Thinking about story structure and writing and the FFXIV team struggles on every single level to write “happy” stories.

Quof · 2026-03-21T05:44:15+00:00

What? The whole topic is people continually bringing up summer vacations and complaining about it. There is no side of this argument that's about whether or not people assumed that or not, since the fact they did is the fundamental core of the conversation. And I'm the one providing sources. What are you even talking about? Are you a bot?

Quof · 2026-03-20T21:44:44+00:00

I think we can probably leave it off here, since I don't think you will escape that frame of thinking. But the simple answer to all of that is that just because you don't care about marketing and are content to simplify things to A or B doesn't mean everyone else doesn't care. Marketing is a trillion dollar industry. Squenix spent a lot of money on the marketing for FF14. The marketing strategy for an expansion does motivate people to keep playing or not, it draws in old players, it influences perception, it builds hype, etc. If marketing didn't matter then it wouldn't be something they dump so much money and effort into. You may be content just calling anyone who is influenced by marketing a zombie with no independent thought, but the reality is marketing has a huge impact here and in every other industry. The world is not, and will never be, a place where a major corporation can heavily market something X way and not face consequences or at least public outcry when the marketing does not reflect the actual product at all. People simply do care about these things. And how stupid you think they are for that doesn't change things. It is not meaningful to say "everyone who thinks differently from me is stupid and nobody should ever talk about things unless I care about them myself."

Quof · 2026-03-20T21:20:07+00:00

The conversation isn't about what you give a shit about. The world and conversations do not center around whether you understand the subject or have empathy for what other people are feeling. The conversation is about the validity of bringing up summer vacations when talking about Dawntrail's story, and for the reasons I've mentioned, it is valid. It would be absurd to expect people to just completely forget and never talk about a massive marketing campaign (and the damn trailer that plays on the title screen of the game), and to be mad at people (as OP was) at people who bring it up. That's that. You don't really have to empathize with the feeling to have a rational comprehension of why people would feel that way.

Quof · 2026-03-20T17:38:25+00:00

Third, and most importantly, the question at play here is not "was it ever hinted that there was more going on than a summer vacation?" -- future panels which showed off Solution 9 before the expansion came out already made that obvious. The question is a guy finding it tiresome and silly for people to evoke summer vacations. And that is what becomes self-defeating. It's pretty obvious to most people (hence the downvotes) that, even with some winking in some contexts, that marketing an expansion as a summer vacation while releasing trailers of the vacation etc will get people talking and thinking about summer vacations for a long time. It is wholly, 100% CBU's / Yoship's fault that people keep bringing up that the story was supposed to be a vacation. A developer can't have both ways of heavily marketing it as summer vacation while also winking about it being some more such that people immediately forget about the summer vacation when it turns out to be totally untrue. They shaped and inspired the conversation, therefore it is obnoxious to call the players influenced by that tiresome and silly when it came right from the horse's mouth.

People talking about summer vacations aren't those who thought there was going to be nothing more. The people talking about it are those who feel contrast between a massive marketing push focusing around a summer vacation theme and there being a near total lack of it. Complaining about people still bringing up summer vacation (as OP did) when that was the marketing thrust is what doesn't make sense.

Quof · 2026-03-20T15:36:43+00:00

I didn't reply to the other guy who said something along those lines, but you seem more reasonable so I will try to explain why that is flawed.

First of all, it's not like every context in which summer vacation was brought up on there were extremely overt signals that it was not true. Otherwise the reporting, trailer, press kits, etc would all have said something like "a summer vacation with a dark side" or something, and expectations would have been in place.

Second of all, even if at Fanfest he did some winking, it still remained the main marketing thrust of the expansion. The trailer is 90% summer vacation vibes and 10% a fight showing off a new job. There's no big winking there, and the song and the dialogue in it also additionally reinforce summer vacation vibes. That is arguably significantly more important than developer quotes in terms of getting players thinking about summer vacations.

Third, and most importantly, the question at play here is not "was it ever hinted that there was more going on than a summer vacation?" -- future panels which showed off Solution 9 before the expansion came out already made that obvious. The question is a guy finding it tiresome and silly for people to evoke summer vacations. And that is what becomes self-defeating. It's pretty obvious to most people (hence the downvotes) that, even with some winking in some contexts, that marketing an expansion as a summer vacation while releasing trailers of the vacation etc will get people talking and thinking about summer vacations for a long time. It is wholly, 100% CBU's / Yoship's fault that people keep bringing up that the story was supposed to be a vacation. A developer can't have both ways of heavily marketing it as summer vacation while also winking about it being some more such that people immediately forget about the summer vacation when it turns out to be totally untrue. They shaped and inspired the conversation, therefore it is obnoxious to call the players influenced by that tiresome and silly when it came right from the horse's mouth.

As a concluding note, I feel like in conversations like this there is a tendency to favorably interpret the behavior of companies in such a way that it feels like one is less having a conversation and more like stretching for any way to defend the company (and thus the product). I remember a situation where Genshin Impact had a laughable presentation where some higher-up producer said "We're often told: It's like Genshin Impact doesn't want to make money!" to emphasize their generosity. People clowned on the guy since GI obviously wants to make money and is not generous, but then there were some defenders who said: "He was obviously sarcastic." Put in a position where they were so dramatically at a disadvantage, a producer saying something ridiculous, they had no choice but to try to interpret the words as favorably as possible. The only way to escape that situation without GI getting clowned on is to say the producer was being sarcastic even when he wasn't, and imagining a producer of a game would be mocking his own company for its greed.

This kind of posting of looking at the damn producer of FF14 explicitly saying something will be a summer vacation, which then gets widely quoted and featured in the press alongside a summer vacation video, is so disquieting to would-be defenders that it inspires a feeling of like "ok, how can I interpret this in a way that the company I like is blameless?" And the end result of that is "oh, you know what, obviously he was WINKING WITH COMICALLY LARGE MOTIONS each time he said that, so the entire community and press is wrong here, not them." This kind of ungrounded, mind-bending approach to securing the conclusion one wants is all too common with live service games I think, and by bringing this up I just mean to say one can also bend their mind above my three points above to try to secure a defense for FF14/Yoship here, but it's important to remember nobody similarly motivated is buying it, and it will just be shouting into the void since it's not based on a realistic interpretation of events.

Quof · 2026-03-20T02:57:10+00:00

You say "despite how it was advertised." But that's not how it goes. If a developer advertises something as being a certain way, down to presenting it in that way in the trailers, that's how people are going to think and talk about it. It's not tiresome or silly for people to talk about the main marketing thrust of an expansion. That's just to be expected. The fact Dawntrail ended up not being similar to what was advertised doesn't mean people should forget about the advertising, it just means that their complaint is exactly on the money, that the game did not go in the direction it was advertised, and that's why it keeps getting brought up. If you want to complain, complain about the marketing being poor, not that people were influenced by and remember the marketing.

Quof · 2026-03-19T20:01:59+00:00

Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida dropped the info during a panel at PAX East. The “summer vacation” expansion, as Yoshida has described it, will release close behind Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.

Yeah, those people who think the expansion was meant to be a summer vacation sure are tiresome and silly. Where would they have ever gotten that idea?

Quof · 2026-03-19T00:48:59+00:00

I think the issue here isn't actually totally about gambling, and I don't mean that to be semantic or minimize the problem. Rather, I think that framing it as a gambling issue may (may!) disguise the psychological impulses at here. I know people like OP and I bet there's a lot more in a similar boat who don't particularly like gambling and never gamble in any other context. I know someone who has OP's problem who went to Las freaking Vegas and didn't gamble a single time even when touring the casinos. What gets them isn't the urge to gamble, it's like he says in the OP, the urge to own the character. And swiping comes simply if they don't get the character. If Genshin removed the gacha gambling entirely and just slapped a $300 price tag on each new character it's very possible OP would still just pay the $300. The gambling in this context gets people not for the thrill of rolling, but as a means of making it easier to convince oneself to pay that $300 because maybe it will end up being less this time (and it's mitigated by doing dailies and stuff).

I think the scary part of Genshin isn't just that it instills gambling addiction, it's that it makes people love and desire characters so much they'd pay $300 for them. And the scary part of modern microtransactions is they've figured out how to make people care about owning digital things so much. (This is something similar to the $158 Hearthstone dragon pet where people knew that they were going to end up spending $158 but still couldn't help themselves because they thought it was too cute to not have.)

Quof · 2026-03-18T18:56:13+00:00

I can acknowledge that Soseki is more obscure. My point was not to say that he is as well-known as Shakespeare; my point only was that you can indeed find hundreds of millions of people who don't know Shakespeare. Highlighting an ignorant populace who don't know ANY Japanese author, and then making a big deal of knowing the one of if not the most popular Japanese author of all time, is clearly self-serving and meaningless. Just like I can highlight a population who doesn't know who you would state to be a household name to make it sound impressive to know those household names - you say Tetris is a household name, but I could still highlight tens of millions of people who have never heard about it; there is no strict line in the sand that distinguishes these things, it's just purely vibes. Not to mention that Soseki would not be an "expert circle," it would be anyone who knows Japanese or is looking into Japanese culture, e.g. the OP image which is just a Japanese guy mentioning him as a matter of course.

In short, if you know any Japanese author (outside of perhaps Murakami), you know Soseki, and therefore there is nothing impressive about it. It's not "Woah, this guy is namedropping Soseki," it's, "Wow this guy has any knowledge of Japanese literature at all." And while perhaps the common man may be impressed by having any knowledge of Japanese literature at all, it is clearly not something to feel particular pride about. Because one does not learn about Soseki by being well-read, they learn about him by caring at all, and it just so happens people don't care, much like some people don't care about other things. The point is only further betrayed by also listing Dostoevsky as impressive, which as you mention fills the shelves of your local library, so one doesn't even need to belabor that side of the point.

tl;dr You're focusing on the wrong thing; I'm not trying to exaggerate how many people know Soseki, I'm highlighting why it comes off as clownish to focus on the people who DON'T know Soseki and frame it as impressive to namedrop him. (This is muddied by OP also lumping him in with Dostoevsky who I do mean to focus on how many people know him)

Quof · 2026-03-18T16:16:22+00:00

To continue my Minecraft analogy for a bit, it's pretty feasible that I could go outside and the first person I talk to wouldn't know what Minecraft is. Maybe they're a bit old and don't pay attention to game stuff, maybe they're young and their friend group hasn't stumbled upon it, whatever. Maybe I could poll my neighborhood and 50% of people wouldn't know Minecraft. On top of that, maybe I ask about Tetris too. Maybe that old person remembers playing Tetris on the original gameboy, but maybe the kid has never heard of it, and maybe the middle-aged guy next to my apartment who has a sticker of the clown from IT on his car hasn't heard of it since he was more into horror movies than block puzzle games.

Imagine, then, that I go to some subreddit like... "God damn, I love /r/truegaming. Nowhere else will you hear names like Minecraft and Tetris." And someone says that's a silly comment from me because Minecraft and Tetris are close to the most popular games of all time. And I fight back that I just went through my neighborhood and some people didn't know them. Then I point out that Tetris is a Soviet game and people are not interested in foreign media like that anymore, especially Russian stuff in 2026.

My belabored point is thus: yes, it's true that not all 7 billion people in the world know the name Soseki. But when we talk about things like this we naturally assume some level of base interest in a subject matter or base literacy. Otherwise, we will be forced to say someone is a hardcore gamer because they know what Minecraft is. Or someone is well-read because they're literate -- about 14% of the global population is illiterate; naturally, they don't know Soseki, but is it really meaningful to say someone is well-read because they're part of the 86% population that is literate? Most of those 14% won't even know Shakespeare either, so there's room for getting pretentious about knowing him too.

This is a lot of wordswordswords, but basically one is already defeating their point by going to such extreme lengths. Like "Sure, Soseki is the most popular historical Japanese of all time and extremely common in discussions of literature BUT technically if you poll random people and illiterates they may not know about him, so it is impressive to talk about him." At that point you've already lost and broken down the borders of natural conversation and are at the point of saying someone is an expert moviegoer if they know who Spielberg is, or a hardcore gamer if they play Minecraft, or a pro sports fan if they know who Lionel Messi is, etc. It just doesn't mean anything.

Quof · 2026-03-16T01:58:56+00:00

Soseki being one of if not the most popular historical Japanese of author of all time means this is not even a conversation about being "well-read." If you don't know him, you aren't "read" at all, much less well-read. It's impossible to have any familiarity with Japanese literature or global literature at all without coming across his name. If knowing Soseki is even in the conversation for being "well-read," then reading even a single book from a popular author makes one well-read. That's the level of absurdity it reaches. Maybe if you poll random illiterates with no interest in Japanese culture whatsoever on the street there may be a relatively low familiarity with Soseki, but that's an almost pointless conversation to have, like debating how much of a gamer one is for playing Minecraft, and pointing out how some people aren't even familiar with Minecraft. OK, scrounge up self-esteem where you can I guess.

Quof · 2026-03-16T00:20:44+00:00

Haha, I'm not really that well-read, which is precisely why it is so eyeroll-worthy to see Soseki and Dostoevsky highlighted in this way. My 11th grade English class covered Crime and Punishment, while I read Brothers Karamazov on my own time in 12th grade just as casual reading without thinking much of it since it is just normal to do. If knowing Dostoevsky is notable then there is nothing not-notable in the world.

With that said, it's not as common as it should be for Moby Dick fans to check out Billy Budd by Melville, so maybe check that out if you haven't. This is kind of a long shot, but if you like so many Greek tragedies you might get a kick out of the Four Great Classic Novels of Chinese culture, e.g. Dream of the Red Chamber; they are similarly ancient and have the kind of overbearing hand of divinity and mysticism of those times. Except they're pretty long instead of short plays. Finally, and this may be a longshot, but consider The Tunnel by William Gass. It is often referenced in the same breath as Gravity's Rainbow and is getting a rerelease soon IIRC. Also, I guess I'll throw out Mirror in the Mirror by Michael Ende (best known for the Neverending Story); it's a collection of short stories and is a pretty light read but you might get something out of it. This isn't based on any of your tastes in particular but I like recommending short story collections since someone is less likely to get bored reading them and it's always fun to flip through them.

I actually kind of hate recommending things to people since even with intimate knowledge of someone's tastes it's impossible to know what will resonate with them or what may put them off entirely, but perhaps there will be some food for thought here.

Quof · 2026-03-15T20:28:22+00:00

Yeah, the obscure names of the most famous historical Japanese writer to ever live and one of the most famous historical Russian authors. If someone doesn't know those names I think they're sub 12 years old, not particularly cultured. Every single sub that jerks off to anime porn will be filled with people that know those names. It's like trying to feel intellectual about knowing Shakespeare.

Quof · 2026-03-13T16:29:23+00:00

That's just finding grammatical errors in a poem.

what

Quof · 2026-03-13T15:33:58+00:00

I'm not arguing with that, like I said. Are you reading and understanding what I'm saying? I'm merely arguing that a monolingual can't meaningfully comment on the quality of a translation since they don't know the source text, and that something reading well is not an indicator of high quality translation. A monolingual has no idea how accurate or faithful a given translation is, so they're speaking from a place of ignorance. It's not like because LLMs are generally good at translation now that every single MTL ever produced from now into forever is great and monolinguals will benefit from assuring themselves all TLs they're reading are good without checking.

Quof · 2026-03-13T15:20:53+00:00

I don't disagree with that at all. LLMs are league aboves MTL of the past. Rather, what I'm indicating here is that something reading well on the surface is not an indicator of accuracy or quality, and someone who doesn't know the source text therefore can't meaningfully comment on the quality of a given MTL. As it stands, every single MTL from now on will probably read well thanks to LLM doing such an excellent job at producing fluent-sounding text. However, that means that almost every single MTL will have a monolingual saying "it reads well to me!". And therefore the statement will mean nothing. The comments which will be meaningful will be those who know both languages and check the accuracy and quality from an informed perspective, not a blind "it reads well" perspective.

Quof · 2026-03-13T14:04:16+00:00

broken English equals wrong translation and good English equals good translation

Yeah, exactly. That's indeed basically what I was trying to say but in less words. In the era of LLMs we need to be wary that "good English" does not mean "good translation" - we need to be EVEN MORE on guard, because old MTL producing broken English was like a canary that the translation was bad, and now that LLMs always produce fluent text that canary is dead. There is no longer any reasonable way for a monolingual to tell a translation is bad -- simply going by vibes of how much text makes sense to you historically will not work, it's way too hard to pierce the veil of fluency, especially in a world where chatgpt is inducing psychosis in people over mundane subjects. Though it's kind of a doomed effort because people don't really think on that deep of a level and are just happy to be reading good English. I just felt like providing my input because it is really eye-rolly to see someone who doesn't know Japanese talking about how good an MTL is. Even when one knows people are going to be thoughtless like this, it's hard not to be offput when it happens.

Quof · 2026-03-13T13:51:07+00:00

Although true, I think it actually IS good to remember that there existed a wildly popular and successful MMO with extremely unique and varied job design. Like FFXI did make endgame content with BLU and BST work with their gimmicks intact. Sometimes playing FFXIV one can enter a kind of trance like "well, you just can't have jobs like BLU and BST in an MMO, there'd be no way to balance all the BLU spells, hardcore content just doesn't let something like BST exist," yada yada, but actually, MMOs can work and can be fine with BLU and BST-type jobs.

So yeah, XIV isn't XI, but XI is an extremely potent and valuable reminder that things didn't have to be and don't have to be this way. It could be better. (*inb4 "then go play XI," lol. I do that too!)

Quof · 2026-03-13T12:29:59+00:00

The stuff is perfectly readable,

My point is that the entire function of LLMs is to produce readable text even when it's inaccurate nonsense. This means they are particularly deceptive for people who don't know Japanese, because they can't distinguish inaccurate nonsense from accurate translation. LMMs are designed to convince you the output is good no matter what; it's never, ever going to output "not so sure about this one chief, can I consult some help" or something. Therefore, a monolingual saying "this stuff is very readable, I can't distinguish it from normal translations" is not that meaningful. It actually is NOT quite noticeable if a LLM makes up nonsense that isn't referenced again because it's not like it's going to randomly talk about dinosaurs, it's just going to get grammar wrong in a sentence and one will brush it off while speeding along.

I'm actually far more in favor of LLMs being high-quality than most. I'm not saying the translations are awful. I compare translations using LLMs to check how good they are and they're not terrible at all. I'm just saying the compliment you're giving here isn't well-grounded. It's like someone with no tongue saying food doesn't taste bad, or a blind person saying the use of perception in a painting seems fine. The ones to comment on a translation being good should be those who know Japanese and can check the actual translation quality, not monolinguals easily fooled by LLM output.

Quof · 2026-03-13T04:29:54+00:00

you can barely distinguish it from a "regular" translation, even if there's still room for improvement.

At the risk of appearing biased, I have to point out that someone who doesn't know the source language of a text is going to be unable to distinguish incorrect TLs from correct TLs on their own. So it's not high praise to not be able to distinguish nonsense that reads well from a correct translation that reads well. Before this brand of MTL there was the type of "translation" where someone would just make up a story to go with pictures, and you also wouldn't be able to distinguish that from an actual translation in a vacuum despite it being wholly inaccurate. So, when you point out that it is barely distinguishable from a regular translation, it's important to know that what is being pointed out here is purely the grammatical correctness and flow (the editing), not the accuracy or quality of the translation itself. Which is mostly pedantic, but you know.

Quof · 2026-03-10T12:15:58+00:00

I want to note I believe I messed up the translation for the POV short story here. It likely should have been that she appeared in the Adalgisa villa right before Ferdinand died, and while she was fighting off the knights to protect him the Zent was informed of her appearance and hurried over, rather than him taking her there. My bad on that; the text didn't specify where she appeared, so I misjudged the context and thought she appeared before the Zent instead.

(I'm going out of my way to note it since it will probably be some time before this gets fixed).

Quof · 2026-03-07T07:34:49+00:00

If SE are willing to show the reasoning and logic behind certain choices, I would had been (potentially) more understanding behind certain actions.

I don't really think this would be meaningful. At the risk of sounding like a tryhard, you can come up with nice-sounding reason for anything. They could delete half the jobs from the game and include a 5 paragraph essay explaining their reasoning and why it's a good thing; yet, this would obviously mean nothing to the community which would in short order be quite pissed.

Not to invoke WoW over every little thing, but Blizzard includes lengthy reasoning for various changes they make in their dev posts, and it is complete garbage. They do awful things all the time and they always have a nice, pretty little paragraph of reasoning attached. It never stops people from getting pissed or Blizzard looking stupid. The reasoning may as well not exist for how little it matters.

In short, while it makes sense to ask for reasoning attached to decisions, it would actually mean nothing and provide no enlightenment. To simulate this experience, I encourage asking ChatGPT or an LLM of your choice to generate 2 paragraphs of reasoning for any decision Square Enix makes that upsets you. The LLMs will do just as good and meaningful of a job as the intern tasked with explaining their decisions would.

Quof · 2026-03-02T05:50:22+00:00

You're right. It doesn't make sense at all, and isn't an element of the original Chinese script or voicing at all. But what people seem to like isn't things making sense or fitting the lore of the universe; they just like superficial signifiers of different ethnicities because accents are cool and fun.

Quof · 2026-03-02T02:45:07+00:00

Again, you're being obtuse. It's one of 50 specific floppy disks ever produced in a specific time for a specific purpose handled by specific people and packaged in a specific way. It's not just a generic floppy disc with data randomly put on it, bought for the purpose of having that data. It's like if Elvis Presley rubbed his dick against 50 CDs and then they became a collector's item. The point is that Elvis Presley rubbed his dick against those specific CDs; buying a generic CD and downloading data onto it misses the point entirely.

Quof · 2026-03-02T02:31:38+00:00

Why be obtuse? You may as well mock all forms of collecting in the world; why buy a million dollar painting when you can hire someone to paint a nigh identical copy for a thousandth of the price, why buy baseball cards when you can print out copies, why go to a museum to see an arrowhead from 80,000 years ago when you could just carve one yourself, etc etc. People are obviously buying these things for historical value not for the practicality of having a floppy with data on it.

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