Etiquette for partying with Japanese?

[Elayne]

I wasn't sure if I should hijack Reinheart's-NA-to-JP thread with my question. Ratatapa had a great comment there though, I'm curious what kind of advice Stanislav gave!

I do agree, that JP hated NA in FFXIV though

Usually (talking PUG wise) a NA joining a JP group, will usually get kicked 30sec in, unless he can prove, he can communicate. While a JP joining a NA, rarely get a problem.

Stanis helped me alot to get into JP group, like telling me how to act wiht them an all. So yeah JP are really different in their playstyle lol

Does Stanislav, Ratatapa, or anyone else have advice for partying with Japanese? I've made some faux pas in FFXI, not trying to be disrespectful; only out of ignorance.

Btw, I've been studying Japanese for a bit, and can understand simple sentences. (My main problem was that they would talk waay too fast in parties.)

FFXIV etiquette wasn't taught in-between transitive verbs and performing an action on a relative clause if you know what I mean! :D (Perhaps this will be less relevant this time around, as I'll likely be on an NA server. Still..)

Any replies here, or messages to me, are highly appreciated!
Thank you for your time.

[Stanislaw]

I wasn't sure if I should hijack Reinheart's-NA-to-JP thread with my question. Ratatapa had a great comment there though, I'm curious what kind of advice Stanislav gave!



Does Stanislav, Ratatapa, or anyone else have advice for partying with Japanese? I've made some faux pas in FFXI, not trying to be disrespectful; only out of ignorance.

Btw, I've been studying Japanese for a bit, and can understand simple sentences. (My main problem was that they would talk waay too fast in parties.)

FFXIV etiquette wasn't taught in-between transitive verbs and performing an action on a relative clause if you know what I mean! :D (Perhaps this will be less relevant this time around, as I'll likely be on an NA server. Still..)

Any replies here, or messages to me, are highly appreciated!
Thank you for your time.

Stanislaw, not Stanislav. =P

But anyway, in an effort to answer your question, I'm actually the wrong person to ask for advice when it comes to etiquette of partying with other JP players. To explain the reason why this is so, imagine this scenario: you have a friend who came from Japan who speaks little English, and he/she is asking you tips on how to speak the language. Unless you're someone who's studied English extensively as a subject, it's kind of hard to teach your friend on how because it's a skill that kind of comes to you naturally.

The same kind of thing applies here. For me, when it comes to partying with JP players it's something that comes to me naturally. I view it as simple common sense, but from foreign observers this apparently ain't so, and hence it's kind of hard for me to list off specific pointers. In Ratatapa's case, he was able to get by as I acted as the 'in-between' person between the NA and JP players by translating communications and strategies both ways and also giving Ratatapa some basic Japanese words to say so he wouldn't be completely alienated.

So, all I can offer as a tip is basically: try to make an effort in speaking Japanese. By approaching the JP players that way, they will try to reach back to you through their broken English and thus establishing a good middle ground of communication. That said, this isn't always the case, and there are of course people who will turn you down regardless of efforts, but just remember they're only human too.

Best of luck on your adventures.

[Kohan]

So, all I can offer as a tip is basically: try to make an effort in speaking Japanese. By approaching the JP players that way, they will try to reach back to you through their broken English and thus establishing a good middle ground of communication. That said, this isn't always the case, and there are of course people who will turn you down regardless of efforts, but just remember they're only human too.

As someone who is not ethnically Japanese, but who both properly studied the language and is in a long-term relationship with a near-fluent speaker/reader/writer, I can vouch for this approach. I unfortunately only learned to read and write Japanese vowels and a grabbag of various words, but I have no problem with romaji whatsoever. Considering, whenever I have partied with Japanese individuals, I have always formally greeted them, introduced myself, explained my handicapped ability to communicate in Japanese only with Roman characters, and joked with them about it a bit. We would go on to talk about our outdated knowledge of one another's languages, and discuss strategies using simple sentences, and so on, so forth.

I've never had the awful problems with JP players that others have spoken of. The worst thing I've ever been on the receiving end of is being ignored, and NA and EU players do that just as well. As long as you make the effort to communicate in a friendly manner, most people—being polite by nature—will respond in kind.

(And before anyone believes they were saying bad things about me in front of my face in Japanese, that's never happened—having a significant other who reads the language and often plays with you helps in determining that.)

EDIT: To provide a fun albeit embarrassing little side story: one of these people even sent me a Chocomilk on White Day (as my character is male). I appreciated the gesture, but explained myself to the individual afterward while deeply apologizing. I do not use gender-neutral terms to refer to myself anymore.

[Elayne]

Stanislaw, not Stanislav. =P

Gah! I'm sorry!

Thank you both very much!

[Sigmakan]

Show up in good/great gear, and try to communicate. Even if its just fragments of auto-trans and google translate, you can kinda figure out whats going on. Also, be an expert on the content you are about to do since there is no way they'll be able to explain every detail to you. In this way I've had some very successful PUGs w/ all JP parties for AV/CC/Garuda.

That being said, there will still be some JP PUGs that will instant boot you once they find out you cant speak japanese.

[Churchill]

Eh, event knowledge is probably the most important but that's also sort of misleading.

To get into the parties, I would basically respond to shouts and quickly google translate what was being said (and could recognize things eventually) and give them a quick response. I have no doubts they knew I was using google translate to communicate, but I think the figured that: he has a relic and he tried so fuck it.

Like, if you are a great player you can get by in JP parties by taking it a bit slow the first run and figuring out what they are doing, but in general they do their runs very differently than NA (as a standard) and as such don't always communicate that they are doing it differently because to them they are not. If you mess up, or are percieved to have messed up, or the run doesn't go so well and they know you aren't JP then you can probably expect to get kicked.

Sometimes they will discuss the run in broad strokes but that's more like, "We are grabbing berries in the first room and pulling lillies to the tunnel". AV being incredibly easy, that's pretty much all you need to know outside of following them around (outside of a 17m run) but CC can be a bit more difficult if all you get is "Ballad at Princess, SV at ants".

Further, a lot of JP players don't set foot in an actual (clear) run until they do practice runs for fear of wasting other peoples time by not being proficient at what they are doing. I found they pretty much all did the same thing in every dungeon with slight modifications based on time goals and experience level which is very different than NA because almost every group does it differently. To add to that, I found JP runs to be a lot more...timid, less focused on DPS race and more focused on doing each portion carefully.

I did a lot of 17m runs for gear with JP folks and don't think I ever got an actual 17m clear except for in AV when they were getting desperate so I tanked the run and showed them how to do it my (our) way. I only failed 25m runs a few times though, mainly due to Chimera being a pain in the ass the way they fight him. In general, JP players were much better prepared and easy to run with for pugs but I found the proficiency on the NA side to be much higher at the top of the spectrum. That doesn't really mean much unless you run with the same 8 people every day and never have to worry about pugs, if you do, then NA is probably the most nightmarish version of video game hell I can imagine.

PS the way JPs fight Chimera was retarded, did I mention that.

[Stanislaw]

Further, a lot of JP players don't set foot in an actual (clear) run until they do practice runs for fear of wasting other peoples time by not being proficient at what they are doing. I found they pretty much all did the same thing in every dungeon with slight modifications based on time goals and experience level which is very different than NA because almost every group does it differently. To add to that, I found JP runs to be a lot more...timid, less focused on DPS race and more focused on doing each portion carefully.

In general, JP players were much better prepared and easy to run with for pugs but I found the proficiency on the NA side to be much higher at the top of the spectrum. That doesn't really mean much unless you run with the same 8 people every day and never have to worry about pugs, if you do, then NA is probably the most nightmarish version of video game hell I can imagine.

I will throw in my two cents to say the above points were very true in FFXIV 1.0. It was very rare for me to see a different 'run strategy' done when I joined JP pickup groups, whereas the NA ones were... yeah. I'll just say that I haven't gotten a single successful dungeon clear in an pure NA pickup group.

One of my biggest regrets in 1.0 was the fact I never really got a good opportunity to run a dungeon with the higher-tiered NA players.

PS the way JPs fight Chimera was retarded, did I mention that.

Out of curiosity, how did JPs fight Chimera on your server? For us, it was 'throw BLMs at it'. I think I've only seen it meleed down once, and that was only during the period when they were still figuring out the strategies to down it quickly.

[Carraway]

I think I'd fought Chimera like seven different ways by the time 1.0 ended. First time I ran AV with a JP PUG, I almost had a panic attack because the party leader linked to maps on some Japanese blog with the route marked out in Japanese and I was playing BRD. After having done AV a thousand times a particular way with my shell, the entire thing was basically muscle memory so I fucked up a few times. But every time I fucked up, I apologized and owned up to my mistake, and they were okay with it since we still made it under 25 minutes. But as Churchill said, once Japanese players establish a safe and guaranteed way to do something, they will stick to their guns (excepting specific static groups/linkshells/etc.)

From my experience, if you're upfront about your lack of proficiency in Japanese but make an effort, most people will be receptive to that. I would recommend not relying too heavily on google translate to produce responses because it makes it kind of awkward when they realize that you can't actually speak Japanese. Otherwise, it's just general etiquette taken to a different level.

[Hiroishime]

Eh, event knowledge is probably the most important but that's also sort of misleading.

To get into the parties, I would basically respond to shouts and quickly google translate what was being said (and could recognize things eventually) and give them a quick response. I have no doubts they knew I was using google translate to communicate, but I think the figured that: he has a relic and he tried so fuck it.

Like, if you are a great player you can get by in JP parties by taking it a bit slow the first run and figuring out what they are doing, but in general they do their runs very differently than NA (as a standard) and as such don't always communicate that they are doing it differently because to them they are not. If you mess up, or are percieved to have messed up, or the run doesn't go so well and they know you aren't JP then you can probably expect to get kicked.

This is basically what i did with my limited JP language, I would google translate stuff, took time to understand half of the sentence means after translated such as "IF TRUE" "GALL TRUE" "MOGUMOGU", but eventually i came around understanding their content terms without translating and just join as soon as i recognized what it means because JP PUG fills up really really fast.

Oh also, back in v1.0 most JP PUG uses the recruitment system and there is zero need to send them /tell beforehand, if you do send tell first, they will knows right away you are a foreigner because JPs doesnt send tells from my experience unless they explicitly ask you to send /tell in their shout, this custom should carry over later with duty finder too.

I will not join a JP PUG unless i have clear knowledge of beating the content or only if they clearly state its a practice party, because one mistake they will starts asking you tons of questions and if you couldn't answer or understand what they wants to do, then you risk being kicked. Some JP are more flexible towards english speaker, some are not, so eh.

However alot of JP on Gungnir server was very nice towards NA or at least towards me because i established reputation in JP PUG by joinin shitton of it due to my timezone and most of their PUG PT is amazing, did alot of AV/CC17run with them (Yes, they do run differently but it's easy to adapt if you are familiar with entire dungeon's mechanic. Like eating fruit in AV wasn't really done in NA parties until i show my LS it is actually alot safer and you can still get 17min regardless), also got 3 of my relic with PUG extreme ifrit lol, 1 being a practice PT.

[Churchill]

They would fight Chimera by running to it and doing Rampart, then the PLD would pull it back to where you entered and they would get at max casting range (22?forget) to Chimeras right and nuke/heal from there. I didn't like this spot because it put the PLD out of range of the healers very easily, and I hate dodging voice - especially when going for speed runs and the game is laggy. If I'm doing pure BLM, I'd much rather leave Chimera where he is (on the trap) and setup at 12.5 behind him and just get pulled in and risk dying that way. At least in that way, one person dies and you can tonic/raise. When you dodge voice it tends to kill everyone if it kills anyone.

[Elcura]

They would fight Chimera by running to it and doing Rampart, then the PLD would pull it back to where you entered and they would get at max casting range (22?forget) to Chimeras right and nuke/heal from there. I didn't like this spot because it put the PLD out of range of the healers very easily, and I hate dodging voice - especially when going for speed runs and the game is laggy. If I'm doing pure BLM, I'd much rather leave Chimera where he is (on the trap) and setup at 12.5 behind him and just get pulled in and risk dying that way. At least in that way, one person dies and you can tonic/raise. When you dodge voice it tends to kill everyone if it kills anyone.

We did Chimera like this most of the time and it went well except for when people don't know how to dodge (which is usually everyone at first). Just gotta keep checking the eyes of the dragon, because as long as it is red you were safe from voice. I didn't realise this was a JP strategy because it worked very well for us though it does explain why when we had random JP people in our group they did well enough lol

[Cichy]

Dont have to worry about any of this anymore since all JP's will go to JP servers

[Laelani]

Do I need to sign into a Japanese Sony Entertainment Account to be able to type Japanese on the PS3 in FFXIV? Or can I just simply change the language on my current PSN account? lol

[Buffy]

Do I need to sign into a Japanese Sony Entertainment Account to be able to type Japanese on the PS3 in FFXIV? Or can I just simply change the language on my current PSN account? lol

How does this in any way have to do with etiquette for partying with the JP?

Questions like this are probably best asked in the random question thread, FYI.

[Laelani]

How does this in any way have to do with etiquette for partying with the JP?

Questions like this are probably best asked in the random question thread, FYI.

You should see how off-topic some other threads can get. Anyway:

So, all I can offer as a tip is basically: try to make an effort in speaking Japanese.

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Found my answer anyway, thanks