Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

First Soldier's gacha was purely cosmetic and it was part of the same project as this so it wouldn't be too weird. But in this case, we already know the gacha is for weapons; the pre-reg bonuses include a 5* sword for Zack and a guaranteed 5* ticket that includes weapons for at least Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith.

It's possible they'll give you trial characters for the story like FFRK, but my first thought was actually Opera Omnia. In that game, the gacha is also for weapons, but they give out basic 5*s for free in a character's introduction event and are otherwise incredibly generous with free pulls and free currency; a lot of banners come with a free 10+1 pull, you get a free 10+1 ticket with every event that runs, normal summon tickets from login bonuses and event stores, tickets and currency every time they put on a community stream, etc. The biggest stat sticks in the game are even free, but are essentially the game's version of a relic grind. And there are tokens obtainable from events that allow you to buy a weapon of your choice. All of this makes it incredibly easy to make your way through the story, so long as you aren't too hung up on who you're using.

But on top of that, almost every character has at least 1 alt costume, with some (Rinoa, Garnet, etc) having worked their way up to 4~5 now, which are only available via paid packages that cost like $30 each. Though the individual packages are time limited, there are always several of them available at any given time, so it's pretty clear it's a big part of where the game makes it's money. And EC seems to be looking to do the same thing in that regard.

Whatever they're doing, the beta is less than a month away so we'll get to try it out soon enough lol. As long as you're in the US or Canada because *** the rest of the world I guess.

Paged with gacha rambling... To make up for it; turns out Tifa's new outfit in the latest trailer is based on Zangan's clothes.

Sorry to carry on about EC for those that don't care, but damn, this Famitsu interview has a ton of information.
https://www.famitsu.com/news/202306/09305456.html

The game will launch with VII, Crisis Core, and First Soldier stories. The tutorial will take you through the first chapter of each before opening up to let you do the rest in any order.

Story is split into 2 modes; 1 where you use a specific party that fits the story (CC is basically all Zack solo), and 1 where you play with whoever you want. They have seperate rewards, so even people that want to use their own team should play the proper story mode too for free ***.

During combat, you switch between characters on the fly same as in Remake, except the AI isn't completely braindead this time and will actually use skills on it's own if you can't be bothered to control them yourself.

When rolling for weapons in the gacha, you get currency to spend on the alt costumes. Some alt costumes can also be obtained via the story. Alt costumes change appearance in both battle and on the map.

Summons will be obtainable through quests, though the requirements for each will vary. Some will require you to battle, others to get items, etc.

There'll be a "battle tower" challenge mode where you fight your way down through floors of battles to get rewards. This'll be updated with new content regularly.

There'll also be "dungeons" which will basically be hard mode or boss rush versions of story mode battles.

There will also be multiplayer options, but no unique rewards for them, just better drop rates for the same rewards as solo.

The closed beta test will allow people to play the First Soldier story.

And most importantly; short haired Sephiroth is playable. :I

(Please correct me if I got any of that wrong; I'm working with only my very basic understanding of Japanese and machine translations here.)

yeeeeehaw!

GRATZ! You are officially end-game ready!

Everything you've described sounds like a lot of fun. I'm also kinda happy that they're combining all of the FFVII stuff together because that universe was starting to get a bit overwhelming.

IIRC that was one of the reasons they stated for making EC early on. Rather than having people think they have to go out and hunt down some nearly-20-year old PS2 game, or hope they can find a video playthrough of an early-2000's mobile game, it's more reasonable to just redo it all in a freely available app game.

I still kinda hope they remake Dirge of Cerberus anyway, like they did with CC Reunion. It was a fun, if hammy, game. Just a little janky in terms of gameplay. Just copy/paste First Soldier's combat in and it'd be great.

lmao, no I ain't. I'm still on Chapter 3 of Seekers and like just before fighting the Shinryu Clone in Rhapsodies still lmao

Starfield looks sick. Sounds like Todd prolly gave some of his patented lies (if it ends up being everything he said I'd be shocked) but man. The scope of what was on display in a Bethesda game...

Atari asteroids was pretty cool.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH

I've been trying to figure out how the *** Netflix claims their accounts went up, despite the outcry of *** that noise.

But then I just realized black mirror is in 3 days. Smart timing. Everyone will drop their accounts after, but no one will be talking about it then. Only better timing would've been right at stranger things launch.

Man the scale at which 16 was developed was insane. Announced that they had the studio responsible for Kingdom Hearts as well as Platinum Studios collaborating on it in a major way to ensure they could realize the entire scope of what they wanted to do.

The stream went from stellar to shitshow real fast.

So the 16 demo comes out tomorrow? I will check that out, despite having little interest in the game.

4 AM EST yeah

All of the common XI bots broke just in time for the FF16 demo.

edit: nvm theyre back up. I was hoping it would be down for a couple days to see some real panic.

Well played from Microsoft…

It throwed me like 4 questions regarding to upgrade. I tried as always to prevent going to 11 but the questions mislead me to the upgrade anyway…

Alright, firing up the demo. Also, I see that FF11 quit thread went up in smoke, just as I was about to post. It's always the same guy with the same bogus story.

Here in todays news:

“Potentially dangerous asteroid gonna pass near Earth.”

Hey, dont pretend i dont exist! Come here so we can chat and drink some tea together

You can still post! There are a bunch of people still posting their actual stories and ignoring the discourse.

Personally, I've just started blocking some people. For any social media, that really is the best thing to do. If you see someone posting and it makes your blood boil without even needing to read it, just block them.

I'm sure some folks have done that to me already too. I've been getting really bad with venting, ranting, and arguing lately >_<;

EDIT: And if I did happen to get under anyone's skin, then I apologize. Either way I'm going to put more effort into not antagonizing people.

Awe, looks like they cancelled the winchesters after just one season

(still hadn't watched it... no rush now)

I enjoyed the first season for what it was, but honestly I don't think it should've gone any further anyway. At least it had a good ending.

Really great (and long) article about why streaming doesn't really work and why they kill good and popular series. With minor nods to the writer's strike.

https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/streaming-industry-netflix-max-disney-hulu-apple-tv-prime-video-peacock-paramount.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

so, after playing through the XVI demo

pros:

• Combat is smooth. Simple to start, but the skill tree makes it clear it's going to get more nuanced as you expand the tree. It's very responsive even in its basic form, though, and it just feels good to play.

• It's absolutely *** gorgeous. I know it's Square and that's what they do, but even by SE's standards it's just incredibly stunning to see.

• The UI is informative without being cluttered at all. That's really hard to do!

• Active Time Lore is a feature that every RPG (or really, any game with any real amount of story/lore) should incorporate.

• So far, no magitek horseshit. It might show up later but Yoshida said outright he wanted less of that and so far this delivers.

• You actually kill enemies/bosses. This might seem like a silly point, but how many stupid boss fights/pointless deaths could have been avoided in other games if we just put villains to the *** sword, instead of getting them to where they're kneeling and backing off for a dialogue moment?

• I'm gonna ding the story for leaning on tropes in the con section, but they DO mostly use them well, especially around characterization. It's very easy to get a feel for the people you're dealing with.

cons:

• I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea that the actiony gameplay doesn't "feel" like a mainline FF game. This is sort of true but that's mostly because the combat system is so simple. I do not miss XIII's janky job combo stuff

• It's hard to judge from just the demo, but the bosses in it are really spongy. Countering offsets this somewhat but those fights are a lot of strafing and dodging as they're currently built. Maybe that changes later.

• Not being able to control party members is kind of a letdown, but you couldn't do that in XV either and I adapted just fine.

• Story is leaning HARD into the tropes early on. I know it's all setup for bigger stuff that's coming later, but it wasn't a high point.

• Who calls a continent "Storm"? Come on, Koji.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed the demo. The people who decided they were going to hate it beforehand will find plenty of things to nitpick, but basically everyone else is going to have a real good time with this.

I agree with you, but the lack of control over the party members is a big problem for me. It feels like we are going backwards from FF7R, which lets you control everyone amazingly well. Its enough to make me take a wait and see approach. I think the story is going to be much stronger than anything they have done in the last 20 years, even if it does rely on the same formula. But the combat system just does not feel like a JRPG.

I just don't get why they didn't copy and paste that combat system instead. Who complained about FF7R combat? It was the best of both worlds.

They were upfront months ago about it being a solo journey where you might have guests in combat sometime.

A system with companions and happy friendship and bonds doesn't work well with a prince's revenge story with heavy themes like betrayal imo. One of the common ff15 criticism was how the prince lost his kingdom and he still happily go out on a tour with his bros.

Game of thrones's plot structure also doesn't work this way. GoT Characters rarely have companions that stay for too long. People always leave, or die, or backstab. So solo journey with occasional guest characters makes a lot of sense in a GoT style story. If they add companions and friendship it wouldn't really feel like GoT imo.

Some aspects of this Windows 11 reminds me my short experience with Ubuntu's derived OS...

I have mixed feeling sbout this

Which is why I just haven't been interested. I was waiting for the demo, played it, and while the graphics are spectacular, it didn't alleviate my concerns. The story looks to have been a heavy focus, which is good, especially after 15. But a solo Final Fantasy adventure is of no interest to me. It's not like this is a new story idea. A prince loses his kingdom, gee.

I'm content to wait 7-8 months for FF7R and a price drop.