Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Kane Lives said:
It's just so funny when you had
a) the entire disaster that setup ARR, and the petty crimes you witness in the aftermath
b) Haurchefant dying in Heavensward, followed by the implicit death of Papalymo
c) dissidents being executed in Stormblood and implied torture
d) literal chest-bursting shenanigans by sin-eaters in Shadowbringer, and the whole war vibe in Bozja (bonus points to the fey who's actually very much into torturing mortals if not for the WOL presence)
e) entire families raped to their soul by blasphemies in Endwalker

And what do you get in Dawntrail? "rubber bullets". Lol lmao. It's like they forgot what world Eorzea is in.
Click to expand...

The introduction you get to the Garleans in early ARR is, as I recall, one of the refugees in Ul'dah telling you about how he escaped Ala Mhigo after nearly dying in a work camp, and how his mother and sister both killed themselves when the Garleans forced them into sex slavery after the conquest. Then they make their proper entry to the story by attacking the Waking Sands while you're fighting Titan, wiping out most of the Scion friends you recently made and forcing the survivors on the run, including double tapping the wounded on screen for shits and giggles. Then you proceed to go to Coerthas and narrowly save a man from being executed on false charges of heresy, as your first taste of Ishgardian society.
There's also all the Tempering stuff, the pirate sex slaves in Sastasha, Elizabeth Bathory with the serial numbers filed off and her torture dungeon/demonic sacrifice chambers in Haukke Manor, the Dalamud cultists with their human sacrifice rituals, Edda Pureheart's entire questline, etc. Even the Hildibrand questline, which is straight up comedy, delves into some fucked up stuff with the history of Sil'dih.

Then the first dungeon in Heavensward (admittedly optional) is a frozen over fortress full of zombies, and scattered diary scraps about how they descended into cannibalism in the wake of the Calamity. Your friends get dragged into a rigged trial with the intent to execute them. The priest who throws a boy off the Vault. The murder attempt on Aymeric for trying to negotiate with the Dragons. Etc.

Then we have Yotsuyu, both what she does and her backstory, in Stormblood, and the general facts of life under Garlean occupation. Hypertuning. So on and so forth.

Everything about the Sin Eaters, from Tesleen's chestburster scene to Eulmoran "ascension" and meol being Soylent Green, in Shadowbringers. Also the Weapons trial series, where the kid pilots get melted into goo and mind raped by the templates installed in their mecha.

The Final Days in Endwalker, and the fates of every world in the universe, as exemplified by the stuff we see in the final dungeon, with worlds succumbing to mega plagues or nuking themselves into oblivion to stop Skynet. Also the Pandemonium stuff, from Hephaestos mindraping Agdistis and merging her with a tree, to Athena just randomly taking souls out of the lifestream and mindraping them into useful forms. There's also the guy who shoots himself in the head just barely off camera, for that matter.

And then, like shifting gears without a clutch, Dawntrail is just everyone singing kumbaya, tacos, and rubber bullets. The fact that this is supposed to be the same world is insane.
 
They could've easily given the rubber bullets shit actual gravitas by making the good guys go full Vash Stampede and handicap themselves by shooting non lethally with actual bullets. And given the bad guys actual devilry by not making them subject to such niceties

But rubbee bullet ahoy! Its not like we just saw some erzats eugenics and mass baby graves. Or the previous expansion whose entire bad guy core was about forcing despair to weed out humanity in horrifying and self destructive ways!

Mickey Mouse's Playhouse probably has had higher stakes than alot of the scenarios in DT
 
John Titor said:
It's been quite a long time since I was here and never got to share my opinions.
Click to expand...

The XVI collab was disappointing. You meander around for 15 to 30 minutes and it's boring and it doesn't do anything with the concept. Gacha games like Granblue Fantasy have extensive multi-hour long collab stories that really capitalize on the concept and are very entertaining throughout, like the FF11 collab or the Slime collab.

Yes the Void should have gotten different zones for the different layers or floating landmasses. FF14 for whatever shies away from adding new zones in the main story patches while GW2 and WoW do it. Odd.

Wuk Lamat's voice actor is indeed very disappointing given how FF14 was drawing upon British theater talent who were more professional and adept than your average American anime or game dub VA. However, I did not find her to be insufferable like so many other people apparently found her to be. Dawntrail's main issue is that the storyline is hours and hours of meandering around with not much urgency or excitement, so it becomes boring.

Main issue with Tural is that there are nowhere near enough different factions in it. In ARR alone you meet Limsa, Gridania, Ul'dah, Kobolds, Amal'jaa, Sylphs, Ixal, Sahagin, Ishgardians, Ishgardian heretics, dragons, demons, Ala Mhigan refugees, Limsan Pirates not under Merlwyb's jurisdiction, a Garlean Legion, and there might be more that I am forgetting. Whereas Tural is supposed to be 3x or 4x the size of ARR's region, but only has 1/4th of the amount of different groups.

My suspicion is that Yoshida is being fed warped info by the dangerhair lead localizer Kate. One look at a picture of her or her BlueSky account (or just knowing she has one) tells you all you need to know about her agenda and motives to lie to Yoshi-P and tell him what people really want. Unfortunately Japanese devs don't or are unwilling to fact check this, so I expect this situation to continue.

Yeah, the first three zones looked neat. The last two zones are more high fantasy but I didn't think the execution looked that great, both artistically and also technically with the lighting issues. FF13's environments look more amazing and that game came out 16 years ago.



The rubber bullets thing/cowboy arc was whatever. Didn't particularly like or dislike it. Main issue is that again, you are meandering around for hours without anything really compelling happening. But if you are doing the main story of a FF14 expansion you probably want something compelling like sneaking into occupied Doma trying to incite a revolution or going on an adventure to save a ruined world in Shadowbringers. Things happen in a timely manner there. Whereas in Dawntrail there has been no urgency since Valigarmanda was unleashed (and then immediately died having destroyed nothing) and the story is spinning its wheels.
 
Pigeon Enthusiast said:
And then, like shifting gears without a clutch, Dawntrail is just everyone singing kumbaya, tacos, and rubber bullets. The fact that this is supposed to be the same world is insane.
Click to expand...
I was really really looking forward to the Shaaloani section of Dawntrail. I've never been big into Westerns or cowboys and indians or whatever, but I was excited for some weird ass fucking reason. And I dunno, it feels like that section was heavily revised at/near the last minute as, IIRC, the crafted armor sets were those weird Mad Max/Fist of the North Star sets which would've been the level range for Shaaloani (and IIRC, were quest rewards for that segment of the MSQ) but were wildly out of place. Makes me think that originally the 'bandit' faction was going to be more menacing and then they changed it because of 'concerns' over noble depictions of the Wild West or some other inane bullshit (which is why I think Shaaloani in general was so saccharine, even when compared to the rest of Dawntrail.)

I think I've mentioned this before, but you can really sense the influence of certain folks (Kate, yes, but also others) have had on the narrative direction with just the tribal quests.

Why are there so many fucking tribal quests with cutesy animal noises that are clearly intended to be a talking point for players? And why are so many of them focused on shitty minimum wage real-world analogues? (Mostly talking about the hippo riders from EW which was Door Dash...in FFXIV...!)

You know what was cool? Helping a dilettante son of a transportation magnate defy his father and help a group of beastmen realize their dreams of flight. Or helping a group of newly-freed individuals work through the experience of free will and choice. Or uncovering archaelogical secrets of an ancient empire.

Not fucking opening a cafe (admittedly I think this one was done pretty well), doing food delivery, assisting with a smoothie stand (this was one of the DoH quests in Tuliyolall), or being a tourism guide as a near virtual stranger in the land you yourself have only recently arrived to.

What could've been a fun thing to do would've been to have made Dawntrail whimsical and care-free and whatever (which...goes against the stories we were presented with in the BLU questlines of Tural having to deal with folks fighting over natural resources, illnesses and lack of medical care, etc...but whatever) and potentially turned Wuk Lamat into a well intentioned villain or set up some other rug yank where all that harmony gets upended. The peace and happiness vibe is fun, but something either needed to disrupt it, or there needed to be an undercurrent of something. Urgency, like @Golfing on the Moon 1971 said.
 
Last edited:
Well Intentioned said:
Why are there so many fucking tribal quests with cutesy animal noises that are clearly intended to be a talking point for players? And why are so many of them focused on shitty minimum wage real-world analogues? (Mostly talking about the hippo riders from EW which was Door Dash...in FFXIV...!)
Click to expand...
Well Intentioned said:
Not fucking opening a cafe (admittedly I think this one was done pretty well), doing food delivery, assisting with a smoothie stand (this was one of the DoH quests in Tuliyolall), or being a tourism guide as a near virtual stranger in the land you yourself have only recently arrived to.
Click to expand...
"Write what you know" is probably the worst possible advice that's being given to young writers for the past 20 years and we're probably going to continue to feel this for probably another 10-20
 
Not your Buddy Holly said:
"Write what you know" is probably the worst possible advice that's being given to young writers for the past 20 years and we're probably going to continue to feel this for probably another 10-20
Click to expand...
It doesn't help the moment you try to write about something you don't know shitlibs will crawl out of their caves and screech at you for cultural appropriation before trying to cancel you for not including enough trannies in your fantasy novel or whatever.
 
Well Intentioned said:
I think I've mentioned this before, but you can really sense the influence of certain folks (Kate, yes, but also others) have had on the narrative direction with just the tribal quests.
Click to expand...
I read that some of the writers for DT and post EW were also writers for beast tribe quests so that could explain why including Hiroi.
Sunflower Samurai said:
But rubbee bullet ahoy! Its not like we just saw some erzats eugenics and mass baby graves. Or the previous expansion whose entire bad guy core was about forcing despair to weed out humanity in horrifying and self destructive ways!
Click to expand...
As I said before it’s wild how we have rubber bullets when literally the last expansion had a guy blowing his brains out offscreen with a gun and ShB even had Emet shooting the Exarch with actual bullets. Some people really underestimate how dark and gritty Endwalker gets.
 
I agree with the MSQ from dawntrail having a lot of meandering around without real sense of urgency and shaloni... Holy fuck wasted potential, you had so much potential with bandits and asshole ceruleum barons but nope, rubber bullets and cow worshipping cats.

As for the beast tribes: Yes I've always found the Hippo riders being pretty much Uber eats to be extremely silly BUT the whole story managed to be compelling and had conflict with it involving reformed "thrillseekers/rebels" potentially having their newly stablished reputation ruined by another group moving in into their turf and terrorizing the locals. The omicron's cafe sounded like a straight out of Tumblr fanfiction/AU but it worked, it showed more of Dynamis and the doomed civilizations we saw in the last dungeon (plus I am a sucker for the trope of machines finding a semblance of feelings), again there was confict there even if minimal.
Then comes the first beast tribe from DT: a travel agency/vacation resort where you don't do much but oversee parts of the operation, you recruit the bandits who Wuk Lamat spared and learn why they turned to banditry: they were being exploited by ceruleum barons in Shaloni, oh cool that might come into play with one of them coming to harass them or wanting to buy our resort? Nope, everything goes smoothly and nothing ever happens, the end. The gatherer's tribe is a bit better conceptually but the execution was really meh, everyone is quick to forgive all of the lizards who left for the city.


Edit: the concept can be as silly (Ubet eats, tumblr AU coffee shop) as you want but what ultimately matters is execution, if you think about it the travel agency makes a lot more sense (area recently hit by a natural disaster needs money/rebuilding) yet it falls flat due to its lack of conflict/stakes, not to mention the payoff is nothing, like what do you accomplish? The business thats been running well since day 1 will continue running well? I was expecting them to at least rebuild the stairs, ffs they didn't even need to make them function just a NPC that teleports you between two points?
 
Last edited:
BlazikenLover said:
I was expecting them to at least rebuild the stairs, ffs they didn't even need to make them function just a NPC that teleports you between two points?
Click to expand...
It's even funnier cause they did it for Labyrinthos and Thavnair in Endwalker. Apparently a bunch of fucking hispanic stand ins can't rebuild a vital part of their home that was used often as a way to get goods quickly to and from the Moblins. Oopsie daisies, maybe Wuk Lamat showing an ounce of leadership or Koana not trying to kill himself to save a single buffalo in the patches might've helped with that.
 
Couriers are nothing new so I didn't think much of the Hippo Riders. I like the Omicron one even though I have mixed feelings about them doing a Jurassic Park on the dead civilizations and I was excited to learn anything about the Necropolis. Maybe it's for the best if they don't address that in order to keep its mystique.

I am also enjoying the Raids storyline. Arcadion just gets straight to the point and throws you into a conspiracy and I am invested in the Vanadiel one despite having never played XI.
 
I’ve been picking up old beast tribe quests I never got around to doing and I’m enjoying the Omicron stuff so far. I really hate the daily restrictions on these quests because it’s going to take a long time to raise every thing up to max. I don’t know if I’ll even continue.
Honestly other than that I decided to just unsub for a bit as I’ve ran out of things to do and really look forward to. I wish I could just enjoy this game again. I’m also so fatigued by both the doomerism and the toxic positivity too, even when you don’t engage with the community it still leaks into other places. It’s a shame because I do enjoy some aspects and I do want the game to get better.
 
Live service games like WoW, GW2, Warframe, Genshin, etc... actually any long running franchise even like Assassins Creed or Trails, they typically do not fix the underlying fundamental problems with their games. You just get more and more of the same. And we have seen that Yoshi-P sure likes to say "we are going to fix this, please look forward to it" and then result is delayed for years and when it finally does happen it's just laughable and we repeat the cycle. Anyone hoping for 8.0 to "save the game" is still stuck in denial.
 
RIPRhongoBongo said:
On today's episode of Fuck Me XIV, I made it 17 steps into crafting my Carpenter secondary before realizing neither my Ceviche or Tisane were active. RIP my HQ materials
Click to expand...
I feel your pain I’ve done that a few times. I’ve also accidentally hit the wrong macros a few times but thankfully didn’t lose anything major.
 
Last edited:
Not your Buddy Holly said:
It's even funnier cause they did it for Labyrinthos and Thavnair in Endwalker. Apparently a bunch of fucking hispanic stand ins can't rebuild a vital part of their home that was used often as a way to get goods quickly to and from the Moblins. Oopsie daisies, maybe Wuk Lamat showing an ounce of leadership or Koana not trying to kill himself to save a single buffalo in the patches might've helped with that.
Click to expand...
I know in thavnair you have an hippo rider to take you to the top for beast tribe quests, but what did they do for Labyrinthos?
 
Yeah it’s the same person. They eventually became an even bigger lolcow than the people they make fun of.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom