Lament

Technically, what some blind humans do is also considered echolocation, but more than likely nowhere near as precise as that of bats and dolphins, not unlike how our sense of smell isn't anywhere near as precise as that of dogs, and our hearing can't compare to other animals, either. @Shae'ra: It could develop naturally, yes! But she doesn't really have the skill - or rather, she doesn't have it developed. She would rely more on the Aether - like we tend to rely more on vision - and focus less on sounds. And she's Hyur, so I suppose that would make extra sense. Thanks for the comment! c:

It's impossible to be truly selfless if you consider selflessness to be acting strictly for the sake of others - because really, a kind person with no ulterior motive enjoys doing kindness for the sake of kindness. So it is for themselves as much as it is for others. Ultimately, people are driven by what makes them happy, even if that happiness comes from making other people happy too. It's even possible to be selfish while acting selfless. If you constantly throw yourself at danger to fight evil and be a hero, you could be selfish in the eyes of people who care about you - who would much rather have someone else possibly die fighting evil than you. Even the best of actions with the best of intentions can come with negative (selfish, cruel, evil) consequences. In Suikoden 2, a nation cleverly takes advantage of another's kindness by making said kindness turn against them - they release a massive amount of war prisoners, which a certain city readily takes in... and then they lay siege to the city and wait. With the increased population, the city's own supplies drain fast, and they eventually have to surrender, without a battle ever needing to happen. Taking in the refugees was the good thing to do, but ultimately it led to the city's inhabitants also being made war prisoners. I think it's extremely fun to play good guys, but I prefer the realistic approach to it. I like making them learn that good is relative and that their actions won't always be taken as good, or always have the intended result. It's really interesting, to me, to see good characters - who are, legitimately, trying to do the right thing - struggle with the notion that nothing is as black and white as they thought.

I agree that relying on sound during battle (especially convoluted battle) doesn't seem feasible. My girl doesn't really have combat experience, so she'd probably get skewered very fast. Thanks for the input!

To clarify: she is a remake of an older character who's been through a few incarnations, and was blind in all of them. She is also a psychic in all of them, so for this version I figured the Echo would be a nice substitute for psychic powers. @Nimahrie: If she has the Echo, maybe that contributes to spidey aether sensing? I do picture it as similar to "aura sight" - in that she can pinpoint the source of aether and use that to orient herself. Lore says it exists in all things, so it makes sense to use that. I figure magic studies and Echo could be enough to excuse it. But I do want it to be a disability, so I wanted busy places to be disorienting since the aether would be all over the place. @Sinmal: I think the hardest part for me to play as an able-bodied person is figuring out how she would go about things without eyesight. I suppose having aether sensing work like an "aura sight" type thing like Nimahrie suggested would make it at least a bit easier for me to understand how she interacts with the world. aa new post @LandStander: That is what I was thinking! Except summarized much more neatly. Thanks for the comments, guys! This aether "vision" sounds like a good way to pull it off without making the blindness totally pointless.

I'm looking for some advice/input! I have a character who is blind and has been long enough that she would be used to it. For background reasons, she also has the Echo. Her blindness is not due to brain damage, so I think she would be able to see properly during visions - since they would be in your mind, rather than your eyes. She hasn't always been blind, so this wouldn't be completely foreign to her, but it would probably make her visions more confusing/less clear in the visual aspect than those of someone who can see. Also, since the aether is a concept in FFXIV that isn't in the real world, do you think it could be reasonably incorporated into how a blind person can get around? She is skilled with magic and as such it makes sense she would be sensitive to aether. Could sensing changes in the aether affect how she would find her way around? I'm thinking that in places like cities, with a lot of people, things get too hazy/confusing for this aether sensing to be any help, in which case she would get around the real life way - with a cane. But if traveling alone in the field, where there aren't so many things bunched up so close together, she would be able to orient herself and mostly keep out of danger by sensing aether on top of things like sounds and smells. Also, if she is especially sensitive to aether, I think it's sensible for her to be mildly disoriented in crowds. In Ul'dah she usually hangs around Pearl Lane, so she doesn't keep her cane on her - anything that could be stolen probably would be stolen from a blind girl around there, after all. She just uses time/distance (on top of sounds etc) as a way of estimating where she is and hugs walls to avoid running into things. I'm thinking in other cities, and new places especially, she would also stick close to walls, but would have her cane on her. Lastly, she's a conjurer/healer, and needs to touch the target to be able to "aim" the spell properly. Does this seem reasonable? I know that IRL, some people use sounds like clicking as a sort of "sonar" mode, but it's not an instinctive skill and she wouldn't know about/use it. Also, I am working off the premise that the aether sensing hinders more than helps in places where there's too much of it and it overwhelms her other senses. And since she became blind later in life (in her teenage years or so, although she claims otherwise), she isn't as good at getting around as people who are born blind or become blind early in life. She was also greatly sheltered until five years ago, so exploring on her own is still fairly new to her. Thanks in advance for any advice/input! I don't want her to be any clumsier than what would be normal due to a lack of eyesight, but I also don't want her to have super sensing powers that make her better at evasion than people who can actually see.

Lore says even in large Keeper families it is rare to have more than two (maybe three) sons, because females are born more often. Which isn't to say it's impossible, just uncommon. But if all six come from the same mother, and not from an arrangement like Naih'ir's, this may have some form of impact. I have a Keeper boy who is the 2nd son of a very large family. My headcanon for him is that being male and the 2nd male at that, he is largely ignored by his mother. But! Keepers live in small familial communities, not large tribes like Seekers, so it gives a lot of wiggle room - what is the norm in one community may not be the norm in the next. So it's entirely possible to make it so that in the community your characters come from, adoption is a pretty normal thing, and so is keeping the late mother's name, and so forth.

Emphasis mine, because this may be the root of the problem. Until very recently, I don't the Squeenix really appreciated just how large their NA base is. I'd hazard a guess it's far larger even than their JP base now, but Squeenix has never treated NA as a market worth special attention before. Yeah, I agree. Heck, they didn't anticipate sales in the west for this game. A friend in Japan said that preorders there were limited. That they weren't limited elsewhere hints at them not thinking they'd sell more outside of Japan than within Japan, and that probably happened.

Note the number of people who are also on Reddit and you might be less surprised by the number of straight white guys.

Think of games like SWTOR, in which EA/Bioware hired over 200 voice actors for 200,000 lines of dialogue. The amount spent on that was obscene, but did it actually give any lasting power to the MMO? Nope. Voice acting is like the little sprinkles on top of the detailing on top of the icing on the cake. In terms of what it lends to a game in the long term, it really doesn't matter. Graphics, music, voice acting, none of that can make up for other problems or save a game from tanking. Films that have had obscene amounts of money invested into them can tank, too. Garnishing doesn't save the cake, but it sure makes it more attractive to customers. It won't keep them coming back, but it'll help draw them in the first time. Either way, this game has a lot less voice acting than that - there's really no excuse for it to be this crummy, especially since obvious care went into the JP cast. If you're going to have poor voice acting, it's best to just not have any. It's really not comparable to SWTOR. @Tobias: I was saying the cost of VA is small potatoes next to development costs for a game of this magnitude. So because the cost is small next to what it costs to develop a title like FFXIV, they should, undoubtedly, have been able to afford better VA. Or at the very least put a bit more effort into searching for amateur talent.

Honestly? For this reason alone I am 100% fine with the voice acting. I don't give a rat's patootie how many fancy stars a video game hired to voice their characters' lines, because that kind of expenditure is a symptom of a serious problem plaguing the game industry: treating video games, a niche market, as though they were Hollywood blockbusters. Spending millions upon millions upon millions on voice acting (or super fancy CGI, or whatever) is one of the reasons a game can sell over a million copies and still be considered a "failure". It is the cancer of the industry. Now if only Squee had taken the money they saved on voice acting and spent it on developing actually interesting game mechanics. Voice acting is expensive to the average person and for small indie localization companies - but it's in the tens of thousands range usually (especially since most games are not fully voiced), not the millions range. Here's an example of rates - scroll down to video games. This game has what, a couple of minutes of dialogue for each character, at most? The price of voice acting is small potatoes compared to script localization and even smaller potatoes next to actually developing a game of FFXIV's magnitude. A single interesting game mechanic, depending on complexity, can cost more than the cost of voicing several characters. Graphics are much more expensive. Trust me, the figures don't even begin to compare. Art assets are always much more expensive (and numerous!) than audio assets. @Tobias: I know, right? It's still one of my favorite things on the internet.

Honestly, and speaking as someone who isn't a native English speaker and understands a bit of Japanese - language doesn't have a whole lot to do with it. You may be more critical of things like pronunciation, pausing, word/syllable accents and such for words in a language you can understand (e.g. you can't tell if someone is mispronouncing anything in another language, or if they're stressing the right word when asking a question, or stressing the right syllable in a word etc). Tone, pitch, emotion have more to do with it. You could have a sentence in utter gibberish and have it delivered in varying degrees of emotion that are universally understood. That said, here's a list of the Japanese VAs: @dualshockers.com Note how prolific most of these names are, and how long they've been acting. Compare to the English version VAs listed here: @final fantasy wikia A quick search for these names reveals you can't even find info on most of them. Obviously, experience does not necessarily imply quality. There are plenty of amateur VAs who are more skilled than some professionals. But experience does imply price, and it's pretty obvious that with this many inexperienced VAs, they were after something cheaper rather than be overly concerned with quality. If they were concerned with quality, they'd have screened better for talent. I mean, some amateur stuff is ...pretty damn awesome. |D

I have a ton of alts. Let's try this with one I haven't RPed yet. Part 1: The Basics Part 2: Growing Up Part 3: Past Influences Part 4: Beliefs And Opinions Part 5: Relationships With Others Part 6: Likes And Dislikes Part 7: Self Images And Etc.

Super late! But I meant specifically not caring about XIV, since it's SE Japan heading the whole thing. If it had been the NA branch of SE, things might've turned out differently.

@LiadansWhisper: I started my post with "I don't think anyone should exclude the main storyline's events from their roleplay. But I can see why people would." I'm not telling you how to do things. I didn't say most of the things you reacted to, actually. There's nothing wrong with this idea; I was just explaining why I, personally, understand Ildur's reservations. Edit@Theo: I think that made sense and is a brilliant way to include incompatible timelines without changing the concept. "Future RP" would also work, but less well since other things may come up in the character's actual timeline that would mean the future RP can't actually happen (e.g. if in the future RP there is mention of a family member that ends up dying in the 'current' timeline). Though if everyone involved is OK with the possibility of "future" RP being disregarded by characters 'from the past', so to speak, nothing stops that either!

I haven't reached the end of the main storyline, myself, but I read Ildur's spoiler tag anyway-- I don't think anyone should exclude the main storyline's events from their roleplay. But I can see why people would. Unlike console games, MMOs can't change much, visually, as the story progresses, because you have multiple people playing, and each person may be doing a different story step. So, as Ildur mentioned, the world itself is in a sort of permanent stasis. Story events aren't actually reflected in the world. When there are changes that are reflected in the world, they tend to come in the form of patches. Now consider this scenario: A patch comes up. Ishgard opens to foreigners. Consider we have players A, B and C. Player A finished the story, player B just defeated Titan, player C just started. Ishgard opened to foreigners at the same time to players A, B and C. But for player A, this was after the main story, for player B this was right after Titan's fall, and for player C, it opened before the main story actually happened. If all three players are taking what they know of the main storyline into consideration, you have three completely incompatible timelines. This is generally why people tend to disregard the main storyline when it comes to RP - timelines get very messy. Now, you absolutely can set up a scenario where you consider the main storyline has happened, for RP purposes (disregarding which step of the main storyline you're actually on in the game itself). But this also brings up a few potential problems: - New players will not have experienced the full storyline yet. Reading about it is different from experiencing it, so it's likely new players will be unable to take part until they're done with the main story (which can take a long time if you prefer RP to leveling). - Like Ildur has stated, most other people/groups will not be sharing that timeline. This makes it difficult to cross-interact or to absorb new players, unless they specifically roll a character to fit the timeline. - It rules out or complicates several character concepts/ideas and limits what those characters can accomplish. Consider: Obviously, you don't need to disregard the main storyline if you don't want to. But it does severely limit entry into the group, it does rule out some concepts that people are likely to think of before they finish the main storyline, and it does severely limit interactions with people outside the group. Which is absolutely okay, if you don't mind. It's entirely possible to make a group if everyone involved approves of the idea. There's nothing wrong with having a group headcanon that is incompatible with other people's. Ildur never said this was a bad idea and everyone ever should always disregard the main storyline, just that they have reservations due to how limiting it can be.

Make sure you check colors in other backgrounds in the creator. The blue lighting really trips you up. The name could, if you wanted, turn into an IC pet peeve. But if it irks you OOC that much, I'd reroll.

Dude, I use all 8 slots and I have rerolled. Several times. In GW2, I completely dumped a level 80, fully geared character, and started her over. For me there's no cutoff point - if I'm unhappy with a character, I'll reroll (or pony up for a name/cosmetic change if the option is available). The amount of effort put into leveling &c is second to being happy with the character's looks, name and so forth. But that's just me. If you think you can manage your character's unfitting name until the name change is available, give it a shot. If not, 30ish or so (until around Titan, in the story) isn't that hard to get back to. The only problem would be story dungeons, since finding a group for the earlier ones can be a pain. Since you're on Balmung, though, feel free to hit me up anytime (Elissa Vermont is my main) for dungeon/primal/leveling help if you do end up rerolling. I can tank up to Haukke Manor and heal up to Halatali, DPS up to Titan. Or I can just level (I have 2 alts past 30, one past 20, and the others all need to catch up, so it's like... a banquet of leveling buddies).

Welcome aboard!

Faye already addressed pretty much everything else beautifully, but I will say this: Being tolerant of different approaches to RP does not imply being tolerant of being an awful person. If you're being inconsiderate, inappropriate, doing anything illegal, or generally being disruptive of everyone else's fun, you need to go. It does imply that, as long as you aren't doing anything illegal or harmful and everyone involved is in agreement/consents, you can, yes, do whatever you want. Even if it's something that I personally wouldn't participate in. (I should note that I don't consider being disruptive in general a 'wrong' approach to RP - roleplay to me is just playing a role, and there are tons of ways to do that, including sketchy ones. But I'm a person first and a roleplayer second; RP will never excuse being a horrible person.)

It's just conveying info about the character. I include dialogue, actions and inner monologue when I want the players to know what my character is thinking. It's never added with the purpose of getting people to react to it. Heck, it's a way to make posts more interesting. I get a kick out of reading what's going on in other characters' minds. I get a kick out of writing the ridiculous stuff that goes through my characters' minds. I don't expect you to do the same, I don't expect you to react to it, I don't expect you to like it, even. I expect you to respect that. There is no right or wrong - RPing is not science. I respect other people's preferences; if they can't respect mine, then we don't RP.

i'm. i'm just going to go over there...

Thank you! (Mods: sorry this topic is super off-topic now. It can be locked or moved out of this section, if necessary.)

edit: ahh nevermind for now. hurt my arm badly and will not be able to manage anything like this anytime soon.

Given the overall lack of quality and wooden sound of the voice acting of humans too (eg Minfilia), I'd disagree. There's a difference between purposeful monotone and just plain sounding monotonous; the Elcor in the Mass Effect series are a good example of this. A character sounding wooden and a VA's delivery sounding wooden are different things. Gideon Emery is a highly prolific voice actor, I've seen him do much better. Urianger is by far his most forced-sounding role in my book. It just doesn't seem like he was trying. FWIW though, I liked Kan-E-Senna's voice the best out of the three leaders. In Japanese she sounded serene and mostly spoke in monotone, too. The majority of the localized voice acting in this game, though, is indefensible. Much of it sounds like it came straight out of a 90s console game (Papalymo, anyone?) when nobody cared about voice acting in video games. I'd attribute it to SE not caring, really. In Japan the VA cast has a much bigger impact on a game than in other countries, so I doubt they paid much mind to their budget for localized voice acting.

That's easy. The problem's the budget. Voice acting is expensive, and not every localization company wants to dish out the $$$ to pay for good VAs. For locally made MMOs, you have a better chance at finding good voice acting (e.g. WoW, GW2). FFXIV really has no excuse, but Kingdom Hearts aside (and even then only the Disney cameos and the protagonists), SE doesn't really have much of a history of caring about the quality of localized voice acting. What really gets me about the voice acting in FFXIV is Urianger (aka Balthier in FFXII, Fenris in Dragon Age 2, a bunch of Sylvari in GW2 etc) - we know this guy, we know he can do better, and even he sounds uninspired and wooden. Doesn't sound like most of them were trying. ): But look at it from the bright side: at least it's not Ragnarok Online 2.