Final Fantasy XI: Kurohyou, Jillia, Phoenix, TiamatsFangs

I have a lot I'd like to write about this post and I'm gonna take it from the top in just a moment, but before that I'd like to take a moment to explain that the title of the post is intentionally weird and I'll get to explaining it somewhere below (or in another post).  Jillia, if you somehow manage to find this, please, please, please send me an e-mail at spantera@gmail.com or find some way to get in contact with me.

A couple weeks back I came across a post on Facebook: one of my old friends from FFXI, Techno, talking to another old friend, Margulis, about the FFXIV beta.  I interjected to ask a couple questions about it since I was kind of in an MMO drought and I then went and signed up for the beta for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.  Last weekend I managed to snag a key from Alienware Arena's giveaway (and then later got a key direct from SE for this weekend) and got a chance to try it for a few hours and catch up with some old TF buddies that have been playing XIV.  The game itself is amusing, kinda eh but I'm really relishing the chance to nostalgia bomb with some old friends and familiar character/class styles (making up for lost Mithra time).

Oh, and I was seriously, seriously giddy to have auto-translate again.  That thing is so much fun.

When Final Fantasy XI first came out I was still in high school and didn't have the means to procure and subscribe to an MMO, but as a big Final Fantasy fan I vowed to myself that one day, one way or another I would find a way to play it.  About a year after I graduated I finally was in the right position to pick it up.  My senior year of high school I was really big into Tribes: Aerial Assault and by the time I got into FFXI I still was in touch with a few old clannies who were now playing it, and they managed to get me a friend code for Phoenix and I hopped on board their social linkshell.  I can't quite remember the name of it...

I was Kurohyou, a Hume male, beardy style.

That first LS (we'll call it LS1 for now) introduced me to the environment that would typify most of my FFXI tenure: bittersweet drama.  The distinguishing feature I'll always remember most was the Lexi/Talenar/Elvaan-PLD-guy-whose-name-I-forgot trio.  Lexi was the only female and WHM in the LS, which meant despite the fact that nearly everyone absolutely fucking despised her, they were obliged to kind of put up with her.  She was married to a guy called Talenar (a THF), and this almost wouldn't be worth mentioning except that she was near constantly hitting on and generally fawning over a second guy, the Elvaan-PLD-guy-whose-name-I-forgot.

My first main was WHM, entirely because I hoped to relieve Lexi's stranglehold as the group's only healer.

At some point, when I was doing the first level cap raising quest, on the part where you have to get THAT paper I had been struggling, stress-fully, to farm it all day.  At some point some friends from LS1 offered to help and somehow Lexi and co. came along.  I don't remember the details but for whatever reason Lexi's presence put me into an incredible, seeing-red fury.  I do recall she was bitching about having to come help me and this upset me greatly because by luck it happened to drop shortly after they all showed up.

Anyways, the only other notable thing I can remember about Lexi is that later a guy named Atistab (whose name I only remember because of the below image) and I became really good friends when we discovered we had a mutual hate for Lexi (who had been in his Dynamis LS for a long time).

There was a second LS I was in between LS1 and TiamatsFangs, all I remember is that the leader was a guy called Ninboy who was one of the few max level goldsmiths on the server.  And man, digging up that image I came across a number of interesting images from those days.

This is Astarael, a career BLM who was another of a constellation of old friends from my Tribes days.

There was some point when I was partying in Valkurm Dunes (would have been in the earliest area) when I joined a party with Jillia and Margulis (they were a couple at the time IIRC).  We had one member of our party who was pretty bad and the three of us were arguing with him which made us all fast friends, and from there I joined TiamatsFangs--a group that I've been involved with in varying degrees over the years but I've always maintained contact with at least a few of them as time has gone by.

Jillia and I were close friends.  I hesitate to say she was my closest friend ever because at the time I was still quite close friends with Brandon Seidler (whom I'd dragged into FFXI at some point).  I'm not too shy enough to not admit that I had a smouldering unrequited crush on her for quite a while as well, but I also don't mind saying that at the very least I loved her like a sister.

This was the picture she posted on the TiamatsFangs forums.  She was a PLD and an absolutely badass tank.  I'll come back to her because there's a baffling backstory that leads into the last time I left the game so we'll save that until then.

I'm actually going to cut this post short here and come back to things.  Topics for another post: Nikki/Moosey/Clashes, Aurawyn, Kiren, Arithia/Faux/Kazeryushin, Girr/Homer the Scammer/SWTOR follow-up, more Jillia, playing FFXIV.

Quick tl;dr on the post title/first paragraph: I lost contact with Jillia shortly after she quit to go to university and the combination of our close friendship and the really bizarre circumstances surrounding her exit from the game form a seriously haunting mystery that I hope-but-don't-expect might someday be resolved.  Got the idea earlier today that if I can get this post to pop up on Google or other search engines with the right combination of keywords she might stumble across it someday.

Edit: It's a number of weeks later now and I was cleaning out some tabs on my browser when I noticed this post pops up at the top of a Google search for "Final Fantasy XI Jillia Phoenix" and quick searches confirm that "Kurohyou Phoenix", "Jillia Phoenix", and multiple other permutations show this post at or very close to the top, so mission accomplished.  The TF gang and I (especially) would love to hear from you again if you're reading this, Jilli.

Remember Who?

Remember Me: not particularly impressed.  I'll give it a few brownie points for trying but everything about it was kind of disgustingly sub-par.  It's kind of a mess to critique because you can see where so much work was put into it to make it into the alarmingly bland experience it was.

The premise for the story was interesting but commits the cardinal sin of not properly exploring its depth.  Here's the gist of the background so I can give an example of what I mean: in the near future a genius inventor has created a method of digitizing memory so that memories can be stored, transfered, quarantined, or deleted and the technology is so developed and so ubiquitous everyone has implants that allows them to network with virtually everything (Plot immersion breaking point #1: everyone?  Seriously?  Nobody thinks this is a bad idea?).  You play as Nilin, who is a memory hunter--a type of criminal who specializes in memory theft--but as a twist her abilities to manipulate memories are so advanced that she's able to "remix" memories, altering them so as to fiddle with the fabric of her victim's personality (Plot immersion breaking point #2: it's hard to sympathize with a character who wants to take the moral high ground when she's literally meddling with the fabric of people's identities and in numerous instances flat out cleaning out everything.)

Anyways here's the example-of-what-I-mean about the game not exploring the depth of its own ideas: midway through the game you break into the office of the CEO of the big evil megacorporation you've been fighting against in order to alter a key memory in their past to make them suddenly decide to take the company in a less evil direction.  First of all, it's weird that it's one event--and secondarily right from there the event is a car crash that they bitterly blame on their child.  Second, how is changing one memory from 20 years ago make up for everything that's happened since?  I mean the CEO literally just got done telling their secretary to prepare a list of everyone who went home early that day so they could be summarily fired the next day.  It's never hinted or mentioned anywhere that further memories are altered recursively (which would have cleared all this up)--in other words, they're going to remember each and every decision and action taken along the road to being CEO of Evil Megacorp Inc.  Third, what's to stop them from realizing they've been tampered with the instant they consult another human being and discover their recollection of events doesn't match others' and/or the physical or historical evidence?

Maybe that's a weak example.  Anyways, the game conceptually treats memories as distinct, almost-physical objects but fails to really explore how memories interact with each other to form the fabric of one's collective experience and identity.  Instead memories are absconded with, deleted wholesale, and generally mucked about with without really exploring the consequences.  They kind of deal with it in a very nebulous way in the form of the Leapers but it's wholly unsatisfying.  Lots of the plot is, frankly.

And also, like Yahtzee put it, the moment you establish at the beginning of the game that the main character can manipulate memories you might as well throw up a big gigantic neon sign saying TWIST COMING.  READY FOR THE TWIST?

The setting is pretty disappointing too.  We have this rich environment in Neo Paris and it's really elegantly fleshed out and put together--in the background to all the linear corridors you run through.  The camera is both hilarious and frustrating in its un-cooperativeness too, it really seems to fight back when I'm trying to move around and inspect the details of the environment in a way that's really baffling, like they were so obsessed with adhering to some sort of cinematic vision, the developers are actively fighting against your efforts to take a moment and look around and appreciate the art direction.  And even the game's attempts to direct your attention to some big scenic background are poor--there was one segment where I was climbing a pipe and would have missed a very nice image of the sprawling city if I hadn't suddenly noticed the music was doing some awkward swell and I was probably supposed to be looking at something other than the precarious ledges I was climbing.  The worst part is you're in a sprawling future metropolis and you literally visit 3-4 of the same general locations 2-3 times each.

The gameplay is likewise a bit disappointing for different reasons.  The keystone gimmick--memory remixing--is really, really cool but is very limited in scope and only shows up about 5 times.  The game gives you periodic ability unlocks in a kindasorta Metroidvania style but the entire game is pretty hardcore linear (if something branches off to a tiny detour you can be sure there's a collectible hiding somewhere).  The combat is slightly interesting but very samey.  They made the excellent choice of using an Arkham City style combat system but then watered it down but then give you the neat little cookie of customizable combos.  And, while this is nice, there's no real depth to it, no cost-benefit decisions to make, it's just simple pick-what-you-want-put-it-where-you-want-it visual dickery that's frankly kind of hard to appreciate when you're busy dodging shit and keeping an eye on other enemies in the thick of combat to really appreciate.

The bulk of the gameplay is the acrobatic conveniently-placed-ledge crawling and it's applied liberally and everywhere, and while it's not atrocious the game sure beats that dead horse into a pulp.

The director was some French guy and the entire first segment of the game was pretty reminiscent of Indigo Prophecy (I hope it's not the same French guy who directed that because I haven't taken the time to go make sure it wasn't).  The entire experience screams game-that-should-have-been-a-movie.  Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was trying to decide how possible it would be to just record the entire game and edit it down to an un-interactable movie.

Overall it wasn't an unpleasant experience.  The real star here was the art direction and the visual themes--the concept art for the game is gorgeous and it really came through.  Unfortunately they're the face of a superficial and dull plot and a gimmicky excuse for a video game.

Deus Vult

The following is a collection of semi-AARy posts I made on Facebook chronicling my various exploits in Crusader Kings 2 the last number of weeks.
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It seemed I was destined to expand my grand strategy collection having spent so much recent time on EU3; Paradox sale on Steam over the weekend and today is CK2 day. Already spent the entire afternoon as a sort-of-ambitious Sicilian count.
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Crusader Kings 2 consumes my free time at an alarming rate. I was a tad ornery when Laura was trying to ask me what I wanted for dinner because I was in the middle of a succession crisis, but then I realized a moment later that she had been home from work for a while and was asking what I wanted for dinner because it was 5PM, not noonish.
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My Duke of Mercia also holds one province in and the Duchy of Lancaster. When the previous pope called the second crusade, it was conveniently at just the right point in time that the Saracen dynasty that held Jerusalem at the time had just finished exhausting their military beating back a rival Muslim dynasty, so when I and a handful of lesser western European powers came riding in there was nothing but ripe sieges and stacks of 2k soldiers everywhere, and when the crusade won I accidentally inherited all of the pope-inaugurated Kingdom of Jerusalem. I now had 100+ holdings which was much higher than the 8 max I could administrate, so I quickly unloaded the four brand spanking new duchies on a bunch of whiny uncles who were mad they didn't have any land. Anyways, one of those uncles decided the Duke of Mercia shouldn't ALSO be the Duke of Lancaster and started a plot (which I foolishly backed) to depose the title for the latter duchy. But being as the ambitious uncle has four kind-of small territories all the way over in the middle east and his opponent controls essentially two duchies worth of provinces in northwest England, he's spent the last several years ferrying over tiny groups of soldiers (started off between 1-2k troops) and promptly smashing them into a much larger force (8k).

The last boats seriously unloaded a squad of 14 guys.

The Duke of Mercia apparently doesn't have any boats (he has a few ports but isn't calling any of his ships) so he's just sitting waiting. I'm waiting for the damn war to be over with (could take decades for the negative warscore to build up at the rate soldiers are slowly being ferried from southern Israel to England) so I can just revoke the damn title anyways (which I can do for free because the cunt supported the pretender in the last succession crisis).

Deus vult.
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I remembered Steam actually co-operates when trying to take screenshots with CK2 when I noticed this funny little detail up the top-left. My character had just gone from Infirm to Incapable and his wife, Queen Birgitta of England was appointed regent. At some point I'd also gotten an event to have an affair...with his wife. Fun fact: via the gift of tragic irony she's also the highest intrigue vassal I have and is thus my spymaster. I'm several years into Saexraed's grandson's reign and grandma Birgitta is STILL my spymaster.

  
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Decided to give the ASoIaF mod for CK2, loaded up the Feast for Crows scenario, picked Martell because Dorne is relatively passive to the central conflict, except shortly in Aegon VI landed in Westeros but I couldn't remember canonically if Dorne supported Aegon's campaign (did a little digging on the wiki, apparently the event that popped up where Arianne is sent as an envoy is yet to occur in the Winds of Winter) but he already has secret pro-Targaryen plots afoot and Aegon VI would technically be his nephew so I figured why not.

Anyways, immersion was immediately broken when, in the first battle of campaign, my troops summarily cornered and slew Jaime Lannister.
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While I wasn't looking, Scotland managed to somehow inherit all of Norway, which gave momentary pause to my future plans to take Scotland for myself. Fortunately, a few years later virtually every Norwegian duchy revolted and at present Norway's back to the status quo. Meanwhile, Scotland has also somehow inherited what's left of Connacht.

Two words: Scottish vikings.

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I ran into a snag in my England game where midway through an offensive war to unify Portugal (the third Crusade that granted me the Kingdom of Portugal somehow left two counties in Islamic hands) my king died in battle and quickly resulted in a small succession issue that obliterated my slight advantage over the Moorish reply to my offensive. Took a break for a few days (played some Mount & Blade) and then came back to my save before I'd started my offensive. Went smoothly this time.

When the above king's grandson inherited (his direct son had died to illness) things were very smooth. No rival claims and he cleanly inherited two kingdoms which were under gavelkind succession (which is tough to do, he had at least one eligible uncle and/or brother and I'm not actually sure how it technically happened). Things were great until his two eldest sons starting warring over separate duchies in Portugal (which was still under low crown authority which permits intra-Kingdom warfare). This wasn't unmanageable (I was actually using it to my advantage to try to maneuver the elder son into a stronger position on succession) but then the Duke of East Anglia decided he wanted independence and dragged two other duchies with him. Even THIS wasn't unmanageable but the Fatimid Empire took advantage of the situation to decide he wanted Jerusalem back. With ~2/3 of my potential forces attempting to pacify the other third, I managed to put down the rebellion and bring all my forces into the far east side of the Mediterranean JUST in time to lose the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem to war score.

I actually wasn't too discouraged by losing Jerusalem (one less kingdom title to worry about doling out on succession), but I used it as an excuse to rage-revoke the primary titles of everyone whose rebellion caused me to lose it.

Anyways, I played for a little bit after that, but attempting to mitigate the gavelkind succession of the Kingdom of Ireland and Portugal was more daunting than I was prepared for this afternoon so I decided to quietly retire that campaign for now. The lesson learned here is not to create titles that have de jure gavelkind succession until you ALSO have the ability to create the title one level above it. For instance I basically should never have created the title for the Kingdom of Ireland because it's liable to pass to my heir's sibling and thus completely invalidate the effort spent uniting the Irish mainland. I still would have had to deal with having Portugal and Jerusalem thrust on me, but dealing with 2-3 extra kingdom titles is better than 4.

I started a game as King of France, since I have yet to touch them in a grand strategy game and immediately found another set of problems. Like England, France starts with primogeniture (unlike, say, the Iberian kingdoms), which is much much easier to deal with compared to gavelkind. Unlike England, France starts with no established crown authority which isn't a real disadvantage by itself but means that your internal politics are going to be in constant turmoil as your vassals bicker incessantly and makes individual dukes who accumulate power potentially dangerous. In addition to all that you start with the very menacing HRE looming to the east.

I actually had to start twice. Both times the HRE went full on angry war for the laughably tiny county of Gent. The first time just as I was marshaling all my forces, my uncle decided he should be king and took about a quarter of my forces with him. My 10kish army was getting stomped by the 30k HRE stack when I realized I could just surrender Gent at absolutely no penalty aside from losing the county. When I restarted again, I just gave him Gent and then reclaimed it like 5 years later when the duchy that held it declared independence from the HRE. It seems that the size of the HRE is mitigated by the same problem I'm dealing with--the low crown authority means that basically your "country" is a bunch of tiny duchies constantly warring with each other while you're busy trying to deal with world politics, and the HRE has the added problem of elective succession which means there's only really going to be brief windows of time where there's actually a unified HRE to be worried about knocking at your door all at once. They're already suffering somewhat from a number of independent nations popping out from the empire.

Anyways, the constant intra-kingdom warfare is really chaotic and I'm just trying to hold on long enough for my next heir to institute medium crown authority which'll put an end to internal disputes. Then I only have to worry about my dukes poking the sleeping dragon to the east.
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After reading about a von Habsburg count to HRE challenge I decided to give that a try. Had a really slow early game that picked up steam when I convinced the emperor to give me the Duchy of North Burgundy but then came to a screeching halt once medium crown authority was instituted and I couldn't even press de jure duchal claims when I was finally in the position to.
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Woke up yesterday at like 6AM thinking about my France campaign. The trouble I was having planning ahead was that I wasn't sure where France should go in the endgame. I always like to plan on shooting for the de jure empire of my chosen country but I can't foresee what the next goal is after forming Francia, but laying in bed thinking about it I was starting to get psyched up to just go for it and see where it takes me.

But as I sat down at my computer, before I loaded it up I did a quick review of the wiki tabs I had up and I was looking at the tab on succession laws trying to think more on dealing with gavelkind succession when I was reading the section describing seniority succession and the section mentioned that it's a useful tool for unifying the Iberian kingdoms which sounded really interesting so I went and started a game as Leon instead.

Right off the bat I had to consider the same issue that I was slightly vexed with when I tried starting as Castille: do you make an early grab for the other Christian kingdoms so that you have full control over the push into Moorish territory or do you keep the alliances and risk them either calling you into wars with very weak positioning and/or taking land for themselves and putting you into a weaker position. The advantage of starting as Leon is that you're already playing the eldest of the Jimena kings; a quick survey of my neighbors showed that the king of Castille (to whom the king of Leon is heir) was the heir of Galicia, so I decided I would try to grab Castille and hope Galicia falls apart. Castille starts weaker than Leon, but when I declared war they called in Galicia and Navarra. But I had a little luck on my side, Galicia's Duke of Portucale started a faction to hand Galicia over to me, so I marshaled my forces and bitchslapped the small contingent from Galicia so the Duke of Portucale could mop up and give me a nice birthday present before turning back to Castille.

So less than a few years in and I held all three of the western Iberian kingdoms. Nice start. There was a slight wrinkle; Galicia's crown authority didn't start high enough for me to convert it to seniority succession right away. I decided I was fine with this though since I got the duchy of Portucale out of the deal, which meant when my king died his son would inherit the two counties comprising what remained of the Kingdom of Galicia while I got to keep Leon, Castille, and the lower half of Galicia. As it turned out, it got a little better, because the King of Navarra was the senior-most heir, so on succession I picked up Navarra when I lost Galicia--but this was only a temporary boon, it too couldn't be converted straight to seniority but I only needed its resources long enough to expand decisively into Moorish territory. By the time I lost Navarra's three provinces I'd gained 3-4 times as much territory by expanding south. Playing in the afternoon yesterday I steadily advanced south taking more and more territory.

I was gonna continue the advance today but I've been distracted watching CEO 2013 all day. I briefly tried to play while having the stream run on my second monitor but I accidentally won the Second Crusade for Jerusalem (again, seriously I didn't want it this time, I arrived late when the warscore was already like 70-something, beat down a 13k enemy stack and didn't even have time to start a siege--somehow that had given me the highest contribution rating and before I could load my troops back onto the boats to run off with my Crusader trait I suddenly had a whole new kingdom under my belt--quick aside: somehow the Kingdom of Jerusalem started with seniority succession, so one less massive headache to deal with) and suddenly had a lot of minutiae I had to deal with and I didn't want to have to divide my attention so I'm saving the county handout for later.
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Taken at the start o' my last session. I've since expanded farther south and control about half of Ghana (had truces with both Jerjerid and Almoravid so I had nowhere else to throw soldiers). Had some trouble following my last succession that was eerily reminiscent of the trouble I ran into at the end of my England campaign but I managed to ferry troops over in time to save northern Jerusalem from an opportunistic Jerjerid attack. As I was taking a chunk of Ghana, there was a Catholic crusade for Hungary, which is the western tip of Cumanian blob there; it was won and picked up by a single HRE duke who is now probably busy trolling the emperor.