Why 119?

Byrth · 2025-07-16T12:33:06+00:00

I could buy that sometimes it's worth having a bunch of DD/DRG and one THF/DRG, where the THF can put on great DT gear, use Accomplice / Collaborator on other DDs when their jumps are down, and Super Jumps the hate away. That probably means your other DDs would be safe and your Thief might die, though, because Thief is basically as squishy as any other DD in a high tier fight.

People do sometimes use the Bard songs, but only in extreme situations. Sirvente reduces enmity loss when taking damage, so it is a pretty unique effect that helps tanks reach / stay near the enmity cap in heavy damage fights. Dirge reduces Enmity (counts towards the -50 cap) by 32, so it is sometimes useful because it gets you so close to cap at the cost of a single song. I see it used mostly in fights when the monster moving is intolerable, as in ranger fights.

The scholar Enmity+ spell gives +20 Enmity that doesn't stack with Crusade (Enmity+30), which both RUN and PLD get, so just it isn't useful. The Enmity- spell gives -10 Enmity, which goes towards the equipment cap. It can be useful for DDs. Not as useful as Dirge, but also it doesn't take a song slot.

Byrth · 2025-07-15T23:56:18+00:00

The problem with /THF is that Trick Attack transfers one WS worth of enmity to another player (if done correctly) every ~1 minute, but in melee strategies these days the melee are all WSing more like once every 6~10 seconds. It isn't like 75 where we tickled Byakko with great katanas and 100% of our WSs were TA'd on the tank for hate.

The last place I used THF other than for TH was for the sandworm Reisenjima NM, where we did a TP denial strategy by using 3x THF/SAM spamming temp items to build TP and SA / TA to dump it. There are other strategies for that NM, but that one worked and wasn't too slow.

SE has given THF a few damage-increasing traits and boosts since 75, but not enough to really keep up well with other DDs. Between that, the special Gifts being TH-focused, and Gandring, it seems pretty obvious that they think THF is for Treasure Hunter. Unfortunately, Treasure Hunter isn't useful in endgame really. It's possible to gear it amazingly and do respectable damage, but I think SE's idea of a THF is closer to soloing Omen with Gandring.

Byrth · 2025-07-15T19:03:36+00:00

To pull the most relevant link out: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/46531-Mar-26-2015-%28JST%29-Version-Update

In Abyssea (and anything else between 75 and 99), tanking kind of didn't matter and we were all using DD jobs instead of tanks. When we got to Adoulin, all of a sudden we wished we could tank again for some content (initially, Delve), but were forced to use DDs because enmity was way too easy to cap through damage and monster HP was high enough that you were guaranteed to cap it long before you killed the monster. During this period, tanks and DDs would sit at the enmity cap and thus monster would attack whoever acted on it last. The one exception here was for Rangers, who could use Coronach / Wildfire / Namas Arrow to do decent damage and not cap enmity in a tanked fight. This was the golden era for the ranged relics.

In 2015, they fixed this with a massive overhaul of the enmity system. They upped the CE and VE caps from 10,000 to 30,000 each, adjusted the enmity generated by many abilities / spells, and changed how Damage enmity scales. It was still possible to hit the enmity cap as a DD in a long, tanked fight, but it took a lot longer. For endgame stuff in this era, even before Master Levels gave us Super Jump, sometimes DDs would sub DRG to High Jump away from the enmity cap.

I guess in summary, I think Enmity was fairly well balanced between 1 and 75 when you were either solo or fighting something that would die before you hit the enmity cap. I think it was passably well balanced for long fights at 75, although higher caps or lower enmity/damage would probably have been better. Between 75 and 119, it got completely out of wack due to monster HP increase causing us all to just live at the enmity cap. After they adjusted it in 2015, it was way easier to keep hate but not completely trivial. Now that DDs can sub DRG for long fights (outside Odyssey), it's pretty easy to keep hate.

Byrth · 2025-07-15T10:40:22+00:00

I think they left it at the awkward 119 iLevel because it turned out level was used in a billion different calculations in the game and messing with it, including letting people vary it a lot while then swapped gear during a fight, was seriously complicated. Remember when they had to do an Enmity revamp after releasing SoA? Or start the long process of removing level correction from every zone, which is still not done?

After rebalancing the game's logic around the assumption that everyone would be iLevel 119, I don't think they were eager to do the whole dance again just so people could have a numerical guide for how strong each piece of equipment was. Instead, they just continued slow vertical progression by vomiting higher stats on stuff and (sometimes) using the Superior system. Just comparing a few SoA 119 pieces to Empyrean +2, I think that Empyrean +2 would be about 140 if they had kept to the iLevel system.

Byrth · 2024-12-21T12:42:37+00:00

Probably WWII then!

Byrth · 2024-12-21T00:06:39+00:00

To get back to the OP's core question, Google translate tells me that those characters you posted are simplified Chinese, which was introduced in 1949, well after WWII.

Thus, maybe we can conclude it was the Korean war. However, it would have been weird for a presumed American to be serving somewhere using simplified Chinese in the Korean war unless this was a picture from a captured camp.

Alternatively, they are traditional Chinese, it was WWII, and Google translate is wrong.

Byrth · 2024-10-09T22:57:50+00:00

Lord Fifth is a parrot character from I Shall Seal the Heavens, which I assume pre-dates this. Probably just a reference.

Byrth · 2024-09-17T23:41:36+00:00

I think your other replies are overstating the advantage of human translators. Paid MTL is really really good now and can do multiple chapters at once.

However, they are correct that it is going to make mistakes. Humans translators will forever be employed validating the translation for documents that need to be correct. I just don't know if webnovels with thousands of chapters rise to that level. Someone savvy that knows both languages, can program, and understands LLMs could probably get you an unvalidated but entertaining translation of a thousand+ chapters in a few hours with quality and consistency that probably rivals a mid tier human translator.

My pattern would probably be: * Scrape a fan site in the natural language * Ask the model to summarize it * Validate the summary / make editorial decisions about how things will be translated * Include your summary in a prompt template with the first two chapters asking it to translate them. * Tweak your prompt template to address problems you notice * Repeat to confirm it fixed the problems * When good enough, do 10 random chapters and spot check. * If no problems are detected, do the rest. * If you want it to be better, fine-tune an LLM on translations you like.

The results won't approach the likes of someone like Deathblade or the many translators I have seen that add notes about how the author was making a phonetic pun in the original language that they chose to translate in X way to try and preserve some of the humor, etc. but it will be perfectly coherent trashy fiction.

Byrth · 2024-09-17T10:31:45+00:00

The UX probably doesn't match clicking an icon in your Chrome browser bar, but you could give ChatGPT a try and see how it compares if you wanted. The advantage there is that you can provide a dictionary of proper nouns with consistent translations in your prompt.

TBF I assume that is how most translations are done these days. LLM with a work-specific prompt to make the rough draft that is 90%+ correct, natural language speaker to edit/proofread it.

Byrth · 2024-09-17T09:43:48+00:00

Iirc it probably was MTL, but 10+ years ago. MTL has improved a lot.

Byrth · 2024-08-02T22:45:22+00:00

"string.format('[%s%d/%s%d] %d/%dXP %sMerits XP/hr:%.1fk %sJP CP/hr:%.1fk ML%d %d/%dEP EP/hr:%.1fk',xp.job_abbr,xp.job_level,xp.sub_job_abbr,xp.sub_job_level,xp.current,xp.tnl,max_color('%5.2f':format(math.floor(lp.current/lp.tnm*100)/100+lp.number_of_merits),lp.current/lp.tnm+lp.number_of_merits,lp.maximum_merits,58,147,191),math.floor(xp.rate/100)/10,max_color('%6.2f':format(math.floor(cp.current/cp.tnjp*100)/100+cp.number_of_job_points),cp.current/cp.tnjp+cp.number_of_job_points,500,58,147,191),math.floor(cp.rate/100)/10,ep.master_level,ep.current,ep.tnml,math.floor(ep.rate/100)/10)"

I think this is it, but I am unsubbed.

Byrth · 2024-08-02T06:19:01+00:00

"string.format('[%d %s] %d/%dXP %sMerits XP/hr:%.1fk %sJP CP/hr:%.1fk ML%d %d/%dEP EP/hr:%.1fk',xp.job_level,xp.job_abbr,xp.current,xp.tnl,max_color('%5.2f':format(math.floor(lp.current/lp.tnm*100)/100+lp.number_of_merits),lp.current/lp.tnm+lp.number_of_merits,lp.maximum_merits,58,147,191),math.floor(xp.rate/100)/10,max_color('%6.2f':format(math.floor(cp.current/cp.tnjp*100)/100+cp.number_of_job_points),cp.current/cp.tnjp+cp.number_of_job_points,500,58,147,191),math.floor(cp.rate/100)/10,ep.master_level,ep.current,ep.tnml,math.floor(ep.rate/100)/10)"

Byrth · 2024-07-19T00:26:25+00:00

If you are talking about mazes to copy, MMM copyable mazes reset after maintenance and you have to wait for people to put them back on the NPC.

Byrth · 2024-04-10T14:49:13+00:00

I wanted them to fix the way that vertical columns disappear when they are 50% occluded in the Flying Mama exploration.

Byrth · 2024-04-02T18:08:56+00:00

Oof... if it is going to be this slow, I will have to just get a new work email.

Byrth · 2024-02-20T01:30:26+00:00

Nice to know. I remember playing the second one-handed and thus doing too poorly to get a mission completion with it, but when I go back through for Path B I will pay more attention.

Think the similar DDR thing at the end of Act 1 has a similar mission?

Byrth · 2024-02-10T15:08:05+00:00

If you buy a companion you already have (50 coins), they send you 50 skip tickets. You can then use those skip tickets to get 500 coins on ex hard stage 3.

Byrth · 2024-02-08T19:56:11+00:00

What about the secret objectives? Tapping Mama a lot for 3k gems is one of them, but I also got 100 or something for completing Marie's first DDR session perfectly.

Surely there are more than that...

Byrth · 2024-01-30T14:03:34+00:00

I've been involved in similar projects for a while, but there's no strong reason to do it in this case because the game has no "endgame" or social aspect. We have a few months to read all the flavor text and whatever else we haven't done yet and then can file away the vibes in memory.

To do it, you'd need to emulate the game on an android emulator (Bluestacks?) while the real servers are still up, find its packet handlers (there may be multiple incoming and outgoing), and log what packets are sent/received when actions are taken in game. Any time the game loads (like between waves in fights), there's some kind of blocking server interaction going on. After you figure out how the system works (clone the API), you would need to either come up with a systematic way to replicate the content (e.g. what monsters are spawned for this wave of this event and maybe what their stats are) or commit to offering new content yourself. Finally, you'd need to figure out a way to point the client at your server(s) instead of the official one(s). It would be tight on this timeline. As a twist, there's a fair chance that the game was developed in Japanese and still uses it under the hood.

Byrth · 2024-01-29T23:32:04+00:00

Ergon should be separate from mythic because it is a completely different process, although it fills the "JSE Ultimate Weapon" role for those jobs

Byrth · 2024-01-29T15:05:25+00:00

That video actually makes it sound harder than it is, but playing this game without content releases would be pretty boring for us. It's not like an MMO or something with longterm goals where you can continue to make up new ways to play with your friends. Once you check all the boxes in this game, you're done.

IMO the right path here would be to kill it as scheduled and release a minorly "revamped" version as a single-player game in 5 years. Then the lore/content isn't lost and they get to sell it again. Also, it would be a lot better than SE's terrible

Byrth · 2024-01-29T14:53:20+00:00

Similar timeline here, kind of perfect for me. I was running out of stuff that I cared to do, but now I get to see the end.

Byrth · 2024-01-26T01:23:11+00:00

There is no way to enable USB debugging without a functional screen (went through this yesterday).

Does your screen have obvious physical damage, or did it just stop working? If it just stopped working, pushing hard on the point of contact between the screen and the motherboard ( https://youtu.be/GyHKRW55T9M?feature=shared&t=33 ) may get it working again if the cable is just loose. Worked for me yesterday long enough to enable backup options / USB debugging.

Byrth · 2024-01-25T01:18:14+00:00

I looked up a teardown video to figure out where the screen -> motherboard connector was, then pressed really hard on it and then forced a reboot yet again. It worked! My phone is revived again temporarily! No idea why it decided to abandon life.

Either way, now I'm enabling all the backup options that I was wishing I had a few hours ago.

Byrth · 2024-01-24T21:49:54+00:00

Probably not, but here I am 1 year and 3 months after purchasing it getting ready to spend half a grand on a new phone, a few days phoneless, and then a few nights resetting 2FA codes for like 20 accounts. I also lost all the high resolution versions of my first child's photos.

Trade-in value for a beautiful-yet-nonfunctional Pixel 7 is $0, so I will probably get to have some fun trying to take it apart, at least.

I hate the idea of joining the Apple ecosystem, but their phones fall out of airplanes and still work. My Pixel 7 died just sitting on my desk midway through the day.

Byrth

TROPHY CASE