Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Baguette Child]

The gameplay in the latest expansion is perfectly good, great even. Almost all the complaints are story related. As a new player, the stretch between starting a character and reaching Heavensward can be a slog since jobs don't get a ton of buttons to play with before 50 anymore. But once you get past all the ARR content and reach Ishgard, it's a non issue.

Sounds fine, I don't mind grinding. Thanks for the helpful info!

 

[std::string]

Sounds fine, I don't mind grinding. Thanks for the helpful info!

The free trial goes up until Stormblood which is easily like 100+ hours of content. You'll be able to figure out if you like the game or not.

 

[Ravana]

Why did the cowboys use rubber bullets in their duel? Is everyone in that town, bandits included, larping

 

[ChromaQuack]

Bring Hiroi out on the next LL in chains, force him to sit through the RUDIMENTARY character-building of this stupid, goofy WWE knockoff, flog him, fire him, and remind him that a joke raid tier in a single quest managed to establish setting, tone, character and voice better than he did in the longest-ever FF14 expansion with the most dialogue and most cutscenes.

Listen, as much as I agree with this, the higher ups are not without fault.

If 7.1 does not open with a cutscene of Wuk Lamat exploding into a shower of gore and a video of @吉田 直樹pulling the stunts in this video then I'm afraid I will neither continue subscribing nor will I buy a PS5.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Why did the cowboys use rubber bullets in their duel

I guess the logic would be that these duels were intended to be non-fatal, but that would be surprisingly retarded given the wild-west theme. Of course, GJJ is swinging around giant meat-cleavers and says "donn worry, ayyh wohnt keel yew" or something, despite the fact that you kinda can't choose to "go easy" on someone with an edged weapon.

As such, I can't tell if it's localization retardation or if it was genuinely written that stupidly. I strongly suspect localization, though, as I don't know why the writers would have thought, specifically, about them. But I can imagine why a bunch of retards who believe cops should never have live rounds would fantasize about people using crowd control tools in some kind of honor duel (???)

Listen, as much as I agree with this, the higher ups are not without fault.

Well, yes and no. What I would love to know (and will never know) is just how much they actually knew this was happening in their product. It often feels like entire project managers in the corporate space are good at making sure people are technically doing what they should-be-doing, but then they're totally oblivious as to what's in the end product until way too late.

I highly suspect that someone suggested cutting QA in order to reduce overhead for this expansion, because the glaring flaws with the MSQ experience should have been obvious to anyone doing even just 90-91. Given that it's the same issue all the way through the entire game, I have to imagine whoever was in charge of the product didn't get to realize how shit it was - especially the quality of the EN voice acting, which any competent sound engineer would've thrown into the bin immediately - until so late in production that there was no salvaging it.

So of course, they do deserve blame for terrible management - but I really want to know who said "nahh, don't worry, trust me, it'll be great. We don't need QA."

 

[Alligator Alcatraz]

Why did the cowboys use rubber bullets in their duel? Is everyone in that town, bandits included, larping

In some interview, I read that they had to use rubber bullets because the game would get banned if real bullets were used.

Though that never stopped them before when Yotsuyu shot Domans and G'raha got shot with actual bullets. Who are the fucking babies who wrote Dawntrail?

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

Gunshots are a no no but tasers, explosions, chainsaws and some maniac spinning a fuck axe so fast it turns into a chainsaw in a fit of rage are a ok

 

[ChromaQuack]

In some interview, I read that they had to use rubber bullets because the game would get banned if real bullets were used.

Though that never stopped them before when Yotsuyu shot Domans and G'raha got shot with actual bullets. Who are the fucking babies who wrote Dawntrail?

Sounds like they were advised by a """consulting""" firm to me.

 

[Well Intentioned]

but I really want to know who said "nahh, don't worry, trust me, it'll be great. We don't need QA."

I honestly think it's a case of just not enough oversight.

I'm guessing Yoshi P (and whoever else was on 16) were doing weekly check-ins and looking at the broad strokes, assuming that things were all hunky dory. There wasn't the level of scrutiny that should've been there as they trusted folks.

As for the English localisation? It screams of a lack of attention/care, from the VA selection, vocabularly/language/voice used, creative liberties taken, etc. It's not just Wuk Lamat, but Honey B's VA is another horrid one, as are all the faux-British Alexandrians, all the NPCs in Shaaloani, etc. People should be fired (but won't.)

 

[Baron Reginald]

I swear 90% of legends I see are paint eating retards. Even the ones who clear legitimately. They can clear the hardest content in the game but stepping aside 2 centimeters to not die in casual content is too hard for them.

I know you were probably being hyperbolic, but this is actually the correct amount of paid-for titles. Only about 10% are legitimate. For context, early ultimate titles are owned by about 25% of accounts and all the recent ones are owned by 10% of accounts. Not just active players, global accounts.
For moar context, thats more accounts who have done ultimate than have caught 100 different types of fish. (7.7%)

The guys I still talk with, not a very big seller either mind you, already have over 40 paid for preorders for the next ultimate, at a going rate of $1200.
You have no idea how desperate people are for a lick of clout lmao

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

Gunshots are a no no but tasers, explosions, chainsaws and some maniac spinning a fuck axe so fast it turns into a chainsaw in a fit of rage are a ok

If it was to do with the japanese ratings boards, that makes sense. They really don't like guns specifically. Snake in Smash Bros Brawl famously doesn't use a gun in his moveset because the ratings board would have kicked up a storm about it, so they instead used grenades, plastic explosives, mortars and RPGs (honestly, sounds fucking stupid to me too but they just really hate modern-day guns specifically, the only character that uses one in the most recent game probably loopholes it by "oh it's not a REAL gun it's a toy that is made real by the metaverse").

I don't think this is CERO this time though. As pointed out earlier, they've used real guns before. You can even main a class that uses one. It sounds to me like the writers either got overly sensitive or went "hey wouldn't this be funny" without thinking that it completely ruins all immersion when you have what is essentially a town of LARPers (but for some reason when you rescued that one guy, he moreorless said they were gonna kill him if you didn't save him).

 

[Frosted Snowflakes]

The bants in r/ffxiv are suprisingly great. There's been some disturbance in the force over there...
View attachment 6255368

Some people are complaining that it's really annoying that people keep posting the same shit, over and over. ...Considering the primary gripes with the expansion, this just gets them shat on even harder.

Speaking of r/ffxiv, anyone know who's been targeting Sena Bryer?
EDIT: Here's a non-Reddit post I found.


Or is Sena Bryer just using buzzwords for attention to look like the victim without any actual proof of the claims?

(Someone should meme this scene)

 

[std::string]

I have to imagine whoever was in charge of the product didn't get to realize how shit it was - especially the quality of the EN voice acting, which any competent sound engineer would've thrown into the bin immediately - until so late in production that there was no salvaging it.

It's not just trooncat either. Thancred's VA sounds like he was recording at 5 AM and his allergies were flaring up. There are also a lot of lines where the VA is way too close to the mic.

It's literally like some indie game where they only had a budget for grabbing the first take from a cold read. Square can't be that hard up for cash.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

It screams of a lack of attention/care, from the VA selection, vocabularly/language/voice used, creative liberties taken, etc. It's not just Wuk Lamat, but Honey B's VA is another horrid one, as are all the faux-British Alexandrians, all the NPCs in Shaaloani, etc.

A lot of that is top-level stuff that I think reflects poor choices, but if I was an audio engineer I wouldn't throw out immediately. They're terrible performances, but the thing that gets me is that ALL of the US studio has that fucking compression. That should have been the immediate disqualifier: "this stuff sounds like total ass compared to everything else in the game, guys." And I remain convinced that they applied this compression due to Wuk Lamat.

I can only guess that, like you said, zero oversight. The team got used to trusting the UK studio because it delivered consistent quality. So they trusted the US studio more than they aught to have (or whoever was project lead in place of Yoshida didn't have the sense to ask for in-progress samples), and by the time they got the absolute mountain of horrendously-mastered audio, they had no choice but to shove it in.

Thancred's VA sounds like he was recording at 5 AM and his allergies were flaring up.

It's kindof funny, because I think outside of Y'shtola, all of the scions phoned it in. I don't know if they touched up her audio, but at the point in the story where she speaks, I honestly didn't notice it as any worse than the US cast she's flanked by. Maybe I was blinded by the fact that there was a voice-actor for once.

I think all of the returning cast got the sense that they were playing second-fiddle and weren't voicing the characters they had been. Thancred sometimes sounds alright but yeah, at that moment where you do the stealth-following thing with BJJ and he cuts loose the boat-manatee, it sounded like he completely forgot the accent and was a totally different guy. Erianger has like 2 lines that he sleepily delivers, you can clearly trace where Alisaiae is trying early-on in the story but has totally checked out by around level 93, and Aplhinaud the entire time is giving the flattest performance befitting the flattest characterization. G'raha sounds like a completely different character in his first few lines because the actor clearly was warming up, but they're... just fucking in there!

 

[Ravana]

Here's what I don't get with voice acting and direction and coping from people on behalf of Sena's dogshit performance. Let's take the "SPHEEENE" line for example. Wouldn't the script have that line elongated with an exclamation mark? Wouldn't someone reading that line interpret it as yelling or shouting? If all those elements are there, why is it the director's fault that Sena didn't emote at all aside from telling him that the line read sucked and to do it again? Don't get me wrong, the director is probably also dogshit. As for the others, from what I've gathered, Y'shtola's VA just had a baby so she recorded from home and Graha's had done something prior that fucked up his tongue or something. If I were the other scions' vas, seeing my amount of lines go from probably several pages to like, half of one, I probably wouldn't give a shit either.

 

[Frosted Snowflakes]

If all those elements are there, why is it the director's fault that Sena didn't emote at all aside from telling him that the line read sucked and to do it again?

People say that it's Kate's fault for the hiring, the woke localizing, and the consulting to please her selfish alphabet rainbow community that's obsessed with turning the world into DEI.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Wouldn't someone reading that line interpret it as yelling or shouting?

That line delivery in particular (though not uniquely) is why I suspect the weirdass compression was designed entirely around Wuk Lamat's "performance."

Because if you listen in closely, it just sounds fucking -weird-. The upper and lower Hz just aren't there - eeeeeverything is fucking smooshed together, and then has its volume pumped. The upper Hz is where you would hear the voice crack; the lower Hz is where you'll hear bassier undertones, say from a man attempting a female voice. The end result is that SPEEEEN! doesn't sound unnecessarily quiet - it's actually quite loud relative to everything else.

Let me show this off a bit more.

Spoiler: autism

So this is a default Equalizer in Fruity Loops. I threw some random stock kick hits in there, and viola - everything through, there's a lot of sound on the lower end of Hz.

This is an exaggerated abomination you would never actually use just done to prove a point. By fucking around with what Hz I suppress and what Hz I amplify, I actually make each hit of the kick sound more uniform across the spectrum. The sound completely changes, and the second one is actually half a dB louder than the first.

Eventually maybe I'll care enough to leaf through the footage, find a scene with old-cast and new-cast, and run it through just to find where, exactly, they crunched the audio.

I think it's safe to say that Wuk Lamat's voice sounds unusually effeminate, right? Like whenever you hear a troon talk, there's certain points at which the effeminate veneer struggles and you hear something deep and low, and that doesn't really happen often with Wuk. And that's clearly not because this VA is particularly talented or especially feminine.

The thing is, if they had submitted the voice-work with just Wuk Lamat weirdly fucked around with, it'd really stand out. And so everyone gets crunched and weirdly warped, with this unnatural gain applied. I suspect this is also why Koana attempting to be loud & angry, or quiet & brooding sounds so comically bad - maybe it's not really the VA's fault there.

 

[SilenceIsViolence]

Here's what I don't get with voice acting and direction and coping from people on behalf of Sena's dogshit performance. Let's take the "SPHEEENE" line for example. Wouldn't the script have that line elongated with an exclamation mark? Wouldn't someone reading that line interpret it as yelling or shouting? If all those elements are there, why is it the director's fault that Sena didn't emote at all aside from telling him that the line read sucked and to do it again? Don't get me wrong, the director is probably also dogshit.

The director has a lot of say in this situation, and ultimately I would argue that that line specifically had a lot to do with voice direction. There's other voice work from Sena out there that shows he can yell, so I don't understand why that take was chosen at all. It's truly awful, but as badly as she delivered it I hold the director at least as culpable for it's emotional failing.

None of this excuses the shit accent though and while I don't think the VA was immersion breakingly bad (besides a few choice lines, like above), it was a cut below standards for sure. I find it funny that he is accusing people of death threats and rape threats - I don't think the people who want trannies to die also want to rape them.

Also it will never not be funny to me that these people put misgendering next to death/rape threats to themselves and family. True brainrot.

 

[std::string]

The thing is, if they had submitted the voice-work with just Wuk Lamat weirdly fucked around with, it'd really stand out. And so everyone gets crunched and weirdly warped, with this unnatural gain applied. I suspect this is also why Koana attempting to be loud & angry, or quite & brooding sounds so comically bad - maybe it's not really the VA's fault there.

I don't think there's any grand postprocessing conspiracy here because this is exactly what you'd see from someone recording with a headset mic with high gain.

Which, well, was the first thing I thought about trooncat when the EW postpatch leading to DT dropped.

e: and actually trooncat seems to avoid fricatives which is what clips really bad when you do this.

 

[Ravana]

All this hz and compression stuff went over my head when listening to the actual game. I may not have the ears for it so it's interesting to get the perspective from someone who does.