@Aniseed I feel you on the alts thing, lol. I've been skipping most of the cutscenes on mine but the dead-end fetch quests are SO. ANNOYING. "Please go to this place and get this thing. Oh, whoops! That's actually not the right thing, but I'm not going to tell you until you've come all the way back. Now go to THIS OTHER PLACE HALFWAY ACROSS THE CONTINENT instead. Your reward is like...a potion. Thx. Hahaha adventurers love this shit, right???" I'm nearly at Garuda on Victor, who is my second highest level after my main, and sometimes I wonder how I do it. I just hit Thornsmarch on Imry so I'm....still going. Haven't even hit 2.2 yet. ;o; why I picked tank as my first class I have no idea. Having to know everything abt an instance before i go in and being expected to lead is so stressful. x.x
@alchemicalheart oh, mostly I meant it in the context of it seems to be data center lag, for me. But a crowded server like Balmung could have it caused by traffic, definitely. I've run into FATES that were over before any of the enemies even loaded for me on Balmung, which doesn't happen on Tonberry.
for anyone curious about 1.0 stuff.. (Limsa Lominsa + Maelstrom Grand Company) (Gridania + Twin Adders Grand Company) (Starts off in Ul'dah. I think it goes into the Immortal Flames story quests as well. Playlist seems to go further than the other two, also includes bonus videos of the old Hildibrand lines.) this channel posts a lot of lore videos which can be really cool! but i think the guy narrating is trying to sort-of-RP and mimic the accent of the characters and for some reason it grates on me really, really badly. so i can only watch so many videos in one go: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs2UQ_EJkAAlzXkcTfDj-2g he has a video about 1.0 lore here:
Also in general this game has a lot of lag.. and certain ISPs make it worse. If any of you use Verizon Fios they bottleneck traffic really, really badly. Literally the only way the game is even playable for me is for me to use a VPN/GPN program like WTFast or BattlePing. Otherwise anytime I'm in group content or trying to do FATEs or more than like, 2 other people are on the screen my latency is at a minimum of 2k and about once every 2 minutes spikes up rapidly to about 20k, making the game unplayable.
And oops that Ul'dah video is a supposed to be a playlist but I guess copy pasting links just makes them videos on the forums. Open it up in another window or something and you can switch over to a playlist. It's about 3 hours long.
It's happened to me even at lower levels but it seems worse at high level. Where do you see the latency in-game? I haven't found it but haven't searched that hard. I'm on Midgardsormr which doesn't appear to be a heavily laden server but I haven't investigated where it physically is or network-wise is. And my ISP is Comcast who suck. More Testing Required. I should cut my graphics to the minimum and see if it's better there, too.
Watching the 1.0 Limsa story made me appreciate Y'shtola even more. Like holy shit, what a badass. SHE CATCHES BULLETS WITH HER BARE HANDS. if anyone thinks conjurers are weak they're welcome to fight her. The phrase shall now be: "speak softly, carry a small stick and a huge can of whoopass". Also the four of them fighting Gaius near the end was a really awesome cutscene.
@Morven I think aoe casting times get shorter the higher level enemies get, as part of the difficulty curve. But if it's server lag that means everything is a fraction of a second behind. I raced a friend while on Skype to confirm, and to each of us it looked like our character had won and the other person was behind them. (Just sprinting from one place to another on the field)
I feel like latency is worse at high level just because the sheer volume of people around, and that it's even worse on servers that have more people. With little reason to roll alts + the new expansion keeping people mostly in Coerthas means the lowbie zones don't have many people in them. Then of course in dungeons latency is bad just because of all the spell effects. Graphics can also cause problems and it's worth trying to lower them and also to turn off Direct X 11 if you have it on, but if it doesn't help I wouldn't be surprised. The servers are just.. not that great, and how some ISPs treat the traffic for MMOs in general but especially FF is not that great. If you suspect that it might be packet loss causing lag you can also try Leatrix Latency Fix: http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13581-LeatrixLatencyFix.html It's not just for WoW, it would work for any MMO.. but yeah, a lot of FF14 latency really isn't packet loss, it's just crappy servers and crappy ISPs.
I'll give that a try, just in case, but I suspect Comcast and an insufficiently powerful game server.
Been playing Trogdor--I mean Dragon Man and here's a cool shot of him...his eyes glow in the dark :D Spoiler: Nergui Iirc this was the part at the beginning of the lancer quest line where Foulques nearly stabs you in the face ;D He started as Archer tho, I'm lvl 25. Also, we got to witness the Odin FATE in action, despite being tiny low-level babies and having to watch our distance or get oneshotted. Spoiler: so many shiny lights
I have to say, male Au Ra are sexy indeed. So tall! Almost as tall as Roegadyn. I wish female Au Ra weren't so goddamn tiny. Unfortunately, popularity stats show that players don't like playing larger women. So that probably encouraged them to make them much cutesier than the original concepts. Female Roes are especially rare in game. Female Elezen aren't that popular either. Even female Highlander Hyur are pretty rare.
Yeah, I'm bummed about it. I got questioned by some FC-mates (a group made up of mostly women, even!) about why I was playing a lady Roe because they "look weird". ;o; I kinda...sidestepped the subject because it was awkward. I think Imry is pretty cute, actually! Just look at my giant daughter's face. (I may be extremely biased.) Spoiler: cutie alert (also Merlwyb makes me fan myself every time she comes on screen. Damn.) It's weird b/c my two closest friends in the game play lady Highlanders (+ my dudecat friend has a lady Elezen alt). I just get headaches thinking about the logic of a race with such tiny women having babies. @_@ Do Au Ra start out really tiny? do they hatch from eggs?? we will never know.
And yes, Merlwyb is stunning. Definitely the sexiest NPC in the game. Raubahn is kinda sexy too in a tough old gladiator with a soft heart kinda way.
Apparently Elezen are significantly more popular on EU servers. JP servers, lalafells are most popular, and on US servers it's the miqo'te. Most people I know play miqo'te.. a few jumped to au ra and then really didn't like it and went back to miqo'te. If they weren't so tiny I would have tried one out but if I'm going to go for a waify character I'll just go miqo'te. I love lady roes, especially their build and height, but I just liked the hyur highlander faces a bit better.
Roes are a bit limited on pretty rather than sturdy faces, I'll admit that. And if you don't like wide, leonine noses and strong brows, you're probably out of luck. I personally like the look of Hellsguard over Sea Wolves; there's some facial difference that I prefer, plus the skin color choices. I played a female troll in WoW, so I was already biased towards 7ft+ women who looked like they could fight! Love Highlanders too; my alt is one. I suspect the prevalence of miqo'te is the furries or furry-adjacent ;) Can't stand Lalafell personally and could never play one. They have that Chucky-the-evil-doll thing going.
Hellsguard just have better skin tones imo. I don't really like having to go with bluer tones. And they definitely had more fierce faces. I was considering rolling that at first before I decided I wanted to be a bit leaner and went with Highlander. I played lalafell for a bit! The females are pretty cute but the males freak me out. The main problem I had is that non-robe armor doesn't really look that great on them because the model is kind of small, and also because you're so small the mounts are all really tiny and look kind of weird to me. Like a big reason why I wanted to race swap in the first place was to get a bigger chocobo. I've considered going back to lalafell.. but it'd be solely to have a tumblr blog where I do a baby fashion mag mock, lol. They do look cute in robes and dresses. I'd probably rather stomach leveling a new alt for that though.
I picked Sea Wolves b/c I was interested in the culture of a maritime people (but I started in Ul'dah...ok me) and also I liked the idea of the green skin+red hair combo (complimentary colors!) I think people's beauty standards are definitely influenced by their own culture, I know it took a lot for me to start drawing people that weren't generically pretty, skinny and pale. But growing up as a tall girl (though I am probably not-a-girl now, it's still p important for me) I just didn't see people that looked like me in media, ever. So big buff ladies make me happy. So I used to try to make my characters as "pretty" as possible, but now when I see a character creator I want to do stuff no one's done before. I mean, most people make these pale blond Raen and I'm like...for Au Ra especially the peach skin tones are a FRACTION of the possible ones, I'm so going to make mine blue. Because I can. (Thinking abt it Kototsuki and Nergui have a red oni blue oni thing going...) I've made a few Lala fell "npcs" for the rp I'm doing but I don't think I could play one in game, having to look up at...everything...would be really bizarre to me. I have to restrain myself from putting freckles on everyone.
I've generally always kind of preferred unpopular races. Generally if a game has a beast race that's what I go for first, depending on how it's implemented, and that's definitely because I'm furry trash. My main problem with this is most games have awesome bestial dudes and then the girls are turned into kemonomimi, which makes me angry lol, because I feel really uncomfortable playing male characters most of the time. Second choice is Big Buff Babes. In WoW my main was a troll for a long time, and I also had a few orc and tauren alts when I was Horde. Then I jumped Alliance and my choice at the time was pretty much only draenei.. Then worgen were too ugly for me so I didn't race jump until pandaren came out. In GW2 all my characters are Charr except one Norn. I think for me it's less beauty standard influence making me want to make pretty things and more me wanting to.. avoid rolling the pretty things everyone else rolls. My self esteem is shit and I've always felt a disconnect from things like elves. I don't really want to ever be that sort of pretty. And since most games you really just.. can't roll fat characters, the next best thing is pretty big and buff, which is more my body ideal than skinny anyway (seriously I less want to lose weight and more want to gain muscle and start taking krav maga lessons, lol.)
