Momo

Rather than some, I would say the majority of courtesans, both male and female, consider themselves to be prostitutes or act as such. The best way that I have seen to counteract this from my experience, is just have integrity and faith in your own character and the portrayal you choose. It gets a little exhausting, but being vigilant in telling people that ERP isn't all your about is rewarding when people ask for your to perform courtly duties, and enjoy your character for the atmosphere they create, the little gestures, words, and actions your character takes to entertain your partner and those around them. It can be done! Just gotta put in the work and dedication and find a place your character fits in, either a group or specific friends.

I am having my characters take an extended stay in the region rather than traveling back and forth. I think with the interest and number of people likely moving into the area, that there won't be RP lacking unless you corner yourself with plot, and traveling back and forth to me, seems...well as admitted, hand-wavey, but to a level I'm not comfortable with as I have never seen Aetheryte travel as a very very common thing. I think there is a certain amount of fear and uncertainty for many who have been in Eorzea for so long, that some do not want to create a story that forces them to stay for a little while. That is okay, I just think for me, it is better to try out a new venture and not allow myself to go back on it so as to force me a little out of my comfort zone, so I took a boat on my characters who aren't from there (or rather living there already). If I am there a long while and it doesn't work out, I will return...though I view Ul'dah as a home since 1.0, I admit I am a little tired of bars events, same old fights, and the QS and sand in every place imaginable.

Having five people with the same lore appropriate name is better than having 5 Johns, 2 Marys, 3 Steves, or any other number of boring uncreative names. If that character has that name for a reason sure, but those names aren't even backed by visible lore in most cases unless they are a shortening of a more elaborate name or a reference to a real world pop culture subject (and even in those cases could still be a shortening of a longer name). In the same instance, if you have a name that would better match another race? Just make an appropriate story to help you solidify the idea. A name that fits into the world, and is creative, will always be better received than a name that matches nothing, or isn't well thought out. If you like a name of a character from another final fantasy, I say go for it, but have the appropriate foundation to work that character as someone only inspired by, and not directly coming from the other games. I guess this is a harsh stance, but I think it is better to set a standard to work from, and if you deviate and have a good foundation, go for it. I don't write characters off entirely based off names, but I admit seeing a name which plain stands out as something someone insisted on keeping before or after actually researching lore, does alert me to have caution.

I am hoping that is part of a larger image because it blatantly has like 5 female characters in the foreground and not more than 90% of a male character in it...I get it, bro-gaming, but we'd like to see those hot male bods too. I have really enjoyed this story so far, but I get this feeling that they are saving a great deal of the story meat for further patches, and I am hoping that includes fleshing out Lyse more. I hate to harp...but I enjoyed Lyse back when she was Y'da, she had clear character points and a purpose, but now she is trying to be shoved into a role she can't hope to fill at this part of the story. Give me more of her sister's story to make me feel for her, give me more of her warm-hearted and vulnerable moments, and give me some battle charged moments so I can believe she is a damn leader. Otherwise, the Steppe, my god, it is like a true ray of sunshine and fresh air when you first walk in. It just has that open and welcoming feel, being both free and at home all at once...maybe that is just me, but they are at the heart of this expansion certainly. I won't talk about Hien, this thread should probably stay PG13...

Love this idea, but would you consider opening ranks a little more and allowing for characters that relate to the group too, rather than just those strict races and types?

I agree this aspect is a bummer, we have just gone in twice and it helps when the content is a little older that we can just get through all the enemies quickly.

It doesn't feel handwavey at all to have your character be a Xaela and live in Kugane and be a samurai. A city like Kugane, one open to outside inhabitants, could be the perfect place for a Xaela to live outside the tribal life, much like the Raen chose to do. Seeing every type of race in Kugane wouldn't be unusual, so I think he would blend in pretty easily. My suggestion about the name? Keep it the way it is, and have a tribal name he maybe left behind at some point. This will help boost his backstory and give you a jumping-off point to start working around in that respect. How did he get to Kugane, what happened to his family, why did he leave his tribe? Those sorts of questions are what comes to mind when I think about it, so hopefully that can help you set a good grounded storyline for him. Unless I am totally mistaken...I think the soulstone is spoken of directly at the start of the SAM quest? He gives it to you along with the starting armor and says something about you feeling bonded with it right away, but I will have to go back and look to be sure of it. Hopefully some of this helps! (Also, something that I think helps on RPC itself, is getting a little avatar so people can recognize you around and be there to help when they see you posted, and take an interest in you, can we see maybe a pic of Kiyo?)

I thought of opening an FC or LS of dungeon raiders who are specific to dungeons accessible by the MSQ, which PoTD would be a big place to work on. It is accessible to people outside the MSQ, and only the higher floors are really getting into deep lore specific stuff. While Yoshi-P no Kami hasn't released further information, he has said there will be a new deep dungeon in the SB expansion series, so one can assume even further content will be available to a group like this...tbh, I just love doing dungeons and specifically deep dungeon, so I would love to see this content become more open to RP.

Word of advice that you didn't ask for? Don't play a Lalafell if you want romance. You're options will undoubtedly be few and far between. Post just about any other race and you will get interest, believe this from experience, RPers in this community have a VERY hard time separating reality from fantasy and seeing Lalas as less young and more dwarfish characters. It is annoying and disheartening, and it takes time to get over the fact that you have a character you love that automatically is at some disadvantage in the amount and types of RP available to them. I wish I had someone years ago to tell me this, or at least had the foresight that it would turn out this way, but I didn't and I had to find out over time that people would be nice to your face, but otherwise ignore your character even just for everyday RP if they were a lalafell. Go to a party and be the last one to get RPed with even when you try to start conversations, make contacts, try to follow up over and over and get no response, then switch to another race and have the same people magically be available and asking for RP even when you don't contact them haha. Good luck either way!

Personally I never really liked Lyse/Y'da, she only had interest for me because of her relation to a main Lalafell character, which she has proceeded to lose for the time being. As long as SE continues to be afraid of side characters accomplishing too much, we will likely continue with these disjointed feelings about "character evolution" or lack thereof. I was surprised and happy to see a lot more character participation in many parts of the MSQ though, it did give me the feeling they were there with us actually doing shit for once. That is far better than Minnie who literally showed up after battle every single time.

So here is the response to this. Since it does contain spoilers to the SB SMN quests I'm sticking it in a spoiler tag.

I was fine with us playing the "may or may not be the chosen one" sort of card, and I like Zenos, in part because I find him attractive in some way, but also because he feels like what a being confined to a normal sized physical body, should feel like if they are powerful. There seems to be a balancing act on amount of aether and strength of will/aether usage as far as primals and powerful figure goes, so his power and ability didn't really feel off to me. I will say! The fact that he felt like we were weak to start made no sense to me, seeing as he tried to attack us, and was in some way beaten back even if only for a time. If you want me to feel someone is truly more powerful than me, throw me in a scripted defeat in the DF or give the enemy some ability which I cannot withstand outrightly and give a reason, not just he hit you with a sword and you were taken down though you didn't need healing and weren't knocked out. Given his transference into Shinryu giving him some real power, that made sense to me, because bosses who are in physical bodies similar in size to the player, often feel easier to defeat and limited by the space usage they can perform, so his progression made sense, but his start didn't for me? Finally, I didn't ever like that we fought with other people and it wasn't mentioned, so I had this whole theory in my head where different realities converge into a single point of battle, combining the WoL from different unknown realities into one space which helped us defeat a common enemy. It was a little ridiculous, but not entirely implausible, but now we have "friends" so that is out the window lol. Not sure what to make of this newer mention thing that is happening, where I call on my "friends". It makes more sense to the mechanics of the game, but not sure it makes sense to the nature of the story.

First of all, the title is redundant~ Second of all, don't trust anything Unnamed Merc says, he is the title's namesake~ Third of all, Arenvald is hot, so leave him alone. Proof: Lastly, Garleans so far, have followed no obvious physical pattern besides being mostly tall. Now, Cid is a shorty, truly. Lucia, all the royals, Nero, they all use an Elezen-like form as their body model, unfortunately this is harder to see since most of the main Garlean enemies wear armor so heavy and have heads that are so unique in shape and size, that you can't assume what model they really use. I don't think they will ever make garleans a playable race, but they could maybe give us a third eye equipment if we need to infiltrate or just for fun since any halfbreed wouldn't be able to use it convincingly anyway. The lore behind Garleans is interesting, and I hope that we get more of it because every loves an underdog though the Garleans are so easy to hate this late in their story!

Momo who I have played since 1.0 and who has been a summoner in-character since it was possible to be one, just got a lore boost after years in fact. I have since changed mains because of the inherent struggle of RPing a Lalafell, buuuuut with current SMN lore being introduced, they used literally the same opening I did from previous lore, in that Momo was a survivor of the Ul'dahian army attacks against Ifrit. That was a satisfying development because even though I don't play him, there have been many naysayers over the years about IC summoners, that are no longer supported by the scarcity of information.

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(I see! I will really enjoy it if he shares the contents of the well of his knowledge <3 ) To be honest I'm not so sure the Sharlayans don't worship Thaliak in a literal way. I picture the Egyptians who had a very extensive knowledge of everything and still were as zealous with their gods as possible. On the major pursuits of someone who worships him, it sounded very similar to D&d 3.5 God Boccob. Would they then be similar deities on philosophy and methods of worship? I apologize that I haven't gotten back to you until now, I took a little bit of time to read over the god you mentioned as I am not well-versed in DnD lore, but it seems he would be similar yes! Not to be too spoilery...but the point I was trying to make, is that we do not know exactly who The Twelve are by standards of gods and primals and in the company of Hydaelyn and the like. The Sharlayans, above even the Allagans as far as we can tell, have come to closest to touching realms beyond our own and collecting knowledge of the deeper workings of the world. From what we have gathered, a major piece of the lore being revealed in HW by Tiamat specifically if I remember correctly, seeks to undermine the place of the Twelve as actual gods, and there is a good chance that the Sharlayans understand this, and as such wouldn't really "worship" Thaliak as much as they would pay respects to all that he stands for, and perhaps even keep archaic practices alive to show respect to the path of the scholar. I agree with Vex, likely things such as sacrifice would be viewed as barbaric and unneeded and perhaps even if it were something that was once part of their culture, they would likely have dropped live sacrifice for rituals involving more symbolic and metaphoric forms of sacrifice. The solemn vow of the Sharlayans to learn of the world, but try not to affect it as it is still living, is something that would probably steer how they see and practice their rituals as well. Either way? This is a really fun and interesting topic, the pursuit of knowledge and the fine edge of the blade, which may fall to the side of breaking a vow or keeping, but always strikes some sort of blow, is an endearing and alluring prospect, and one that certainly makes for interesting RP!

I'm with Teadrinker, they know there is an issue, and they know it is something many players want to talk about. They specifically said: "We are thinking of this positively" so I am trying to figure out where people are STILL being naysayers after we already had to climb over the piles of people who insisted they would never even pay attention much less mention it in Live Letter. Get with the picture, they are paying attention, let's make some noise and help them figure this out. Be positive about it and drive to do something about solving it instead of sitting on your hands and hoping someone else steps up. To those of you somehow still stuck with your heads in the sand about them paying attention or caring, why don't you finish eating the first dust before you kick up seconds~

To be more accurate: We are looking for data to back that up, and we are looking at the timing of that which is sensitive, but we are looking at it positively not negatively. BUT, either way, this is for you naysayers out there who are convinced no one on the team is listening to RPers, and that if we made posts on the OF, no one would care. EAT THAT.

(Sounsyy is our resident Lore expert expert, like there are lots of lore experts, but none come close to the amount of time and effort put into his work~) While we do not know how Thaliak and Athylk are worshiped, we can infer a few things if you would like to have something to add into your RP. They aren't really given lore, but some of the best religious RP practice, is going to be the practices that RPers come up with themselves using the clues we get. In the Dravanian Hinterlands, runs the Thaliak River. It is likely no coincidence that Sharlayan lands bare the name of the Scholarly God of The Twelve running through them, and that the people of this nation of seekers of knowledge built one of their greatest collections of knowledge on the banks of it: The Great Gubal Library. I am not sure we can really infer that the Sharlayans truly worship Thaliak, only because they are of very advanced knowledge and it is likely they know more about the Twelve than we know and that they do not view them as gods to be worshiped. We could infer however, that all scholarly pursuit, the discovery of new lands, the revelation of secret knowledge, and the workings of life in all forms are all major pursuits of someone who dedicates their life to Thaliak as their patron. I have some ideas on rituals or common practices of religious people of Thaliak if you would like to hear them, note me~ Althyk, The God of Time, has many things attributed to him in the lore of the Twelve in the game. As the god of time, he is viewed not only as one who can recall all time, present, past, and future, but also a god of creation and destruction, with particular focus on him in death rites. Therefor we could probably infer that he is a god which is called upon at both birth and death, to ask for longevity of life and also safe passage for all time in the afterlife. Trials of memory and also any of those told by bards are often summoned up by a call to Althyk. Honestly there are lots of ideas that one could derive from these things, hope that any of this helped!

My main being a courtesan, he may retire from that as a job sooner or later, but that won't end his adventures in the least. To retire from using him as a main? Hmmmm, he would probably take the lover of his who is most doting and has vowed to wait for him to settle down into a tribal life in a distant land. It is a pleasant thought to think of him with crinkles around his eyes, sing as he does laundry or cooking after his hard life.

http://cdn4.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Screenshot-26_04_2015-22_23_56.jpg[/img] Here is your concept art for the Wolf people. They have exactly the same face, and also as Berrod said, tails. So either they are a new playable race that will come in later in the series (you will notice they have more human bodies possibly for this purpose) or they took the idea and adapted it into some sort of beast tribe. I wouldn't be surprised if they are putting them in to test waters on how we feel about them for possible addition in 5.0 either.

I'm not going to be that nice about this. The fee isn't much, and it transfers all your character slots should you make place holders or more than one character. Even a younger age, should I have genuinely wanted to join the server, I could have saved the minimal fee money to do so somehow. And just by seeing what was going on with Balmung, all the characters, groups, and events, I would have known it was well worth the fee to transfer in. I just don't see a pay wall of that small an amount as an excuse why someone couldn't join, and if you are truly in straights that dire, I would question your ability to afford the sub period, and that you should have stabilized your income in-general before playing an MMO with a sub instead of a standalone game. Secondly, one should not feel encouraged or somehow empowered to dislike Balmung because of envy or even the few voices that gather to be naysayers of the server that they are a part of, or once were a part of. Those people, like the ones on Mateus who left Balmung for some sort of "promised land" or New World, are the ones who either couldn't hack general RP interaction and connection building, and wanted it easy, or those who had some bad experiences and instead of persevering, decided to just write the whole sever off and treat every person who came from that server with disdain. Lastly, the problems with Balmung, the "stalking" or "all ERP" blah blah and all that nonsense, is a problem with Balmung's size and a lack of ability to read and disengage from situations which are harmful not just for the character but for the RPer. So when everyone, or most people move to Mateus, draw clear lines in the sand for yourself as a character and RPer. Check comfort levels before starting interactions, ask intent also. I feel like most RP guides that have been listed over the years probably have these are main points of their suggestions, but so many do not follow them. When you want to RP with a person or character, do your research! Not just about the character, but about the RPer as well. There are people on the server who have been in the community a very long time (some in this thread), and may seem established and worth your time, but after a little research you will find that not to be the case. Let the "going in blind" aspect of your RP, be the part where you are unsure exactly how your characters will hit it off. Balmung is, and has been worth every penny of investment into it for me. I am entertained, I have good gameplay and RP to thank daily, I have found few other things I enjoy more. There is nothing inherently wrong with Balmung, it may not be for everyone, but perhaps it is the approach which defines the right fit, rather than just the server itself. Your RP will always be what you make of it.

I firmly barely cared about any of the Scions, and now this...I don't want anyone to die, yet I know with war approaching someone will have to sacrifice. I even cared about Alisaie for a second there. What are these emotions?! Imagine they are showing us this now, but we will literally have to wait patches and patches for possible retribution on some of these bigger plot points. Torture. I do really love this war narrative they have created, a sort of microcosm to grow their greater themes in, and show the hardships of the everyday people ruled by Garleans that have a taste for the more sadistic. I can't wait to crush the Empire as time goes on.

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Thank you for that response, because all this "it will just go away" is not going to be the case from my experience. On Balmung, and on RPC, these sorts of things have never just "gone away" after 5 years or more, and I think a sprouting community, especially at the rate that Mateus is growing daily, it's better to be proactive than reactive. This wasn't an attack on you at all, this was an experience and a feeling that I thought should be shared in case there are others who have felt it and could address those concerns as well as reassure people from those who I believe make up the majority of the community on Mateus, that all RPers are truly welcome and there is so much room to grow.I had planned on taking another stab at it, and likely will soon, and will do so with the thought that I am welcome at the forefront of my mind. (Note: The thread title has been changed by the mods and not by myself. If you didn't understand the title or felt it was attacking you, then you were just as welcome to move on and not come in to read it. If you didn't understand the title then I question why you bothered to come read it anyway, as sarcasm and irony is probably lost on you, part of the soul of creativity in my opinion, and if you felt it was attacking you, then I ask you to question yourself on why that is, but still move on. Your justice warrior spirit would be better spent elsewhere on the site, with actual trolls, they aren't too hard to spot as they tend to post predominantly in the Void, and when they do spill out, it is only with vitriol and not with any standing point that could be defended with reason more than contrary nature.)