Salvage Resolution
Well. Though in general I’m pretty pleased with playing FFXI as a hobby, I’m coming to the realization that a lot of the actual things I do while playing the game aren’t giving me a particular lot of joy. So I’m going to work on them until I’m satisfied.
The first thing I’ve decided to do is leave the salvage group, for a number of reasons.
* I’m tired of being at 0 assault points before every run and having to half-beg someone to come on an assault with me to get points. Where these people get their apparently infinite supply of assault points for salvage baffles me.
* I’m tired of blocking out an entire evening from 9 PM onward three days a week for salvage, only to have not enough people to show or Shpen not show up and have the run be cancelled, wasting hours of my time when I could have been doing something else. This happens at least 2/3 of the time.
* I’m often physically tired. I can’t remember the last time salvage didn’t keep me up past midnight, and 1 AM+ is too common. That’s pretty late to be doing 100 minutes of cell distribution and tough monsters.
* I’m tired of WHM only. I have seven 75s now. And while I admit a couple of them aren’t good salvage jobs, a couple of the others are. I NEVER got to even try dancer and my blue mage has performed nothing but well the few times I took it. It frustrates me to be stuck on support every single run when nearly every other member can come as pretty much whatever screw-around job they want.
* I’m tired of begging for cells to do my job. In almost every run I’m woefully undergeared and my completely shallow mp pool actually has gotten us killed both climbing up and on bosses. Cell lot order seems to go: main melee > rdm > every other melee > totally free.
But really, I’m just tired of it not being fun, due a combination of all this stuff. It has become a major chore; a chore where I have no options or say if I want to stay in. The group has always had a “my way or the highway” attitude, so okay, this time I’m going with the highway.
I remember when I would pride myself on being part of this salvage group. Consistently taking down Long-Bowed Chariot and popping 6th floor appapago frogs takes some pretty intense teamwork, and when our group started to get there, it was a great feeling of accomplishment and togetherness. Just looking back through old Ereblogs shows myself how excited I would be to climb up to a new floor or tackle a new boss. I didn’t even mind going on white mage to the runs, because the group valued my white mage’s contributions strongly - there wasn’t much mistaking the fact that my reflexes were one of the few things holding the balance between beating a boss and wiping pathetically.
But these days… I’m not feeling it. Shpen doesn’t seem to much care about the group, skipping multiple days without even bothering to tell us its cancelled. I’ve fallen out of the cell order down to the bards and the thieves and the extra DDs that we didn’t even know would show up that day. The group’s gotten a few new members that both know very little about salvage and don’t seem too interested in learning anything about the zones and the pulls so we’re always one step away from failing, at best. I’m being constantly expected to do more (support) with less (cells) in increasingly pointlessly dangerous situations. Frankly, I just can’t muster the enthusiasm.
Probably the breaking point for me was the “soul voice ranger” incident a few weeks back. We were doing one of the LBCs for getting Brimah his 25 ares body run (not the one where we got it) and all the DDs were going on about how hard they were going to pwn it. Typical soul voice for us is to SV the melees, have them engage, and then SV the mages. But this time the ranger wanted SV too, so the group decided that the bard would drop after SVing the melees to go to the ranger party. Can you guess how this ended? You’d be right. The mages didn’t get ballad at all, SV or not. MP ran out and people started dying at around 50%. We’d managed to flail around while on the verge of wiping and got it down to like 10% or so before running out of time and failing the run.
I blame a lot of people, because frankly they should have known better. But I also blame myself. Because I didn’t say anything, even though I knew exactly what was going to happen. It’s just basic math and personal experience. I know how long a white mage can spam heals, I know how hard LBC hits, and I knew it wouldn’t end well. I knew this and I didn’t say anything to stop this plan from happening. Because I didn’t care. Because some part of me wanted the run to fail, just to show them all that there was once a time when this group was scared of losing and actually paid attention to battle strategy rather than just going in guns blazing. Because I’m sick of being that whiny white mage because he’s the only one that’s realized we’re in danger of failing the run and is actively trying to save it.
When you're the main healer and you don't really care if everyone dies, that's a sign it's time to go.
Reader, especially if you’re a reader in my salvage group, it is possible you’ve mentally invalidated all the complaints I’ve made here and just think I’m leaving the group because I’ve gotten most of the stuff I want. I’ll clear this one up right now - no shit. Yes, that’s pretty much it. But, that doesn’t change anything I’ve said so far. I’ve had these objections for months upon months. Brimah can attest to how much complaining I did in real life specifically about salvage. After the SV thing, it was just a matter of if I would leave before I got the Morrigan’s Cuffs. Turns out I did get them. Thanks. But I would have left without them anyway if I hadn’t gotten them by now, I think, because I’m pretty much at the end of my rope as far as caring goes. The way I see it, I put in my time and I got a few things out of it. Salvage and I are pretty much even. It seems foolish to stay in after that point, especially if it’s not any fun for me.
So, that’s a year’s worth of salvage bitching that I’ve always sort of wanted to do but never did while I was in the group out of respect. For the record, I don’t hold any ill will at any members of the group or the group itself, and wish you nothing but good luck and multiple drops in the future. I just don’t want to be a part of it anymore. I already told Shpen (in a POL message unfortunately, as he logged off in a huff after yesterday’s latest disaster) so this Ereblog is not my way of saying I’m leaving. But still, please don’t ask me to come to any more runs. I’m just not interested. Part of me wants to add a disclaimer like “maybe I’ll come back in a few things change” right about here, but I don’t think it’s for the best, so I’m not going to.
… you know you’re reading Ereblog when I type up two pages in a word document to say I’m leaving a group when everyone else just doesn’t answer tells next time the group’s been gathering. Maybe that’s what makes me awesome!