#ffxiv thoughts

[house-fortemptations]

Got all four of my wisdom teeth extracted today via surgery, so they had to knock me out cause fuuuuuuck no am I getting that done while conscious.

Anyway, all I can think of as the nurse woke me up all woozy and disorented was Emet-Selch’s line after Ktisis Hyperboreia: “Unharmed??? There’s a gaping hole in my gums! I can scarcely remember arriving here in the clinic!”

[lilas]

One thing I want to do before graphics update is get a shot of Avi’li in Voidcast Dais before and after Golbez gives him an intimate haircut

Mostly cause the light is gorgeous in there

[weirdshapeddog]

FFXIV posting

I love the idea of the animal-like races behaving animal-like.

Specifically, the thought came about of miqo’te acting more catlike. Sure, there’s some good catlike emotes, but I mean like a miqo WoL attempting to hold one of the Scions still so they can “groom” their colleague’s hair.

Can you imagine, in the middle of a big ol’ political meeting with each of the nations, and miqo WoL just randomly gets up to go to where Ser Aymeric is sitting… only to clamber up onto the back or arm of his chair and begin grooming him because “he had some hairs out of place!”

Idk about anyone else’s miqo, but I love giving mine more animal behaviors

[fyx-ation]

FFXIV hot-takes:

The voice actors for ARR were not bad. Every one of them were very talented people. The voice direction, however, was utter shite. I mean, I wasn't in the booth or anything, but you can just tell. And some of the takes they had... woof. I doubt the actors were even given thorough notes on what was going on in what scene or how their character should be feeling.

Once they switched to European (mostly British) voice actors from HW onward, the voice direction feels so much better. And the script feels more natural, too.

And yettttttt... some really crappy takes still get through. I feel like even terrible takes from a British VA get a pass because there's a weird bias toward their accents sounding more sophisticated. So, even if the delivery is awkward as hell, the director's just like "Cut, print! Wonderful!"

The greatest example I can think of (because I just got it for my trial roulette and it made my brain zip off to write this thought down) is the Sphene fight.

This is a bit funny to me since they only had the VA for Wuk Lamat re-record her lines. The original version was pretty stinky. I mean, it was so bad that it sucked the wind right out of my sails, which is a very bad thing to happen during the final boss fight of an expansion that starts with you on a boat. If you were there for it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Spheeeeene. It was like we were back in ARR and no one was on the other side of the glass saying, "Now you're being crushed by a gigantic robotic hand! Your words have to be grunted out because you're fighting the weight of it!"

So, they had her re-record her lines and they are 5,000,000,000% better.

And yet.

Sphene's lines were not re-recorded. They still sound dull. And awkward. As did much of her delivery through Dawntrail. But I guess no one was complaining about it? Maybe SE just saw people shitting all over Wuk Lamat and thought changing her script/recording was all that was necessary.

"How can you say that to me now?" sounds particularly blasé to my ears.

I would have asked her to emphasize part of it.

disbelief, anguish:

"How can you say that to me now?" (after everything I've put you through, put your people through...?)

or

rage, determination:

"How can you say that to me NOW?" (after you know what my people have been through and how badly I want to save them!)

or maybe even a mix between the two

anguish and rage:

"How can YOU say that to ME now?!" (you, who know what we've been through. After the lengths I have gone to! There is no turning back!)

IDK. The next time you do the fight, pay attention to her line delivery and tell me what you think. Just a few tweaks here and there could have greatly changed how I feel about Sphene as a whole. I know people compare her to Emet Selch a lot, but I think the gulf between them is immeasurable. Goals are similar, but passion is null and void.

And I think it's because she got a big, fat pass because British.

While I'm in the mood of being nitpicky, there was a whole ass patch back in EW where Y'shtola's VA had a cold. I'm assuming they could only get her for that one day and were on a deadline. It is very noticeable. lol

And Honey B. Lovely's "southern"/"midwestern/"i have no idea" accent is absolutely grating to my ears. Every time I get that fight in roulettes, I'm just like, "Yeehaw and shucks howdy, y'all. Let's tussle with this big ol' bee. Bless her heart!"

There're a few accents in Shaaloani that are very obviously trying for "cowboy" but come off as "I'm British, but I saw a western once."

End rant. :D

[koko-mochi]

I have a hard time with lalafell discourse because I have experienced the bad side of lalafell players, and so a lot of the blanket statements that "lalafell players are not sexualizing children" just....don't ring true to me.

And like I have to say that the vast majority of my 11+ years playing a lalafell character and participating in lalafell communities have been wonderful and open and accepting and safe. I think lalafell players tend to be among the most queer and queer-affirming players in the game (and there's a lot of furries who play lalafell too) so I feel safe and trusting of most lalafell players.

But for a few months, that sense of safety and trust lulled me into a lalafell-centered FC that was run by a core group of people who very much were engaging with sexual content involving children and manipulating the people around them into feeling like that was an okay environment to be in. Over those months I was groomed into becoming an officer of that FC, and trained to look the other way when really horrible objectionable things were happening.

It's not a coincidence that people in that FC also turned out to be homophobic, transphobic, racist, and bigoted. I was never safe there, and was manipulated into allowing those small-minded ideas to flourish. I've had to do a lot of work in therapy to realize that it's not my fault I was groomed to support that toxic and damaging community, even while it did terrible damage to me.

Now I've been the leader of my own lalafell-friendly FC for a few years. We're focused on making sure we are a safe and accepting space. We're all queer and we support each other and we've become close friends even outside of the game. It's wonderful.

But those few months of being around the worst lalafell stereotypes have stuck with me the way that trauma has a tendency to. I have struggled to rebuild trust with other lalafell, and have had periods where I didn't want to play as Kokora because I felt guilty. And it sucks, because out of eleven years of playing FFXIV it was one bad experience...but it's an experience I have never really been able to completely shake...

[mneiai]

Thinking a lot about the FFXIV MSQ stuff and just...how unexciting I found the later patches of EW compared to ShB.

I think it's because, for one, we already had a bunch of questlines about the 13th in ShB and none of the characters we knew from that were part of this one. Two, we already had a questline about restoring an unbalanced world and the parallels didn't somehow make this one stronger, especially since we learned very little about the 13th in truth and instead just focused mostly on Zero.

And three, I was really invested in it when it seemed like we'd get confirmation of who the Azem shard was, but instead we basically just have theories (I do think it was probably original Golbez, but some people still insist it's just our Reaper avatar...who we don't even get to meet or anything and anyone who doesn't have the Reaper job would have no connection to, so like how boring is that choice?).

I had hoped it was Zero, as I think that Fandaniel/Zenos using a part of the WoL's soul would have been incredibly fitting, but that would have surely been confirmed somehow if true. Instead Zero is just...this person. I've seen theories that they're a shard of the same soul as Ryne, which would be very fitting and I'd like way more, but disconnected I'm just...not really that interested in them. I would have rather, say, had the post-MSQ stuff delve more into Zenos/Emet-Selch/etc's history in-game as we dug through Garlemald or something.

I think the Hildebrand questline was actually way better than the post-MSQ stuff. I was invested in some of the characters (whenever Brandihilde seemed to die I was devastated lol), we traveled to most of the places that mattered in the xpac, and the questline worked in the aftermath of some of the Final Days stuff, while also being relevant to our artifact weapon.

The Zero stuff feels a lot like the Heavensward post-MSQ stuff, which sucked at the time and only became good in my mind once ShB started, really, but the idea of the expansion after DT going back to being some sort of Shadowbringers type one seems highly unlikely, it feels like if we're going to more shards for the main MSQ it will probably be some of the "untouched" ones as we experiment more with traveling between worlds. This was more an epilogue for the ShB/EW storyline than a hint at what is to come, I feel like.

[malacola]

My best friend is obsessed with Eureka in FFXIV rn

Honestly I’m just glad she finds fresh new things to do and has fun even years after I got her back into the game

Hoping Dawntrail brings some big fun grind for her this summer as well tbh

I’m so tired lmao

[tavi-plays]

Quick question for the Tumblr FFXIV community: for those with WoL or non-WoL OCs, how do you continue to engage with the game and/or your character even when there is no story or character stuff left to respond to?

I'm doing art when I can (it's a slow process). Tried glamour farming, but tbh the extrinsic reward couldn't overcome my low tolerance for frustration (and general lack of time to invest). I'm debating whether to join an rp/lore community, if that is an idea or if I might find it restrictive.

What other things do people do to feed the WoL brainworms?

[fenxshiral]

Every job in every role should have something it excels at better than the other jobs. Right now the game is struggling with that identity and it's something I hope they can work on in Dawntrail.

There were a lot of times during this expac that many people were left feeling "Oh they took my job's thing and gave it to this job instead." That's not something that should happen ideally, imho.

The fact that so many DRK mains were upset about DRK being the least damaging tank in the final patch because "being the high dps tank is our thing," shows what a sorry state job identity - especially for healers and tanks - is currently in.

I know it's not something easy to fix, but hopefully Dawntrail shows some change for the better.

Right now, many jobs - especially healers and tanks - are struggling to find their identity. That's something that needs to change before it becomes a real problem.

[kian-sama]

For the whole succession thing in dawntrail and how we have to help someone with it. Would be pretty cool if the person we're helping was a female hrothgar.

I mean, there's already the area in the jungle that has a hrothgar homeland zone, so why not.

[domesticatedanimal]

I love tanking as DRK in raids because it immediately deflates the awkward "Who's gonna MT?" dance at the start.

You're a warrior? Great. For the next six minutes, I'm a mediocre DPS with an ego problem.

[lilas]

Something I’ve been thinking about while going around, finishing some quests and unlocking things here and there, is the stories Avi’li tells Erenville and the experiences he talks about.

And it makes me think, Avi’li doesn’t really share about his deeds or the great things he’s done, and I don’t think Erenville is interested in that. The world has heard of those deeds again and again, and Erenville isn’t one for hero worship.

What Avi’li does share are the things he’s seen and the people he’s met. He talks about swimming in the Ruby Sea with the Kojin and helping on their hunt for treasure. He talks about the beauty of Doma and the auspices he met. He talks about the pixies, and their quest to heal peoples’ dreams.

And Erenville shares his stories, the places he’s been and all their beauty and the diversity of the endemic species, the sights the tastes the sounds, the cold nights and muggy mornings.

This had no point except! Just them bonding over their happy experiences and love for discovery and travel gets me, and I think it’s significant that Erenville sees the adventurer, not the savior. (´；ω；`)

[gumjamin]

FFXIV Spoilers for me have been like:

Yes. I know who this character is and what is going to happen bUT BOY I DIDNT KNOW THIS WAS THE ROAD WE WERE GONNA TAKE TO GET THERE

[menacevenice]

i miss gposing 🫠

[rynpost]

This is deeply frustrating as I become more convinced that Alexandria is from a mystery reflection that isn't the 12th.

There are four choices - the fourth, the eighth, the ninth and the eleventh. For the idea I had I need to reshuffle the shards but I don't know where to T___T

Need crimes to return so I can craft Kira properly.

[the-littlest-kojin]

Bold assertion to:

A) say that any Scion went to therapy

B) say that Estinien, master of ghosting when someone wants to talk to him, went to therapy

major endwalker spoilers: yeah it's funny how estinien probably doesn't realize who emet-selch is

but also he could be standing there at the end poker-faced because nidhogg remembers. ohhhhh nidhogg remembers. this guy. this is the allagan empire guy. the meracydian horde is either dead or still enslaved cause of him. whether directly or indirectly he screwed over half of the first brood. bahamut and (seemingly) azdaja are dead, tiamat's life was ruined, and baby brother vrtra ignored nidhogg's calls for at least a thousand years

nidhogg's memories start snarling at estinien to Kill This Fuck and estinien is like "?? this again? my dude we've been over this. we went to therapy. also pretty sure he's already dead. as are you" and nidhogg grumbles and wheezes in disappointment for a few seconds and then tries to snap out some witty gloat to the ascian, he was real good at those while alive but he's working with estinien's linguistic processing here, give him a sec - oops hades and hythlodaeus have already discorporated