#ffxiv rant

[therealdesastrffxivpast]

Can we get #altfriendlyffxiv trending? Gods it's a hope it'll be a thing someday...

The twitter link: Here!

[catboynutsack]

got both ends of the tanking spectrum today!

earlier I was doing rouls and I got a sprout tank who was obviously rough around the edges and not familiar with the low level dungeon we were running but was still oozing with talent and was super polite to boot.

then just now I got a tank who was pulling far too much for my skill level then chose to insult me when we wiped. I was not in the mood to deal with their shit so I told them I'm not doing this, if you're gonna talk to me like this then I'm leaving (as my mental state is. not great tonight!) and they threatened to report me for abuse! in the end I apologized to the rest of the party for leaving and as I was clicking the "leave duty button" everyone was calling the tank toxic as hell which was nice. cathartic even

[yanaeden]

What would be the perfect way to start a Tumblr that is very... my thing? Oh, I know! I'll start with a vague rant (because my brain doesn't do detailed thoughts, apparently) about FFXIV! Well, the attitude of some of the community, that is.

Let's do this.

I don't understand why people frame their opinion as fact. Just because YOU don't like the content that is coming out doesn't mean it's objectively bad or that there is a content drought. There are a lot of people out there who are playing and enjoying it. The only real difference between previous expansion patches and EW is that the content being released in EW isn't a grind fest. Personally, I'm fine with that. I am one of those who hated Eureka and Bozja.

Grindy doesn't do it for me.

But am I going to shit on the content I don't like and frame my PERSONAL PREFERENCES as objective fact? No, because I understand the universe doesn't revolve around me.

I understand being disappointed, and you are absolutely free to express that. There is nothing wrong with venting. I don't have any issue with people who are just saying that the content isn't for them and that they wish there was something that they personally enjoyed. There are some, however, that seem to have this underlying entitlement with the way they seem to complain.

"Because I don't like this type of content, it means that it's objectively bad and the devs NEED to put in what I like! What I like is objectively superior!"

That type of vibe.

There is no content drought just because you don't like the type of content they are releasing. The devs have always expressed that they design this game with cintent lulls in mind to encourage players to take breaks from the game. They encourage you to play other games and to actually go and touch grass.

It's been like this for the 7 years I've been playing.

In the end, no matter how much you love it, it's just a video game. No video game should become your whole life. If it does, then that is a huge issue. I mean, I adore this game. It has quite literally changed my life. With my circumstances, I should be one of those that makes it their whole existence, but I don't, because it is ultimately just a video game. A hobby.

Having critisms is valid. Shitting on something just because it's not to your personal taste and framing it as an objective fact, isn't. All it is is being entitled and it is something I will probably never understand.

All in all, I personally don't feel like there is a content drought in FFXIV and I'm playing it the exact same amount that I always have in between expansions. Actually, it might be more because I have finally gotten into savage raiding.

It's what you make it.

(Damn, that turned out to be a lot longer than I was expecting. I'm so used to Twitter and thinking about how I can make things more concise to fit the character count. This felt so much nicer to get the thoughts out and flowing better. No restrictions! I kinda like it. XD)

[mneiai]

Okay, I have to rant about something completely trivial and unimportant, but if I rant about it on the discords or anywhere else people will attack me for daring to dislike something like this lol

spoilers for DT and also the EW alliance raid

Okay, so, for as much as I adore G'raha, I did not like the Alliance raid questline and so finished it kind of late which means my memory of it is very good. There was this one part that I just found really frustrating so it stuck in my head: we were asked to think of a device that stores information and it would materialize in our hand.

I was all ready to get one of those choose options and all ready to choose the Azem crystal/Ascian memory device type thing, and instead it just chose for us and it was a tomestone (and for some reason the WoL was embarrassed by that which was also annoying). Tomestones are basically the Allagan versions of smartphones.

So, this established, as if it needed to be, that the WoL is intimately familiar with advanced technologies.

Then we get to Solution 9 and...my WoL looks impressed? We've been to Azys Lla (also honestly thought the Golden City was going to end up something like that and was annoyed it didn't even get a shout out when people mentioned the Golden City being in the sky) and the edge of the universe, we've worked with aliens multiple times, we've fought Omega and Alexander and etc etc, we've been to the World Unsundered and seen the absolute cutting edge of Garlean magitek.

There is not actually anything that is happening in Solution 9 that does not have an equivalent, as we ourselves are told repeatedly with comparisons to the 13th and the Voidsent, but also we literally had a major villain (/love interest lolol) come back to life? We literally fought people who survived the death of their bodies by transferring their souls about and who also transferred memories into new bodies/souls?

Which also, like, side rant, but the whole "actually it would be ethnocentric of us to judge these people for what they do with souls" take is soooo bullshit and yet another way the game is pretending it's, uh, "woke" I guess is the only way to say it, in that more common use of the word where like someone thinks they're "woke" because they said women should be allowed to vote or some shit, much like the really ridiculous rant about being marginalized that the main baddie in the role quests gives in the intro quest. And it's another way this expansion is like...lowkey very conservative, at least in the English localization.

"What happens when they run out of souls since they're using up their own?" should have literally been the first thing out of someone's mouth and then it should have been followed up by "if people are reborn from souls that have been allowed into the natural cycle and a rejoining has already occurred, that means the souls from our world could potentially end up here and get devoured" and "uhh is this an invasion for more souls?" This is in no way like the giants building monuments to people before they die, this is literally people possibly upsetting the balance of the universe.

Anyway, I liked when we got to bring up the other shards and our experiences and knowledge with that, but it felt like way too little. Hell, when Wuk Lamat asked what to do without stairs, they could have easily just had us point out the teleportation pad things, since we've used some version of them pretty much all over the place.

[eorzeanchronicler]

I Rant About: Parallels in Stormblood

Time to live up to my description and rant about something. And for my first rant, I chose a topic I love to talk about to anyone in listening distance: Stormblood. I have many, many opinions about the expansion that made me finish the side quests of a single zone willingly (Azim Steppe, my beloved) but for now I'll focus on the single major factor of the story's telling, that is the parallels.

Stormblood is very much a tale of two cities even before we step foot into the expansion, as we deal with the remnants of both peoples. The refugee crisis of Ala Mhigo comes first, we encounter it as early as the level 23 MSQ in the form of Little Ala Mhigo but as we go on to the patch quests of A Realm Reborn, we encounter the Domain Refugees. These events happen together and the fates of these people were tied together though we didn't see it at the time.

Teledji Adeledji wanted to use the Domans, but they were denied refuge in Ul'dah as the nation already had their hands full with the Ala Mhigan refugees. So the Ala Mhigans were manipulated instead. In this way, they were linked together, the people affected and affecting one another without fully interacting.

The parallels don't stop there, as they're under the same viceroy, Zenos yae Galvus. They were terrorized by the same daughters they had failed in the form of Yotsuyu and Fordola. Their nations also held failed attempts at pursuing independence as with the case of the Domain revolution which resulted in the Domans fleeing to Eorzea, and the Ala Mhigans trying to free themselves from the yoke of Mad King Theodric only to end up under the clutches of the Garlean Empire.

The parallels don't end there though, the color schemes evoked are also parallels of one another. Red is the key color of Stormblood, red is the only bright color when you see the uniform of the Resistance, red is the color of the Mol, red is the color of Lyse's dress and it is everywhere in Kugane.

And Stormblood works because of these parallels. If one nation's story was told without the other, it would have suffered storywise. The reason story beats make sense to us is because we draw these similarities together to form the cohesive theme, unity. Both nations are united despite their differences because they fight for freedom. They are different but you see red everywhere, and most especially in the color of your allies. The Mol wear red, the Resistance uses red, and even Zenos wears red to symbolize his connection to Ala Mhigo and Doma as their viceroy.

The parallels serve to further the narrative. Zenos is the parallel of the player, a reflection of someone who chases the next big challenge for want of more, who reflects the player who wants to be better in battle. He reflects the person who is tired of playing a role even if it should give him the greatest joy. While this parallel may be different from player to player, I found this to be quite spot on for my lovely Riyi'to.

Ah, but Zenos is a whole different matter that should be tackled in a different rant.

There are probably plenty of other parallels that I missed but ultimately they all serve the same goal and it shows in how unity is just as important as the differences and parallels between the two nations.

Loyalty, Unity, Liberty. These three words from the trailer's song truly reflect the themes of Stormblood's story.

[eemamminy-art]

Skeb style comm for @ethelune ! The prompt was Talkingway giving Zenos some much needed therapy, but I loved the EW tribal quests so much I made it a little story in two artworks ehehe :3 Thank you for commissioning me!!

[mimble-sparklepudding]

Apologies for being grumpy, but I would like to suggest that the popular argument that "if you don't like this character/ship/story then you can just block it" can equally be applied to things that you might personally consider too vanilla, clichéd or boring, not just things that someone else might consider too explicit, weird or disgusting.

Whinging because you think there's too much monogamy, romance and tenderness in someone else's blog is just as ridiculous and judgemental as complaining there is too much polyamory, casual sex or vore in it. If you don't like something then nobody is forcing to you look at it - hard as it might be to believe, you're not actually imprisoned in some cottagecore version of A Clockwork Orange, and you do actually have some level of agency in how you engage with the media in front of you.

[carnivorous-arboretum]

bad end

[i'm a sucker for a lightwarden au hehe]

[misedejem]

Thinking about Eden, and there’s something about Emet-Selch abandoning Mitron as a Sin Eater for a century while Loghrif returned to the Star that feels pointed. Emet-Selch is the man who lost one of his partners to Zodiark and could not ascend the other because of their treachery, who had to watch them pass him by, oblivious to their history and their love, again and again. The fellow Ascians he condemns to be apart had loved each other before the Sundering, and they got to be together again. Twelve thousand years and he never got that, and even if he could get close to a shard of his beloved, it would not have been the same. Perhaps there was a bit of a bitter influence in his actions when he decided to leave Mitron trapped there.

Or maybe… it was revenge for all the fucking sharks?

[therealdesastrffxivpast]

"Zero is a stand in for Cecil from----"

I don't give two fucks what nostalgia bait FFXIV is trying to pull. Zero's change is so frustrating to me, and it's again that stupid 'oh light is better than/conquers the dark'. I LOVE voidsent and was hoping for an actual fulfilling story with them, instead we got 'embrace the light' for some stupid parallel people constantly bring up like it makes the shitty story palatable.

I will never stop hating patch 6.5, legit. I really did like Zero too. Now, every time I see a post about her I roll my eyes.

I do find it hilarious that people always talk about her and liking her BEFORE the dumbass change too. Makes me feel less alone in my frustrations.

[fatedroses]

And some days, I just wish you wouldn't look at me at all.

[soothinghymn]

Need someone to submit a concept for pedialyte

[idalenn]

"So bold, and yet, so empty."

[faragonart]

[galactickohipot]

Hmm so I've seen a lot of ppl say there's no stakes in FFXIV anymore because the WoL is too strong anyway. Like sure, making the WoL a godslayer isn't making things easy, but that's not truly where the issue is imo. Spoilers for DT's msq!!!

The main problem to me, is that the writers now consider that a victory through fighiting is a victory in the story. It kinda boggles my mind that there aren't negative repercutions for using violence anymore... It's especially true in DT: when you fight it's always the right thing to do and all fights have a positive influence on the story. It's pretty much "right is might and might is right" all around. The characters never doubts their fight is a righteous one for a second, and we are never given an ambiguous win either. Wuk Lamat is only able to influence the story because she becomes strong and she becomes strong because she is right and good. It is ironic for a character that is so focused on peace and love. Yet the story will still consistantly reward the characters for crushing their opponents. Storywise it doesn't make sense. It only cheapens your victories, so of course you would need to amp up the stakes. (also please note: these issues were already present when Ishikawa was at the helm, but there were other things to balance it out in ShB though.)

In contrast, in ARR and HW, there usually was a downside to the WoL's victory. It wasn't the entire story!

For example, a part I particularly like in 3.0 is the first time you slay Nidhogg. Not only is this done by Estinien after you've weakened the dragon; but it actually feels like a defeat. The entire game up to this point had your group try to mend the relationship between ishgardians and dragons. Estinien warms up to your group and Ysayle, and you can feel he is slowly begining to hope for lasting peace. However, with Hraesvelgr's revelations, Ysayle's dellusions are exposed and all the progress made towards reconcilliation is reduced to nothing. Worse, Estinien's violent and vengeful ways are proven to be the only solution. Truly, a terrible setback for the characters, and it results in an empty victory over Nidhogg. Sure you beat the baddie, but it's devastating for Alphinaud and Ysayle. It even comes back to bite Estinien in the butt when he gets possessed. There was more to the story than just finally beating a very strong foe, and it is made apparent at that moment. Even though the wol won every fight, it didn't mean that the main characters would be victorious. It could either be a diplomatic defeat, your beliefs could be challenged, or one of your allies could die. Unforeseen consequences were right around the corner. Plus, your character is only one person. Things could still happen outside of their reach, like at the end of ARR. Regardless of your WoL's strength, there are many ways you can create tension for a story!

In earlier expacs, there used to be a feeling that your battles wouldn't necessarily win the war. No need for a world ending threat then, to have stakes.

[razzz-poutine]

Okay, I was half-way joking when I said that reddit hates Wuk Lamat and tumblr loves her, but I didn't realize that it's at a point to where people who enjoy Dawntrail are being bullied for it within the FFXIV subreddit.

Like, Jesus, I had been using reddit quite a bit because I'm unlikely to run into disturbing US news when I'm just looking at ten different cat subreddits.

And for the longest time I had considered the FFXIV subreddit a safe place, that it's the nice mmorpg community, where I can be myself.

But, damn, it really really sucks how the community became so goddamned hostile because they didn't like DT. Was it this bad during Stormblood when everybody hated Lyse?