Fenrir Ballista: Do You Have What It Takes? :3

For those of you who already live on Fenrir and sit in Jeuno, you probably have seen my ballista shouts! Though Fenrir currently has an active ballista community, the majority of participants are overwhelmingly JP. The reason for this thread (and my shouts) is to encourage those who are interested in ballista, to join in, and those who are interested or curious, to give it a shot. For those of you who’ve played FFXI but don’t know what ballista is, I’ll sum it up as form of PvP that requires strategic play, teamwork, and proficiency in order to play well. In the official matches, players receive “ballista points” and “chevrons” (a medal that accrues from ranking in matches) after they score “petra” into “rooks.”

Condition of Fenrir’s ballista

A few months prior to the establishment of our LS, ballista was practically non-existent, if anything, sparse. Our linkshell is home to players of all skill levels as it’s initial purpose was to bring back Fenrir’s ballista. At first, I was skeptical that this linkshell would even survive one day, let alone one week - but thus far, the LS & matches have been doing well and ballista has been revived! It’s “revival” doesn’t just exist within our LS, but as well as two JP shells, random participants, and cross-server transfers. Ballista has definitely been more lively than it’s been for a long time.

BallistaSession

Our linkshell consists of many many members that live in different time zones and have different play styles as well as skill levels. We have over forty members, though the number of players who wish to play competitively are a smaller number within the LS. Consider our LS a gateway and introduction to ballista for those who are interested/have never played a match before, and a bigass ocean to practice and play with all types of fishies for those who want to play competitively.

The distinction between casual and competitive play for me depends on how “serious” a player wants to take ballista. Not that casual play is bad or that playing “just for fun” is bad either - Ballista is a nice break from FFXI even if you have a very tight schedule or you’re bored with the other aspects of FFXI. Competitive play involves commitment and great lengths of practice, though not everyone is willing to dedicate so much time. That being said, whether you’re fresh to ballista or a seasoned player, we have quite a nice variety of people to play and practice with.

Due to the recent outstanding growth of the JP ballista community, we’re trying to set up matches with the JP in the diorama. The general mindset of the NA ballista player tends to differ from the JP player, so learning from each other would be most productive by practicing.

How to join?
Messaging me on FFXI, Guildwork, e-mail, FFXIAH, youtube - Gah, whatever you want to do is fine. :’3 I check everything and I get excited when I see something ballista-related. Even if you’re just curious, bored with VW, sitting in Jeuno/staring at your moogle, don’t be shy! For those of you who wish to play competitively with us, contact me and I’ll be able to give you a bigger run down of uh, us. Not from this server? No problem. :c

FAQ:

★ Who are you and why should I listen to you? Are you a ballista god or something?
You don’t have to listen to me. :< I’ve read many threads and conversations about ballista and people reply as if it’s something extremely controversial. I understand it’s not for everybody and by no means am I forcing it onto anybody - I’ll try to answer serious questions or doubts as sincerely as possible, but I’m not interested in having an argument with “ballista haters.”

I’m not a ballista god because I require too much coaching, and I’m not a spokesperson for every ballista player out there. This post is to generally inform and update players who have an interest, of our current ballista situation. I enjoy ballista a lot so I’d like to share the enjoyment with others who are willing, and I always love seeing our community expand.

★ PvP is just a slaughterhouse, you just hit people, kill or get killed. It’s stupid.
One of the most common misconceptions about ballista is that it’s a pure murderfest. I repeat again, actual ballista requires strategy, skill, and teamwork. There are many meticulous details in ballista besides the basic understanding of what PvP generally is. Yes, the basic idea is to quarry for petra and score by throwing the petra into rooks. While this seems simple enough, faced with a good opposing team while a player has a “kill kill kill” mindset, this basic concept will prove to be a difficult task.

★ PvP is for n00bs because they can’t do other things in game.
We have our “newbies” and our “pros” in ballista as well, like in any other part of the game. I don’t see why someone can’t enjoy endgame or getting good gear while enjoying ballista as well. I’ve also seen good-geared braggarts spew neverending diarrhea from their mouths about ballista being easy, but when faced with good players, frustration and denial usually ensue after their losses.


★ Do I get any rewards besides the meaninglessly small EXP and gil at the end?
Chevrons
If a player does well and makes it on the leaderboard at the end of the match, s/he can sign up and perhaps receive a chevron. Chevrons accumulate over time and are ranked as: gold, silver, bronze, and job. Every time you /check a player in ballista, you will be able to see how many chevrons they’ve received. It’s not really a material reward - just a nice way to keep track of how many medals you’ve received.

Fun?! Omgwat
Having FUN is probably the biggest reward from ballista. Like any other linkshell and any other event, we have people that actually talk, not ballista robots. You are able to work with a team while incorporating your playstyle on your job to fit your team’s needs. Ultimately, we are paying for a video game to entertain us. Ballista is very different from the rest of FFXI, so it’s a good relief from endless VW, Abyssea parties, farming, etc.

Reputation
Within any community is a reputation. If ballista is important to you, you would be mindful of the reputation you hold within your community. Having a good reputation for example, will probably yield more friends and connections that would only add to your motivation and fun. A good player will be recognized as a good player and most of the time, we play a game with the hopes of progressing to become "somebody," not just a lowly noob with no friends that's hated by everybody.

If any questions are left unanswered, please do post them! This thread is meant to be generally informative, so if you have more specific questions, feel free to reply as well. &for those of you who noticed, the bullets for the FAQ are stars. I'm obsessed with that star. v__v

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( LINKS ! )
★ BallistaSession Guildwork
★ BallistaSession Thread
★ BallistaRevolution (Carbuncle/Lakshmi) -
a very informative ballista blog involving more competitive play.

I wish you and your LS good luck! Nevermind the haters!

I wish you luck, it sounds really fun and is a very neat cause/turn of events.


On a side note;
How prevalent is speed-hacking use, and JA0wait? That was one of the things that led to the decline of large group matches on Phoenix.

I assume people are blackballed, but it was/is a nightmare and really was/is an issue.
In addition to. . . other, things.

I don't think we've had any problems with people hacking, the people i know have access to such tools always assured me that they were off for the matches, and i don't think anybody has noticed anything to suggest otherwise.

So i'd say it's none existant, and hopefully won't be proved wrong anytime soon @.@

Flippantly running across a zone at flee speed is one thing, but the design of the tools is such that they are hard to detect, otherwise they would not be so prevalent (and nearly all of us would be banned), or utilized by so many as you said.

Stuttering to remove animation/after spell immobility is quite simple the best way to tell is with particle effects.


That being said, again I wish you the best of fortune.

I use to Ballista on Fenrir when it was THE Ballista server all the time before and after the lv increase, til lv 90. And there use to always be good matches(10v10) for awhile then I stopped Ballista and FF for RL.I heard it started to die down after lv 95-99 release because ppl been focusing on gears and there upgrades ectect. Since its been awhile now, have people been returning to Ballista? I also heard people left for Carbuncle and other servers... But it would be nice to know how Fenrir is going.

@Urteil; I'll give you some justification on why I don't think our Fenrir's ballistars are keen to hacking, to add onto our previous conversation.

You brought up a great point about hacking because of high stakes. Even though your competition was to encourage ballista participation, there was a large sum of gil involved; especially if the person offering the reward is highly at what he does, participants would then be more suspect to hacking.

Luckily, I didn't need to offer any gil or items to get people to play. When I /sh, a few people who aren't regulars tend to come, even if it's for just one match. That being said, the stakes aren't really that high, because we don't offer "material" rewards.

You asked me if our community was close, and I'd surely say it is. Since we have one predominant NA shell, we pretty much know each other/talk to each other. We have a friendly relationship besides a simple "team. ballista. talk-to. finish. done" sort of thing. We also have a small connection with the JP shells, though we're a little limited because I fail my race and culture. I doubt that the JP are hacking either because most of the more loyal members to ballista are reputable.

Our ballista community isn't actually too small. Our matches range can reach 16v16s (or 14v14s, idr) on a regular OM day that lands on JP and NA times. Before, it was actually a hassle to even get a 3v3 match to uh, happen. We've had a ton of transfers too, so I'm really excited to see what everyone has to bring to Fenrir. It's actually really exciting. I squeal whenever I get a /tell about ballista.

Hello! I left FFXI at the time of Fenrir's peak and came back to ballista's ultimate decline.

At the start of ballista's revival about three months ago, I was surprised to see many people sending me /tells and telling me that they were interested. Started off with 3v3s that would sometimes happen or not. Recently, ballista has been consistent - usually 3 matches per week (1 match = 3 OMS, Jugner, Pashow, Meriphataud, USUALLY). Diorama happens more often now as well, so time isn't too much of a constraint.

Carbuncle came back to Fenrir. :l

But all in all, Fenrir's doing well. I'm posting this because even if we have a lot people, we still don't have "enough" if you'd like to put our NA numbers in comparison with JP. The JP numbers are overwhelming. So the current ballista situation is: we're doing well, but I'd like more participation from English speakers, more specifically, NA.