he/him

got a degree in cs (is my biggest regret)

i play a lot of ffxiv

read my fair share of manga

p2p file sharing enjoyer with data hoarding tendencies

i use arch linux btw

  • 2 Posts
  • 60 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I feel like this is a big miss by framework. Maybe I just don’t understand because I already own a Velka 3 that i used happily for years and building small form factor with standard parts seems better than what this is offering. Better as in better performance, aesthetics, space optimization, upgradeability - SFF is not a cheap or easy way to build a computer.

    The biggest constraint building in the sub-5 liter format is GPU compatibility because not many manufacturers even make boards in the <180mm length category. Also can’t go much higher than 150-200 watts because cooling is so difficult. There are still options though, i rocked a PNY 1660 super for a long time, and the current most powerful option is a 4060ti. Although upgrades are limited to what manufacturers occasionally produce, it is upgradeable, and it is truly desktop performance.

    On the CPU side, you can physically put in whatever CPU you want. The only limitation is that the cooler, alpenfohn black ridge or noctua l9a/l9i, probably won’t have a good time cooling 100+ watts without aggressive undervolting and power limits. 65 watts TDP still gives you a ryzen 7 9700x.

    Motherboards have the SFF tax but are high quality in general. Flex ATX PSUs were a bit harder to find 5 or 6 years ago but now the black 600W enhance ENP is readily available from Velkase’s website. Drives and memory are completely standard. m.2 fits with the motherboard, 2.5in SATA also fits in one of the corners. Normal low profile DDR5 is replaceable / upgradeable.

    What framework is releasing is more like a laptop board in a ~4 liter case and I really don’t like that in order to upgrade any part of CPU, GPU or memory you have to replace the entire board because it’s soldered on APU and not socketed or discrete components. Framework’s enclosure hasn’t been designed to hold a motherboard+discrete GPU and the board doesn’t have a PCIe slot if you wanted to attach a card via riser in another case. It could be worse but I don’t see this as a good use of development resources.









  • FF14 is basically unplayable at resolutions below 1080p. There’s simply not enough pixels to display all the detail needed for serious play e.g. hotbars, buff/debuff bars, target/focus target, party list, castbars and enough empty screen space to see the boss. It’s also complete ass trying to raid at below 50-60fps. If your framerate is low enough it starts to become a dps loss since the time you can queue your next skill is delayed until the next frame is drawn, effectively increasing your global cooldown. On top of that no access to 3rd party programs on PC that would help alleviate these issues e.g. framerate locking, zoomhacks. Only way this works out is that the new nintendo switch is a 1080p+ 60fps+ capable machine with specs equivalent to a midrange PC from 3-4 years ago. Or Yoshida is talking out of his ass giving a japanese PR response, which is pretty typical





  • basically, instead of nerfing picto they buffed everything else. The biggest changes are:

    VPR: removed their boss side debuff that causes more 10% damage, and baked extra potency into the regular abilities (sorta like leaden fist / monk stuff).

    BLM: Buffs via enochian, f4, despair and some aoe stuff, re-addition of ice paradox, and a QOL change to Umbral Soul that pauses the eno timer indefinitely after you press it.

    SAM: Basically got a mini rework, tsubame is no longer tied to a Meikyo or Tsubame-gaeshi timer, you literally just hit Kaeshi Setsugekka after every single midare. This screws with the loop, you have to do 1 more gcd per minute which means no filler at 2.14/2.15. Ad hoc play unaffected. This also single handedly makes speed samurai viable as this is a pretty massive buff to the basic 10 (previously 9) gcd loop of building up 3 sen and doing your double midare.


  • Feels weird to review an expansion before 90% of the content has been released. We have the main story, main story dungeons, and 2 “hard mode” trials so far? And one of the EX is hot garbage, probably the worst fight released in the past 4 years or ever (subject to personal opinion). There’s still 12 raid bosses, 5 more EX trials, large scale field content, a deep dungeon i think, and an ultimate raid or two on the way. Still remains to be seem whether they are going to continue with good fight design, or endwalker fight design. Music has some good points for sure, and story as always is a non-factor. It’s really nothing special as far as JRPGs or even previous final fantasy games are concerned.


  • I’m a bit disappointed that SE is continuing to enforce the God-given correct way to play these jobs (monk, pictomancer) rather than allow us to do jank tech for a 1% or sub-1% gain. For samurai tendo, I must be the only person on the planet who likes the long recast (double weave after iaijutsu, triple weave after tsubame). I like the two extra weave slots during burst. Also curious where the potencies will end up, I would expect BLM to get a sizeable buff, and I’m also not sure if Picto is meant to be on par with melee DPS but its numbers are really high rn.



  • The progression is absolutely time gated, and they definitely calculate the travel time to make each zone take some given amount of time to complete. When they need to pad out the zone a bit longer they add one of the trailing quests (autoscroller). It’s the business model and the same reasoning for why they don’t increase the weekly tome cap and also why there’s a weekly loot lockout during the raid tier, if players could grind out all the gear they need for a patch in 1 week, they would. That said if all you want to do is the msq and normal content, you can probably beat that in 30-40 hours watching cutscenes if you can dedicate a weekend to it and unsub until the next patch. I finished the msq + all aether currents in about 16 hours after launch with a couple friends, skipping all cutscenes, and the leading edge progression groups were probably done in closer to 10-12 hours so they could hit the EX trials.



  • Some old friends had an inside joke that whenever we were getting called one by one (to receive a distinction or something) that the best was always saved for last. Then one of them would get called up and you could hear the hushed “Dang it!” coupled with a giggle of victory. Anyway that’s basically how i feel every time my main goes without being featured another day. #1 is probably viper to complete the bookends (since #21 was picto) but i’ll be pretty happy if my job makes the top 5