etrayaooc | JUNE STATE OF THE GAME

⏵ June State of the Game and Arrivals ⏴

Hello, Etrayans!

We hope you enjoyed your time at Summer Camp! Or if your character had the fun of going off to Solmara, we hope they enjoyed fighting beasts, and convincing Borealis to come out of hiding!

For this application round, we have opted to keep them open an additional week. We announced this over plurk, but realize not everyone checks there! Their new closure date will be July 4th. This will not impact our log or posting schedule at all. In addition, as of today, June 27th, the X-Men cast is no longer under cap.

We've got our arrival mingle going up later today to welcome new characters! Please keep an eye out for it. On July 11th, our mission announcement and plotting post will be going up. We do want to note that this next mission will be off world, and we intend for its' duration to be four weeks. As always, we strive to be flexible and build our missions up to suit our player base/characters currently in game, so if we need to slow it down some or put up any additional logs mid-mission, we may check in with our players during to get a feel on if that would help any.

Our last feedback post went up on June 19th with our next coming up on September 18th - but we welcome feedback throughout the year regardless of if there's a specific post asking for it! You are always welcome to comment to our older feedback posts with any concerns, comments, or ideas of what we can do to improve the game. We can't promise to bring everything into play, but we do listen to the ideas that have been brought our way and have implemented many player suggestions in the past. Our Mod Contact page is always open in case you would like a screened location to reach out to.

Don't forget your Activity! This is just a comment with your handle and characters' names for new players. You are welcome to submit TDM threads for activity points if wanted. Our activity results post always goes up on the 1st of the month, and we have switched to providing a warning list for characters who have yet to responded to AC with an additional five days to respond from the date our results post goes up.

⏵ OOC INTRO ⏴

Welcome to the game, new arrivals! Please use the below form to introduce yourself, tell us what you’re looking forward to, and CR you want to play. We also have a mod comment HERE that you can use to ask us mods anything about our upcoming plans, add suggestions, or anything of the like.

PLAYER: your name/handle, and your preferred pronouns if you want to provide them!
CONTACT: your plurk, discord, carrier pigeon's name to call out to the wind to get their attention 
ABOUT YOU: what fandoms are you in? what cool thing about you do you think would be fun to share? are you more of a texty tagger, a log tagger, quick boomeranger?

CHARACTER: who have you apped? what canon are they from?
CHARACTER INFO: are they rowdy and loud? an introvert who needs an extrovert to adopt them and take them out into the world? how are they going to settle into game? is there anything in particular you're looking for with them?
PLOTS YOU'RE INTERESTED IN: mostly for us mods: tell us things you're interested in! are you here more for horror elements, the mystery, soft fluffy missions, or the plot behind why echo has called everyone in? do you want to explore the world and figure out what's beyond the bubble etraya resides in? let us know!
OTHER: this is for pretty pictures or gifs.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, hurting/traumatizing Vivi would be a good way to get people to call her on her shit and that is appealing. But Clea's also a giant spoiler almost by nature and I saw you were trying to avoid them.

I LOVE IX. IX is my 2nd favorite of the PS1 era FFs (only because the top spot is won out by FFT which is a masterpiece). I feel like more people appreciate it now, but when it came out it was definitely underappreciated. The characters, music, and storytelling are all top notch, and I really like how they handled the ability system too. Plus it has the best mini game in existence. (Look I'm just saying if they made an entire Chocobo hot and cold game, they should SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.)

I need to play the Suikoden rereleases and the FFT rerelease when they come out, but FFIX is on my to replay list. :D

Ah, yes. The walking spoiler type. Yup. I have at least one similar sort of character, if also way more obscure. It can be tricky to balance.

But yes. I do want to gradually work my way through the other FF I haven't played. IX was just the first I actually finished, but it sure felt like most people skipped it because of the timing, with just going to the PS2 when it released.

I played on PS, but I would like to replay with mods if I can poke my fiance to help me figure those. I did see we are getting Tactics rereleased, so might get to that at some point too.

Yup yup yup! So no CR for now, but I love Vivi and wanted to make it known that I love Vivi and will be on the sidelines cheering with Vivi pompoms.

A lot of people were introduced to FF (and JRPGs) here with VII and since VII and VIII share certain similarities, they were put off by IX. Personally, I think IX has aged the best of that era aesthetically. Tactics is 100% work playing, but the gameplay is a complete departure from the mainline series.

I've played I-XII (minus XI and I don't even think you can play that any more so *shrug*), if you want recommendations on which ones you might like depending on what you liked about IX. (I'm a librarian who isn't working as one and I rarely get to flex my recommendation muscles...). Huh. I never played FF on a PC, so I never thought about there being mods, but of course there are now. My kingdom for a fast travel mod.

I am usually more keen on the protags/heroines, but. Vivi was too cute. As much as I also adore Zidane and Garnet.

I got up to the crater in VII and around halfway through VIII before losing my memory card and the second disc. I've also played through IX and the main story for XVI but not the dlc yet. I've got XV and X and XII as options as well, and am starting on XIV (still doing A Realm Reborn, so I know I am way behind since I only started playing in like Sept.) idk there was just something really kinda. Timeless/classic about IX?? And lbr my fave Tales is Symphonia, so the cutesy aesthetic but actually being dark as heck fits my jam, I guess lol.

I know nothing about installing mods since I mostly go with consoles but. I do have some games on Steam and IX has some iirc so I want to try??? Maybe.

I'm a side character girlie through and through. I can't help it. It's in my bones. Vivi is just so cute he's like a black hole: People see Vivi, Vivi is favorite. That's just how it is. A law of the universe.

Based on that, I'd do X and VI first of the older ones, with X first. It shares some similarities in that it's very bright and colorful, but it tackles some pretty severe/dark themes like 'how much do you give up before a goal stops being worth it?' I'm not super familiar with the newer ones and don't do MMOs, so alas.

Steam mods are really easy! Even off Steam mods aren't that bad if you're on a Windows machine. Mac can be a pain with how it obstructs its file paths, but it's really easy once you get the basics down. :)

Hee. It's true. He was my fave before I even played it, just based on his character design.

Fiance has said I should give X another try. I played like four hours??? when a friend had it. I just kept comparing it to Tales of Symphonia. But I know it prob does differ more later on in the game. VI is on my list, and I know it is one of his faves, too.

Yeah, I'm on Windows. So I'm hoping it isn't too complicated. I've mostly been playing on consoles, so I have not looked into mods before.

It is an A+ character design.

I haven't played Symphonia, so I can't compare, but yeah, to enjoy a game I usually find you have to set aside comparisons. Ironically, that's part of what made people not appreciate IX! As a curveball recommendation, before picking up FFT, I'd try FF Tactics Advance first. I think it'd appeal more to you right off the bat and it'd help you decide if you vibe with that kind of gameplay.

It shouldn't be! Usually you either subscribe on Steam and it's managed for you or, at worst, you plop some files in certain folders. The main things to watch out for would be making sure that your mods are compatible. (Like if you have a mod that turns everyone into Cid as a frog, that will conflict with a mod that turns Steiner into Beatrix or something). The other major thing that makes modding a pain is game updates breaking them, but given FFIX is complete and made back when games weren't drip fed content/updates, that shouldn't be an issue.

It really is.

I think it was just because at the time I was playing through Symphonia when a friend offered for me to check out X. So, timing-wise, I couldn't help comparing them. I know X probably does go in a different direction later on, but the early plot sure was similar. My DS can play GBA games. So, if I can manage to find a copy, Tactics Advance might be one I look at?

I know my fiancé has modded IX before with the Moguri mod, so at least that one should be easy if I can just ask him for help! I think the ones he had were mostly just to enhance the visuals a little, so nothing too major.

Yeah, I think it'd be a good one to try!

It tends to work the same logistically whether it's a big mod or a small one, so should be easy for him to figure out. :>

Mm. We have it on Playstation, and I have it on Steam with the Remaster. So I'll have a think and see which I might prefer.

He should be fine to help me, since he has used mods for IX before! I've only previously played it on the PS5, so I didn't use mods then but it might be nice to have the option to play around with mods to improve the visuals a little and such.

JUNE STATE OF THE GAME

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