#palia rant

[tinyowlthoughts]

Emotional Level Today: Crying over video game cutscenes

I've been playing Palia for a while now - started two years ago, took a break a year ago, restarted my game a few months ago, and just reached the Acceptance Ceremony. (And I am kicking myself for not recording it!!! There's no way to rewatch it!)

Anyway basically, in-game (it's an MMO, with Stardew Valley & Animal Crossing vibes IMO), humans were previously wiped out from the planet due to Flow (wibbly-wobbly magic-wagic stuff) and now for some reason, thousand(s) of years later, humans are remerging! The Majiri (purple/pink-skinned bipedal race who have taken over) are very confused. You wind up in a little village called Kilima and, over the course of the beginning plot, are invited to become an official member of the village by choosing one of the characters as a Shepp - basically a mentor who will help you continue on your path of growth.

I chose Zeki:

Spoiler Alert: His species, Grimalkin, are literally ALIENS who to the planet in between the great human extinction and the Majiri race taking over. They stuck around and FORGOT THEIR WAY HOME TO THEIR PLANET.

Tell me that isn't orange-cat-one-brain-cell energy.

There was also some kind of trade war in the past between Grimalkin and Majiri, and it was decided that Grimalkin don't have the same restrictions concerning Flow that the Majiri have. Flow is seen as 'dangerous' and is not to be messed with - only the Order can use it. (Kinda dystopian, but humanity managed to wipe themselves out with it so also kinda makes sense from a 'lets keep our species alive' standpoint?)

Zeki runs the general store, AND the underground black market, where he sells special furniture, runs a Hot Pot minigame, and traffics in illegal Flow devices and other magic odds-and-ends. There is this whole background of the cartels and illegal trade routes and such, which I'm certain are going to be hugely important to the plot going forward (they just now released the end of the prologue, so there's a TON of game left to explore!).

So, like, he should be this gruff, rude, 'mind your own business kid' kinda guy, right? Running an illegal business and already being suspected of it by the towns magistrate?

Nope. Zeki is a generally nice dude. He regrets getting another village member tangled up in the illegal mess. His inventions, which are to benefit him, would also benefit Majiri kind as a whole. He's funny, charming, not above some jabs and teasing, but overall a swell guy. I LOVE him so much, so I chose him to be my Shepp.

(Which the magistrate looked horrified at! The character designs and modeling in this game are pretty amazing, especially the beautiful cutscenes!)

So today I finished the acceptance quest, and got to have my special Welcome Home cutscene, and I'm kicking myself for not recording because I cried.

It's one of those things where like, yeah, it's just a game, but the characters are well written and interesting and I've spent time with them - getting to this point takes a LOT of in-game time. You've got to work at building relationships. You can't choose a Shepp until you're at a level 4 relationship, and that's weeks of daily chats and gifts and such! Seeing all these characters celebrating my character becoming a permanent part of their village, of their lives - it made me so happy I cried.

I only grabbed a screenshot at the beginning of the scene - my character starting the walk towards the dias where Zeki was waiting for me. The integration of player avatars into cutscenes is really well done too - it feels like you, specifically, are part of the story, not just puppeting a doll through conversations.

I don't know why I'm rambling about this today - I just wanted to share. if you need a community-focused MMO that is FREE (funded through their cosmetic store, which is pricy but SO worth it!!!), I highly recommend it. The whole game gives you a sense of community, belonging, of being seen and valued.

I guess that's just what I really needed this morning.

[noneofchar]

Chapaa chase sucks so bad if you’re on switch. I can’t even catch one half the time because it’s so damn glitchy. I’m really disappointed in the Maji market. Not enough opportunity to get tickets, the stalls are expensive af and I’ve only gotten one claw machine token this whole time.

[sasiefox]

Dear Players who are BITCHING about Palia and the bugs right now... Please remember you are playing an OPEN BETA game... some peeps are bitching about Palia hardcore about them not fixing some bugs when it's ONE been less than a week since the new patch and quests dropped and TWO It's OPEN BETA. We are test subjects and there are a lot of little bugs to fix. They released a statement saying they'd rather do it right than in a hurry to please the masses. I honestly applaud them for getting things done as quickly as they are and for being so open and connected with us. This is not a complete game where they can just focus on content and fixing bugs. Geezus some people need to go touch some real grass I think.

[universefrogg]

Plays a new game that’s in beta: oh I like this it’s cute

Sees an NPC who is a fashion twink: oh cute

Sees another NPC but this time it’s a single father who sounds southern and works in the mines: OH NO

[mossiagocheese]

awoof?

[piltoverfinest]

Listen! Listen! I am TRYING to write the next chapter for Fuel. I am doing something that involves typing words, I swear it but...

I kinda fell in love with a fictional wizard again and it takes all my brain capacity to hungrily lust after him. So...

BUT: Good news is, by the end of the week, there will be a chapter. Either one or two. It has taken me weeks but there will be a new chapter.

[trashymouthgremlin]

I'm back to say that in my absence I have been deep in steddie brainrot playing a fucking game called palia and considering writing an au because THIS GUY

Is so Eddie to me, please I need to know if I am the only one

[sarkitsune03]

Palia Confessions

I had a crush on Hodari since the beginning. Jel was just easier to romance.... It's taking forever to get my friendship up with Najuma. I got Hodari at 3 friendships already though.

Also.... why is silk threads so hard to find? It sounds so complicating!!! And I need to get my foraging to level 7 to be able to make flow tree planks... and I need more flow tree wood for the things I need to make for Tish...

[fishiteeth]

Some very minor spoilers for Hassian's 4-heart quest, I think

Tw: death mention, Tamala

In my mind, Tamala is Taylin. Turned bad. She kinda just has the vibes in my mind, being so far away from the rest of civilization, in the same way that Taylin is lost. I feel like she might have survived whatever beast she came in counter with before Sifuu learned of her 'death', that she might've managed to get away, maybe without her memories. So she started a new life for herself in the Bahari woods.

And then, unfortunately, Hassian comes along and falls in love. Maybe it was out of genuine dislike or maybe, just maybe it was an inkling of knowledge that this is her son that lead her to rejecting him.

Maybe when Sifuu learns of this rejection, she never gets the chance to see Tamala. Or when she does, she can't help but see the resemblance between that cursed sorceress and her late wife. She thinks of a moment, that maybe her wife is still alive. But why would she lead her son on and then leave him distraught? Wouldn't Taylin, the mother of their child, love and embrace her son as a mother should?

Maybe she never sees Tamala, so when Hassian first tells his still-living mother about his new love, she thinks of herself and Taylin. Maybe when Hassian comes back after Tamala's rejection, she thinks of when Taylin was lost to battle.

Maybe something leads to another and Sifuu meets Tamala in person. And in those cruel and seductive eyes, she sees Taylin.

Just a theory (: an unfortunate one

Edit: I've been told tamala is canonically over 200 yrs. so this is now a personal headcanon. Canon will not dictate my life!1!!

[payte]

ALSO I SEE you are posting SDV stuff...are you playing the new update right now?! I just started a new farm on my PC to play and I'm addicted again <3 If you need someone to rant and rave about SDV, let me know 😅🥰

You caught me 👀 I started a new farm with some friends and my boyfriend just for the new update and we've been loving it! My twin hasn't really played much Stardew so it's been so much fun watching him experience a lot of the game for the first time after I've been playing it for so long! I'm normally the designated farmer of the group, so I've been showing him the ropes of that and actually heading into the mines and fishing this time around 😅

Also I'm romancing Elliot for the first time (I've been so loyal to Shane once he became romanceable, and then married Harvey) and I've been missing out on this man!!! I already love him 😭

Let me know who you're romancing (if you are)! I always try to go for someone new each time (and almost always default back to Shane 😅) It was so hard to choose for this farm bc I've always had a soft spot for Sam and your Stardew legacy has made me want to go after Sebastian!!!

My inbox is always open to you, too, if you want to rant! I love SDV sm, probably as much as the sims!!!

[hassianlovebot]

i know the rare and epic bugs are supposed to be yknow,, rare and epic so it wouldn't make sense if they spawned all the time. that being said, it's bad enough that the game has time limits on certain bugs, adding super low spawn rates just makes it worse. imo players should never feel like they have to spend hours playing to catch one bug

[limbooog]

This is just Stupid little Palia rant thingy (the good kind i swear) but i was looking at Jels wiki and i saw his voice actors name (Greg Chun) and googled it thinking that it sounded familiar only to Find out that Jel and Kenji are voiced by the VA who is the English voice for HIROTSU!!! Like the bloody Port Mafia Assasin, the commander of the Black Lizard, that Hirotsu.

So i Ended up doing some researching and i realised that many of the Palia VAs voice/ voiced BSD characters in the English dub (we love a hyper fixation cross over lmao).

But seriously so many of the Palia vas voice act in Bsd and idk why but that literally makes me so happy but i was not expecting that.

The Palia VAs who did the dub for BSD for anyone interested:

Jel and Kenli’s VA Greg Chun who voices both Hirotsu and Natsume

Auni’s VA Adam McArthur who voices SAIGIKU FUCKING JOUNO (when i tell you i was not expecting that i mean i was not expecting that)

Nai’o and Einars VA Ray Chase who voices FYODOR! (this dudes range is insane istg, like how you gonna voice the anemic rat man and then voice the sweetest country boy and Einar like how, i am amazed)

Hekla and Najuma’s VA Cherami Leigh who voices Kyoka Izumi and Teruko Okura as well as multiple less prominent characters in BSD (i cannot unhear it now istg)

Hodari and Ashura’s VA Jamieson Price who voices FUKUZAWA!!! (Why is this man always voicing dads whenever i hear him like bro has contributed so much to my father issues).

And finally Zeki and my bestie Reth’s VA Robbie Daymond who voices… Ace. Yeah that guy. (No hate to Ace lovers but he’s just not my cup of tea sorry)

(If i missed a few or got something wrong I’m sorry I’m just a dude with Google i get stuff wrong sometimes)

LIKE THATS A DECENT CHUNK OF THE CAST, I WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT AT ALL!

[grifxmain]

I don't usually make rant-type posts about games I'm playing (or make my own text posts in general tbh), but I feel like I need to talk about this, even if only to get my own thoughts in order. Heads up that it will be a pretty long post, but the tldr of it is that the new Grand Harvest House is disappointing to me.

So the new Grand Harvest House. I was pretty excited about it since I've been wanting a second story for my house primarily so I can put my bedroom upstairs. (The fact that my bedroom is just attached to the living room is bizarre to me especially since there's no doors.) Hence why I bought the blueprint right away, only to be caught completely off guard by the sheer size of it. Since I wanted to use it as my main house I had intended to put it on my main plot by simply replacing the original Harvest House as I assumed that it would be roughly the same size but just with a second story. Instead the new Grand Harvest House is at least as big if not bigger than the entirety of my previous house.

Ignoring the miscellaneous items that temporarily had to be thrown on a heap to make space for the new house you can tell that the two houses take up about the same amount of floor space. But unlike the old house which uses a bunch of configurable add-ons to reach that size, the new house is just one big room that takes up all that space.

Yet despite how large the room is the are very few windows. Now some people might be happy to have that much wall space, I know I've had trouble fitting all the paintings I wanted on the walls of my old house before, but then again you can always opt to remove any windows you don't want by altering the house. But when it comes to altering the windows in the Grand Harvest House for some reason you cannot alter the windows per floor, meaning that if you want big windows on the walls of one floor you are forced to put big windows on the walls of the other floor as well. Speaking of walls, they are taller on the Grand Harvest house than on the older buildings for some reason.

On the bottom floor this is dealt with by the addition of wooden planks at the top of the wall, however these planks are not added to the walls of the top floor. Which creates some issues with the wallpaper.

Since the wallpapers were designed for the wall height that all the buildings before this one were the wallpaper is too short for the wall so that the wallpaper repeats near the top. The wall height on the top floor is slightly different on each wall too, so the amount of repeat wallpaper that's visible is different on each wall, which makes it even more noticeable.

Another strange feature found on the walls of the top floor are these thin wooden dividers. Since these do not exist on the bottom floor and the wall is registered as one big surface - the wallpaper is applied to the wall in its entirety rather than following these sections - they do not serve any actual purpose. Personally I think they look kinda ugly even on a bare wall, but that is of course merely a matter of taste.

However when applying a wallpaper they create this issue where, because the wall is treated as one big surface, the dividers will sometimes cut off the pattern in weird ways.

I say sometimes because as seen here there are some wallpapers that do change up the pattern to fit with the dividers, note how the wallpaper starts in the middle of the 'flower' on both sides of the divider.

Moving on from wallpapers another side effect of the taller walls is that any ceiling lights end up way higher that they are designed for. This is even worse in the middle of the room on the bottom floor as the only place to put up ceiling lights there are the support beams directly under the roof. This is not the end of the world or anything but it just looks a little sad and also gives very little light. Which is especially unfortunate since the room is so large and cannot be divided into smaller rooms, meaning that the entire building will remain dimly lit.

Even with the new building blocks the room cannot be properly split up as the heights don't line up, but if you could you would not be able to paint the walls made with the building blocks anyway.

Other than the big room there are 3 spots on the bottom floor to add more rooms, in the same places as the windows just like how it works in the other types of buildings.

This means that the rooms are not centered in the wall to which the are added, except for the back wall where there is a staircase in the way. If you don choose to add a room it will also spawn in two pillars on the wall where the corners of that room are. However since the walls of the Grand Harvest House are taller than the walls of the add-on rooms this means that those pillars will stop abruptly.

Lastly, the second floor itself, which is the main feature that this new building is meant to provide. As seen in the pictures it is not so much a full floor as it is just a loft. The part at the front wall of the building is fine, but the two walkways on the sides are a little too slim to really put any furniture it, effectively turning it into dead space.

All this to say that the Grand Harvest House feels a little poorly thought out and is ultimately disappointing to me. It feels as though the people who worked on this only made the house without considering the previous building options and how this new building would fit into that roster. Now I know of course that they have stated that they are looking into more options for second stories in player homes to add in the future, so perhaps something that fits in with the other building options will be coming down the pipeline at a later point. But as it stands right now I find that this house is very difficult to implement into a home just by virtue of the incredibly large scale of the building. That being said I do think that this building could work as a standalone so that is how I will use it, likely by turning it into a sort of community kitchen type space on its own plot to use when I have people over for cooking. I would have liked to be a bit more aware of these issues before purchasing the blueprint for it though. It would have been nice if the patch notes had mentioned the size, since both the trailer for this patch and the preview pictures shown in the patch notes do a poor job of conveying the size of the building due to the perspectives used. I might not have bothered getting the new house at all if I had known about everything I mentioned ahead of time.

EDIT: I found another issue regarding add-ons used on the Grand Harvest House. So I started building the community kitchen I mentioned and actually added add-ons to the building rather than just hovering them over. Specifically I added a fireplace to the back wall and two bay windows in the front wall, but when doing so I realized that this made it so I couldn't change window size anymore. So if you want to change the size of the windows upstairs it means you have to remove the add-on on the lower floor first.

This isn't the worst, though a bit of an unnecessary hassle, but with the front wall there is the porch in the way so you have to turn the building and look at it from an angle to be able to grab the window add-ons. Which once again confirms this feeling that the Grand Harvest House is just poorly thought-out in terms of practicality

[kiutotakulady]

when you finally found big Flow Tree but the Asia Pacific server just left you hanging cause either nobody speaks English/Malay or we asian just be shy like that.....

[mistyycowoa]

Why am I a being of flesh and skin and bones. It's so fragile, so biodegradable. So easily destroyed, as if I would've never existed at all.

Why am I not made of stone and metal and wood. It may not be any less biodegradable in the long run, but I would be less fragile for as long as I live. Nothing would remain of me except for the stone at some point, I suppose... But is that any different from leaving behind a pile of bones?

I wish I could just... Cut a few limbs of and replace them all one by one, until I am eventually truly who I am. Until my exterior represents my interior fully. Until this flesh is no more. Until my skin is gone. Until my bones are nowhere to be found.

Until my consciousness rests in nothing but some stone and metal.

[feralgoblinqueen]

Trying to romance Hassian in Palia and you have to befriend his mom, Sifuu. Quickest way to befriend someone is to ask them about things they want/need. You know what Sifuu wants? Her son to eat. Everyday she’s like “Wish my son could find someone good” and I’m like “I’m trying my hardest but you gotta be my friend first since you raise the most old fashioned man in Palia.”

Long story short, please, Sifuu, just tell me what you want and not what your son likes to eat. He’s already my friend now let me be yours!

Rant over lol