;-; <3
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I thought I nominated Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat? I really should have double checked my list at least one time.
I also realized that I may have forgotten to nominate Pirates! Gold, so god even knows what I was doing.
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Oh I do, I think Guitar Hero is actually bad.
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I spent literally hundreds of hours paying attention. I came into the game wanting to believe everyone who told me āYeah, ARR sucks, but the main story quest in the expansions get so much better.ā And I donāt really agree with that. They make great strides when it comes to dungeon and boss and class design. The voice acting improves. There are some great cutscenes sprinkled throughout. But solo adventuring is largely the same from 2.0 to 5.0, and at some point it became apparent that if I wanted to keep playing the cool bits I enjoy with the friends that I love I would have to pay an enormous time tax. And I chose to do that soā¦I think itās pretty clear that I really like my friends, and I donāt hate this game. I just think thereās a lot to criticize.
And if something isnāt capturing my attentionā¦how is that my fault? This isnāt homework. This should be entertainment. I want to enjoy every second of this, but I donāt. I think much of it is not good. I have repeatedly expressed why. Iām qualified to criticize this ā I sat through all but, like, one of those post-ARR cutscenes. I paid my dues at the Waking Sands!! Itās a wonder I didnāt lose faith in the designers earlier.
Yeah and I go like āwho the fuck is that, am I supposed to remember who that isā like, twice an episode in the later seasons of the Sopranos. Iāve watched that series four times. Yet I find it captivating and entertaining even if I canāt tell Italians apart. Having poor recall when it comes to fictional characters doesnāt really negate my criticism about how this gameās cutscenes are paced and āshotā. It has, like, nothing to do with anything I wrote in that post.
Anyway a week or two ago Closed, miffy, tacotaskforce and I had a long, long discussion about FF14ās design and howā¦mechanically segregated? it is compared to many previous MMOs. How infrequently you really have to interact with other players outside of dungeons. How it was seemingly part of a conscious attempt to foster a more friendly, welcoming community while working within the incredibly busted framework FF14 v1.0 left behind. And how its approach to subscriber retention is less Get 'Em Hooked On The Grind and more Joining a Fan Club For Your Favorite TV Show. We had a real interesting talk! We got to go over a bunch of stuff Iād been thinking about for awhile and I also learned a bunch of stuff that Iāve been mulling over since. My post was an attempt to work through some of those thoughts.
And that talk made me realize all my fav FF14 memories come from chatting with my friends or doing/witnessing some extracurricular role playing. Not from us coming together to solve some devious puzzle, or stumbling across a surprising Square Enix designed scenario, or finding some way to exploit the auctionhouse, or running into a strange party in the overworld and doing our best to kill a big monster before they do because weāre the ones who deserve its fat loot. The game isnāt about that stuff! Itās not, like, EVE or Ultima Online, right? Itās a hangout game, where all the combat/exploration/story bits are tightly designed and largely the same for every player. You do not express yourself via conflict but through chat, and your wardrobe, and your free company house, and typing /bread. The playerās job isnāt to conquer the world but to make it a more beautiful, lively place, and youāre amazingly good at that, daphny. So Iām sorry if it read like I was minimizing those moments ā meeting that lalafell who keeps fraudulently claiming to be my offspring was far, far more memorable and entertaining than, like, the one time I resurrected some FF11 cat girl in some shitty dungeon filled with bats.
It was also more traumatic.
Tiger Mountain, once the paternity test come in.
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i donāt think i disagree with hobo and otherās thoughts about xiv, i think i understand what they mean and that itās like fair criticism honestly expressed, but i just have like a much different perspective. i think itās true that a lot of experiences iāve had in xiv could have happened in another game, but i think a better question is would any of them have happened in another game, and iām pretty certain that they wouldnāt have. the game does try to remove a lot of the friction and social dependency that exists in other mmos like xi, and there is a lot thatās lost in that, but i donāt think any of the experiences iāve had in xiv are cheaper or less authentic because of it, and i think most of them only happened at all because i felt more free to participate in the social/endgame parts of the game because of that lack of friction. i think itās worthwhile to judge xiv on its own merits rather than like, according to some arbitrary idea of what mmo games are for and what kinds of mmo experiences are more valuable and authentic and meaningful than others. xiv isnt very good at cultivating the kinds of experiences that xi is good at cultivating, but it is very good at cultivating other kinds of experiences, and i personally find them very valuable and meaningful and largely specific to xiv
as far as the stuff about the story, i understand hobo and otherās frustrations and difficulties with it, but all of the parts that others have find tiring or irritating iāve genuinely been very excited by. iāve been even more excited about much, much clumsier storytelling before, and like now that iām going through shadowbringers and the cutscenes and have started to shed some of their little quirks and idiosyncrasies iām realizing i had gotten used to and grown to appreciate them and now itās like novel and exciting that theyāre absent. i think i just have like a certain temperament that works well with how the story is presented and i think others donāt, but when the story hits it hits really fuckin hard and i think that counts for a lot
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Good thread.
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Ya I wanna state for the record that I am so glad FF14 isnāt some FF11 or Eve Online thing, I think it makes some very admirable choices and as fucked up as it sounds it feels like the devteam truly do love the players, that despite my complaints about its quest design/cutscenes I still think its approach to serial storytelling is better than anything else in games aside from, like, Kentucky Route Zero, and that I seem to be an outlier when it comes to hating most of the solo content. Itās a special game, and that is why I spend so much time playing it and thinking about it and griping about it.
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It looks like you (and only you) nominated Jungle Beat. Kudos to your good taste.
My apologies for the error. I was at work and was too lazy to use the search function.
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editing cuz i quoted the first sentence of your post which is stupid. you paid more attention than i gave you credit for originally, i think you talk about skipping cutscenes more than you actually do, because like you said youre an outlier when it comes to the story (and i respect that), so you like highlight your lack of interest in stuff as a bit
like im fully aware i thought more on the post because i see you waffling between liking it and hating it, and it sucks to see you when youāre just not having fun at all, but you keep coming back for social stuff or maybe a good dungeon. your criticisms are totally fair. i just wanted to be acknowledged. i need attention like, constantly
also i thought the krile thing is funny, like wehn you were like WHO IS THIS and you described her and like everyone in the voice chat said OMG ITS KRILE i lost my shit. that was a great moment, like up there with the emet reveal in the latest trial. okay maybe not that high i just wanted to opportunity to bring em up
and its true THERE HASNT BEEN AS MUCH VOICE CHAT LATELY WITH BUTTS AND THE GAME IS LIKE HALF AS FUN. i gotta take this downtime opportunity to play other games
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Whenever you log off I start talking about the lore, and reveal that I actually do remember who Urianger is, and sometimes I use other playersā adventurersā āshootā names.
Thatās rightā¦I break kayfabeā¦and the rules. 
This is my midnight confession.
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How many hours of FFXIV do you have to play before it turns into a good game?
i still laugh at how i was making up some story in free company chat about busted coming over and screaming something about how daphny was right but i realized oh shit im telling this story in game, and i gotta be dedicated to the LORE, so i had to add āWHOS DAPHNY I REPLIEDā to the story
i really like when closed calls me on my shit when i break kayfabe about literally everything else besides names and the discord
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i mean if this thread is any evidence it depends who you ask
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my current playtime is 63 days 23 hours and 7 minutes. I have been Logged On for 30 percent of the 6 months Iāve been playing the game
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Dozens, if weāre talking about, like, the game demanding the slightest bit of effort from you. But I think everyone I know who has tried the game has at least played through the base game, even if they had tons of issues with it, soā¦maybe itās always at least somewhat compelling?
You reach your first dungeon around level 15 and classes start to bloom around level 30. How many hours does that take? Fuck if I remember. I do think itās worth trying, since itās free, but if you find yourself feeling antsy about the solo content then you are like me and you should know Itās Almost Always Like That.
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I just wanted to say Iām really getting so much out of this thread and the many strings of conversations weāre all having here. Everyone is so thoughtful and passionate and really inspires me to learn to communicate better about the things I care for ā thatās always been what drew me to this forum, but this thread is really maxing out on that.
Iām really excited to explore the world of FFXIV sometime in the distant future, hopefully with friends. I want to write more about that but I keep falling asleep and dropping my phone on my face.
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the most sustained effort i ever made trying to play an mmorpg was when all my friends were into WoW and i made a tauren named STOMPER so i could play with them
i got incredibly bored within the first hour of the game. when i asked my friends about when it āgets goodā they all admitted that it would take many hours of inane fetch quests before i could even approach doing one of their raids, and i dropped that shit like it was a sprite can with a yellowjacket on it
im afraid every good thing someone says about mmorpgs reeks of sunk cost fallacy to me. though tbf i canāt help but treat my own feelings about games ive played for 60+ hours as compromised, like it took me ages to realize that actually persona 4 is a terrible boring reactionary game and just because i put myself through 100 hours of it doesnāt mean anyone else should
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Iām telling you, emet-selch overtook sephiroth for first in a best final fantasy character poll in japan. all the nerd passion and fury that was clamoring for a ff7 remake for 23 years and willed that game into existence: defeated (deservedly), by a guy who doesnāt even show up til 3 expansions into a 5 million hour long mmo.
now Iām not saying itās worth everyone slogging through an mmo for, Iām saying there are real things going on here.
I donāt even like mmos. I think mmos are mostly just interesting theoretically, and usually only actually interesting when theyāre simulationist world things made by sca weirdos like ultima online. but Iām old enough now my brain doesnāt mind some of the tedious repetion of a wow type mmo, which I could tell before I played because I had watched and enjoyed the miami vice series recently. that was how I thought it might me mmo time
but having a group of selectbuttoneers to play with is a big part of the appeal, and the expansions being interesting final fantasy stories constantly straining at the limits of the mmo format their trapped in is interesting as well. and being able to switch classes at anytime is big part of why this is way more tolerable than other mmos.
it is also a game that was made to fix another mmo from 2010 that was a mess and also was forced to make an appearance on ps3 hardware. so even if you donāt want to put up with this particular game we should all be interested to see what these people could do someday starting from a blank slate. we still got two more expansions to go first though
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Iām gonna talk about my personal failures. I am not a very creative person. I needed instruction books for Legos. I felt frustrated with what I would create with just my legos or sand at the beach. It was never good enough!
Flash forward my early 30s adult friends were enjoying minecraft. I broke down and got it knowing I would have a bad time. I declared, āI am going to throw anything you give me in the lake.ā I booted up and then proceeded to throw my inventory in the lake.
I gathered some stuff and put it down and then went āhow did I get an axeā āYOU STARTED WITH ONE YOU THREW IT IN THE LAKEā āOh yeah. Well I better go get it.ā It was getting dark and those zombos were around. I died several times lost of all my supplies.
I looked at friends creations and all their progress and all the internalized knowledge of this game (one of the reasons I refused to learn the game was the feeling of waste of knowing how to do all this stuff (i have also played A LOT of Destiny recently.))
The game of throwing my stuff in the lake and then getting it back because I needed it was a whole game. I critized the game the entire time. I hate played if. I had a wonderful time with it. If you ever play a crafting/survival game with me I will complain the entire time. I will be a petulatant child. I will try to be funny.
āI got like 50 things of grass is that important?ā
But people make working factories and elevators and turing machines and recreations of helmās deep and the enterprise. It is a game of so much. What an incredible toy to have as a child.
Iāve been living in Japan for 15 years and I am not sure Iāve put 15 credits into Super Turbo machines. Maybe I need at 15 minute video essay on why Super Turbo is the good one.
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Super Turbo isnāt the good one.
Hereās a quick breakdown of Street Fighter II versions
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior
Is the original version of Street Fighter II. Itās extremely slow.
Champion
Is an updated version that is still extremely slow, but letās you play as the boss characters and allows matches with two players choosing the same fighter.
Rainbow Edition
Is a hack from Taiwan that fixes the game being too slow, but also makes the game batshit crazy. Thereās homing fireballs, and rapid fire fireballs, and characters can turn into other characters. This version was tremendously influential on the genre.
You can see Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat both taking ideas from this, and the general pacing of the matches probably set the speed for fighting games to come.
Turbo (A.K.A Turbo: Hyper Fighting)
Is the best early official version. Capcom saw the Rainbow Edition hack and realized the official game had a speed problem. They fixed the speed problem while leaving everything else including the game balance intact.
Super
Adds new characters that donāt fit.
Super Turbo
adds some bullshit like super combos.
Hyper
15th anniversary version that letās you mix and match things from earlier versions.
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