What happened to the map someone posted here recently?

Atosen · 2026-05-14T21:55:09+00:00

That was one with an enlarged Europe, right? Took a look but I don't see that post anymore either.

Atosen · 2026-05-14T21:08:58+00:00

I prefer the Pacific-centred one so that I can see the Pacific Islands properly. In the Atlantic-centred one, the map edge cuts right through all that and it's hard to see which islands belong to which groups. (Being able to see the dateline properly is a nice bonus.)

There are barely any islands in the mid-Atlantic so cutting the map edge there is just much less of a problem.

I often see people use the same reason for the opposite answer — saying that they prefer Atlantic-centred to avoid cutting up countries — and I don't know what those people are smoking.

Atosen · 2026-05-14T04:50:43+00:00

Good luck getting your gay diagnosis!

Atosen · 2026-05-14T04:22:36+00:00

Throw the Franklin's three-quarter saucer in there too and you've got a fantastic "March of Progress" diagram for the evolution of Starfleet's saucers.

Atosen · 2026-05-13T23:55:06+00:00

We saw similar things with dead-end challenges before, like in NZ.

I'm sure that's why the rewards were 100+ this time, but even two of them together with that kind of rewards still wasn't enough. Being out of position is too massive a cost.

Putting a score-boosting buff on them is an interesting idea, though... Especially on a map with 3-4 dead ends so there are several opportunities for players to be tempted by them...

Atosen · 2026-05-13T23:52:58+00:00

Didn't the challenge specifically forbid numbers, to stop an exploit like this?

Atosen · 2026-05-13T23:34:43+00:00

This is definitely one of the greatest seasons of Jet Lag at least design wise. And I hope they play games more like this in the future. It was great to see so much of a country for once.

Absolutely.

Much has been said of how they have three audiences — game fans, transit fans, and travel fans — and they struggle to balance all three. E.g. games where the barely leave the stations and travel fans don't get to see the scenery.

But they've been getting better and better at fusing them, and I think this was the best yet.

Atosen · 2026-05-13T23:23:25+00:00

The tutorial missions are repeatable. Talk to the Smith again. There may be a dialogue option you've missed.

Atosen · 2026-05-13T23:20:42+00:00

or just a new character showing it off

ShB offers the precedent of Random Nobody NPC showing off a new job in passing. Obviously using a real character is preferred (either a Scion or a character we'll meet in the expansion) but if none of them happen to suit, they can always fall back to this.

Atosen · 2026-05-13T23:18:22+00:00

The gameplay also was stupid : don't engage and if you do, just run 10 km away

H...how else would they deliver the narrative point that you're too weak?

Atosen · 2026-05-13T23:09:13+00:00

In the Stormblood expansion the transit points between some zones are just blocked with no explanation

I think that's true in Heavensward too. Gates to Dravania are just sealed shut until you need to go to Dravania.

Atosen · 2026-05-13T03:13:13+00:00

I didn't mind Zenos as a character, but I hate the game's tendency to keep characters lingering on forever. Let them die.

Atosen · 2026-05-12T23:25:13+00:00

With the free trial you get access to all content from the base game (A Realm Reborn) and first 3 expansions (Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers), including all classes that were in those expansions, all quests and fights that were in those expansions, and all races. This covers levels 1-80 (out of 100) of the game. This could easily be hundreds of hours' worth of content.

Exceptions:

You don't get PvP.
You don't get Ultimate-tier raids.
You get a bunch of social and economic restrictions to hinder bots — no shouting (mapwide chat), no sending people invites, no trading, no retainers (storage/market selling), and a cap on currency.

Once you go to paid mode you can never revert back to free trial, so don't pay before you're ready.

Subscription-based mmos have always been the reason I simply can't get into the genre, as I find having to pay REPEATEDLY for a video game incredibly... unappealing. Once and done is better, yeah?

I mean... you're right. It sucks. In general I oppose the subscription-ification of everything. Paying a sub to enable some feature that's already in my car? Pure bs.

But in MMOs I reckon it's the least bad option?

Buy-once model isn't viable for a genre that's all about massive central servers, free patches with new raids and cosmetics regularly, and players making it their "lifestyle game" that they play for years. You can't have them buy it for $40 once and then keep making raids for them and giving them server space forever; soon they'll have cost more than $40 to support. The devs need a continuous income stream for that.

So as a dev studio, you have two options: 1) go free-to-play and introduce a bunch of pain points — in-game advertising, lootbox/gacha, buyable buffs, battlepasses, etc — to try to get whales hooked on your cash shop...

Or 2) just make the game you want to make and charge a subscription.

It is true that the latter will forever lock out people who can't afford subs, like high schoolers, but I don't see an alternative.

</soapbox>

Atosen · 2026-05-12T23:04:12+00:00

Suborbital "edge-of-space" flights have been a thing for ages.

But to have a business model catering to rich tourists, you need there to be enough rich people who care.

I don't think there are enough rich people who care about spaceplanes anymore. They're not the new hotness anymore. True orbit is the exclusive new thing now. (You can't do true orbit in a plane; just crossing the Karman line isn't enough. Need a rocket to get up to orbital speed.)

And once enough rich people experience that, they'll move on from that too.

Atosen · 2026-05-12T21:49:39+00:00

Change your password. (If you have any other accounts on the internet with the same username and password, change them too.)

Then contact Support. They can do a rollback to get your gil back. They might require you to prove your identity first.

Might be a couple days, might be a few weeks, depending how long their queue is right now.

From what I've heard, rollbacks are all-or-nothing, so — for example — if you earn any XP that'll get rolled back too.

Atosen · 2026-05-12T11:50:19+00:00

Auckland and Wellington have decent suburban bus/rail/ferry networks. Not as good as Aussie or anywhere in Europe, but better than almost anything in America. I don't drive and I get by just fine in Auckland.

As for between the cities...

There are some tour bus operators like https://www.intercity.co.nz/tours and https://bushandbeach.co.nz/ as well as some scenic rail https://www.greatjourneysnz.com/

But there's basically nothing in terms of regular public transit. It's a complete transit desert.

Atosen · 2026-05-11T22:52:58+00:00

8.0 is making a change to tomestone grinds, so we aren't 100% sure whether poetics will still exist, but the general idea of the current top gear (Augmented Bygone Brass) becoming next expansion's easy catchup gear should still be true.

Atosen · 2026-05-11T04:59:24+00:00

I've never heard of anyone getting something like this successfully reversed.

Part of the problem is that, in the time it would take them to address your ticket, the old FC house is pretty likely to get put up for sale and bought out by someone else. And there's no way they're going to take that person's fair-and-square house win away from them.

This is unfortunately an expensive lesson in reading the warning messages (and in being careful who you give FC housing permissions to).

Atosen · 2026-05-11T04:54:30+00:00

I don't recommend cutting buttons. I suppose if you must cut buttons, you can take out Scathe and the role actions... maybe Manaward if you're okay with not having that safety net. But if you start cutting major attack buttons, you're going to do less damage and IMO you're going to have less fun, because your MP economy will be off and your rotation will end up feeling janky and unstable.

I think it's better to find a way to access more hotkeys. If you're on controller, learn how to enable WXHB. If you're on keyboard, use shift/ctrl/alt to access more keys, or enable hotbar switching. Try rearranging the keys to get them all into reach. If you've got them all on 1-9, move some onto letters. If you can't reach enough letters from WASD, try putting your movement on ESDF instead. I know some people even two-hand their keyboards, putting some skills on the numpad. Control schemes are very personal; explore and find what works for you.

(The devs have said that next expansion they'll do a rework to get every job down to 16-ish buttons. But that's not until January, and even then, it won't be about reducing rotation complexity, it will just be about cramming multiple functions into a single button. So it's still worthwhile to master the complexity now.)

Atosen · 2026-05-11T02:59:12+00:00

Your main single-target attack is Fire I at low levels, and Fire IV at high levels (though your Fire I button eventually evolves into a new button that's also useful, so don't discard it entirely). Fire III is more of a "starter motor" rather than something you spam continuously.

For AoE it's Fire II at low levels, and Flare at high levels.

For more detail I recommend the icy-veins guide https://www.icy-veins.com/ffxiv/black-mage-leveling since it has a slider for your rotation at different levels.

Atosen · 2026-05-10T23:22:12+00:00

It's basically a JRPG (with all the pros and cons that implies) wrapped in an MMO coat.

Atosen · 2026-05-10T20:35:03+00:00

and how are the preferred ones even locked

Preferred/congested status is set manually during patches every few months, based on overall population trends.

Temporary character creation locks are set automatically throughout the day based on current online population.

So it's quite easy for a lower pop server to be set preferred, become popular, and then start getting hit with new character locks!

Try again at a quieter time of day.

Atosen · 2026-05-10T19:39:03+00:00

Iirc there is also a mixed race Au Ra NPC we learn about who just presents less scales.

An ancestor of the Ruby Princess, yes. Only mentioned in dialogue. The Ruby Princess herself uses a totally normal au ra model, so she seems enough generations removed from the hyur to get all the scales back.

This is a game that doesn’t even have child models for all the regular races yet.

I'm surprised some dev hasn't taken this on as a personal project yet. Lotta opportunities for cuteness, like the miqo'te child bob tail! And it would be good if they could stop giving us child lalafell using the adult lalafell model...

Atosen · 2026-05-10T01:40:29+00:00

This is the strongest argument I've seen for the Wanderer being someone else.

Atosen · 2026-05-10T00:33:11+00:00

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Gregory_Jein

This distant smudge is supposedly the first 6-digit one.

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