EreRant #9 / Survey Results
Normal people would just call it a night, but I don’t have class until 3 PM on Tuesday’s and have grown quite used to staying up absurdly late on Monday evenings because of it. And I was still in my speculative writer Ereblog mode. So I put on my trusty hat and paced around town for a while in the gloom, stopping to exchange a few words with the other insomniatic souls (consensus: nobody had any idea what was going on regarding the blackout) but largely pondering what would become this blog entry. Being suddenly cut off from my work by the blackout forced me to take a few steps back from merely the things I myself had done recently and think about FFXI times in general. About an hour later, I came back to find my laptop dutifully still running on backup power and gushed out some of these thoughts before the battery finally died.
Preface: AXI, which stands for AncientsXI, is the endgame linkshell that I am a member of. I’ve had various things to say about AXI over the past year and a half, some of them quite drastic. You can read the strangeness of the drama at http://ereblog.livejournal.com/tag/axi . Start from the last entry and work towards the present for a more coherent timeline, especially regarding weird things around winter 2007 / spring 2008.
AXI is, at best, difficult to describe as an endgame linkshell. Though one of the oldest endgame shells on Sylph, it’s extremely laid back as far as endgame goes. We have no relics. We don’t camp kings. We don’t sell drops. We do a limited number of events on a fixed schedule and that’s about it. On the other hand, it’s not really a social linkshell, since there a lot of people that don’t really know eachother, rarely talk socially, and only show up for events. There are some fairly significant cliques, the largest being what is derogatorily referred to as “the Ventrillo crew,” though we prefer the name “Ventrillo Awesome Gang.” And yes, that acronym is intentional.
If I were forced into giving a solid description of what I thought of AXI’s policies, and I guess that I’m sort of writing myself into that corner here, I would say that AXI more closely resembles the blueprint for a linkshell than an actual linkshell itself. Imagine if you and some of your buddies got together and tried to think of a bunch of ideas on how to make a new linkshell with some fair policies. Whatever you came up with would probably be pretty close to how AXI runs. Of course, if you actually got around to running your new linkshell you’d find out that some things that you thought were good ideas are actually totally impractical and need to change, but you also had some new ideas that you didn’t think about until the need arose. You would modify your rules as you went along. AXI doesn’t really do that. Ever. It stubbornly sticks to its policies even after those policies have been proven to fail time and time again, and about the most modern content they do is Limbus (unless you count their relatively new Einherjar efforts, and it’s better for them if you don’t.)
Naturally, this pisses a lot of people off.
Whenever an AXI event goes horribly awry (Einherjar is the biggest offender here, but long gather times and a lack of direction also spawn this,) disparaging comments are made (privately, not on linkshell, of course) and each conversation has a pretty good likelihood to spiral into a full-blown “what everyone thinks of AXI these days” soapbox-fest. The majority of what people say isn’t overly positive. Round and round the conversation goes without any real course of action being decided. Nobody actually wants to leave AXI, yet most everyone agrees that things ain’t right in major ways.
Strangely, I am one of the most contented people in AXI. When I was on the verge of trying to steal as many AXI people as possible and form my own linkshell and that plan fell to pieces and I had to nod my head and at the forgiveness I was given, I made a policy about AXI that I have yet to significantly break. That policy is very simple: AXI is not my end-all, be-all linkshell. It is my dynamis / limbus / sky and sea farming / social linkshell. And that’s about it. When I set up my Nyzul group last fall, some people were from AXI and some were not. Same deal with my MMM farming. When AXI Einherjar proved itself completely broken forever, I joined an offshell group and have been very happy. I keep AXI in its little box and don't let it leave. I began to put more and more faith into small group activity by invite only rather than trying to get the sponsorship of a linkshell largely filled with people I don’t know and occasionally containing an absolute fuckup or two (or more) and put my event at risk. Generally, this policy has made me fairly satisfied.
Still, being who I am, I got curious enough to want to quantify people’s likes and dislikes, and so I administered a “short, unsolicited survey” to my closest AXI friends. The survey had a mere four questions, answered all in tells. I asked 8 people and then filled it out for myself, so 9 responses. I retyped it every time I gave it so the wording varied a little, but here’s the gist of it:
1) What is your favorite event that you do in FFXI?
2) What is your second favorite?
3) What event do you wish you could do in FFXI but, for whatever reason, do not?
4) What, if anything, bothers you about how AXI operates?
Do you have any closing remarks about events or AXI in general? Anything on your mind.
(please note: if you’re in AXI, consider yourself one of my friends, and didn’t get this survey, it’s nothing too personal. I basically just handed them out whenever I had a lull in my in-game action and also noticed someone else not doing something either. So if you kept yourself pretty busy the past few days or didn’t log on much, I didn’t get a chance to talk to you.)
Some people took this more seriously than others, particularly questions 3 and 4. I got some LOONG answers about number 4 from a couple people. You know who you are!
All responses were assured to be confidential, but I did notice some general trends. First, the good. The most popular event that people attended was Nyzul Isle Investigation - people that went to Nyzul seemed most satisfied with this event as far as general enjoyment went. Salvage was another big winner, with less people citing it as a favorite event but several others that went once or twice, never joined a group, and want to get into it more regularly. The most desired event that people did not do but wanted to, other than Salvage, was Einherjar (good Ein, not AXI Ein), followed by ZNMs. From then on down almost every single endgame event had at least one or two people that ranked it in the two two. Dynamis, Limbus, Sky and Sea gods, Land Kings and other HNMs, missions and quests, and even MMM had a few fans. Looking at the data as a whole it seems that the majority of the positive responses were from relatively simplistic activities that can be done with a small group, though there was a sizeable number that long for the bigger, more challenging fights… at least, as long as we don’t have to bot claim them.
Now, the bad. The complaints about AXI’s policies. Unlike events that fit very nicely into easy chunks, people’s opinions varied in specific complaints, but I tried my best to put them into general categories. By far far FAR the largest complaint about AXI’s policies, with a whopping 100% of the responses having to deal with this in some form or another, was about linkshell officer attitudes, generally other than the actual linkshell leader himself. Many people felt that the officers needed to “step up” and do more to actively run events by making sure everyone knew what to do during events. Another common complaint, directed at largely at one individual in particular that I will not name, was that certain officers were standoffish and rude. Other than officers, many people had similar things to say; people in the linkshell aren’t friendly or enthusiastic, major policies are beyond broken, and the ls bank is not being used for anything.
Raw data from the survey results:
Things people approve of:
Nyzul: 6
Salvage: 5
Einherjar: 3
Limbus: 3
Dynamis: 2
ZNM: 2
Land kings / other windowed NMs: 2
Missions: 2
MMM: 1
Campaign: 1
(Total of 27; 3 responses per person from the 3 questions * 9 total responses to the survey)
Things people don't approve of:
Officer indirection / attitude: 9
Lack of enthusiasm in linkshell events: 5
Overall leadership / policies regarding scheduling / item distribution: 5
LS bank black hole: 4
Lack of camaraderie / friendship between linkshell members: 3
AXI events don't interest me: 2
(Total is arbitrary, as some had more to say than others)
Before going much farther, I want to say that I don’t have any of the answers to our problems. Or rather, I have an answer to our problems that involves fixing none of the actual problems. As I stated above, I have been putting more and more of my faith into by-invite-only events. As of yet I have only set up relatively small events such as Nyzul or MMM runs, but with enough people I trust that are willing to do something, the sky really is the limit. People that helped me with my MMM farming runs have more than earned my gratitude, and if they want to put together an event that interests them, I’m more than willing to help out. This has already happened actually, as Shad and Cribe recently put together some box farming / SCNM fights. You can view the video here - rather boring easy fight, but it shows yours truly pretty prominently.
Where does a policy of inviting only people I trust to events and bypassing the ridiculous AXIP (AncientsXI points, a closed-auction point system that the ls uses to distribute some, but not all, of its items, completely ineffectual for reasons I’m not going to go into) in favor of a simplistic “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” honor system, where does that leave AXI? It leaves it right where it belongs - as a dynamis / limbus / sky and sea farming group. And nothing more. As they want it to be. I still go to events and give my fair share of effort, but don't expect me to baby fools that keep screwing up.
Distributing all of those surveys made people wonder if I was creating my own linkshell. I’m not. I’m still not. I simply don’t have to. To get what I want, I don’t need to become an officer in AXI and deal with any of the fools that got past the application screening system. I don’t need to clean up the shell or change our policies or inspire the masses or any of that crap. I don’t need to complete with AXI for events and manpower simply because AXI is both unwilling and incapable of competing with me. They have abandoned a lot of content entirely and all I need to do is simply find some people that are interested and go do it. I can set up my own events and work with other people that set up theirs. All of this is completely within the boundaries of the linkshell’s rules. It’s also completely against the spirit of an endgame linkshell as I can choose to invite some people but not others, but honestly, that sounds like a personal problem for them. Be less sucky and more nice next time, mm kay?
Let’s see. Where to start. The Kisa and I joint-run ALikelyStory Nyzul group is still around in some form or another so that takes care of the Nyzul desire. That leaves Salvage. I already decided that I’m going to start my own Salvage runs designed to compliment any other groups running in the linkshell when I get my Warrior to 75. It’s at 72 right now and growing steadily. There’s some interesting news there, but it can wait a few days for one of my bi-weekly “stuff I’ve been up to” updates. As for right now, the power is finally back and I can upload this entry and get a good night's rest.
Preface: AXI, which stands for AncientsXI, is the endgame linkshell that I am a member of. I’ve had various things to say about AXI over the past year and a half, some of them quite drastic. You can read the strangeness of the drama at http://ereblog.livejournal.com/tag/axi . Start from the last entry and work towards the present for a more coherent timeline, especially regarding weird things around winter 2007 / spring 2008.
AXI is, at best, difficult to describe as an endgame linkshell. Though one of the oldest endgame shells on Sylph, it’s extremely laid back as far as endgame goes. We have no relics. We don’t camp kings. We don’t sell drops. We do a limited number of events on a fixed schedule and that’s about it. On the other hand, it’s not really a social linkshell, since there a lot of people that don’t really know eachother, rarely talk socially, and only show up for events. There are some fairly significant cliques, the largest being what is derogatorily referred to as “the Ventrillo crew,” though we prefer the name “Ventrillo Awesome Gang.” And yes, that acronym is intentional.
If I were forced into giving a solid description of what I thought of AXI’s policies, and I guess that I’m sort of writing myself into that corner here, I would say that AXI more closely resembles the blueprint for a linkshell than an actual linkshell itself. Imagine if you and some of your buddies got together and tried to think of a bunch of ideas on how to make a new linkshell with some fair policies. Whatever you came up with would probably be pretty close to how AXI runs. Of course, if you actually got around to running your new linkshell you’d find out that some things that you thought were good ideas are actually totally impractical and need to change, but you also had some new ideas that you didn’t think about until the need arose. You would modify your rules as you went along. AXI doesn’t really do that. Ever. It stubbornly sticks to its policies even after those policies have been proven to fail time and time again, and about the most modern content they do is Limbus (unless you count their relatively new Einherjar efforts, and it’s better for them if you don’t.)
Naturally, this pisses a lot of people off.
Whenever an AXI event goes horribly awry (Einherjar is the biggest offender here, but long gather times and a lack of direction also spawn this,) disparaging comments are made (privately, not on linkshell, of course) and each conversation has a pretty good likelihood to spiral into a full-blown “what everyone thinks of AXI these days” soapbox-fest. The majority of what people say isn’t overly positive. Round and round the conversation goes without any real course of action being decided. Nobody actually wants to leave AXI, yet most everyone agrees that things ain’t right in major ways.
Strangely, I am one of the most contented people in AXI. When I was on the verge of trying to steal as many AXI people as possible and form my own linkshell and that plan fell to pieces and I had to nod my head and at the forgiveness I was given, I made a policy about AXI that I have yet to significantly break. That policy is very simple: AXI is not my end-all, be-all linkshell. It is my dynamis / limbus / sky and sea farming / social linkshell. And that’s about it. When I set up my Nyzul group last fall, some people were from AXI and some were not. Same deal with my MMM farming. When AXI Einherjar proved itself completely broken forever, I joined an offshell group and have been very happy. I keep AXI in its little box and don't let it leave. I began to put more and more faith into small group activity by invite only rather than trying to get the sponsorship of a linkshell largely filled with people I don’t know and occasionally containing an absolute fuckup or two (or more) and put my event at risk. Generally, this policy has made me fairly satisfied.
Still, being who I am, I got curious enough to want to quantify people’s likes and dislikes, and so I administered a “short, unsolicited survey” to my closest AXI friends. The survey had a mere four questions, answered all in tells. I asked 8 people and then filled it out for myself, so 9 responses. I retyped it every time I gave it so the wording varied a little, but here’s the gist of it:
1) What is your favorite event that you do in FFXI?
2) What is your second favorite?
3) What event do you wish you could do in FFXI but, for whatever reason, do not?
4) What, if anything, bothers you about how AXI operates?
Do you have any closing remarks about events or AXI in general? Anything on your mind.
(please note: if you’re in AXI, consider yourself one of my friends, and didn’t get this survey, it’s nothing too personal. I basically just handed them out whenever I had a lull in my in-game action and also noticed someone else not doing something either. So if you kept yourself pretty busy the past few days or didn’t log on much, I didn’t get a chance to talk to you.)
Some people took this more seriously than others, particularly questions 3 and 4. I got some LOONG answers about number 4 from a couple people. You know who you are!
All responses were assured to be confidential, but I did notice some general trends. First, the good. The most popular event that people attended was Nyzul Isle Investigation - people that went to Nyzul seemed most satisfied with this event as far as general enjoyment went. Salvage was another big winner, with less people citing it as a favorite event but several others that went once or twice, never joined a group, and want to get into it more regularly. The most desired event that people did not do but wanted to, other than Salvage, was Einherjar (good Ein, not AXI Ein), followed by ZNMs. From then on down almost every single endgame event had at least one or two people that ranked it in the two two. Dynamis, Limbus, Sky and Sea gods, Land Kings and other HNMs, missions and quests, and even MMM had a few fans. Looking at the data as a whole it seems that the majority of the positive responses were from relatively simplistic activities that can be done with a small group, though there was a sizeable number that long for the bigger, more challenging fights… at least, as long as we don’t have to bot claim them.
Now, the bad. The complaints about AXI’s policies. Unlike events that fit very nicely into easy chunks, people’s opinions varied in specific complaints, but I tried my best to put them into general categories. By far far FAR the largest complaint about AXI’s policies, with a whopping 100% of the responses having to deal with this in some form or another, was about linkshell officer attitudes, generally other than the actual linkshell leader himself. Many people felt that the officers needed to “step up” and do more to actively run events by making sure everyone knew what to do during events. Another common complaint, directed at largely at one individual in particular that I will not name, was that certain officers were standoffish and rude. Other than officers, many people had similar things to say; people in the linkshell aren’t friendly or enthusiastic, major policies are beyond broken, and the ls bank is not being used for anything.
Raw data from the survey results:
Things people approve of:
Nyzul: 6
Salvage: 5
Einherjar: 3
Limbus: 3
Dynamis: 2
ZNM: 2
Land kings / other windowed NMs: 2
Missions: 2
MMM: 1
Campaign: 1
(Total of 27; 3 responses per person from the 3 questions * 9 total responses to the survey)
Things people don't approve of:
Officer indirection / attitude: 9
Lack of enthusiasm in linkshell events: 5
Overall leadership / policies regarding scheduling / item distribution: 5
LS bank black hole: 4
Lack of camaraderie / friendship between linkshell members: 3
AXI events don't interest me: 2
(Total is arbitrary, as some had more to say than others)
Before going much farther, I want to say that I don’t have any of the answers to our problems. Or rather, I have an answer to our problems that involves fixing none of the actual problems. As I stated above, I have been putting more and more of my faith into by-invite-only events. As of yet I have only set up relatively small events such as Nyzul or MMM runs, but with enough people I trust that are willing to do something, the sky really is the limit. People that helped me with my MMM farming runs have more than earned my gratitude, and if they want to put together an event that interests them, I’m more than willing to help out. This has already happened actually, as Shad and Cribe recently put together some box farming / SCNM fights. You can view the video here - rather boring easy fight, but it shows yours truly pretty prominently.
Where does a policy of inviting only people I trust to events and bypassing the ridiculous AXIP (AncientsXI points, a closed-auction point system that the ls uses to distribute some, but not all, of its items, completely ineffectual for reasons I’m not going to go into) in favor of a simplistic “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” honor system, where does that leave AXI? It leaves it right where it belongs - as a dynamis / limbus / sky and sea farming group. And nothing more. As they want it to be. I still go to events and give my fair share of effort, but don't expect me to baby fools that keep screwing up.
Distributing all of those surveys made people wonder if I was creating my own linkshell. I’m not. I’m still not. I simply don’t have to. To get what I want, I don’t need to become an officer in AXI and deal with any of the fools that got past the application screening system. I don’t need to clean up the shell or change our policies or inspire the masses or any of that crap. I don’t need to complete with AXI for events and manpower simply because AXI is both unwilling and incapable of competing with me. They have abandoned a lot of content entirely and all I need to do is simply find some people that are interested and go do it. I can set up my own events and work with other people that set up theirs. All of this is completely within the boundaries of the linkshell’s rules. It’s also completely against the spirit of an endgame linkshell as I can choose to invite some people but not others, but honestly, that sounds like a personal problem for them. Be less sucky and more nice next time, mm kay?
Let’s see. Where to start. The Kisa and I joint-run ALikelyStory Nyzul group is still around in some form or another so that takes care of the Nyzul desire. That leaves Salvage. I already decided that I’m going to start my own Salvage runs designed to compliment any other groups running in the linkshell when I get my Warrior to 75. It’s at 72 right now and growing steadily. There’s some interesting news there, but it can wait a few days for one of my bi-weekly “stuff I’ve been up to” updates. As for right now, the power is finally back and I can upload this entry and get a good night's rest.