Falling asleep is a common thing in FFXI. Because the North American players are about 16-18 hours (guesstimate) behind Singapore/Japan time, when it’s evening in SG/JP, it’s late night in NA. Thus, some players who refuse to logout but continue to play in an experience points PT(party) tend to fall asleep.
I’ve come across such players before. A black mage in my PT suddenly stopped casting magic and he was just sitting there not responding to our calls. I admit falling asleep once [X|]. But it was at a coffer key PT where we’re all fighting skeletons hoping they would drop the keys to treasure coffers. I fell asleep on my chair and woke up to the familiar BGM of Jeuno. The japanese were kind enough to give me Warp II.
Last night I got invited by a Japanese player to form an EXP PT at Yuhtunga Jungle. It was fun playing Thief and somehow I enjoy taking hate off the tank, even when playing Dark Knight. Not through Provoke but by simply dealing lots of damage. As a Thief, I relied on Sneak Attack + weaponskill to deal enough damage for the damn goblin to keep hitting me.
This is where a Ninja subjob comes in. With Utsusemi:Ichi, I could absorb up to 3 hits. Time it well and I can recast it and absorb another 3 hits. Hopefully during these 6 hits, the tank is able to regain enough hate to have the monster start hitting him back.
I digress! [X|]
Anyway, it was clear to the rest of the JP players that I could read a bit of Japanese. After we killed a goblin and was resting, one of the JP player (hereby referred to as JP-A) said:
Rough translation: “Since he knows Japanese, teach this foreigner neochi lol”
Obviously, I was the only foreigner in the PT. I knew it was directed at me. And I admit I even thought neochi (I read this as “neo-chi”) was some kind of program to assist me in FFXI, haha. So I asked the leader, the JP player who invited me and knew some English.
To which he replied in PT chat. (I guess it’s kind of rude to speak to a person through private message. Somewhat like talking behind someone’s back.)
Shock! [8|] Did they think I was falling asleep? This is where I assume I must’ve been playing badly or JP-A said that because I missed a skillchain with him. (T_T)
The party carried on till 12.30am SG time, 1.30am JP time. At this point the JP-A began to stop moving when our puller pulled monsters to camp. He would start moving in 1 or 2 minutes later. This was when I suspect he was “neochi”. w
Then his friend began joking and said “JP-A=neochi w”. We laughed and I joked about casting Barsleepra (a spell to increase resistance against sleep magic/attacks).
All in all it was a fun party. Before disbanding, leader said it was good and he’s happy. We played for 4-5 hours and everyone levelled 3 times. I played around with my IME at work and got the words “å¯è½ã¡” (neochi, which I now understand as “ne-ochi”). Did some babelfishing and got the translation “Falling asleep”.