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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I play FFXIV. I’ll break it down by expansions, but it’s the one that didn’t follow the general downwards trend so much.

    1.0 - trash. They couldn’t figure out how to work together. One guy spends forever making the best looking water wheel ever, in the background, that you never interact with. It’s too graphically intensive, and flows the wrong way from the water. It doesn’t match the building it’s attached to. Meanwhile, they forget to add roads towards main cities. It’s an unplayable mess. It’s literally unplayable, as they killed it off to replace it with:

    2.0, A Realm Reborn - they really fixed it under one guy’s leadership. It’s playable, and works. It’s outdated somewhat today, but has a lot of moral grey areas and twists. There’s a lot of running around and time wasting, which was common back then.

    Heavenward - they made a great story. It’s one of the best expansions. Streamlined and faster. No needless “talk to 5 villagers” quests like previously.

    Stormblood - not as great. There’s a lot of setup they use later. The world building is really great, though. Some of the best looking areas.

    Shadowbringers - the best expansion they’ve ever made. Perfectly balanced world building and characters, and story. This is peak FF, with the best music as well. Probably because they can ditch much of the old A Realm Reborn story.

    Endwalker - ties it all together. The story leads up to “death is inevitable for everything that has ever lived, so just die now” kind of depression hopelessness that you wonder how they’ll get out of it. Well, because it’s Japanese and FF, it’s the power of friendship that saves the day. But, this really feels like the culmination of everything they’ve learned in the previous expansions.

    Dawntrail - this is the downward slide. They force you into a role to support someone for ruler that is almost slapstick bad. Characters don’t make logical choices. The theme is all over the place and can’t decide what it wants to be. Many people say to stop at endwalker, but we’ll see how the next expansion goes, which is years away.

    There’s plenty to say about the game otherwise, but the general thought is that they’re gradually cutting corners, taking longer, and under delivering as they’re stretched too thin. They’re feeling the same pressure everyone else in the world is - not enough money. Which is crazy, because FFXIV is THE game keeping Square Enix alive.


  • Their best album, imo. Which is saying something because they have a lot of great albums.

    I got to see this live back in like 2009 I think. When they toured with Dethklok, High on Fire, and Converge. What a cool show! The visualizations were of these images on the cover shooting towards you in space. They played the whole album, which sadly didn’t leave room for Blood and Thunder at the end. But! They did play that during the Mega Monsters tour with Gojira! Unfortunately their visualizations broke during the show, but they were playing such heavy stuff that we’re all thinking that they really are going to make a heavier album next, like they said.






  • Why is Musk mad at AsmonGold? Did he dunk on Elon for paying others to play his account?

    I just… Fail to see the reason Elon should dedicate his time to fighting with a neet shut in. Asmon turned off donations on his stream. He doesn’t care about money, political influence, or bathing. Just games. What possible gain would there be in trying to mess with him? The richest person to have ever existed in history, in a slap fight with a dude that lives in a dirty hovel? It almost sounds like trying to fight Diogenes.

    And exposing his editors isn’t the “gotcha” you think it is. They just protect him from YouTube’s crappy rules.







  • If it happens past your lifetime, it doesn’t matter. So for sure it’ll pass. These sayings are meant to apply to you, not history.

    I look back to the serenity prayer, which is really just a bit of Buddhism: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

    The Buddhist path is “why is there suffering in the world?” Because of attachment. You want things to stay the same. Things change. You want your parents to live forever. You don’t want to be sick. You wish your job didn’t suck. Why can’t I just win the lottery and have my problems go away? You want to cling to the good times and not have the bad. You can let go of the bad, and the resultant suffering because of it will fade. Letting go is incredibly hard, because our biological bodies are hard wired on routines. But if you can overcome that, and accept that whatever happened, happened, you can move forward. You can’t change the past. And whether you like it or not, time and the world moves forward. You can move forward with it, or let something hold you back.

    And just to clarify, I’m an atheist, so my understanding of both the Serenity Prayer and Buddhism are seen through the lense of someone that doesn’t believe in an afterlife or religion in general (strict Buddhism is not a religion). I encourage you to find your own conclusions.