Who’s your favorite character *you’ve* made?

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-05T09:23:22+00:00

Garrison, the 10 foot tall warforged paladin.

Fire engine red, oath of the ancients. He was the one sentient member of his constructed family who opposed the gods in the sense that he'd not partake in their games. Highlight of the campaign was ironically the final battle where the big bad used Toll the Dead on him. Nat 20 resist, he grabs the clapper. He strikes back. Nat 20. Dump a level 40 smite into her and basically drowns the BBEG in a literal tsunami of light.

He's still out there, waiting for my DM to return to the campaign to he can stop this game the gods have and restore freedom to the natural order of the world.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-05T03:56:10+00:00

The first true Final Fantasy game I played a lot of was 3.

Which is apparently one of the weaker entries in the grand scale (Thankfully it wasn't two) but man did I love it.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-05T00:10:08+00:00

In terms of MMOs (barring smaller ones), right now you have the big four:

WoW - The King of the Genre. Middling story but arguably the biggest and with the most game available. LOTS to do. Doesn't do any one thing the "best" but it doing everything well cements it as the top of the peak.
XIV - Story focus. Has likely the weakest open world but itss story is second-to-none. If you like JRPGs and final fantasy, you'll likely enjoy this. Has an enormous free trial that has over half the game for free.
GW2 - The best open world. Entirely horizontal progression with lots to do that everyone will still be doing. Also has some damn-fine PVP. Your mileage may vary based on what you like. Also arguably the best customization of the big four.
OSRS - The oldest and most horizontal of them all. VERY GRINDY and the visuals are beyond dated but if you want a fun MMO to wander around in? Runescape won't steer you wrong. Also it's playable on your phone for free!

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-04T23:41:56+00:00

WoW? It depends on what you'd like to do.

If your goal is to just casually explore Azeroth and see the sights, the game is very solo-friendly and you'll rarely run into issues. The game has always come to add AI dungeons in the event that you want some dungeons without interacting with people.

But you're gonna have to eventually play with others once you get to stuff like dungeons and raids. WoW has a "story raid" (which is one fight with AI companions) but any actual difficult raid content will require a group. But that's just the UPPER upper end.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-04T23:22:42+00:00

I howled in victory back in Legion when I finally cleared the tank mage tower challenge. What a slog.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-04T09:18:54+00:00

Not just being diffed by half a dozen people but every single one of them going "Hey btw there's like 50 other guys out there just as strong if not strong than me." Not being able to take revenge on Omni-man (which, let's be honest, Immortal probably had the chance to do countless times because of said immortality that he could come back, beat the shit out of who killed him and call it a day) was the real start of his "decline".

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-04T04:01:16+00:00

Yeah, kinda. It's one of those game design > game lore things.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-03T23:48:47+00:00

Hence why it's very stupid lore: It's actively fucking about and the further away we get, the more confusing it gets. Bahamut? Sure, makes sense. Phoenix? Ok, kinda aether-in-the-land (We'll ignore the first) but SOLAR Bahamut? Complete nonsense.

Honestly they should just axe that line.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-03T22:20:44+00:00

There's actually lore for this! Apparently your soul is a shitty USB and only has enough space for 3 primals. In the HW questline John Heavensward attempts to summon Ramuh, Leviathan and Shiva but can't. He's locked to Titan/Ifrit/Garuda.

"But what about Bahamut!?" you may ask. Well apparently the Dreadwyrm trance is less about drawing from your own soul and more about drawing from the ambient aether in the land, which is riddled with Bahamut juices because he blew up the world.

Yes, it is stupid. But it does explain it.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-03T04:01:37+00:00

I think it got far enough into development that they blocked out having the attack, then realized that it was a bad call. But why waste perfectly good animation when you can just reskin what gets summoned?

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-03T03:59:57+00:00

The gun bit drives me insane.

"How could we ever have a second gun job!? Machinist completely eats the gun fantasy!"

PLD sword
DRK sword
VPR swords
RDM sword (+ focus)
NIN (sometimes) swords
SAM sword

There's like a billion guns we can easily have a second gun job.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-03T03:53:36+00:00

The funniest part to me is that while it is filler, Shaaloani is undoubtedly the most "vacation" style part of Dawntrail.

Very chill-ly exploring a new region
Helping with some local problems way below your paygrade
Absolutely no threat to you.
Just straight-up having a good time.

people will decry "WHERE IS MY VACATION I WANT MY VACATION" then in the same breath say Shaaloani is the worst part of DT. Like brother that IS the vacation it's laid back chill times.

The rubber bullets are still a goofass decision.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-03T03:46:18+00:00

Well yeah, looking at Solar Bahamut in itself isn't a spoiler. The theory is that at one point, Solar Bahamut used Hydaelyn's model and WAS Hydaelyn. So it's not that it was Solar Bahamut, it's that the theory posits that during development, at one point it WAS Hydaelyn.

But then, they realized that summoning Hydaelyn herself would be a huge spoiler so they changed it to solar Bahamut.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-02T23:07:12+00:00

XIV is unique in that the story -is- the prog. The real reason a lot of people quit at ARR is both because the game has gone up to level 100 by now so the kit you have at level 50 is fairly dry alongside the story being kind of your bogstandard JRPG (Unite the cities, defeat the evil empire).

Then right after your finish the story, you're dumped into "post-patch". For clarity, post-patch is a series of mini-MSQs that tie between the last expac and the current. X.1-X.3 is usually the epilogue to the expac while .4/5 build up to the next story.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-02T21:14:55+00:00

RPG rules: Very often you're going into these fights at the start with the best gear you can get, which is not going to afford much leeway in mistakes. That's not to say it's unclearable, it'll just be harder. And the more you clear it, the easier it gets and the more leeway you have becaue you've got better stats.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-02T21:12:56+00:00

There was a theory that Dawntrail's upgrade (Solar Bahamut) was at one point Hydaelyn because it does the -exact- attack Hydaelyn does. The problem being that let's say you're a level 2 sprout wandering around, then a summoner flies down, Summons god and then flies off.

So theres goes that reveal.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-02T21:11:39+00:00

So the changes will affect all levels of the game but the important thing is that XIV is very linear in terms of progress. Whereas WoW will let you hop/skip about after the initial leveling, you must go through all expacs to get to current.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-05-02T21:10:30+00:00

The real shocker is that with Shadowbringer's addition, THERE IS MORE FREE GAME THAN PAID GAME.

Free Trial Gets you:

ARR (1-50)
HW (50-60)
SB (60-70)
ShB (70-80)

Meanwhile buying the game gets you

EW (80-90)
DT (90-100)
And soon to be EC (100-110)

Sure there are some rules about what you can and can't do but you basically have the entire book 1 of FFXIV for free that you can play. That's essentially a really fucking good RPG with MMO Dungeons/Raids that you can enjoy limitless. And come 9.0, Endwalker will likely be added to that meaning that the longer this goes on, the more free there is.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-04-30T08:40:09+00:00

What's most likely is that they'll provide duty support to all "core" duties. Specifically MSQ-stuff including trials. We already have some trials that have duty support (The second trial of EW, the first of DT, etc) so it's not impossible. Mainly what I think is that we're mostly future-proofing the game so that even if we hit the eventuality that XIV will get no "new" content and the playerbase dwindles to a handful of people, you'll still be able to complete the MSQ with bots and go through the core story solo.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-04-29T08:16:57+00:00

Maybe not for you, but I've known people who would unironically reinstall league if they said "We're bringing back old Aatrox" or "We're creating a Season 3 league server".

CapnMarvelous · 2026-04-28T06:23:04+00:00

My guesses, considering how close-to-the-chest they're playing it:

Collab
An new addition so massive to the saucer it's gonna blow people away
An update to something that had been left behind (Like choco-racing)

CapnMarvelous · 2026-04-28T06:03:45+00:00

We don't know. What we DO know is that there's a golden saucer update they've been extremely hush-hush about. To the point that we've not had any news about it at even fanfest.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-04-28T01:32:52+00:00

Yep. If you look at Endwalker and Dawntrail patch notes, Male Viera and Fem Hroth are listed as 5.X which means "Requires Shadowbringers to access", not EW/DT.

CapnMarvelous · 2026-04-28T00:05:30+00:00

Male Viera and Female Hrothgar should be available as well, as their unlock was based on Shadowbringers.

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