Rhostel

Unnamed Elezen Cyroliant Boucher: Flippant Nietzschean

You get access to Beta phase 4, which includes almost all content and progress is planned to not be wiped. Plus you get to carry over any progress you made on your characters from 1.0. Not getting into early access just means you have a few days gap between the end of beta and the official launch where you can't play. That's it.

Uruvion, I can't see any contradiction. Can you tell me what you think it is? Do you think the second red part is implying product codes can be registered to any service account? Because it's not at all. It's just talking about how any service account you register will not grant its bonus items to any other service account registered on your Square Enix account.

Rhostel: Humble perfectionist. Nahctgeim: Fierce heiress. Yes, fierce as in 'don't cross her' and 'honey, you look fierce in that' alike.

Critique, huh? Well, your painted stuff looks unfortunately smudged. It's like you used the blur tool all over it, and that's bad. It has neither the clean beauty of cel-shading nor the weight that any actual texture would lend it. It basically looks as insubstantial and ill-defined as (...what do they call fairy floss...) cotton candy. That's not to say it's all bad. The overall shape of things looks fine, apart from the obscured facial features. You've also demonstrated a reasonable understanding of lighting. Could use more practice on that, but it's serviceable enough to be a low priority for a while. The pencil sketch, on the other hand, is actually pretty good. His hair looks like hair, with discernible strands and everything, rather than an oversized cotton wool helmet. Yes, his hair is white, but that doesn't mean there should be no definition to it. Just look at the white-haired characters in the border pictures of this very site. While that arm looks unfinished, particularly the line of the bicep, the forearm has some honestly well balanced foreshortening. The face is a touch crudely rendered, but that's just something practice will fix. The neck muscles and tendons are a mess, though. That pencil texture? Lovely. The actual shading? Woefully incomplete. But you proved you can get that part right enough in the other pic, so it's nothing to worry about. I know this isn't giving you any specific instructions, but I don't want to be here all day before I hit Post Reply. Just take a look at the issues I pointed out, and the things you did alright with for that matter, and try to figure out why. If you want more specifics, ask specific questions and I'll try.

Got Nahctgeim. She's giant, black and fabulous. Aw yiss. Werk dat camra, gurl.

Rhostel is big, red and jumps a lot.

Something something stored in the Aether something something that's why all your abilities go on cooldown when you change. At least, five bucks says if an official lore position on the matter was asked for, this is what they'd say, rather than brushing it off as a gameplay conceit. MMO developers feel this compulsive desire to insist that everything that can happen in their game has a canonical explanation, even when that creates internal contradictions that they don't care to resolve.

Possibly, but it seems more likely that using Scholar would take away Carbuncle, in order to further differentiate the job from Summoner. Arcanist is described as a class that uses grimoires for DoTs and debuffs and summons Carbuncle, which reads to me like a mix of the old XI Scholar (somewhat) and Summoner. So if Arcanist can advance to either Scholar or Summoner, it looks to me like if you go Summoner, you would lose most of the DoTs and debuffs in favor of having more powerful primals to summon, or if you go Scholar you lose the summoning in favor of more powerful magic and DoTs. Basically the class would do a little of both aspects, but the two jobs are both masters of a single aspect. Just speculation right now of course. We'll see come launch. Losing features from the Class that your Job is derived from was something that did not happen. I sincerely doubt it's something that will happen, ever. There's few abilities that were even made redundant, because Jobs are designed to enhance and focus, not replace or subtract. I think Carbuncle should be thought of more as a familiar, not a summon in the classic sense. It's the Arcanist's partner, a constant ally, not a special ability used briefly. For the Summoner, Carbuncle will likely be still of use, but not as essential as the mighty Primal avatars. For Scholars, making all the standard assumptions about their existence, Carbuncle would continue to fulfill the same role as for an Arcanist, but the Scholar's own powerful specialty spells would be such that it is less vital. Where Carbuncle is a training device for prospective Summoners, for Scholars it is a useful assistant.

Heh. Good thing I've already read each article when it went up. Or as close to it as was convenient.

Gorgeous! First and fourth pics make me think of Adventure Time, for some reason, and last one looks like she's stepped out of The Secret World.

I may have to find someone (in the US?) to get a copy of the physical CE and mail it to me. Just so I can have all dat artz.

I'm sorry, I thought this was common knowledge or I'd have mentioned it ages ago. :cry:

OBJECTION! That has nothing to do with what I was saying. It's entirely irrelevant whether members of an active resistance movement were killed, only that they prove resistance to Garlean brainwashing techniques is plausible. Thus, someone in Ala Mhigo could potentially be free willed but not actively resisting the Garleans. Perhaps out of fear, maybe from being incredibly deep undercover, or perhaps even from a genuine belief in Garlemald's motives. And just to rain on your parade, like you said, there's room for a new resistance to be formed. Or even remnants of the resistance who weren't there (even if it was claimed they all were, given that resistance movements tend to keep their true numbers secret even from their own). Heck, there might even be a separate resistance movement that existed alongside the one that got wiped out, but never interacted with them due to mistrust, and survived due to that trait. Any of these could be played with without breaking the setting. Remember, NPCs can only say what they know that they want you to know. Anything there's no physical proof against and never can be is where we make our stories. The existence of resistance fighters so secretive that the Garleans don't know about them is one such possibility. Just keep in mind that in order to be so secret, they'd have to take only the most subtle actions against the Empire, and it's fine. No worries about contradicting anything in the future.

It's important to note that there is an Ala Mhigan resistance, and they have agents who pose as members of the Garlean military. Some of these appeared in the main storyline quests available at launch. While there's a lack of evidence either way for whether Garlean brainwashing is reversible, this at least demonstrates a strong possibility that it can be resisted (no pun intended).

Hyur is absolutely fine. The quest-giver for the Dragoon training storyline pre-Dalamud was a Midlander, and was in his younger days counted as their greatest living member. And the names work pretty well, fitting with Midlander naming conventions and meshing nicely with the French naming scheme of dominant Elezen. (Given how much of Arthurian mythology is actually French in origin.)

My recommendation is, unless you're so sure about playing XI that you're going to ignore anything anyone says away, just forget about it. It's not something a new player can do anything with without a great deal of effort and reliable contacts among current, dedicated players.

Read my post again. I explained exactly how the limited population of males fits the nuhn system developing near the end. It's only extrapolation, not stated lore, but you're only asking for a possible explanation as far as I can tell. Point is, the males are fewer, not unique or even rare, just uncommon. If they were equal in number to the females, monogamy would be plausible and probably desirable for genetic diversity. With disproportionate numbers, polygamy becomes necessary for survival. Because there's no limit on the number of mates a male could have, they compete to have as many as they can. The male who can attract the most mates gets to father most of the next generation, until another male overthrows him. This series of upheavals continues because it helps avoid close inbreeding as a necessity, and becomes a cultural tradition. And again, using the word race there doesn't mean the Keepers are a race. It means the trait in question is one that applies to the entire Miqo'te race, and saying Clan, while a touch more grammatically correct, would mislead everyone into thinking it's a trait exclusive to the Keepers. Clarity of intent is more important than absolutely perfect grammar. Since the only possible way to interpret it as you have is by being a stickler for grammar, I can only suggest you loosen up a bit. :roll:

The obvious reason why male Miqo'te, of either Clan, are now appearing is that Eorzea has just been through a disaster that's forced a change of lifestyle. I expect much of the traditional tribal territories have been overrun with monsters or laid waste by either Bahamut or Dalamud. This means the males can no longer hide away from civilisation, but must venture into it to find safety. Furthermore, many may embrace this as an opportunity to change their lot in life, to find mates in females who left behind the tribal way (or even from other races), or to simply experience new things. I have little doubt that male Miqo'te NPCs will be uncommon, if not rare, let alone hostile mobs. This makes sense, as the vast majority of males would naturally become adventurers, learning the trades of the cities and looking for opportunities to find their place in an unfamiliar society.

That's not how the term race is used in the game. In fact, it's technically not valid to use it that way even in real life. 'Race' as categorisation for peoples of different regions who have developed physical features suited to their environment dates back to a time when that was thought to indicate being of different species. In reality, all humans are the same sub-species and the differences are all minor clinal variations. It follows that, given that at least some Eorzean races can crossbreed, they have to be the same genus. Chances are, they're the same species. That means Clans of a single race have to be the same sub-species, given how similar they are. They even breed true so readily that cross-Clan traits are being added to the character creator suggesting characters can have ancestors from another Clan going back generations. The difference between Clans are no greater in magnitude than the differences between some groups of real world humans. Therefore, calling Clans races just doesn't hold up in any sense, and the writers of FFXIV are smart enough to know that. Yes, that text was referring specifically to Keeper males. That's because it was in a larger piece talking exclusively about Keepers. It doesn't mean that 'race' isn't referring to Miqo'te as a whole, just that it's discussing a Miqo'te trait in the cultural context of Keepers. A low birth rate for males is exactly why the nuhn system is in place; few males means the opportunity for multiple female partners anyway, so powerful males try to get as many as possible. They set up the precedent that the strongest male gets all the mates, and over generations it becomes formalised. It becomes the accepted state, so that other males can decide to pursue other lifestyles instead of just fighting to become nuhn until winning or dying.

I have no idea how you did that, Ship.

UNFORTUNATE! Maybe if it was like... NOT a face tattoo... I didn't specify a character I'd use it on. >_>

At the start of ARR, Rhostel has steady work running errands from Mealvaan's Gate, making her an employee (but not a member) of the Arcanists' Guild. Since she travels hither and yon searching for missing or plundered shipments, chasing up overdue payments and other far-ranging tasks, she supplements her income with local leves wherever she ends up. It works out to enough to get by, the main benefit being to travel a lot. Nahctgeim is an employer. Guess that counts as self-employed. She certainly works hard.

That chocobo hatchling face tattoo is sorely tempting.

This right here is what I am afraid of. The reason I killed off my character and left WoW. A similar idea was being imposed on me, I felt violated OoC when a reasonable request to fade to black on the kinky bits was met with hostility. The guy in question was considered respectable by the community so instead of going against the grain I killed her off ICly. (Since the man acted like IC and OoC were one in the same.) My husband also wasn't happy with the way the guy acted like he owned me OoC as well with all the lewd comments over vent infront of others and threw a fit when my husband told him to back off. Since then we decided we do not want to engage with anything that enforces an idea remotely like that. I still want Rhynka to be mysterious, exotic and feral but I don't like the whole challenging the Nuhn system there. I'm a bit confused. Not because of your concerns, they're totally valid and something you should act on as you're comfortable doing so. I just don't see any connection between your statement and my post you quoted. My comment was just about cultural norms, not how people should or even could be expected to play it out. The Seeker clan system is not a healthy way of life for humans, and we shouldn't be overtly trying to engage in it. We should try to understand it, though, so we can see the cultural context for Seekers of the Sun, whether as players of them or of other races interacting with them. It's about background, things that may have happened in the past of a character, not about things that should play out except as something they might struggle to overcome. Even then, it shouldn't be about whether they will succeed, but about how they will.