Winter MMO Archair Dev Session: Final Fantasy 14

Welp, I don't think I'm in a position to give a sweeping review.

First, I still only have the crafting jobs to 16, the dps jobs to 50 (RDM is a little higher because I used it for an extended FATE event), and the two original tanking classes to 15. Only the current three healing jobs are to 70, and I'm most comfortable with WHM. I'm on and off with this game a lot, but recently became confident enough to add the roulette for expert dungeons to my repertoire. Still no extreme primals or current 8-player raids, though.

Second, I'm not at a place of having been in the game continuously so long as to see the big picture limits or downsides clearly.

Two things that do stand out to me:

   1) concerns over WHM having its identity leeched and its value overshadowed by other healer jobs

   2) old zone feeling empty and pointless

So here's the gist of what I've posted about these issues on the official forums...

On the identity/role of WHM

Current player concerns (skip down to see suggested action)

WHM is much easier to get into/more accessible. No managing cards or aetherflow or pets. That's "what it is". Unadorned and straightforward.

That's also why the lily gauge feels so tacked on by appearing so far into leveling. There *is no* WHM minigame to manage that relies on some special resource (aetherflow, pets, cards). SE seems to acknowledge that this is "what white mage is" by making lilies nice but optional and ignorable, especially for non-raiders. That keeps the "plain, simple, powerful" theme intact. Confession stacks don't even get a gauge, and outside of less forgiving content they are also nice but easily ignorable.

In adding those late extras to WHM they appear to want to avoid introducing much complexity while adding a little something extra for prog players/optimizers. People who only do non-prog content and/or play infrequently/casually can use WHM as easy-to-get-(back)-into job for healing, while the other healing jobs offer more complexity and management of resources.

I have dropped in and out of the game a lot over the past 2 1/2 year, and can say that WHM being so basic and easy to use has really helped me jump back in and given me a cushion for making mistakes and some confidence trying new content because it's easy to remember/relearn/use all the way up to the current expert roulette.

Erasing Transgender People - A Perspective from Deviance and Social Control

Note: I'm not going to be citing various sources as per some academic paper. It's been a while since I read/discussed material in that area and don't recall all the references that may have influenced my thinking. Feel free to comment if you recognize such influences. I know Stigma by Goffman and a generic reader or two with classic excerpts/articles and cross-cultural examples were involved including a piece on social landscapes. So that is the fertilizer for the mind soil in which my own perspective has developed. This isn't meant to be revolutionary or amazingly insightful, just an introduction for those not familiar with the issues discussed.

Societal Ideal and Distance from Center

This is a pretty standard idea, I think? Not sure what's "in" at that moment. But as I use it "societal control" and "distance from center", consider if society imagined an ideal person. Now it wouldn't be totally consistent or stable, but it would still be a constellation of features that hung together. This echoes some of Erving Goffman's thinking. And it need not be all of society that imagines it, but those with the most power and influence. It then spreads out to others by representation in public spaces and platforms. In the United States, this has generally been a young white somewhat wealthy Christian male who is athletic, confident, and handsome. Plus cis-gendered and heterosexual.

Now if everyone is evaluated on some level by this, even if only subconsciously, then assume for a moment that the closer you are to this ideal the more you are seen as a proper, respectable, decent person worthy of consideration and deference. If you make a mistake you are more likely to be treated kindly and given the benefit of the doubt.

The further you are from this, the more suspect you are. The harder you have to work to be seen as and maintain an appearance of being acceptable, respectable, safe, and reliable. You are more likely to be judged quickly and harshly or have your actions viewed with suspicion or disdain. The harder it is to get or restore a good reputation.

This framework makes societal privilege easier to understand. A poor, average-looking white guy with little education is not at the center of the target ideal. So he can generally expect to not be treated as well as the rich, pretty white guy with a Harvard degree. Yet a somewhat handsome black man with a degree from a state university may in some ways be considered further from the center of the ideal. Hence in some situations he may get less consideration that the poor white guy while still enjoying some advantages the poor white guy lacks.

So we don't need to pit them against each other. We can simply acknowledge that some criteria are more important for being closer to or further from the ideal, and that your cumulative distance is a decent predictor of how society will treat you. But of course it's never that simple in how people picture the situation. The black man may be painted as "having been given everything" based on the color of his skin. The poor white man may be made to resent the black man. After all why not? It's a great form of social control. People must be reminded of their place.

The Nook that could have been

Or could yet be if Barnes & Noble doesn't keep shrinking its investment in the e-reader. I like Nook. I prefer to Kindle. Any Kindle. I like that it has some limited value in an actual brick-and-mortar store. I like the layout of its digital UI, especially how books look on the screen. And yet B&N stores now hide or remove the Nook kiosk and third parties provide content services to minimize costs. The Nook could be extinct within a year or two.

What a shame.

One word sums up what I had hoped would happen with Nook -- integration.

Picturing Nook and the B&N Website/Store PoS

I've activated preference tracking for my B&N account. I have a registered Nook device and an active Nook app.

I use my account with my B&N membership to buy a product from the store's website. I add a few things to my wishlist. I walk into a store far from home and get an alert that something I've shopped for or that is on my wishlist is available in store. Or maybe it's on sale right now. Or I qualify to use my Nook device to activate a special discount.

I buy something at the store. Since I've authorized tracking on my B&N account (optional), neither my Nook device nor app tries to sell me the exact same item (unless it is consumable/something you can use up). But maybe I am offered a discount on the e-book version of a physical book I've just purchased. Especially if I've spent so much through various Barnes & Noble outlets to qualify for that perk.

Oh look, my Nook just notified me of events happening at what I've designated as "My Store". I head over a few days later for a book signing and for being a loyal member who spent money on ebooks on my Nook a notification pops up saying I qualify for a free drink in the cafe.

Just a few examples, but, right now the best you get is to sample a book for free for one our each day if you bring in your Nook. That's it. Sure you can switch books to get another hour of free reading. BUT THAT'S IT.

I mean, if you have a device, a physical store, and a website, there is soooooo much you could so to weave those together into a satisfying experience that other retailers can't touch.

Or, you know, you could just try to copy whatever passing fad is happening with handheld devices and come in at second or third place in a highly competitive market.

*shrug*

The End of G+

Most people probably couldn't care less about the end of Google Plus. Some will laugh. It's been the butt of many jokes. But I really like the potential it had. It was like Facebook and Twitter merged together, but without a lot of the BS of either of those platforms. Plus I liked it's integration into the larger Google suite of tools.

I also liked its integration into the larger Google suite. I get it was struggling, and there was a security breach. But if it was just because of the breach, which didn't reveal nearly as much serious data as other sites that are still running, that makes little sense. The feeling many people have that this was an excuse to announce a pending plan to close the platform makes more sense.

Who knows where it might have gone if it had caught on with a larger number of people. I hope they at least leave what's already there as an archive rather than totally wiping all of the photos, art, discussions, etc. people have posted over the last several years.

Here's to whatever fun alternative social media platform comes next...

Weight

Heaviness and lightness.

Heart. Body. Mind.

Could go through how anatomy/physiology, the mind, and the social/cultural are interconnected and interactive information systems that influence each other regardless of your views on religion and spirituality, and that if we toss in the spiritual it would another linked system, so whatever, but, I'll just let this paragraph introduce/reaffirm that idea.

Plus I don't care about whether we call the heart an affective-aspirational network of perceptions and impulse, or whether the mind is an emergent phenomena arising from the brain or localized, concentrated, catalystic cloud of coherent sentience crystallized from a fundamental form of awareness that exists as a property or aspect of fundamental elements of time-space. I'm just gonna say "heart" and "mind" and you'll know what I mean without all the blah-blah-blah drama.

Yes, some cultures see what some call the heart as part of the mind, and...

Ahem.

So here's a way to think about weight, and to consider the heart-body-mind connection. It's a way to get a handle on basic aspects of wellness. No doubt it will have connections to ancient sacred teachings (about things like qi, lung, prana, etc.) and modernized takes on those teachings, as well as some slowly emerging fields within the health sciences. This is my take from my own experiences.

For the sake at least of analogy, consider information as something manifesting as or through energy and matter. For humans, we have of physiological system with its anatomical pathways and structures for our biological bodies. We also have our social system with its cultural pathways and structures for our interpersonal bodies. Those two systems, physiological and social, interact in many ways but the actions are primarily regulated by the brain and recognized/experienced through the mind.

Again, some people will argue that mind is a localization of a universal awareness tangled up with the brain, or that the mind is just an illusion conjured by the brain or a higher form of function that is a new level of organization beyond the sum of its brainy parts. So argue. But we know what people generally mean by mind.

And in this model, the brain and mind are two sides of the same coin as the area where the social and physiological meet. Human minds (whatever the ultimate nature) are bound up with and at the very least greatly affected by brains, and so no brains, no versions of mind as we currently experience them. Would they persist in some other altered way without the brain? If so, how? Great questions to speculate, but they aren't necessary here.

The point is that physiology (which includes genetics and epigenetics) and its related anatomical structures are connected by information pathways to sociology (including linguistics and personalities) and its related cultural structures (like languages, worldviews, etc.). Information can flow back and forth within these different areas, translated (sometimes in very distorted or limited ways) from one medium to another and therefore affecting how those other areas/systems work. The mind-brain, and hence psychology/neuroscience, are the critical to producing/reproducing/storing much of the social, despite written language, physical tools, human-made structures, etc. They are also crucial to the highway between the physiological and the social (although human-made alterations to the physical environment, influences on dietary and physical habits, etc., can also directly impact and send signals to our physiology).