Marisa

Because I strongly suspect that power metal is secretly responsible for everything awesome in the world, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the similarities between Ishgard, and Dark Moor's 2002 album, Gates of Oblivion. Now, anyone who's big on both fantasy and metal has at least a passing familiarity with Dark Moor. Meaning at least one person on the dev team is probably fanatical about them. So I guess we should start with the most obvious connection, the album cover. That's more than a coincidental similarity. That's somebody at Square Enix going "Oh. My. God. This is the best. Make this!" So what's on this album? Uh, just a bunch of harpsichord and pipe organ music about templars and stars and dragons n' stuff. How about a few samples: iLdpSJ0QggM xLa0aC0L1RQ tqyNJVKBO1Y At this point I'm willing to bet Heavensward will contain at least one weapon called Starsmaker or Eibereth, but I guess we'll find out. I mean, I suppose this could all be one big coincidence since both are based heavily around gothic fantasy... BUT WAIT, WHY IS VISHAPS THEME THE SAME THING AS CITADEL OF LIGHT? HZtBCnhlDUU SytqpkaRUS4 \m/ I want to believe.

I would like to draw attention to Wikipedia's entry on the Arquebus, because it is likely the most similar weapon to what exists in Final Fantasy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arquebus Basically this means that, while plate armor isn't great against firearms, it's definitely better than nothing. However, if we want to say FFXIV firearms are closer to muskets, then plate armor is completely useless. Keep in mind that muskets usually fired between .69 and .75 caliber balls. To put that in perspective, think about a .50 caliber rifle, often used as the 'ultimate weapon' in FPS games. Now think bigger. Carbon-fiber or not, that thing is going to punch a hole the size of a doorknob in you.

One of the things I kept suggesting when the game was relatively new was that they add instrument emotes, similar to what Aion and ESO have. Sadly, the idea never became very popular. Should would be great for rp, though.

Literally just that for hours. Followed by terrible confusion due to all the ret-conning.

No source, no evidence. And consider the answers to this thread : how would it alienate the playerbase? Well, y'all are claiming that ol' Yoshi is going to sit back and cackle madly as he forces all new players to stop 10 levels before the cap and grind for weeks, which would definitely alienate a lot of people needlessly. But that's not how MMOs work, and no major developer would ever do that. The guy has decades of experience in the dev game, he knows what he's doing.

I mean sure, nobody has a primary source one way or the other. But all of the evidence points toward the idea that Yoshida won't intentionally alienate his playerbase, with almost no evidence indicating that he will. Basically they'll do it this way because they've always done it this way, and anyone saying they're suddenly shifting paradigms is just doom-saying.

I think this (the "most of us" part) is debatable. It's the job locks that bother me the most though. That's some Grade A jerk stuff on SE's part and more than being unfriendly to alts is a huge kick in the privates to new players who might be drawn to start the game with Heavensward advertisement. "Oh hey, I've never played this game before, but that machinist/astrologian/whatever class looks awesome. Wait... I can't actually make a character with that class until I've grinded up a bunch of levels on one of these other classes I have no interest in? Ugh." Now here's something we can agree on. The fact that almost 1/3rd of existing classes won't be playable from the start does seem like an un-fun mechanic for new players. As for the Warcraft thing, I guess this might not be that kind of crowd. But believe me when I say (and any other former WoW player will tell you) that SE is following Blizzard's path pretty closely, and nothing they do surprises us because of that.

Try going into Coil while undergeared - just T1 will do. You have an Echo buff from the start these days, but you still need i70 to do so. Patching in an Echo buff won't change iLevel requirements, and yeah sure it's easy to get up there in iLevels these days... provided you can get a group, period. Unless they went out of their way to make solo versions of these instances (which would be arguably incredibly stupid) what you propose won't change a thing. The best news to combat a bit of this (in short from 30-49) is that new classes start at 30. Since that means from 30 onwards there'll be a bigger pool of people leveling DRKs and Astros. The problem is the amount of available bodies who will be around to do 2.1-2.5 content. The only solution that's been brought forward is literally "let's help the new people!" or "they should join an established FC!" Joining a rando FC should never be a solution, and people here shouldn't feel pressured into helping out new people. Since this needs reiterating : NO ONE IS SAYING THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DO THE CONTENT. I'm saying that this decision has underlying problems that I'd like the devs to address. How is it any different from the parts of the 1-49 MSQ which already require dungeons? Roll them all into low-level roulette, scale them down to be doable in ilvl 60 gear, and call it a day. Again, we've been playing this game for 2 years now, and it's heavily based on a game most of us played for up to a decade. Nothing here is new, and it's entirely easy to predict exactly what SE will do. Seriously, have a little faith in the dev team. They're not idiots.

Can't provide any pictures right this second, but I've made costumes for Malzahar from League of Legends, a Witch Hunter from Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, and Hildibrand from FFXIV. I just started working on this version of Dio Brando, which will be the first time I'll have ever done an anime character. I'm not very fond of eva foam, so I'll be using Kydex for the bracers and breastplate. It's the same material I make my gun and knife sheaths out of, and I honestly don't know why more people don't use it for costumes. It's cheaper, stronger, and easier to use than eva foam.

Sure it can. It hasn't been used for dungeons yet, but there are several solo instances throughout the MSQ where an echo buff was applied which raised the characters stats. Literally all it would take to solve the issue of level 50 dungeons is an upward level-sync. And of course, it's not like you'll just be sitting there grinding out dungeons with no reward. You'll be getting experience the whole time, meaning you'll probably have a few level head-start when you hit 3.0 content.

I am honestly kind of horrified by some of the things I'm reading in this thread. Its like half of you have never played a Triple-A mmo before. Fact is, y'all signed on for a Final Fantasy reskin of WoW, and with that mindset almost all of SE's major decisions in the last two years were very easy to predict. This is how expansions are done in the big leagues, and how they have been done for over a decade. What horrified me the most was the statement that "SE is going to lose a lot of money because of this decision", which is an absolutely absurd notion. Most of XIV's player base came here from WoW or some other Everquest-style game. The RPC may be full of people who played FFXI, but thats a demographic bias. Outside the RP community, it's a small minority. As such, the vast majority of the playerbase expects expansions to operate in a very specific way, the exact way which SE is implementing. If anything, not doing it like this is what would kill XIV. Doing anything which is counter-intuitive to the mainstream, no matter how fun it might be, is suicide for a large game. This isn't some 3rd-rate Korean f2p game operating on a couple thousands dollars a month. FFXIV is one of the big boys and it has to play by big boy rules. As for the idea that players will have to sit at level 50 and grind out gear to access Heavensward, that's also nonsense. They haven't said how they'll change that, but it's nearly a guarantee that it'll be changed. Likely through some sort of Echo buff, much like you get in the solo instances throughout the MSQ. And we can guarantee this because at the end of the day, Yoshida is a man who was raised on Western RPGs. He knows exactly how Americans play games, and thus far he's catered to that. I'm baffled at how many of you suddenly think he's going to abandon that for no apparent reason.

I found the chibi maker to be more enjoyable.

Oh lord, where do we even begin? -Can't read -Overly trusting -Halfbreed, got the worst qualities of both races -Not very clever -Socially retarded -Has no particular talents -Afraid of lalafells -Gets lost easily On the upside, she's very friendly!

Parked myself in Camp Dragonhead several weeks ago. I'll go anywhere in Coerthas, but I will not be IC outside of the borders of Ishgard. Frankly, I kinda hate RPing in Ul'dah. Too crowded and nobody's really doing anything other than talking.

Actually, hand-to-hand combat happens far more today than it has any other time in the last few centuries. Because today's conflicts are almost entirely urban, soldiers tend to get up close and personal with enemies. However, where the gun-sword was quickly determined to be stupid, the gun-spear is one of the most effective weapons ever created. Also known as the bayonet, this weapon is so effective that it will probably stick around long enough to be used in wars on other planets. by last few centuries, how far back are you going? cause I am fairly certain Hand to Hand was far more prevalent in the Napoleonic wars, and that was only 200ish years ago. Napoleonic warfare is kind of a passion of mine. Now, you're sort of right. When soldiers committed to hand-to-hand, they did so in mass, and it was pretty glorious. However, a bayonet skirmish was very rare, is the thing. It was hard to get men to commit to steel (having your soldiers straight up just walk off the battlefield was a huge problem back then so commanders had to know their limits) and when they did, the opposing army would typically just fall back until you stopped chasing them. Events where you'd charge and they'd stand to fight you were pretty rare compared to today. The reason you see it happening every single battle in movies and whatnot is because those battles were the ones everyone remembers (because a proper steel-on-steel battle is crazy epic) What's funny is that typically whichever army decided to charge first was the army that won, but rallying your troops to do so was damn near-impossible. Stranger still, you'd actually have fewer casualties fighting steel on steel. Stab-wounds are relatively easy to recover from. Musket balls are almost always a death sentence. Still, the psychological effect of being inches away from your enemy was too great for most. So yeah, modern combat has fewer people doing the stabbing, but it happens way more often.

Actually, hand-to-hand combat happens far more today than it has any other time in the last few centuries. Because today's conflicts are almost entirely urban, soldiers tend to get up close and personal with enemies. However, where the gun-sword was quickly determined to be stupid, the gun-spear is one of the most effective weapons ever created. Also known as the bayonet, this weapon is so effective that it will probably stick around long enough to be used in wars on other planets.

*Jumps in circles around the mage while rambling about friendship and cool hats*

Stop touching things! Why do you keep jumping? What do you mean you've never heard of _______? You can't just not wear pants! I want to speak to your commanding officer.

I'm currently rockin' two abilities IC. At some point I'd like her to learn Cure 1.

Jumped in circles for a solid half-hour before noticing the glass. Drank whatever was in the glass. Instructions were unclear, glass is now being used as a hat. Tripped and fell. Glass is now broken. Goes on journey to find replacement glass before the owner of the broken glass finds out and doesn't want to be friends anymore. Got lost.

I feel you bro. I've wasted hours working on almost that exact problem, with very little success.

I think there's a new friend in the back left trying to get your attention there. Oh no, I completely missed that one! Ru Ru was supposed to be watching that direction, but he didn't say anything...

No new friends here right now, but we'll keep looking!

I guess she could mash up a popoto and smear it on there. Wouldn't have access to much else. She'd probably feed the toast to Ru Ru anyway.