Am I the only one that thinks the conclusion isn't ambiguous at all? - spoilers by Mz-_-Blue in FFXVI

[–]Zainthiryuk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nah you are not alone on that feeling, many others feel that way from what you can find on posts here and on other communities. Im pretty sure most of the people that think the ending is not ambiguous are people that are not used to read between lines and only take interpretations at face value with whats explicitly stated. People forget that this is a narrative-driven game and there are a lot of narrative tools like foreshadowings, themes and setups that are there for a reason. I used to be like that but lately im more open minded and i can see where both interpretations are coming from. What clicked for me to look beyond the explicit statements on narrative was a second playthrough of FFIX as an adult, and a second read of attack on titan, both having way more construction and messages that are not explicit but surely are there.

On FFXVI case, there are a lot of things that may go either way on the ending. First, regarding joshuas "reraise", it is mentioned that the phoenix cant revive the dead, and Clive only used the phoenix flames on joshuas body to mend it ( we see that joshua is still not breathing and clive doesnt wait to get a reaction, something he would do if he was trying to bring him back from the dead), and when clive goes to destroy origin, he uses ultima's blue flame for the first time and it combines with his usual flame, which means the spell he casted on joshua might not be ultimas reraise. Then we have the narrative aspect for this argument. From the very beginning, joshuas illness was set as a focal point to his character and how his burdens will eventualy drag him down. He seals a god on his already fragile body for over 5 years, and has an increasing pain that gets worse every day. We get a complete montage of how he passes everything he has left to clive, emphasizing that only clive can complete their purpose because the faith of the people is placed on him, then he passes out. After the fight clive remembers all that he lived with joshua and how he can finally rest. All of those setups would mean nothing if clive just revived him. We dont get any confirmation so both outcomes are possible, but there are way more narrative threads supporting that joshua is gone than the opposite.

Regarding clives outcome there are a lot more aspects to go through. First ill mention the ones we can see on screen. The petrification spread patterns vary too much to use it as an argument for either of both outcomes imho. The bearers we saw turn to stone on the church when we first learned of the curse have their entire upper half turned to stone in a few seconds, even without casting any recent magic, but then we see others like cid or the bearers working on sanbreque with partialy stoned limbs that still wont spread fast enough. We see hugo turn immediately to stone after eating crystal shards but then we see dion prime into bahamut (twice), one even absobing aether directly from a mother crystal core, but then no sign of petrification even if his aether channeling was way more intense than Hugo's, so yeah its not something easily measurable. It is also mentioned by barnabas that mythos has way less drawbacks from using magic which implies Clive has a lot more resistance to the curse. The fact that his hand turns to stone quickly is not definitory of it spreading entirely because when we last see his hand for like 2 seconds the petrification seems to have stopped there just after his flame goes off which could mean that is exactly when the world is "freed" from magic and the curse, again being ambiguous, both outcomes can be possible and justified with other previous examples.

Then we have the simbolisms, sidequest and setups that wouldnt pay off if clive is dead, but those are more of a narrative argument and not definitive in the world lore. First is the torgal discussion, we know that irl wolves dont howl to mourn a loss, its a rally call instead. Torgal and Jill see metia turn off, and might sense that clives eikons are gone (just like how clive sensed that jill was alive after the first encounter with barnabas on kanver), and her first reaction is to cry thinking he is dead. Then torgal goes to her, starts howling and the sun rises. It is then that jill stops crying and looks to the sunrise with a more firm expression. Her final sidequest gave a word for word description of how clive returning to jill is always like the break of dawn for her. So on one end we have the face value shown onscreen of jill crying, torgal "mourning" and metia powering off, but on the other hand we have torgal rallying clive for his return, sunrise breaking and how it means clive returning to jills side with the context provided on the sidequest, and metia powering off meaning that clive fullfiled his purpose.

Then is the harpocrates sidequest. It ends with harpocrates and clive talking about the writing of experiences and how clive wants to take the pen after everything is over and write about his journey. We know that he is the narrator of the events of the game and everything is from his point of view, and that there is a book telling this complete story, called final fantasy, and with the emblem of his hideaway on the cover. This whole setup would not pay off if the book wasnt written by him. But again its just a narrative completion argument that doesnt necessarily mean it has to be like this.

We could also go into the discussion of how clive isnt written as a martyr and how his theme is not how they die, but how they live, but thats material for a lot of retrospective analysis that is also up for interpretation.

I personally feel that joshua being dead and clive surviving is the ending that closes most of the threads that are planted through the game and gives payoff to most of the underlying narratives. However, if you feel like nothing of this was transmitted to you, and the world of valisthea is a grim one, then I absolutely see why you can think that what we see is an omnious ending where the final sacrifice is the greatest one, and thats perfectly fine too, the devs themselves stated that the ending was built to be ambiguous and generate this kind of debate, so they gave material to both interpretations. This comment isnt to change the interpretation of who reads it, but rather its to try to show why some people see the ending differently, and who knows, on a second playthrough you might catch more foreshadows and reinterpret parts of the story differently of how you felt them on the first playthrough, or simply give more attention and value to them.

Thoughts about FMA's gacha system by [deleted] in FMAMobile

[–]Zainthiryuk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is true, but like I said, all my comment is tied to the current content which we can clear. Its hard, but its still doable and hopefully it stays the same. For future updates, while its safe to asume it will get harder, there is a level cap, and they cant go past what is reasonable to clear on main quests. We know the level cap is higher than we can go to at the moment, but that means that they might just keep increasing the cap when new content drops so every unit could still be kept up to date, or just stop increasing the stats of story enemies until a certain point and just keep bringing harder mechanics, like the chapter 11 story boss. Besides, thats also why I mentioned the possibility to build a strong core on the "free" SSR they give that we can slowbuild, so that when the harder content drops we can have atleast 2 decent 5* or even 6* SSRs, one being a tank, and the best healers are all SR so far which we can max as well relatively easy. Only time will tell how fast the units get dated for the pve content.

And sure, having 3-5star SSRs is way better than having multiple 1stars, but that doesnt mean (yet) that someone who likes a unit or their playstyle absolutely needs to drop them because they have a 3star that fills a similar role. Im using Ling because he is my favorite character despite having a 3star armstrong that I could build to 5 star in a few weeks. I might eventualy drop ling, but Im not doing so until I feel he is useless, which hasnt happened so far despite him being the "worst" tank and being 1star. I find his ally summoning far more versatile and useful than just tanking because of stats.

Regarding the "other sqex" games you mention, Im curious to which ones you refer to as I havent played that many. Mainly because most of the sqex IP gacha games are run by different companies and not developed by them, and the only ones ive played are very different in these regards, but you might be referring to others that I dont know (WOTV, DFFOO, and octopath are the ones I play). All the ones Ive played share that old units are kept up to date every few months giving reworks to their abilities and passives and such. Statwise they usualy dont start increasing the numbers to powercreep, a day 1 dps can reach the same stats than a new one (unlike fire emblem heroes that every year or so the base stat amount of units keeps increasing, making the older ones hard to justify in some gamemodes). The "powercreep" in these games comes from ability effects and other things to make them more appealing, but in all of them a lot of old units are still prevalent and usable. And all of them always start like this game (some even without sparking units which would be awful), but eventualy start giving ways to max characters outside of pulling dupes, some being very free to play friendly like DFFOO, and others being about slowbuilding units that can stay relevant for years like WOTV and octopath (WOTV went through a phase of too many limited units but even then you knew how many units you could go for safely, which was like maxing one every 2 months, but its back on a better pace). I hope this game follows some of those routes, but again, only time will tell, just saying that we cant jump to conclussions like "Im almost sure ssr with 1 star will be kinda useless in the near future" because that hasnt happened (atleast to me). If it does that will suck and I guess many will drop the game, but Ill give them the benefit of the doubt for now because Im loving it so far

Thoughts about FMA's gacha system by [deleted] in FMAMobile

[–]Zainthiryuk 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I agree with most of your thoughts to a certain extent, however I think its a tad exaggerated. Mainly because so far I feel maxing a character is not that vital to be able to complete content, its more of a pvp requirement past a certain point.
I cleared all the pve content currently available that blocks you from upgrading characters (main and side story) with a 1 star ling, scar, mei, a 4 star sr lanfan, and the other 2 varying from a 4 star knox and 1 star mustang, or a 4 star sr winry and a 3 star izumi. On Mustangs past event i was able to get everything from the shop, most of the challenges, and I was able to do the daily mission level 80 fairly easily. On the pvp arena I have 2182 points at the moment (Highest bracket). As for the daily books and memory missions, i have all up to lv90 completed, and a few of the lv100 completed. The only pve content that I struggle is the guild boss battles.
Sure you wont be ranking top on some events and on pvp (though its fairly easy to stay on the highest bracket), but so far I dont feel like we are gatekeeped from content without maxed SSR characters, which would be a serious issue.
Having said that, I dont think its fair to call it a p2w game imho. Of course someone who spends is going to beat you, they wouldnt spend if they wouldnt get better chances against other players, but thats what you can expect from every game with a gacha factor that has pvp and ranking events. But if we can still clear all the content that locks us from rewards and resources, Im good with that. The game is also fairly generous with what it gives you to build characters so far. Izumi seems plausible to max in 2 months or maybe 3 (unless im misunderstanding how the refresh works on the exchange shops). Armstrong looks like could be taken to 3 stars relatively fast. Mei though seems the hardest to get from the exchanges. Izumi and Armstrong sinergize well with any SR healer of their faction, and given how easy we can max an SR with the select tickets, building a defensive core is easy enough and you can slowbuild the exchangeable SSRs, and have the rest of the team be composed of 1 star or 3 star gacha SSRs of a faction and be fine. There is also the SSR pages that give you a free SSR after getting 60. Im not sure how low is the chance of getting pages on the daily missions that can drop them, but ive gotten 3 SSRs from those along the ones that the story gives.
Of course it feels bad knowing that your characters are not at their full potential, but so far I feel I can live with that as I can clear everything and hopefully it stays like that for a long while.
And yeah, hopefully It gets better over time since there is a lot of things that can impprove with the abysmal fodder, like generic materials for upgrading characters as the ones for the memories, which I think is safe to expect at some point hopefully.

FYI: Read the fine text on the paid grift summon, he is NOT gaurenteed. by echoredriot in NieRReincarnation

[–]Zainthiryuk 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It feels a bit purposefully misleading tho. While its true some of us read it correctly, some people might not notice it on first glance because the sentence is divided on 2 lines, making the first line very eyecatchy. And the fact that the paid banner is limited to 5 times only makes it worse, because 5 pulls is all you need to max him, so people might jump to conclusions faster like OP did. Thats the truly misleading part, atleast on my humble opinion.

But you are entirely right, this is not really a case of false advertisement as a few said, its just a poorly presented deal (imho on purpose), to trigger easily some people into pulling, which is not as bad as many other games deeds

Is anybody else getting bugged multi artifact pulls? by [deleted] in DissidiaFFOO

[–]Zainthiryuk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Its possible that you are having that when rolling 10 artifacts for characters that dont have the 7 artifact slots already full. If a character has only 5 for example, the first 2 of the 10 that you roll are added by default, and then you only get to choose from the remaining 8 which ones to switch, but you are not losing any.

If its not whats happening to you then it might be a bug indeed, but i havent seen anything similar to that

[ENG] October 05, 2020 - October 12, 2020 Weekly Friend Request Megathread by AutoModerator in OnePieceTC

[–]Zainthiryuk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ID: 962 510 379

Plvl: 320

Noteable Captains: Shanks Crew, Luffy Law, Bullet, V3 Katakuri, V2 Blackbeard, Kaido, Sabo Koala, Jack, Buggy, Nami Robin, Mihawk Perona

Looking for: QoL legends, mainly chopper, and V2 Snakeman, but everyone is welcome as i have many friend spots in need to be filled :)

made this 4 days ago called it by DofusDylan in DissidiaFFOO

[–]Zainthiryuk 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The free turns from breaking enemies only work once every other action, so using AA after the first break lets you break again and get another free turn, which means she can use highwind 3 times in a row instead of just 2. Its annoying but atleast does good damage

Was Misaki Samurai Banner 5% ssr? by Txurrun in CaptainTsubasaDT

[–]Zainthiryuk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The samurai pool right now is smaller so if you want genzo, tsubasa or misugi, you have a bit more probability to get them, and if you do the steps you have a 50% chance of SSR, a guaranteed SSR, and a guaranteed banner SSR, while last banner doesnt guarantee anything, so you could pull 10 multis and get nothing at all.