The scary paradigm shift of Balmung.

[kajv95]

I'm not a software developer, but for a team that can make an MMO run, it shouldn't necessarily be hard, but they took the lazy (and cheapest) approach and that's kind of indicative of how Dawntrail has been.
When it comes to the 7.2 patch notes, optimistically it reads "guys we fixed it." But pessimistically it reads "we just made a new identifier to reshuffle the database and we'll start broadcasting that instead. We hope that'll be enough"

If it's the former, it makes me wonder why we're still stuck excusing spaghetti because that's a pretty serious rewrite to do in just a few months, and clearly you have the talent on your team to make things happen. If it's the latter, well, yeah that checks out.

I'll be happy to feel okay to log into my alts again though, so here's hoping it's the former.

[Shezza]

clearly you have the talent on your team to make things happen.

any talent on xiv's team has been moved to other projects that will ineviteably flop like forspoken, babylon's fall and ff16

and it really shows

[SkankyRoe]

And here's the kicker: you probably wouldn’t believe me when I say I get more unsolicited RP offers on Aether than on Crystal.

I think it depends on what race/gender you play as tbh. I've gone to Balmung Quicksands a few times and rarely get any spontaneous interactions, but I get plenty whenever I go to Faerie Limsa while on my hroth alt. I don't get much solicitation in general tho, most tells I get are compliments or tame conversation starters.

[Astronis]

I think it depends on what race/gender you play as tbh. I've gone to Balmung Quicksands a few times and rarely get any spontaneous interactions, but I get plenty whenever I go to Faerie Limsa while on my hroth alt. I don't get much solicitation in general tho, most tells I get are compliments or tame conversation starters.

This is the truth. My friends who play catgirls have Stories to Tell, while I think I've gotten two weird RP tells in several years. More often I get weird interactions where I get the feeling someone expects they'll get free stuff out of me just because my avatar is male, though that doesn't happen a lot either.

Mostly I get what sounds like sincere compliments on my glamours.

[Shezza]

This is the truth. My friends who play catgirls have Stories to Tell, while I think I've gotten two weird RP tells in several years. More often I get weird interactions where I get the feeling someone expects they'll get free stuff out of me just because my avatar is male, though that doesn't happen a lot either.

Mostly I get what sounds like sincere compliments on my glamours.

Its true its far nicer to play a male character because the interactions you get are actually genuine.

[NaoSen]

Yeah I think this person was just making things up, literally nothing to back up what they're saying.

I was referring to the stalker plugins code since it was publicly available on GitHub to read which in turn showed how SE was implementing it originally, in all discussions about it that happened at the time the only quick fix options were easily worked around, there is no unbreakable way to do it purely client side.
There is only one way to do it right which if they want to do requires it being server side and the work there being on the where and how to implement it from a load point of view and would take time and testing.

I know that the only accepted opinion to have is to say that they will fail, I just wanted to correct which code I was talking about.

I'm not going to discuss it any further, it's very much conjecture and I've chosen to put my faith in SE's side in this case because its blatantly obvious there is only one way to get it right and its going off topic of the post itself.

Its true its far nicer to play a male character because the interactions you get are actually genuine.

Can you elaborate by the way, because I've had male character playing friends who have had very negative experiances from people who want a "Daddy", though people are more bold towards female in general on the surface level.
If you mean from the part of in general the average gooner isnt going to strike up a conversation with a male character then I agree for sure.

[Astronis]

If you mean from the part of in general the average gooner isnt going to strike up a conversation with a male character then I agree for sure.

I think it's pretty much this. My friends who play female avatars have told me enough stories about weird creepy tells, whereas in the last...*mumblemumble* years of playing MMOs with almost exclusively male avatars I almost never get weird creepy tells or strange interactions. Not that it hasn't happened, just that the numbers are quite skewed--it happens to them a lot more.

So, you know...just a general thing, not a hard and fast iron clad rule. Race and sex of your avatar does have an effect on that sort of thing in general.

[ForteNightshade]

You are so right, despite being a pg-13 game, BALMUNG is NOT safe for children under any circumstances. This was a really good call from you, you're a good parent.

If only square enix would WARN parents about the interactions their CHILDREN could be exposed to.

People always seem to ignore practically every online game explicably says, "Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB." It's even flashed on screen when you first log in.

Simply put, they do warn you. Several times, in fact.

Balmung was always an RP hub. Almost every single FC was named ??-RP. And it was mostly genuine RP and you'd see people RP out in the world and cities RPing, absolutely everywhere. I mean RP as adventurers, mercenaries, travelers, inns, "free companies", etc. Having detailed character biographies was common.

But when World Visit released, everyone traveled the Balmung immediately, for one reason only: they came to Ul'dah to see if the rumors were true. I waited there and said hello to people as they came to "see" if the Quicksand meme was true. Of course, they were disappointed to learn it was not true and that the Quicksand was just people discussing life in RP. "How are you doing today?" "Pretty beat up from some bandits I fought off earlier" etc.

Due to the World Visit system, people finally left Balmung and spread across Crystal turning it into the "RP data center" in general.

However, as Balmung's Quicksand meme persisted for years after, I expect it has continually attracted people interested in poor forms of RP of an intimate nature, interfering with the genuine RP. I don't know if that's the case because I left Balmung several years ago, but it was my expectation that this would happen after seeing the sheer amount of people travel to Balmung looking for "intimate" RP.

It's true that, prior to the implementation of World Visit, people did paid transfers to Mateus and treated it as an "overflow" server, but at the time we knew Mateus as the server people were doing... intimate RP on.

Uhh, I don't know when you went to the Quicksand, but it absolutely lived up to the meme. All you have to do is check people's search info and "people watch" for a few minutes and you'll see every kink imaginable. People just know to keep their ERP private because doing so publicly will get you in trouble. Something else to keep in mind is with "Moon Magic" these days, those two catgirls sitting on the bench together are seeing something very different on their screen than you are on yours.

[NanaWiloh]

People always seem to ignore practically every online game explicably says, "Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB." It's even flashed on screen when you first log in.

Simply put, they do warn you. Several times, in fact.

There are parents who even ignore warnings on the box. Don't know how many still do it but I remember stores having ESRB rating sign up showing the ratings. Even with a obvious sign parents still bought games rated above their child's age range and then complained.

[Kazuke_Miso]

any talent on xiv's team has been moved to other projects that will ineviteably flop like forspoken, babylon's fall and ff16

and it really shows

This is 100% the truth. FF14 is staffed by junior devs who have no idea what they're doing. It's maintenance mode in all but name. Actually, it's even worse - FF14 players are pretty much paying a subscription to train SE employees.