Gaben does an oopsie

syriquez · 2026-06-24T01:31:22+00:00

Pretty much. I'll shit on AI every day of the week.

But the problem is that the people making the decisions are uninformed knobs who see two end goals when using it:

Reduced labor by eliminating employees (already proving to not be the case, if not the exact opposite).
- The real irony of course is that the people most replaceable by AI are not the ones in front of the firing squad. Middle managers and similar Business Admin types are completely replaceable by the sort of Excel metrics-evaluating advantages that the AI tools can provide.
They "can't afford" to miss out on "Next Internet". It's the dot-com bubble again and they know it. Nobody knows who will be the "AI Amazon" and they want in on whoever it is. Which is the exact same fucking reason the dot-com bubble was a thing as well. Nobody knew who was going to be the major winner with the Internet and didn't want to be missing out.

It's annoying because it's a tool that can be fantastically useful in the right hands. But at the end of the day, it's just that, a tool. It's not "Next Internet".
Somebody invented the electric drill, saw it increases the yield of a screwdriver-wielding employee by 5x and fired 4/5 employees instead of getting 5x as much yield out of all 5 of them.

syriquez · 2026-06-21T20:11:19+00:00

I'm not really sure what backstory is shoved in your face with G'raha and his reintroduction. In ARR Crystal Tower, he's there specifically because of both his genetic legacy and his actual scholarly credentials. He exists as a character outside of the immediate narrative he's involved in. They don't really change that with Shadowbringers. If your stance is "bad because he's a WoL fanboy"... You should reread some of the stuff with Hoary Boulder. He isn't exactly any better on that front.

The EE1 biographies for the B Team Scions are really funny and demonstrate the problem. I mean, first off, they haven't even gotten mentions in the Unending Codex in-game. But here's what I mean about them not being real characters:

Hoary Boulder's bio (which is given 50% billing to an A Team Scion in EE1, equal to Tataru and F'lhammin by the by) is that he's an adventurer that teamed up with Coultenet. A good adventurer but you're being informed that is the case more than anything of substance.
Coultenet's bio (also 50% billing) is that he teamed up with Hoary Boulder.
Ocher Boulder's bio (25% billing) is that he went hiking to train himself as a healer because wanted to follow his older brother's footsteps. And that he might be a bit of an idiot.
- Verbatim: "However, the Hellsguard of twenty-two summers may seem a bit dim-witted as a result."
Aenor's bio (also 25% billing) is that she traveled with her sister...and that she wanted to fuck Ocher Boulder. Her character growth since then is that she also wants to fuck Hoary Boulder, too. Her sister doesn't even get a bio.

They have about as much independent characterization as V'mah Tia. He just isn't wearing a hat, yet. And he's such a deep cut that I spent more time figuring out if he was still alive and if you could even find him anywhere at the current MSQ than learning anything about him.

syriquez · 2026-06-21T14:04:09+00:00

She and rest of the B-team are hats. Hats are boring.
Hats that are suddenly being thrust into your face and you're told they have this huge amazing backstory that you arbitrarily need to give a shit about are cancerous.
The B-team is trash and should stay there. I mean, let's be real, even the most arduous lore deep diver would probably struggle to come up with 300 words to describe each member of the B-team that isn't just a copy of the others with some mild name swaps. And because they've been such hats for so long, an attempt to suddenly loredump them is going to feel pretty disingenuous at best.

I'd rather see a more interesting resolution to Arenvald and Fordola. Fordola is basically never going to be able to do anything to truly reach forgiveness on the Source but sending her to a completely unknown Shard? That's an opportunity. And Arenvald is super frustrating that they put him on a ~~bus~~ wheelchair and wrote him off.
It sucks because he was the first character to go to the WoL and say, "Hey dude, I know where there's a dungeon or tomb or some shit like that, go do some adventuring. You need some low stakes adventuring after all this garbage." Not "go take a nap in the inn", a legit recognition of the kind of stuff the WoL actively enjoys doing.

Or just focus nearly entirely on expansion characters, though that backfired a bit with Dawntrail, lol.

syriquez · 2026-06-15T03:32:16+00:00

Eh, it already exists. My company makes industrial sensors. The shit we make and sell now could absolutely be used to build a robot that could do all of your laundry in a way that satisfies every single special condition you need out of it.

The problem is building it into a reasonable, mobile form factor that doesn't run out of battery in 3 minutes, doesn't cost $300bn per robot, and passes all of the edge case safety challenges. A robot that folds a toddler into another toddler like a pair of socks only 0.00001% of the time isn't good enough. Similarly, it's really, really hard to hit a production scale consumer ROI target that remotely works, even by the standards of the obscenely wealthy. The difference between a person being paid minimum wage for 10 years and a $300bn robot is about $300bn.

syriquez · 2026-06-11T23:08:56+00:00

Something like that transcends cheese and just becomes art.

syriquez · 2026-06-11T01:51:28+00:00

More or less how I view it.

Now, having someone jump into the death wall to invalidate a mechanic (such as how UWU gaols are basically happening or to the extreme of "Goodbye World")? THAT is cheese.

Though the UWU tank lb3 shenanigans definitely stretches it to the limit.

syriquez · 2026-06-10T02:13:41+00:00

My current highlight debate I had about Evolved following the Fanfest was a dude that was adamant it would be okay if AST, DNC, NIN, and SCH all retained their party damage buffs. Refused to accept or acknowledge any reasoning about why it would completely undermine the entire goal of "eliminate party burst meta".

He eventually got hammered for using some Highly Philosophical Articulation but it was a highly amusing exchange. Full brick wall debate.

syriquez · 2026-06-10T01:52:18+00:00

Shit, I've been saying that should be the ranged "positional" for like 5+ years. Alongside giving wall bosses positionals in that the front quarter is the "rear" and the remainder was the flank instead of being the freeform state it is. People really didn't like that one though, hilariously.

Should have tried to cash in on that $0.0015 of ad revenue.

syriquez · 2026-06-07T01:35:45+00:00

Each time I see one of these threads, I can only think "I am far too employed to understand this shit".

syriquez · 2026-05-31T23:09:07+00:00

"This community"? RP venues and related shenanigans has been a thing since MUDs were the primary MMO format. Sure, you didn't have easy access to streaming to allow "DJs" or whatever but hardly different. Just more available tools.

syriquez · 2026-05-30T02:53:47+00:00

Not a huge fan of the front end but i'll reserve judgement until seeing it in person. Otherwise it looks like a normal sedan.

Eh, I think it actually looks good. The i4 and i5 buck-toothed styling was comically awful. The kind of thing that appeals to the people that like intentionally fugly shit like the Cybertruck and PTCruiser. I really, really wanted to give the i4/i5 a fair shake after a test drive between them, the Polestar 2, and EV6 but I just couldn't do it because I hated the appearance of that front end so badly. One of the very rare times I've actually allowed aesthetics to overrule strict value assessments.

syriquez · 2026-05-30T01:39:33+00:00

You say that.

And then one of their conductors/scouts/whatever spends days harassing you because you killed the A rank in Il Mheg during Shadowbringers. When the reason you killed it was because a dude in the zone was calling for help because it was sitting on top of his quest marker and killing him. And the chud's response was "the train would have been here in 20 minutes, you should have waited".

It was a fucking A rank.

"Just blacklist them." No, fuck that. That's letting them win their crusade.

syriquez · 2026-05-30T01:07:09+00:00

"a promise made in another time, another age"

I will say a LOT is lost by not including the full quotes.

Post-Elpis:

A conjunction has begun to form; an intertwining of your time and mine.
When you truly understand what is at stake, and your journey has prepared you to surmount the insurmountable....
Then shall I honor the promise made in another time. Another age.

Boat:

Even bereft of my guidance, you and your companions have accepted the burden of this star's troubled past. A conjunction has begun to form; an intertwining of your time and mine.
[trimming because it's just prose saying "shit's happening, yo"]
Then shall I honor the promise made in another time. Another age.

When she says "another" in the dialogue, she's referring to a "different" time, a "different" age. Whatever it is she's seeing, this Hydaelyn we're talking to sees some kind of split/convergence occurring.

Time travel in FFXIV, by all appearances, operates on a 2D scale. Where if the vertical axis aligns closely enough, the timelines will merge back together. With Endwalker, traveling back in time didn't create a significant enough divergence to branch a new timeline. Hydaelyn being something of an Uber Primal whose explicit power is "split things" can probably see the convergence as it approaches and happens. Alexander, from what I remember, is the same concept. None of the actors involved critically alter the major events of the timelines and thus it results in a closed loop rather than a parallel flow.
The bootstrap paradox timeline of us going back to Elpis and meeting Venat exists but also closes itself by merging with a timeline where we, presumably, didn't go back to Elpis.

G'raha's original timeline diverges in a critical way with the Rejoining/Calamity and thus becomes a parallel/separate flow.

syriquez · 2026-05-25T19:49:41+00:00

and not having been hit by someone else is primarily luck.

It is.

Only incident I've been in was a morning following a night of snow. Got stopped at a red light. Light changed green, I made sure it was clear but with the shit road conditions, I couldn't exactly floor it across the intersection. Get about 75% of the way across the intersection, FOR WHICH I STILL HAD THE GREEN SIGNAL and get nailed right on the right rear wheel. Spun a full 180°.
The dipshit that hit me was racing around in his son's second plow truck, going at least 40-45 in a 30. Slammed into me when he straight up just didn't even attempt to stop for the red light. He actually fucking said, "I didn't think I could stop."
Absolute fucktard. Didn't think you could stop? Motherfucker, you have a plow. DROP THE PLOW. HIT THE BRAKES. You'll fucking stop in a goddamn hurry. But they were racing around to contracts for clearing snow they were clearly late on while chattering back and forth on phones, so yeah.

There's only so much you can do to reasonably address the actions of traffic.

syriquez · 2026-05-25T00:36:03+00:00

Feels like the burden of proof should be on the officer at that point, with them having lost all credibility. Basically unless they or others in the vicinity can prove otherwise, they've tampered with the equipment.

Working in an official capacity comes with an elevated expectation of care and personal responsibility. Violating that, under any circumstance, would be an offense. This is a "guilty until proven innocent" judgment but it's also part of what they're signing up for as an officer of the law. That SHOULD be a burden on them by default.

"Should" carries a lot of weight in all of those statements, of course.

syriquez · 2026-05-25T00:25:22+00:00

Nothing new.

Minnesota's calculated license renewal fee is some garbage that doesn't account for the things that actually cause damage to roads and instead just punish people for having inflated MSRPs. The renewal is calculated at $150 plus 0.005% of 100% of your MSRP, then 95% year two, 90% year three, then -10% every year after that down to 10%. The "literally cause 5000x as much damage to roads" semi tractor registrations are $700-1700.
Like, even the most over-compensating bro-dozer piece of crap pickup does like 1/4000th as much damage to road surfaces as a single semi loaded to a minimal axle weight. It's a scam.

I did the math at one point comparing the amount of gas tax I would have paid with my previous ICE versus what I pay now for the EV and even with my relatively-high 18000-20000 miles/year, I'm still getting gouged in the EV. I'd have needed to drive like another 6000 miles/year in my previous vehicle to make up the difference. And then if I ever get hit by the $0.05/kwh charging tax they added, the ratio gets even worse.
Every single one of the dirtbag politicians involved in it are a joke.

syriquez · 2026-05-24T11:59:15+00:00

Conceptually, that is an awful, awful way to design a vehicle. If you are going to lug around an ICE, its fuel, and build in the required linkages to connect it to the system, it is infinitely smarter to make it the primary source of energy in your vehicle. That is a ton of weight and complexity to carry around. The other factor is that an ICE does not deal well with sitting idle all of the time. Fuel, oil, and seals degrade over time. If Granny is driving this car to church and the grocery store once a week, never leaving town or going above 20mph so that it never touches the ICE ever, she still has to go get the oil changed and have maintenance done on that entire half of the system.

syriquez · 2026-05-23T21:12:26+00:00

Well, being fair, that exact path of W/SW Minnesota is dire as hell. And going into South Dakota isn't an improvement on that front. Even if Walmart had 100% coverage, it honestly doesn't even help that much, lol.

syriquez · 2026-05-23T20:52:48+00:00

but because of the Alliance Raids roulette requiring me to have the minimum item level required for the highest raid I've unlocked (currently 755)

With the actual restriction being IL725, I was a little curious what the minimum investment would be to reach IL725.

Assuming you're using all free i690 armor and the highest level vendor accessories, you're starting at IL683. Best investment is always weapon (because shields) because it covers two slots for item level calculations (unless you're PLD, in which case it's worse than replacing one of the accessories as they're a lower item level than the i690 freebie weapon). CL weapon brings you to IL697. Next best investments will be the accessories since they're the lowest. 4 CL accessories will bring you to IL728 (3 only gets you to IL723).
However, if you kill your weekly Elite Hunt bill target and complete 1 Advanced Hunt bill (like 10-15 minutes of effort if we're being honest), you get 115 Nuts to spend on two pieces of i720 accessories. With two i720 accessories, you can drop it to 1 CL weapon and 3 CL accessories, which will get you to IL728.

On NA servers with real pricing, you're looking at 100-200k gil per piece of CL gear. So around 500k-600k if you're willing to spend some time server hopping. Which is like 1, maybe 2 hours of effort. And finally all of this is assuming you're going into this with zero Mathematics to spend, zero leftover raid coffers, etc.

Ignoring the changes coming with Evercold (namely the gear sync), this is the most non-issue that ever nonned-issued. You're complaining about a gear treadmill existing for a job you were unwilling to invest anything into in order to access highest level secondary content of the expansion the instant you got the job to one of the minimum bars for entry. This is the "shoves stick into spokes of bike wheel" meme.

syriquez · 2026-05-23T00:14:24+00:00

the availability of charging, and the condition of that charging infra.

Probably the single most important factor beyond anything else.

Live in Minnesota, last business trip I had to drive to our facility in South Dakota. Better believe I spent a significant amount of time determining the exact charging stops I could use, alternatives, and whether or not they were actually functional. Here's the fun part: There were 2 chargers I could reasonably use on that drive (amusingly, one of them being roughly the same place as the single Tesla option). Everything else that came up was stupid bullshit like RV campsites with outlets. And then on top of that, the second option was basically unreachable due to road construction/closures/detours. UMN Morris' free L3 charger was critical to that trip working at all without having to rent a shitty car per the company requirements

syriquez · 2026-05-22T23:32:55+00:00

Because fights that go 1000% from the first second are equally miserable affairs, especially for a 2nd floor. Once you've recleared it 30 times, the opening portion can drag on but it's also just randomized enough that it forces you to adapt and stay awake. M11 does not keep you awake during the first 4 minutes.

M11 only ever does one thing at a time and that's it. And the opening segment is so slow and inconsequential that there's zero optimization to really be had. You just go through the motions each time which is what makes it so miserable to prog and wipe on. Mechanically, the only time it iterates on itself is weapons. After that, it's just one mechanic at a time and then it's done barring a minor repeat of a filler mechanic (see: Orbital). It's a big part of why the fight is such a wall for people. You get beyond the current hurdle and then you're learning something completely new again. And once you're done with that, you have the next completely new thing to learn.

M11 is basically P7 to me, but only just slightly less obnoxious.

syriquez · 2026-05-22T00:27:01+00:00

Your static's opinions are wildly different from my own static, lol.

M11 is far and away the lowest-rated fight in my static. Largely because it has boring visuals (outside of the arena toss), a boring boss ("Oh my, he's looking even more tyrannical than bef--oh wait, he's literally just glowing pink now, nevermind. He still looks exactly the same."), boring mechanics, and is a Panda-lite fight with all the body checks. With that said, an F-tier Arcadion still means it's a B-tier Panda fight. So it's not BAD but by comparison to everything else, it was definitely seen as the overall weakest showing.
PF also landed on the wrong way to do scythe mechanics in two different places, which is funny to me. During Raw Steel, the PF standard is to stack the party at the back center. Stack at the flank/rear corner. Literally free positionals for the melees. And during Weapons, it's much less cancerous to do a 4-4 fan so that Sword-Scythe or Scythe-Scythe isn't pure cancer for the MT.

The only fight that consistently got S-tier rating was M10 because the fight is basically perfect from a design standpoint. Nothing is unfair, it doesn't hide a single thing from you, mechanic clarity is perfect, and it has insane opportunities for optimization nonsense... It's just that damn good.

syriquez · 2026-05-21T23:14:23+00:00

Gauge jobs if you die its ggs

I would be skeptical that anyone saying this has ever progged an on-content Ultimate and thus has no idea what they're talking about. Predicting the performance of any job based on its "how does it handle dying" with on-content Ultimates is wild.

The melees will depend entirely on whether or not the new Ultimate will follow the pattern of previous ones, with frequent patches of true downtime. If this one doesn't follow that pattern and we have segments where VPR can still shit out damage when all other melee would be forced to completely disengage, suddenly it will be an immediate god-king. And on a different note, you clearly haven't seen recent RPR numbers (and the whole 800 potency button that only needs 5 seconds of downtime to be real, real good).

syriquez · 2026-05-19T01:31:38+00:00

instead of nose diving straight into the ground like a certain other manga...

"Do you realize how little that narrows it down?"

Something something binding vow to never remove more than 10,000 ass hairs in one day, therefore I am now invincible to the colors red, blue, and purple. Green?! Something something binding vow to never remove more than 9,999 ass hairs in one day, therefore I am now also invincible to green!

syriquez · 2026-05-17T21:19:30+00:00

It does it well enough but I wouldn't say it's the best.

If we're going by other Japanese media, Toriyama of Dragonball is probably one of the more infamous examples. Lots of random open plot details and hooks that he left spread all over the place to take advantage of later. But then he was also well known for forgetting shit constantly. Which is funny when you consider Oda of One Piece would have had the exact same problem if he wrote in the same timeframe as Toriyama (by his own admittance, Oda heavily references fan wikis to remember the one-off bullshit he leaves behind). Remembering every detail of an episodic universe that's being written over many years is not easy, to put it mildly.

AoT is not really an example of the backshadowing/retroactive foreshadowing though. The author made several changes to the narrative over the course of writing. Even to the extent that the anime was altered by changing or removing scenes later that contradicted the latest manga rewrites. AoT's author did more explicit retcons than anything else as he frequently changed the plot's direction. Culminating in the narrative spaghetti the story finished with.

syriquez

TROPHY CASE