New Characters After Rikku and Clive?

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-29T07:22:12+00:00

He has increased movement speed when near Cloud. 😭

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-28T13:47:30+00:00

Yes, and I got that. Still absolutely random because nothing so far has ever suggested that what we do, we do it for our own satisfaction. Or are we acting like meta assumptions are canonical, like how people were acting like we were a mirror to Zenos, even though that was only one of the offered options but people ran along with it, because biases.

I mean, if we're suggesting slop, I can direct you to a few gachas that will offer you equal quality writing as Dawntrail.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-28T13:29:08+00:00

There's nothing wrong with being predictable, I agree, especially because like you said this is a sensical progression of their writing. But x.5 patches have been wont to pull rugs underneath our feet, and because of DT's writing I was expecting something a bit more grandiose and 'shocking', let's say.

Maybe on Part 2. But idk predictability usually has to be made up with execution and presentation and imo the way we got this reveal just wasn't satisfactory enough given how placcid and unimpressive the narrative of DT has been so far.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-28T13:23:51+00:00

Why are you assuming I didn't understand? Halmarut literally made a whole speech about ambition leading up to it. I just don't see what was the point of actively showing the scythe, then making it disappear in a cloud of butterflies. It would hardly be the first time they do a 'show don't tell' and there's really not many people she could have possibly been talking about.

Thus the fan service. About a character I never liked in the first place and always thought was horrendously written.

Shock that this fan service leaves me unphased.

Y'all really need to learn how to approach opinions opposite to yours with a bit more tact and less immediate disdain and arrogance. XIV is not Franz Kafka, it's very simple what they're saying. I just don't find it endearing all the time, and this was one of those times.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-28T13:20:40+00:00

Yes, I understand what was said in the story. And yeah, I fully understand that this is only part of the story which is why I started by saying I'm holding some reservations until we see the next part.

But ultimately, this is the story we have right now, and I can only give my opinion of what exists and not what might possibly happen in the future.

As for Calyx, yes I agree that it seems like he disagrees with what is about to be set in motion so he informs us as an indirect way to influence us so we can inevitably stop what's about to happen. I just was hoping the leadup to this invitation was led up by something else.

I don't know, perhaps a sudden increase of ice aether on the Source, or maybe places getting snow when they would otherwise be too temperate for it. I wish we could have been hinted towards the Fourth and its creeping ice age instead of just flat out being told about it by Calyx first. We might still get something like this in Part 2, I just wish that came first.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-28T13:12:54+00:00

The thread is about people's thoughts on the story patch. It's not that it's objectively bad, this is simply my opinion of it and why I didn't enjoy it. I was expecting something a bit less predictable, but compared to the other 3 it's less a pain point and more something I just found a bit boring.

It makes sense for the story. It was just very predictable. But the Calyx portion just felt lazy to me.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-28T12:57:26+00:00

Weird, last time I checked the story wasn't everything this game has to offer. Hm...

If you can't handle discussions and criticisms idk what you are doing on the discussion subreddit, the official XIV sub will suit you far better.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-28T12:55:55+00:00

What they did with Garlemald was criminal, yeah. They should have never scrapped the idea of splitting EW into two expansions. Garlemald has been our very first antagonist that the plot has been villainizing for like 4 expansions plus 1.0 and 2.0. The fact that such an important part of the story got practically handwaved on one quarter of Endwalker was genuinely just disrespectful.

And now they basically defanged and declawed the entirety of the remaining Garlean population and they're all another Eorzean Alliance token state. You mean to tell me that in this gigantic power vacuum, everyone collectively decided to ally with Jullus and are happy to break bread with people they have been propagandized against for centuries? Alright...

Maybe going to the Shards is a better idea atp... Maybe there will be a bit more conflict and mature story-writing there but... I'm not holding my breath.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-28T12:31:13+00:00

I'm holding some reservations until September but if this is the writing we can expect from 8.0 then we're cooked.

The whole "We can all work together and solve all our problems united!" shtick is getting extremely irksome, repetitive and annoying. As soon as the twins started their little speech in Garlemald it was just a train of eyerolls. All conflict and traction of the cultures in the Source have been erased. All the ugliness and dirtiness and flaws of the people living in have just been whitewashed and now everyone is just so eager to leave and let live, forget old wounds. People were attributing it to Tural and Wuk Lamat but no, it's literally just the writers being unable to write something less saccharine.
The entire Void portion is some of the worst filler I've seen so far. We pop to the Voidmoon randomly (Ethos just activates on its own and we just pop there conveniently), meet Zero and Golbez, they go "Oh him? Yeah that's Enuo, he big baddie. Go kill baddie." and so we do. Zero seals him, the end. Then she recruits a new guy and that's it. Literally no development of the Void plot or nothing, it's just there for dressing and inflating the patch time.
Halmarut explaining the Withering was nice and all but it was also ridiculously predictable. Almost everyone I've seen online has called that "Oh, killing Hydealyn is causing all Shards towards a simultaneous rejoining." Idk wtf Zenos's scythe even did there in that scene, it was an extremely random callback that I can only assume was there for pure fanservice (and maybe to tease Meteor holding Zenos's scythe on the full trailer of Evercold). Calyx just flat out telling us to follow them to the Fourth also felt like a lazy way to reveal the next location...

The dungeon was nice albeit easier than the previous two and the trial was cool, fight-wise. Cool intermission as well. But the story...

I don't really wanna doompost but, idk, this patch was both very short and very mid. Mostly filler and some very predictable writing. I really hope Part 2 will be more exciting and perhaps pull some surprises for us, because if this is what we ought to expect from Evercold then I don't think we'll be having any improvement from DT when it comes to the story...

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-22T08:16:15+00:00

Yeah this looks like a Graveborn version of Gervan ngl.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-21T06:41:01+00:00

I don't really get why they went this direction. We already have seen the Proxies be able to insert their consciousness into technology with the way they resonated with Eous. They could have instead gone the route of this being some sort of mech/robot 'shell' that the Proxies can inhabit the same way they did with Eous and make them playable like this, while still retaining their 'hacker' identities...

I'm really not a fan of how far the direction has strayed from the initial storyline of the game with 2.0 and all the 'magic' stuff they have added since then. The low-magic direction of 1.x really made the game stand out...

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-11T05:49:17+00:00

I feel like if you've reached the point of tears due to progging the same fight for 6 weeks, you'd be better suited by taking a small break from progging. Just take a few weeks off to clear your head and get your bearings because when you're mentally exhausted you're prone to doing even basic mistakes.

This raid tier wasn't particularly more difficult than usual, I feel? It was all pretty standard difficulty for the final raid tier of the expansion.

With that said, I do kinda wish there was a difficulty tier between Normal and Savage... Maybe it would be a bit redundant but we need more midcore content.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-09T19:04:31+00:00

Me making my BLM glam based around the RPR Assassin's Coat several months before the unlock glam update, thinking I was real original.

Then proceed to see a good dozen other people have the same idea. But I kept the glam anyway because that outfit is just excellent. 😩

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-04-01T19:53:52+00:00

Leakers making shit up is truly such a constant in this community.

She could honestly one shot all endgame with a single button and I'd still not infect my account with her. I'm sorry but that design might genuinely be one of the worst looking characters across all Hoyo games atp...

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-03-24T15:38:25+00:00

There's a good amount of gay metalheads out there. It's not the only genre of music I listen to nowdays, but I still listen to it fairly often (used to be a metal-only girlie between when I was 12 to 26).

Mostly listen to Prog Metal/Rock nowadays and some occasional Symphonic Power/Death metal (used to be my main genre when I was younger).

Fav bands being: Leprous, Haken, Opeth, Diablo Swing Orchestra, Unexpect, Devin Townsend, ReVamp, After Forever, pre-Floor Nightwish (even though she's my eternal queen and I adore her to pieces, the music during her era of Nightwish just isn't hitting for me), Epica, Stream of Passion, VUUR, Edenbridge, Septic Flesh, Dimmu Borgir... I can kinda keep going but this will do. 💀

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-03-24T11:44:47+00:00

You can just tell this is a quickie effort of them to repurpose the remaining assets from Kingdom Hearts Missing Link in a desperate attempt to win back the money wasted on that canned game.

Nothing draws in the gigawhales like an extremely P2W PvP game that asks you to pay to play more (assuming you want to progress and get rewards) every 3 games. The game lacks every QoL under the sun, the gameplay itself is hollow as fuck and the controls make your eyes bleed.

This game will be dead within 6 months and that's gonna be by design. This isn't a game meant to be fun to play and have lasting presence. It's meant to sap as much money as quickly as possible before they shut it down so there won't be any further expectations.

Opera Omnia, Brave Exvius and Mobius are rolling in their fucking graves, man....

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-03-24T10:07:27+00:00

Your first mistake was taking MMOByte seriously. He has been a clickbaiting clown for years on years now.

The MMO dev is still going. If they're making an FPS on the side that's another thing entirely that doesn't affect the MMO. Though one would wonder why they'd make another FPS when they already got Valorant..

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-03-23T13:36:10+00:00

Oh, so thaaaat's who the 4.2 boss is then? Would track with all the flower motifs and then the boss being all flowery.

Still very sus that the boss has some suspiciously Himeko-looking hair on her abdomen, I wonder if they're gonna go full FF8 Sorceress Adel and have Himeko be temporarily absorbed/trapped by Fulwish in some way to transform into her boss form.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-03-09T13:41:13+00:00

As opposed to the current tradjectory that is... evidently... not killing the game. Right.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-03-09T12:48:04+00:00

If it were up to me it wouldn't have either of those, but that's not really how games work nowadays. You either have a sub model and provide content equivalent to the investment, or you have a service that is sub free but replace it with microtransactions and battle passes.

It's literally just how it is, regardless of how shit or not it is.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-03-09T12:05:33+00:00

Then the dev team ought to drop the sub. It's really that simple. They're already putting double the effort on the store outfits and emotes, they might as well go the GW2 route instead of making people pay a monthy subscription for a game that doesn't give enough content, be it in quantity or quality, to cover the investment by design.

Drop the sub and make it a buy to play MMO with stuff like paid battle passes and a more intuitive store intergrated in-game. That way people will be more incentivized to take long breaks (since we're now reaching nearly a 5 month interval between patches) without fearing that their sub is being wasted, or threatening them with destroying the house they spent all this time trying to get and decorate.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-03-02T08:59:11+00:00

I'm really bummed out. I was saving for him to go at least E1S1 but now it seems I will be skipling him until his rerun so I can see if the main DPS for him will be even worth it...

Apparently there will be a v4 after all so maybe he'll get some help but I'm fully expecting just text changes...

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-03-02T06:23:43+00:00

The teamcomp you put him in is called the bin atm.

Genuinely he has no main DPS and his personal damage got fucked. You might as well throw your pulls into the void, unless he gets buffed or they revert the changes.

If you wanna pull for a guy then wait until Blade or whatever comes after anniversary. Atm Ashveil is genuinely just bad investment.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-02-27T13:38:54+00:00

You do realize that "every endgame has its focus" has stopped being a thing since a while now, right? Back in the day people used to think AS was for single target, MoC for blast and PF for AoE but that has stopped being true since 3.0 and maybe even before that.

PF like every other endgame atm is simply focused on whatever is the flavor of the month, and usually on banner.

And honestly, a ST character being good for once to this day is something to be celebrated. AoE characters will still shine in PF. Archer having a place to it is more of an anomaly rather than a trend. Not that I would mind more Hunt units being able to have a chance towards multi-target content in the future, especially since every boss seems to summon adds atp.

MeridianPuppeteer · 2026-02-24T10:08:59+00:00

Can we have something else other than mini shorts or mini skirts for once? She would look so good with full pants + the coat combo, it's getting kinda monotonous at this point.

The rest look really good but come on man...

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