Two years of chocobo racing

Crystal Stakes (C1) results

Time period	1st place	2nd place	3rd place	4th or lower	TOTAL
Period of angst	98	78	24	15	215
Period of relative prosperity	52	28	11	3	94
Since Chocobo Circuit changes	40	24	9	6	79
Since March 2010 update	5	4	5	1	15
	195	134	59	25	413

I made some gil. How about you?

The (chocobo) racing silks

I would consider this scraping the bottom of the barrel, but let's run with it for now.

I never cared about chocobo digging, as someone who hasn't even gotten around to getting all the chocographs for Hot and Cold, but anecdotes about the effect of the blue racing silks, which " enhance chocobo digging endurance," indicate that they dramatically increase the total yield above the usual maximum of 100 items per zone. The sky blue silks, which are supposed to "enhance chocobo digging skill," can give the message "Your chocobo appears to have gained valuable knowledge from this discovery" after a successful dig, but it is unclear to me whether any chocobo digging skill-ups come with that. The blue silks seem like the better value for chocobo digging.

As for Hot and Cold itself, the white and black silks give one additional digging attempt and "increase Jackpot chance," respectively. Since hitting the jackpot allegedly can only occur when your chocobo is "especially sharp today," the white ones would seem to be a better value. I myself have observed that you can receive another digging attempt when your chocobo is "especially energetic," so this status and the white silk effect are not mutually exclusive.

The green racing silks are supposed to "enhance chocobo caring ability," which sounds like it could decrease the amount of energy depleted from both care plans and active care. However, chocobo raising is not something I would expect anyone to do indefinitely, so this doesn't sound like a really good value. Besides, you can raise a maxed-out chocobo with minimal expenditure and attention anyway.

The last three racing silks pertain to a chocobo's speed (how fast it goes) and riding time. It seems as though the orange silks would increase riding time by 10 minutes for both rental and personal chocobos, which is not very useful. Rental chocobos last 30 minutes and personal chocobos with maximum endurance are supposed to last up to 45 minutes. (I'm sure it has been shown but it's something easy enough for me to test, so I will just say "supposed to" until I check it out.) If the orange silks can be shown to increase riding time by 10 minutes for both max-END personal chocobos and rentals, then what about the red silks, which have the vague description "extends riding time"?

Finally, the purple racing silks, which I bought sight unseen because I like purple, are supposed to increase the movement speed of your personal chocobo. From FFXIwiki, which provides a convenient chart showing how levels of STR and END for personal chocobos correspond to movement speed and riding time, respectively, max-STR chocobos are only +95% faster than character running speed, compared to rentals, which again run as fast as Flee.

There is at least one account indicating that a max-STR personal chocobo with the purple silks is as fast as a rental chocobo, although I'm not sure how you can really ensure that your chocobos are lined up so that they run exactly parallel. My own extremely informal testing indicates that my personal chocobo with or without the silks covered approximately the same distance in approximately the same amount of time (about 32 seconds) as a rental, accounting for positioning error and 1-second precision. If the purple silks actually work, sure, why not use them. Again, I just got them because they were pretty.

Overall, the silks corresponding to chocobo digging and Hot and Cold seem to be the most economical uses of 150 chocobucks. To the extent that you do chocobo digging, you want to optimize your yield, and for Hot and Cold, you want to minimize failure. The other ones, not so much, but if you like the colors, go for it.

The Chocobo Circuit changes

C1 frequency: C1 races are held every other hour, with the registration period starting 45 minutes after odd hours for Japan time and Eastern Standard Time. This means that the number of C1 races per day has increased from 9 to 12, C2 races from 15 to 24, and C3 races from 24 to 36. Also, it is much more convenient to register for a C1 race because the registration periods are distributed uniformly throughout the day.

So far, the sequence of alternating C1 and C2 races has held. Also, the chocobuck rewards for C1 races have increased to 120, 100, and 80 for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, respectively. (I have not verified these myself though.) The chocobucks were also increased for C2-C4.

The obvious consequence of this chocobuck change is that, if you win around 50% of your races on average, you will pretty much never have to farm chocobucks ever again, barring an unlucky streak of finishes 4th place or worse, and you'll be swimming in chocobucks, which would give you the incentive to use them on things other than entry fees for Chocobo Circuit (raising another chocobo, even selling items).

Now if only FFXI could "die" some more so that there are fewer Japanese players doing races...

A cynic's view of the Chocobo Circuit changes

Edit: whoops, major mistake fixed.

I'm kind of surprised that there will be changes to the Chocobo Circuit schedule in the next "major" version update, among other things. Given the skeleton crew assigned to FFXI, you have to wonder if there is any sense of priority. On the other hand, there should no longer be any surprise that SE tends to play up features that hold limited interest, at best, among the "player base" in the lead-up.

For those of you who choose not to spend time racing a chocobo in the Circuit (actually spending time earning enough in entry fees actually to be able to enter your chocobo in the races), here is an overview of what I think the stated changes actually mean:

Bigger Rewards. The amount of chocobucks rewarded to first, second, and third place winners in chocobo racing will be significantly increased.

What it actually means: They obviously forgot to mention the part where the entry fees to chocobo racing rise accordingly. Given SE's penchant for parsimony, the end result is that it will take more time to accumulate enough chocobucks to race, not less time.

Revised Race Schedule. The Chocobo Circuit schedule has undergone a full review. ...

Comment: What do you expect? Their tendency is toward being even more tight-fisted. Any careful consideration (to the extent that there actually was a "full review") is done only to ensure that any changes don't make things inadvertently easier on players.

... The C2 Chocobo Race and C1 Crystal Stakes will be held with greater frequency, and races will take place at the same time each Earth day, making it easier for players to participate than ever before.

Comment: To understand the potential implications, you have to understand how C2 and C1 races are handled under the current schedule. (You may review the details of the August 2007 update that introduced the Chocobo Circuit.)

Currently, all C1 and C2 races are handled by the blue NPC. Either C1 or C2 occurs every hour, but there are only three consecutive C1 races in an 8-hour cycle, or nine in a 24-hour cycle (with the remaining being C2). Furthermore, the sequence of C1 and C2 races follows a pattern such that there are only two C1 races that occur every day, with the third C1 race occurring every other day in its time slot (alternating with C2).

Moreover, the registration period for each C1 (C2) race is only 15 minutes, starting 15 minutes before the hour and about 35 minutes before the actual race. Also, the registration procedure is handled such that up to six PC chocobos can enter a given race, apparently, yet you, the registrant, are completely blind as to how many PC chocobos are currently registered or will eventually register, not to mention blind as to whether the scrub chocobos MegaFlare or LunarHarvester are actually in the race (they always occupy lanes 1 and/or 2). Chocobo racing seems to be fairly popular, relatively speaking, in the JP community (although sheer numbers of Japanese, given that the "market share" of FFXI is predominantly the Japanese market, provide another plausible explanation), so that it's pretty rare, especially during JP prime time, to be in a race that is completely uncontested. (That is no guarantee that you'll win, though.) Therefore, chocobo races end up being a zero-sum game where the first two finishers have net positive earnings (accounting for entry fees) while the rest are totally fucked. (Imagine how it is when there are six PC chocobos registered...)

Also, you are only allowed to register for a race only if at least 24 hours have passed since the last time you registered. Yes, this is the same kind of player-unfriendly time-limit feature that manifests with Dynamis, Limbus, and Einherjar also occurs with chocobo racing. So you can see how the combination of limited C1 races, small registration windows, competition among the JPs (at least on Fenrir), and time limits to registration makes chocobo "racing" generally pretty annoying, but I can deal with it.

Now, regarding the changes, the allegation is that C2 and C1 races will be held with greater frequency. The red NPC, which currently handles only C4 races (yes, C4 races, which have trivial rewards, are held twice an hour currently), will now handle C2 and C3 races, meaning that C3 races may occur twice an hour now.

It will probably be the case that the frequency of C1 races will be cut while the frequency of C2 races will increase, so that SE can technically be correct by saying that "C2 and C1 races will be held with greater frequency" while looking like the asshole Scrooges they are.

New Rewards. The dashing racing silks dutifully worn by jockeys will be added to the list of reward items obtainable in exchange for chocobucks. With each color offering unique beneficial effects for its wearer, there is bound to be something for every chocobo fan!

Comment: Honestly, this is kind of a nice perk and not unexpected, but I wouldn't be surprised if they made the body (and legs?) 500 chocobucks apiece with the benefits being completely incommensurate with the cost (and I don't mean there's going to be movement speed +12% on them).

Stay tuned to see if I should issue a mea culpa after tomorrow.

I suppose I should mention my chocobo racing record since I'm talking about it. I actually had a nice run going, actually approaching the 50% win rate at 149/299. Of course, I dropped my 300th race (second), which initiated an eight-race losing streak (including two 3rd place finishes and coming in second in both uncontested races) that was snapped today, so I now sit at 150-106-35-17. Starting with my 9- or 10-race winning streak (I forget which) earlier in the year, my record since then is 52-28-11-2, for a 56% win rate, which isn't that bad for a server that seems more competitive than others.

Retaliation

The warrior job ability Retaliation (level 60) is something I rarely use outside Nyzul (for bosses), so I was curious about how frequently it activates. This is something I would probably have a good idea about just from doing Campaign... if I actually did Campaign. Of course, FFXIclopedia's article is not much help as to what actually affects this frequency (there seems to be variability based on something else other than neglecting to reactivate Retaliation), so I went looking for any sort of data elsewhere.

From wiki.ffo.jp, apparently it is thought that Retaliation rate is based on weapon delay, from 20% at 999 delay to 50% at 200 delay, subject to further verification. (At least this is what I gleaned from Google Translate.)

As for data to support that kind of trend, so far I found one source that describes the results of dual wielding Brass Jadagna +1 (334 delay) and Caduceus (216 delay). Indeed, it is not immediately obvious whether Retaliation, in a dual wield context, is dependent only on the main weapon or based on total delay. The results indicate that Retaliation rate depends only on the main weapon:

Brass Jadagna +1 (main)/Cauduceus (sub): 71/244 (.291) with 95% confidence interval (0.2347960, 0.3523304)

Caduceus (main)/Brass Jadagna +1 (sub): 110/241 (.456) with 95% confidence interval (0.3923515, 0.5215964)

I would assume the experiment was done with Retaliation constantly active, at maximum hit rate (95%), and the Retaliation rate is not dependent on mob's melee attack speed and level (to account for the possibility that there were different mobs involved). Even more important, I would assume the rates were estimated by taking the ratio of Retaliation procs over the number of times being hit.

If these assumptions actually hold, then Retaliation frequency does appear to depend on the main weapon delay only, not the total delay from both weapons. The higher delay weapon, Brass Jadagna +1, had a significantly lower rate than the lower delay weapon, Caduceus. It is not clear whether dual wielding would be any different from using a 2-handed weapon, but I don't see why there would be a difference.

Chocobo update: winning streak ended at 10; have won 12 of the last 13 (7 uncontested). Record is 111-79-24-15.

Milestones

Somehow I managed to update sporadically this testament to a lack of priorities for almost one year. To be honest, I wrote foremost for myself so I didn't really bother to spend much time making these entries easily digestible for a wider audience. In particular, I found an excuse to apply some basic probability and statistics to FFXI, the playing of which is also a testament to a lack of priorities and extremely poor taste. On the other hand, I did try to focus my attention on the mechanics of the game so that these entries would have some informative value--at least some people thought so--instead of being just some masturbatory self-chronicle.

I would really like to maintain this conceit, anyway, but there is not much of an empirical mentality among the so-called playerbase to provide persuasive support for any theories that are developed or serendipitously discover non-trivial things about how the game works. Maybe some dead-enders take great pride in running their mouths without putting their bullshit to the test, but I find legitimizing claims with real data and observations to be far more interesting. I thought about turning this blog into a "digest" of sorts to summarize both new and old findings and give credit to the individuals that shed some light on some aspect of game mechanics, but actually it is just too tiresome to comb forums with crap search functions and garbage "intellects" for shiny nuggets of insight. So I will just continue talking about things that interest me enough to commit to blog, even though the posting frequency based on that criterion will be very low.

Anyway, this wasn't supposed to be just some navel-gazing exercise. Instead of making individual posts for the following topics, none of which really warrants standalone status, I decided to throw them all into a single entry.

Thoughts on Aspir

I managed to finish collecting some data to check the effect of Pluto's Staff and magic accuracy +12 on the potency of Aspir and updated the dot plot:

I think it's safe to say that INT or magic accuracy (MAB too, based on tarblm's results) have no role in the potency of Aspir (and by analogy, Drain). Note that I am not bothering with statistics and just arguing informally that none of MAB, macc, and INT increased the maximum in these samples.

As far as accuracy is concerned, that is much more inconvenient to check. The main purpose of my collecting data was to visualize the distribution of Aspir values. It seems here that the range of possible values of unresisted Aspir is fairly wide. The low values of Aspir observed may also be the result of a half-resist, which may cut the unresisted Aspir value in half. Unfortunately, you can see how partially resisted Aspirs are easily confounded with unresisted Aspirs if these ideas are true. Going back to tarblm's data though, the observed Aspirs generally have much greater variability, which could be attributed to partial resists.

Chocobo racing

Haven't talked about this in a while. A few months ago I actually canceled my content ID, but I let myself get pulled back into this pit of mediocrity that is FFXI. Since then I made some effort to maintain more detailed information on my Chocobo Circuit results, particularly whether my chocobo was competing against other PCs.

Not surprisingly, few of my C1 races were uncontested. In fact, 16 of the first 20 after I returned had at least one PC chocobo and 7 of those 16 had 2 PCs. I won only nine of those races, with a pretty abysmal 3-3-1-1 record against only one other PC.

During this time I came across a testimonial of another chocobo racer, also with a SS/B/B/B chocobo, who claimed to have won 67% of his races (128-41-22). This kind of pissed me off because farming chocobucks is extremely boring and here this guy was getting nearly 2 million more gil with the same chocobo profile and similar number of races. I thought perhaps he faced much less competition on his server and that his use of leather saddles may also have been a factor in his great success. But rather than shell out another $25 bucks to SE just for a server transfer, I tried the Sheep Leather Saddle for another month to see if taking the receptivity hit would be worth it in races with one or more other PCs.

My results were even worse with the leather saddle. In 20 races, I went 8-10-0-2 with 11 contested races, and in four of those contested races, an NPC chocobo won (I placed 2nd in all four) and in one case, two NPCs actually placed 1-2. (I finished out of the top 3 in this one.) Even worse, I won only four of the uncontested races, races in which I really "needed" to win to blunt the annoyance of losing chocobucks.

I then went back to the elm saddle and am now nurturing a nine-race winning streak (four contested), by far the longest streak I ever had. During this streak, I also reached the 10-million gil mark in net earnings. I am now going out of my way to race only in "off-hours" time slots to try to get my win rate back to 50%. My current record is 107-78-24-15.

Having reached 10 million in net earnings, I calculated an approximate rate of gil per hour earned in chocobo racing based on the time (one free race per 5 minutes) and gil spent to accumulate enough chocobucks (5,846) to enter the races and the gross earnings. Including this nine-race winning streak, chocobo racing has yielded an average of 74,644 gil per hour. (I admit this figure does not include time spent running to Chocobo Circuit.) Not as efficient as the guy winning 67% of his races, but still a nice reminder that even though chocobuck farming is a real pain in the ass, at least this huge barrier to entry allows chocobo racing to provide a steady income to those who actually put up with it... assuming the C1 races aren't so congested.

Thoughts on the possibility of chain 6 solo on Ebony Puddings without Novio and Manafont

I was extremely disappointed to find out that I had died 957 times between Adventurer "Appreciation" 2008 and A.A. 2009, the majority on black mage. (If I am really appreciated, can I get a Chocobo Wand in fewer than two weeks without being lucky?) I had considered myself more risk-averse over the past year (I did not even do Dynamis at all), but in retrospect this was not true, since you tend to die a lot in pickups, soloing, and poor event linkshells.

The pain of losing experience points on black mage (never mind the bullshit conceit that losing experience points on top of losing the time and resources you wasted is a reasonable penalty) can be blunted somewhat with efficient rate of gain of EXP. But what is considered efficient? From experience, the best I can do is around 8,000 EXP/hour (estimated by the time required to burn off an Emperor Band), and that's when being somewhat vigilant about achieving chain 5 (which is trivial if you are paying attention). Anyone who claims rates of 10,000 EXP/hr solo is full of shit until proven otherwise.

Is it possible to achieve chain 6 solo without Novio, though? By the time chain 5 rolls around I almost always have insufficient MP without Aspir to mount a chain 6 attempt, an indication that my maximum MP is not high enough. Moreover, even three "tier 4" nukes tend to leave a sliver of HP (on off-weather days), meaning that I have to rely on Drain to finish off a pudding. Casting Drain on chain 4 and 5 wastes MP that could be used for chain 6. These factors, along with half-resists and weather effects, conspire to make it really difficult to achieve chain 6. If it is easier than I am pondering, I'd like to know though, but not from shit Morrigan's users who still cast AM II on puddings.

Benevolent Despot

With the advent of Fields of Valor, the prospect of not spawning Despot in a timely fashion is less unpalatable since a training regime awards 1,550 EXP in about an hour of killing 11 placeholders. And maybe those tabs will actually be useful someday. Also, soloing without desirable rewards has grown pretty tiresome. I still have a Fenrir solo (ninja) on the back burner now that Lunar Roar supposedly does not dispel reraise, but I haven't been motivated to do that yet. At the moment, Despot is the only remotely appealing "get out there and kill shit" profit opportunity with a relatively high barrier to entry (actually being able to solo it under 30 minutes to lower the chance of vultures finding you and trying vainly to MPK you).

Though not quite as enjoyable as killing Despot and hardly a consolation prize, watching hapless groups kill Despot can provide some humor to brighten the day. Not a few weeks ago, I had the "pleasure" of witnessing this quartet of PLD/NIN, NIN/DRK, BLM and MNK struggle with Despot for over 40 minutes! Apparently, it didn't occur to these people to shed enmity via teleport in order to expedite the kill. Unfortunately, even inept players win eventually, a testimony to the dominance of the lowest common denominator in FFXI. Throw infinite time and resources at something and you can triumph! (Except for Absolute Virtue.)

Spending time farming gems of the west also has given me an opportunity to "get back" at the MPKing Tarutaru Duo That Shall Not Be Named by dispatching Despot in 22-27 minutes while those oblivious assholes continue to kill placeholders long after I'm gone.

Mr. Decay

This post will be a potpourri of topics.

Chocobo racing - Crystal Stakes results

As of this post I've raced my (good) chocobo (SS/B/B/B) 112 times in the Crystal Stakes (C1) and obtained the following results:

1st: 52
2nd: 40
3rd: 16
4-8: 4

Total: 112

I haven't seen much information on results with other chocobo configurations, except from this one forum post (chocobo attributes unknown):

1st: 27
2nd: 12
3rd: 10
4-8: 7

Total: 56

Now, I have no idea how often this other chocobo faced competing PC chocobos, but seeing another chocobo's results helps to provide some more perspective.

Is B receptivity a good hedge if it means placing 2nd relatively more often than a chocobo with lower discernment, "all things being equal" (which never happens, but let's just finish this filler post)? One one hand, I'd rather place 1st more often at the expense of placing 3rd or lower more often, as in the long run the return could be better. (One way to think of it is that it's better to place 1st and 3rd in two races than 2nd both times.)

On the other hand, I don't like farming chocobucks.

Sure, you can calculate expected gains and losses of chocobucks per race, but I won't do it because it won't motivate me in any way to raise another chocobo.

Magic accuracy - does weather and day have an effect?

Earlier (see previous post), I observed that the (effective) magic accuracy of Paralyze seemed not to be (statistically) significantly affected when Paralyze was cast during Firesday and Iceday. I tried to search for more data sets, but I didn't find anything meaningful.

Lodeguy himself seems to have said neither day nor weather have an effect (too lazy to find the actual quote), but, really, since his goal was to measure changes in (effective) magic accuracy, whether or not there is a day/weather effect (that he didn't control for and is not practical to control for) doesn't matter all that much considering the effect, if it exists, processes only 1/3 of the time. (I haven't verified this myself though.)

Anyway, I guess I could operate under the assumption that weather and day do affect resist rates. But are the effects of day and weather on accuracy (if they exist) the same in magnitude as the effects of day and weather on damage?

If you wanted to test this assumption and you have a scholar, you could see whether single weather and day combined drastically increase the accuracy of nukes of the same element. (You could also check for the reduction in accuracy of nukes of the opposite element.)

Laziness dictates that I should do a basic statistical power calcuation to obtain the number of Bernoulli trials needed to observe that a possible 20% increase in effective magic accuracy is statistically significant, given a Type I error of 5%:

Computed N Total

Actual        N
Power    Total

0.801      166

This conservative (but one-sided) power calculation (details omitted) indicates I need a total of 332 samples (166 for the trials without the effect of weather and day, and 166 for the trials with the effect) to observe statistical significance (using Fisher's exact test) with a probability of .8. And this probability assumes that this 20% increase (or reduction depending on your approach) is real.

But, I would have to make sure my effective magic accuracy, without the effect of weather and day, is somewhere above 50% and less than 75%. Based on lodeguy's data, one could figure this out for Earth Elementals (...) or, better, a Qiqirn ranger.

If weather has an effect on magic accuracy, why does Klimaform exist?

The English description of Klimaform states that the ability "[i]ncreases the magic accuracy for spells of the same element as the current weather." This statement does not really imply an existing accuracy bonus from weather before Klimaform, nor does it really imply no weather bonus before Klimaform.

Magic accuracy - revisiting data sets other than lodeguy's

A long time ago I looked at this data set and then just glossed over it while talking about lodeguy's results. But "intellectual honesty" compels me to attempt to explain the results of this other data set.

Actually I do not recall all the experimental details, but I "hope" the Ebony Puddings targeted were at the infamous Mount Zhayolm experience "camp." There, Ebony Puddings have a level of 79 or 80. (Incidentally, I noticed that these flans provide a experience point bonus of 5%, which I could not find corroboration for on FFXIclopedia.) Then that makes the observed data more "plausible."

First, it would be pretty obnoxious to say that the effect of magic accuracy increases with skill level without even acknowledging the imprecision of the estimates. If you are going to claim that, then you have to claim that one point of magic accuracy input gives an effective magic accuracy increase well above 1%, as shown below, using the nuke data from "Test III" and "Test IV" together (without the INT observations):

                            Analysis Of Parameter Estimates

                              Standard     Wald 95% Confidence       Chi-
Parameter    DF    Estimate       Error           Limits            Square    Pr > ChiSq

Intercept     1     -3.2974      0.6462     -4.5639     -2.0309      26.04        <.0001 skill         1      0.0143      0.0022      0.0099      0.0186      40.56        <.0001 macc          1      0.0179      0.0027      0.0126      0.0232      43.27        <.0001

Not only can you not argue that macc is "better" than skill, you also cannot really say with a straight face that 1 point of magic accuracy input increases effective magic accuracy by some value well above 1%. That is just ridiculous on its face.

One possible explanation for the data is that the level 79 and level 80 Ebony Puddings were not targeted in roughly equal proportions; in the worst-case scenario, puddings of one level were inadvertently targeted exclusively for "Test III," and puddings of the other level were used exclusively for "Test IV." Since lodeguy provided some evidence of a level difference penalty (or bonus), we should be wary of such a phenomenon when collecting data.

For this data and experimental setting, a potential consequence of severe imbalance in the relative proportions of level 79 and level 80 Ebony Puddings targeted is a "distortion" of the true sampling distributions associated with the "skill" and "macc" effects, "true" meaning that the distributions should have a mean of 0.01.

This can be demonstrated through simulation as a demonstration of the concept. This is not a "proof" of anything, just a whimsical example. Suppose that the difference in level penalty between a level 79 and level 80 Ebony Pudding is 10% magic accuracy. Then, using the worst-case scenario I described above, I can generate approximate sampling distributions (with many, many assumptions) for the slopes associated with the main effects.

The most important assumption for this simulation is that 1 point of skill equals 1% effective magic accuracy, and 1 point of magic accuracy input equals 1% magic accuracy output (regardless of whether this is true in reality, which I think it is).



For elemental magic skill, the approximate sampling distribution has a mean of 0.0154 (not 0.01) and a standard deviation of .00245, which is close to the standard error from the actual data.



For magic accuracy input, the approximate sampling distribution has a mean of about 0.0133 (not 0.01) and standard deviation of about .00334. The standard error from the actual data is not close to .00334, but the concept still shows the "plausibility" of the data. Moral of the story: failing to control for real effects may have deleterious consequences.

As for the apparent (lack of) effect of INT below 50% effective magic accuracy ("Test II"), if 30 INT really corresponds to a 15% magic accuracy bonus (assuming any bonuses are cut in half because of the hit rate penalty), observing no improvement (or worse) is virtually guaranteed not to happen. At this point, I would just keep this result in mind but take it with a grain of salt.

Here's the R code I used to generate the above graphs:

n = 10000

skill2 = rep(0,n)
macc2 = rep(0,n)
skill_se = rep(0,n)
macc_se = rep(0,n)

for (i in 1:n) {
 success = c(rbinom(100,1,.59),rbinom(100,1,.72),rbinom(100,1,.72),rbinom(100,1,.79),rbinom(100,1,.90),rbinom(100,1,.90))
 skill = c(rep(274,100),rep(274,100),rep(287,100),rep(284,100),rep(284,100),rep(295,100))
 macc  = c(rep(0,100),rep(13,100),rep(0,100),rep(0,100),rep(11,100),rep(0,100))
 trials = data.frame(cbind(success,skill,macc))
 model = glm(success ~ skill + macc, family=binomial(link="identity"),data=trials)
 skill2[i] = coef(summary(model))[2,1]
 skill_se[i] = coef(summary(model))[2,2]
 macc2[i] = coef(summary(model))[3,1]
 macc_se[i] = coef(summary(model))[3,2]
}


win.graph(width = 6, height = 4.5, pointsize = 12)
hist(skill2,freq=FALSE)

win.graph(width = 6, height = 4.5, pointsize = 12)
hist(macc2,freq=FALSE)

Crystal Stakes collapse

Note: this is a profanity-laced rant.

On November 4, the day of the last server maintenance, my winning rate in C1 races was 32/68. Since then, the results have been atrocious: 5 1st place finishes, 8 2nd or 3rd place finishes, and 3 below 3rd place. For perspective, in the first 68 races, I placed worse than 3rd only once. Or, to put it in terms that really make me incensed as I write this, a loss of chocobucks between 542 and 764 in sixteen fucking races, or 33.9 to 47.8 per fucking race, or between 72 and 103 fucking minutes wasted per race farming chocobucks for basically jack shit.

It's not merely that I have been losing but that losing more often entails dealing more frequently with a timesink that is in place basically to deter RMT. But so be it... not that I don't have methods of dealing with it.

During this period, aside from one uncontested race (and I didn't even finish first), all the C1 races I've entered (and recorded the toteboards for) have involved at least one other PC chocobo. Rationally, I must acknowledge that C1 races are more hotly contested than ever. Irrationally, I am pissed off that the same chocobos keep placing first over me (and to rub more salt in the wound, I end up placing behind garbage SS/SS/B/F chocobos and "off the podium"), even ones with nominally the same attribute profile as mine. Literally, the same SS/B/B/B chocobo has placed first 3 times against me while I have gotten 5 first-place finishes in three weeks. (Interestingly, I've observed that chocobo was raised with an enlarged beak, for what it's worth. I might even laugh if that owner read this blog to get some ideas.) It would be even more crackpot and solipsistic to associate this string of poor results with the latest server maintenance, but you can't count the FFXI "dev team" out for fucking with its players without even being upfront about it, especially that fat-fuck CoP director.

Sure, in the long run things may even out all things being equal (all things being equal is a huge assumption, not knowing what saddles they are using), if I even get a chance to even things out. But this is FFXI the zero-sum MMORPG, where illiterate, proudly ignorant, gloating motherfuckers get to rake it in and bolt once they get theirs (fuck the rest!) while you get jack shit for the same amount of "effort." Even in chocobo racing.

Crystal Stakes results update

After 30 C1 races my chocobo has yet to place worse than 3rd, which is actually kind of nice since I haven't had to write off a disastrous 4th or worse finish. To my delight, some of my PC competitors have actually placed worse than 3rd even with fewer than 3 entrants. (The worst result was 6th for a SS/B/A/C chocobo; I placed 3rd.) Since the Sept 8 update, my chocobo's 1st-2nd-3rd tally is 6-2-2; overall, 14-12-4.

In the last 10 races, I've faced PC chocobos 7 times. I've used the mythril saddle at least twice (the first two races after the update I finished first both times with a mythril saddle) but otherwise I've used the elm saddle. Speed apple used, as always.

I hope in the long run my win rate ends up being closer to 60%, but that's probably wishful thinking because of competition from PC chocobos. It hasn't been uncommon for me to face two other PC chocobos in a race. I have yet to try the C1 slots at 21:45 and 22:45 JST time. I've done either morning or mid-day, and the usual suspects are sticklers for the morning slots (5:45 AM and 6:45 AM)

What are my net gil earnings? In the past week I've hardly been doing free runs, and when I do I just do one cycle of eight races, which costs 3,550 gil to complete. Because 2nd and 3rd place finishes result in a net loss of chocobucks, I factor in the costs of chocobucks, too.

1st: 90,000 × 14 = 1,260,000 gil
2nd: (30,000 - 40/28*3550) × 12 = 299,142 gil (approx.)
3rd: (10,000 - 64/28*3550) × 4 = 7542 gil (approx.)

Total: 1,566,685 gil (approx.)

I really couldn't be happier with this gil fountain that requires minimal effort to tap now (despite the initial outlay of raising a chocobo). I don't covet any big-ticket items (too bad I can't just up and buy Usukane Sune-Ate, Usukane Hizayoroi, and Morrigan's Slops, pieces for which the materials are cheap), but maybe I'll think of something to blow my gil on later on.

I've noticed, or at least it's somehow evident to me, that accidents ("stuck in the mud") may adversely affect other chocobos since most of them appear to be startled when it happens. (The camera "work" is still bad though so sometimes you can't get a good look at how they react.)

I think I'll give a progress report after every 15 races just to give me an excuse to use Blogger once in a while. It's pretty sad I've found occasion to make 8 posts this month already...

Success in the Crystal Stakes

This post is a response to an earlier comment regarding how well my SS/B/B/B (8/5/5/5) chocobo fares in the Adventurer Races (C4-C1).

First, I should point out (I don't think I've mentioned it explicitly) that the June 2008 version update notes include a statement that "certain race items have had the potency of their effects increased and their durations shortened." I started racing my good chocobo in the C1 races well after the update, so I have no pre-update basis for comparison.

So far in the Crystal Stakes, my bird has placed first 8 times, second 7 times, and third 1 time. I always use a Speed Apple and an Elm Saddle and "Final Spurt." A 50% win rate is pretty good for me, although maybe players who've raced longer than I may beg to differ given the update mentioned previously.

Based on my limited experience, I feel that my chocobo's profile is kind of a hedge against finishing 3rd place or worse. As an example, I distinctly recall one race that involved 4x gysahl bombs yet I still finished 2nd. (The camera "work" is really annoying with respect to showing whether your chocobo is affected by AoE items.)

But there have been a few cases where I've lost to NPC SS/SS/B/F chocobos (don't recall if they had gallop/canter), which can happen if there aren't any gysahl bombs in play, I guess.

In case you're curious whether I ran into PC chocobos, in those races, I raced against PC chocobos three times. I have to be honest that I prefer not to race against other PC chocobos.

The first time, I placed 2nd. The winner was a SS/B/A/C chocobo and the other PC placed 3rd. All PCs used Speed Apples.

The second time, two chocobos finished 1-2 and I ended up 3rd. (I don't remember the winner's stats though but the 2nd-place finisher actually used Sprint and resisted a few biscuits despite having D receptivity, to my dismay.) All PCs used Speed Apples.

The third time, I placed 2nd and the PC placed 3rd. The winning chocobo was SS/SS/B/F chocobo. Only one Gysahl Bomb the entire time, and the 3rd place finisher was pelted with a few biscuits.

I'll try to keep detailed notes in the future so I can compare notes with others.

All these words spent on a superficial feature in a MMORPG

Now that I've put my chocobo out to pasture, I probably won't be writing any more about chocobo raising or racing unless another set of Official Races is introduced later. But I just want to go over a few observations I've made in the following areas as a reminder to myself in the future should I actually care about raising chocobos again.

Riding in the field

On FFXIWiki there is a chart mapping levels of a raised chocobo's strength to riding speed and endurance to maximum riding duration. It's generally accepted that raised chocobos at maximum strength are slightly slower than rental chocobos. (Way to provide positive incentives for raising chocobos!) Maximum riding time is also said to be between 15-45 minutes depending on your chocobo's endurance level, and it's also thought that Canter also raises maximum riding time (three more minutes?). This has intuitive appeal.

The other day, after finishing Hot & Cold I estimated my chocobo's maximum riding time to be about 37 minutes, which appears to be more than what could be predicted from the chart. But at least I can ride mine longer than I could a rental even though I never ride chocobos that long.

Of course, give it up for people who have the audacity to spout horseshit claims (present on the "Chocobo Raising" article on FFXIclopedia as late as July 30) that can't be verified or refuted easily, if at all. Seriously, riding speed is a function of discernment?

Free runs

Slightly less unimportant than the color of one's chocobo is how successful one's chocobo is in the free runs, yet I feel that these two things are often overemphasized from the occasional threads that I see pertaining to chocobos.

Sure, it'd be nice to get more than 28 chocobucks per eight races (in Windurst) since doing free runs is what a serious chocobo raiser is going to be doing the vast majority of the time. Yet are you really going to commit Speed Apples (or another item of your choice) to winning as many of these as you can, especially since you can trade only one Speed Apple at a time to the NPC? (Come on, SE, let's be allowed to stockpile items of the same kind for our convenience.)

Actually, it seems that before the June update people were able to beat the "super chocobos" (MeteorBrian, InvincibleLeg, StarOnion) on a regular basis.

For example, I've read that an SS/A/C/C chocobo (8/6/4/4) prior to the update was able to accumulate 36 chocobucks per cycle by beating the trio and StarOnion alone (twice) without items. Unfortunately, after the update, the outcomes have actually been variable and not in this chocobo's favor.

I've also read that an 8/8/8/1 chocobo beats the supers "about 50% of the time," while an 8/5/5/4 wins "about 30% of the time," in both cases without items. Presumably these observations were made after the June update.

Finally, an 8/5/5/5 chocobo (same as mine) before the update was able to beat the trio and MeteorBrian for 32/40 points in Bastok without items, but now is unable to beat any of them.

In my case, mine can beat StarOnion once in a while and can even come in second against the trio without items, but only occasionally. Perhaps it was a fluke, but when my chocobo was within the 8/6/4/5 range, it was able to beat InvincibleLeg and MeteorBrian at least once (but never beat the trio).

However, if it's true that even an 8/8/8/1 chocobo can't beat the supers regularly (low receptivity doesn't seem to be a big deal in free runs), then why even bother caring about free runs? It'd be much worthwhile to focus on winning the Crystal Stakes regularly instead.

The cost of Official Races

Yes, I finally completed the entire Pashhow Swamptrot series while I was finishing raising my chocobo, but I'm still not happy about the cost of entering these races.

You really get all your chocobucks from Hot & Cold? Bullshit.

At this point, I've grudgingly accepted the various elements of bad sportsmanship that are pervasive in chocobo racing. I suppose you could compare chocobo racing to Mario Kart. But in the Mario Kart games, you control your racer directly, racing outcomes are much less influenced by "random" factors, and you don't have to spend hours and gil doing busywork "free" runs to accumulate the chocobucks necessary to cover the entry fees for the higher-level races, because there are no entry fees. Winning lower-level races opens up access to higher-level races, and you don't have to pay entry fees. What a concept!

Yes, I am very pleased to have paid for the privilege of getting nickel-and-dimed by my Cardian competitors' AoE abilities and, as a further insult, having some insane taru observer (guess who) directly interfere with the outcome of the race. Yes, I find it amusing to compete against a cactuar that can use "Mad Dash" seven times in rapid succession (still, I won the Lethal Race my first try), and that the supposed creme de la creme of chocobo racing must use a Dream Apple (increases speed, stamina, and resistance to other chocobos' items) and be assisted by her fawning handmaiden in order to win (also won the Dream Race the first attempt).

So what if I got lucky on the last two races? Did I really have to pay at least 225 chocobucks total (more like 500 considering all the times I tried the Survival Race) for the honor?

Lower entry fees would make the costs more tolerable. Let us pay the entry fees in gil, even. But why chocobucks? If your chocobo simply can't win these races, I'm pretty sure getting trounced a bunch of times would be ample evidence of that fact (as my first "crappy" chocobo was), and you don't need the steep cost of chocobuck entry fees to dissuade you from persisting like an idiot. (Instead, hoard thousands and thousands of chocobucks to raise a chocobo that can win!)

I suppose that if another series of Official Races is introduced later, we should expect entry fees up to 100 chocobucks and I'll come to accept that grudgingly, too.

How sobering it is

I wish I had kept better notes on chocobo raising. I'm sure I wrote down when my chocobo's endurance finally fell to "better than average," but I can't find that scrap of paper at the moment.

I do know that endurance fell to "impressive" (below 192) after day 51, and that it fell to "average" (below 96) after day 62, so the endurance loss during that time should be around 96 points over 11 days, or about 8.73 points lost per day. Yet between day 43 and day 51 its endurance was in the "outstanding" range (192-223), which corresponds to a loss of about 32 points or 4 per day, which is actually the expected loss under "digging for treasure" according to ff11wiki.

I'm not sure how to explain the rapid loss of endurance between day 51 and day 62 unless DSC+8 from successful "digging for treasure" results in END-8 after the attribute cap is reached (thought to be 640 total points across STR/END/DSC/RCP). To put it another way, the care plan normally lowers endurance by 4 points, but when the attribute cap is in effect, endurance must be lowered by 4 more points to compensate for DSC+8 (otherwise the cap would be exceeded), for a total loss of END-8. The average of 8.73 points seems to be a result of my using strength training once during that time.

Note: When the attribute cap is in effect, raising an attribute with chocobuck training (strength in my case) leads to the reduction of the highest-level attribute that is not being raised (endurance). At least that's how it's thought to work.

If this is actually true, then this is convenient for raising an 8/7/4/4 chocobo at maximum strength without too much chocobuck expense. You could raise STR and END to the max with care plans, then use chocobuck training programs to raise receptivity to 94-95 points with 19 training sessions.

After nine successful days of "digging for treasure" (hope for no failures), you should then have 72 DSC ("a bit deficient"), about 219 END ("outstanding"), and exactly 640 total attribute points. Then after three more successful days of "digging for treasure," you should have 255/195/96/94 (640 pts).

You could then retire your chocobo and use one of the 100-chocobuck training tokens to raise RCP to 96 and lower STR to 253 accordingly. Then you could use another 100-chocobuck token to raise STR back to 255 and lower END to 193 accordingly.

If that plan actually works then you would have spent "only" 1,720 chocobucks to increase your chocobo's attributes directly, or as much as 490k gil and 41 hours of free runs.

In my case, not only did I spend 2,200 chocobucks to raise receptivity to "better than average," I also used 480 chocobucks worth of training programs (2 strength, 1 endurance, 2 discernment, 1 strength) between days 43 and 62 mostly out of impatience. And to top it off, I used 400 more chocobucks (1 endurance, 4 strength) to cap strength, leaving my chocobo at SS/B/B/B.

3,080 chocobucks. Somewhere between 657,000 and 880,000 gil. Over 73 hours of free runs. In the long run, hardly anything at all.

Well, I could have tried to rein in costs a little better, but with a minimum of 16 days required to raise discernment to 128+ with care plans (without any care plan failures), there most likely wouldn't have been enough time to finish and I would've had to resort to using chocobuck training anyway. (Of course, as it turned out, I finished care plan training after day 62 and discernment had just risen to "better than average," which was cutting it really close.)

The end of the road

After the day 54 progress report, I entered my chocobo in the "Survival Race" yet again, this time with "a bit deficient" discernment, and to my relief it finally eked out a victory after three attempts. On this successful run, it used a speed apple at the appropriate time during the final leg of the race (as opposed to the middle of the race the first time, when it finished second) on a final spurt directive, allowing it to pull ahead of Sakura at the end. This confirms to me the benefit of a sufficient level of discernment (when I actually get there).

However, it seems that due to the "random variability" that this skeleton crew of "developers" think is fucking cool in the form of "accidents" and cheap-fuck abilities and items used against other racers, the damn sheep actually wasn't in contention this time. Still, I finally managed to win with a still-developing chocobo--SS/A/D/B with Gallop--that had mediocre discernment and no Canter. Considering that these developers still hold the fucking conceit that imposing "Japan midnight" time restrictions everywhere (here, between non-repeat official races) serves a purpose other than to annoy the fuck out of players, I'm glad to get these piece-of-shit races out of the way when I can.

With that in mind I even tried the next race, the "Deadly Race"--similar setup again with mobs that can use their abilities twice (which is cheap) and yet another fucking annoying sheep--and also cleared it after three attempts.

I can't say that I'm ecstatic that I spent 195 chocobucks (about 55,714 gil worth of "free" runs for a total reward of 15,500 gil) for these two official races, but no one forced me to attempt these races with an unfinished chocobo, just as no one forced a group of players to fight Pandemonium Warden for 18 hours to the point of nausea. They knowingly accept the costs and risks of being part of the "vanguard" by fighting an unknown quantity. (Perhaps they should read up on the concept of "sunk cost" before trying again.) Who isn't surprised that the FFXI developers shit on our faces again and again and again and again and again, yet we continue to play? And I was so impatient about my chocobo's unexpectedly slow progress that I decided to roll the dice.

How slow does my chocobo go, anyway? From day 44 to day 55, my chocobo had been digging for treasure (care plan) twelve times, yet its discernment had yet to clear the "average" threshold. This indicates that the increase in discernment during this time was at best between 89 and 91, which does not jibe with claims that the most intensive plans raise an attribute one level in 3-4 days without failures. (In my impatience I used one session of training during this period.) This seems to agree with the idea that a chocobo's personality influences the effectiveness of care plans. It never took more than five days to raise either strength or discernment one level while "carrying packages."

Another explanation is that care plans become less effective as the chocobo gets older. A chocobo is in the prime of its life, so to speak, after the day 43 progress report, but I have never used anything other than "digging for treasure" after day 43. It's also possible that care plan results are constrained when the chocobo is at 640/640, which I finally thought to check today with Robino-Mobino.

Whatever the case, prospective chocobo raisers should consider these things should they strive for a certain attribute "profile." At this point I am very concerned that my chocobo's endurance won't "decay" fast enough so that I'll have to spend even more chocobucks adjusting strength, discernment, and receptivity in order to force my chocobo's endurance down. More chocobucks means more free runs. More free runs means more time. (Depending on how endurance pans out, I could have saved myself the cost if I had stopped endurance training around 192/255 instead of 224/255.)

Even so, at this point in my FFXI "experience," the time spent on free runs doesn't crowd out other things I could do in the game because there are no things I even want to do without having to cajole unmotivated people to do things like the Ashu Talif series of quests, or even some simple assaults to hoard points for Salvage. ZNMs can be spawned on demand, yet no one wants to do them. I am not so enamored with some rare/ex loot that will collect dust in mog storage. But neither do I care anymore about trying things that are off the beaten path (in other words, things that are off the path of least resistance).

I could go on and on, but it's a waste of time in the face of other people's lassitude. Other people can't squander my goodwill because there's nothing left to squander. As for soloing, that doesn't much appeal to me anymore. I will never step foot in Temenos again with the intention of soloing some Goblin Slaughtermen or doing anything else (other than zoning) now that I finally got a fourth Plaited Cord without having to do 10+ attempts between the third and the last, or wait 3+ months because some shitty LS is fixated on Apollyon to outfit with Homam shitty players with worse attitudes and personalities than mine. I don't care much to spend an hour obtaining access to Holy Cow just to be one-shot. Even if I were motivated to solo Genbu, the cost of Winterstone (650k seems to be a common list price if not a selling price) and Gem of the North (100k) means I should expect a net loss in exchange for the "fun" of kiting for hours and some shitty abjurations.

At this point I don't need to manufacture so-called fun through contrived challenges. Instead, I'll simply log on for minutes a day to feed and care for my chocobo and bide time before the next version update is revealed to be the barebones disappointment that I expect it to be, the anomaly of June 9 notwithstanding.

Chocobo comments

After 2,200 chocobucks, about 628,572 gil, and at least 52 hours of senseless automated free race cutscenes (barriers to entry, right?), I've finally completed my chocobo's receptivity regimen and its current distribution of attributes stands at SS/S/F/B (or 8/7/1/5) STR/END/DSC/RCP. Now I just have to wait out the next 10 days of "digging for treasure" and hope I don't have to do much tweaking to achieve the desired SS/B/B/B profile.

As expected, it took 26 targeted chocobuck upgrades to improve receptivity to "better than average." This was accomplished using 14 training sessions (1,120 chocobucks or about 320,000 gil based on the expected value of 3.5 chocobucks earned per 1,000-gil free race entry fee) along with 12 training tokens (1,080 chocobucks or about 308,572 gil) set aside so that I wouldn't have to wait long to finish the training regimen while accumulating another 1,000 chocobucks to pay for the rest of the upgrades.

I did attempt the Survival Race again with this SS/S/F/B chocobo and, not unexpectedly, it placed 7th. I am not so irritated with the result as with the fact that these races have steep entry fees in gil cost and time cost. Now that's 120 chocobucks wasted on four attempts at the Survival Race, or about 35,000 gil and almost 3 hours of free racing.

Considering that the entire Pashhow Swamptrot series takes 225 total chocobucks to finish (about 64,286 gil and 5-6 hours of free racing) without repeated attempts, and the gil rewards add up to 48,000 gil, it's typical of SE to make gil rewards totally incommensurate with the wasted time and gil put forth. Sure, a Chocobo Pullus Torque, another shiny trophy, and a title signifying a difficult "accomplishment" are nice, but consider the cost of raising a chocobo capable of clearing the Swamptrot. What the hell do they expect chocobo racers to do for cheaper chocobucks, Hot and Cold?

I'm banking on my chocobo being able to rake in the gil in the Chocobo Circuit, though, so the gil costs ain't a thing. As far as the time spent accumulating chocobucks goes, I wouldn't excoriate people for being sensible about acquiring chocobucks with, ahem, unattended free races.

Days at the races

While I'm still stuck on the Survival Race in the Pashhow Swamptrot (recently placed 8th and 7th in the last two attempts), I actually had better results in the Crystal Stakes with my first chocobo, placing 4th, 8th, 4th, and--finally!--3rd. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to observe the 3rd-place race, but having noticed that my low-endurance chocobo always loses steam toward the end of races even on a "keep pace" directive, I went with an elm saddle and a stamina apple.

By low-endurance, I actually mean no-endurance. By the time I took chocobo raising seriously, my first chocobo's endurance wasn't high enough to withstand the "digging for treasure" care plan and it ended up being completely depleted. An 8/1/4/1 chocobo isn't very effective in C1 or C2 races, and it definitely won't make it through the whole Pashhow Swamptrot series. (However, my chocobo did actually win a C2 race because a superior PC chocobo stumbled in the rain and was the target of the NPC chocobo's attacks before its accident. What a fluke!)

Still, I'm satisfied that my old chocobo was good enough to accumulate a few first-place finishes and actually place in the Crystal Stakes. And while it was scrapping its way up the ranks I got to witness some amusing events. For example, assuming receptivity actually does affect a chocobo's ability to repel attacks and avoid accidents in races, I wouldn't expect a poor-receptivity chocobo to resist all attacks thrown at him. (This is a C4 race, if that matters.)



I've temporarily halted participation in the Chocobo Circuit (it hurts the pocketbook a little having spent 320 chocobucks to acquire a CS bronze trophy and stand), but not before having the "Winning Owner" title bestowed on me after my chocobo's 10th first-place finish. (According to the Japanese FFXIwiki, "Victorious Owner" is earned after 25 first-place finishes, and "Triumphant Owner" after 50 first-place finishes, presumably.) My racing data so far:

Solo Victory Points: 71
Number of races: 32
First-place finishes: 10

Fortunately, my second chocobo seems to be coming along well even though its STR and END progression seems a bit slow. After the day 33 progress report, both STR and END are still at "better than average." (STR and END changed to "better than average" after the day 29 report.) If I have to use chocobo training to raise STR or RCP after day 64, I can live with that.

Honestly, the extreme time and gil costs associated with acquiring chocobucks for training programs don't bother me much anymore. Considering the possibility of winning about 700k every week (before entry costs) just by signing up for C1 races (which takes a few minutes at most) makes the initial outlay seem like a good investment in the long run. We'll see in a few weeks.

Of course, the adventurer races require chocobuck entry fees, and chocobucks cost time and money. But taking first place in any of the C1-C4 races basically results in a refund of the chocobuck entry fee. Since C1 races require entry fees of 10k and 80 chocobucks, no net change in chocobucks for a first-place result would save the owner the trouble of having to spend about 23k and wasting a few hours to reclaim 80 chocobucks through free races. (I must say though that the separate gil entry fee is annoying since you have to spend gil anyway to accumulate chocobucks in a timely manner.)

Of those players who actually spent time with chocobo raising and racing, I'd hardly be the first person to say correctly that the FFXI devs did a terrible job with the implementation and execution of this feature, but I suppose the high barriers to entry are necessary to prevent RMT from exploiting it. But at least it's still a more satisfying activity than Pankration and bottom-of-the-barrel quests such as "The Miraculous Dale." Seriously, how old is FFXI? Shit like "The Miraculous Dale" with absolutely no redeeming qualities you would've expected in 2004.

Chocobo raising revisited

Even taking into account the previous tirade about chocobo training tokens, I still consider chocobo raising one of the few long-run activities in FFXI from which I have actually extracted something akin to pleasure. Why babysit a needy, spoiled, infantile linkshell member when you can dote over something similarly needy, spoiled, and infantile, but that you can abandon at your whim? So with an eye toward placing in the Crystal Stakes, I again take up the cause.

By the 60-day mark of my new chocobo's life, I aim for my chocobo to have the following attribute ratings, based on the idea that "balanced" chocobos with first-rate strength fare well in Chocobo Circuit and actually have a puncher's chance at overcoming the new cheap-ass Official Races (Pashhow Circuit):

STR - First-class
END - Better than average
DSC - Better than average
RCP - Better than average

While I proceed to spoil my new hatchling, I put my old, worn chocobo through the ringer, using it to accumulate chocobucks that will be invested instead in its pampered successor. And as a bonus, this old pro is actually earning Solo Victory Points for me in the Chocobo Circuit (29 at last count), only for the young buck to take its place eventually and seize the glory of placing in the Crystal Stakes, after which I'll toss the geezer's VCS registration card. (At least I hope that's how it pans out, as I'll be annoyed if SVPs are reset when registering a new race chocobo altogether.)

Of course, there has to be some nettlesome feature about Chocobo Circuit that's a result of some dubious design choice, and for me it's the fact that one cannot sign up for a C1 race every hour, any hour.

Instead, the schedule of races is such that one can sign up for C1 races every day only during six sign-up periods (times in JST):

5:45-6:00
6:45-7:00
13:45-14:00
14:45-15:00
21:45-22:00
22:45-23:00

It's already irritating enough that one can sign up for a race only every 24 hrs. (Even though you sign up at any time within the 15-minute sign-up period, the race starts at a fixed time 35-40 minutes after the end of the sign-up period.) It's even more annoying that if you wish to hew closely to the ideal situation of racing every 24 hrs, you are stuck with these limited registration times, which can be quite inconvenient depending on your time zone and schedule.

A conceptually simple remedy would be to scrap sign-up periods altogether, and limit signing up your chocobo in a 24-hour period such that one can register for the next upcoming C1 race (or any other race you wish to enter for that matter), no matter when it occurs, any time after midnight JST. So simple and convenient for the players that this will never be implemented.

Are chocotrain tokens worth it?

Searching for a new challenge, I have been revisiting "content" that has basically been orphaned by the general playerbase. Chocobo racing, yeah, that's a hot ticket.

Having recently entertained thoughts of putting my long-retired and seldom-used chocobo through the gauntlet of Chocobo Circuit races in the hopes of obtaining eventually any Crystal Stakes trophy, I considered the possibility of using Chocobo training tokens to raise its receptivity in order to mitigate adverse status effects inflicted by the other jockeys during the races. For example, one may use a Gysahl Bomb to reduce the speed of the other chocobos.

The following asides will help to explain my motivation for raising receptivity:

Aside 1: Chocobo racing in general is a microcosm of the FFXI experience where cheap-ass AI tactics or onerous restrictions provide most of the obstacles to gratification. The chocobo attribute "receptivity" is a measure of how well your chocobo copes with such tactics in the domain of chocobo racing. A higher receptivity level for your chocobo supposedly increases the probability that your chocobo "evades" the adverse effect altogether. And if your chocobo does suffer the adverse effect, receptivity supposedly lessens the effect in some way (reduced duration, attenuation of the effect itself, something).

Aside 2: Chocobo raisers generally accept the idea that the game measures chocobo attributes on a hidden point scale of 0-255, which corresponds to the eight discrete levels that the game actually reports:

0-31 - "Poor"
32-63 - "Substandard"
64-95 - "A bit deficient"
96-127 - "Average"
128-159 - "Better than average"
160-191 - "Impressive"
192-223 - "Outstanding"
224-255 - "First-class"

Aside 3: 80-chocobuck training programs are available to "adult chocobos still residing in the stables" (not retired) and are understood to raise attributes by 5 points. But these are not available to my retired chocobo.

For my retired chocobo, the only way to raise its receptivity attribute is to use Chocobo training tokens, which cost 100 chocobucks. Based on the above information I came to the terribly wrong assumption that these 100-chocobuck tokens also raise attributes by 5 points.

Unfortunately, after entire days of "botting" free runs to accumulate chocobucks, I found out that these tokens are actually less effective than the aforementioned 80-chocobuck training programs available to "active" chocobos. Not even seven RCP tokens--which I thought would raise receptivity by 35 points and thus raise my chocobo's receptivity from a "Poor" rating (0 points) to "Substandard" rating (35 points)--were sufficient to raise its receptivity from "Poor" to "Substandard." Who the hell knows how many points they're worth? Two points? Three points? Fuck that.

Considering the time and gil cost of accumulating chocobucks, to offer 100-chocobuck training tokens that are more expensive and less effective than the 80-chocobuck training programs is classic FFXI "development team" timesink/gilsink bullshit. I even wonder if the 90-chocobuck training tokens are similarly less effective, but there's no way in hell I'm going to check.

My hope was that I wouldn't have to raise another chocobo just to place in the Crystal Stakes months down the line. Instead, I would rather eat the time and gil cost now of "botting" hundreds of free runs a day to bring my chocobo up to competitive form rapidly and get a fucking inventory-1 trophy within the month.

Yet not even I am masochistic enough to throw away millions of good gil after bad. At least I can take solace that I can accumulate chocobucks for other purposes without actually attending to the game at all, one motherfucking four-minute free race, 3.5 chocobucks (on average) at a time.