Thanks for finding that! I've instinctively avoiding clicking on the 2chan links (most of the time) because my anti-virus software says the pages aren't entirely trustworthy.
Almost certainly the sources you remember are sites that no longer exist. There are a dozen major websites that are referenced over and over in the still-existing guides and blogs, but the information is now lost. If only I had gotten to this "Multiplayer Archiving" scene sooner.
One thing that I find makes this more difficult is that Japanese fans in general aren't as preoccupied with stuff like scans, screenshots and videos as those of us elsewhere. For whatever reason. There may be exceptions here and there, but there doesn't seem to be nearly the concern with archiving as we have.
It's especially problematic in this instance, due to the loss of those servers, but I've always found it to be a pain in the ass when researching.
I've always kind of been confused about Ragnarok v Restrictors. How many Ragnaroks were there? How many Restrictors? Did the rest of Deepground step aside? 'wiped out in a single night' kind of implies substantial numbers, while 'squad' implies not that many.
- I have begun to write a "Multiplayer Archive" frontpage feature. Strictly speaking it is not fit for public view, but only a handful of people are going to find and look at these pages while they are in these early, incomplete forms anyway. When the three available sub-pages are in an agreeable stage of completion, I might have a newspost made about it.
- In this NPC Map by Cloze he places one Restrictor in each of the four cardinal areas. But I'm a bit jaded by only seeing and hearing the one Restrictor in the cutscenes so it feels weird to imagine that multiple Restrictors are standing around in the Deepground hub. =/
As for Ragnarok, I think they'd make good buddies with the Bothans from Star Wars.
I wonder if it's clear which Restrictor -- North, South, East or West -- that we see throughout the Multiplayer Mode's story (and is killed at the end).
Apart from the tables in the Medals page still being an eyesore (I want to make it so the medal icon is adjacent to the table and vertically centred, but without being surrounded by table borders) I'm okay with how the page currently looks.
I don't even feel bad leaving translation windows empty. I'm still preserving the content by having the Japanese text there and I'm not going to postpone that aspect of the project just because we aren't finished with making it available for English reading audiences.
At the bottom of the page I link to the following Google Docs Spreadsheet:
Shera's blog and the FFCheats page about the medals sometimes differ in both medal name and medal descriptions. You'll find all the discrepancies clearly pointed out above, albeit without translation commentary. Feel free to point out any differences that can be commented on, in the same vein as the "Mako Ampoule vs Mako Capsule" analysis at the bottom of the Multiplayer Archives - Medals page.
- I do feel a bit aggressive grabbing so much content from guides and blogs without asking permission. However in my desire to get these archives online I'm justifying the "better to apologize than to ask permission" approach. I know at least that Grimoire should be okay with me reposting his content.
Years ago when I approached him about possibly uploading his content on TLS, he replied with the statement that he can't claim ownership of his archives. In fact he raised both eye brows at me for asking permission at all, since it was so obvious to him that I should feel free to do as I please with the media he's got collected. Hopefully he'll be able to tell me soon about the origins of the concept art for Argento, Restrictor and Usher.
Moogle doll selling prices: Wooden Moogle Doll [Wood carving Moogle Doll]: 15000 Gil Gold-plated Moogle Doll: 20000 Gil Gold Moogle Doll: 35000 Gil
The selling price of the Gold Moogle Doll here is the same as in the Single Player, so the two probably even share the same Item ID. The Gold-plated Moogle Doll and the Wooden Moogle Doll never make an appearance outside of the Multiplayer.
In Ex Hard Mode, only available in the post-JORG versions, there are the Silver Moogle Dolls. There are a total of seven of these dolls, each being sellable for 5000 gil. All seven sold together nets you as much gil as selling one Gold Moogle Doll.
I have not found a single reference to the Silver Moogle Doll in the Multiplayer, so the silver variation of the doll probably didn't exist there.
Thanks dude! I totally forgot to browse that book for concept art. XD
I'm a little curious if the Online Mode summary in the same book (pages 145-147 in the Revised Edition) hold any information that could be of interest to us.
- Wow, I did not expect to grow such a feeling of familiarity with the community that played the online mode.
When I archived all of Cloze's 218 blog entries, it was more like following a guide being written. Cloze focused a lot on writing guides and creating maps. It was neat though to see that pretty early on there was communication between Cloze and Michui, whose DoC Multiplayer blogs were both popular and are now among the best sources we have.
Then I began to archive Michui's blog, all 189 entries, one by one. Technically I had already saved all Michui's articles in bigger bulks by month and by category (archiving entry-by-entry was more justified in the case of Cloze's blog since only so few diary entries could be displayed per page), but I began this arduous process to really absorb what his play diary had to give.
I made sure to google translate every part of Michui's play diary, including the comment sections, and to archive everything as I went. Michui is way more emotional in his blog than Cloze ever is and over time that got to me. He really enjoyed playing the Multiplayer, he made many friends and was sad to see the player base gradually going down over the months. At least Bruno was there to be a constant companion for Michui!
In his entry from April 17, I found that Nekomimi had commented! Who is Nekomimi? Well, he is binnsennto!
Then by July 24 none other than Shera began to comment on Michui's blog. Presumably this is the same Shera who gave us the snapshot of the 24 medals.
Reading Michui's blog after the service termination announcement on June 29 was quite bittersweet. I felt sad as the ending drew closer, and the goodbye posts of September and October made me FEEL THINGS.
The familiarity with the community is quite present as I've become something of an expert on the gameplay recordings. For example when Jill battles Weiss, I suddenly noticed the player "Pochi" in the background. Pochi is the player who defeats Shelke! I don't know if Pochi is the second character of Nekomimi or if they are two completely separate individuals.
There are many more examples. This is what I might sound like when I watch the DC PlayOnline videos. "Oh look, there's Pierce! He's got his own videos!"
"Wow, that's Nekomimi again!"
"...And there's Nekomimi again, but this time on the same team as the player!"
"Hiya DG-Judgment01! I remember you from that other recording!"
I may or may not be completely submerged in the year 2006 right now.
- At least on Michui's keyboard, I read today that the screenshot feature was assigned to Alt + PrintScreen.
The recording where the player character Futaba takes part in a Team Battle in the Desert...is the same battle as the recording with the player character Pierce!
I could write lengthy commentaries to the DoC PlayOnline which would make them far more interesting for people to watch, yet there is still much left to observe since I for example don't know what is being said in the chat(s).
Another neat thing I only caught on to recently is that in one video we see a player trying to pick up a チョコボコイン [Chocobo Coin]. Unexpectedly its 3D model is that of gold ingots rather than an actual coin. The gold ingots are used for gil drops in the single player.
The player must have maxed out their Chocobo Coins, since they can't pick it up in the video. I wonder how many Chocobo Coins you could carry and how much they sold for.
If you see a video where the player character is Jill, like the one above, chances are high that you will see Kdub in it in one form or another. They clearly played together a lot.
In the Weiss warfare videos where the team ultimately fails to bring down the Immaculate one, Jill ends up employing an odd strategy. By repeatedly entering a series of sub-menus, it seems to cause Weiss to temporarily freeze in place. At first I thought the player was just being crazy but the enter-menu-cause-Weiss-to-freeze glitch actually seems to...work? o__O Start watching from 19:25 and onwards in the niconico video to see what I'm talking about.
I don't know what the menu is about, but guess whose name fills that menu? Kdub, of course! Are these chat logs? The date written in that menu is "July 29". The video can't be from earlier than August 17 though. This battle against Weiss, the mission called 解き放たれた王 [King Unleashed] was added with the August 17 update.
A familiar face in these "Weiss Warfare" videos is Pochi. Remember Pochi? At 23:36 in the video, when Jill falls and Weiss is almost beaten, poor Pochi is left alone on the battlefield. XD He doesn't last long.
Observations made regarding DCFFVII Multiplayer screenshots taken using the game's own screenshot feature (done by pressing Alt + PrintScreen on the keyboard, at least on blogger Michui's settings) :
After the April 20 version update, screenshots stop including the Timer as well as the imprint from the Network Connectivity (?) graphics on the upper right of the screen.
If you were taking screenshots before the April 20 update, you had to be pretty lucky for these bars on the upper right not to leave an ugly imprint on your picture. Since the imprint could take on various colors and intensities, you would sometimes strike lucky and have the imprint blend in with the background.
At the same time that this ugly artefact stops appearing, so does the Timer. These observations are consistent with the blogs of Michui, Cloze and DGYaco. I am yet to notice any blog entries specifically referring to the screenshot feature being improved, but given my observations I feel confident that any DCFFVII Multiplayer screenshot that includes the connectivity imprints on the upper right and/or the Timer were taken before the April 20 update.
One error that has so far only popped up in Michui's blog is that the screenshots are sometimes not properly pieced together.
- Example 1
- Example 2
- Example 3
The first two examples has the bottom section seemingly repasting a piece from the upper part of the screenshot, while the third example is a way bigger mess. Was this a common error with the screenshot feature or some oddly messed up pasting jobs by Michui? I do not know.
Note: While Example 2 and Example 3 link to a different blog than Michui's, my impression is that the "Screenshot Memorial Album" hosted there was made by Michui.
So I watched this documentary about Lovecraft yesterday. It brought to my attention that some words have become directly associated with Lovecraft's work, due to how often he used them. The documentary referred directly to the words "eldritch" and "gibbous" as examples of these, but frequently enough the word "cyclopean" came up both in the documentary's readings of Lovecraft and in the descriptions by those interviewed for this feature.
What came to mind then were two parts of the English script of DCFFVII. Firstly, the name of the first Chapter 5 segment, "From the Eldritch Depths".
Second, the name of the 28th Extra Mission, "Cyclopean Causeway".
Are these intentional uses of words that have become intimately associated with Lovecraft? If so, do these references occur only in the translation or are they part of the original Japanese script?
At least in the case of "Cyclopean Causeway", hito's translation suggests that the reference is not there in the Japanese name.
hito's translation:
ビッグブリッジ = Big Bridge
Hito has commented on how "Big Bridge" sounds like an FFV reference. The map itself in the mission is the bridge that leads to the WRO HQ.
The leap from "Big Bridge" in the Japanese game to "Cyclopean Causeway" in the localization is one of a translator taking fancy liberties.
Moving on from here in this speculation is pretty much impossible for me though both because I don't know Japanese and because I haven't read any Lovecraft. Ideally, one would have read Lovecraft both in English and Japanese so you could compare notes.
My lack of knowledge on Lovecraft's literary language means that I can speculate wildly about where else the translator of Dirge took these liberties with the script. Is "stygian" a word that Lovecraft often used? Is that why the 16th Extra Mission is called "Stygian Sewers" instead of just "Dark Sewers"?
hito's translation:
暗黒下水道 = Dark Sewers
In this particular case I feel more that the translator just felt it appropriate to invoke general "horror" words into a game where the main character is already submerged in horror elements.
For hito or Tres to unravel, here are English and Japanese screenshots of two lines where I wonder how much liberty was taken in the translation.
"From the Eldritch Depths"
"Cerulean Abyss"
EDIT:
Asked for input from my friend Dipsiel who is actually familiar with Lovecraft's works.
Dipsiel paraphrased: ' "Stygian" is not Lovecraftian and "cyclopean" isn't particularly specific to him either, even if he used it often. But the word "eldritch" is very much re-popularized by him, so you can imagine that most people who use the word are at least a tiny bit familiar with who Lovecraft is. Lovecraftian stuff has more or less creeped into general horror themes too.'
I have only read a manga adaptation of one lovecraft story in Japanese and that's all, although I do own a collection of stories I have yet to read and I think I have text files somewhere on my computer of at least one Japanese translation
Booted up my All S Rankings save to gauge my level of anxiety and fatigue while playing Chapter 6. Fortunately, I felt surprisingly relaxed and decently motivated. Now is a good time to face the stress I've built up around this challenge and find a more casual attitude towards it. My goal will be to at least clear Chapter 6 before the year is over.
Here are the All S Ranking requirements for said chapter, from page 113 of the DCFFVII Complete Guide.
Targets Destroyed - 120 or more Accuracy Rate - 70% or higher Damage Sustained - 3999 or less Critical Hits - 125 or more Killchains - 80 or more Items Used - 3 or fewer Limit Break Used - 5 times or more Mako Collected - 90% or more Times KO'd - 0 Time Expired - Less than 25 minutes
Stage Missions:
- Defeat the choppers attacking headquarters! : 15 out of 15
- Save the WRO members! : 12 out of 12
This chapter is one where overachieving the results is not easy. In fact in the Targets Destroyed category you can't get higher than roughly 130 kills, and chances are high that a handful of kills will be stolen by Bizarre Bugs and WRO members.
The game would normally expect you to get dozens and dozens of critical hits by using the gatling gun against the choppers. Notice how you need MORE critical hits than you need to defeat enemies! But using the gatling gun would plummet my Accuracy Rate, so not touching that one. Instead I'll be using the cheap method of shooting the Black Widow's belly repeatedly with a weak weapon, thus getting the necessary number of Critical Hits.
To my great joy during the test-run I did just now, I noticed that if I get lucky I can actually afford to upgrade my Power Booster all the way to Power Booster γ. This makes the chopper segment significantly easier, meaning that my failures will depend more on bad luck than on poor aiming. Like with so many "Save the NPCs" stage missions, your ability to rescue them all depends to a greater or lesser extent on luck.
The chapter consists of four segments, the first of which is all cutscenes. Segment #2 will be roughly 15 minutes long, probably the longest singular segment so far. This is easily the most challenging part of the chapter, so once segment #2 is clear, sailing will be mostly smooth for the considerably shorter segments #3 and #4.
Miscellaneous challenges right now include me...
- adapting from the Castlevania: Lament of Innocence controls to the DCFFVII controls.
- remembering to shoot down the Cactuar. I have the bad habit of forgetting to shoot it. >___>
- maintaining low stress levels and being fine with creating recordings that are filled with mistakes, as long as I get the necessary results.
JORG - Hard Mode - Vincent Lv1 - Chapter 6: Deepground Strikes Back
ALL S RANKINGS
Compare the results above with the minimum requirements: Targets Destroyed - 120 or more Accuracy Rate - 70% or higher Damage Sustained - 3999 or less Critical Hits - 125 or more Killchains - 80 or more Items Used - 3 or fewer Limit Break Used - 5 times or more Mako Collected - 90% or more Times KO'd - 0 Time Expired - Less than 25 minutes
Stage Missions:
- Defeat the choppers attacking headquarters! : 15 out of 15
- Save the WRO members! : 12 out of 12
Thank you for the love Tres <3 Your post greatly brightened my day and makes me feel better about this whole enterprise.
I have no plans for when I'll complete Chapter 8, but here are some stats.
Chapter 8 is actually two chapters in one, being divided into Chapter 8-1and Chapter 8-2. Probably to make up for the fact that Chapter 7 wasn't an actual stage, just an intermission for lots of plot exposition.
S Ranking requirements for Chapter 8-1, as provided by page 125 of the DCFFVII Complete Guide:
Targets Destroyed - 78 or more Accuracy Rate - 80% or higher Damage Sustained - 3999 or less Critical Hits - 40 or more Killchains - 50 or more Items Used - 4 or fewer Limit Break Used - 6 times or more Mako Collected - 90% or more Times KO'd - 0 Time Expired - Less than 26 minutes 40 seconds
Stage Missions:
- Escort the WRO squad to the central complex! : 5 out of 5
- Save the surviving WRO members! : 8 or more out of 9
- Defeat the Deepground commander! : 1 out of 1
The demand for Accuracy Rate is high and I'm not sure if I've ever actually achieved an S ranking in this category in Ch. 8-1 before. Especially now since Dirge of Cerberus makes me shake when I'm recording (yes, that is unfortunately still a problem but I hope it goes away eventually), I expect that when I do get an S ranking I won't overachieve and get 90%.
As usual, the requirement to transform many times is more of a nuisance than anything else. I will be re-using Mako Points and perhaps even use an Ether to get to the oddly high number of transformations demanded for such a short chapter. >___>
Chapter 8 and onwards mark when the enemies start dishing out really high damage, so it's not impossible I may end up using a restorative item soon instead of relying on the limit break transformation to heal me.
Saving the required 8 WRO members is fairly easy, it's saving 9 that is really hard. There is a gatling gunner who will kill one WRO guy within the first half second after this foe appears. If you can't kill this DG soldier within that short time space, you're out of luck. Most of the time I "fail" on this one and only save 8 people.
The last Stage Mission is a joke. The game can't move on unless you defeat the commander and get the cardkey. The DCFFVII Complete Guide even reveals that there is no way to get anything other than an S ranking here. Definitely one of the silliest Stage Missions in the game because of how pointless it is.
Chapter 8-1 almost done. The surprising fact that I've actually gotten a handful of Game Overs while playing this chapter reminds me that this will be the first playthrough in which I never use a Phoenix Down. Typically, I like to use Phoenix Down and have that lifeline just in case I screw up. But for this All S Rankings playthrough, and for the recordings, I will not allow myself to be KO'd so I might as well go without that lifeline. Having that achievement under my belt will feel nice.
So far I have felt almost none of the "shakes" that Chapter 4 gave me. Clearing Chapter 6 made me shake and feel sickly, but perhaps having that bit behind me provided an important feeling of progress. There is also the relevant difference that Chapter 6 is an extremely busy part of the game, with some new challenge around every corner. Chapter 8-1, unless you are playing it on the Ex Hard Mode, is mostly empty and has long, quiet areas. Perhaps this breath of relative relaxation was intentional before we get to the high-intensity challenge that is Chapter 8-2. I expect that 8-2 will be troublesome on my nerves.
At 23:36 in the video, when Jill falls and Weiss is almost beaten, poor Pochi is left alone on the battlefield. XD He doesn't last long.
