Zyrusticae

Yup. Using the recommended SweetFX package here and these settings (copy+paste into the sweetfx_settings.txt file). I'm also using SGSSAA and HBAO+, but, well, those require some really, really beefy hardware and I'm under no illusion that most players can play with those enabled. But if you insist, I'm using these AA bits: 0x004010A1 and there are two working AO bits. One works only with transparent lighting quality on "normal" (0x0000001F) and the other only works with transparent lighting quality on "high" (0x0000102B). Pick your poison. If you don't know what to do with these, look up Nvidia Inspector. If you don't have an Nvidia card, sorry to say, this will be useless to you. Anyway! Have a few new shots: (this one would be perfect if I just had SOMEONE standing on the left side of the screen...)

Well, since materia is essentially refined aether crystals, I would say that materia merely adjusts the aetheric properties of your weapon in a specific fashion depending on the type of materia used. Remember that your weapon is actually bound to your soul (and while this is nominally a game mechanic, the relic weapon questline makes no bones about the fact that the weapon is connected to you, personally, as a character). As such, any materia you put into it should affect yourself in some form or fashion. Remember: when in doubt, the answer is aether. Which is just a fancy word for "magic", really, but you know...

Oohhhh, I need this. I've only attempted (not completed) Garuda EX thus far and I could really, really use some of those weapons, too... If you haven't already, everyone who's shown interest in this thread should consider joining the Balmung's Finest linkshell, since it exists specifically for setting up stuff like this. At the very least, we can never have too many...

Well, anyone who hangs out on the Balmung's Finest linkshell knows just how much I absolutely despise the Hunt and every detail about how it's been implemented. GOOD NEWS! Yoshida has confirmed that 2.35 will include some pretty drastic changes to the Hunt in an effort to curb the current craziness going around, so hopefully there will also be a corresponding decrease in whining related to the subject. Fingers crossed! Source: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/186993-52-Minutes-of-Yoshi-P-unleashed-D-Here-s-my-interview-with-our-fearless-leader?p=2363967&viewfull=1#post2363967

I'm afraid I cannot bring myself to wear the Yukatas due to how much emphasis they put on the breast area. As T'rahnu is intended to be mostly (if not entirely) flat-chested, that just doesn't sit right with me. So instead, I'll just leave these here:

While I won't have specific examples on hand (because I can't login at work, heh), here are what I would think are some general guidelines: Ul'dah: The post above pretty much covers their common look, but I should note that the Miqo'te ladies at the Forgotten Springs are a prime example of how not to dress up in the desert. Your back and shoulders MUST be covered or you WILL get sunburn and, given enough exposure, possibly die of heat stroke. The Ul'dahn citizens are far more sensible about this, thankfully. If you just wore a light-colored shawl and something to cover your head, that would probably suffice, even if the rest of you were naked. At night, on the other hand, the temperature can drop considerably, so you would need warm clothing regardless. Gridania: In a forest environment where you're constantly running into native foliage (to say nothing of all the insects), clothing that is resistant to scratching is a must. The lack of sun thanks to all the tree coverage providing oodles of shade means you don't have to worry so much about coverage like in Ul'dah, but this is probably offset by the scratching problem mentioned above. Limsa Lominsa: Dress like you're walking around in San Francisco. It's temperate pretty much all-year round and you don't have as many environmental hazards to worry about (native fauna aside), so you pretty much can wear whatever you'd like. Native Lominsans appear to have a preference for simple open shirts and the like. That's my 2c. Hope this helps.

Well, really, 99% of all PCs SHOULD be riding chocobos. It's the default for a reason. It'll be less boring when we can change their colors, I think. More on-topic, yeah, T'rahnu rides her chocobo around everywhere she goes. She also keeps her (the chocobo) naked and unburdened aside from her weapons and occasionally some packs of food and camping gear if she needs to go far downrange. She's affectionately named her "T'supahto", treating her as if she were her own family (and given that her own family is DEEEAAAD, she kind of needs the therapy). They have a very close and affectionate relationship. So how did they first meet? Well, T'supahto was actually a wild chocobo, one that T'rahnu ran into the wild back when she was still quite young. (This was back before the Calamity hit, when T'rahnu was just leaving home.) As she was lost and confused and clearly quite terrified, T'rahnu decided to take her in and raise her as one of her own, knowing that she would eventually need a mount to aide her in her travels. As such, the two have spent far more time together than most riders would ever have with their own chocobos. This could also be seen as a weakness - while many riders would simply switch to a new chocobo should their old one bite the dust in battle, T'rahnu would be left an emotional wreck should she ever lose her one true companion. Unsurprisingly, this makes her fiercely protective of T'supahto, and absolutely no one else is allowed to feed or even attempt to ride her when she is around to see it.

What a nifty thread. So, T'rahnu carried around and used the bow her father gave her as a farewell gift for quite some time. It served her well over the years, and she was fond of it as a memento of her time with her family. Eventually, however, after the cataclysm and the loss of her old tribe, she began to use it less and less over time, both for how it served as a reminder of what she perceived as her failure to protect her own kin, and also due to its continually degrading usefulness as a weapon. She eventually used the bow as a base for a rebuilt modified composite bow, which she still uses today. This was as much to help her move on from the ghosts of her past as it was to restore its use as a weapon, and she now keeps it with her always. Her other weapons include a Twin Adder spear made of the unique jade-like gemstone they use for all their serpent sergeant weapons, which she quite likes due to its standout design and good balance. She naturally acquired that through her time working with the Twin Adders. She also has a basic single-edged heavy-weighted axe, her preferred weapon for close encounters. Nothing special about that one; she simply purchased it from the market. She doesn't carry all of them on her at all times, but rather keeps them latched onto her chocobo and chooses the weapon most appropriate for the task at hand. And of course, if all else fails, she still has the use of her fists as weapons. As someone who wishes to become a master-of-arms, it's only appropriate that she make good use of her own limbs when necessary.

I'm glad to see you back! Your screens are always amazing >_< Why, thank you! I do appreciate that. Here, have some environmental shots I took with the bloom turned up so bright it'll blind you (heh):

So okay, guess I'll talk about this. If you haven't already, you really should watch Gundam Unicorn. EVERYONE should watch Gundam Unicorn. Doesn't matter if you're a mecha fan or not, this is the magnum opus of the entire Gundam franchise and is easily required viewing for anyone interested in Japanese animation in general. Incredibly detailed, high-budget animation, a gripping story, looaaads of fanservice (the GOOD kind), and more mecha-on-mecha battles than you can shake a joystick at. It's set in the Universal Century timeline as well, which means you can expect a level of believability in the combat and setting that you don't usually get in the genre. Oh, and did I mention that the soundtrack is god-tier? Listen to this stuff, just try and tell me it does not capture your imagination: [video=youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evPpYoB8O3Y [video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diein_Zd3is [video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAiV7zYwk5U Same guy that composed the soundtracks for Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan), Kill la Kill, and Guilty Crown, among others. Also now composing for Aldnoah.Zero. It's good stuff, and consistently good all the way through. Love it. But, okay. That's just one series. What else do I recommend? Hellsing Ultimate's already been mentioned. Violent and crazy as all hell, it's perfect turn-off-your-brain entertainment. Prisma Illya was a big surprise for me last year, and this is all you need to see to know why: [video=youtube] There's more I could talk about, but I haven't even read the entire thread yet and I need to get back to work. Chao! :cactuar:

GUESS WHO'S BACK. Yeah whatever, I know nobody actually cares. Have some pictures: Lots more here. And while we're at it, I'm gonna advertise the /FFXIVGlamours/ subreddit, because it's obviously not getting enough attention.

This is an intriguing philosophical quandary. In truth, the desire to self-propagate is something written into the very core of our beings. An individual who is completely selfless and altruistic is an anomaly, and might be seen in many peoples' eyes as a freak accident. But even pure altruism can be said to have a "selfish" bent, in that they are often working towards the preservation of their loved ones, often children - and the reason they are so engaged is because those loved ones happen to carry much of their own genetic material within them. (The constant war of the genes is a fascinating subject in and of itself, I should mention.) Because of this, I tend not to value overmuch the ideals of selflessness as much as I do pragmatism. It's okay to be selfish. But it's also good to be aware of how your actions affect others. There is a happy medium to found there, I would think. There's also the question of the value of such a sudden and all-powerful "solution". We, as living creatures engaged with nature, both without and within, recognize that conflict is a core part of our lives in some form or fashion. A life without some form of conflict tends to be considered boring and uninteresting, something that is very clearly borne out in the way we write our stories to have multitudes of conflict. There are, of course, stories without conflict (ostensibly referred to as "slice of life") where the draw is in other aspects such as the characters or the setting itself, but they are hardly the most popular form of storytelling out there. It can also be argued that the solution is simply too much resembling a "deus ex machina", which most will consider to be a faux pas in any otherwise decent story. As such, I imagine that many people would balk at the idea of such idealistic wishes due to the possible unintended side-effects such wishes may have in a world where the people themselves starve for stimulation and entertainment. (The Matrix famously asserted that humans would reject such an ideal world straight away, hence the creation of the more realistic recreation of the world used in the simulation.) Of course there are many others who wouldn't think it through at all, but those are the types of people who would get themselves into a bad situation even without any stipulations or side-effects added to the wishes. At any rate, it really takes a very specific kind of individual to be willing to sacrifice themselves entirely for the good of the world. Someone with incredible passion, an incredible disregard for their own future and their very existence, and someone with the insight to know exactly how to fix the world (instead of just fixing things temporarily only to have them unravel later down the road). Does such a person exist? I'm not sure, really. Maybe they do. But it'd be one hell of a coincidence to have them exist and be in the right place, at the right time, to make that wish in the first place.

WHAT. THEY TOOK THIS OUT?! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! AN OUTRAGE!! :frustrated:

T'rahnu would not go for it. Besides the fact that most of her loved ones are already dead (from the cataclysm), she knows well enough that wishes have a tendency to go awry in unexpected ways. She's a learned woman, after all. But beyond the technicalities of wishes themselves, she has no desire to remove personal goals from her life. Much of her life is defined by the pursuit of these seemingly unachievable (within a lifetime) goals, and the thought of having those goals achieved within the blink of an eye with no personal effort galls her. She'd much rather die than live a life devoid of that sort of purpose. No drive, no go. Thus Caleb dies in a horrifying freak accident during the sparring session and a strange series of coincidences and misunderstandings occur, marking him for life as a murderer and a fugitive from the law. Hey, the third wish had to be proportional to the first two, after all.

Since we're on the subject, quite literally the ONLY reason I went with Miqo'te for T'rahnu was because it was the only race with something close to what I had in mind for her height and facial features. If another race had a face like the one she has now I would have gone with that. (And if Lalafell were less rotund...) Anyway, I will admit I have a bad habit of ignoring the cat ears and tail when it comes to expressing emotions. Doubly unfortunate considering the emotes in-game make it far too clear that the tail is highly involved with any gesticulation of any kind, so not using it is really a disservice to the race as a whole.

Better sense of taste and smell, sure. Sight and hearing, not so much. Most four-legged mammals have better senses of smell than us humans do. In some cases, several hundreds of times better than our own. Cats and dogs, in particular, basically live in a world defined by scents, with sight and sound being supplementary senses. (Fun fact: cats have scent glands along the tail, on each side of their head, on their lips, base of their tail, chin, near their sex organs, and between their front paws, so their affectionate cuddling is actually a way of marking you as their family. Your furniture, on the other hand, is less fortunate.) I wouldn't be against Miqo'te having a sense of smell a few times better than humans (but not much more than that, because there are only so many sensory nerves to go around). Sight, on the other hand... believe it or not, we humans have some of the best eyesight in the animal world. We can observe the full range of colors and our visual acuity is obviously very high. There are animals that can observe a more specialized range of the electromagnetic spectrum (like animals that have infrared vision) as well as animals with higher visual acuity (like most birds of prey), but never both at the same time. We have the "best of both worlds", you could say. If anything, it is likely that most Miqo'te would be partly colorblind (having blue and yellow cones, for example, but not red ones), at least if their feline heritage is anything to go by. Hearing is complicated. Our hearing is omnidirectional, which means we may have a little bit more trouble picking out sounds from the rest of the background noise, but unlike creatures like cats, we can pick them out no matter what direction we're facing. Miqo'te, on the other hand, have focused hearing by default, and so while they have better hearing in the directions their ears are facing, they will naturally have worse hearing for anything that isn't in those particular directions. This is simply due to the physical design of their ears. It should also be noted that you do NOT want an exceptionally sensitive sense of hearing, because that would just result in hyperacousis, and as anyone who's had that condition can tell you, it is NOT a boon to your everyday life. And that is my exceptionally long-winded post about inconsequential fictional sapient fauna. I hope someone enjoyed it! Edit: And just for completeness' sake, I should note here that real cats have both. Like any animal with complex eyes, their pupils will dilate based on the amount of light hitting their cornea at any one point in time, hence they will tend towards slitted (closed) pupils during the day and round (open) pupils during the night. If Squeenix wanted to be accurate, both Keepers and Seekers would have this feature, but programming functional eye muscles is probably more work than they're willing to put in for a single race.

Given that the Primals come back again, and again, and again, and again, and then some more, it's actually justifiable for a whole mess of people to have killed a Primal within their lifetimes if they are Warriors of Light (which, well, they are, at least if canon is anything to go by). The Primals themselves are actually one of the better-done parts of the lore, as they somewhat justify the constant replaying of the same fights by pointing out how transient their physical forms are. They'll keep coming back as long as their tribes keep feeding them the aether to do so.

There is absolutely nothing unreasonable about being a Warrior of Light. It is canon that there are many Warriors of Light and the developers explicitly intended for all player characters to be THE Warriors of Light to begin with. The player characters are a small percentage of the overall population, numbering in the thousands where ordinary citizens number in the millions (or tens of millions). They even drive this point home with the first cutscene where you meet Hydaelyn and you see a whole bunch of other souls flying around with you, which represents other player characters going through the exact same thing. You never actually lead the Scions' date=' you're just the done-getter go-doer who happens to be [i']really good[/i] at their job. That being said, yes, this one is a lot harder to justify in RP since the story doesn't really imply that you are a whole group of people (which it really should, to jive better with the whole MMORPG thing) instead of just one guy or gal. When it comes down to it, the problem is really in that the proportion of NPCs you actually meet and interact with will be far, far lower than the number of PCs you meet and interact with simply by nature of this being an MMORPG. If NPCs were actually sentient and did their own thing and outnumbered PCs 10:1 it would seem a lot less outlandish that so many PCs are "special snowflakes" in some way.

I CAST NECROMANCY: THREAD! So recent discussions on the nature of the world got me to thinking. Specifically, I started thinking about aether. When you stop thinking about Hydaelyn as a game world and more as a setting, aether brings forth a whole wealth of possibilities that we, as players, could tap into in unorthodox and unexpected ways. For example, classes (and their weapons) are basically schools of thought on how to approach manipulating aether. Knowing this, it's not far-fetched that we could create entirely new classes simply by getting creative with how we manipulate the aether. I would fully expect that one of the first things that would happen if we all somehow fell into Eorzea would be that someone would create a Hadoken made out of aether. (And then MNK would be forever altered...) Of course, it extends beyond simply class abilities as well. Consider that sprinting drains all of your TP in exchange for 20 seconds of fast movement in the game; what if someone were to develop a more efficient way of duplicating this effect? What's more, what if we found a way to enhance this effect to allow us to pull off superhuman feats beyond merely sprinting faster? You know - jumping higher, super strength, faster reflexes and all that stuff. Think FFVII: Advent Children. Or better yet, Dragon Ball. When you remove the shackles of being forced into parity for the sake of game balance, and can manipulate the rules to your own gain... the sky's the limit, really. The world would be constantly changing as a result of our influence. Would it be for better or for worse? It's really hard to say, but it's certainly interesting to think about, no? And really, please, someone post besides me.

This is a good post and I applaud you for making it. It honestly kind of annoyed me how much people put emphasis on VIT when the game launched, completely ignoring the benefits of extra damage (and thus extra threat generation) and the fact that most content in the game really doesn't require anywhere near maxed out VIT in the first place. And yeah, MRD damage output is incredible. Tankiness and high damage in one beefy package? What's not to like?

So I'm gonna be honest: If it's anything less than the expert dungeons (which you can't run yet anyway because you're not i70+), I don't care if I'm ripping aggro off of the tank, because nothing in those dungeons is strong enough to kill anyone in the party anyway. Playing as MNK, or DRG, when I get a particularly undergeared tank, I don't hold back. I just keep punching because I'm probably better at taking hits than the tank anyway due to the sheer insanity of the gear difference. (I once dropped into a low-level dungeon queue where my LNC had more HP than the tank, and ended up tanking half the mobs in the dungeon. True story.) So, you know... it's gonna happen. Don't take it too hard on yourself if it does, because it's not really your fault. You just have to work your way up until you've caught up in the gear race, and until then, DPS is gonna do what DPS is gonna do.

Well, yeah, of course they're not as weak (misleading word - toddlers are, pound for pound, not actually that weak, just uncoordinated), because Lalafells are actually adults who just happen to be tiny and consequently have fully-developed brains and the neurological and motor systems to accompany that. But come on, you know that they'd be screwed without aether to back them up. Those tiny little arms and legs, even if they packed much more power than an equivalent human's, are still too much of a disadvantage to just ignore without something to compensate for it.

The thing about this is that they're actually trading brain power for more brawn; to put it another way, only so much of our brains are devoted to physical activity and exertion. Part of the reason we're weaker is because our brains are actually holding us back in order to prevent us from damaging ourselves in the process of exertion. Naturally, since Chimpanzees are much less intellectually inclined (but they're still smart, mind you), they have more resources to devote to raw physical strength. A similar and related theory says that their lack of fine motor control (i.e. less precision) means that they devote more resources to the major muscles. And while we're at it, the actual amount is closer to twice that of human strength per pound - any claims of 4x or higher are completely unfounded. All this is just a long way of saying that, no, Lalafell are really, really unlikely to have chimpanzee-style strength. If they did, they would be lacking considerably in other areas, and wouldn't even be capable of performing certain jobs, much less do something like fine stitching. I will continue to posit that aether is the answer, always.

This is a crafted work of fiction, but in any good work of fiction there is always an internal logic that is (or should be) internally consistent with itself. Stories that fail to maintain this usually suffer for it, unless the lack of consistency is the point (and obviously this is far from the case for FFXIV). They've visibly put a lot of thought and time into making aether a big part of the game world, going so far as to make primals into beings made of pure aether and making an entire continent whose premise lies on "how do they compensate for a lack of aether". It goes without saying that aether is a large part of how combat works in the game world, and trying to make sense of it without consideration for it just isn't going to get you very far.

I appreciate you telling me that my interpretation of the lore is incorrect and yours is factually sound, but I assure you you are wrong with this sentence. Thanks for the lesson, though. Well, I don't really know how to respond to that. You're... welcome, I guess? I really hope they expand on this. The whole thing about Garleans and their lack of aether manipulation and the corresponding lack of aether on their home continent is a really big question mark on this whole thing. For example, if a mage steps foot on Garland, what does it feel like for them? Are they still capable of casting spells, or does the lack of aether perform the equivalent of suffocating their magical prowess? And why is their continent low on aether, anyway? Was there some great magical disaster in the past that created a vacuum in that area, is it naturally-occurring, or was it something else entirely? Big questions, and still no answers yet. Don't let me down, Squeenix!