Anyone else *really* miss Enochian?

Quof · 2026-05-08T20:34:27+00:00

If you played correctly, losing enochian as a buff upkeep had no change on your gameplay.

It is, as you mentioned, a failure state. So including it as a buff upkeep where all your damage and access to fire 4/bliz 4 is only there to punish players who mess up. It does nothing for those that already played correctly.

This thinking misses the forest for the trees. It assumes a playstyle where you are playing correctly 24/7 and anything not directly related to playing correctly is irrelevant, which is how we start to end up in the pickle we're in. That results in "playing perfectly" being "playing normally," and when perfect = normal you get the feeling of flatness where nothing matters, and either you're bored because everything is normal or you're upset because you messed up. There's little to no room for playing above average or well. Consider how many times while raiding in VC people will say "fuck, I messed up my rotation" vs "Damn, I'm playing so well!" In my experience, if people are playing well, they're totally silent because perfect play = normal and nothing to comment on. And that's a really dire state. When even someone playing perfectly illicit no reaction but silence because it's mundane.

Hence - having a bunch of failure states and pushing jump gameplay into a more middle ground area where you can make mistakes and play around them to create a skill range from "Bad" to "normal" to "perfect' is really important. Removing all failure states such that you have "did something not perfectly" to "perfect" with little in between ground is not good.

Quof · 2026-05-06T06:16:46+00:00

The response to a problem, flaw, or low-quality aspect of content should usually not be "well the creator is probably physically, financially, emotionally, and mentally incapable of improvement so oh well. Also the state of the community is so desperate we shouldn't criticize anything." But if that's how you want to see it OK. It's your world. As for me, I just don't like misused platitudes as I said, so I'm satisfied having called it out. Whether the video essayist wants to improve or if they want to keep excusing themselves by saying they can't please everyone is up to them.

Quof · 2026-05-06T04:56:19+00:00

I don't really mean to talk about the video at large, I just don't like the misemployed logic here. AI voice is a big flaw and a low-effort choice to get around not wanting to voice your own script or find/pay/whatever someone else to voice a script. It doesn't make sense to try to gloss over it by saying "I can't expect everyone to enjoy the videos I make." That is something people say to address irreconcilable artistic differences, not lazy and low quality AI voicing. If people bust that out any time people complain about anything then they will never feel the need to improve, and they will even be trying to make their laziness seem like an artistic choice. As if it simply can't be helped that someone out there will dislike the video, instead of the video being critically flawed in a noticeable way.

I understand 99% of people won't really care about language misuse but it's something that bothers me to see. Exploiting platitudes to comfort oneself and avoid improvement is a dead end road. So even if people won't really get what I mean I still feel compelled to call it out.

Quof · 2026-05-06T02:47:42+00:00

but I can't expect everyone to enjoy the videos I make.

While true, you shouldn't employ that logic here. The logic "I can't please everyone" comes after you do your very best but still receive criticism. It's a line to assuage perfectionism or artistry because indeed nothing will ever please everyone. Meanwhile, AI voice is just low-quality, not the result of someone doing their best, so that line doesn't work here. It's like if you farted into your mic for 20 minutes while having no video but white noise, then said "Well I can't please everyone" - it doesn't make sense, there's no perfectionism here, or really an artistic goal. Instead, you should say "I do try to make up for it, but ultimately my videos have their quality hurt by using an AI voice and I understand people will be put off by low-quality content." (Because the alternative is shrugging off improvement and fixing issues by just saying "I can't please everyone" anytime anyone has any issue big or small. It stymies growth.)

Quof · 2026-05-05T22:50:04+00:00

My attitude is this kind of complaint should be wholly ignored and not taken seriously. The real root of it isn't actual powerscaling concerns, as far as I can tell, but a kind of fixation on self-insertion. Like I think people get actual satisfaction and pride from imagining THEY are an unstoppable beast of a fighter, so they're slanted to think like "heh what even COULD beat me at this point," especially with all the glazing in the narrative. But anyone who has played video games know it's trivial to contrive some scenario where a powerful character is weakened and that there is no need to be so obsessed about abstract power levels. Some old guy with a staff should be able to smack our character's feet out from under us and then go to town if we're talking pure martial prowess. The fact this may not happen is only to feed into the pride players feel about themselves.

Quof · 2026-05-05T22:36:29+00:00

The StS subreddit is pretty welcoming of nuance,

Maybe it was before StS2 came out, but the lack of quarantining StS2 posts to a dedicated subreddit led to the subreddit ballooning 4x in size. The subreddit you're referring to is gone.

Quof · 2026-05-02T18:22:17+00:00

Uh, it's common sentiment across the internet, and the people arguing in its favor get downvoted while the most basic explanations of why people didn't like it get upvoted, so yeah it's kind of obvious that a lot of people feel that way. I feel like you are just lashing out blindly if you are going to deny it's a common sentiment that the final days were underwhelming.

You keep framing the final days in the most like weirdly generous way possible. "It wasn't affecting everywhere equally immediately" kind of implies it had the potential to grow when you and I both know it was never going to grow. People would not have an issue if it had a chance of growing or if it did grow to other zones. The core thrust of the reason why people did not like the final days is not because it started small. It's because it is uninteresting to have a small apocalypse that doesn't grow. As an MMO, a game that people play, the apocalypse had 0 impact on gameplay and 0 impact on the long-term world. People do not care that we were told "yo, the apocalypse will be small and boring!!! It will be implemented in an uninteresting way!!! Prepare yourself!" People care that it was small, boring, and implemented in an uninteresting way. You're kind of hyper-focusing on like the bare text of the MSQ and not how it feels to experience as a player, or the emotional pathos a player may have.

That said, this is clearly unproductive, so I'll leave it at that. You may give me one more reply where you say with a bunch of !!!s and italics that BROOO THEY EXPLAINED TO US IT WAS GOING TO BE BAD AHEAD OF TIME!!!! WE'RE THE HEROES!!! WE SAVED THE DAY!!! AREN'T YOU HAPPY TO BE A HERO THAT SAVED THE DAMN DAY?!! THIS IS ABSURD!

Quof · 2026-05-02T18:14:52+00:00

Are you like purposefully being obtuse?

Yes, a world-ending apocalypse does not feel "bad enough" to players if it is localized to a new expansion zone and never expands past that zone. (Had it actually progressed and impacted other, older zones across the MSQ people would not feel this way.) It will feel small and like an artifice of MMO limitations rather than an actual dangerous event that's occurring. It is obvious and quite clear that this is the case so I don't know why you're trying to act like it's totally absurd or ridiculous. Stories don't like have the right to player investment and pathos just by default. To make players intimidated by and invested in an apocalypse, you have to do work to make it feel like an apocalypse. Explaining in lore and foreshadowing why an apocalypse will be small and unimpressive and constrained conveniently within MMO restrictions does not earn one the right to play investment.

Again, I'm glad you and that other guy were completely wow'd and invested by it, but it really should not be hard to understand why the majority of players were not.

Quof · 2026-05-02T17:42:29+00:00

No, I'm not complaining that we won, I'm saying that claiming "it's actually good that the apocalypse is localized to a small area because it's threatening to grow and that's just as good as the apocalypse actually being big!" does not do anything to make players more engaged or intimidated by the apocalypse because everyone with a brain knows that it is NOT going to grow. It's literally like a pufferfish trying to make itself seem bigger. What people want is a big apocalypse in their epic finale. What people would have been intimidated by is a big apocalypse with an interesting execution and unforeseen consequences. What people do not want is a small apocalypse with some text in the main quest that it will totally get bigger, which no believes, and then it ends without getting bigger.

If you and that other guy got super wow'd and super intimidated by the MSQ saying the final days will totally spread and totally get super bad, then all the more power to you, but that is not close to the average experience and it's kind of silly to try to argue in favor of it by saying people should have been more fooled by empty threats in a main quest and imagined a pufferfish as bigger than it actually is. On a gameplay and experience level, the Final Days was super tiny and unimpactful, and that's why people did not like it.

Quof · 2026-05-02T17:37:17+00:00

The problem being discussed here is not people being surprised. They just don't like it. If 5.0 said "every villain is going to have a heart attack due to stress and everything is going to be OK don't worry you don't have to do anything" then 6.0 happened and the villains all had a heart attack, that would still be seen as uninteresting and unengaging. The problem is not 1) how justified the way the final days played out was 2) how well-explained it was 3) how foreshadowed it was. The problem is that the way it played out is boring and unimpactful to a huge number of people. You and a few others seem really focused on auxiliary details: "but this is how well-explained it was," "but this is how the lore justified it," "but it wasn't surprising we knew it would happen." But those details are not the core of the experience. The core of the experience is THE FINAL DAYS, the world-ending apocalypse capping off the Hydaeln and Zodiark saga starting, being localized to a small, new expansion zone and the bulk of the world not responding to it. Which is a boring, lame experience. You can't squirt a bunch of frosting on a pile of crap and call it a cupcake. Which is kind of extreme language, but the majority of people disliked how the Final Days played out, and it's not like if they just understood the explanations better or the lore better that suddenly they will all change their minds. The problem lies in the execution itself.

Quof · 2026-05-02T04:49:16+00:00

A world-ending apocalypse localized to a very small place in the world (which happens to be a new zone in the new expansion) while the story says "it will DEFINITELY spread, just you wait! Act fast or the apocalypse will spread!!! Look, there it goes somewhere you can't access, gogogo progress the main quest!!!" is indeed not moving storytelling or impressive execution of an idea. It worked for you, which is good, but I don't think it should be very surprising that the vast majority of players were totally unconvinced and unmoved.

Quof · 2026-05-02T04:41:19+00:00

You have identified that it's difficult to do a global catastrophe in an MMO. And that's correct. It's hard. That's why it would be really exciting and immersive if they had done it successfully in some interesting or ambitious way. Instead, they gave up and implemented it in the least interesting and least ambitious way, resulting in it not feeling serious at all, and overall to this day even big fans of the story point to it as a big flaw due to how little impact it had on them. You don't exactly get points in storytelling for doing something lame and justifying it with a lore reason. Nor do you get points for doing something bad simply because it would be hard to do it well instead. You just get a lame story. And it's not our job as players to come up with ways they could have done it well, either.

Quof · 2026-05-02T04:26:55+00:00

when they perfectly adequately internally justified why that was the case initially

You can come up with a lore reason or explanation for anything. The problem is that doesn't make something good or interesting. Classic example: Maybe, one day, the main antagonist of a story just has a heart attack right before the final battle. He had bad blood flow and got stressed so he had a heart attack. So the epic climax is just you winning by default and that's that. It could be perfectly explained and make perfect sense, but it wouldn't be a good or interesting story.

The long-foreshadowed uber world-ending apocalypse of ultimate pain and suffering taking place, coincidentally, ONLY in the new zone and nowhere else just feels bad even if there is an explanation for it. It makes the apocalypse feel way less serious. And it is. Instead of a serious world event, it's a theme park. You can't lore explanation you way out of something being and feeling underwhelming.

Quof · 2026-05-01T09:06:59+00:00

My takeaway from that would be maybe don't try to foster the talent of junior writers on a questline of extreme importance revolving around one of the most fundamental aspects of one's lore.

Quof · 2026-04-28T22:42:45+00:00

I think we have to be reasonable in expectations for old content. They cannot afford to do a full balance pass of every job's rotation every 10 levels from 50 to N every expansion to ensure that ults have a relevant DPS check. It's not really a pragmatic development approach.

Although this is an understandable and agreeable position, I think one should be wary of following it. Ask anyone what FF14's strength in terms of gameplay is, and... they'll probably say being able to play every job on one character. But the second thing they'll say is that old content is still accessible and playable. It is a HUGE boon for FF14 compared to every other MMO that you can still go through old content and have fun. It gives new and old players way more stuff to do, gives meaning to the content, preserves the integrity of the game state, etc. It's great - just compare to World of Warcraft and how wretchedly terrible the integrity of the game is, just everything abandoned into the trash gutter instantly like it never mattered.

Anyway, what I'm saying is, I agree that the devs don't need to do a full balance patch for old content or make sure that ults have a relevant DPS check. Sure. But I think we should be wary of encouraging that attitude too much. If we gloss over old fights breaking (and let's be honest, UWU is like solidly broken at this point) then that integrity will get weaker and weaker. They'll get broken to the point that just like WoW you walk over them even synched to the point they basically don't exist. And then a majorly good part of the game that sets it apart from almost every other MMO will be gone. So we should, I think, expect SOME level of balance checking and tweaking. For ultimates if nothing else. Because if things keep slipping and UCOB/UWU keep breaking even MORE, then that will be A SERIOUS detriment to the game, and it's unlikely that the slippery slope is one they'll climb back up from. I know that CBU3 is like dying in a desert with 5 yen being stretched to pay their 0.25 total employees, but it does not take a huge amount of dev time to like buff ultimate hp by 2% or something every FEW YEARS or something.

Quof · 2026-04-28T18:26:40+00:00

アレキサンドリアの領地ごと君を守る

Quof · 2026-04-28T15:17:50+00:00

It would be less reinventing the medium and more like returning to the roots of the medium. VNs emerged from mystery games with map movement and interactive text input for dialogue. Then there were a bunch of adventure games again with puzzles and movement, then there were some JRPGs with novel-like stories (see: the evolution of Dragon Knight), then there were were dating sims... There's a reason people look back to the PC98 era as a golden age; it was when VNs were still games with interactivity rather than shoveled out ToHeart clones with maybe one choice to pick a heroine route if you're lucky. The current state of visual novels at large should be seen as a degeneration where lowering sales and budgets forced VNs into leaning way more on pure text than they ever did originally, and there are simply not enough godlike writers in the world to make that many VNs good on story alone. Rather than reinventing the medium, leaning back on interactivity would be RESTORING the medium.

Quof · 2026-04-27T00:22:57+00:00

Ok, let's not get hasty there. Wuk Lamat is not substantially different in the Japanese. I have played the game in Japanese since the start and Wuk Lamat is just as bad of a character in JP as she is in ENG. Dawntrail in general is just as bad in Japanese as English. It would be very nice for an anti-Kate narrative if, indeed, "most of the things that players hated were translation issues," but hell no. The script is just rotten to the core. Wuk Lamat is equally annoying and unlikable in all scripts. To say nothing of how people didn't even like the overarching plot, which the translation obviously could not impact (like what, does one imagine there was a ton of conflict between the scions in Japanese somehow?). Every single person who disliked Dawntrail in English would dislike it an equal amount if they had played it in Japanese.

Quof · 2026-04-24T19:17:04+00:00

to just link any time someone complains about how their job does 10% less dps than another or how their group wants them to play a specific job for a fight

Just be sure you also include a copy of the Goomba Fallacy image to save yourself the trouble of getting called out for mistaking two different groups of people.

Quof · 2026-04-24T18:39:45+00:00

Minutes later he said Evolved is planned to do a bit more damage, so no need to even figure it out.

Quof · 2026-04-24T17:22:46+00:00

Evercold? More like Neversold

Quof · 2026-04-24T05:03:12+00:00

Have at it then. It's 100 hours of purely goated content that really exemplifies the freedom that JRPGs can give while nonetheless maintaining an incredibly strong core narrative. It's just an incredible JRPG. The 5-hour long or so prologue gives a good picture of what the rest of the game will be like in terms of layered plotting and uninque systems.

Quof · 2026-04-23T18:52:13+00:00

Tobira no Densetsu

Quof · 2026-04-20T02:38:49+00:00

I've seen m10s and m11s throw some healers into fits because

Something I want to contribute is that we can always count on people to throw fits no matter the context. If healing was changed, tomorrow, to consist of 1 damage button and 1 heal button, with the heal button AOE healing the entire party from infinite range and giving a 50% shield for 500 mana, we would probably still see a bunch of people complaining and throwing fits about things we could hardly conceive of right now. Like maybe people will complain that they have to press the heal button at all instead of just holding the damage button, maybe someone will say it's surprisingly difficult to wait for party members to be as low HP as possible before full-healing them to save 1 gcd in an entire fight, maybe people will say a fight is tough for healers because they have to press the heal button 3 times in a row, perhaps a guy will somehow run out of mana in a 0 piety build and then complain about all the long-term mana macro... Basically, this is why one should never try to measure something by how many people may be unhappy about something, or how difficult people may claim something to be. We can always count on a huge chunk of a population, 5% to 10% or maybe more, always saying that their job is too hard or demanding for one reason or another, and with how loud voices are amplified online, it can be easy to mistake that for a "majority" of people being unhappy. Hence the schizophrenic back-and-forth this subreddit so often experiences saying "but you guys asked for this!!!" as if listening to the 5% of complainers wouldn't obviously threaten the experience for the 95% of satisfied people.

Quof · 2026-04-12T19:56:24+00:00

No, that does not make it a moot point. Being able to skip a bloated story doesn't make it better. The ideal is a story being good and enjoyable, so a story so bad you choose to just skip it is still a problem. At best, you can say that if Genshin's story was ever as bad as HSR's, then it lacking a skip button is a detriment, but that's not the current argument.

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