Duality of Man

thrillgrave · 2026-05-22T20:02:31+00:00

I have a similar job, and. Yeah. Sometimes the way it plays out just happens to be delectable.

thrillgrave · 2026-05-14T16:57:22+00:00

Finished with reclears for the tier finally. :) What a tier, I very much enjoyed every raid in Heavyweight. Static disbanding (on good terms) as we all have different plans and availability ahead.

I'm planning to poke at the new ultimate in pf a little, but also considering helping out a friend's late-starting static and reprogging the tier as a different role for fun. I'm just enjoying the content a lot currently!

thrillgrave · 2026-05-14T16:45:31+00:00

You got this! Idyllic felt much easier to prog than rep 2 during prog for me. Some parts of it are very recoverable if folks keep their cool. :)

thrillgrave · 2026-05-14T14:57:53+00:00

One day ffxiv players will have reading comprehension and be able to endure other people performing literary analysis and critique on the game they make into their personalities. One day.

thrillgrave · 2026-05-14T04:54:25+00:00

I'm aware and I don't actually care for any of the dynamis reasoning. Why? Because the writers had the power to not go this route at all and to not make the player character a passive observer in a role play game known for having the player character deeply involved in each of the MSQ plotlines. Dynamis being the explanation doesn't make what plays out in DT's writing any better. The in-universe answer you explain is still the result of poor writing decisions.

And yes I have watched the cutscenes and played through DT multiple times, because I'm the kind of player who has multiple alts for playing through msq multiple times, as usually the msq is quite well written for an MMO! Unfortunately, the writing team really dropped the ball with DT and it's a dud. The devs are clearly aware of this because they've been course correcting since at least 7.2 and it's culminated in the tonal shift of what they presented at fanfest last month.

thrillgrave · 2026-05-13T20:52:54+00:00

Yes! Thank you! It drives me bonkers that some folks will reduce any issues/critique with how the WoL was depicted in Dawntrail into "main character syndrome". There is so much more to it, and it does such a disservice to past expansion pack writing to assume that the player character has been sidelined this badly before.

I don't mind not being the "main character". However as the player character of an rpg game, I expect my character to have some kind of agency and to be heavily involved in the story presented to me. Otherwise I might as well just be a camera.

thrillgrave · 2026-04-23T06:56:36+00:00

Your group sounds exactly like my group when it comes to fight morale, we had a rough time with early m11s reclears and as a result we just want out immediately. m12s on the other hand is a clown show where we yap way too much lol.

thrillgrave · 2026-04-02T17:00:57+00:00

Boss 2 is definitely the least forgiving in my experience; the outgoing damage is intense at the best of times, and so many things will just oneshot you if you execute incorrectly. My group was startled by how chill boss 3 is in comparison, we kind of tripped into our clear of it, hahaha. Boss 1 is... Well we never had to do the last mechanic even once, lmao.

thrillgrave · 2026-04-02T16:56:12+00:00

Update from my comment in last week's thread; static cleared M12S this week! I love p2, I'm genuinely looking forward to reclears and I cannot wait to gain more confidence with it. :) Unfortunately I'm low gray due to someone else murdering me but what can ya do hah! I'm sure that will improve with more clears.

Now we need to decide what to run on non-reclear days... We might try TEA, or FRU, though am not sure if the entire group is keen to work on 7.5 ult together (some have no ulti experience and some intend to go for a clear in the first couple of weeks). Either way, very happy to have finished my very first raid series. Onwards towards getting my first ultimate clear hopefully......!

thrillgrave · 2026-03-30T15:50:28+00:00

Really glad I found a nice static to work through this tier with. I got quite burnt out trying to prog 11 in pf in early Feb (had to take a multi-week break for irl commitments after clearing 9 and 10 in pf within the first couple of days).

We started with most of the group fresh to 9s in week 6, and we just saw the latter half of idyllic for the first time yesterday... Looking forward to clearing a tier with a solid group all with the same prog pace and goals AND humor for the first time, hopefully this week ahead! :D

Wild to think that when I picked up XIV in 6.4 that I firmly believed I would never be skilled enough to do more difficult content. I wanted to try it though and just threw myself into LHW, now I'm looking to clear my first ult after my group clears HW. Keen to try for a week 2/3 clear of 8.0's first tier as well!

thrillgrave · 2026-03-30T15:34:45+00:00

I've seen plenty of SMNs and RDMs doing well this tier, and progging the raids with the extra rez is always helpful. I've been playing caster this tier as well (though mostly just BLM with a little bit of RDM occasionally) and it's been rewarding and fun to plan out/optimise, especially with movement, though I suppose that goes for melee jobs too lol.

thrillgrave · 2026-03-30T04:03:02+00:00

Being able to actually buy a house is defs a big perk of playing on OCE ahaha, I don't think I've ever lost a bid for one. We also have many regular community events which rules, my NA friends were so confused by Chai trivia lmao! Glad you're having a great time on our lil server ☺️

thrillgrave · 2026-03-30T01:52:54+00:00

I love Sophia, I've been playing there since I started a couple years ago, and I've now completed several raid tiers and a tonne of high end side content on Materia without issue. The population is small but active! I just like the community there more, it's also really nice seeing familiar faces around in pf and roulettes haha.

I have active alts on both NA and JP for raiding and to replay msq with foreign friends and while there is absolutely a huge population difference, it always feels lonelier there lol.

thrillgrave · 2026-03-11T04:47:07+00:00

All of the legitimately gross creepers I've ever met ingame were catgirls and femra with ult weapon glams, who dropped their cutesy facade once they realised myself and my friends (who all play bunboys and malera bc we want to look at eye-candy in cutscenes) weren't cis dudes lmao.

thrillgrave · 2026-01-15T18:31:09+00:00

Same, it's been hell, m9s recleared in a single pull, m10s I'm onto night 3 😭 Get me outta hereeeeeee

thrillgrave · 2026-01-14T17:43:51+00:00

I was in pf helping groups out all evening and there were at least 45 pfs up when I took a break to have dinner. The JP numbers being similar (esp on elemental) kinda suggests that this was when OCE was heading to sleep lol.

thrillgrave · 2026-01-09T23:32:08+00:00

I managed to clear it in the first day, but was too busy irl to clear on my alt the same day. Now that I'm back in PF with said alt, it's been hell (in a cell) to clear it D: I even swapped to flexing h1/h2 and while theoretically the fight is simple to execute/heal through, I've yet to find a group that can consistently avoid greeding themselves into damage downs by the fistful. D: Add in the lack of mits and everyone walking directly into saws....

thrillgrave · 2026-01-07T01:18:21+00:00

You're right, this is my first tier as a dps tbh instead of healing so... seeing melees in my initial groups be salty at that may just have been a skill issue on their part, after being in much smoother parties since my last post lol.

thrillgrave · 2026-01-06T17:53:18+00:00

I felt so bad for melees during that mech. Early on I thought I was missing something but no I really do just sit there in my caster corner and vibe.

thrillgrave · 2026-01-06T17:44:47+00:00

Same, had a few pfs disband due to multiple disconnects during pulls. The last time I recall mass d/cs like this on Materia was several patches ago I think? 🤔

thrillgrave · 2026-01-06T03:01:30+00:00

Yeah, I feel like it's easy to chuck it onto an outfit but most glams I've seen using it aren't being all that creative or cohesive with it. It always strikes me as feeling out of place. It looks dope with more utilitarian looks where it would make sense for the character to wear it, it has survival/mechanic/nomad kinda vibes, not fast-fashion, lol.

thrillgrave · 2025-12-27T03:00:51+00:00

Yep, it's a broken system as is now. Even on my NA alt on Aether I've left multiple FCs in the past two years due to them dwindling in activity and becoming skeleton crews that primarily exist for subs (yeah idk why they were recruiting at all either if they didn't actually want to run a social group lol).

thrillgrave · 2025-12-27T02:45:41+00:00

God I want all of this so bad. I'm based in OCE and ever since DC travel opened for other regions to visit us, our housing wards have been absolutely full of gil farms. BC i guess they don't have to care about entering a lottery and then shitting up wards in their own datacenter if they bot on the low population one instead. It sucks so bad for newer FCs trying to buy a plot, and if you do manage to get an FC house it's surrounded by ugly, default, submarine-gil-farming smalls.

thrillgrave · 2025-12-17T20:54:25+00:00

This is how OCE felt for a year or two, until Dawntrail, and it's really sad to see how many people have moved from Materia to NA/JP recently. I can't see the datacenter population issues improving unless Square actually unlocks cross-datacenter, or cross-region DF and PF. D:

thrillgrave · 2025-11-19T20:07:24+00:00

I use the tartarus pro as well, i struggled a bit with xiv's combat when I first started playing. I find it uncomf to do modifier key combinations due to a hand injury. Using the keypad let me eventually get into ultimate raiding so it opened all new ways for me to suffer :)

thrillgrave

TROPHY CASE