std::string
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 17, 2018
Only if your teammates know what they're doing. Otherwise you're just more grist for the mill.
Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company
- Thread starter Country Matters
- Start date
SuffahWhorse
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2024
Didn't see this posted here yet. Sena Bryer (Wookie Lmao's english VA) has repeatedly claimed to be latino/hispanic/whatever the fuck. Yet I found this from the EN official forums (from somebody who briliantly decided to not archive it beforehand), a tweet back in 2016 of Sena Bryer claiming to be white. Why I didn' t realize IRL fantasia's existed and you could simply change your race in real life, as apparently in a mere 8 years Sean Bryan here managed to shapeshift into a latino. Why isn't that awfully covenient!
Last edited:
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2014
You know in the first dungeon where you encounter Thancred, Uriranger and Koana and Thancred collapses the cave just to fuck with you? All I was thinking was "fuck, why can't I hang out with those characters instead?"
But I realized that I had no time, because I needed to talk to Wokie Lariat again.
But I realized that I had no time, because I needed to talk to Wokie Lariat again.
Well Intentioned
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2018
There's a lot more interesting stuff in that thread, just taking a cursory look through it.
Start around page 100 for when they start unearthing shit.
Speculation that this was a nepo hire due to Sena and Kate being friends.
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2022
They missed the mark completely with not putting us at odds with the B-team (or depending on your view, the A-team) more. We were basically allies after the first couple of rites.
Maybe something like you need to buy Wuk Lamat time for something, Thancred was sent ahead to scout as they figured that Urianger and Koana could handle the trials alone and Thancred was to speed things up by scouting out and clearing the area. Or a three-on-three battle where Koana was utilising Sharlayan marksmanship and technology while Urianger utilises traditional magic and Thancred is heading through slashing things with the gunblade. Forcing you to adapt to safe areas from their three attacks. Could even stick in a cool gimmick like Spell in Waiting for Koana, where he'd have timed drones.
Not only would it have been fun narratively to go face-to-face against allies in a duel, but it would have broken up the "talk to Wuk Lamat" quests up.
It's crazy how we had some of the best solo instances in Endwalker such as fighting against Venat using mechanics you'd see later in Hydaelyn's fight, and the famous timed mission where you need to race Zenos to get back before he kills your allies in your body. And in Dawntrail, we had like... 2 good ones?
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2022
She kind of does for Zoraal Ja, when she enters the last few areas she does not really mince words and goes full "I'm here to kill my brother", Zoraal Ja is an irredeemable piece of shit (and a deadbeat) and I think his dying words cement that.
Honestly. I think I'd have a good idea on how to fix both of them.
For Zoraal Ja, play up his inferiority complex. You can still make him a complex villain. His status as the "Resilient Child" puts him into a constant self-doubting mentality. For as long as anyone is stronger than him, he can never be content with himself. You can kinda infer this but I'd make it more obvious. Zenos seeked constant battle for fun and Omega seeked constant battle for improvement. Zoraal Ja seeked constant battle because in his mind, if he's not the strongest, he's dirt.
For Sphene, push back against her more and actually follow out the reasons why what she's doing is wrong. Really hammer in that she's sacrificing the living for the sake of the dead. Maybe even instead of the last area being "let's learn their cultures!", maybe play about with what is endless life. Maybe without end, they lack purpose. Maybe they have made peace with dying to let their descendents have a happy life. You could have done some really tough, philosophical questions here. And they just... didn't.
Imagine if that final area had the guy not re-uniting with his love, it was just him coming to terms that he died with regrets, and that's okay. He'll never meet her again, but life is like that. It would have been a lot more emotional imo.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2014
As unimpressive as this expansion is, as an FF9 oldfag this dungeon and music hits differently
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2015
The story is pretty dirt but all the trials and dungeons are good. It’s a clear sign that one specific group was dragging. It’s why I’m still excited for the Arcadion
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2017
Man what the fuck is summoner anymore. I played one pre HW and it was straight-up an affliction warlock. Now it's a shotgun machinist "but magic". I like the summoning of ifrit and go, but not at the expense of my carbon uncle being literally useless. The hell happened?
RIPRhongoBongo
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2019
Iselda
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2019
Part 3 of putting my thoughts on paper for Dawntrail
Links to: Part 1 & Part 2
The Zone Split & First Dungeon (Levels 90-92ish):
Last time we’d met the claimants, got a summary of the rules of the Dawnservant contest, and reached the starting zone split of the expansion. Tiger Princess is tied to our hip, and we can choose to help her complete the challenge of the Alpaca Jews in Urqopacha or the Vanu-Vanu lookalikes in Kozama'uka. I did the Vanu first, but let’s cover the Alpaca Jews first.
The alpaca jews like money and trade. We make our way to their town in the mountains, and find a helpful girl who wants to leave the Alpaca ranch orphanage and set off to become a peddler. We also waste an ungodly amount of time on yet another “gag” that they thankfully abandon after this zone, where Wuk doesn’t like alpacas because they spit on her once and their spit smells bad. Our first challenge is... to tame a wild alpaca. No really, that’s it. They have a very awkward contrivance that this must be done with a special saddle, and to get the exorbitant amount we need (due to the guy who makes them supporting Zoraal Ja over Wuk) we must trade our way up from a piece of junk all the way up to something valuable enough to trade for the saddle.
Time for a commentary break. I do not know WHY they felt the need to have the first day of an econ 101 class comprise an entire challenge for Dawnservant, but here we are. While this section has spawned some funny “Excellent Trade” memes, this is where we realize that we’re in for a bumpy ride.
First off, we finally realize that our second (and by far most common) quest type “Talk to exactly three people or interact with exactly three things, then talk to Wuk Lamat” is going to be what we’ll be doing for most of this MSQ. I would say some variant of this comprises 80% of the quests. You might’ve thought you’d have signed up for a story heavy video game, but no, you’ve signed up for a visual novel with occasional gameplay. I don’t have anything against visual novels, and actually have quite a few that I like, but FFXIV is supposed to be something closer to a normal video game. When I open up a more video-game type video game, I want to play a video game. At least let me do SOMETHING for most of these quests. Hell, I’d take the occasional “collect 10 bear asses” quest just to diversify things a bit.
We also realize that these “challenges” to elect the Dawnservant are not going to entail anything super interesting. They’re just going to be a cultural tour of the Turali people, and will make us do something relevant to their culture or history. A couple will make us solve a current problem for them, but it’s not going to have any sort of grandeur that you’d think challenges like this would warrant. It’s only going to get worse from here as well.
Back to Alpaca Land. We get our saddle and as we’re gearing up to go camp out while Wuk hunts her an Alpaca (we don’t even get to help her), we see Zoraal Ja show up with a fuggin’ SHINY GOLDEN alpaca he just intimidated into coming along with him. He then waddles off to the next challenge. Luckily for Wuk there are no bonus points in these trials. Anyway, she goes into the canyon for a whole day alone and brings back an alpaca. Trial complete, gemstone get. Now onto the Not Vanu Vanu.
Before we go over the birds, I want to emphasize that this challenge is tied for the stupidest challenge in the contest. I’m not even counting the goblins we’ll meet later in that statement, because they’re goblins. This challenge is so mind-bogglingly dumb from a writing standpoint that it is where I started to crack. Let’s see just how bad this goes.
We arrive in the swampy Kozama'uka and meet our elector. We learn that the birds use reeds that they grow in the shallow swamp waters for literally everything in their lives, and our challenge here is to figure out what is causing the reeds to stop growing. This is a workable premise and could lead to something interesting if competent writing was involved, but this is Dawntrail, so don’t get your hopes up.
Bakool Ja Ja shows up trying to act tough and intimidate the gemstone out of the elector, but he rolls a natural 1, and won’t be relevant again until after the third challenge. At least he adds a bit of corny villain fun whenever he shows up on screen.
Investigating the area has us learn more about the Not Vanu Vanu and reveals that a float used as part of a festival got damaged along with their homes in the recent storm. After an investigation turns up no obvious sign of what is causing the reeds to stop growing, Wuk decides we should fix the float to lift the spirits of the people instead... If you say so, Tiger Princess. It’s not like our character has any agency in this story or anything.
We gather the materials to fix the float with the help of Wuk Evu, an eccentric carpenter/weaver who lives in a treehouse and has experience as a shipwright. He will be a minor recurring character consisting of one gag. His gag of feeling unworthy hits a bit better than all the others so far, but it still grinds due to it being his entire character.
This is where the real stupid starts. As we finish up repairs on the float, we figure out that the festival they stopped holding due to the recent storms, was a HARVEST FESTIVAL! Our new friend Wuk Evu knew this, one of the village elders knew this, and even several random citizens knew this! They all just had a collective moment of retardation and... forgot... I guess. As Tiger Princess rides the float to the destination MAGICAL GLOWY AETHER SURROUNDS EVERYONE AND THE REED FIELDS! THE REED FIELDS THEN SHOOT UP TO FULLY GROWN HEALTHY REEDS IN SECONDS! Words fail me. I genuinely can’t express just how dumb this resolution is. Also Koana shows up, puts some magic foreign juice in one of the ponds that fixes the reeds in that one. Anyway, gemstone get.
We return to the capital city, help a random goldsmith get employed at Whatchu Makey Makey, and prepare to head upriver to meet the goblins on the other half of the swamp zone. On our way out, we also learn that ya boi’s Urianger and Thancred are here! ...Unfortunately you won’t get to see them much because they’ve been contracted to help Koana. Don’t get your hopes up either. This will amount to very little aside from a few character moments for Koana after the third challenge is done.
This will be our opening dungeon for this expansion and... it’s certainly a modern FFXIV dungeon alright. It’s surprising how little I have to say about it. Compared to last expansion's first dungeon (Tower of Zot) there just aren’t many interesting mechanics here. They try to tie some narrative pieces into it with ya boi Bakool Ja Ja damaging your boat and forcing you to pull over after the first 3 trash packs, but this winds up not mattering. This dungeon is the standard 3 or 4 trash packs then a boss that we’ve seen since Shadowbringers. None of the mechanics are anything you can’t sight-read aside from maybe the first time you see the tornado on the final boss. The visual design of the final boss is cool at least.
After the dungeon, we arrive at the other end of the river and camp for the night. Which seems like a good spot to end this post.
This is not a good start. In fact, this is an outright terrible start. The alpacas are boring, and the stupidity of the bird quests are on a whole other level. The dungeon has nothing of note, and it is now clear that we won’t be doing much video gaming with this expansion. In addition we now also have a clear picture of just how sidelined our character will be for this entire story. We’ll see how the wheels on this story continue to wobble and fall completely off in the next post where we cover the goblins, giants, and Mexican Trogdor.
Have a great weekend all.
Links to: Part 1 & Part 2
The Zone Split & First Dungeon (Levels 90-92ish):
Last time we’d met the claimants, got a summary of the rules of the Dawnservant contest, and reached the starting zone split of the expansion. Tiger Princess is tied to our hip, and we can choose to help her complete the challenge of the Alpaca Jews in Urqopacha or the Vanu-Vanu lookalikes in Kozama'uka. I did the Vanu first, but let’s cover the Alpaca Jews first.
The alpaca jews like money and trade. We make our way to their town in the mountains, and find a helpful girl who wants to leave the Alpaca ranch orphanage and set off to become a peddler. We also waste an ungodly amount of time on yet another “gag” that they thankfully abandon after this zone, where Wuk doesn’t like alpacas because they spit on her once and their spit smells bad. Our first challenge is... to tame a wild alpaca. No really, that’s it. They have a very awkward contrivance that this must be done with a special saddle, and to get the exorbitant amount we need (due to the guy who makes them supporting Zoraal Ja over Wuk) we must trade our way up from a piece of junk all the way up to something valuable enough to trade for the saddle.
Time for a commentary break. I do not know WHY they felt the need to have the first day of an econ 101 class comprise an entire challenge for Dawnservant, but here we are. While this section has spawned some funny “Excellent Trade” memes, this is where we realize that we’re in for a bumpy ride.
First off, we finally realize that our second (and by far most common) quest type “Talk to exactly three people or interact with exactly three things, then talk to Wuk Lamat” is going to be what we’ll be doing for most of this MSQ. I would say some variant of this comprises 80% of the quests. You might’ve thought you’d have signed up for a story heavy video game, but no, you’ve signed up for a visual novel with occasional gameplay. I don’t have anything against visual novels, and actually have quite a few that I like, but FFXIV is supposed to be something closer to a normal video game. When I open up a more video-game type video game, I want to play a video game. At least let me do SOMETHING for most of these quests. Hell, I’d take the occasional “collect 10 bear asses” quest just to diversify things a bit.
We also realize that these “challenges” to elect the Dawnservant are not going to entail anything super interesting. They’re just going to be a cultural tour of the Turali people, and will make us do something relevant to their culture or history. A couple will make us solve a current problem for them, but it’s not going to have any sort of grandeur that you’d think challenges like this would warrant. It’s only going to get worse from here as well.
Back to Alpaca Land. We get our saddle and as we’re gearing up to go camp out while Wuk hunts her an Alpaca (we don’t even get to help her), we see Zoraal Ja show up with a fuggin’ SHINY GOLDEN alpaca he just intimidated into coming along with him. He then waddles off to the next challenge. Luckily for Wuk there are no bonus points in these trials. Anyway, she goes into the canyon for a whole day alone and brings back an alpaca. Trial complete, gemstone get. Now onto the Not Vanu Vanu.
Before we go over the birds, I want to emphasize that this challenge is tied for the stupidest challenge in the contest. I’m not even counting the goblins we’ll meet later in that statement, because they’re goblins. This challenge is so mind-bogglingly dumb from a writing standpoint that it is where I started to crack. Let’s see just how bad this goes.
We arrive in the swampy Kozama'uka and meet our elector. We learn that the birds use reeds that they grow in the shallow swamp waters for literally everything in their lives, and our challenge here is to figure out what is causing the reeds to stop growing. This is a workable premise and could lead to something interesting if competent writing was involved, but this is Dawntrail, so don’t get your hopes up.
Bakool Ja Ja shows up trying to act tough and intimidate the gemstone out of the elector, but he rolls a natural 1, and won’t be relevant again until after the third challenge. At least he adds a bit of corny villain fun whenever he shows up on screen.
Investigating the area has us learn more about the Not Vanu Vanu and reveals that a float used as part of a festival got damaged along with their homes in the recent storm. After an investigation turns up no obvious sign of what is causing the reeds to stop growing, Wuk decides we should fix the float to lift the spirits of the people instead... If you say so, Tiger Princess. It’s not like our character has any agency in this story or anything.
We gather the materials to fix the float with the help of Wuk Evu, an eccentric carpenter/weaver who lives in a treehouse and has experience as a shipwright. He will be a minor recurring character consisting of one gag. His gag of feeling unworthy hits a bit better than all the others so far, but it still grinds due to it being his entire character.
This is where the real stupid starts. As we finish up repairs on the float, we figure out that the festival they stopped holding due to the recent storms, was a HARVEST FESTIVAL! Our new friend Wuk Evu knew this, one of the village elders knew this, and even several random citizens knew this! They all just had a collective moment of retardation and... forgot... I guess. As Tiger Princess rides the float to the destination MAGICAL GLOWY AETHER SURROUNDS EVERYONE AND THE REED FIELDS! THE REED FIELDS THEN SHOOT UP TO FULLY GROWN HEALTHY REEDS IN SECONDS! Words fail me. I genuinely can’t express just how dumb this resolution is. Also Koana shows up, puts some magic foreign juice in one of the ponds that fixes the reeds in that one. Anyway, gemstone get.
We return to the capital city, help a random goldsmith get employed at Whatchu Makey Makey, and prepare to head upriver to meet the goblins on the other half of the swamp zone. On our way out, we also learn that ya boi’s Urianger and Thancred are here! ...Unfortunately you won’t get to see them much because they’ve been contracted to help Koana. Don’t get your hopes up either. This will amount to very little aside from a few character moments for Koana after the third challenge is done.
This will be our opening dungeon for this expansion and... it’s certainly a modern FFXIV dungeon alright. It’s surprising how little I have to say about it. Compared to last expansion's first dungeon (Tower of Zot) there just aren’t many interesting mechanics here. They try to tie some narrative pieces into it with ya boi Bakool Ja Ja damaging your boat and forcing you to pull over after the first 3 trash packs, but this winds up not mattering. This dungeon is the standard 3 or 4 trash packs then a boss that we’ve seen since Shadowbringers. None of the mechanics are anything you can’t sight-read aside from maybe the first time you see the tornado on the final boss. The visual design of the final boss is cool at least.
After the dungeon, we arrive at the other end of the river and camp for the night. Which seems like a good spot to end this post.
This is not a good start. In fact, this is an outright terrible start. The alpacas are boring, and the stupidity of the bird quests are on a whole other level. The dungeon has nothing of note, and it is now clear that we won’t be doing much video gaming with this expansion. In addition we now also have a clear picture of just how sidelined our character will be for this entire story. We’ll see how the wheels on this story continue to wobble and fall completely off in the next post where we cover the goblins, giants, and Mexican Trogdor.
Have a great weekend all.
std::string
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 17, 2018
Button pruning.
I'd be interested to know what actually set them off that they felt the need to rework SMN though. Meanwhile they won't touch Freecure even though it's only relevant in content that 99.99% of players won't do so all it really does is confuse players coming from WoW.
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2021
It is refreshing how hard the official forums are shitting on Wuk Lamat's VA and the new VA director. I thought the people there had turned into Twitter 0.8, but I guess they still got a few sensible people floating around.
DerpyPunch
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2022
nah man, Wuk making want to skip every cutscene shes in... fucking hell
big bad literally about to wage war with all reality, Wuk Lamat "I want to learn about your people" Shut the fuck up, theres no reason the last area should this padded outthis much.
The last area drags on way longer then need be, its so obvious they ran out of ideas for this story.
big bad literally about to wage war with all reality, Wuk Lamat "I want to learn about your people" Shut the fuck up, theres no reason the last area should this padded outthis much.
The last area drags on way longer then need be, its so obvious they ran out of ideas for this story.
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2019
I pray to god that whoever is writing the FFXI raids is good because they're what I'm looking forward to the most.
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2019
Did it strike any of you guys? The hype for this shit died faster than Endwalker. I barely see my Discord acquaintances talk about the game, and they were gushing at every EW reveal, good or bad. Even Twitter seems kinda just meh on it.
If I were SEnix, I'd be worried.
If I were SEnix, I'd be worried.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2019
Because the story was dogshit and the person they hired to write this garbage should immediately be thrown into a trashbin.
Not to mention, SE outright lied by saying they'd drop the high stakes bullshit for a while after we literally save the universe only for the tail end of the story to turn into another fucking universal apocalypse that we have to stop. Out of all the directions they could have gone, the writer chose to just rehash the stuff done previously in the last 2 expacs.
I really hope the team takes lessons on how bad the base expansion is and work to fix things for the patch content because this writer just took a steaming shit on everything Ishikawa built up in the story.
If it weren't for the music, the dungeons and general gameplay, more than half the playerbase would've stopped playing by now.
Iselda
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2019
I can't speak for the broader playerbase, but I can confirm that the hype in my circle of immidate friends who play the game has completely died. Normally we'd be leveling classes, grinding shared fates, working on crafting while shooting the shit in discord, or other new expansion type activies. After we all finished the MSQ this time though, even the most diehard white knights for the game have drifted back to finishing the elden ring dlc, genshin/star rail, trying out ZZZ, or are getting started on the newest Trails game.
It's not just that the hype is dead with us either. The bit of leveling we've been doing has been done with a groan of "yeah... i guess we can knock a few roulettes out" due to just how bad this story was. It's why I'm taking the time to type out my thoughts in full for the whole MSQ in my giant word vomit posts in this thread. It's taking time to process just HOW BAD this MSQ was.
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2015
Finally found some fanart for dawntrail.