#definitely not alt au level of complex

[shmorp-mcdurgen]

Uhm. guess who may or may not have resurrected the monster alt au but instead made it it's own separate au instead of a branch of an already existing one.

this guy <

[but-first--tea]

LFRP: Kyraeth Vale

location: Crystal Data Center (Balmung)

full name:  Kyraeth Aille Vale pronunciation:  Keer-uh-eeth Awl-uh Vale (The Celtic origin of the name is Cyhiraeth, but I altered the spelling to make it more user friendly.) nicknames:  Kyra height: 5'6" age: 27 (almost 28, her birthday is next month!) 

languages: common, Sharlayan, can read some ancient languages but doesn't speak them

relationship status: single

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

hair color:  copper eye color:  pale green skin tone:  fair body type:  lithe accent: Sharlayan, with definite Limsan influence posture:  poised and confident scars: none visible accessories: a silver chain that bears a darkened crystal pendant which is typically always hidden from view

Traits

Extroverted / In Between / Introverted

Disorganized / In Between / Organized

Close Minded / In Between / Open Minded

Calm / In Between / Anxious

Disagreeable / In Between / Agreeable

Cautious / In Between / Reckless

Patient / In Between / Impatient

Outspoken / In Between / Reserved

Leader / In Between / Follower

Empathetic / In Between / Apathetic

Optimistic / In Between / Pessimistic

Traditional / In Between / Modern

Hard-working / In Between / Lazy

Cultured / In Between / Uncultured

Faithful / In Between / Unfaithful

Loyal / In Between / Disloyal

CHILDHOOD

Much of her very early childhood was spent moving from place to place as her parents avoided any potential pursuit for their crime. However, most of her memories are of growing up in Limsa, her father often at sea, her mother coddling her and worried about her frequent illness, and her older brother bringing back piles of books from Gridania to keep her occupied. Her life changed completely when a stranger calling himself Drutwas showed up and offered her the "cure" for her illness.

place of birth:  Sharlayan

hometown:  Limsa Lominsa, though she's spent the last two years traveling abroad

siblings:  an older brother named Faolan, deceased 4 years ago

parents:  Mathu and Irnan Vale.  Irnan deceased 2 years ago

upbringing: by her highly overprotective family, reading as many books as she could get her hands on, and awaiting more tales of her "privateer" father's adventures at sea.

ADULT LIFE

Kyra's entire world changed when the cause of her frequent illness was "cured" by a man calling himself Drutwas. He was later revealed to be a lesser Ascian attempting to manipulate her to his own ends. Much of her adult life has been focused on attempting to free herself from his machinations, and finding a way to end him. After years of working toward this goal, her beloved Tay sacrificed himself, binding his own spirit into a relic that now serves as the Ascian's prison. She has promised to make his sacrifice worthwhile, and live the best life she can, moving forward.

Character RP History: located here.

occupation: soulcrafter/spirit healer (not advertised openly), aetheric researcher

current residence:  Goblet

financial status: never seems wanting for gil, but doesn't flaunt it, either. 

weapons: arcanima, being smart enough to avoid the fight in the first place, a sword that she doesn’t seem to know how to wield, its hilt wrapped in silk painted with warding sigils.

vices: reckless and impulsive behavior, a weakness for rum, a bit of hedonistic tendency

SEX & ROMANCE

sexual orientation: heterosexual, demisexual

preferred sexual role: switch

turn ons: strength, altruism, intelligence, emotional maturity, intensity, strong-willed, determined, kind, sense of humor, confidence, loyalty, time spent together, a bit of danger

turn offs: ignorance, immaturity, cruelty, drug dependence, submissive, overly charming/insincere, selfish, shallow, betrayal, overly materialistic

love language: trust, a willingness to allow the other to lead, physical contact, devotion, indulging

relationship tendencies: Kyra has experienced a great deal of hardship and loss, and has built up her emotional armor accordingly. While she's not snobbish or hostile, she's difficult to get physically or emotionally close to. She won't assume that anyone particularly cares for her without said person making it too obvious to brush off or ignore. She won't rush into anything. Any relationship with Kyra will be the result of a slow burn. She is monogamous by nature. If she actually physically touches someone voluntarily, it's a fairly significant act. Enjoy a challenge? Here’s your ship!

MISCELLANEOUS

hobbies to pass the time: reading, drinking tea, listening to musical performances, sight seeing/exploring/travel, learning any new skill no matter how random, anything she's never done before (within reason... usually). Currently trying to learn swordsmanship.

mental illness: oh, she has some serious emotional baggage, but nothing that would qualify as an illness.

physical illness: aetheric hypersensitivity, currently "cured"

left or right brain: balanced

self confidence level: situational. Typically very outwardly confident, no matter how she feels about the situation inwardly.

vulnerabilities: self-isolation, a lack of physical combat skill, vulnerable to physical contact

RP HOOKS

walking library: this woman has spent her life researching things as a coping mechanism. If she doesn't know the answer, she can probably tell you where to find it. 

also a walking bomb shelter: she is protected with enough magical warding on her person you'd think she were expecting to be hit with a meteor at any moment. Paranoid, much? Anyone aetherically sensitive/trained is probably going to notice this and wonder... what the actual hells?

but... why?  She carries a sword with her, always, but can -clearly- not wield it. Anyone experienced with a sword could tell that she's definitely not.

probably in need of a bodyguard: She has a lot of (sometimes rather shady) things she intends to do, and a lot of people/creatures in the way of said things. She’s not really a combat character, and it would go rather badly if she tried to do them alone. 

spirit healer: this character focuses on healing non-physical ailments. MSQ has now made this accepted canon, as soulcraft \o/. However, I won't RP her showing up, fixing your problem instantly, and leaving. No heal-botting, please.

searching for an artifact: She's looking for a soulstone to replace one she's had taken from her, in hopes of gaining further insight. She'll chase down any rumors, hints, or leads no matter how bad the idea sounds. It probably won't even be the one she needs, but it's worth looking into all the same.

extremely curious: Have your own story arc? Kyra can’t seem to mind her own business, and can easily be drawn in! Want to hook our stories together so our characters end up working with each other ... or against each other as it plays out? I'm up for plotting and brainstorming!

open to shipping: While this is my one and only RP character and I won’t ship with alts, or engage in AU or multi-shipping, I am interested in potentially developing a romance for this character. 

OOC

I am 40 years old, and I started RPing when I was 15. I prefer emotionally mature RP partners, and I have no tolerance for poor communication, toxic behavior, or drama. I am NOT interested in any OOC romance.

I am in the CST time zone, and I make my own schedule. I can be available for Discord RP at nearly any time of day, and in-game things anywhere from 8am to 9pm. However, I’m not a night owl and you won’t find me in game at all after 9pm.

While I don’t do hard core raiding, I do enjoy content. I can play most jobs, and I’m an omnicrafter.

I have a love for very long-term, complex story arcs that can take months, or even years to play out. I don't particularly enjoy "tavern RP" or random scenes that don't build up to anything. I do enjoy slice of life, but only when it's building the character dynamic between co-workers/friends/family/romantic partners.  I prefer to put my time into building character connections with strong significance, and as such I'd rather not RP with rarely-played alts.

My character is located on Balmung, but I am happy to RP with characters located anywhere on the Crystal data center. 

Discord: Kyraeth#4608

@balmungrp  @ffxiv-crystal-rp​ @mooglemeet​

[forgiven-naunet]

My thoughts on live letter...

... That no one asked for! And that no one will probably read. xD (Under a cut, because I have a lot to say.)

The good:

- Pet changes. No more Ifrit dying to melee cleaves or Garuda dying to AoEs. I am intrigued by what they’ll do to make Titan useful. Also, happy to have nearly an entire action bar freed up by them consolidating pet actions.

- Following that, being able to summon egis with an instant cast is great! My hope is that weaving which egi you have summoned throughout the fight becomes part of basic SMN gameplay. We’ll see, though.

- Additional FATE rewards are nice. Though honestly, the FATE system needs a complete rework. Take a page out of Rift’s book here, SE.

- Charged actions. Now truthfully, this is just SE coming into the modern era and acting like they invented the wheel, when abilities with multiple charges has been done forever in other MMOs. But it’s still nice to have.

- PLD gap closer. Can’t not love this!

- Interrupts actually being interrupts and visually clear. When they said they were reworking the interrupt system, I had a brief flash of baseless hope that we were getting MOOs, but I’ll take this anyway!

- AST cooldown that lets us move between Sects. Interesting potential there.

- The Lily changes for WHM. From what we���ve seen, it looks like they may have made them actually useful. I still have some questions, but I’m hopeful for this.

- Role actions being automatically earned. The system as it stands now is pretty silly, so this is logical.

- Party list visual showing absorbs. Hurrah!

- As an AST main, that graphic of planets orbiting the AST in the job abilities demo made me so happy. It’s very pretty.

- DRK calling forth their inner darkness was cool.

- Very hopeful for the new and improved MCH. A little short on details, but it sounds promising!

- I was extremely bitter about DNC not being a healer when it was announced. I think I’m slowly learning to love DNC as it is, and I’m happy that SE is emphasizing its support capability as a buffer. To be honest, I may switch my main alt from BRD to DNC (especially given incoming changes to BRD).

- PIE becoming Spirit (essentially). Its usefulness will depend on spell cost balance and healing demand, but there’s finally a chance that PIE will have some import to healers.

The bad:

- Not sure how I feel about these “role quests” supplanting our job-specific quests. I enjoyed the unique stories we get to follow with new job quests. Also, the SCH Stormblood chain really left me with so many questions.

- SMN Phoenix looks like it functions basically as a Bahamut reskin. It’s just red Akh Morns. It’s pretty, but... Doesn’t really add much mechanically to the job.

- Speaking of SMN - two Aetherflow stacks?? Are we going back to the days of Ruin spam mage? :(

- Those tank changes... Just... I found it incredibly ironic that the line talking about skill being the distinguishing factor appeared on the ppt slide where they talked about how they were essentially removing most of the skill from playing tank jobs. Now, removing the damage stances and having it so you just toggle on/off a tank stance is fine on its own, but they’ve gone way too far in simplifying by having there be pretty much no reason to toggle it off unless you’re doing a tank swap in an 8-man environment. They’ve removed the thought from game play - that tactical decision of “Can I afford to take more damage/is my threat at a comfortable level?” I’d be more okay with this change if tank stance still came with the damage taken/damage done effects, which would mean you’d still have to think about when to toggle it on or off. In the same vein, they removed enmity generating combos, which one the one hand I understand, but on the other... It’s like they’ve seen tanks trying to focus on nothing but dps and have just thrown their hands in the air and given up, instead of trying to design jobs that require thought.

- AST card changes. Some of the details are still unclear, but I am incredibly wary. For one, I think making all cards give a damage buff of some kind is a big mistake. There have definitely been times where AoE or buffed Bole has been very helpful, or a well-timed Ewer on myself or a fellow healer. I main AST in large part because the card mechanic provides a layer of complexity that keeps the job mechanics engaging. It’s not super difficult, but it does require thought and planning, and it rewards preparation and knowledge of upcoming mechanics in a fight. That kind of skill-based play is enjoyable to me. But reducing card choice to just “Which damage buff goes on which job” really takes the shine off. I am not pleased at all. Also, do we even have Royal Road anymore?? It sure didn’t look like it in the demo vid. Another dark mark.

- Speaking of removing job interest... oh BRD, how I weep for thee. It feels like my favorite jobs are really getting kicked in the balls here. Despite what Yoshi wants to claim, removing the song mechanic and their different procs WILL change the play feel of BRD - and not in a good way, in my opinion. This is yet another example of them oversimplifying.

- SE’s apparent answer to how to balance healer jobs is... to make all the healers as similar as possible. This is the exact opposite take they should have gone. I’m honestly still baffled as to why SE seems incapable of designing distinct healing jobs with just three jobs, while MMOs like WoW has like six different healers and they all have distinct flavors and game play. Making them all the same is not the answer, Yoshi!!

- This move to decrease job synergy just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. While I understand the reasoning behind it (not wanting people to feel like certain jobs are required, or that certain jobs are undesirable), I feel like the answer is not to make everything as homogenized as possible. Rather, they should be finding ways to make each unique job valuable in its own right.

- Please stop trying to make every job as easy as possible. It is okay to have some jobs with a higher skill cap and some jobs with a lower skill cap.

And lastly...

Somewhat unrelated to the live letter, but after playing around in the Benchmark, I have to say... I am utterly unsurprised that the character creation options for Hrothgar and Viera are so underwhelming. Hrothgar hair being tied to face may honestly be worse than Au Ra horns. And Viera being unable to make use of any of the base game hairstyles?? Their options feel so limited, especially since half of their hairstyles are just “same hairstyle but with bangs”. I never really believed Yoshi when he said that they were going to make up for not having both genders by providing better customization.