Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

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Nobody knows game development more than bullshit localizers. This is like the person making sure the manual included with your car has a page dedicated to social media resources talking about how difficult it is for them to build the car itself.
Yeah, this is what I meant about how people who aren't qualified to be making big decisions are now taking the reins.

Kate is basically a flat circle when it comes to the localization process. She went to post-secondary to learn Japanese, doesn't seem to have any real interests outside of anime/manga/Japan (although at the very surface level as is the case for most weebs) beyond archery (which she was part of the team at her university.)

This is a problem because localization is an understanding of language and how it works. Part of why Koji Fox's efforts are celebrated is because he dug really fucking deep and created not just character voices through language and being consistent with it. He has this breadth and depth of knowledge because he is a voracious reader and because his interest in Japanese doesn't stem strictly from weebshit: his interest in the language stemmed from some live action drama that was filmed in Washington state that was broadcast when he was younger.

On top of that, there's a creative spark to him, which is apparent in his translation efforts, but also with shit like music.

Can you imagine that fucking minge Kate singing or collaborating with Soken? It's why transliteration adherents are so fucking odious in my mind -- they slavishly adhere to being 'accurate' and 'respectful' to the source material (where else have those two particular gremlins crept up in recent years?) while basically gutting it of any meaning or creative spark. Being able to create a faithful translation that still retains that spark is something that not everyone can do and is something that, IMO, Kate can't really do.

There is almost assuredly a style guide that was created or overseen by Koji in the game's early days and it is pretty apparent Kate is not really following it. A lot of conversational english and conventional slang has crept into lines from characters you wouldn't expect those particular tics to have (but you would expect a North American english speaker about the age of Kate to have...), plus just general structure and formatting is a fucking mess.

The team is literally so comfortable some of them did double duty on FFXVI. Nothing says "extremely comfortable at work" like "taking another job concurrently".
I agree on the structure, but the 'double duty' thing is a bit overblown. Outside of Soken and Yoshi P, no one else on the dev team was 'double dipping.'

The bigger issue is that a LOT of senior devs in key positions were shuffled off of XIV to go work on XVI once the general vertical slice and general narrative outline were hashed out, did a lot of the heavy lifting for XVI, and then were rotated back in to XIV. This led to junior members getting an opportunity to step up and some of them fumbled it rather horribly, IMO.
Based on this, it can be surmissed that Sena is still deeply embedded in the FFXIV crew and likely isn't going anywhere.
I'm inclined to think that Sena and Kate are friends and this was an instance of cronyism and this recent bullshit is just proof of their friendship.

Granted, it is virtually unheard of to have a biological woman staunchly defend a troon (ahem...), but it is possible she's just a useful idiot in this situation and is gunt guarding Sena under the delusion of being an 'ally.'

It might just be retarded optimism on my behalf but I do think they are really trying to minimize Troon Cat's presence, even if she does show up in those instances you cited.
 
7.2 had a good moment, and I have to acknowledge that this being considered a good moment is setting the bar very low, where we arrive in S9 with Wuk Lamat and the first thing the character says is something like “I’ll go this way, you go that way”. It was nice. I don’t know if it was course correction or just how it was already intended, but it was nice to not have them perched on my shoulder. It’d still be very funny to see a hard “this is where we knee-jerked in response” type moment where Wuk Lamat just disappears mid sentence or something.
 
I would think after the reception to 7.0 the reaction was mostly to pull the "It'd be a bad look for the ruler of another nation to do X" thing more. At least that's realistic enough to push Wuk to the side any time you're in S9 or Alexandria as a whole. Sadly we have to keep going back to fantasy taco land enough that there's still time to shove the character in our faces, that or Mexican Gra'ha.
 
Found this on /v/, from Kate's Bluesky thread, she's making her thoughts even more clear, going even further to suggest that youtube (which is now filled with anti-Dawntrail videos that are very popular) be shut down completely.
Kate seething.webp


Also, speaking of /v/ (gonna be a lengthy post here but fuck it, this faggot needs documentation at this point):

There is currently a schizophrenic poster on /v/ acting as the Dawntrail defence force, and are SUPER defensive of Kate and Sena Bryer specificially. He's been running damage control for Dawntrail, Kate, Sena Bryer and Wuk Lamat (and really anything widely criticized about the expansion) every single day for the past year. He's been increasingly unravelling mentally as his numerous copes have fallen apart (Occult Crescent was the final big cope for white-knights, only for it to be met with backlash over the execution of it and how they handled Forked Tower) and since then he's gotten even more deranged, now he's currently trying to force a narrative that every person who doesn't like Dawntrail is one person, that this is all a conspiracy by one schizo (who's also acting on the orders of Zepla, because Zepla made a youtube video shitting on Dawntrail you see) to besmirch Dawntrail. He stalks /v/ 16 hours a day to find any XIV threads that get posted and will find them within as little as 1 minute (even if no XIV-related keywords are used) and dump his schizoposting and render the entire thread unsueable as they attack anyone and everyone trying to discuss the game, labeling them their schizo boogieman.

This poster has been dubbed "Homestuck", due to his posting history (made obvious by his extremely easy-to-identify posting style and usage of reaction images with the same hashes) of liking Homestuck, even often using Homestuck-related reaction images. You can easily identify Homestuck by this manner:

-His extremely disingenous argumentation tactic where he deliberatley misrerpresents whatever you say and dances around any point you make
-His defense of Dawntrail and Wuk Lamat, Kate and Sena Bryer. He REALLY acts defensive of Kate most of all.
-The lefty bias tinging not even remotely-subtly off his posts
-His defense of avatarfags
- And that he will almost NEVER use a reaction image related to FFXIV. Despite defending the game every single day as if he's it's #1 fan, he strangely has barely any XIV-related reaction images. His reaction images are always some western cartoon (like Homestuck, Family Guy, Spongebob, etc.) or video game (TF2 images are some of his most frequently used). He also never posts any images of his own character (despite loving avatarfags so much, so you'd think he'd have no issue avatarposting himself with his own character), so there's no evidence he even plays the game. Some argue he's simply defending it (specifically Dawntrail/Wuk/Kate/Sena) for ideological reasons (as he's a massive lefty)

He is quite possible the biggest white knight of Dawntrail in existence. Worse that anyone I have ever seen on even Reddit or Twitter, if only because of how utterly dedicated he is. I mean this by no exaggeration when I say that his every waking hour is spent sitting on /v/, camping the catalog for any XIV threads to invade and defend Dawntrail like his life depends on it.

Included are a few examples of posts suspected to be him, to also give you some idea of his posting style

Trying to force anons to stop talking about (shitting on) 7.0 because 7.2 was about to come out (he was banking on Occult Crescent bringing everyone back and being a smash hit):

Homestuck coping.webp

Gleefully admitting he would be happy if critics of Kate and Sena were shot and killed:

Homestuck wants people who criticize Kate & Sena to die.webp

Attempting to downplay Kaiyoko Star, a FFXIV Vtuber who's infamous for him and his wife (who is a FFXIV Community Manager btw to this very day) being literal diaperfetishists:

Homestuck Defending Kaiyoko Star the Diaperfetishist.webp

Of course we can't PROVE that these are all from the same person, but his posting style, his argumentation tactic, his usage of specific reaction images (often sharing the same hash, and almost never XIV-related reaction images), along with who and what he consistently defends, make it very obvious in my opinion (as someone who's been observing XIV threads for the past year over there). He has singlehandedly rendered XIV threads on /v/ nigh unuseable with his schizophrenia and the jannies won't do anything about him. Perhaps this would be better suited in a different thread though.
 
Found this on /v/, from Kate's Bluesky thread, she's making her thoughts even more clear, going even further to suggest that youtube (which is now filled with anti-Dawntrail videos that are very popular) be shut down completely.
"A complaint is worth twice a compliment. The silent ones always leave first and those that loudly complain still love the game and want to see it be better." - Yoshi-P
"Erm, can't we get rid of all the icky people? They're totally ruining my positive vibes (which totally isn't toxic to both the community and development team)" - Kate
 
Can someone give me the quick run down on Barry? All I know is he’s some XVI hater and XV fanboy.
 
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I'm inclined to think that Sena and Kate are friends and this was an instance of cronyism and this recent bullshit is just proof of their friendship.
I am fairly certain this was more or less the audition tape that brought Bryer into sight of SE and possibly Cwynar. I do agree that from the comments she gives it really seems like Cwynar would be very interested in getting a trans VA into a noteable role despite the obvious shortcomings.

Also, speaking of /v/ (gonna be a lengthy post here but fuck it, this faggot needs documentation at this point):
How can anyone use 4chan any more? Having any meaningful exchange of thought or opinion seems completely impossible at this point when a single autistic man can shit up everything. I always wonder how these people exist, they can't have a job so they must be on some kind of social security?
 
The XIV threads on 4chan get shit up by the same groups of schizos every time and the official XIV forums are no better for having meaningful discussions on the game. From what I’ve heard the OF has a bunch of people using multiple sockpuppet accounts and buying up accounts from RMT that they use to troll the place and one guy Titanmen was notorious back in the day for this.
 
Can someone give me the quick run down on Barry? All I know is he’s some XVI hater and XV fanboy.
XV-kun/Barry/Bazztek is single-handedly responsible for making all Final Fantasy threads on /v/ nigh-unreadable for over a decade. The first sightings of him were back in 2013 when he would spam the board with footage from FFXV's E3 announcement trailer. Long suspected of being a paid shill, Barry worked tirelessly to dispel misgivings and skepticism over this new installment to the FF brand in the years leading up to its release. However, as it became clearer that XV was undergoing a very troubled development and would decidedly not be the best game ever made, so too did Barry's sanity begin to unravel.

It's difficult to encapsulate the sheer scope of his autism in words. Imagine standard sperg fare but dialed up to 100. Aggressive walls of texts in defense of the game, religious reverance for Tabata, accusing everyone of being accounts he had beef with on other sites like twitter/gamefaqs/neogaf, completely derailing threads, samefagging with a 4chan pass, ban evasion, etc. He unironically saw other games as a threat to XV and would thus also shit up threads for KH, DMC, Bayonetta, Xenoblade, AssCreed, and whatever else just released around that time. You so much as mention something about FF or KH and he would appear, guns blazing, to the point people suspected he either had some kind of bot programmed or spent his every waking hour scouring the archive. He would also form one-sided "alliances" between fanbases to dunk on whatever game he was the most mad at. Back then it was KH3, nowadays it's FFXIV and XVI. And he's been doing this nonstop for 12 fucking years.
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This is just a taste of the quagmire that is Barry. We haven't even covered the Yoship tranny porn arc yet.
 
More Kate Bluesky posting

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>"unlike the other takes that bother me, which are bizarrely specific"
Almost like it's pain points that people are telling you.
>"it feels like people believe it because it's repeated so much"
If it's repeated so much, it might actually be worth looking into.
>"Gamedevs lazy"
We're calling you complacent, not lazy. Massive difference.
>"I just play games for... playing, and not the loot"
It's funny that this is the probably the most egregious thing she said. Everyone from the hardcore raiders to the causal dungeon runners fucking HATE how loot it is in this game and 450 good boy tomes a week has been a pain point since Stormblood for some people.
 
This is just a taste of the quagmire that is Barry.
I remember when the XIV /v/ threads were an oasis of sanity compared to the /vg/ ones, which isn't hard when /vg/ is filled with avatarfag troons having high school drama, spamming, and also printing out pictures of peoples' characters and cumming on them, among other depravity.

And the worst part about the schizos (but this is more of a general 4chan thing) is that if your opinion even slightly overlaps with them you're automatically accused of being him.

one guy Titanmen was notorious back in the day for this
His bait threads were all very obvious and his characters were easy to spot, honestly the OF kind of deserved him for chomping the bait every time and acting reddit-smug, as well as in general derailing genuine criticism/suggestion threads with pages of inane 'lolz xD i like sporks and tacos' spam.
 
Is it just me, or is saying "gamedev is hard" when you're in localization of all things a pretty dumbass take?
It's a terrible take. You're so far removed from the actual GameDev process - it doesn't even take place on the same continent as you.

Also I like XIV but the idea that the releases aren't formulaic is insane. You know exactly what the patch cycle is for years and the only small variance is when they put in Relic Content and how deep that goes.

- Expansion (X.0)
- New Dungeon and 8 Main Raid (Four Fights) (X.05)
- New Dungeon and 24 Main Raid (Four Fights) (X.1)
- New Dungeon and 8 Main Raid (Four Fights) (X.2) - This starts to setup the New Expansion
- New Dungeon and 24 Main Raid (Four Fights) (X.3) - This starts to wrap up the Current Expansion
- New Dungeon and 8 Main Raid (Four Fights) (X.4)
- New Dungeon and 24 Main Raid (Four Fights) (X.5)
- Pre New Expansion Content (any changes that aren't new content) (X.55)
- Expansion (X+1.0)
 
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