Minor Entry

30 Dec, 2024

Today is one of the last few days of the year. As I sit here at my desk at 1:30 am, winding down before I go to sleep, I find myself at a general loss. Not just because of the situation with the dogs, but just in general. Everything feels so overwhelming when you get piled with it at once. But being able to sit down and just take some time to myself over the last week while I got Felix kind of used to the situation has been rough, but I guess it's like, as much as it stings, life goes on. New Years Eve will be a week, but that'll turn into months and years and so on. I guess that's just how life is.

I'm trying not go to into 2025 with the same defeated mentality I go into most years with. These next 4 years are going to be rough, and truth be told, I don't want to keep surrendering my will to do literally anything to some bigoted, spray-tanned orange piece of crap. If I mope and wallow, I'm just going to end up where I was in the past, which was laying around, crying, not doing anything and gaining weight, and I don't want to be that way anymore.

I guess, for the sake of my own sanity, I'm going to just go into 2025 running, throwing ideas at the wall and doing what I can to survive. If I can get a better job then what I had when I lost mine, then I'll take it. Though at this rate, anything is better than nothing. I realize living off of inheritance sounds like a luxury, but really only having enough to pay your rent and nothing more than that just... isn't ideal. It's kept me rooted to my home, and most notably my desk, instead of doing literally anything. And I just don't want another year of that.

As for other things, I plan to continue working on the blog, maybe putting out everything I finally said I would and then some. Things still need to be cleaned up. It's all backend work though, so no biggie. Well, as I said, I want to do it, so I'll just keep doing it. Maybe later today, I'll see what I can do to put another article out. Shouldn't be too hard.

I did want to do one thing, moreso for MFC, but I'll be mirroring the post here. I wanted to do a year in review for my collection, considering that's pretty much my main hobby outside of art. So, I guess look forward to that. It'll probably be a bit before it goes up here, but the plan is to write it out later today.

Another thing I'd like to do, mostly for tomorrow, is maybe set up one of the bullet journals I've had laying around and use it. I have 2 that have like... next to nothing in them. One has some info about an OC that's ever changing, and who knows what the second one has. Guess I'll get to work on figuring out a theme over the next 2 days. I probably should have thought of that before the literal last 2 days of the year, but oh well. I've always wanted to get into bullet journaling, but in all honesty, I always felt like I had nothing to write about. Maybe this year will finally change that.

For now, I leave you with this minor thing. I made a new wallpaper & set up a new layout for my Rainmeter. It's been years since I came up with a new Rainmeter layout. Like sure, I've added stuff to it over the years, but it's still been the same basic structure. Doing something new feels a bit fresh in a way. Though, I don't really tend to change my wallpapers all that often, mostly because I don't tend to look at my desktop too much. Seriously, I think for the longest time I used a Eustace GBF promo art until I reformatted my pc and was using Kangel promo art until the hack happened.

Here's the post, for those interested.

For now, I just have uhhhhh... The result of me staying up until like 6 am. I have no excuses. I simply live for the Babygirlification of Seto Kaiba. After all, that is pretty much this entire blog's theme.

Desktop Screenshot, 12/30/2024

I made 2 alternate ones, but to be honest, when I was much more awake I noticed how one of the renders was very smeared and AI upscaled, so I don't really want to reupload it. The other one just has a ton of jpeg artifacting. Truth be told, uhhhh, so does this one. There really isn't a lot of high res renders that I know of with Kaiba that are like easily accessible and all in one place anymore. I remember a site named Animepaper existing but who knows if that's still around. If there's some sort of place you can easily get a ton of promo images that are cleaned and in good resolution for YGO, please let me know. It's been hell to get renders off of twitter that are just not in good quality. Otherwise, I might see about scanning in some of the stuff I have solely so people can have stuff. I was talking to Kimi and I legitimately am considering scanning in all of my acrylic stands so that people can just have assets. I'm beginning to be glad that I invested in a regular printer/scanner and not just a label printer.

Either way, it's about to be 2 am for me, and I have an appointment later. Getting to sleep has also been a bit hard, so I guess I'll cut my blog off here. Thank you to everyone for the kind and supportive messages about Oscar. Take care, and I hope you guys have a good end of the year, despite everything that's been happening in the world.

Current Situation

Dec 28, 2025

This entry has to do with animal death. If you don't wish to read about that, I suggest skipping this entry.

So, I won't really lie. I don't know what to say or do, or even how to feel right now. I'm a bit at a loss on generally everything, and I guess way to put it is that I just feel a bit empty. I originally wanted to get around to all the things that I planned, but I went from a bad situation which finally turned itself around, to a way worse one.

Basically, over the Christmas holiday a series of events happened. We used to have 2 daschunds (Technically, they're my grandparents, but I just help out,) each of them being almost 13 yrs old. I'm sure you know where this is going. The smaller of the 2 is a small, chubby blind dog. His name is Felix. He's generally a pretty good dog, even if he accidentally makes some problems. It's not his fault, he can't see. The other one was a loud dog with a big personality. His name was Oscar. He's the focus of this article.

So, to make it short because I just don't want to dwell on this any further than I need to because it's making me struggle to sleep or even have energy to do things, but basically Felix tripped my Grandma while feeding the dogs. I rushed out to help her up. While we were getting that done I took over feeding them and noticed that Oscar had made a bit of a mess beneath him while waiting for his food, and there was a lot of blood in his stool. Took the dogs to an emergency vet trip the next day (Christmas Eve).

Basically, with Oscar they found a rather large tumor of the rectum. We had taken him in around the end of August and he had nothing like that. But here we are, a few months later and it was out of control. Most of the time that I take care of them is at night, mostly doing their night walks to make sure they get exercise & do their thing before going to bed. So I guess I can't exactly see their rear easily. It doesn't help that it's not well lit out there and I'm wandering around in the dark with the light of a flashlight and that's it.

Oscar had been having issues for a while. He wasn't eating, despite us giving him food. We tried all kinds of ways to attempt to get him to eat. When he would need to go to the bathroom he would sometimes go and sometimes just not be able to go. At the end, he was getting really grumpy as well (Though with him, we could never tell why. That was just kinda what he was like. Sometimes all that mattered was getting a lizard or a water bottle.) His hind legs were getting kind of weak, but he had an operation several years ago for a slipped disc or something like that. One of his vertebrae. Just one day all he could do was drag his legs. We were able to restore his ability to walk but unfortunately he couldn't hold his bladder very well after that. And he'd get excited a lot, so he'd always make a mess. Basically, we just assumed that this was normal for him, getting older, and didn't think to ask about it.

We talked to the vet and asked what our options were and essentially at that stage of the cancer, it would just be endless surgeries to keep it away, but it'd always come back. So we got asked if we wanted to give him the shot right then and there or if we wanted to bring him home for the holidays with no guarantee if he'd survive until the next time he could be seen, or how much pain he'd be in with his rectum being rather bloody.

Unfortunately, we deliberated and my Grandpa made the choice to put him down that day. He was already miserable as is. So we spent his last few moments trying to pet him as he continued to bark about everything, as he always did during every trip to... literally anywhere. He was just like that though.

The entire ordeal has just been really draining, it happening the literal day before Christmas. Sucked even moreso because Christmas was Oscar's birthday.

I have plenty of more stories about Oscar and all the drama he made over the years, with all the absolute ridiculous things he did, and how our raid group came to know of Oscar during an incident while progging UwU, but I'll save those all for another time. I unfortunately have more bad news.

Felix was the survivor of the vet visit, but hasn't been taking Oscar's absence well. The two of them have been together since we adopted them. They're brothers, but not from the same litter. I don't know the details past the fact that the breeder explained it once upon a time. Either way, at the moment all Felix does is cry and sleep. Hard to listen to.

It doesn't help that while at the vet, we were told Felix has a benign tumor. Considering cancer got Oscar, the vet wants to do a biopsy on it, which means surgery. It's going to cost a decent amount to figure out what's going on there. Truth be told, I know I should open up commissions, but part of me is like "Do I even have the energy to do that?" Hell, I don't even have all of my art up on this site. I should probably finally do that, now that I finally have the computer. I'm just drained though. I need to go find all the drivers and what not for this tablet, which is ancient and not exactly super good. And even then, I constantly wonder if my art is even good enough to do commissions lately. I haven't exactly drawn much over the last year. Getting back into the habit during all of this is hard, but if it's for my dog, it's for my dog. And even then, I'm well aware something could go wrong. Even if I pay all this money, something could be way worse than we thought. That and he's pretty old. I'm just stressed and this whole situation just kind of sucks and I hate coming around being like 'yeah I have the money to pay up front, but it's going to put me in a bad position to take care of other things, and I struggle to find a job.' But I suppose that's where I'm at right now.

I dunno, I'll look into setting up my ko-fi again at some point. I'll make a more positive article later. And of course, as I've stated in the past, I'll aim to get around to all the other things I've gotta do. It'll just take some more time. At the very least, I have my new computer which came the exact day this all started, so I can at least do stuff, but I just don't have the energy right now. Thanks to everyone on Neocities who was super kind about everything. It's really appreciated.

Dawntrail Thoughts

20 Dec, 2024

Originally, there was a spoiler warning here. But I didn't really talk about any spoilers for Dawntrail outside of 1 thing, which taken out of context doesn't really seem like a spoiler, nor does it tell anything past the blatantly obvious. I will say that before you read on, keep in mind that I have not played 7.1 due to the fact that I got hacked and am waiting on a replacement computer still. I do not plan on spoiling myself on it, so if you have any rebuttals to anything I have to say, please do not bring it up until I've stated that I've finished 7.1. I don't wish to engage in spoilers and would rather make up my opinions on the plot for myself.

Also, this rant is incredibly long and me just generally venting. I sourced no claims. Take them all at face value and don't take them as absolute truths. It's 3 am, I'm annoyed, I'm tired, it's the holidays (a time of year I tend to not enjoy whatsoever), and I could be misremembering plenty of things. Basically, this entire blog is pretty negative, and you'll probably disagree on several points. You've been warned.

So, I have a game plan when it comes to my site. I usually make a check list in my Notes app of everything I want to do for this site, and then I set out to do at least a good 80% or so of them, and then I re-evaluate the list. Anything I deem important enough to keep gets placed back on the list, and all the other bits get cast off. They're just dropped until I decide at a later point that I eventually want to tackle them. That's just how I've been doing things with most of my projects. It works for me. It always has. If it's not a necessity, I'm not going to fret about doing it.

At some point, I was planning to tackle the topic of FF14. It's only the hottest MMO as of late--Or maybe we're getting to the point that it was the hottest MMO. I don't know, and I don't care. I try to isolate myself from a majority of most FF14 players at large, and even more importantly, most MMO players at large. This is for the sake of my own enjoyment of these types of games, of course.

However, every once in a while, I'm forced to actually make contact and look at what people are saying. Unfortunately, as an FF14 player, I think it's time to finally say what I've been feeling about Dawntrail for the most part. Why? Not simply because everyone else is airing their grievances with the game and I'm here to dog pile. More like, because I think it's about damn time everyone's on the same page with FF14 as a whole.

Before I get into the bulk of my thoughts, I do want to tell you a bit about my history with FF14, to give you my perspective. The first time I heard of FF14 was back during its 1.0 days. Having been one of the people who could never play FF11 simply due to not only lacking the hardware, but never having the way to pay a subscription to an MMO as I was still an early teen, I was excited that FF14 was another MMO. After all, I played Maplestory and loved that game (which is another dumpsterfire but I'll get to that one later.) And when I started asking friends about FF14 and looking into the game I found out that... It was a dumpster fire, best to avoid it and move on.

So I stayed in Maplestory, eventually moving to Mabinogi, but far away from 14.

At some point though, the game did lure me in, and I started my journey in 2.3 with my free trial on the PS3 version of the game. Back before the days of the 2 week trial, yet alone the free, unlimited, 'play all of Stormblood for free' trial that everyone loves these days. I eventually purchased the game around the time of 2.4 solely because they said "Look, we have Shiva!" and that was enough for me to play for some time, only to quit due to people in MMOs being people. I didn't make it to Heavensward with that initial character, and went so far as to delete her.

"But isn't this about Dawntrail?" Yeah. That's why I'm here to tell you that I did come back, and made a new character, at some time around 3.3, caught up to the story. I had my brief periods of putting the game down, but most of what I skipped was Patch 4.3-4.5 and that was about it.

For the most part, my interest in this game has always been a variety of things, but the biggest focus has always been the raids. I attempted again and again to raid, and did eventually succeed in clearing tiers on content, ontop of 2 Ultimate raids. I don't bring this up to brag, I mostly bring it up to inform where my perspective is coming from. I love the story and lore of this game as well, don't get me wrong. But the reason I'm here? Well, it's to get crushed by Alexander every time he transforms. And if you weren't expecting that then I don't really know what to say. On this blog, I haven't exactly been shy about my love for The Epic of Alexander. No, the TEA and Water mentions aren't my love of beverages, they're references to the raid. I have the same disease that every other FF14 player on twitter does, where I find a cool name related to the game, and make it my entire personality. After all, I think I've stated this at some point, but the URL "Ordained Motion" is just a reference to one of the many parts of Fate Calibration in the final phase.

Anyways, enough about what I love about the game, let's just move on to finally talking about Dawntrail and the community and their current takes on it.

So, I'm not going to be talking about 7.1. I kind of haven't played 7.1. And it's not because I skipped it or I refuse to, it's because of the hack. I don't want to be spoiled on 7.1. Even if you have an argument against me that uses 7.1. I've remained unspoiled on it because I'd like to experience it for myself, and not being able to play it when it dropped due to said hack was a major blow ontop of everything that already happened, and a lot happened during that hack. Please, I am begging you, if you would like to argue about 7.1, do me a favor and just wait until I can see it for myself and come up with my own opinion.

I will be talking about 7.0 though. And personally, on the topic of 7.0 from an MSQ stand point? I don't think it was that bad. I know some people will be like "NO IT WAS AWFUL AND THE VOICE ACTING WAS GARBAGE WOKE LAMENT WAS TERRIBLE" and I'm just here like... I don't know, it just wasn't as bad as some of you are all making it out to be? I'm not saying it's amazing or even super good. I'm just generally fine with it. I know people think the pacing dragged on. Yes, it was long, I can't even begin to argue against that and I won't. But in all honesty, I feel like most expacs take a bit to set up. And DT had a lot of setting up not just the new expac, but an entirely new arc as well. Did they drag their feet a bit in some places? Yeah, I won't lie. There were sections I felt overstayed their welcome. But I don't think it was as bad as people make it out to be.

"BUT THEY JUST REUSED A BUTCHERED PART OF FF9 FOR THE END! THAT'S BAD STORY TELLING." So, I don't want to defend this, but also, they've been using butchered parts of other FFs for a while now. I mean, literally right before this they packed in FF4. And don't forget, their weird alternate Ivalice is part of the game as well, and there's not just a alliance raid based off of it, but it goes as far as to seeping into Bozja as well. And don't forget that we have raid series that take heavily from FF5, FF6, and FF8 as well as Trials that take from--You get the point, there's so much of stuff that isn't just borrowing similar concepts but just pasted into the game. They add their own twist to all these elements taken, but I won't deny that I do agree with people on feeling that the excessive fanservice does kind of hold them back at times. Hell, I feel like the only reason they get the pass is because FF just kind of does this. And it's why the Endwalker raids were a breath of fresh air. Both of them were trying to be unique to FF14, which is something I can't help but want more of. I feel like that picture of Paris Hilton with the Bubbles ice cream where she's like "Can I get 5 more of these little blonde bitches" but it's me holding up an Erichthonios minion.

Basically, with the story of Dawntrail I just don't super know how to feel. Everyone is mad about it, and I keep feeling like everyone wants me to be mad about it, but I can't help but just feel... indifferent. Like, I'm not putting my foot down to defend anything about the actual story telling. I'll defend Wuk Lamat's voice actress though, because I've seen so much disgusting amounts of transphobia flung her way for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and everyone going "UM ACTUALLY, I'M NOT TRANSPHOBIC BUT," before saying something incredibly transphobic is nothing short of disgusting. But that feels irrelevant to judgements of the actual story. That's just another case of "Fandom is Miserable and I Hate It." Oh, well that and TERFS being fucking TERFS. But I don't expect anything out of a TERF other than a new name to go on my block list. But I also don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be. "It's worse than Stormblood" is the recent new take and in all honesty, I feel like most of the people screaming this are all the people who joined during 5.3 who were promised greatness with Shadowbringers and told that they "Have to Sit Through Stormblood" to "Get to the Actual Good Parts." Like, Base 4.0's story on release was not that bad (when we were able to play it). The beginning is boring at times and I don't super like Hien, but when Stormblood's story wanted to be good, it was good. Hell, I feel like I could go on an entire tangent about how people who weren't there during Stormblood try to act like it was 100% miserable in every part of the game somehow when most people's issues with the story were legitimately the early parts, the existence of Lyse because people always tried to act like Lyse was all of the stories issues (hint: she wasn't), or the fact that some people say that Yotsuyu is the pinnacle of good writing when we have patches like 4.1 & 4.2 which are just... I don't want to say they're the game at its worst, as it's been a while since I revisited them, but I definitely wasn't fond of the amnesia arc. But I dunno, that's just the view of One Guy Online. Your takes on the entire thing may be entirely different, but Stormblood was a great time to be playing the game.

Part of me is like, "Okay now that we got the 'Stormblood Isn't That Bad' tangent out of the way, lets move on." But honestly, I think it's the perfect set up for what I'm about to say next. I don't think I need to go any further on the story. It's just okay. The real issue with 14 that more people are seeing lately is the... Well, I don't know how to put this but, it's everything else. Some of you are just seeing this for the first time because you were so railroaded by the story, and weren't looking anywhere else, because a lot of people (notably raiders, quite a few of which who had the general FF14 community bully them out of the game. "Great Community" BTW.) have been saying this for a while now, even before Endwalker was completed. And now that you can't hide behind "Well, this game has an amazing story that carries it," you're faced with confronting the truth: This game has just generally been going downhill.

Like, I dunno. When people say they are upset about this expac and how it feels (past the story parts) there's nothing to do like yeah, I'm with them, but it's hard to put into coherent words. It's all just a wall of complaints. I could go off and complan about how most of the jobs are super homogenized, but I'm sure there's plenty of youtube essays that could say it far better than I could. I could complain about how the raids have only gotten easier, with the bar literally on the floor, but it seems pointless to do so when I've spent the last 2 tiers not raiding, and seeing a raid vs doing a raid is a world of difference. And it's not that I've just given up, the thing that prevents me from doing raids right now is a lack of motivation due to time constraints via real life, and the need to eventually find a new group that suits my needs and has an environment I want to be in, and that is an entirely different can of worms that can't be summarized with "another issue with the game." But I really don't feel like going on that tangent.

I hate to start another paragraph of an essay (or well, more like a rant to be honest) with "I don't know," but it's really all I can say. I want to do the content, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if I'm in love with the idea of doing raids for the sake of completion, or if I'd really be enjoying myself doing these raids if I had the time and group to do them with. At the end of 6.2's raids, I was so fed up, burnt out, and just done with everything related to the game. And sure, I came back and did more Ultimate, which was fun, but even the latest Ultimate just seems underwhelming.

Which reminds me, this is the tangent where I talk about Ultimate.

So, like I said earlier, I really don't want to start a rant on content that I haven't completed (or in this case, even unlocked this time around) because as I keep saying, seeing is so different than doing, especially with these fights. But honestly, once the race died off, it feels like this Ultimate is just not really talked about. Like people have already moved on from the spectacle of it all unless they're currently progging it. And despite knowing several people currently progging it, nobody's really talking about it. And that feels a bit weird to me. The Shadowbringers raid series was well liked. Hell, it was one of the few raid series I actually attempted to read (until I was rushed into queueing but that's a different story.) Everyone was excited for this raid, but I feel like Square just hyped it up so much and then had nothing to really show for it. And it just leaves me feeling conflicted. Like yeah sure, putting too damn much in a trailer is a Square Enix Classic. I wish they'd stop doing that already, but they never learn. But even without the final form of the boss being spoiled, there's still something that feels missing after seeing it all. Mechanics are just straight up not covered. Only 3 bosses are represented. We're missing entire junctions. Hell, the flow of the music doesn't even feel good. Everything here doesn't feel like a grand retelling of the events. It feels like a sloppy attempt to rush out an Ultimate. Will I prog it? Probably, if I ever find the time. I'd like to prog them all. But is it bad to say that I'm disappointed at the quality of even our recent Ultimate in comparison to things we were getting last expac? Because I kind of am. It just doesn't feel like it comes close to the feelings of grand retellings of previous Ultimates. I've progged 4 of the previous 5 releases (I didn't attempt Omega due to the burnout, but I have no issues with it.) All of them feel like they've earned their status as "Ultimate" versions of these fights. Even the fight everyone seems to hate, the Ultimate Weapons Refrain, feels more like an Ultimate than whatever the fuck Futures Rewritten has going on. Seeing the Ultimate Weapon glowing bright blue as it hurls and onslaught of dense mechanic after dense mechanic at you feels more impressive to watch than watching FRU did. And I'm talking about the feelings of watching UWU clears from before the time I cleared, rather than my own personal experiences in there, as that is one I did clear as well.

I guess, couple all that with just the general exhaustion of the systems never changing in this game, the fact that new content gets added and immediately invalidated because they don't add in enough alternate ways to do advancements in this game, and the fact that content remains super easy, I'm just tired. Exhausted. I would like to be able to raid again in this game. I want to have fun playing it again. But I don't know if I would be having fun. When I unsubbed last, I unsubbed with the mindset that "the only thing I really want to do in this game anymore is Savage and Ultimate" only for that to turn into just Ultimate. Now I'm beginning to wonder if finishing the rest of them will make me love this game once more, or if I'm just going to get more and more fed up with it. People have told me "Well, the solution is simple, you need to change your job!" but I don't think it's that easy. The amount of goofing off I do on Samurai hasn't really revitalized any love for this game. Hell, I think the only reason I was having fun was because I was just messing around, doing dumb shit on purpose, and generally being a nuisance in casual content because that's the only way I could have fun. And that in itself is detrimental to a raiding environment. Showing up and being Peepo The Jackass isn't going to make raid more fun for me. It's going to make it miserable for the seven other members of the group in content that's already enough of a challenge to organize, yet alone is a giant timesink. Basically, people don't deserve to have to deal with Peepo the Jackass, so I stick to what I can prog with and get results on, even if healer is just whatever right now.

I don't know. I'm sure there's more things I could touch on, but this blog is honestly long enough. It's all a lot of text for me to ultimately say "I'm upset that FRU wasn't what I imagined it'd be, and because everything else is not great in the game, and everyone else is venting their frustrations with the game, I'm just going to add to the pile." Becuase that's essentially what this is. I guess I just wanted FRU to be like The Amazing Ultimate That I Get To Clear because Verse was the first Savage tier I really ever cleared and I dunno, I wanted to be validated? maybe? by it being amazing? And we just got this very lukewarm experience that I'm looking at and going like, "Well, there's always Bahamut and Thordan." Or alternatively, More TEA.

At the end of the day, I know nothing's going to change with this game. I've known that for some time now. And it's not even that I won't admit it to myself. I realized it back at the end of Shadowbringers when things were rapidly changing, and how we saw things coming out for Endwalker were looking like. This game is never going to be what it used to. The days of janky ARR and Heavensward needed the modernization of Stormblood, but the userbase continued to demand more, and Square Enix has always been fond of playing it safe, pandering to the loudest people who ask for accessibility. And don't get me wrong, I do think accessibility is a good thing. But we've gone from being accomodating to turning everything from distinct jobs with a purpose to everything essentially being "what kind of particles would you like your character to have?" and "would you like a small rotation with large responsibility, a medium rotation with decent responsibility, or a larger rotation with no rersponsibility" while end game difficulty is now a bar that you don't even realize exists because it's burried so deep underground, it might as well not be there. I constantly see people saying that the new dungeons are hard, and I'm just sitting here like "a wipe happening once or twice on week 1 doesn't make it hard." Like, I've even seen the comparison that "No other dungeons in the story were ever this inaccessible" but I'm just sitting here like "Some of you have forgotten about or just straight up do not know about The Vault and what it used to be like, and it really shows." People don't remember the days of queueing into trials roulette, getting on content Nidhogg Story version and sitting there wiping for pull after pull after pull. People don't remember back when Shinryu was new and Mr Happy was harassed to make a guide because one didn't exist on youtube yet, all because people didn't like getting stuck in it and wiping. This isn't the first time it's happened at all. This is the first time you've experienced it happening. But you know what sucks more than being frustrated at other players because of this? The fact that devs have allowed it to get like this. You have the type of 14 players who really haven't had a challenge in this game thinking things are now too hard, and you have people like myself who want things to have difficulty and there's no happy medium. We either get one absolute end of a spectrum or another with them, and things finally dipped outside of the favor of casuals who can't play this game at higher difficulties, so they just give up. And the worst part is that tools just aren't given to them within the game. Like yeah sure, places like the Balance and tons of other tools exist, but if you're playing this game casually and you have no idea what the word "rotation" even means in relation to FF14, or if it should mean something within the context of FF14, then how do you even begin to look for help? And the worst part is that they're barely beginning to think of doing something related to this... 11 years into the game's life, when it should have been the major priority aside from pushing out raids & story patches. I feel like people just act like it's easier to blame the casuals. They're "Ruining The Game" after all. That's totally it. They totally aren't set up to fail by the devs who should have done something ages ago, with no tools at all to figure out if they're even playing their job right. And before we even get into the topic of 3P, I just want to say that people shouldn't be required to download 3P to have an idea if they're doing something right in a game. Like yeah sure, I love bitching about shit casuals do in this game as much as the next angry and jaded raider, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Square has failed a lot of these players by not giving them tools to learn how to play the game within the game, as they should have. So now we're in this absolute ass predicament of the game feeling like ass for absolutely everyone. I'm just glad that more and more people have set aside their rose tinted glasses for FF14 and see the issues that some of the rest of us have known were here, so that we can hopefully stop being mad at how one type of player plays the game and be mad at the company that should have done more to stop it from getting this bad.

Honestly, thinking on all of this is just exhausting. There's no real solution here that we, the players, can do about anything outside of just not buying. And even if we don't buy, I doubt it'll do anything. Square has shown that it's hesitant to change. FF14 was the biggest attempt at them owning up to their failures and attempting to do better, but even that only goes so far. They're hesitant to do anything huge with 14, because if they rock the boat too much, there's too much riding on 14's shoulders. I went looking for the article, but maybe it's because it's 3 am now, and I'm going insane typing this to the point I desperately need sleep that I can't even find the thing, but I remember hearing of an article related to an interview or something that basically stated that almost all of their money comes from 14 and is going towards other projects, such as FF7R, FF16, etc. Don't quote me on that, because until I find it again, I'm hesitant to treat it as an absolute truth, but if it is true, then rocking the boat with 14 is a dangerous game. Everyone knows that Spirits Within caused Square and Enix to undergo a merger sometime back around 2002-2003 and has several close calls that have nearly destroyed this company. So, unfortunately, I doubt anything will change with 14. And knowing that just has me so... indifferent about a game I honestly do love. It's truly an "everything sucks here" kind of moment.

Will I still be playing FF14 in the future? Probably. Will I still be raiding? Well, I'd like to finish those Ultimates before I finally throw in the towel, admittedly. But with everything going on with 14, and the general disdain I've noticed in the community towards pretty much everything at large, I'm just skeptical. I was skeptical of how I felt going into this expac, Dawntrail being the only expac I didn't preorder for myself at launch outside of Heavensward (which was more of a 'I thought I was quitting' thing). If you take anything from this, I guess take the fact that I don't hate Dawntrail as a whole, but I'm not thrilled either. It's just me watching the game go through one of it's many ups and downs. I'm sure it'll wether this storm, but who knows what will come out of it. Only time will tell.

Anyways, thank you for sitting through this wall of unhinged babbling about this game. Take a picture of Peepo the Jackass as your reward. This was from one of those meet up parties. I rarely go to these kind of things, but a friend is super into them and invited me, so I went. I'm really awkward at this kind of stuff, I won't lie. I challenged a Zenos rper to a duel or something, I think.

Peepo the Jackass

Also, before I post this, as I've just finished proofreading it, I'd like to say the following things: If you're one of the people who is enjoying your time here, I think it's absolutely fine that you're enjoying your time with Dawntrail. Good for you. I hope you continue to enjoy it. If you're sitting here wondering if you're being blamed for being "too casual" at the game by people like me and our constant demands for challenges, the people that I'm angry at aren't players like you. It's Square Enix for not doing things that truly help new players. Basically, this isn't a blog meant to shame anyone for not being like me, a person who's main goal in FF14 is to do the absolute hardest content. In fact, I realize that while the amount of people doing ultimate is indeed growing, it is still a very small amount of the population that clears them after they come out, even within the expac they come out with, or get clears at all. This is still seen as incredibly challenging content, to the point that people go as far as to buy illegally purchased clears due to the amount of time and effort it takes to clear one of these. Basically, do not feel bad if you find things in this game difficult, no matter what it is. Everyone, at some point in this game, has found something challenging. If you don't succeed, don't feel bad, but also don't quit and cry on the forums for a nerf. Just get up and keep trying. That's how you overcome any and every challenge in this game.

Current Site Goals

16 Dec, 2024

Wow, long time no blog, right? Well, maybe not that long. It's been 11 days total since I've last posted an entry, and considering the previous frequency at which I had been blogging, that makes it seem like a long gap since updating. I suppose it isn't exactly true though. After all, as I've stated in a few places, I've been overhauling this site. I won't go into detail talking about that. After all, I have an entire updates log, so I don't have to post them as blog entries any longer. I wanted to keep it all documented, but part of me kept feeling like having multiple entries related to updates was simply padding for content. Now it's all placed in a convenient container that you can scroll through whenever.

Anyways, since I'm on the topic of entries, I did want to state some stuff that I didn't feel needed to be in the updates, but I felt like sharing in relation to this site. That would be my current content plans. Since Christmas and New Years are coming up, I originally wanted to save this update until then. However, since I started neglecting other things I was making for the site to work on this layout, I decided to go ahead and put it out. I hope people like the way it looks. It took a lot of work, and it probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The entire thing is coded so that asset swapping is easy for me. This will make it much easier to change my layout for things like holidays and what not. That should be fun.

At the current moment, I would say this site is around 95% done. I really only have a few more image heavy blogs to format and put online, but I'll probably be doing that later today instead of right now. Truth is, after spending the entirety of this month so far working on this layout and only this layout in my spare time, I need to do something to unwind and take a break. So after the rest of the missing pages go back up, I will probably not post for a while. Hopefully during that time, my new computer will have arrived and that will be my excuse, as I have a lot to rearrange.

I do have quite a bit of new content I am planning though. Hopefully people will enjoy it. A bit of that includes the following:

  • One of my biggest plans is to expand the Media Log part of the site. Between the remaining YNO screencaps that I'd like to post, I'd also like to cover some of my watched & read logs for Anime & Manga, as it should be pretty easy to talk on them--I do have both a MAL and Anilist account to pull from, after all.
  • On the topic of that, I want to make a few blogs based on playing XIV. I have so many screencaps just taking up space at the current moment, so maybe sharing them and talking about them could be a bit of fun.
  • I desperately need to sit down and take pictures of all of my Doujin Albums like I keep saying I would. Getting entries related to those are definitely something to do as well. I might take the pictures while I'm taking a break, since it should be quick.
  • I do have a figure review that I've been sitting on pictures for. That's the big one for right now.
  • On the topic of anime merch that I have, I generally would like to have articles related to helping people who are new to this hobby find information on a variety of things. That probably will be pages by themselves rather than articles, but it's more of a long term goal.
  • I also plan on doing a room tour after the holidays and a trip to Ikea.
  • Planning to add a few bits to the graphics section for stuff I've made.
  • Fixing stuff like mobile CSS and adding gif stopping scripts, along with tidying up everything is one of the major priorities
  • And finally, I plan on talking a bit more about the Gen 1 cards. I have stuff ready to go for Fossil, so that should be soon.

For now, that's pretty much it. I'll probably be doing this all at my own pace, so I'll get to it eventually. They're more of 2025 goals, aside from stuff related to formatting, so don't expect them right away.

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