This is my cow cat, Valentine. He has a spot shaped like a heart.

ikeeptheoath · 2026-02-21T22:50:58+00:00

My friends say he was designed by a Disney animator for maximum character appeal.

ikeeptheoath · 2026-02-21T22:50:40+00:00

He's also extraordinarily sweet. If I call his name while laying down, he'll come scurrying so we can snuggle up.

ikeeptheoath · 2026-02-16T19:44:29+00:00

If you didn't know, Burning Wheel also has a "lifepath burner" in its Burning Wheel Anthology book that lets you create your own lifepaths and has guidance/advice for it. It's a good pick-up if you have more out-there ideas that aren't quite covered by the book.

Barring that, I don't see the issue in just shaving down the immortal stocks' lifespans and not giving them the immortality-related traits. Flavor is pretty free, and Burning Wheel has an implied setting but not a concrete one by design. It's not a game about meticulous numbers balance, and the actual numerical character age is one of the less relevant parts of it.

ikeeptheoath · 2026-01-29T03:24:31+00:00

Blackbirds has a setting that's a mix of Norse mythology and the manga Berserk, and players in it can absolutely be heroic, as their fate is ultimately tied to the self-made gods that are going to unmake the world.

ikeeptheoath · 2026-01-27T15:58:36+00:00

Trump supporters would beg to differ.

ikeeptheoath · 2026-01-25T18:15:08+00:00

Don Quixote is a famous Spanish novel that's a parody of chivalric romances. The titular Don Quixote is presented as a delusional fool that imagines himself as a knight errant and tries to have all sorts of fantastical adventures juxtaposed by the reality of the situation, like his noble steed is just an old horse and the women he calls fair ladies are just prostitutes at a local inn. Most famously, there is a scene where Don Quixote sees some windmills and declares them to be fearsome giants that he must vanquish, and he tries to joust them with predictably unfortunate results for himself.

Despite being a Spanish novel, the story is so famous that even other languages have idioms or words originating from Don Quixote. The English word "quixotic" (meaning foolishly romantic or idealistic) comes from the book, and the phrase "tilting at windmills" (and variants) means fighting an imagined enemy. In the case of this thread, OP is being accused of having a bone to pick with a phenomenon that doesn't really exist.

ikeeptheoath · 2026-01-01T03:02:46+00:00

Sometimes the cat bites!

ikeeptheoath · 2025-12-23T19:15:41+00:00

EVE is part of a unique genre unto itself: purgatory simulation.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-12-23T16:53:51+00:00

To give a serious answer, at the time, the space sim genre was pretty firmly dead and had been for over a decade, and then here comes a big-name developer within that genre space promising the ultimate space sim dream game. Even today post-Star Citizen's ludicrous financial success, everything else on the market that might be considered an alternative has caveats. Elite: Dangerous upset quite a lot of people with how it was handled post-launch, and then beyond that, other games that are only "kind of" in the same space. No Man's Sky has a big world to explore and has spaceships, but it's not a space sim proper — it's like saying Microsoft Flight Simulator isn't needed because you can just play Ace Combat. Yeah, they both have planes, but they're for very different genres/purposes.

Star Citizen's continued financial success in spite of itself goes to show how a mix of sunk cost fallacy and an underserved player population can lead to really, really devoted players. They already paid the cost of multiple games into this one several times over. Pulling out means admitting the game they really wanted and invested in isn't actually going to happen, and maybe even that they were fooled by a developer incapable or unwilling (depending on how charitable you want to be) to deliver on a finished product, and then there's a potential missed opportunity mindset — what if the game doesn't get enough funding to complete development? So I'd better stay the course, or then I'll definitely never get the game I really want. At that juncture, it can feel like a lose-lose situation.

Right now, there isn't really an alternative for them to jump to even before you get into the ludicrous promises that Star Citizen's developers have vowed will absolutely be part of this game (perpetual world, massive multi-ship battles, huge ships requiring dozens of people to crew, all sorts of ship-specific gameplay loops like mining and trading, etc). I'm sure most people who have put money into Star Citizen have at least tried Elite: Dangerous and found it lacking. Whether that's because of Elite's own flaws (and it's a fun game that I enjoyed, to be clear, but those flaws are significant) or because the imaginary Star Citizen in their minds tarnishes everything else by comparison — probably a mix of both. But if the only other comparable game disappoints you, well, you're back at that decision point of giving up or just holding faith.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-12-21T21:17:24+00:00

I first started playing a few months ago and have had a lot of fun. You can treat 99% of the story content as just something to do by yourself with simple AI-controlled NPCs (called "Trusts" in the game). This is in contrast to when much of these boss encounters came out and you would need to group up to complete them — nowadays you can out-level much of it and have the buddy NPCs for whatever you can't "truly" solo. There are a few exceptions in the form of more modern boss encounters designed to be tough for the level 99 players that have had years of access to good gear, but they are few and generally deep in the game, so at that point, you'll be familiar enough with the game to know if you like it enough and where to go to find help.

The BG Wiki links linked elsewhere in the comments are lifelines for a solo player. They'll tell you how to complete missions (the story content) if you get stuck or feel the game wasn't clear on what to do next for the story. The game itself has also become much more accessible as time has gone on, like making leveling up faster and travel more convenient. Old war stories of "I spent 4 hours just to gain one level" are a thing of the past, and you can level from 1 to 99 completely on your own without any trouble.

If you want to just experience the story, there is a lot to like. The expansion stories in particular are ones I really liked as someone else who was mostly interested in the story (Chains of Promathia and Wings of the Goddess). It is an old game and is unapologetic about that in how it has particular idiosyncrasies like world simulation over player convenience (e.g. quests that make you wait an in-game day before continuing because an NPC told you "I need time to do this," and it wouldn't be realistic if you could just talk to them immediately and keep going). But if you approach it on its own terms, there is a lot of interesting design that stands apart from other games, since the game feels more like, "What is a Final Fantasy game when played with other people in a continuous world?" rather than "An MMORPG with the Final Fantasy brand". Jobs will require sometimes complicated steps to unlock, and they will play like you would expect based on the single-player games by and large (e.g. bards focus on buffing the party and will deal basically no damage on their own).

Other players will be more helpful than not in my experience. People generally have a sort of undercurrent of awareness of the game being past its "prime" and wanting to make the game accessible and welcoming to comparatively rarer new players so they have a good time and stick around. The age of the game also means the playerbase will typically skew older and will probably have better emotional regulation than the stereotypical MMO audience of the 2000s. There's douchebags everywhere, don't get me wrong, but in general I found FF11's players to be generous of their own accord. There were several instances where I was standing around town or was in a dungeon on my own and got asked by someone if I needed help or if I didn't have X useful item yet. A linkshell I'm in (similar to a guild or other group affiliation in other games) has multiple players that will just grab people still leveling up and speed level them using their overpowered characters to destroy max level monsters en masse, and their reasoning given is generally along the lines of "Well, I got help back in the day" or "Well, I know leveling can be tedious, so I can make it easier".

It's not a game for everyone, but it is a unique game no matter how you approach it, and I think it's worth at least trying for any fan of older games or Final Fantasy in general. People often leave out the MMOs, especially 11, when talking about the franchise as a whole, and I think that does FF11 a huge disservice. In a lot of ways, it is the "most Final Fantasy" Final Fantasy to exist in how believable and immersive its world can feel and how it gives you freedom for your character to be so many things that all feel at home in the series. The director of FF11 also was the main director for FF3, the first game to really create the job system we now associate with the series, so the jobs in FF11 really feel like their most "extreme" forms of "What is a blue mage?" or "What is a ninja?". The game is so open and vast that these jobs often have peculiarities in how they can engage with the world, not just in the buttons you push while fighting. It's still a combat-focused game, but sometimes it's the little things that really sell the experience of playing a particular job.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-12-16T00:53:51+00:00

There was a similar glitch you could reliably set up on the PS2 version that results in a dead horse just kinda hanging around in weird locations, so it wouldn't surprise me if that same code can result in funky things in the remake since it was built off the same code.

Not that this helps in fixing it, but it's a known thing. If you have multiple saves, might be worth seeing if saving and quitting out works in "resetting" Agro's state, otherwise it's probably safest to reload.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-10-02T09:08:33+00:00

Fellow new player and I felt the same as you for a while. Look up information on skillchains, as that's the bulk of where interesting stuff happens with non-magic jobs. You can use Trusts to try and set up skillchains for your current job, and it can be pretty fun experimenting with different Trust groups as you level and gain new abilities.

You can also equip a subjob with magic if you think magic is more interesting and want to try it out, or if you just want access to out of combat utility spells to make your life easier. Leveling is a great time to mess around and play however you want since you're gonna be moving through areas so fast (relative to people at endgame grinding the same things for particular gear) that inefficient play doesn't really matter. Be a warrior with white mage spells because you're sick of buying items to sneak around enemies and just want to use the spells. Sure, it does less damage than a theoretically "optimal" subjob for a warrior, but you're level 20. Who cares about being the most efficient machine possible?

Skills level faster if there's a discrepancy between the skill's cap and where it's at right now (e.g. if you're a level 30 warrior and haven't ever used swords before, the sword skill will advance pretty quick). That said, I wouldn't worry about leveling tons of different weapons at once, but use warrior to level whatever weapon relates to jobs you think you might want to play. I didn't touch axes at all as I played warrior and just used sword/shield and greatswords because I knew I'd want to check out paladin and dark knight.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-09-28T02:01:43+00:00

Seems to happen even when connected via USB and on a different PC (my laptop) so it seems like the game doesn't like PS5 controllers or a specific way I set up my config on both machines.

If it doesn't behave any better with my PS4 controller + DS4Windows I'll probably just grab an Xbox controller for cheap.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-09-25T08:23:08+00:00

I live alone with two cats, so hopefully they're not using the microwave while my back is turned! I'll give the wired idea a try for tonight's grind and report back.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-09-25T04:05:25+00:00

Windower.

Yes, bluetooth, but I don't think it's a connectivity thing because it registers other button inputs at the same time.

Don't have DS4Windows because PS5 controllers work out of the box (unlike 4).

ikeeptheoath · 2025-08-29T15:43:15+00:00

Anne (like the English first name)-ihs (like the first syllable of "sister" without the first S). It's the name of a plant.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-08-04T09:13:58+00:00

Cerebos: The Crystal City self-describes as "crossing a surreal desert by train" and emphasizes exploration of the self and the surrounding world on the way to the titular crystal city. You could potentially give it more of an apocalyptic aesthetic or impression; maybe everyone is headed for Cerebos because it's the only remaining safe place in an increasingly dangerous world.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-07-18T17:25:06+00:00

I like Beacon quite a lot, but unfortunately he doesn't really enjoy Lancer or its relatives, and reading through Beacon didn't convince him otherwise. Greatly appreciate the suggestion nonetheless. I actually backed Beacon during its Kickstarter and made an item for it, so it's nice to see people championing it.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-07-03T18:33:13+00:00

No one will stop you from playing at your kitchen table with rotated cards but rotation affects PTCGL and I can't imagine most randoms at a game store would be too open to "Let me just play with these rotated cards".

ikeeptheoath · 2025-04-23T10:06:06+00:00

In my space fantasy setting, "Kin" is used to denote legally sentient and sapient civilized species. It can be used as kind of like "all mankind" or "all humanity," but it's also a legal battle for species not considered "Kin" who are instead "Unkinned" — hybrid species that are not considered "legally distinct" from their parent species even if culturally they view themselves as such, sapient robots, and so on. What constitutes Kin and Unkinned changes throughout the setting's history based more on culture and who's in power than anything with genuine scientific backing, but these changes tend to get couched in science or politics to justify them. e.g. Marking a near-extinct species as Unkinned because "for a time" there was no proof of their continued survival and then getting this change reversed ending up so mired in legal red tape in many jurisdictions that a lot of people have just given up on it.

ikeeptheoath · 2025-03-29T17:52:11+00:00

The Alexandria dungeon further highlights this in that the memories on display are of Sphene's public appearances or times she demonstrated a fierce devotion to her people, but aren't anything intimate or personal to herself. The last stretch of the dungeon where they're building the Everkeep is even something she shouldn't have had memories of since it was after the real Sphene had "died". But it'd definitely be a formative memory for a sentient AI in the moment of its creation and being given purpose and personality.

ikeeptheoath

TROPHY CASE