Backlog 2024

All other video games not related to the main farming series - Pokemon, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and other indie-developed games.
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Bluie
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Kikki wrote: Jan 11, 2024 6:05 pm Glamour seems very important in FFXIV. It's strange how much more fun it is to play when your character (and their mount or minion) looks good.
It's often joked in the community that Glam is the true endgame in FFXIV. As your character gets so much attention in cutscenes, many want to look a cool/good as possible. I personally spend a lot of time collecting different pieces of clothing to make outfits as it is really fun. It's a slippery slope though - you can spend so much time and gil trying to get that one piece.

----

Did two things today! Firstly I played through the Pokemon epilogue. It was very, very silly, but also a lot of fun with some interesting lore drops. It's probably safe to say the games are 100% over now story wise. I'm honestly expecting them to announce the B&W remakes at their year's equivalent of E3 because Indigo Disc did feel like a setup for it.

Secondly, I got the Platinum for Honkai Star Rail! Way easier that Genshin Impact's, but was still time consuming regardless. I'm still missing one trophy from the volume 2 section, but I'll get it later.

Non gaming stuff; I finished another fic chapter - go me!
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Kikki
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Bluie wrote: Jan 11, 2024 6:32 pm It's often joked in the community that Glam is the true endgame in FFXIV. As your character gets so much attention in cutscenes, many want to look a cool/good as possible. I personally spend a lot of time collecting different pieces of clothing to make outfits as it is really fun. It's a slippery slope though - you can spend so much time and gil trying to get that one piece.
I'm quite fond of the 'brand-new' set that I was given during the MSQ, for my arcanist to go visit the dignitaries. (Are they implying he was too grubby to see anyone important??) The elezen are too slender for bulky costumes. All this warrior bulking gear would be better on a roegadyn. Or if you can adjust other body types I guess. I didn't see a way to adjust the elezen build except for height, so I assume build isn't adjustable for anyone.

So hopefully I'll be satisfied with stuff I can get for free or at least not sink too much time into it. I'm pretty okay with this outfit I already have for the summoner, though it's a little froufrou with the poet sleeves and all the little ties. But it's pretty good, so I just apply it as a glamour plate over anything else and that seems to be good enough for me so far.

I seem to be a sucker for anything that is asymmetrical, or has a sash at the waist, and isn't bulky. I'm pretty satisfied with just the one nice outfit I already have, except I need to get something nice for my Warrior, now, since he can't wear the magic stuff my summoner has. As long as I have a way that he doesn't look lumpen and/or destitute in a cutscene, I'm fine with it. I just like for him to look intelligent and well-cared-for. All other qualities are negotiable.

~

Good for you on all your productivity yesterday :)

~

EDIT: Forgot to note that the FFXIV subscription prices are listed entirely in USD (because the game prices on PS4 are in CAD). Subscribing is even more expensive than I thought...

EDIT 2: Found out how to clear the screen of all clutter for picture-taking. Also figured out uploading screenshots on PS4 without social media. :D
Spoiler:
This is what FFXIV wants my warrior to look like:
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This is what I think an elezen warrior should look like (well...close, anyway!):
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Bluie
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*sigh*

It's happening again. That thing where I don't want to play anything but a select few items therefore dropping everything I have going on in my backlog. I just... really don't want to hit massively giant games right now or any time soon. I want to keep up with my live service games and done some quicker experiences. Anything that requires me to play it for more than 30 hours is such a turn off. I really think all my time with FFXIV and Genshin have rewired my brain somehow. I went from playing every game I could get my hands on, even the bad ones, to just not giving a damn any more. Sure, there's still titles I want to play actively, but every time I pick up something because it's popular or all my friends are playing it, I have a genuine good time for a little bit, and then I just loathe the idea of getting back to it. So I'm quite literally dropping my entire backlog that's ongoing. No more Baldur's Gate 3, no more Harvestella. I'm not going to even start Cattails 2 or Silent Hope because I'm in no mood for them.

I'm probably going to do a playthrough of Atelier Marie and then hit Monochrome Mobius because I actively want to play them. The only obscenely long game I do want to play is the Muv Luv trilogy, but that's a VN and I eat through those pretty fast because speed reader. My most anticipated release atm is Star Rail's next expansion next month, and I really don't care about much else until whenever the heck the 3 other games I care about this year get release dates. But you know what I do wanna do?

REPLAYS. GOSH I REALLY WANT TO REPLAY SOME OLD FAVES (and some new ones too). I want to finish my second Fire Emblem Engage replay, I want to replay the Toukiden duology because I ADORE THEM, and I used to play Final Fantasy IX yearly and I haven't done that in 4 years! All these new games arriving at once are stressing me out! I wanna indulge in what I like! It's gonna be a loooong wait til Dawntrail, so I just freaking might!
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Finally restarted Fantasy Life, yaaay! I picked Mercenary this time, and I'm going to take some advice found on Reddit and try a combat, gathering, and crafting Life on rotate for the story. Or something like that... I remember cooking being fun, but I want to try to remember which Lives I've used and try different ones this time. I also am reminded how much I really enjoy the graphics and especially music of this game!! I'm sad because I missed out on the DLC, I hear it's fun/important/etc so I'm a bit bummed about that, but I can't be too upset with the new release looming. :bunny:
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Kikki
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We're snowed in, today!

Our driveway ended up getting cleared by truck at about 4pm, but until then our drive was impassable with a two-foot tall, thick, heavy snowbank at the end. We got 8 inches of wet snow overnight and this morning. (Plus we got about 5 or 6 inches between Tuesday and Wednesday, so the sides of the road were already messy and then the plough churned up a huge drift when it cleared the street early this morning.)

Grandma's 'funeral' was today too, but it was by zoom since we knew the storm was coming. I've been to a lot of funerals but that one felt the weirdest. But anyway, it's been a strange day.

I did get A Realm Reborn done, though. I knew I had to do it early, before anyone would be interrupting me, since you can't pause, and it's a long thing to get through and I knew I'd be stressed by it to boot. Which I was. Though I only died once (because I was paying too much attention to my attacks and not enough to where my conjurer was and I ate multiple AoEs in short succession...SUCH a messy battlefield, that one!), which for me is pretty good.

Still, I was kinda frazzled after that. Glad I got it out of the way early. And then, for some reason, I got three quests about zombies in a row! I was afraid the story was becoming about zombies because I confused it for the MSQ, lol. I only meant to pick up very quick 'unlock this dungeon and walk away' quests just to clear them from the map in the city, but they turned out to be big quests, which is probably where I got confused. One was about a zombie groom and it just unlocked a dungeon quickly and that was done. Easy. One made me run all over the world to get 3 sentient cactuses (but it rewarded me with a cute cactus minion) and the last one...

That one introduced to me to this utter buffoon named Hildibrand. He seems sweet, but I don't enjoy farce and cringey humour makes me shrivel. And it was LONG. And I knew the second I saw that horrible dance that the game was gonna force my elezen to do it. It was so awful. :eek: A cute female character or one of those little gerbil people could do it and not look unbearably embarrassing, but my character isn't cute. He's hugely tall and looks very serious, so watching him flail and mug was just...gah. The one good thing about it was that I could tell they enjoyed making that content. It reeked of a giggly dev team cheering each other on to reach ever higher heights of absurdity.

It rewarded me with a dreadful dance emote and a dungeon (or just a fight?) that I can't do, lol. Zombie + cacti quest much better!

But anyway: A Realm Reborn. Of course, there's still all this connector content between ARR and Heavensward, but the (VERY long) credits already rolled, so I'm considering it to be part of Heavensward.
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Kikki wrote: Jan 13, 2024 5:21 pmThat one introduced to me to this utter buffoon named Hildibrand.
Ah, Hildibrand, one of the reasons I started FFXIV. Yes, I am entirely serious. I had planned to play the game eventually, but I happened across a streamer doing the Heavensward Hildibrand questline (the one you access after finishing the HW base story) and it tickled my funny bone enough to jump in a little sooner, because I NEEDED context. Humor is subjective, so I totally get when people don't like the slapstick comedy of Hildibrand, but I love seeing our character, who is basically this « Harvest Goddess » killing machine, be so out of their depth babysitting an indestructible idiot. They go from "I guess this is happening???" to "« Puppy Doodoo », I'd better tag along so they don't break something important". To go from being so bewildered by it all to just accepting everything is the funniest thing to me, and the hijinks they get into in the Stormblood and Endwalker were particularly hilarious. The fact that there's been this organic progression of:

(ARR) "This dance will summon your family?"

to

(Endwalker) "THIS DANCE WILL SUMMON HIM, TRUST ME!"

Just kills me. I also just love seeing the animators flex what they can do with the models/engine, because they PUSH them and it's actually been a tech demo for the story cutscenes. Some of how your party reacts/does things really shows that Hildibrand walked so the MSQ characters could run. I cannot wait for Dawntrail as it's supposed to be a 'Summer Vacation' expansion, because I want the party to have some hijinks that don't involve world ending circumstances in the background.

----

I started Atelier Marie last night and yes, YES, this is how Atelier should be! No long « Mr.Gourmet's hat » open world JRPGs - just a hub town with selection map with small explorable areas. I'm probably gonna binge it on my next day off and just accept whatever ending I manage to get. People in Texas right now are FREAKING OUT over a cold snap, so work has been utter shite. This seems like a nice fun game to decompress to after it.

Honkai Star Rail side note: 75 pity and no Blade. I don't want him that badly, so I'm probably just gonna stop. Somebody in Penacony will probably catch my eye, so I'll wait and keep my high pity + guaranteed focus pull.
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Kikki
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Slapstick humour is definitely hotly debated. It certainly takes plenty of skill and great timing for actors/comedians, but for me it's just not funny. Seeing someone slip and fall in a weird way, or be hit with lumber, or make bizarre faces...it just doesn't do anything to me. I don't laugh or smile in response to it.

I DID burst out laughing one time during the whole thing...but I don't remember why. Something about it startled me and I laughed. Wish I could remember exactly when that happened. Something with that Godfrey or Godrick guy (or whatever papa's name was) I think. But mostly I was groaning and covering my face to try to minimize the amount of cringe I was shriveling away from, lol, particularly when MY character started doing the dance. Uuuugh. (I tried to make my elezen to look like Sanjay, at least as much as that was possible, with the dark skin, white hair and purple eyes. I love his gravitas...and it evaporated like water in the Sahara during that questline! I don't even like when he does that 'yes!' motion at the end of some of the larger feats, it looks so strange on him, as his face normally looks like it'd crack if he smiled more than a sliver.)

~

Glad you're enjoying Atelier Marie! Must feel good to enjoy an old favourite series again :)

~

I was out with the whole (local) family, to a place about half an hour away for a late lunch, today, which was really good. A place called The Granary. Everyone loved their food and their dessert as well, so that was a big success. (I had a huge cobb-style salad that I could barely keep on the plate with house-made balsamic dressing, and some black forest cake.) It broke the day neatly in two, but I'm up really early so I did run around doing some gathering, as I wanted some of the botanist rewards. I've now collected every logging item from level 1-50 and have the master botanist ring, which improved my outfit by something like 4 levels. Took forever, but leveling the gathering classes, especially mining and botany, are some of the simplest tasks in the game and I find the relative straightforwardness satisfying. I'd love to get the reward from the logging hours achievements but that would take me many hours, as I'd need to mine literally about 10,000 more times. (I wish I was joking.) I really want those tools! To think I have to do that 4 times, though, when you include main and and off-hand separately, and for both botany and mining. I feel like I'll barely need those rewards by the time I get that much done!

Doing some decisioning. Decided getting the game just because it's on sale is a stupid thing to do. I like it a lot, and I WILL get it...but it's too big a commitment in time and budget atm. So I'm going to ignore the sale and buy when I actually feel sure I know what I'm doing. Even if it's not on sale then. Oh, and I don't actually want to be playing when Dawntrail comes out. I think it'll be crazy busy then and I may as well leave that traffic all to the proper players and just stay out of anyone's way.

I've been saying this for 6-8 months already, but I really should just buckle down and go complete Trails to Azure, with it being half done already. And I want to get two more demos done this month. If I do both of those things then, including ARR, I'll have completed 4 games this month. And abandoned one. (Lego Bricktales. So glad I got it on a good sale!)
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Today in Fantasy Life, I didn't get very far in the story but I changed to the Angler Life and completed some of those quests as well as some of Flutter's Bliss quests. I feel like it's gonna take me forever to play this game lol.

I know the game is older now, but I'll spoiler just in case.
Spoiler:
I just finished Chapter One about the Doomstones falling. I just found out there are about seven chapters, so maybe it won't take me too long especially considering I don't own the DLC, but with so many Lives and 50 million side quests, including multiple categories of side quest, I can see myself playing for a long time.


I think I said this the other day but regardless, I forgot how amazing the dialogue and music is in the game. I think the farthest I've ever gotten is to Port Puerto, and I've only played about half of the lives. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll finish by the time the next one comes out. :lol:
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Mikodesu
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Finished (I think) the main, spoilery portion of the Sandrock story last night. Still enjoying it more than Hoyo games, so I'm rushing through my minimum time commitment in those to clear up more time for it. I have been piddling in a puzzle game again, though, to give my brain time to chill. « Harvest Goddess » damn, this game...

Second spoiler-filled wall of text:
Spoiler:
Wrote a whole bunch of stuff last night, and I've reordered everything to be chronological, past where I left off in my last ramble.

I really think the whole *you should finish your quests before you go in here* thing should be for the Sandrock Storage bit, because after that you get railroaded into the endgame. Miguel and Pen are in jail, Matilda gets shot. None of them are really *accessible* after that. :/ You can't even talk to Matilda at the clinic! I went to see her twice! (One of them she was slightly bugged and had scooted halfway out of the bed.) And you don't know any of that until it is WELL too late. NONE of them are redeemable, and it takes 10 hours to find that out, and you may not have a save file before then.

On to story complaints! Not a fan of Haru just appearing after you leave the vault. I know they needed the « Mr.Gourmet's hat » pull to get him caught, but why not have Grace caught instead? She sees you off, sneaks off on her own to go find the lads, gets caught by Pen. You're still implicated because of that. :/ Makes more sense that she would be the one to find them/give them information, too. Since at that point you have ONLY met Haru/Logan once.

I remember there being something like the 'final battle' in Sandrock back in Portia, and from what I remember this was a big upgrade. I love « Cow Poopoo » that actually drags the whole cast in for the ending. Up to that point the villain is still this "faceless" evil, though.

I kinda wonder if the devs ran out of time on the ending... There's a line from Haru to MAKE SURE you go get Logan, and after he's gone Logan may as well be too. And after Duvos sacks the place, their commander just happens to be super tall and have white hair. I was SO hoping it was Logan in the mask, that he happened to knock the guy out and steal his uniform and help you take them all out... Could have even extended that section to involve some investigative work, figuring out who the true villains are, etc etc

And then there was the final stretch... As I feared.

It was a little more subdued than most games, but Matilda and Pen got the "mwahaha, I am evil now" treatment. Yan and Miguel were consistent, but they were the easy part! After all the other goofiness I would have taken a redemption arc (it genuinely feels like I missed some trigger for it at this point), but I was definitely expecting a little more nuance. Matilda's behavior made SOME sense with her pacifism streak (jumping in and getting shot, demanding that civilians not be harmed in the invasion)--maybe her years pretending to be a priest changed her? Her baiting Logan before the final fight was...not great, though.

Pen, though. « Harvest Goddess » damn they were so, so close with him. I have to admit, its been a long time since any media has gotten a rug pull off on me like they did with him. Looking back I can see how hard they were working to completely polarize the player base on the character, you love him or hate him, there is no in between. By the end, I expected him to be working for the villain, I did NOT think he would be smart...

I dunno if the team planned this or just kinda stumbled into it, but having a highly intelligent/manipulative super soldier imbedded into a group of people who come off as not very intelligent, playing up the aspects of his character that make him look just as stupid is « Snuggly Bunny » brilliant. There must be some line I didn't pay attention to, because pretty much the whole story I thought he was at least a long time Sandrock resident who was just kinda taken in by the church because he didn't really have any marketable skills? Big, dumb, strong, chuni bro. Should have been working for Civil Corps, too arrogant for that. I don't remember when it was explained where he even came from. Did he just show up? Did Matilda bring him? (I will pay CAREFUL attention on NG+. If NG+.) If the story were more self-serious, I might have caught on, but the way it's all written, he blends in perfectly. I got HAD. Completely had.

(I only have vague recollections of the explanation of the story of Matilda and Miguel coming to town around the same time, and there being arguments over who the town priest was. Which doesn't really all shake out for me, unless there's 'post game' story explaining who Miguel was working for. Duvos could have internal factions, which I dunno, probably the writers didn't have enough time/leeway to work on.)

Returning to the ending. I don't mind the lines of Pen having killed people--it makes sense for the backstory of an elite soldier. I didn't like the exchange with Logan about his dad. Unless it was a lie (which I don't think it was), I don't buy it. Not that he wouldn't have done it, but what setup is there for his hatred of Logan+dad? The whole rest of his explanation is just that it's a job; he wants money, luxury, adoration. He wants to be a hero. Maybe there was intent to explore some kind of jealousy of the relationship Logan had with his dad? I could be being charitable, I just don't like that story beat. And I don't buy Pen being evil. Selfish, self absorbed? Absolutely. Willing to undercut other people for his own happiness/comfort? I'd buy it. Evil? No.

Even at the end, the writing feels more bent toward Pen's attempt at making Burgess and the player hate him. And he's not good at it with you. (Tonight I reloaded to see all of the possible lines from Pen in that conversation, and I'm glad I did because the first time the game bugged over a conversation w/ Miguel. Doesn't really change much, but I was glad to thumb through that at the same time. On Pen's end, he can reluctantly be made to admit he'll miss Burgess, for more than just bullying. And that's...almost more special than the player, especially if you're in a platonic relationship with him, because Burgess is to then the only person who connected with Pen in a non-violent way. Poor Burgess.)

Just occurred to me today, too, how carefully placed the goofy 'weapons training' bit with Pen and Burgess is. It fit the chuni persona, but it also makes sense for the super soldier. He has so few ways of connecting with people, and Burgess (and presumably you) are some of the few people who will put up with it.

I also don't really buy someone spending literal years of their life in a small town and that not having had SOME influence. Matilda arguably did, Miguel genuinely felt he was doing what was right FOR Sandrock, despite being a religious fanatic. So what the heck is up with Pen? (I did get the scene right before I hopped off of Admiral weird eyes stuffing Pen on a plane to take him to prison. Would they bother having him turn back for one more look if he was evil? Big Kratos vibes.)

Not even done with one playthrough, and I don't know if I have the stamina, but I want SO much to play the game again. I've never seen a sim game play around with player choice so much, and I really want to see what the opposite ends of the story are. Make a concerted effort to get close to all the church characters, Pen is probably the best pick to date/marry because he's the true 'villain'. I'm sure there wasn't budget to change the story's outcome to account for that, but I would be SO incredibly disappointed if you don't even get a few unique dialogue lines for it...

What a « Snuggly Bunny » ride for the players who liked Pen from the beginning and pursued/married him on their first playthrough. (All twelve of them.) What's that like? How fast does your head spin at that point? I'd love to hear that story.

On the non spoilery end of things, I finished MSQ (basically) with a level 1 workshop--it can be done! So I caved and upgraded. Level 5 or something for now. Got a stable, bought the horse I've been using all game. Kinda wanted to bum rush the next story segment but I'm glad I took a very small chill pill on that one. I'll get there, not rushing gives me more time to digest. I wanna spend at least a little time figuring out how to properly build a house... Every time I make mine a lot wider my front door gets munched. Hopefully that doesn't cause bugs.

And I need to digest. Question is, after I finish the story, take a breather with a virtual console game or something, will I be up for round 2? Hard to say.
Last edited by Mikodesu on Jan 15, 2024 6:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Kikki
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Deleted entire part of post that was a response to Mikodesu, because while it contained no story spoilers, it might still be stuff she doesn't want to know. Even though they're things I wish I'd known from the start (I feel my playthrough would have been better for knowing them), that's just me, so...better not say anything after all!

~

I am a bit disgusted with myself. Well...it's not entirely my fault, because I did look it up first! But I should have looked MORE. I shouldn't have believed one or two articles. I should specifically have looked up trials. This is what I saw:

Title: "Final Fantasy 14 Patch 6.5 notes now let players play solo through Endwalker"
Subtitle: "Duty Support has been added for some of the final Endwalker content, allowing players to play through Final Fantasy 14's main campaign with the help of an NPC party."
A portion of cut-and-pasted content: "Duty Support has been around for quite some time already, giving you the opportunity to take on quests and dungeons with a team of NPC party members, but now that support has been extended to the final bits of Endwalker. That means as of Final Fantasy 14 Patch 6.5, you can play from the beginning of the A Realm Reborn era all the way through Endwalker main quest content solo."

Another site, IGN, also wrote this: "Square Enix has finally made it possible to play all of Final Fantasy 14 completely solo despite it being a massively multiplayer online game. As reported by VG247, Final Fantasy 14's patch 6.5 has brought the game's Duty Support system — which lets players bring NPCs into dungeons instead of other players — up to date to include every part of the game."

And I believed it.

And my beef with this? This is the information I decided to return to the game on. But...Final Fantasy XIV is no more soloable for me now than it was before the most recent update (6.5 in October, I mean.) You still run into Thornmarch at exactly the same point, and it is still unsoloable. A party of NPCs is still not available to run trials. (8-member party battles.) So I will have to stop at the same point I did last time.

I'm not complaining that it's not soloable. FFXIV is an MMO. They want to bring in even more players because they need or want the revenue, so they're trying to cater to solo-preferers as well as MMO-lovers. That's their decision, and it makes good business sense. They aren't obliged to make an MMO solo-friendly and half of the entire honking massive game is FREE, so it's not like I've been ripped off. And I feel a bit sorry for the MMO-lovers who are complaining that catering to soloists is diluting or changing their MMO experience.

Fortunately I decided not to buy it as I felt like I was rushing to that decision when my budget is so limited and it was already soaking up too much of my time. (And ALL of my game time.) So I figured I'd better wait. Somethign made me go and look things up again, and I found the same misleading articles again, too. There is more than one article still out there stating that FFXIV is now 100% soloable in the MSQ. BUT IT IS NOT. But I found a collapsed comments section on one of them and followed the trail.

That would have been about 30% of my entire year's budget wasted. :shock: Lucky for me I was so hesitant about it! I feel like I've wasted a lot of time, but y'know, it's not like it wasn't fun. It's just very unsatisfying to be stopped like this, because of stupidity (mine) and misinformation. I can do an acceptable 'basic' rotation as a Summoner or a Warrior. But I can't switch tactics with changing circumstances. When things get urgent/hectic, I forget every control combination, I can't remember which attacks do what...all the bad stuff. And I never get better. My coordination, my eye-hand communication speed, only seems to decrease as time goes on, it never improves. I cannot be inflicted on other players. Even if they were nice about it, I wouldn't become better with time. Maybe a tiny bit, if I played a stupid amount and found a miraculously good cross hotbar battle layout, but I'll never be good enough at noticing and reacting to ever be anything but a burden.

Well, no money lost, just time and considerable headspace. And I feel goofy for believing right away that they had made the MSQ 100% soloable when I was expecting it to be at least another year before they got to the point of having the 8-man trials workable with a party of NPCs.

Time to go back to true solo gaming and stop all this dabbling in stuff I know I just can't do without way more dedication than I'm willing to give to a single game. I'd pretty much have to dedicate my life to become good at FFXIV, and that would be ridiculous.
Last edited by Kikki on Jan 15, 2024 5:10 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Yep, did it again. Quoted myself instead of editing. :?
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Bluie
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Kiki, the moment Trials past ARR are soloable, I will let you know, trust me. I was under the impression that you knew they still weren't and was going to try and do them anyways. I will say that I guarantee nobody will care if a sprout is fudging stuff in a ARR-Sormblood trials because everyone perceives them as beginners and looks out for them. Any one who doesn't is sent straight to jail, literally, the mods will get them and punishments are usually very harsh. But if you're not comfortable with the whole experience, that's fine too.

We know for a fact they are working on making the game entirely soloable, one of the Trials in Endwalker can be done with NPCs, but it's low priority atm due to Dawntrail just being a few months away from launch... and if they don't want a repeat of Endwalker's launch, they'll dedicate every resource they have in preventing that. The longevity of the game is going to rely on having everything (storywise) be soloable, especially to keep drawing in the casual crowd. Final Fantast XI (the other MMO) has already done this and the devs of FFXIV always refer to it affectionally as their 'senpai', so they'll be hand in hand eventually.
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Kikki
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Bluie wrote: Jan 15, 2024 5:09 am Kiki, the moment Trials past ARR are soloable, I will let you know, trust me. I was under the impression that you knew they still weren't and was going to try and do them anyways.
:) Thank you.

I looked it up a fair bit but the thing is, I find comments sections on gaming articles are usually full of sniping and various other unpleasantness. So I didn't open the collapsed sections. If I HAD, I'd have known that the non-optional trials and raids remained unsoloable. (The raid almost sounds bearable, as 24 is so many that I don't think anyone would even notice me as a DPS in there. I could do just the basic Energy Drain, fester fester (or painflare, if there's lots of enemies relatively close together) shoot off primal summons, repeat, and no one would notice anything about it, and it wouldn't hurt anything. I do know NOT to use the limit bar since it is 'shared', so I wouldn't likely be harming the situation with whatever I was doing. And I'd watch a video first to know what really obvious mistakes to avoid. It'd probably be okay.

But anyway it was just dumb of me, especially when you consider how surprised I was that they'd already figured out NPC teams for 8-man trials.

I didn't trust the article from Shacknews because I don't know them, but when I saw the info on IGN, I just believed it, lol. Derp. All I had to do was open that comments section. And it wasn't actually that bad in that case, people weren't being particularly awful. They weren't insulting solo players in that case. I usually run into people saying how solo players are some form of cancer on their lovely MMO, which I sympathize with since the game SHOULD be MMO before anything else, but is still unpleasant aggressiveness toward anyone like me. All the 'just get over it!', 'you shouldn't be playing an MMO if you want to play solo!' and 'see a therapist!' makes you feel worse about something you already feel bad about so I admit I avoid seeing it whenever possible. But if I HAD opened it, what I would have seen was just people saying 'Uh, no. No, IGN, the game's MSQ is most certainly NOT soloable now.' Which is what I needed to read and really should have opened it and checked.

I'll go back if someday they can give the other stuff duty support. I'm not sure why it makes so many other players so angry that anyone wants to play solo...aren't we staying out of their way if we play solo? But I guess the game has been rebalanced in some places to accommodate the solo player needs, which admittedly doesn't seem fair. I don't want to take their MMO away from them. But if you want the MOST players (which means the most money!) then of course you have to try to appeal to people who want to solo because there's such a huge amount of us. But I can see why it'd upset the core players if the game gets its multiplayer aspects in any way watered down to accommodate solo players. I haven't heard specifics about how we are ruining their game, like if the mechanics are dumbed down or something, but I more or less get that the feeling is that multiplayer options suffer for having focus go to making things soloable.

~

Oh, I do want to address the common very angry argument of 'you shouldn't be playing an MMO if you want to play solo, just go back to your millions of single-player games!' Do they really not understand? No one who wants to play solo is playing an MMO for the Ms. They're playing it for the huge, living world that receives regular updates. No single player game has that. You can find great stories in single-player games, but the way MMOs are created and operated is really fun, and it's got nothing to do with the multiplayer, but with the world and the diversity of gameplay. They are so huge, they feel like real worlds. Single-players want live service, too. (I mean 'live service' in the good way, not the bad way. A game that's regularly maintained and renewed, not something that torments you with daily log-in bonuses and things like that.) I don't want to ruin anyone's MMO, I just really like that they don't have that sad and empty feeling when the main story is over and there's nothing left to do in the world you were enjoying so much.
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I finished Atelier Marie today. I managed to do it with the Philosophers Stone ending which I'm surprised I managed on first playthrough. I'm satisfied enough to not do another run of the game. It was very refreshing to play and Atelier game again that was just an Atelier game. I really, really hope they start remaking the other PSOne and PS2 titles so I can play them all too, because I'm not going to be touching their attempt at gacha unless it drops on PS5.

Onto Monochrome Mobius.
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I think at this point I'd only really want mechanical spoilers/info for Sandrock. Stuff like a guide for building houses, for run 2 it would be great to know if there are missable events. But even then, I don't want to ask anybody to go out of their way for me.

For story related stuff, I think enough care was put into the script that I'm interested in seeing it again myself. It's interesting to read other people's thoughts, but, I want to see the actual verbage, for context, before I decide more on my own.

Got a quest that gave me a BIT more context/info on the 'did Pathea hire English-speaking lead writers?' front, though. (I feel, anyway.) Unsuur quest spoilers:
Spoiler:
The one where he trips and tosses/knocks his rock buddy Wilson into the pond. The Mandarin VA also yells "Wilson". So in both voice tracks...this is a Castaway reference. And now that I think about it, doesn't Unsuur look a little bit like Tom Hanks?

So I guess the question is...are Tom Hanks movies popular in China? With millennials, maybe? Somebody on the staff loves them, at least.
More thoughts on the ending:
Spoiler:
At this point I THINK my dissatisfaction with the Logan quest resolution is that it feels rushed. You spend dozens of hours, entire seasons in game hunting Logan, trying to figure out what his deal is, and the space between the Logan fight and the Matilda-bot fight is...10-15 hours at best, depending on how much you rush. I know Musa hints at Duvos being the 'big bad', but I don't think that was enough to really justify the ending (for me).

You spend FAR more time with the church crew, but there's so little comparative exposition on why they did what they did. Little too much 'just a job' for my tastes--if that was the case, they should have been able to be bought. And then they're just...gone. (I'll probably end up dedicating a little space in the back of my head to brooding until I can figure out what would make me satisfied with the way things go. Right now, I don't know.)

The "Pen's Last Word" quest outright pissed me off. I need to go back and read the letter, because I thought he was sending YOU ruin diving to find his treasure. And if he expects me to believe a diamond, three gold and 400 money is his "treasure", he's got another thing coming. (He pays you more to keep him fed than that!) Unfinished quest, maybe? I was hoping for a rare/special weapon. Another backer weapon, maybe. I got the 'quest complete' message though, so...I think that's it.

Incredibly deflating. Even Matilda and Miguel deserved better, and they were far less interesting, and I spent far less time with them than Pen.
I have started post game story, at least. That's probably a very good model for story telling for these types of games, something Natsume especially could learn from. In their case, do one 'arc' of MSQ, unlock marriage, then have more story for while you play around with what you unlock! So much better.