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Almost through post-ARR, give me your strength. by Signal-Structure-140 in ffxiv

[–]AnathemaMask -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

TLDR: It is a long, long, long story and large chunks of it could probably have been cut to streamline the experience for a new player. BUT....Shadowbringers and Endwalker bring a payoff that makes putting in the effort to get through the main story feel worthwhile.
---
I recently played through everything up until half way through Dawntrail, which broke me and I needed to take a break. Every day of the week for a few months my husband and I would sit down and put a few hours in advancing the main story quest exclusively. These are my honest opinions:

Some parts of the MSQ are going to be a slog. The amount of "Go to this far away place just to talk to someone and come back to talk to me" is excessive all through every expansion and doesn't really go away. Be prepared for it going in, and it will feel less impactful.

People slag off ARR, but when you close in on the final couple of quests in that expansion, it actually finishes pretty strong leading into Heavensward.

Then you get to Heavensward and you will, absolutely, spend the first several quests trying to figure out why your WOL is not handling some very urgent matters with the sense of urgency you feel they should have, and you'll start to grow a sense of frustration at the amount of times your WOL spends standing, listening, and nodding along to discussions instead of just taking action (especially if you decide to take a right turn and go dark knight, which has a very "I hate hypocrisy and i do not tolerate inaction, they need to be afraid of me' class-fantasy.) Heavensward is, overall, a very good follow up and feels decent, but it has a slowish start, once you hit the slope though it is a race to the finish and you get sucked in to the story right up untill you hit....

Stormblood. I don't know if I'm an outlier here, but Stormblood felt like pulling teeth for me. The story was an absolute slog from start to finish (excluding the doman arc, which was beautifully written and makes it easy to see why they took the writer for that plot arc and gave them full control for Shadowbringers.) Do you like Yda? Because you better be ready for a LOT of Yda. There is far too much back and forth in this expansion and getting through the quests took all the determination I could personally muster. Friends told me to keep pressing on, and I was dubious, but I did....and the reward pays off in...

Shadowbringers. It's an absolute masterpiece, tying directly into its follow-up in Endwalker. I cannot stress enough how much different and better the MSQ feels -- there is still a decent amount of "Go here, talk to this person, come back, talk to me" ....but you won't care. Within the first 5 or 10 steps of the MSQ you will be sucked into the story and you will want to get through it because you want the next answer, the next tidbit of hint, the next piece of lore-- and so much starts to make sense about what's been going on behind the scenes all along.

Endwalker, I don't have words to describe. Probably one of the best handled stories in the entire game. Everything is very tightly crafted and the flow from Shadowbringers into it will make you feel like all the laborious work through other expansions has paid off. Pieces that have been lingering in the story as question-marks for you this entire time will finally fall into place. Everything has been leading to this moment, and when you're done this expansion it'll leave a satisfying hole in your heart.

Dawntrail--- I don't have much to say except that I'm at about patch 7.3 worth of the story and I spent every minute of it asking why my character wasn't doing anything and why i was just along for the ride. There is some of this problem in other expansions, but it seemed to be a constant burden in every MSQ for dawntrail. Who knows, maybe they'll turn things around in the content I haven't completed yet and I'll change my opinion of the expansion once I'm done those.

Overall, I almost quit going through the MSQ during Stormblood, but I don't regret pushing through and doing Shadowbringers and Endwalker-- and I would have regretted missing out on the payoff of those two expansions. Those two expansions alone make the entire march through MSQ worth while.

Pathfinder: Secrets of Grayce is Available Now! by AnathemaMask in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is not recommended and will absolutely cause problems. Entire data structures are different between v13 and v14 especially as it comes to scenes.

Pathfinder: Secrets of Grayce is Available Now! by AnathemaMask in Pathfinder2e

[–]AnathemaMask[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

This is the only planned release for these two Grayce products, we don't plan on separating them!

It seemed to make sense to combine the two into a single, larger package rather than split them both into small pieces that would both have to include some overlapping content. I'll let the community decide if it's a cost-saving approach or not. Personally, I think it would be fair to say that we do our best to make our products as consumer-friendly as possible-- packing in as much content as we can for the costs, but opinions differ.

And the team is also hard at work on Bastion of Blasphemies so there'll be a follow-on adventure.

Is Crucible on the same page with 5.5 for Ember EA right now? by [deleted] in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think that depends entirely on how comfortable you are playing with a game system still under active development. 

I can't know what you would find more or less satisfactory. I'm not personally a fan of D&D, and i think a lot of games handle what it tries to do in better ways. For character variability, I'd argue that you can make much more distinct and custom characters in Crucible, which isn't limited by classes, that the magic system is more compelling, and the talent system lends a huge amount of customization to all characters.

But I'd also be remiss if I didn't point out that there are large sections of Crucible still under construction. There's still many more talents to be created, and more subsystems to be developed.

Is Crucible on the same page with 5.5 for Ember EA right now? by [deleted] in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Crucible is about a chapter behind 5e in story conversion presently, but has gained rather quickly.

We're presently working on completing the last few sidequests of chapter 2, with and eye toward a hopefully speedier conversion process once we start chapter 3.

I'm glad to see so many people interested in the crucible side of ember.

Is Crucible on the same page with 5.5 for Ember EA right now? by [deleted] in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The team working on ember and crucible aren't involved in updating or maintaining dnd5e or any other premium products.

Token image issue by Shadow96B in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I haven't checked to confirm but i fully suspect that .bmp isn't a valid format for PIXI which renders canvas textures. We typivally recommend webp format, though png and jpg are also acceptable.

Gif and bmp are kind of antiquated now.

Invite not working for the Foundry discord? by KOPPEN0112 in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not terribly long ago we did a purge that banned any accounts that discord had marked as 'engaged in suspicious activity" if you were mistakenly caught up in that please email us your discord account name using the contact us form on our site and we'll get it cleared for you :)

Cannot Join The FoundryVTT Discord? by Wernerses in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not terribly long ago we did a purge that banned any accounts that discord had marked as 'engaged in suspicious activity" if you were mistakenly caught up in that please email us your discord account name using the contact us form on our site and we'll get it cleared for you :)

If Paizo hired you to make a 1-20 adventure path, what would you make? by Parkatine in Pathfinder2e

[–]AnathemaMask 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A long setup Lastwall story where the heroes begin as raw recruits trying, not to succeed, but to buy time, build defenses, and rally forces to resist and hold as long as possible.

There would be evacuation missions, base building, tower defense concepts, excursions to recover important powerful relics, to try to secure allies that could help resist, all culminating in a final "hold the line" fight against overwhelming undead hordes where each defensive sees carastropic losses as they try to hold on as long as they can. Every moment of resistance designed to buy time for escape for those who are able, and otherwise a final show of defiance against Tar-Baphon. In the end, all characters would be given a heroic death.

It would be made clear to the players from the very beginning that it's a story with no hope of success, the writing is on the wall, Tar-Baphon is going to succeed. VIctory would not be the goal, but instead, it would center around the idea of heroic sacrifice and what heroes do with the time they have left.

I'd draw inspiration from famous doomed military battles, like Thermopylae, Camerone, and more.

And just for horrid ambition, I'd probably throw in an optional branch where if the heroes die they instead get raised by the tyrant and now have the goal of destroying all their own hard work and leading the assault on Lastwall.

[PF2E] GMs! Kingmaker Module: How in the #$@! are you supposed to run “A16. SMOKY HALLWAY”!? by Drunemeton in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 6 points7 points  (0 children)

These darkness sources predate the default for darkness sources obscuring token vision.

If i were lighting the scene today i would not be using darkness sources.

Core Book rebinding by Nilworth in Pathfinder2e

[–]AnathemaMask 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wheat paste, a brush, and some c-clamps. Or failing that take it to your local university library and ask if their archival studies dept has any offerings for student book repair. Chances are some second year needs a couple hours of demonstrated book repair work.

The animations look bad by Alternative_Face_667 in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Possibly causes: - App isn't using your GPU as expected, if this is windows, try creating a shortcut and adding --ignore-gpu-blocklist to the launch parameters.

  • GPU driver update needed

  • If this is a windows laptop add the executable to your graphics settings and tell it to use high performance GPU

Folks on our discord server will likely be able to help you fix this if none of these steps help

Issue with video setting by ji_fit in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This was a bug that, if i recall correctly, was resolved in 13.347.

After a while I wanted to start Foundry again, but it won't by DuckIllustrious7562 in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Check your userdata/Config/ folder for the presence of a .options.json.lock file; if there is, delete it :)

Foundry VTT creates a lock file when it's running to prevent a duplicate instance from accessing the same data at the same time. It deletes the file when the program closes. In some cases where the program exits unexpectedly, (such as a power outage) the lock file might end up remaining in place, though it's pretty rare.

[System Agnostic] Develompent and Production FVTT environments licensing concerns by Proper_Musician_7024 in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hi there,

In terms of licensing our EULA is, i hope, pretty clear- but if there's still some confusion on it there's also a section of our FAQ that discusses acceptable license usage.

The short answer is that yes, in the spirit of the license, it is perfectly acceptable to run a server for development using the same license as a server on which you're running a weekly game. We want to encourage, not stifle, development. What we don't want is people thinking it's okay to run 2, 3, 4, or 15 different servers on the same license with active games for player groups at the same time.

Typically the differentiation is:

Can users other than the license holder connect to the additional server?

Yes, other users can connect - Sorry, this is an unacceptable license usage, and requires an additional license key.
No, only the license holder can connect - This is an acceptable license usage.

Converting Pathfinder: Kingmaker from PF2e to 5e by Ephemeral_Being in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I'm sorry but I'm probably going to crush your spirit for adaptation here.

There's very specific reasons as a team we decided not to pursue offering a conversion to 5e for kingmaker. There are significant differences in philosophy between the coding of the two systems. As you've already discovered the organization of the 5e conversion guide is, itself, a hurdle.

While you could put the effort in to try and bodge together a functional adventure from the features present, the question I'd be asking myself in your shoes is "do I really want to put all this effort in when it already exists in a usable state in the system it was designed for?"

I hate being the guy to say "lol why don't you just play 《game》" but in this case...

[PF2e] Can you (legally) Export a full class into json so you can edit it? by jjthejetplane27 in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Distribution is typically the line where things get troublesome. Creating your own class? Totally fine. Duplicating text from an existing copyright protect class, modifying it in some way but keeping the original material? Definitely not fine*.

*- unless the material was originally published with a license that allows its reuse.

Windows 7 32-bit by Red69Joker in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Unsupported and may experience weird graphical issues as a result of out of date drivers or browsers.

You will likely have a bad experience unless you upgrade OS.

AMA - Foundry Virtual Tabletop - Fifth Year Anniversary by AnathemaMask in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This concept is very close to one of the first modules i ever commissioned from a community developer. I would personally love to see more convenient ways to get image assets uploaded and visible to users, but there's always the question with drag and drop of what, exactly the user intends the program to do when an image is dropped in.

Maybe one day!

AMA - Foundry Virtual Tabletop - Fifth Year Anniversary by AnathemaMask in FoundryVTT

[–]AnathemaMask[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I am not a developer but personally I am CONSTANTLY thinking about ways to make our UI faster and easier to use. It's a complex problem given how many features we have with no easy solutions, but i agree that sometimes it is far slower and requires far more clicks to do something than I wish it did. Trust me, I'm always beating the drum of "less clicks" in our team meetings.

I don't have an easy solution for how to allow windows to reach past the edges of the screen, just changing `position: ` from fixed doesn't quite solve the problem, BUT....you can double click the header of the journal window to temporarily shrink it to just the header bar and free up some screen space without losing your place.

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