Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Road Work Ahead]

The obsession with reaching endgame is a disease brought over from WoW where not being max lvl locks you out of the endgame. In WoW old content is dead next expansion.

People are going to want to raid with their friends. Having to slog through what is now over 100 hours of MSQ (or pay for a skip and still play through 30-40 horus of the current expac story) is going to put them off, and if the story isn't even good...why bother.

Also, while their friends can level sync down and play with them, playing sync sucks as half your rotation is now gone and your job is way less fun.

In FF14 I've never had the feeling that the old content is dead.

The old content isn't dead, but the way level sync is currently means it's boring. While you'll be able to queue for old raids, the fights will be finished so fast you may as well not have even bothered.

The only problem is that the story in ARR is not particularly good, and you have to suffer through it to get to the good parts

This is true, and has been repeated for years. Hopefully it remains true. If dawntrail is the new standard, players will just dip after shadowbringers, double so once that becomes free.

 

[Shieldman]

Is it though? You're not really doing anything at lvl 100 you weren't already doing at lvl 60.
The obsession with reaching endgame is a disease brought over from WoW where not being max lvl locks you out of the endgame. In WoW old content is dead next expansion.
In FF14 I've never had the feeling that the old content is dead.
The only problem is that the story in ARR is not particularly good, and you have to suffer through it to get to the good parts

Gating everything behind a MSQ is probably the biggest flaw with the game.
Every single friend I tried to bring to the game quit at some point because they couldn't do the cool stuff (buy tomestone equipment, access alliance/raids) before completing the story, even if they were past the required level.

I hope the successor to Eureka/Bozja is good, I can't think anything else that could make me want to stay long-term.

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

E: This is another one. The sentiment is correct (eg, translating a pun or cultural joke from Japanese to English probably wouldn't work) but that doesn't mean you have a free fucking reign to insert whatever you want.

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The unfortunate thing is that because some changes do need to happen, they'll use this as justification to put in weird as fuck jokes. Anyone remember that the old Moenbryda minion flavour text implied that Urianger used the minion as a fleshlight?

It also isn't helped by the fact that many involved in the discussion likely haven't even done a duolingo lesson on Japanese.

One of the worst takes I've heard was "you need to localise it cause Japanese is a very vague language" which is not only completely wrong, but doesn't even stand up to the most basic of scrutiny. You're gonna tell me that you can run a first-world society, with laws, currency and massive global businesses, and run a court system on a language that is "vague"? Shit would fall apart within a couple of weeks.

 

[SuffahWhorse]

Kate, I'm willing to be a bit more lenient on because she's worked with Square for a number of years. But man, if she was the point person on the EN localization and IF she did play as major a role in the VA selections, she really needs to have her knuckles rapped. I honestly don't know a fuck of a lot about her, but she seems like a weird, quirky weeb/nerd.

This was from one of the fanfests leading into Dawntrail, from a localization panel., as you can see they list "voice casting" as part of the localizers job, confirming that it is indeed Kate's (as localization lead) job to deal with casting VAs.

There's also this interview where Kate outlines how she is personally responsible for the English VA's being changed, her admitting to dialogue changes that she wrote:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fantasy-xiv/ff14-dawntrail-wuk-lamat

I love this part the most:

"You know, you try not take criticism [players] give too personally, but for myself, the hardest thing is if there's a character I really like and then people say, "this character sucks," I'm like, no, you're wrong."

 

[Well Intentioned]

This was from one of the fanfests leading into Dawntrail, from a localization panel., as you can see they list "voice casting" as part of the localizers job, confirming that it is indeed Kate's (as localization lead) job to deal with casting VAs.

Yeah, casting is absolutely handled on the SE side of things, I just wasn't sure if she was personally handling it or if it was offloaded to someone on the team. Lead folks like that typically aren't handling the nitty gritty and are more generally overseeing everything while chipping in here and there.

She would have final approval on VA choices, and honestly my gut feeling is that she railroaded Sena in, but I'm just curious how much latitude she has.

There's also this interview where Kate outlines how she is personally responsible for the English VA's being changed, her admitting to dialogue changes that she wrote:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fantasy-xiv/ff14-dawntrail-wuk-lamat

I think that the rationale makes sense and works -- British English wouldn't make a ton of sense in an area that hasn't really been influenced by the 'East' and it would add some flavor. The problem is twofold in that they went with a) VAs that are American first rather than Hispanic and b) like everything else, it was low effort, shitty performative stuff. Oh, they have an accent, job done!

"You know, you try not take criticism [players] give too personally, but for myself, the hardest thing is if there's a character I really like and then people say, "this character sucks," I'm like, no, you're wrong."

Yeah, when I highlighted that prior quote about her wanting to ban all criticism the above shit was what I had in mind. She seems VERY thin-skinned and resistant to any kind of pushback or criticism. Which baffles the fuck out of me given how insane Japanese work culture tends to be with foreigners (although she does touch on that in one of the quotes.)

But I've dealt with these types before and they usually don't last very long.

Fuck me, I honestly thought Kate was more of an unknown entity at this point but the more I'm hearing about her the more I want her fucking gone from this game, lol.

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

lol
lmao even
View attachment 6307673
(at this point I'm starting to think Sena should get his own thread)

People may be going a bit far, but I also think Sena just needs to stop fucking tweeting about it tbh.

All that tweeting like that does is get you a bit of a circlejerk from people who agree with you and cause everyone who hates you to go "you know what, this is actually really funny let's push it even further".

Just log off lmao.

 

[Well Intentioned]

The unfortunate thing is that because some changes do need to happen, they'll use this as justification to put in weird as fuck jokes. Anyone remember that the old Moenbryda minion flavour text implied that Urianger used the minion as a fleshlight?

Yeah, and there are differing arguments as to whether or not certain localization decisions are good or bad.

You can argue that you should be keeping it as accurate to the original language as possible and that's what you should strive for. Okay, makes sense, but then you run into situations with things like honorifics, styles of speaking, etc. How do you localize 'tone'?

You can also argue that it's more important to keep with the spirit of the original script and can convey the same thing but in a context that would be understandable to the audience you're localizing for. I tend to prefer this as it gives some wiggle room while still having defined parameters.

The other one is that you should try to localize things and make it appealing or 'Westernize' it. The Ted Woolsey translations (most notably FF4 and FF6) are good examples of this, as some of the lines have become fan favorites and even adopted by SE in later translations of the game.

But, it leads to the sort of progressive retard creep that we're starting to see here under the argument that 'this is what Western audiences want' or shit like The Author's Barely Disguised Fetish because they have that freedom. And it also drastically changes how characters are depicted. EG, Kefka in the original FF6 script was more maniacal and menacing than cartoonishly evil. Or how Haurchefant's characterization was changed.

You can make valid arguments for all three of these as being valid routes to go down, as there's merit in all three approaches, but I tend to prefer translations that convey the same meaning, without giving shitbirds a chance to shoehorn in stuff that is not in the spirit of the original work.

One of the worst takes I've heard was "you need to localise it cause Japanese is a very vague language" which is not only completely wrong, but doesn't even stand up to the most basic of scrutiny. You're gonna tell me that you can run a first-world society, with laws, currency and massive global businesses, and run a court system on a language that is "vague"? Shit would fall apart within a couple of weeks.

Yeah....I'm not a Japanese speaker but I have enough knowledge of the language to know that it is an incredibly nuanced language. One of the big things that have pissed off the Japanese players with Wuk Lamat is how she refers to the player with an overly familiar phrase that presumes a close association with the person and they really don't like that.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

and if the story isn't even good...why bother.

I mean, you can skip the cutscenes. If you do that, the experience is really, really quick. Had I not wanted to record and meticulously suffer through Dawntrail, I'd have just skipped everything from about 91 onwards, when it became clear it was all going to be dogshit. Each night my patience would run out and I'd start skipping, and it sped the process up a lot. It's also striking just how fast the EW postgame goes once you realize it is completely irredeemable dogshit and you start skipping all of the completely and utterly irrelevant bullshit that's all over it.

"you need to localise it cause Japanese is a very vague language"

Vague is the wrong word - contextual is the right one. Even pluralization in Japanese will be reflected, as I understand it, less in the noun and more in the broader context of the sentence itself. Gendered language as well, as I've been told, can become tricky if you translate literally, since it will hinge on context - like honorifics, say.

There's a strong argument that it's easy to translate Japanese in a stuffy way, and you have to be a little creative to make it shine. I think that, up until this expansion, Koji (or whoever) pulled that off, for all the embellishments involved. But in this expansion, I both noted some really obvious embellishments (rubber bullets) and the fact that everything is extremely flat, dry, and clunky. The sentence structure is incredibly simple and the way people speak is really, really basic. You'll notice it most with the Scions (who have clearly lost their voice), but you'll also pick up on it if you read the (endless, pointless) dialogue in the 300 or so "talk to 3 people" steps. Very short, simple sentences. Very simple ideas. Very direct, straightforward speech.

"Everyone is the most posh British person ever."

I mean, I assume she's just being facetious to pretend there was a reason to get her friends a job, but... posh? Not even remotely close, with the cast having such a wider fucking range of performances to boot, too.

 

[ChromaQuack]

I mean, I assume she's just being facetious to pretend there was a reason to get her friends a job, but... posh? Not even remotely close, with the cast having such a wider fucking range of performances to boot, too.

I think you can chalk that up to the average amerimutt's understanding of what English from the isles sounds like, they hear NORF FC and think "how quaint and refined".

 

[Dopey Cunt]

Didn't realize WeskAlber was such a faggot, what a shame, he made decent videos. Into the trash he goes.

https://x.com/WeskAlber/status/1823519044781154425

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WeskFagbert has always gotten the side eye from me since the start. You've heard him talk, yeah? Motherfucker sounds like the most downey mongoloid I've ever heard. You can just hear the retardation in his voice.

People may be going a bit far, but I also think Sena just needs to stop fucking tweeting about it tbh.

All that tweeting like that does is get you a bit of a circlejerk from people who agree with you and cause everyone who hates you to go "you know what, this is actually really funny let's push it even further".

Just log off lmao.

If he stopped tweeting, he won't be able to capitalize on being a professional victim.
This is literally their MO: go on a very public social media outlet, say the most incendiary shit and then sit back and back in the ass patting and the milking of people who take the bait. The reality is that if you say anything on a public place on the internet, you're always going to have someone behave like a troglodyte toward you. I have seen literal nobodies who have gotten death threats just because they say they don't like mayo on their sandwhich. The fact that he's a VA or that he's a troon is immaterial.

These kinds of people only have power because others let them by falling into their trap. Yeah it's funny but after a while it just becomes a never ending loop that they never tire of because they always benefit from it in some way. They WANT people to hate them and send them death threats because it makes them feel important to complain about it whilst conveniently ignoring that it happens because they directly cause it to happen.

The only thing we can hope for is that he makes so much of a stink that he's canned just because he doesn't know how to remain professional. Kate is a trash human too, but at least she knows when to keep her head down and shut the fuck up.

 

[SuffahWhorse]

The thing is about accents, no other language besides english is forced to have multiple different accents in their localization. Japanese, German, French? Every single character talks their respective accent. Play the game in Japanese dub for example, and all the pajeets in Thavnair speak with a japanese accent. Why is it suddenly a problem when it's in english and ONLY when it's in english? Why can't we have every character in the world speaking with a british accent in English dub, if it's fine in Japanese/German/French dubs for everyone to speak with a Japanese/German/French accent respectively?

 

[Well Intentioned]

WeskFagbert has always gotten the side eye from me since the start. You've heard him talk, yeah? Motherfucker sounds like the most downey mongoloid I've ever heard. You can just hear the retardation in his voice.

Having been in a TOP prog group where I had the misfortune to deal with him, I can say he's an absolute utter shit heel, and is also very creepy towards people he knows are bio girls (re: not troons.)

Guy is like the ultimate Burger King mentor.

 

[EmpGulcasa]

Just play with the Japanese VA and you don't have to deal with any of this shit, plus you get amusing surprises like that one Lalafell in the Crystal Braves who had like the deepest voice of any NPC.

 

[Baguette Child]

So husband (Gunbreaker) and I (Scholar) are now far enough in that I feel like commenting on my thoughts towards the game so far. Three points, spoilered so I don't spam up the thread with newbie shit.

Spoiler: 7 out of 10 stars, don't totally regret playing

First; The current opening music sucks a bag of dicks. I watched the OP for ARR and it fucking slaps. Seriously, that's how you get someone hyped to play your damn game. DT's OP is just weeaboo garbage with boring visuals. Disappointing.

Second; The MSQ is pretty cool, even in the slow earlier parts. I had fun. Some of it is better than others but, hey, I've definitely played worse. The two of us reached a consensus that we're definitely interested in playing at least up to DT's MSQ.

Which leads me to number three. This is 100% not a game to be played as a group/pair/whatever. Maybe three fourths of the time it basically feels like we're both playing a single player game just sitting next to each other. I knew this would be a thing going in but, admittedly, it's the biggest thing hampering my enthusiasm at the moment. Yes, even moreso than the whole Wuk trashfire bullshit.

I feel like I definitely missed out on something good by not playing this back in its heyday. Just looking at the past OPs FFXIV seems like something that really had a lot of potential before modern day game development sunk its claws in. We're still having fun though so maybe we'll stick around for a while. Who knows. Rate me optimistic but maybe the next expansion won't fucking suck as hard as everyone's told me DT does.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

Alright, so I finally set aside an hour to demonstrate what I've been blathering about endlessly. I'm actually surprised at some of the results.
So, for starters: here's what decent vocal performances will look like, using lines from Erenville and Alisaie. Erenville has a slight reverb applied to him in the narration.

Spoiler: UK Studio

Now, one of the first things that clue me in that something was going on with the audio was Bakool JaJa. You can start to notice there's a huge gap in how the audio for the US and the UK actors look here, and you can see that the US one is much, much more concentrated in its range. It moves less. While it's true that certain voices will generally differ in Hz ranges, given how words work and how intonation and annunciation all work, you would expect the kind of range that Vrtra displays, where you can see his voice moving across the spectrum. Like, think about how you say "apple." The 'A' is usually going to be higher in pitch than the rest of the word, even if just a bit.

Spoiler: Bakool JaJa

But what's really wild is that it's inconsistent. GJJ doesn't seem to have the same issue, at least not in this scene I decided to clip.

Spoiler: Galool JaJa

And, unsurprisingly, I think our beloved trooncat holds the answer.

Spoiler: Godawful

First off, holy shit, what is this volume? He's supposed to be yelling and the BGM is louder than him.

Second off, you start to notice a really crunchy pattern here. It is squished hard between the third and the sixth bands.

And the eureka moment is one that I mostly did for shits and gigs. Jesus fucking christ. Just LOOK AT IT. Look at the form for SPEEN. Look at how fucking squished that is.
That is not a natural range for any human voice on the planet to take when yelling. Someone was fucking around a lot with the audio on this expansion, particularly for the golden boy.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

SPEEN

lissun tu mi

I fucking can't like..every time I hear that I just start laughing it's so bad. I'm curious on the range for the japanese voice.

Edit: I'm gonna play through the MSQ on my alt with japanese subs to see if my experience changes.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

I'm curious on the range for the japanese voice.

I grabbed the audio from the one Youtube comparison video. Since their audio settings are obviously different from what I had, here's both.
The JP voice has more motion and more movement, especially down towards the bass levels. The shout... looks like a shout, or at least someone speaking loudly. You can see its pitch moving around as you'd expect.

Spoiler: JP-speen

The EN one is still fucking crazy. The first SPEEN is whatever, it keeps in line with the rest of the 'performance' and feels like it has anything in the mid-lows filtered out. That might really help to explain why Wuk is so much fucking quieter than every other character - that kept nagging me.

Spoiler: EN-speen

The second one is the crazy one. ONLY the mid-highs were allowed through. It falls entirely within that specific spectrum. And there's just no fucking way - that is so much compression and even with all of that, it still sounds bizarrely quiet as fuck.

 

[Well Intentioned]

For what it's worth, I think I found the studio that did the NA recording:

https://www.keywordsstudios.com/en/about-us/global-offer/locations-studios/sound-lab/

The lead producer, Debbie Gonzalez, is credited on Dawntrail and they list both XIV and FF16 on their credits.

EDIT: I'm not 100% on this, but I think this was one of the prior NA studios they had worked with (and still have a relationship with, re: the Distant Worlds concerts):

https://www.awrmusic.com/services

They were last credited in Stormblood.

 

[Dopey Cunt]

The second one is the crazy one. ONLY the mid-highs were allowed through. It falls entirely within that specific spectrum. And there's just no fucking way - that is so much compression, (well it's not really compression) fiddling and even with all of that, it still sounds bizarrely quiet as fuck.

I think Sena's excuse was that he wasn't good with doing high-pitched or loud vocals. Probably because 1.) He's not a woman so his vocal box will never reach the kind of range that an actual woman can reach and 2.) He's just a bad VA without much experience or training.

The third thing is probably he doesn't want to try going that high or is too scared to go that high because he's afraid that the natural male deepness of his voice will be more noticeable if he tries to strain more.

 

[ChromaQuack]

If you listen to the scene there is a second "speen" scream (a bit after speen replies to trooncat), first time I heard it I almost tought it was a growl, upon hearing it again from the posts here I'm starting to think he actually tried to scream it out and whoever was doing the editing squished the audio so hard it starts flat out distorting.

It almost feels like someone less insecure about sounding like a """"woman"""" at all times could have pulled that scene off without a hitch, just growl out the lines like the pissed off gigacat they're supposed to be instead of letting out a lowercase scream.