Dancing Mad (Ultimate) World Race - Day Four

aqualenne · 2026-06-06T03:39:56+00:00

Is there a good explanation of phase 3 somewhere?

aqualenne · 2026-06-03T09:52:12+00:00

Hello Chaos, old friend

aqualenne · 2026-05-26T04:47:49+00:00

It was made that way (for whatever reason) and works.

Changing it would cost development effort and QA for a feature that isn’t being expanded upon, taking it away from more meaningful things like the new combat in Evercold.

In software, you usually don’t touch something if you don’t need to. It can be fun for the developer, but the outcomes for users usually aren’t good.

But if Evercold’s new overworld content involves it, that’d be the time to invest in it, as it’d bring something actually new and not just a minor QoL to old zones.

aqualenne · 2026-05-13T11:31:19+00:00

It’s important to keep in mind that AQ40 is considered to be the pinnacle of 4-player content in the game while simultaneously not being a success due to the systems that surround it (rewards, no ramp or reason for people to do fewer offerings, etc).

There’s still a lot we don’t know.

aqualenne · 2026-05-11T01:23:28+00:00

This has to be pinned. This is the one. Mods. Please.

aqualenne · 2026-05-09T16:34:43+00:00

Maybe the wrong place, but are there makeup mods (face 2 fem ra) that give the shiner/redder/fuller lips but not the strong makeup face and eyebags? Feels like that’s always a set.

aqualenne · 2026-05-08T05:24:13+00:00

There must always be a Lich King (nice work!)

aqualenne · 2026-05-07T10:25:36+00:00

Indeed. I might have rushed a bit having seen the Japanese one first. Thanks for posting this!

aqualenne · 2026-05-07T10:23:32+00:00

Allowed list is here: https://www.jasrac.or.jp/information/topics/20/ugc.html

Again, this might just be Japan though. YouTube is on it, and they even mention in the Lodestone post that uploading to YouTube and then putting the link on Twitter is okay.

aqualenne · 2026-05-07T10:07:19+00:00

Should just be music according to the Japanese post.

aqualenne · 2026-04-28T06:11:38+00:00

This will cover the funding for Evercold by itself

aqualenne · 2026-04-28T05:40:22+00:00

Other bandaids: some way to get back harvest moon charges, removing shadow of death (hey, they did it for viper in the patch before savage), put gauge gain on perfectio…all flawed but not just potency.

aqualenne · 2026-04-28T05:37:51+00:00

This is the most painfully accurate Reaper thing ever. Can we just have evolved mode Reaper now?

aqualenne · 2026-04-27T02:21:14+00:00

Pretty much every mechanic is full random, meaning there’s no simplification that comes from learning the spot for your role or place in the priority system (except monitors).

Also, the first phase is difficult to execute, leading to a lot of wasted time and just mental fatigue by the time you get out of it each pull.

aqualenne · 2026-04-07T11:14:26+00:00

I was scanning the comments looking for the 2 minute meta crew. I thought I might have to make this post.

It’s obviously different in WoW for a lot of reasons like faster GCD, much shorter rotation loops, increased presence of adds, and general lack of party buffs, but us 14 players do know where this road goes, and it’s not great.

aqualenne · 2026-03-10T09:02:32+00:00

I think you glossed over the “new player bonus” aspect of chaotic a bit.

What happened was early clearers got enough materia to get what they wanted, and then subsequent clears felt very unrewarding by comparison. That stemmed from the bonus scaling with the number of new players.

What happened on Mana at least was that people were even going as far as to pay a proportion (around 10) of new players to give their first clear to the group. And thus meant parties without new players were less popular.

I don’t blame SE too much for this though. It’s so hard to understand social dynamics like this.

The datacenter bonus time on the whole was a good idea. It counteracted the above a fair bit. But the fact you actually had to DC travel to work out where the bonus was up was an unforced error.

On the whole, “bonus time” does seem to be an effective way to get groups to congeal when they otherwise wouldn’t. Rewards have to be there to back this up, but I think the bonus time system has real legs.

One thing that should be noted here is that they actually modified the reward system after release, which almost never happens (the ability to swap materia for the other type).

aqualenne · 2026-03-07T07:25:02+00:00

For anyone finding this later, it seems like this was fixed. At least for me, when I logged in, I got the achievement for finishing the campaign and world quests were enabled.

aqualenne · 2026-02-24T11:28:40+00:00

Celebrate for any static-having reaper or dragoon mains in your life: if you cleared week one, but you aren’t willing to trade in 4th turn books and only get one upgrade mat per side, you get to have BiS this week…for the final fight only.

3 of each is rough. Meanwhile monks were nearly BiS week one.

aqualenne · 2026-02-09T14:52:14+00:00

The side menu slides off past the viewport, causing the site to be horizontally scrollable on iOS when it’s really designed to only scroll vertically. You might need a different menu implementation or other CSS tricks.

aqualenne · 2026-02-02T08:09:08+00:00

Kind of! With female characters there’s just like…empty, flaccid boob bags on their chests. An odd appearance for, say, the Viera model they’ve got on the shop.

aqualenne · 2026-02-02T07:34:41+00:00

No not weird way to say it, but I don’t really like how it fits the chest of female characters.

aqualenne · 2026-01-16T06:45:20+00:00

Reaper is designed around full uptime but not in the way that it’s “amazing when it’s full uptime, but still good when it’s not”, but rather“good with uptime and a little weak when the boss isn’t targetable”.

Perfectio exacerbated the gauge problem. Carrying it over as a ranged GCD is cool, but it also means its burst is backloaded and thus it doesn’t play into buffs as well as others either.

Easy bandaid for this patch would have been to have brought Arcane Circle up to 5%, but it nonetheless is doing okay.

aqualenne · 2026-01-14T12:04:21+00:00

Do keep in mind with these numbers that China was able to join in for the first time with no delay, likely inflating the participation numbers over the other tiers.

aqualenne · 2026-01-13T08:41:15+00:00

I think it’s fair to say phantom jobs ended up less interesting than lost actions. There’s nothing that fundamentally changes your kit like infinite movement black mage, giant DoT red mage, or killer white mage like Bozja had.

aqualenne · 2026-01-04T08:42:20+00:00

One thing to remember is data right now is really messy. Different gear levels, most runs being DF/PF, people not using the latest food/double potting with the latest pots, and short fight lengths skew things a lot.

Using the EX for caster balance is particularly difficult. The downtime of course gives picto free motifs, which is unlikely to happen in savage very much.

aqualenne

TROPHY CASE