The Chocobo Circuit (08/21/2007)

[LD]

Odds are we wont know of any new job stuff until the update day. They wont just ignore Pit and it's next week.

Burrow & Bore add items to the digging pool, which upsets most diggers (as I understand it), because that makes it harder for them to dig up the higher priced items in a reasonable amount of time (digs). If a raised chocobo used fewer or no greens or could dig up rare items more reliably than a rental, that would be something diggers would actually raise one for.

[Kuya]

I've got sand in my boots.

[Zilong]

I've got sand in my boots.

You got gravel'd

[Rocl]

I've got sand in my boots.

There's a snake in my boots!

[Priran]

I've got sand in my boots.

There's a snake in my boots!

Someone's poisoned the waterhole!

[Zilong]

I've got sand in my boots.

There's a snake in my boots!

Someone's poisoned the waterhole!

Must be the jews

[Elcura]

I've got sand in my boots.

There's a snake in my boots!

How does 1 snake get in both boots?

[Priran]

How does 1 snake get in both boots?

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/6...4296863sd0.jpg

wizards

[Kuya]

Xena looks remarkably like Cher.

[Retrieving/C.D/Searain]

The only fix Chocobo Raising really needs is making Chocobos superior to rentals. Run Faster. Dig better (maybe a mechanic where they don't always consume greens when you dig.) I'm pretty sure a FC Endurance lasts longer than a rental by about 5 minutes.

Chocobo raising would be much better if the actual raising process was worth a shit and you could be successful at taking up a 3x or 4x stats choco without having to rely on grinding completely uninteractive, mind-numbingly repetitive and predictable, exhaustingly-long and utterly boring cutscenes all day, for 100 days in a row, until you've made 2 millions gil worth of chocobucks to dump into your doped steed.

I find insulting that in order to cap my chocobo's attributes (even if I was starting off a thoughtfully raised chocobo brought forth by generations of careful breeding) dealing with such a ridicolous activity, which is just a lame time sink made of vaporware that doesn't involve strategy or require any knowledge whatsoever, is pretty much mandatory and constitutes 90% of the time and efforts you'd dedicate to your chicken. Fk that and don't get me started on the chocolixirs scam, at least they've capped them to 1 per day.

[Enciel]

has anyone done up a materials estimate on what it takes to make a perfect bird (like, x stacks of carrots, y cupid worms, etc.)? I've wanted to make one for a while but I'd like to have an idea of what I'm signing up for first, and most guides don't really give specific details in terms of time to raise or gross food consumption.

Depending on how well you plan to feed your chocobo (complete feeding would entail depleting it's energy every day of the 60-some days for a "starving" status the next day) it can take around 13 stacks of carrots and a few stacks of greens. I have yet to determine if feeding carrots after stat lock continues to improve stats on a chocobo but if it does then you'd need to double that number. I know that 80 chocobuck stat raises do work after stat lock (it takes about 6-7 raises for one stat increase). It is possible to have a chocobo with the same stats as an elite NPC racing bird, the best of which is InvicibleLeg (1st/Imp/Avg/Avg) by combining perfect care plans as well as good nutrition and chocobo stat plans. My personal bird was able to reach (1st/1st/Avg/Sub) and was just shy of reaching a bit deficient receptivity before retirement. In both cases it seems that the stats capped out at what I'd refer to as 22 level points (if First class counts as 8 points) so there may be a hard cap for bird stats that requires you to choose which categories you want to max out etc. For a bird with to cap speed traits it is imperative that you start off with physical rather than mental plans during the first half or rearing due to certain stats not rising at the same rate as others (hi2u endurance).

Personally I'm quite happy with the circuit update and I want to see if any other breeders were able to surpass the NPC bird stats. Also depending on the racing pool of chocobos (either 8 birds as in NPC races or 8 > as SE described the event as ballista-like) it may be easier or harder to stack races for betting. Having 2 birds with high stats in a pool or retarded slow birds would obviously favour the high stat birds for 1st/2nd place finishes so a coordination between breeders may be useful. Either way I'm betting on my own bird for the win

[Seigfried Of Pandy]

This isnt huge news but its still cool nonetheless, dont expect it to be a big thing but hopefully as someone said it at least devlops a small community instead of dying out.
Dont know why theres so much bitching though , we know the job adjustments are coming, sure maybe it would have made more sense to have gone with chocobo-->2h weapons. really doesnt matter to me though, not like knowing about it in advance will really matter. the patch comes when it comes and by then we will know everything.

[LD]

Chocobo raising would be much better if the actual raising process was worth a shit and you could be successful at taking up a 3x or 4x stats choco without having to rely on grinding completely uninteractive, mind-numbingly repetitive and predictable, exhaustingly-long and utterly boring cutscenes all day, for 100 days in a row, until you've made 2 millions gil worth of chocobucks to dump into your doped steed.

I find insulting that in order to cap my chocobo's attributes (even if I was starting off a thoughtfully raised chocobo brought forth by generations of careful breeding) dealing with such a ridicolous activity, which is just a lame time sink made of vaporware that doesn't involve strategy or require any knowledge whatsoever, is pretty much mandatory and constitutes 90% of the time and efforts you'd dedicate to your chicken. Fk that and don't get me started on the chocolixirs scam, at least they've capped them to 1 per day.

Most of what you said would make sense if chocobo raising didn't take 10 minutes, at most, out of your day (not to mention that you can now skip each and every daily status CS.) Your interpretation of interactivity must be different from mine, since you technically don't have to feed it, take it for walks, plan and manage its development, and generally just keep it entertained, but you have to if you want to make it grow. They could have had the bird run behind you in real time, ala pet, but that would be even more of a time sink, now wouldn't it? Considering it was designed around the idea that people didn't want to waste too much time on it, I think it has a fair amount of interactivity.

A good racing chocobo also needs Discernment, not just racing abilities. You only get either on a physical chocobo if you have a decent understanding of how far your chocobo will grow on it's current plan and when would be best to change it. That's about as much information and strategy anything else in this game takes. Also, Chocolixirs are more than once a day if you don't feed it much before hand.

The only problem MOST people have with the system is the low effort to reward ratio, not the effort itself.

[BRP]

The most annoying this about Chocobo Breeding was feeding the bird 3 times. Now they fixed that, it's golden. Well, yeah, it would be nice if you could at least get one tier of speed above renting chocobos and perhaps "smart" birds get more use or multiple items during races to make up for their lack of physical stats.

[Septimus]

Chocobo raising would be much better if the actual raising process was worth a shit and you could be successful at taking up a 3x or 4x stats choco without having to rely on grinding completely uninteractive, mind-numbingly repetitive and predictable, exhaustingly-long and utterly boring cutscenes all day, for 100 days in a row, until you've made 2 millions gil worth of chocobucks to dump into your doped steed.

I find insulting that in order to cap my chocobo's attributes (even if I was starting off a thoughtfully raised chocobo brought forth by generations of careful breeding) dealing with such a ridicolous activity, which is just a lame time sink made of vaporware that doesn't involve strategy or require any knowledge whatsoever, is pretty much mandatory and constitutes 90% of the time and efforts you'd dedicate to your chicken. Fk that and don't get me started on the chocolixirs scam, at least they've capped them to 1 per day.

Most of what you said would make sense if chocobo raising didn't take 10 minutes, at most, out of your day (not to mention that you can now skip each and every daily status CS.) Your interpretation of interactivity must be different from mine, since you technically don't have to feed it, take it for walks, plan and manage its development, and generally just keep it entertained, but you have to if you want to make it grow. They could have had the bird run behind you in real time, ala pet, but that would be even more of a time sink, now wouldn't it? Considering it was designed around the idea that people didn't want to waste too much time on it, I think it has a fair amount of interactivity.

A good racing chocobo also needs Discernment, not just racing abilities. You only get either on a physical chocobo if you have a decent understanding of how far your chocobo will grow on it's current plan and when would be best to change it. That's about as much information and strategy anything else in this game takes. Also, Chocolixirs are more than once a day if you don't feed it much before hand.

The only problem MOST people have with the system is the low effort to reward ratio, not the effort itself.

I believe that he was referring to spamming races so you could get enough chocobucks to raise your bird's mind categories with the 80 chocobouck trainings. (Since there is no effective way to raise all 4 stats at once.)

So, you want to do an 80 chocobuck training everday. Spamming the the free runs, let us presume that you will get a 3 chocobuck return per run. (Averaging out 5 for first place, 3 for second place, 1 for third or fourth place, eventhough the average would probably be closer to 2.5 chocobucks per race.) That would mean you would have to run 26.67 races per day (or 32 if the 2.5 number is closer) to get 80 chocobucks. Since the free runs increase in price to a cap of 1000 gil, you would spend 22,550 gil a day (or 29550 if the 2.5 number is closer) for each training. It takes approximately 6-8 trainings to raise an attribute by one, so if you want to get "Better than Average" Discernment, you will need to do the 80 Chocobuck training 24 to 32 times, with a cost of 541,200 to 721,600 gil (or 709,200 to 945600 gil if the 2.5 number is closer), and in this economy it is utterly ridiculous. Not to mention all of the time put into doing 27 to 32 races per day, that is a whole lot of effort put into nothing.

[LD]

No, I WASN'T really listening to him. Skimmed that shit like Milk. Wanna fight about it?

I contend that even if races were more cost effective or entertaining, most people wouldn't play as many as they needed because it would still take the same amount of time.

In any event, we already know that player races will fix the problem of predictability and that, in turn, might also help with the strategy problem (items will have a point, pace setting may become relevant.) Nothing will fix the interactivity unless SE finally caves and redesigns the enitre system. We can only hope that player races will yield better rewards, but I believe that's pretty likely; If you can bet nearly 100k on a race (and Odds can boost that to much more), the jockey reward has to be at least respectable in gil and chocobucks. Plus, H&C will be adding chocobuck rewards, so there will be yet another source for them.