Ildur

Quick question: why can't we judge Miqo'te by real human standards? And by 'real human standards' I mean what philosophically means to be a human being, not the specific morals we may or may not have. An animal is a being that can move by itself. All humans can move by themselves, so they are animals. However, humans have a property that no other animal has: reason. Humans are rational animals, because they can use reason and move by themselves. Miqo'te have reason and can move by themselves. Therefore, they are humans. Or, add "animals have instinct, movibility" and the other things Aristotle told us they have that I forgot, if you want. But details. Deciding that their morality must be similar to certain animals is not only purely speculative fiction, but also arbitrary. It's based only on two facts: that Miqo'te have three animal traits (tails, ears, fangs/eyes) and that we happen to know that they are based on the catgirl/boy archetype. This is somehow more important that they are humans. The original post categorically ignores the human aspect of Miqo'te to concentrate on the biology, and then dares to make categoric statements about Sun Seeker morality, even though if you even run a cursory study of history of civilization you'll see there's always much more involved in the morality of a nation during a specific period. Simply put: there is no lore evidence, as the post rightfully says, to support any of this conclusions. But the conclusions drawn are terrible by pretending to study what is a human culture in animal terms. Interesting, yes. Useful, no.

You say that as if there was as much praising to be done as there is complaining. The reason for the disparity is that praising only gets you a smug and complacent developer who will not improve his projects because they are "good enough". You don't praise the developer when there's so much to improve. It is akin to praising a rocket engineer because the tip of his rocket is very nice, even though he forgot to put a working engine on it. You don't do that until he fixes the main mistakes. And there's also a difference between plain old complaining and constructive criticism. One is as useless as praise; the other gives the developers a base to improve upon.

I imagine he thinks that with this ratio he will 'force' people into playing more tanking roles. Though Squee has been kind of terrible at the time of looking to the history of other MMOs and learning from them, so I don't know. Maybe he just thinks the Final Fantasy fans and White Knights are so awesome there will be no tank deficit or something?

The post is a lot of biological extrapolations that start from lore and cannot be supported by it. I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is that it ignores that Miqo'te are humans. They are not lions, or any other type of cat. As far as the game world is concerned, they are people. And if we judge them by real life human standards, then they are still not lions; they are humans. But the post pretends that they are only lions anyway. It is not speaking of Miqo'te, really: it's speaking of hypotetical animals that share the Miqo'te societal norms without any of the thinking that would be involved. And that's why I call it useless: by ignoring everything that forms a culture besides the animal side, it is not talking about Miqo'te. It's a very interesting and well put strawman. But those aren't Miqo'te. This has nothing to do with it. You can't study Chinesse culture and societal norms only by studying their biology. Even more, you can't study them by picking a random individual and concluding that, because an individual took no ethical, moral or rational considerations in some of his decisions, then the culture they are part of won't either. You have to study what makes that culture like it is. What reasoning leads them to be like they are, their history, their morality. Human culture is much more complex than the social norms animals have. Studying a cultural group as if they were just animals makes no sense and leads nowhere.

My problems with the biology-centric exploration of Miqo'te culture has nothing to do with a 'privileged' western or modern mindset and all with how it disregards the effects of morals, ethics and reasoning as if they did not exist. Probably because it wasn't the intention of the post to do so, but then it dwells in places where those things would have something to say about the matter. It's an interesting read but mostly useless because of that. I said it once before, but I'll say it again: studying Miqo'te culture based only on the biology of cats is like studying any real human culture based on the biology of apes. It may be an interesting exercise but that's all it is. I wish Squee would have spent more time stablishing Miqo'te cultures instead of going for "Oh, yeah! Harem catgirls!".

I mentioned this before when the thread was still 'fresh', but I feel like I should point it out again: The original post, while well written and put, presents the matter as a study of animals and not of a human culture, rellying only on biology to make sense of Miqo'te. It ignore ethics, morality and abstract thought. Three things that a sentient, intelligent species would have besides their instinct. I find this to be a fundamental flaw on it that results in Miqo'te coming out as simple animals instead of as humans.

Or maybe lalafells are the original race, and everyone else is just the results of their magical experiments. It explains why their architecture is so huge: they were expecting to become giants! But in seriousness, yes, all of the 'races' are part of the same species. It makes perfect sense to me, as they all are basically humans. Additionally, Titan calls the player character and his allies "Sons of Man" (or maybe he was talking about how the "sons of man" were hurting the kobolds. I forgot). Considering the one saying it is an ancient monster as ancient as the world, it's a sure bet that they all share the same ancestor.

Keeping only chocobos is a terrible idea. Variety is important, specially on aesthetic choices. My rule of thumb is that if it's in the game and can be obtained, it should be available for RP. However, that doesn't mean you do not have to come with a reason for why your character has that and not a common mount. Ideally, the game itself will cover that with the lore. But we all know how Squee is. With that said, none of my characters owns a mount in-character. They use rental chocobos or just pop out of existence thanks to the aetherytes. Though Ildur might or might not have a magitek armour hidden in his basement. And he may or may not have a basement. I cannot deny or afirm any such rumors. The mounts I'd like to see are: normal horses, because right now we have those nightmares and unicorns that are weirdly thin and have the most hilarious hairdo. And then I'd like to see a paper whatever, only because one of my characters is into making paper golems.

I'll pick one moment for you: in TERA, that drunk-night where my character rested his codpiece against a cart because I somehow confused the word "elbow" with "codpiece". I remember hilarity ensued for everyone else, anyway. I swear I was NOT drunk.

The developers really should add a lala-only action that allows them to be carried by other races. Then I would never unsubscribe. Like, ever. Or at least it'd get a +10 save against Unsubscription. On-topic. Ulanan thinks that physical contact is only allowed in greetings, emergencies, marriage and when you want to be incredibly rude to other people. Sports are included in the last category, for clarification. Ildur only allows shaking of hands and maybe pats on the shoulder or back. Anything besides that is too unprofessional. K'airos is ussually okay with whatever up to hugs unless strangers are involved.

Add "Traditionally have long beards" to the racial traits and I'm sold. Though I don't think Squee would ever give lalas long beards.

Squee's lore is completely at odds with their own mechanics, as usual. But anyway, I explain (common) dragoons uber-jumping powers the same way I explain why a pugilist can hit a magitek golem with his fists and win: aether (or chakra, if you are technical about monks). Basically, all skills beyond the auto-attack are magically enhaced attacks. That's why they are so flashy. A man with a small sword fighting a rock golem isn't just attacking with a tiny blade: he's using aether to improve it. In a way, this implies all weapons are magical foci, but some are better than others depending on their purpose. This also explains why cross-class skills exist (thought there's the old "gameplay balance" to take into account for that). So I see no reason why an IC dragoon couldn't use their jumps ICly. It's just aether and maybe carefully constructed boots or armor to allow the aether to flow correctly into a jump and not kill the wearer when they come back to the ground. The Azure Dragoon can jump much, much higher (and maybe faster). But since he is not any particular PC as far as the roleplaying community is concerned, we don't really have to worry about it. This is more fun and interesting than Squee's LOL u r speshiul! plot that contradicts its own game mechanics, anyway.

Assuming the wording of the translation is right, Yoshida said "(The glamour Prism) is a crystal that can be used to change your appearance by mirroring the look of your item". Then he keeps speaking about it in the singular form. We still don't know if it will be consumed or slotted. And if it's consumed we don't know if we'll get to save multiple appareances. I'm more worried about the prisms being restricted to exactly the item-level range they are made for, or if they will be able to capture the appareance of lower leveled items. This will be a big problem if it results that the prisms capture ALL of your gear instead of needing one per item. Actually, scratch that: if the prisms are consumed and appareances not saved, then it's a useless system for RP. That's what worries me the most. Otherwise, it will be a pretty okay system.

Ascians could be tempered, though. According to the main storyline Ascians exist primarily on a spiritual scale, not physical. If they are not physical, there's no reason to think they age. The 'people' we see aren't the Ascians: they are just possesed by them. Since tempering is the reclamation a Primal makes over a soul, this very well applies to Ascians. There's also the possibility Ascian souls are, just like Echo users, claimed by another different entity that functions in the same way Hydaelyn does. This entity could be Bahamut or something else. Right now, there's no way of say if they wish to summon Bahamut because they are their servants, or because of some other scheme like just depleting Hydaelyn's aether. This seems to be the case, based on how they dedicate theirselves to push people into giving crystals to the beast-tribes.

Natalie, since you have mentioned the tempering was made by a physical character instead of a proper Primal, I think your best bet is to play the 'tempering' like an actual obsessive/possesive syndrome with a side serving of magical curse that forces her to comply every order from the temperer. Everything else is pretty much optional.

No matter what game I go to, I always hear how unbalanced the PvP is. Most players always go for the "flavor of the month" class, no matter what you do. The difference between constantly rebalancing and nerfing classes and not doing it is the ammount of time flavorists will stay with the most unbalanced class. This is specially true for PvP. But Rift is no different. I've been playing it for 30 levels, and I have noted the flavor of the month already. Most mages are necromancers or elementalists. All rogues I've seen are either rangers or tacticians. All the warriors I see are that one that uses electricty whose name I forgot. Clerics are the only class where I have recognized the bigger variation, but even then most of them are druids. Proper balance is impossible to achieve. What developers have to do is just make sure that all clases are fun and viable and stop bothering with people who play the most overpowered class. Of course, when you add PvP to the balancing equation you are screwed. Because in PvP the fun and viability is directly dependant on proper balance. Which, as I said, I do not think is possible to achieve.

I'm sure Squee would be ridicolously happy if the MMO player base was still willing to keep up with that crap. Then they wouldn't need to release meaningful and well-designed content anymore. Instead, they would only need to release the new big grinding checkpoint so that their players can keep mindlessly clicking on the same fantasy penguins (or their new, higher level variants!) and running the quickest and easiest dungeon available ad nauseam to reach it. Sadly for them, players aren't as resistant to the grind as they were before. Which is a good thing.

Clearly, because what I want to do in a game is repetitive, mindless tasks repeated across all the week. Remember my comment about not wanting to make the game a job to get the house? All your suggestions are variations of "transform it into a job" and complete ignorance of how bonkers and unnatural the market and how useless crafting is. Give me something that doesn't take the fun out of the game.

You seem to think there are many different and plausible ways of making lots of money. But this is not the case. The only FC's I know that managed to buy houses were those selling Primal runs. Using the market board, which would be go-to option, is an absolute joke thanks to rampant undercutting (which is caused by there not being a tax for listing items) and there not being anything worth crafting (and those items that sell for 200k or more usually eat 90% of that in the process of making them in the first place). A member of my FC, before housing, was crafting and trying to make a profit with it. Then the prices were announced and she just went "welp! That's it for me!" because she wasn't making enough of a difference. And if we gathered a bunch of people and made them craft? That wouldn't be enough either. Raiding earnings are not enough, and mine is a raiding FC. I have literally no idea how Squee expects people to make money beyond endlessly grinding mobs. There are no markets to be filled. And as soon as there's one? Rampant undercutting smashes it to the ground. You also seem to think that people are refusing to buy houses because they don't want to spend the money. In reality, people don't buy the houses because they don't have the money. I don't know why you'd think they do. They, like me, see no way how you could get anything without transforming the game into a half-time work. Not everyone logs in for 8 hours a day. This has nothing to do with people not wanting to share and all with people wanting houses and not having the possibility to buy them thanks to the prices being not just out of reach but completely out of sight. Yeah, I know how much money I'll need for an FC house in three months. But how do I get there without compromosing my fun? I certainly can't get there just by playing normally. Because if that was the case, my raiding FC would be at least close to get one. But we aren't. Nobody bothers with it. Addendum: Why do we have to 'deserve' player housing? I don't understand this.

I don't think anyone is worrying about personal housing being smaller than FC housing, but worrying that FC houses are already on the small side? I can't say for sure, since I have never been inside. In any case, FC houses should always be bigger than individual houses. There's more people involved, more instalations, more furniture gatherers, etcetera. It doesn't make sense for FC and character houses to be the exact same size (except maybe for the smallest one). But even then there's no way to know if Squeenix won't pull another "let's make sure everyone has opportunity to buy a house by making sure nobody but the richest people can!" logic. That's what really worries me. Incidentally: making individual houses more expensive than FC ones makes character housing absolutely irrelevant. Why would you use more money on your own house when you can get the same place for much cheaper and faster with an FC? Why even implement personal housing if the only purpose is for it to make FC houses comparatively better? It's like saying you are going to place a pile of crap next to a trash can so people appreciate the can better. Instead of doing that, why don't you just put the pile of crap inside the trash can? Why the impracticality?

It will be hilarious (and by that I mean "sad") if they decide if player housing is worth it based on the success of FC housing. Right now, FC housing is so expensive that only a handful of companies had the funds for it. So they'll either have to admit that the way they released FC housing was completely stupid or else have to release something their numbers tell is not succesful. I'm betting they'll go for "OH! Players are NOT interested in housing, so we won't be releasing it ATM. Instead, have this Primal Battles: For Realz this Time."

You could have the toggle change how certain skill work, too. No idea how that would work specifcially, because if I had to design a class/job I'd probably make something like "Unicorn Mage: he's a mage that shoots magic unicorns!" and then I'd get fired.

Squeenix server infrastructure is handled and powered by hamsters, so I bet that estimate is how long until they get enough money to upgrade to dual-core powered servers! Dual core as in 2 hamsters instead of one.

The tabard is actually white with a blue stripe covering the shoulders and the neck. I find it very curious that Squee placed the Brass Blade uniform in Wanderer's Palace but forgot to put in game the uniforms of the other law enforcement organizations. Today I checked the Board and bought a bunch of stuff to see if I could replicate the paladin common-wear. I'm sure nobody will be surprised that I failed miserably. The actual models are in game, but they can't match the Sultansworn armor thanks to having only one dye channel. The closests options I found were the Cotton Tabard (undyeable black parts on the shoulders) and the Hempen Tabard (that has undyeable black sleeves). At least they are low level (16 and 5 respectively) so you can look kinda-sorta like a paladin early on if you want. The boots (Sollerets) are an even bigger problem because all of them dye weirdly, leaving the leather bits untouched in brown, whereas the ones the NPCs wear are blue. So we are all screwed on that part. The gauntlets they use are in game and the correct parts are dyeable: Cobalt Vambraces. Just dye them blue and nobody will tell the difference. All of this could be fixed if Squee had implemented two dye channels instead of one, or if they had made dungeon armor dyeable. The Hopilte/Explorer Tabard from AK and related dungeons could then be basically the same armor but with reversed colors (blue tabard and white stripe). It would not look exactly the same, but it would have the correct colors.

Actually, Dragoon gear prior to 50 is somewhere between tanking classes and monks (no idea how it gets in endgame because I'm a silly non-endgamer). There are quite a few armors that have the "PLD WAR DRG" restriction, but Paladins and Warriors can always get their own unshared gear that has more protection. I think the only times they absolutely share equipment are at the beginning of the game and at level 27, where the most protective non-dungeon armor is scale armor that can be used by lancers but not pugilists or bards.