Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

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Not your Buddy Holly said:
IMO, It's why you don't put 1:1 analogs of IRL cultures in a fantasy setting. Honestly think Radz-at-Han was done dirty with it being so Indian coded, and Tural being so Latin coded really hurt that setting. Eorzea, Ishgard, Elpis and other places didn't need to be 1:1 analogs for them to be great places.
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I think it's solid evidence of a bad case of lacking creativity if the best you can come up with is just 1:1ing a real life culture, and especially bad if the best idea you can come up with to do in this setting to just do a fucking disneyland tour.

Like previous places in the game were also very obviously "x-coded", some very blatantly so, but they're also basically nonentities - yeah okay like, Hingashi is very obviously just fantasy Japan in the middle of Sakoku, but it's also basically a nonentity that you don't even to go outside of a short time in Kugane. It's fine for a background entity to lack real substance like that, imo. It gives more room to explore it if the game ever gets around to that.

But putting it as the centrepiece of an expansion and then chickening out of doing anything remotely interesting with it, and just focusing on fucking tacos and shit? Just... no. Fucking hell, even if you want to do a "colonialism bad" thinkpiece, at least make a conflict about colonialism. As it is, the only time that DT approaches the subject in any meaningful way (the ceruleum exploitation and Yok Tural's colonial project in Shaaloani) it's without even seemingly realizing the dynamics they are portraying, and indeed the game if anything just gives off a sense of tacit approval of the project because it's wholesome browns doing the heckin colonialism.

I fucking hate this expansion more the more I think about it, jesus christ.
 
SnowBall said:
You know what’s really fucking wild about Dawntrail discussion? The fact that I’ve seen the day where I’m actually agreeing with the perpetually offended fandom SJW crowd criticizing the bad cultural representation in this expansion. With the exception of the crash outs over the supposedly “racist” dungeon gear designs in 7.3 obviously. But yeah broken clocks and everything.
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Some of their attempts at diversity were so dumb I don't even know why they were involved. I was flabbergasted by the tank role quests including what I guess is supposed to be Inuits who lived in the far north of Tural had the narwhal treasure, except they're just wearing random moonward gear with "close enough" looking patterning and like all the other Tural hyur their names are supposed to sound like Great Plains languages. At that point putting Eskimo stereotypes in would have been trying harder.
 
Shadowbringers managed to give us an entirely new world without heavily relying on 1:1 cultural references and its zones are probably the most memorable in the whole game because of it. Even if they are mirrors of zones of the source they still keep that fantastical feel to them. I always get excited when I revisit them for hunts or FATE farming or delivery quests meanwhile with Dawntrail zones I lose interest so fast. Even the Thavaniar parts of Endwalker, while imperfect, feel more sincere with their cultural references and a part of the game’s setting than Tural does. (also Thavanair wasn’t the centerpiece of EW and the rest of the expansions zones were kino. Even the sci-fi zones like UT and Mare had an amazing, fantastical quality to them that fits with the setting whereas S9 is just cyberpunk slapped into the game’s world.)

It’s a shame because the non Solution 9 related Dawntrail zones and Tuliyollal itself are really beautiful if you strip away the 1:1 cultural representation parts.
 
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SnowBall said:
entirely new world without relying on 1:1 cultural references
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I'll argue this is wrong.

The First is EXTREMELY British, pretty much every unique thing from it is ether 1 to 1 from a British myth (Pixies, Fauth) or is a twisted evil version of it (Sineaters) the funny thing is that despite all that it's genuinely an engaging and interesting place to learn about because they took all those elements and then built the world around them.
 
Yeah that was what I was going for with the post, taking elements and working them into the setting while still remaining its own thing.
 
Shadowbringers has a range of vague cultures (Eulmore is Victorian England with some pantomime/circus motifs, Rak'tika is Meso-American, Amh Araeng a mix of cowboy and ancient Egypt or something, the Pixies are obviously Gaelic but the land itself was formerly Voeburt which was more central European) but it mostly works because the story of the First is more of a class struggle than anything else.

The Crystarium and other settlements are all working class people trying to rebuild their lives after the calamity caused by blind obedience to the Church of Light, represented in the Sin Eaters who are the embodiment of obedience and Vauthry/Eulmore are the aristocracy trying to reassert their power while wilfully ignoring the impending apocalypse. Engaging with that struggle is how we learn about the world and its history, rather than DT where they try and make their new characters the centre of the story while the world is just kind of... there, and doesn't even really need saving.

As an aside I do appreciate Shadowbringers didn't go the easy route and make the Church of Light a basic Christian-themed punching bag for all the world's problems because lesser writers absolutely would've given us some reddit tier spiel about how religion bad or some shit. There's definitely some theme of how organised religion can be exploited, but the people of the Crystarium come across as very quietly spiritual in how they approach death, the Sin Eaters, and how the Warrior of Darkness fits into that, and it's one of my favourite things about the First.
 
Sheep King said:
As an aside I do appreciate Shadowbringers didn't go the easy route and make the Church of Light a basic Christian-themed punching bag for all the world's problems because lesser writers absolutely would've given us some reddit tier spiel about how religion bad or some shit. There's definitely some theme of how organised religion can be exploited, but the people of the Crystarium come across as very quietly spiritual in how they approach death, the Sin Eaters, and how the Warrior of Darkness fits into that, and it's one of my favourite things about the First.
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There are a pretty solid amount of biblical themes and nods in Shadowbringers, really; Alphanaud gives a modified Bible verse when talking about Eulemore early on, both Vauthry and the Warrior of Light/Darkness have Jesus/Satan parallels, the fall of Amaruot being seemingly based on the Book of Revelation... the devs put a lot of work into Shb.
 
I am doing the new relic step and am surprised that you can farm the materials in occult crescent and at the same time not surprised that they botched it by tying it to CEs. Why the fuck would you do that while also making DT Fates drop the currency?

I may still farm OC since I want to finish grinding the armor pieces and get some phantom job experience, kill two birds with one stone and all.

Edit: I cannot seem to find an unified guide for occult crescent (with maps for treasure chests, accesories and how to avoid mob aggro) via a google search, so either I am retarded or the content is so meh that nobody bothers writing them.
 
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The duties listed and the effort needed for them are not in any way well thought out. 18 paste when you clear M12S compared to 20 per leveling roulette that is not tied to the daily reward.
I'm not even disappointed by that. Its the fact that the item level for the new relics is 775. 5 above crafted and on par with the current EX weapons that you can get as early as day 1 of the patch

The fucking relics wont be getting any better til 7.5. I'm tired of gear just being either stat sticks that become obsolete in a patch or two or just cosmetic stuff. I still hold onto my +2 elemental armor from Eureka because it remains useful even after Stormblood even if it only applies to Eureka.
 
I actually snapped when I saw the new relic step on the wiki earlier this week.

Once again Yoshi & co. are so creatively bankrupt that they just make you grind roulettes for another relic step. Even if there are other options, I think the part that made me throw in the towel was OC paste rewards being the worst of all possible avenues. A relic narratively and thematically tied to the content, but said content is the worst way to complete it.

Made the decision at last to just not go back to the game. My sub remains paid through for a few more months, but after that, I won't be subbing again. If 8.0 somehow delivers, I'll consider it as a one & done for MSQ, but consistent subbing? Nah.

I'll go back to replaying old classics as a means of chill gaming.
 
I genuinely can't decide if I think "spam levelling roulette 60 times" is worse than some of the shit they pulled with the Resistance Weapons back in Shadowbringers.
Phantoms are still worse on balance IMO given that it's actually just a fucking tome sink again, but like.

"Here's step one. The drop rate is awful inside BSF and guaranteed if you do FATEs in HW zones."
"Here's step two. The drop rate is still awful inside BSF, and guaranteed from level 60 dungeons."
"Here's step three. I hope you like the idea of living in LOTA for 15 runs per weapon because the drop rate is, you guessed it, fucking abysmal inside BSF again."
"For a change, on step four there is no way to do it inside the field op content at all."
Etc.
 
BlazikenLover said:
Edit: I cannot seem to find an unified guide for occult crescent (with maps for treasure chests, accesories and how to avoid mob aggro) via a google search, so either I am retarded or the content is so meh that nobody bothers writing them.
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Normal rings are obtained from doing the pot fate. The special set bonus ring is obtained from doing Carrot of Fortune chests. The other accessories have a chance to drop from doing CEs.

Most mobs are sight aggro outside of like the dullahans (suit of armor) in the SW 'tower' area and 1 kind of voidsent mob in the NW 'cave of doom' area, who are proximity aggro (NIN sneak gets you pastthem.)

If you are on PC, the Eureka Helper addon basically has a 'radar' alerting you to chests.

If you have any questions, lemme know. I've sunk way too much time into OC.
 
Pigeon Enthusiast said:
I genuinely can't decide if I think "spam levelling roulette 60 times" is worse than some of the shit they pulled with the Resistance Weapons back in Shadowbringers.
Phantoms are still worse on balance IMO given that it's actually just a fucking tome sink again, but like.

"Here's step one. The drop rate is awful inside BSF and guaranteed if you do FATEs in HW zones."
"Here's step two. The drop rate is still awful inside BSF, and guaranteed from level 60 dungeons."
"Here's step three. I hope you like the idea of living in LOTA for 15 runs per weapon because the drop rate is, you guessed it, fucking abysmal inside BSF again."
"For a change, on step four there is no way to do it inside the field op content at all."
Etc.
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You know, now that you put it into perspective, Bozja relic grind was awful too. And this is coming from a tard who made several because they're really nice glam weaponry.

Thus far my favorite grind has been Eureka, because it's all inside the actual zone. No bad drop rates, just a steady grind of killing mobs to pop fates until you have a few hundred of each color rock. Doing BA after was only for those that wanted to power trip in Eureka, which I think was a fair trade off.

Just how they've handled OC has been nothing but total amateur hour, except they've done twice before so it makes no fucking sense.
 
I got halfway through my Animus books back in ARR and decided relics are no longer worth bothering with and everything I've heard since then has only reaffirmed my belief. I hate their design philosophy that if players have completely abandoned a sphere of content, instead of making that content itself more rewarding, they just force you to run it for something unrelated. People completely stopped doing FATEs after dungeon XP got buffed so what did they do? Atma. God forbid they bust out a calculator and make them both equally viable for leveling. The amount of carrot's they have dangling to lure people back to Praetorium is embarrassing. It wouldn't be half as bad if level sync didn't lock your abilities, the content is already enough of a slough to go through, at least let us have our full rotation. As it is it just feels like getting sentenced to community service because you tried to buy groceries.
 
Well Intentioned said:
Normal rings are obtained from doing the pot fate. The special set bonus ring is obtained from doing Carrot of Fortune chests. The other accessories have a chance to drop from doing CEs.

Most mobs are sight aggro outside of like the dullahans (suit of armor) in the SW 'tower' area and 1 kind of voidsent mob in the NW 'cave of doom' area, who are proximity aggro (NIN sneak gets you pastthem.)

If you are on PC, the Eureka Helper addon basically has a 'radar' alerting you to chests.

If you have any questions, lemme know. I've sunk way too much time into OC.
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Thanks for the tips, gave OC another chance and chests dropping coins really helps with gearing thus making the experience more bearable, maxing out phantom jobs is still a slog though.

I am still puzzled about why they thought CEs dropping 5 paste was a good idea, considering there's gonna be downtime it will take way longer than other methods, should have made them drop 10.
 
the Happy strat of lowering your item level so you can get ARR only dungeons for leveling roulette works btw. farmed 100 paste in about the same time as it would've taken me to do like 3 non-arr dungeons.
 
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