#rpgmmo

[autumnslance]

Aeryn, I need your advice for a friend of mine. She wants to play through the entire story of ARR but for her NG+ ARR doesn’t capture the same the experience (says suspending and unsuspending breaks immersion for her) as playing through the story naturally. The Moogle event has mounts that she wants to get. Do you have any advice I can offer her so she can enjoy the story and get the items she wants before the event ends!

The moogle event isn't reliant on story play, just doing the content, and some people just don't like grinding, though being in voice chat with friends just talking about whatever can help.

As for the chapter breaks causing immersion to be broken, I dunno about that; it personally doesn't strike me as so different from shutting down the game entirely and booting up again. We can't live in Eorzea forever, after all.

The chapters are good episode breaks, moments to breathe and, if this is a story replay, a time to get down notes and maybe drafts, if looking to write fic or RP about it.

In the end though, some folks really just have their own ideas about what "immersion" in a RPGMMO means, and have to figure out for themselves what makes content worth doing, or redoing, and how they want to (re)play the game--or not. Trying to push it usually doesn't help at all, either.

[isayoldbean]

so I've been sorta intrigued by ffxiv because of your recent posts about it but I find mmos kinda overwhelming to get into, do you have any like tips or idk onboarding spiel info you could provide to make it seem less daunting?

sorry i wasn't able to answer this sooner, yesterday was hella chaotic :( but anyway!

tbh i've never been big into mmos myself. no matter how many i tried none of them really seemed to take, and i am indeed not a terribly social person which kind of makes the whole concept generally unappealing to me, so i think i kind of understand where you're coming from.

as the devs themselves have said before, ff14 would more accurately be described as an rpgmmo, because the rpg elements are kind of more heavily emphasized than the mmo ones in comparison to other mmorpgs. they've also gradually been adding the ability to run dungeon content with ai controlled party members for those who prefer to do content alone, are uncomfortable in mmo settings, or simply play in areas/times where there aren't as many people online that would keep them from finding a party in a timely manner. so i'd say ff14 probably has some things going for it to make it a better fit for those of us who aren't super big into mmos.

also unlike a lot of other mmos, progression is tied to advancing the story rather than your level, there's no skill trees to speak of, and instead of being locked into whatever class you decide to pick up at the beginning, you are able to pick up any/all classes in the game on the same character and freely switch between them as the mood strikes you for the most part. this significantly cuts back on the 'oh no what if i make a wrong choice/change my mind down the road' sort of anxiety.

on top of that, even though the reputation of the game's community can be overstated a bit (there are still toxic people and a whole lot of insane people), it's true that in comparison to the average mmo community, the ff14 community is super friendly and welcoming to new people. there is a real culture of helping people learn and being kind and supportive of beginners that is very refreshing to see, and simply telling people 'hey sorry, i'm new' will usually cause most everyone else in your party to be willing to die for you, especially if you show yourself to be kind and pleasant and willing to learn. all of these factors together really make ff14 a much more pleasant mmo experience than average for newcomers and contribute to its continued popularity over the last 10 years.

i'm not sure what else specifically would be helpful for you to know beforehand, but if you have any more questions feel free to send me another ask! also i'd be more than happy to show you around in-game to help you get the hang of things if you'd like! my main is on crystal data center, but i also have characters on primal and dynamis data centers as well, and i'd be more than happy to help in any way i can

[mrswhymrhow]

pandemonium raids from the hit rpgmmo final fantasty fourteen

[meep9898]

[17: What game do you never tell people you play?]

I don't hide most of the games or things that I enjoy. I'm aware that not everyone will enjoy them, but I still recommend them to friends, and sometimes even to people who are looking for recommendations or for things to get into those things.

It no longer is the case, but I used to be ashamed of telling people that I played 2 games.

The first one is Maple Story. Only one of my friends played it and every other person who liked games or RPGMMOs that I knew either taught it was too cutesy or mocked me for liking something that was anime-like. Yes, kids. Liking anime back then wasn't as cool as it is nowadays. Now I can proudly say that I played it.

The other one is League of Legends. For people who barely knew videogames, LOL had really negative connotations, either because of the toxic community or because it was seen as the "nerdiest" thing, which would get you guaranteed bullying. And I sucked at the game anyways, I think I reached level 11 or 12 before I stopped playing it (back then it was harder because there was a level cap at level 30), so I wasn't even proud of telling people that liked it that I played because I sucked. The one time I dared telling someone, we played two rounds, they said "you f*cking suck", and we never played LOL or any other game together again...

[codacontainmentbreach]

yes, but imo their universe is perpetually in the 90s/early 2000s (and modern-day memes/characters enter their timeline as paranormal entities) so i think it would all be pretty early-internet

i like the idea that Ghost cherry-picks some parts of the internet, like games (he canonically plays an RPGMMO obsessively) and anything that helps him do his job

he’s ALLERGIC to everything else on the internet

i think Ghost is sort of tech-illiterate with anything he’s not already very familiar with and he does not like learning how to use entirely new tech

and he’d be too paranoid to willingly put information about himself online

(he’s the zero social media bf, Toast is the instagram girlcore meme page admin bf)

also dude can’t read and i can’t see him being patient enough to have Toast read a whole wiki page to him about some random serial killer, so he still doesn’t know about Jimmy bc he’s just that stubborn & in denial

do you think the pie gang has in universe Wikipedia pages?? i think toast has one (royalty shit), but like did pie get big enough that it and the members had wiki pages?? i personally think ghost has one now, but its really sparse like he doesnt talk about himself / his past much so the page is pretty empty, contrasted to toast's which has most of his life documented (oh and jimmy would definitely have a page) [feel free to respond in tags or comments idc]

[sylniabab]

I'm drowning myself in the world of rpgmmo to forget about my life.

[micaland]

Random things I have in my phone #3

A retired mage has to go back to the fight and he's not happy about it

[ok-boomer]

I love ESO 😍

[fheythfully]

I love everything everyone said but also, since I've been here since launch, I just kind of... played it? And enjoyed it? I remember being annoyed at some parts -- Company of Heroes arc comes to mind -- but at the end of the day, I had a good time and still think ARR was frankly not that bad. I came into the game after playing a number of other RPGMMOs and Final Fantasies as a whole, so I would have been disappointed if the game didn't take its time to worldbuild.

how did all you ff14 players make it through the beginning of the game

[umsaywhatnow]

I-I can’t 😂😂😂 It’s face is fucking priceless!

[autumnslance]

How did you determine what type of adventurers your characters would be? I have a character I adore, but I can't figure out her voice, or is it my voice I'm hearing? A friend asked me what my character's goal was after she became an adventurer and arrived in Eorzea, and I had no clear answer. How do you tell when your character wants to go a specific route and not you, the creator? I am watching an anime this evening; one of the quotes was "Every idol grows in a unique way, so there's no single right answer." My brain took it as "every adventurer/Warrior of Light grows in their own unique way, so there's no single right answer." I would love some insight from a fellow player!

To be honest, I also often struggle with defining my characters goals and voices right away. Sometimes it takes writing out stories of their reactions to events in MSQ, sometimes it takes chatting with friends and coming up with scenarios and jokes and pseudo-stories together; the "campfire stories" aspect of Discord chats, both text and voice.

Part of it comes from my characters' histories, even in the early, general rough stages: where did they come from, how did that place and time shape them, what events, what about the people they grew up around, affected them? No one's born and lives in a vacuum, springing fully formed as a player avatar does in the game world; if we want them to be characters, with stories to tell in roleplay and/or fanfiction, then we take those background elements into account.

The reasons I play through the MSQ more than once--with alts and/or via New Game+ now--is not only to solidify the basic lore in my head, but also because that first play through, I'm as blind as anyone else and having my own knee-jerk reactions to events as I puzzle out what's going to happen next, the whys, the hows, etc.

But on subsequent playthroughs I can take my time, really think about "how does X character respond to this? Why?" Like I knew on Aeryn's playthrough (my second play of EW) that Dark and C'oretta would come help in Garlemald--but Iyna couldn't and wouldn't. Her own wounds from growing up under Imperial subjugation and pushed through the military system are still too raw. So she In Character does other things during that stretch of story. Likewise, though Dark's best known as a Bard, she's the one of my alts who In Character did the Tank Role Quest--because Gridania is her home, so she answered that call for her help with her axe in hand.

I think this year's Rising story with Nhagi having to remember why he started adventuring in the first place is also a good thing to keep in mind; maybe the character doesn't have a defined, granular goal at the moment. At least nothing overarching, no real endgame. But they have a reason they chose, and stay on, this path of adventure. Maybe those reasons are the same, maybe they're different now.

"Characters must want something for a good narrative" is true in traditional stories; in open ended roleplay those goals can be more nebulous, shifting, and varied, in my opinion, and even following the fanfic of a RPGMMO character can feel that way. Sometimes a character doesn't have a defined goal yet, or attained a goal and now needs something else but in the meantime they're drifting a bit.

And we kinda saw that for the WoL, too, in 6.1; the Scions attained all their goals, and the world was saved. What's an adventurer to do? Well, we found "simple" new adventures with some friends--and ended up with more than bargained for, in this trip to the Void!

As for telling when my character wants a different path than what I intend...it's why Aeryn's a "successful" character to me. She does things I didn't intend all the time. Like smooch a damn rogue.

Which I think I answered pretty thoroughly in some asks earlier this year, about how and why I ended up falling into a ship, and then how I see the adage about "the character does their own thing/out of my control" thing so many writers talk about.

[illidariann]

"Burn it!"

[serapheir]

Priestess Draculaura ready to heal some scrubs!!

[wolfkit773]

Why I focus on survivability in games

Step 1: Pull everything

Step 2: Survive

[tyria]

other worldly.

[anhdaosart]

Tagged by @irithyllians @witchesconstellation and @minilev to post a wip! Thanks :3c