Revelations from Patch 7.2: Seekers of Eternity

[Cleretic]

I could see a really pedantic angle with Sugar Riot that she's a Pictomancer working in a specific medium. Pictomancy is a school of magic powered by imagination, so there is a case to be made that she's actually picturing these realistic forms and landscapes, but her art medium wouldn't normally permit realism; graffiti art like that has to be quick, stylized and often bright to even be seen, even if you're depicting something that isn't.

This is spitballing a possible explanation more than anything, though; it would've been a lot of fun to get more garish and stylized landscapes, and it is a bit disappointing that we didn't.

EDIT: It's possible that we've got a game design thing going, though. Sugar Riot's fight requires being able to quickly identify something like a river, so hyper-stylizing the water might actually make the fight unnecessarily harder to understand.

[mallleable]

Sugar Riot is a competent landscape artist, but she's best known for her character art which is cute.

[Turnintino]

More graffiti was put into the savage version of the fight. With adds and a lava phase. There is also a molobro mechanic.

I'm glad to hear they did more with it, at least! I'll have to check out a video some time, since I don't generally mess with savage lol.

EDIT: It's possible that we've got a game design thing going, though. Sugar Riot's fight requires being able to quickly identify something like a river, so hyper-stylizing the water might actually make the fight unnecessarily harder to understand.

I mean, realistically, I know this is almost definitely what's going on. My criticism is mostly just that I think it was a weird direction to take the encounter design, purely from a character perspective (as little as there is to base that on, ultimately). I think the encounter itself is fun and novel, as far as XIV is concerned. This and M5 really hearkens back to the more creative/gimmicky Omega raids that I still have a lot of love for.

Again, from a character perspective, I just wanted a little more cohesion.

(But I digress; I realize this is veering more and more off-topic as I dig more into the encounter design aspect lmao.)

[Iscah]

EDIT: It's possible that we've got a game design thing going, though. Sugar Riot's fight requires being able to quickly identify something like a river, so hyper-stylizing the water might actually make the fight unnecessarily harder to understand.

It could still be more stylised than it is -- or alternately, if making it recognisable requires making it boring, ditch it and find something more interesting that can work with the graffiti/cartoon theme better.

The landscapes feel like a waste of the theme and the character's vibe.

[Iscah]

I was looking around eastern S9 at the graffiti we're told is Sugar Riot's work -- has it always been there or did they add it along with the character?

The particularly odd thing though is that the most recurring picture seems to be a two-headed Mamool Ja with a red X over it. How did that get in as an idea? Has Zoraal Ja been that determined to make people know about how much he hates his dad? Has nobody rethought that in light of their new king and neighbouring allied nation?

Come to think of it, how much king-ing is Gulool Ja actually doing? Have we seen him do anything besides hang out in the Backroom? Who's actually running the show? Gossan? Oblivion? The bureaucracy?

[SannaR]

The graffiti has always been there in the entertainment section of S9.

[mallleable]

Did a quick passthrough of Orgenics after realizing that some of the mobs, and adds' souls (puddings, eyeclops, and katoblepas) showed up in the cruiserweight tier, and something spooked me a bit on one of the info terminals. "Unless expressly specified, the memories of fiends are discarded." Where are they being discarded? And who would want the memories of fiends, and for what reasons?

[Mawlzy]

Did a quick passthrough of Orgenics after realizing that some of the mobs, and adds' souls (puddings, eyeclops, and katoblepas) showed up in the cruiserweight tier, and something spooked me a bit on one of the info terminals. "Unless expressly specified, the memories of fiends are discarded." Where are they being discarded? And who would want the memories of fiends, and for what reasons?

Construction of chaotic alliance raids.

[Levinphos]

Did a quick passthrough of Orgenics after realizing that some of the mobs, and adds' souls (puddings, eyeclops, and katoblepas) showed up in the cruiserweight tier, and something spooked me a bit on one of the info terminals. "Unless expressly specified, the memories of fiends are discarded." Where are they being discarded? And who would want the memories of fiends, and for what reasons?

In Endwalker, we learned from Montichainge that the aetherial sea separates aetherial residue (memories) from the incorporeal aether of the soul and that "our memories drift apart and dissolve." Alexandria's soul refinement center replicates the natural process of the aetherial sea in three stages—extraction, separation, and purification—with the intent of harvesting the soul component (incorporeal aether) and preserving the memory component (aetherial residue) of the soul. As souls are described as "the realm's most vital resource," I suspect discarded memories of fiends are dissolved to base aether as in the aetherial sea, but AFAIK we don't have a concrete answer.

On an unrelated note, I had overlooked "Identification number: 161127" in that dungeon's first terminal, which gives us a hint about the scale of Alexandria's population. Given that the number belongs to a deceased NPC, I'm of the mind it reflects the number of individuals—past and present—who have had a regulator and have been processed by Origenics instead of strictly being a SSN equivalent dating back to Archeo Alexandria, but it does give a useful upper bound for the population.

[SannaR]

Cosmic Exploration

Wow they really did learn from Ishgardian Restoration, Bozja and the like. I mean sure Cosmic Exploration is just leves and fates in a different dress but you can see the improvements for some of it. I do wish the leves weren't so short though. I'm not sure how people who are lower level or not in base 7.0 HQ unmelded gear is supposed to complete any let alone silver or gold rank some of the DoL A rank ones. I haven't done any of the crafting in there except during the red alerts which I guess is the semi stress free version as even the regular crafting has a short timer. I understand that no you don't have to aim for a gold rating but since you get a nice bonus if you do it helps alleviate some of the grind you'd have to do while gaining enough research points to upgrade your tool for whatever class you're working on.

I liked the Star Trek nods in the unlocking quest and that you only get the two Trek references as choices if you haven't touched Island Sanctuary. There are some things in the unlock and little blurbs some of the npcs say that again are only that way because they know not everyone has done everything. Yet I do wish they had mentioned having asked any of the Garleans living on the moon if they wanted to help with the initiative or that if you had done the Cul/Alch Studium quests that the npcs would be having mentions of mervynbread the newer official emergency meal replacement instead of archon loaf. If they can have dialogue in explaining to Namingway about what the others have been up to since they have been stuck wandering Etheirys for a few centuries if you've done the Loporrits society quests then why not the EW role quest capstone or have a 2nd set of blurbs if they've done the Faculty of Medicine quests. I also feel that you should get the ticket you'd get from doing 5 kupo scratches for a "free" spin from more than just having gotten lucky to be a pilot.

I do wonder if Emet ever ran across Namingway while he was Solus. As that could have been an interesting interaction since it could have been seen as Hydelean interference or being aggressive. Or an opportunity to see if the Loporrits could be tampered with or used for their plans. Since for the most part they kept to themselves either making sure Zodiark wasn't dead or about to break free while building up their accommodations for still presumed 20ft tall people of Etheirys.

Edit: There does seem to have been a small amount of collaboration with some Garlean engineers if you read the blurb on the vacuum suit. The mech you drive when the rock smashing fate happens.