Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Well Intentioned]

it didn't, it's just climate alarmism being used as a trope again

I thought the whole reason why Alexandria emerged in Tural was because they basically need to carve up other shard's aether or whatever because running their bitcoin farms is too resource intensive?

 

[Dopey Cunt]

Just did an expert roulette and got station with a new healer who came from WoW.
Got through the first boss fine. But blud could not get past the second boss. Every time he got dizzied, he'd rush right into the no no zone, die and then scream in the chat "WHY" and "HOW"
Started whining about the boss being ass. I say "kek" in the chat and he goes off on some orcish tangent about where the word comes from and talks about WoW completely unprompted to the interest of no one.
Me and the rest of the party explain to him that he can't just furiously press his W key when the hand appears over his head but he'd die to that mechanic over and over.
Then he had a meltdown and said "I can't do this" and quit.
Motherfucker, you can do mythic dungeons in WoW but a normal boss in a CASUAL dungeon in FF14 is too hard for you?
Brother. That is grim.

 

[Gravemind]

I thought the whole reason why Alexandria emerged in Tural was because they basically need to carve up other shard's aether or whatever because running their bitcoin farms is too resource intensive?

The "resource" being used is people's souls.

Unless that bit gets retconned later on down the line because this writing is snowballing hardcore at this point with no signs of stopping.

Got through the first boss fine. But blud could not get past the second boss. Every time he got dizzied, he'd rush right into the no no zone, die and then scream in the chat "WHY" and "HOW"
Started whining about the boss being ass. I say "kek" in the chat and he goes off on some orcish tangent about where the word comes from and talks about WoW completely unprompted to the interest of no one.
Me and the rest of the party explain to him that he can't just furiously press his W key when the hand appears over his head but he'd die to that mechanic over and over.
Then he had a meltdown and said "I can't do this" and quit.
Motherfucker, you can do mythic dungeons in WoW but a normal boss in a CASUAL dungeon in FF14 is too hard for you?
Brother. That is grim.

What makes you think that retard can do Mythic without getting carried?

As far as I'm aware of, the absolute minimum for competent play in WoW is fundamentally identical to XIV, i.e.: Don't stand in the bad shit/move out of the clearly telegraphed bad shit. If they're struggling in XIV, then I see no reason to believe they can actually do Mythic anything.

 

[Soycast Guy]

MSQ in this patch was meh.
I'm too tired and sleepy to properly articulate my thoughts but here's a rough summary until I have enough wits to not sound like a retard:

Spoiler: MSQ sperging

Alexandrians are still just as whiny and insufferable as they always have been.
Literal clone army in the funeral crowd.
I wanted to a punch a kid in the face.
Koana developed a hard on for rroneek in a single quest.
FAMIREE.
I don't what a proper sentence is?
Galool Ja's mom is some nobody dumb broad who thought tricking a murderous sociopath that she has an obsession with into impregnating her would suddenly turn him into a family man overnight. Then is shocked when he freaks the fuck out and rejects the whole thing and cries like a pathetic turd over a microphone while fantasy hitler yells at her before dumping her baby into a lake and fucking off to die.
Sphene is back and she's worse than ever. Thanks Yoshi-P!

...I'm going to bed.

How in the fuck would they reasonably bring Sphene back? Either they treat her like post-shadowbringers “Ardbert” where it was just Elidibus skinwalking as him, or she’s somehow actually back. The former is a recycled plot point, and the latter is just fucking stupid.

 

[Flopper]

How in the fuck would they reasonably bring Sphene back? Either they treat her like post-shadowbringers “Ardbert” where it was just Elidibus skinwalking as him, or she’s somehow actually back. The former is a recycled plot point, and the latter is just fucking stupid.

She shows up in Solution Nine and the residents coom over her, having all forgotten about her funeral, she smiles ominously at WoL and Wuk Lamat, meanwhile, another Sphene (presumably, we only see her POV) appear at Living Memory, and pass out moments before Yshtola finds her, and that's where the expansion ends. It's dumb as fuck.

 

[ChromaQuack]

he can't just furiously press his W key when the hand appears over his head but he'd die to that mechanic over and over.

What's funny to me is that just figuring out that your character's angle of running only spins when W isn't held is enough to figure out "maybe I could just rapidly tap W until it is facing the direction I should go", it's the simplest of puzzles on the go yet some players in FFXIV are of a low enough IQ that this answer eludes them.

I will never cease to be amazed at how DT's 'difficulty' going from EW's 'do you have a pulse' to 'kind of halfway pay attention sometimes' manages to filter out so many people.

 

[Soycast Guy]

She shows up in Solution Nine and the residents coom over her, having all forgotten about her funeral, she smiles ominously at WoL and Wuk Lamat, meanwhile, another Sphene (presumably, we only see her POV) appear at Living Memory, and pass out moments before Yshtola finds her, and that's where the expansion ends. It's dumb as fuck.

So it’s not just one, BUT BOTH?

WHAT THE FUCK?

 

[King Of Braves]

Renewing sub and gonna skip the MSQ and try to do the new Alliance & FFXI raid content and all the alexandria raids i've been missing up until now.

For what it's worth, the new FF11 content is peak. Definitely made by FF11 fans. There's so many references crammed into it, you have to make a point to talk to every NPC on the way.

 

[Tari]

running their bitcoin farms is too resource intensive?

running them is too resource intensive but they've still got a lot of time for them to find an alternative because literally nothing in Living Memory hints to the fuel tank getting low
sphene acts like a retard and doesn't think about any other options (e.g. Nero's Superiority complex combined with the shit going on over in Ultima Thule) that we might have before ripping a hole in the fabric of spacetime again

I'm calling it the "climate alarmism trope" because sphene is acting exactly like retards who think that the sky is going to be burning in [Current Year Plus Five] because of cow farts.
The plot point is objectively retarded anyway. Fucking VOIDSENT are able to subsist off of aether that isn't derived from souls, so the only reason why a giant machine would need to be fueled on soul aether is because presumably soul aether is the most concentrated type of aether that can be thrown into it, and it's so inefficient that causing an artificial Rejoining was the best way to get more fuel for it rather than trying to use the (This is the actual plot of FF7) more environmentally friendly fuel, Ceruleum.

 

[Gravemind]

How in the fuck would they reasonably bring Sphene back? Either they treat her like post-shadowbringers “Ardbert” where it was just Elidibus skinwalking as him, or she’s somehow actually back. The former is a recycled plot point, and the latter is just fucking stupid.

Simple. A better written story wouldn't bring her back save for reference.

Just tossing ideas at a wall here: Let's say Gulool Ja is dicking about with Solution Nine systems trying to figure out what he can and can't do as, essentially, its new administrator. An erring twitch, or maybe even a voice prompt (probably by Troon Lion because, let's face it, we have to shoehorn her into everything this expac) suddenly pulls up some nebulously hidden away historical record on Queen Sphene, and a B or C plot of the patch stories going forward surround us finding out more about Sphene as a person, or at least, what the circumstances of her rulership over Alexandria was when she was alive, and getting into the nitty gritty of that. Maybe we get some context for the reason why she was just a wooden plank in terms of personality. Maybe that context has to do with the fact that Sphene was never allowed to have a personal life of her own to discover who she was as a person, not with the weight of rulership bearing down on her shoulders, so she ended up throwing herself wholeheartedly into the responsibility of serving as a beacon for her people because it was all she knew. Maybe we get hints here and there that Sphene may have wished for more than that. Maybe it even gets suggested to us that Sphene could have had far more personal, selfish desires that had nothing to do with serving Alexandria, like wanting to see the world, taste new foods, experience new things, all for herself.

Doing it this way, you could build upon Sphene's characterization without actually UNIRONICALLY reviving her, and you can play into the expac's themes of learning more about something (or someone in this case) you didn't know and couldn't understand, accepting the inevitable, and learning how to move forward from the mistakes of the past. Hell, all of this could even give the Troon Lion another character-building moment as a leader-to-be regarding how best to go about integrating the Alexandrian citizens with the Turali and the people of the Source, encouraging them all to go out and live the lives their queen wanted to live, but couldn't, instead of essentially shackling themselves to a comfortable, high-tech tomb that they can't move on from.

But that's just one little sperg's idea of a marginally better written story adhering to the themes set on the table, instead of the nonsensical slop we're getting dumped on our plates right now.

 

[SuffahWhorse]

>Prishe and everyone else from the FF11 raid are actually not real, but electrope cubes in with their image holographed over them.
>Somehow these electrope cube people can eat, taste, and digest food



MAKE IT MAKE SENSE HIROI

 

[Soycast Guy]

>Prishe and everyone else from the FF11 raid are actually not real, but electrope cubes in with their image holographed over them.
>Somehow these electrope cube people can eat food

View attachment 6642740

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE HIROI

I wonder how many damn heccin holsum food scenes we are gonna get in this game.

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE HIROI

I’m wondering how the guy who wrote the pandemonium raid suddenly can’t write now.

 

[SuffahWhorse]

You know I've been thinking about Sphene's entire plan after Zoraal Ja dies. And I realized it is actually the most pants-on-head retarded thing imaginable.

So think about it:

Sphene has no army, as they were all defeated. Her King is dead, her army jobbed completely. She's fucked.

So she goes straight back to Living Memory (without a physical body, just AI consciousness) with Azem's Cum Chalice of Shard Travelling and.....decides to tell us exactly what she plans to do instead of doing the smart thing like.......simply not telling us and pretending to surrender while secretly returning to Living Memory and starting up her master plans while we are completley unaware.

And not only this, she leaves Living Memory, her base of operations, and home to her fellow Endless.......COMPLETLEY UNGUARDED, and just lets us walk in and kill all of her people.

But it get's better. So her plan involves taking Azem's Chalice into a virtual reality (somehow) and it still is able to open portals to other worlds while inside this virtual reality (somehow.....) and invading other worlds to SUCC up their aether from within her virtual space.

.....Except, she doesn't have a physical body. Or an army. All she has is Queen Eternal, a virtual avatar inside of a computer. Somehow we are to believe this virtual avatar is a threat to other (very much real) worlds. That she is somehow going to invade other worlds........all by herself........with no army........just a virtual avatar. And even if Queen Eternal was a physical construct, it couldn't possibly pose a threat to other worlds on it's own (even if it attacks by surprise), as it fucking jobbed to 8 people (9 if you count Wuk).


SO BASICALLY:

Sphene somehow took a PHYSICAL DEVICE (Azem's Cum Chalice of Shard Travelling) into a VIRTUAL REALITY.

This PHYSICAL DEVICE somehow still functioned in this virtual space

And in this virtual space, Sphene managed to activate said virtual device and open up rifts to other (very much real and physical) worlds.......from within this virtual reality............and somehow, SOMEHOW, she was going to PHYSICALLY INVADE these other REAL PHYSICAL WORLDS.........not only without any army.........but with only her virtual avatar.


To put this into perpsective how fucking unhinged this is, this would be like if you logged onto your Minecraft server, somehow transported a real portal-opening device into your Minecraft server, and then within your Minecraft server you opened up a portal to an actual real world and invaded said real world with your virtual Minecraft avatar.


This is BEYOND. This is fucking BEYOND. This is the single most demented, nonsensical, fucking retarded writing I have ever seen in all my years of consuming fiction. There is ZERO part of this that makes ANY fucking sense whatsoever. It's actually impressive. How the FUCK did Hiroi ever get hired to do SIDEQUESTS let alone the MSQ?

 

[Gravemind]

I'm calling it the "climate alarmism trope" because sphene is acting exactly like retards who think that the sky is going to be burning in [Current Year Plus Five] because of cow farts.

No? Both Sphene and climate alarmism people are retarded, but you're comparing apples and oranges here.

The plot point is objectively retarded anyway. Fucking VOIDSENT are able to subsist off of aether that isn't derived from souls, so the only reason why a giant machine would need to be fueled on soul aether is because presumably soul aether is the most concentrated type of aether that can be thrown into it, and it's so inefficient that causing an artificial Rejoining was the best way to get more fuel for it rather than trying to use the (This is the actual plot of FF7) more environmentally friendly fuel, Ceruleum.

God, don't make me defend this trashfire of a story.

Voidsent feeding off of aether is not equivalent to recycling souls. The soul is something distinguishably different from aether and this has been shown multiple times in multiple different places throughout the game over the years up to this point. Both an overabundance of Darkness and an overabundance of Light lead to stagnation of the aether, but in Darkness' case, the soul more or less stays in the body, unable to move on, without aether to compel it towards a proper death cycle. The deathless state of the Alexandrians is entirely artificial, on the other hand, utilized almost entirely by either digitizing the recorded memory of the deceased (as in the case of the Endless), or by giving the living a stock of "blank souls" (which have had their own, distinguishing characteristics as an individual soul recorded, categorized, and then purged in order to be recycled) they can implant their recorded memory into so that "untimely" deaths are a non-issue.

It's not that the machines themselves necessarily run off souls. They have an abundance of lightning-aspected aether to facilitate that. It's what powers the magic miracle rock called "electrope" after all that's the fundamental basis of Living Memory and Solution Nine. It's just the function of the machines is to process souls and their memories.

NOW, this raises an interesting thread as to how the lightning aether-induced sickness running rampant throughout the S9 citizenry comes into play, but God forbid if we get that point explored in a meaningful way.

 

[Soycast Guy]

So I’ve been thinking about something and this might be hard to explain because it’s just plain retarded. So in dawntrail the soul and the memories are separated. The memories are sent to the cloud to become endless, and the souls are used as fuel to revive the dead. We know the endless aren’t real because they are just glorified holograms, so that brings me to the subject of the souls. If the souls in question are the consciousness of the actual person, and someone who dies has a soul revive them, would the consciousness of that soul enter that body and just have that persons memories but not actually be that person, or do the spare souls just revive the dead persons soul? I really can’t figure it out because this writing is fucking dumb.

 

[Gravemind]

If the souls in question are the consciousness of the actual person, and someone who dies has a soul revive them, would the consciousness of that soul enter that body and just have that persons memories but not actually be that person, or do the spare souls just revive the dead persons soul?

What's being suggested here is that the conceptual "you", made up of your identity, your personality, your ego, and all the rest, are the sum of all of your memories and experiences. This is directly stated as being the case in the Living Memory section of the endgame. When the "blank souls" are allotted to a given individual, that specific stock of souls is specifically imprinted with that person's recorded memories, so that when one soul is used up and another brings the body back to life, the extra soul already has that person's memories fully integrated into it, thus making a "free" revive.

Functionally speaking, yes, an entirely different soul with the memories and experiences of the person who died enters the body. The narrative posits that, despite this being the case, the person is still the same person even with a different soul that's just been implanted with that person's memories.

From YOUR perspective as the audience, it's basically a Ship of Theseus dilemma, and a topic a lot of different stories have grappled with in the past.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

I just did the 24 man.
HOLY SHIT IS IT FUN.

 

[Herr Flick]

DT is a fucking mess for reasons already explored but this conversation about souls has set up what I think is an interesting idea.

Back before 7.0 launched, before we even knew the expansion’s name, there was some discussion about whether what would be Dawntrail might serve as a starting point option for players new to the game. I believe this was because the devs made some comment about how big of a wall it is to play the whole story in order, as well as their talk about Endwalker wrapping up the plot that began in ARR and a new arc beginning.

The story isn’t great and my hopes for it are not high at all, but consider the following:

The Warrior of Light dies, and subsequently falls victim to this soul washing process, effectively losing their powerful Ancient soul and being reset to a normal power level when their personality is placed in a normie soul, perhaps even one from a reflection so it’s not even rejoined. The appearance and memories of your character are retained, but your powerful nature has gone elsewhere, and now you have to figure out what you will do about it, and how much of the WoL as a person is defined by power.

I think it’s a compelling idea that would make sense, which is exactly why I don’t think it will happen.

 

[Gravemind]

The Warrior of Light dies, and subsequently falls victim to this soul washing process, effectively losing their powerful Ancient soul and being reset to a normal power level when their personality is placed in a normie soul, perhaps even one from a reflection so it’s not even rejoined. The appearance and memories of your character are retained, but your powerful nature has gone elsewhere, and now you have to figure out what you will do about it, and how much of the WoL as a person is defined by power.

It already essentially happened in late ARR/Heavensward when Midgardsormr stripped the blessing of Light from us and we had to spend the whole expansion earning it back. We've already also "overcome" the blessing of Light by this point by having put Hydaelyn to rest. The only plot armor cheats we have at this point is our special magic rock of Azem that can summon 7 other people when we need it and "make miracles happen" if we wish really hard on it (remember when we got warned that its power wouldn't hold out forever? Yeah, the plot hasn't remembered that since the end of OG Endwalker MSQ either, apparently), and the fact that we are, apparently, innately and stupidly proficient at harnessing Dynamis for power, and we didn't even realize it until we had what Dynamis fundamentally was explained to us.

 

[ChromaQuack]

Look I'm just saying.

If the stupid alexandrian ipads can:
1. upload memories to the cloud (which according to living memory makes up the entirety of the person)
2. selectively delete memories (as seen with how alexandrians forget dead people existed at all)
3. implant souls and more than likely memories.

What exactly is stopping sphere from pulling an agent smith on the entirety of that 'civilization'? far as I'm concerned that bitch could easily turn into some fucked up mind virus that rewrites people from within.

Shit, what's stopping her from pulling it on *other* civilizations from other shards? the only ones really aware of her and her powerset are the people of tural and (let's be generous here) eorzea at large, she could easily worm her way into powerful positions in other civilizations, offering their kings and queens the power of 'free revives' before just mindwiping and turning them and everyone subservient to them into even more spheres.

And the best part? the game engine can handle it, just invent some hoo-haa bullshit about how sphere's mind-wipe replacement is a super tempering of sorts and eventually physically turns the people affected by it into more spheres and voila, engine friendly cutscenes.

Hiroi has a shot at redeeming his shit writing by making sphere into the most over the top boss bitch of XIV, his only hope is to go pedal to the metal on it and reach heights of patently ridiculous bullshit that circle back to being good.

and the fact that we are, apparently, innately and stupidly proficient at harnessing Dynamis for power, and we didn't even realize it until we had what Dynamis fundamentally was explained to us.

WoL is an autistic savant confirmed.

Explains the 'memory' fights from eden.

remember when we got warned that its power wouldn't hold out forever?

Silly goose, it was a Blizzard Eventually.