellow pointer, which represents something... cute and pleasant. But now that I got all necessary files through Steam, am already veteran at installing and registering FFXI and the payment went through without problems, I'm ready to rock, despite the 'extended services' and 'content ID' issues, from which I also got some gray hair.

Now that I've reached the point where I am supposed to create the character and read a bit about these things called 'jobs', then there's 'secondary jobs' and 'extra jobs', that's where I get confuzzled. By this time I am absolutely certain, the people behind the game and PO do not think rationally, but they have some higher way of thinking, if that is possible. I wouldn't know, as my rational mind wouldn't understand it anyway! OR perhaps they are rational and I'm irrational, oh no! They are asian, so they possess all kind of super powers anyway, like play Tetris at super speed or solo manic shmups in co-op with two arcade sticks.

So I should figure out race, 'primary job'(?) and server. This is the most difficult part of these damned MMORPG's. I don't want to screw this up (again). I haven't played a MMORPG in almost a year and this time I want to just chill and take it slow, don't want to plan too much and reaching maximum level is only hypothetical possibility. Regardless, I want to do this part right, as it might haunt me for rest of my FFXI career.

Is there any difference between the servers? Where's the RP and most mature community?

I read that race stats do matter when choosing job. Those threads were like 6 years old though. Do the stats still matter and how elitist people are at less optimal race & job combinations? I quite like Mithra, Galkan(sp) and Tarutaru. The Humes and Elvaan are pretty damn cliché and bore-inspiring. I could consider Elvaan though.

I'm not yet sure about the job, it's difficult to understand the FF class/job system. Can someone explain how it works? What I don't understand is, when you get secondary job and how effective will it be compared to primary, or do I use spells from both jobs at the same time or what? And what are the jobs that are available at 30? Does it mean I can make a new character with those jobs that unlock at 30? I does not compute, but it's definitely fun to play something unorthodox for change.

I like healing, support and jack-of-all-trades roles the most. Tanking is cool too, but might not be wise idea for beginner. I don't know if WoW can be compared with this game in any way, but I was main tank as warrior and enjoyed leading raids in WoW. I also healed as holy priest and preferred it to other healing classes, as it had most interesting mechanics and was bit more challenging to play. I hated paladin with passion, though, very boring and mindless to play, and you know, blood elves... FFXI paladin may be different though! The idea of healy tank is really cool, didn't work for me in WoW.

As I don't know how the job system works - do I need to choose warrior or white mage, so I can later become paladin? - will the primary job choice affect my possibilities later in other ways? - I have no idea which to go with. Even after I understand that, I still to need think what job I want to go with. Any suggestion, what would fit my description best? While I love crappy, niche jobs/classes, I'd like to choose something that is actually needed this time around. So I don't just run around mindlessly and try to look like I'm useful, while in reality I'm only of entertainment value at most, due to the sheer idiocy of the combination of jobs and race and other traits my character has.

Thanks a lot, if you read through all that. Any help is appreciated!

Satimasu · September 2010

You don't have to overanalyze it. You can be any job you want. You only start out with 6 though. Pick whichever one you feel like you'd like best. You get the advance jobs at 30, so then you can see what job you'd like to level. You can try all 6 out to get a feel for what you want.

Don't worry about racial stats. It's not as big a deal as some make it out to be. Pick whichever you like best. Yes, some races don't have good stats for certain jobs, but that shouldn't stop you. It just makes things a bit more difficult.

You can change jobs at any time by going to your Mog House or using Nomad Moogles, so don't worry too much about what job to be.

For RP, I don't remember which server does the most of that. It's mostly restricted to linkshells. I'm on Valefor, so that's all I know. It's a pretty decent population, so you can try that out. If you go there, let me know and maybe I can help you out when I'm on.

Anyway, there are no real screw ups for this game. Don't worry about it. Do what you want to do and enjoy yourself.

Vaen · September 2010

Thanks! So you can have all jobs with one character, and main job as well as sub job can both be changes later on, huh? That is pretty nice.

You are absolutely right that I shouldn't think about it too much, but it's difficult not to choose the optimal choice. I read that tarutaru mage is quite a lot more effective than galka mage, and I really like galka for the rough looks, other races are bit too cutesy for my taste. It wouln't matter if I were soloing all the time, I don't mind worse stats for that, but I'd hate to slow down a group just because of my race choice. This is my main gripe with a lot RPG's... the character creation isn't thought out very well, I should be able to choose my stats by myself. It also makes the overall race and job distribution much more single sided, boring, as a lot of people make tarutaru mages, for example.

This bothers me to the point I almost just feel like not plaing the game, as silly it may be. Is there ways to convert my stats later on, or somehow make those excess stats useful? I also read that there's gear to fix the problem at least partially and large health pool as galka mage might actually be useful. I could just choose some melee job to pair with my galka. Would be pretty silly to choose job, because of my race, the otherway around it would make bit more sense, I guess.

I'm so going way ahead of things again! I'm usually really good at most games, but the flipside of it is that I often don't know how the enjoy them. Especially MMORPG's, strategy games fit my style better... Can you imagine, I was annoyed because I couldn't find any spreadsheets late game healer stat weight and differences between races, and that a lot of FFXI players just seem to compare things by what -feels- better or worse? I haven't even started the game yet, I'm hopless. :-)

Satimasu · September 2010

I'll just tell you that I started as an Elvaan Black Mage. That's pretty much the worst choice for a job when it comes to that race. That was my first job all the way to what was then the 75 cap. I got over the hurdles that were against me, and it really wasn't that bad. If you know how to manage your MP and all that, you really won't have a hard time. Yes, there is racial equipment you can get at certain levels to help counter the racial stat weaknesses, and you'll be wearing them a lot. It's not a big deal though. Really, it's not.

I have two 75 mage jobs and one melee. The melee one was the last one I did. Honestly, don't worry about it. At 75 though, you can use merits to add to your stats and such to make yourself to make up where you lack, or just add to your already dominate stats to make them even better. Either way, you'll be fine once you learn how to be effective in a party. When you know what food to use and when to cast, your MP won't matter nearly as much.

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