Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Well Intentioned]

So I went through and read through this entire thread and it was quite a fucken trip.

I was expecting the community to be above average exceptional, but seeing all the troon drama, weird as fuck graphics mods, troon drama, grooming, troon drama, rampant degeneracy, troon drama, etc. was a bit higher than I had expected even with accounting for furry/weeb predilections. I guess it could be worse, though, as I avoided rolling on the Balmung DC.

Found this lunatic advertising his stream while wandering through one of the cities. Kinda amazed that this is what some people do in this game: https://www.twitch.tv/djlimitbreak

Couple of things:

- Are there any QoL mods/addons that would be useful? I'm aware of ACT, but am looking more for QoL shit that might condense information down a bit. Not interested in crap like Cacbot.
- A few pages back there was some hope that Icy Veins might be able to stick a dagger into the heart of the Balance and, welp:

 

[I'm Retarded?]

So I finally finished the MSQ (pre-patches) for Stormblood...what the actual hell happened to the writing?

Coming from someone who loved Heavensward, I just felt the need to put my grievances in writing:

Spoiler: Stormblood spoilers/sperging

- Everytime Lyse was on screen, I wanted her to be off the screen. I'm not sure how they made her go from inoffensive ditz as Yda to actual annoyance as Lyse so quickly but good on them. I miss Papalymo. When she was walking as the liberation leader at the end to greet the people as if she actually contributed fucking anything I laughed. Worst character in the entire game.

- The Ala Mhigo storyline and the Dragon Indians were so boring I started skipping dialogue. Way to ruin the nicest looking zone (Azim Steppe) with absolute tedious gameplay.

- Speaking of tedium, what was up with the amount of ARR fetch/busy work quests; I swear it's like 1/3 of the quests. (This expansion seems to have a fetish for putting what you're looking for at the very edge of the red circle too, where you're least likely to search).

- In addition, I think this has the most "need to ingratiate yourself to the locals through busywork" quests out of the entire story thus far. Rhalgr's Reach, Lyse's hometown, Dragon Indians, and Doman village by my count.

- Some of Doma was actually pretty alright. I like Gosetsu (why is he alive?) and the Kojin were cool too. Kugane is a nice city, but you barely spend any time there, I thought the Empire's consulate and the police samurai were for sure gonna have a bigger role. Also, the distance between Eorzea and Doma is just thrown out the window for story convenience, lol.

- Zenos was pretty based, although I wish he would've killed more Ala Mhigans, maybe incinerate Lyse with dragon breath.

- Why was Empire mook #23 such a recurring bad guy? We fought this fucker 4 times already, put a fucking arrow in his head already I'm sick of him.

- I've heard from people that Yotsuyu gets a redemption arc? Not really sure how that's gonna work as she's pretty irredeemably evil from what we've seen/heard, but okay.

- I think my favorite thing this expansion was Alisaie. I like both of the twins a lot and hope they don't get sidelined again in favor of unlikeable characters.

All in all, I knew going in that there would be a drop in quality from HW, but I honestly think people undersold how bad it gets. There was just no grey in this story, very on the nose bad/good. Maybe it's because I'm biased against goodie-two-shoes #Resistance stories, but this was bad. Afterwards I went to the Restoration and it felt like home, I love (and miss) Ishgard <3

Reserve some judgement until you finish all the Stormblood patches, they do a solid job of rounding out the narrative. The first few patches are boring as shit but they pick up about halfway through. Also the primal Korean tribesman arc was the best part of the launch story IMO, lol. Regarding the twins, rest assured that Alphinaud and Alisaie remain extremely central to the story all the way through the current patch and, in fact, Shadowbringers opens up a lot more room to put the individual personalities of the Scions on display, the twins included. When you open up the Trust system, there are a bunch of little easter eggs in their AI in this regard - i.e. Alisaie will always steal the limit break even if she has to stand in AOEs to do it, Alphinaud will always heal Alisaie first if she's low even if it means the tank dies (lol), and there's one boss mechanic in the level 73 dungeon all the NPCs react differently to:

Spoiler

During the Funambulist's Fantasia mechanic in Dohn Mheg:

• Alphinaud will slowly walk through before nervously ("I'm not afraid... I'm not afraid...") running the rest of the way at the halfway point and takes a sigh of relief when finishing, preventing him from reaching the boss's barrier in time.
• Alisaie will sprint the entire way ('Oh, come now. We know this is an illusion.").
• Thancred expresses mild annoyance ("This wouldn't fool a child.") before running part of the way and leaping across to the boss ("Good thing I'm light on my feet.").
• Urianger expresses mild amusement before teleporting across ("This shan't trouble us.").
• Y'shtola will simply briskly walk through as if there were no illusion ("An asinine trick.").
• Ryne will nervously pause at the start ("W-We're supposed to cross this?") before tip-toeing through while pausing at certain points ("One step at a time...") and is unable to reach the boss's barrier in time.

the redemption comes in them trying to make you slightly sympathetic to the character, as whoever picked up the writing in the patches realized that she was just comically evil for no reason. what they should have instead realized is that it is better to just let her be a campy villain than to waste your time with the utter schlock that is her 'arc,' in which they trot out a long series of extreme tropes and contrivances and in which she acts on her own volition maybe once. Nothing says redemption quite like having no agency whatsoever. Early on the personified slice of white bread ponders "why don't we just kill her?" and there really is no good reason not to, except that the trial that comes out of the arc is at least fun.

troons and genderspecials adore this character because the suggestion is "as long as you've had a rough upbringing, you have an excuse to do whatever you want." the writers awkwardly try to acknowledge that part where they show her leading an execution squad in Isari and go "no no, it's okay, she had it rough as a kid and she's got amnesia, so she's totally a different person now." awful familiar to "I know you ran over some people with your car because you decided to drink and drive, but that was the old you, now you're the new you, and a totally different true and honest person". it's sortof like poetry, in that it rhymes

I don't even care about spoiling this shit because it's exceptional and a waste of time. they should have focused on one of the only interesting things to come out of SB, Fordola, but she instead gets largely relegated to a bunch of side-quests and extremely brief appearances despite, you know, the whole 'artificial echo' thing being a big part of SB's endgame story.

Spoiler

on the contrary, Yotsuyu's arc is a pretty brutal repudiation of the idea that you can excuse everything based on a person's past, because while everyone is struggling to figure out whether it's okay to hand her free redemption tickets, as soon as she gets her memory back she just slaps them all away saying actually, I am a complete piece of shit, it's what's in my heart, and I'll die embracing it rather than try and make any amends. if anything, it shows that while people being damaged is sad, it doesn't ultimately excuse any harm they inflict on others because of it, and the charity and understanding of others is easily wasted on them. also the Tsukuyomi fight slaps

PS Fordola shows up again towards the end of Shadowbringers and it's heavily implied she's going to be a not-insignificant character going forward

 

[Dave.]

So I went through and read through this entire thread and it was quite a fucken trip.

I was expecting the community to be above average exceptional, but seeing all the troon drama, weird as fuck graphics mods, troon drama, grooming, troon drama, rampant degeneracy, troon drama, etc. was a bit higher than I had expected even with accounting for furry/weeb predilections. I guess it could be worse, though, as I avoided rolling on the Balmung DC.

Found this lunatic advertising his stream while wandering through one of the cities. Kinda amazed that this is what some people do in this game: https://www.twitch.tv/djlimitbreak

Couple of things:

- Are there any QoL mods/addons that would be useful? I'm aware of ACT, but am looking more for QoL shit that might condense information down a bit. Not interested in crap like Cacbot.
- A few pages back there was some hope that Icy Veins might be able to stick a dagger into the heart of the Balance and, welp:

Ver archivo adjunto 2666648

As if I don't have enough of a reason to hate the Balance and be MATI at the same time, they're monopolizing themselves onto other FFXIV class and game guides.

 

[Fcret]

So I finally finished the MSQ (pre-patches) for Stormblood...what the actual hell happened to the writing?

Too many chefs. Stormblood was split between the Heavensward writer (on his retirement lap) for the Ala Mhigo parts and Ishikawa (the fiction fujo of legend) for the Doman parts. Ishikawa takes the wheel entirely for the post-SB story and also the ShB story, and it improves dramatically.

So I went through and read through this entire thread and it was quite a fucken trip.

I was expecting the community to be above average exceptional, but seeing all the troon drama, weird as fuck graphics mods, troon drama, grooming, troon drama, rampant degeneracy, troon drama, etc. was a bit higher than I had expected even with accounting for furry/weeb predilections. I guess it could be worse, though, as I avoided rolling on the Balmung DC.

Found this lunatic advertising his stream while wandering through one of the cities. Kinda amazed that this is what some people do in this game: https://www.twitch.tv/djlimitbreak

Couple of things:

- Are there any QoL mods/addons that would be useful? I'm aware of ACT, but am looking more for QoL shit that might condense information down a bit. Not interested in crap like Cacbot.
- A few pages back there was some hope that Icy Veins might be able to stick a dagger into the heart of the Balance and, welp:

For addons:
1) XIVlauncher obviously. The default launcher sucks and won't even save your password (despite the fact that it does this on PS4) and it also allows you to do mods easier.
2) Moogle Maps. If you do treasure hunts or even regular hunts, this makes things much smoother.
3) Teamcraft. Not an addon per se, but if you craft or gather, this is pretty much required. The desktop version even has packet sniffing capabilities that let it automatically track your inventories and stats so you don't have to manually input them when simming crafts.
4) xivalexander. Good if you have latency problems that would normally prevent you from double-weaving. Very likely to be broken soon and SE might even outright ban users because of Retard Max's sperging about how yoshi-p needs to allow his world first troons to use addons on twitch.

On the subject of drama:
As someone who's been at endgame for a few years now, it's about what you'd expect from any large MMO. If you go to an RP venue, whether it's the Goldshire Inn or a club in the Goblet, expect some weird shit to go down. Discord cabals run a lot of the less-structured endgame content like Eureka and Bozja and PVP (because they pretty much have to) and there's an above average amount of biofems who play this game so Girl Drama™ is always on the periphery of any group content you involve yourself in.

It's not that hard to avoid this stuff though. Even on crystal DC, there's some pretty chill and based communities that make fun of the troons. There's no real need to wade into the degeneracy unless you absolutely have to.

 

[Tachibana]

the redemption comes in them trying to make you slightly sympathetic to the character, as whoever picked up the writing in the patches realized that she was just comically evil for no reason. what they should have instead realized is that it is better to just let her be a campy villain than to waste your time with the utter schlock that is her 'arc,' in which they trot out a long series of extreme tropes and contrivances and in which she acts on her own volition maybe once. Nothing says redemption quite like having no agency whatsoever. Early on the personified slice of white bread ponders "why don't we just kill her?" and there really is no good reason not to, except that the trial that comes out of the arc is at least fun.

troons and genderspecials adore this character because the suggestion is "as long as you've had a rough upbringing, you have an excuse to do whatever you want." the writers awkwardly try to acknowledge that part where they show her leading an execution squad in Isari and go "no no, it's okay, she had it rough as a kid and she's got amnesia, so she's totally a different person now." awful familiar to "I know you ran over some people with your car because you decided to drink and drive, but that was the old you, now you're the new you, and a totally different true and honest person". it's sortof like poetry, in that it rhymes

I don't even care about spoiling this shit because it's exceptional and a waste of time. they should have focused on one of the only interesting things to come out of SB, Fordola, but she instead gets largely relegated to a bunch of side-quests and extremely brief appearances despite, you know, the whole 'artificial echo' thing being a big part of SB's endgame story.

That's not what the arc is about.

Yotsuyu's story is based in many Japanese folklore stories. Notably Tsukuyomi and Tsuyu.

In folklore, the moon god (Tsukuyomi) is born from another god trying to cleanse their sins either through his right eye or through a reflection in a white copper mirror. A copper mirror is what Tsuyu is given while she's in captivity and is in part why she recovers.

Tsuyu is from another story where a woman (Tsuyu) falls in love with a Japanese warrior. The warrior goes to war and hears the girl died. The girl ends up dying from grief and reaches the warrior as a ghost. The warrior commits suicide with his lover's skeleton in his hands.

The story shows how evil can be born from innocence, and Gosetsu's grief over that situation. It's never about how Yotsuyu can be redeemed but rather how he feels she deserves to be protected, especially in her state, as she's a product of her environment. Ultimately Yotsuyu decides that she's beyond that and dies for it. Gosetsu doesn't take well to that at all, and unlike in the folklore story, decides to turn a new leaf to become a wandering monk.

Fordola's story is different because she cares about her kin, and her story asked the question "how far would one go to liberate their nation?".

 

[Well Intentioned]

Too many chefs. Stormblood was split between the Heavensward writer (on his retirement lap) for the Ala Mhigo parts and Ishikawa (the fiction fujo of legend) for the Doman parts. Ishikawa takes the wheel entirely for the post-SB story and also the ShB story, and it improves dramatically.

For addons:
1) XIVlauncher obviously. The default launcher sucks and won't even save your password (despite the fact that it does this on PS4) and it also allows you to do mods easier.

Yeah, I got XIVLauncher because the default launcher wasn't downloading the damn game.

2) Moogle Maps. If you do treasure hunts or even regular hunts, this makes things much smoother.
3) Teamcraft. Not an addon per se, but if you craft or gather, this is pretty much required. The desktop version even has packet sniffing capabilities that let it automatically track your inventories and stats so you don't have to manually input them when simming crafts.

Is Moogle Maps strictly for Hunts or does it have overlays for other crap, like undiscovered fishing holes or for sightseeing? Or can Teamcraft do that? I was trying to tumble through it last night and it looks like it's geared towards high end fancypants crafting?

On the subject of drama:

Yeah, it's nothing really new for MMOs, but I was just a little taken aback by how brazen a lot of this shit is. Anytime I'm in Ul'dah or any of the major cities, I see constant spam for "18+ parties with our courtesans", some pretty obvious ERP inspired glamours/names (I've spotted at least 3 characters with some sort of take on Himbo.) In WoW, that sort of crap was relegated to the confines of Goldshire on like 1 or 2 servers, with some kind of RP mod that I think was subverted by those types to basically list out their ERP Personals Ad.

And girls in games aren't really the problem. It's thirsty retards trying to score a piece of hambeast ass that tend to cause the drama, which results in the girls stirring the pot because they're getting attention (or not enough of it.) I've been in raiding circles where everyone got along fine and the only real issue was some tryhard dickhead trying to be the next Furor or Tigole. Here, have Part 2 of Tigole Meme Image:

Spoiler

 

[CptnSnshn]

Bozja isn't too grindy if you don't care about the relic

And if you do care about the relic have fun doing 180 fucking normal raids jesus fucking christ who thought getting 60 items from each raid tier was a good idea.

 

[Fcret]

Is Moogle Maps strictly for Hunts or does it have overlays for other crap, like undiscovered fishing holes or for sightseeing? Or can Teamcraft do that? I was trying to tumble through it last night and it looks like it's geared towards high end fancypants crafting?

Just hunts and treasure hunts. I don't know of anything for the sightseeing logs unfortunately.

Teamcraft is for all levels of crafters and gatherers. For gatherers, not only will it give you maps, times, and rates, but if you add a bunch of stuff you want to a list, it'll actually generate an optimal path for you to travel to farm it all.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

And if you do care about the relic have fun doing 180 fucking normal raids jesus fucking christ who thought getting 60 items from each raid tier was a good idea.

I farmed most of those in Zadnor which I had to do anyway to raise my resistance level and get valor badge buffs. "Have to do normal raids" is a stretch and the skirmishes come in and die really fast so 90 of them are basically freebies if you care about Bozja at all as skirmishes pop up a lot you're in an active instance. The only people who do 180 raids are people who hate Bozja and everything in it, I actually liked Bozja so I only did maybe 40-50 raids because CEs take a bit to spawn sometimes.

Also I'll take Zadnor + normal raids over fucking HW light farming 6 years ago or the retarded atmas/books from ARR literally any day when those were current content or god forbid doing old Eureka where you can't fucking mount and exp is gutted to shit. At least normal raids pop and die in like 3-4 minutes.

 

[Tachibana]

Yeah, it's nothing really new for MMOs, but I was just a little taken aback by how brazen a lot of this shit is. Anytime I'm in Ul'dah or any of the major cities, I see constant spam for "18+ parties with our courtesans", some pretty obvious ERP inspired glamours/names (I've spotted at least 3 characters with some sort of take on Himbo.) In WoW, that sort of crap was relegated to the confines of Goldshire on like 1 or 2 servers, with some kind of RP mod that I think was subverted by those types to basically list out their ERP Personals Ad.

And girls in games aren't really the problem. It's thirsty retards trying to score a piece of hambeast ass that tend to cause the drama, which results in the girls stirring the pot because they're getting attention (or not enough of it.) I've been in raiding circles where everyone got along fine and the only real issue was some tryhard dickhead trying to be the next Furor or Tigole. Here, have Part 2 of Tigole Meme Image:

Spoiler

Ver archivo adjunto 2667007

Drama is inherent to this game. It got a perfect mix of draconian ToS, weeb shit, self-aggrandizement, and communities like Reddit enabling the insane.

You can keep yourself away for most of it except content like Baldesion Arsenal and DR Savage which are both run by cabals. Trying to run either on release was a nightmare because the WF raiders/streamers/cabal people had priority. Running DRS to this day is still a hassle and a half.

The worst mistake I did with raiding since SB was raiding with a tranny one tier. Autistic, fixated on dps only, XIV was their life. This person made raiding for the 7 other people a less fun experience.

 

[Fcret]

The worst mistake I did with raiding since SB was raiding with a tranny one tier. Autistic, fixated on dps only, XIV was their life. This person made raiding for the 7 other people a less fun experience.

The troon voice is the worst if you're using voice comms. It's like Shmorky being your raid leader. Mind you, this is more an issue with the caliber of troons that XIV gets where they all try to be UWU KAWAII ANIMU GRILLS but sound like they're just frying their vocal cords. Normal troons that just go for an achievable feminine voice would be fine but XIV doesn't attract those.

I farmed most of those in Zadnor which I had to do anyway to raise my resistance level and get valor badge buffs. "Have to do normal raids" is a stretch and the skirmishes come in and die really fast so 90 of them are basically freebies if you care about Bozja at all as skirmishes pop up a lot you're in an active instance. The only people who do 180 raids are people who hate Bozja and everything in it, I actually liked Bozja so I only did maybe 40-50 raids because CEs take a bit to spawn sometimes.

Also I'll take Zadnor + normal raids over fucking HW light farming 6 years ago or the exceptional atmas/books from ARR literally any day when those were current content or god forbid doing old Eureka where you can't fucking mount and exp is gutted to shit. At least normal raids pop and die in like 3-4 minutes.

It's also highly dependent on how active the Zadnor instances are on your data center. If you're not playing at prime time, it's very likely you'll be spawned into an almost empty instance. Still, I'd rather farm normal raids one time than do the fucking atmas/books again.

 

[Jinmen]

I guess it could be worse, though, as I avoided rolling on the Balmung DC.

Found this lunatic advertising his stream while wandering through one of the cities. Kinda amazed that this is what some people do in this game: https://www.twitch.tv/djlimitbreak

I've been on Balmung for awhile, transferred to play with a friend. I haven't tried raiding but its really not that bad? The "worst" I've seen is people doing paragraph long rp in the Drowning Wench. Also lots of advertisements for LGBTQ FCs but I'm disappointed I haven't found any outright degeneracy yet because I find that entertaining to watch while in queue for dps.

 

[Tachibana]

The troon voice is the worst if you're using voice comms. It's like Shmorky being your raid leader. Mind you, this is more an issue with the caliber of troons that XIV gets where they all try to be UWU KAWAII ANIMU GRILLS but sound like they're just frying their vocal cords. Normal troons that just go for an achievable feminine voice would be fine but XIV doesn't attract those.

The voice was fine, although it was a giveaway that the person was a troon.

The problem came from how fixated they were with dps no matter how inconvenient because higher number = more skill. That's in spite of the fact that the group didn't have issues with dps checks.

In addition, this person was antisocial but would start shit in the back of other static members. I don't like dealing with that and I don't like dealing with people who can't take a joke when I'm here to play vydia.

 

[Zilortha]

The voice was fine, although it was a giveaway that the person was a troon.

The problem came from how fixated they were with dps no matter how inconvenient because higher number = more skill. That's in spite of the fact that the group didn't have issues with dps checks.

In addition, this person was antisocial but would start shit in the back of other static members. I don't like dealing with that and I don't like dealing with people who can't take a joke when I'm here to play vydia.

See I don't mind trannies if they aren't insane zealots. If they just wanna larp as a woman in an MMO? Well I have my personal opinions on that, but as long as they don't cause issues? Then I'm not gonna start drama.

Like I think there's a tranny in my static, but they cause 0 problems within the group, so I don't mind. They're nice in general, they play well enough, and most importantly: they don't try talking about politics (without prodding) or try starting drama. I'll admit that I was really worried when they first joined, but it's turned out fine. Tbqh, I wish some of the boys in my static were half as restrained.

 

[Fcret]

I've been on Balmung for awhile, transferred to play with a friend. I haven't tried raiding but its really not that bad? The "worst" I've seen is people doing paragraph long rp in the Drowning Wench. Also lots of advertisements for LGBTQ FCs but I'm disappointed I haven't found any outright degeneracy yet because I find that entertaining to watch while in queue for dps.

Crystal doesn't have much public degeneracy. The one area where I did see a lot was nu-diadem on release where all the sweaty DoH/DoL players farmed it for 18 hours straight and got into some straight up fetish shit in shout chat. But even then, it was more for laughs and less for actual masturbation. I think anyway.

 

[Zilortha]

Crystal doesn't have much public degeneracy. The one area where I did see a lot was nu-diadem on release where all the sweaty DoH/DoL players farmed it for 18 hours straight and got into some straight up fetish shit in shout chat. But even then, it was more for laughs and less for actual masturbation. I think anyway.

You can catch weird stuff on Balmung sometimes, but it's mostly relegated to houses/apartments.
So at the very least the degenerates still have some shame.

 

[Jinmen]

This is the kind of harmless stuff I normally see. There's always an abundance of performing bards and strip dancers in Limsa though.

Honestly, I kind of enjoy it because it adds some flavor + silliness to the game. As lala scum I made sure to jump up on the table and ruin their session. That's not me speaking though. I felt a bit bad for ruining their fun and left.

 

[Fcret]

Finally finished up Dalriada last night. Bozja feels like a ton of wasted potential but I'm glad it's less autistic than Eureka.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Finally finished up Dalriada last night. Bozja feels like a ton of wasted potential but I'm glad it's less autistic than Eureka.

A lot of information is in the field notes and I'd suggest reading them for the side characters if you want to know anything about them (even the main characters have a good bit of information there). It does feel like it is missing something in the main quest, but the field notes and the little side stories in the skirmish/fate chains aads a few little layers to this story that has me overall satisfied.

Like with the Doman guy Oboro from the Ninja questline is chasing in Zandor, The Red Mage being chased around in Zadnor due to what happened to him, the various beast masters Lyon's trained, Dabog in general, the cat girl who saves the unicorn, and the final boss of Dalriada. Despite this mostly being fates content, I feel they actually tried to add minor narratives and things happening within these fates that made the whole place feel like an actual battlefield to some extent.

 

[Well Intentioned]

I've been on Balmung for awhile, transferred to play with a friend. I haven't tried raiding but its really not that bad? The "worst" I've seen is people doing paragraph long rp in the Drowning Wench. Also lots of advertisements for LGBTQ FCs but I'm disappointed I haven't found any outright degeneracy yet because I find that entertaining to watch while in queue for dps.

I'm just going off of some of the horror stories that were earlier in the thread, combined with my own experiences on another DC where it seemed really, uh, out there compared to like literally every other MMO I've played.

Novice Network devolved into horny chat earlier today before that Wesker guy spoke up and told people to knock it off. I'm also seeing a lot of really stupid arguments coming from the Burger Kings. Two notable arguments were arguing about whether HQ gear was 'essential' while leveling to 80 and another long-ranging argument over how important secondary stats are (majority of people were saying that it's really negligible outside of folks doing bleeding edge, but one spastic was insistent that a stat is a stat and that it matters, dammit.)

I feel bad for FF fans who got into this game who might not be able to look past this sort of idiocy or folks who are just new to the genre.