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.
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