[Megathread] Final Fantasy XIV

[Poppincaps]

Ala Mhigo was not as good as Doma (Which was better than HW imo), but it was still good enough. I'm still in the SB > HW camp. Currently going through ShB and it's...ok? I just got to the rakita greatwood and things are getting better, but I haven't been super impressed so far.

This is where I'm at as well. I think a lot of the Doma storytelling was good, especially in the post-4.0 content. I also never really understood the hate for Lyse. She's not my favorite character but I thought she was alright.

As for Shadowbringers, it gets the acclaim it does because of the later part of the MSQ. I'd say around 77 MSQ is when it starts getting really good and then the conclusion to 5.0 made it one of my favorite stories in games. The first part is just kinda establishing the zones and culture of the First, so it's good but not anything crazy.

[Leyre]

Also, forgot to add, fuck patch 5.3, it made me ugly cry :,(

[Maljinwo]

Eh, I did enjoy Stormblood

Ala Mhigo semeed out of place after spending so much time in the east, but made sense

[Katchii]

I decided that my "main" would buy a skip and do everything the normal way, half way through stormblood i just couldnt do it anymore and boosted to shadowbringers, i really, really could get interested on a single character and now i have a profound hate for lyse

I'll agree Lyse can be annoying, but hate? Same thing with Minfilia. I never understood why people HATED them so much. Hate that they're shitty characters maybe, but hate them AS a character? Can't wrap my head around that, they just never mattered to me so much to spend that much effort on them.

What about Lyse causes you to have so much hate for her?

[Leyre]

I'll agree Lyse can be annoying, but hate? Same thing with Minfilia. I never understood why people HATED them so much. Hate that they're shitty characters maybe, but hate them AS a character? Can't wrap my head around that, they just never mattered to me so much to spend that much effort on them.

What about Lyse causes you to have so much hate for her?

With Minfilia, it was how she was praised so much by absolutely everyone, yet she ends up becoming princess peach (im still salty she didnt do shit to try and save Moenbryda)

With Lyse, her obsession with liberating ala mhigo, yes, its her people lands yadayada, but they just came from losing god knows how many to Ilberd plot and you want the remaining few to also go and die just because this time its totally going to be different?, also, Ilberd did more for ala mhigo than she could ever dream

[Gutler]

With Minfilia, it was how she was praised so much by absolutely everyone, yet she ends up becoming princess peach (im still salty she didnt do shit to try and save Moenbryda)

With Lyse, her obsession with liberating ala mhigo, yes, its her people lands yadayada, but they just came from losing god knows how many to Ilberd plot and you want the remaining few to also go and die just because this time its totally going to be different?, also, Ilberd did more for ala mhigo than she could ever dream

Minfilia is about as useful as a vegan in a butchershop.

[Leyre]

Minfilia is about as useful as a vegan in a butchershop.

And the funniest shit is she did more good dead than alive

[Lane]

Also, forgot to add, fuck patch 5.3, it made me ugly cry :,(

I failed the "don't cry through Shadowbringers" challenge, multiple times.

I'll agree Lyse can be annoying, but hate? Same thing with Minfilia. I never understood why people HATED them so much. Hate that they're shitty characters maybe, but hate them AS a character? Can't wrap my head around that, they just never mattered to me so much to spend that much effort on them.

Minfilia is probably my least favorite character made worse by the fact that every other character in the game adores her.

[infinitemeridian]

I too don't really understand the hate for Lyse. She's not the most interesting character, but she does actually see some character growth.

Compared to Y'shtola / Yugiri, how can anybody call her bland? Yugiri is the most boring character by far, and Y'shtola is almost as bad.

[Katchii]

I too don't really understand the hate for Lyse. She's not the most interesting character, but she does actually see some character growth.

Compared to Y'shtola / Yugiri, how can anybody call her bland? Yugiri is the most boring character by far, and Y'shtola is almost as bad.

Y'Shtola is entertaining though, to me. She actually has a function within the group, as an expert on Aether and such, that gets used frequently.

Her "little sun" comment was also fantastic.

[infinitemeridian]

Y'Shtola is entertaining though, to me. She actually has a function within the group, as an expert on Aether and such, that gets used frequently.

Her "little sun" comment was also fantastic.

That part was funny, but her mood never seems to switch off from smug.

[dope_danny]

Oh reminder for folks who forgot: your fc quartermaster can give you a 10-15% MGP buff and your squadron can be sent on missions to bring back tickets for 120min 15% buffs that stack. Just got a very lucky 3 16,500's from the cackpot this way.

[Leyre]

Almost done with 5.5 MSQ I think, yay.

Still annoyed at how you can't do the next dungeon in any of the post-ShB MSQ stuff even if you farmed a full set of gear from the previous dungeon. You're 5 item level short in every case, you have to buy some gear or farm some tomes in between.

Minor issue, but still strange. Especially since you can just do them with NPCs anyway, so why pump up the requirements?

Yeah, that was dumb, luckily i was only 25 tomes short of a 520 chestpiece and was able to get into the dun relatively fast, good thing the dungeon gave me like 20 pieces of loot, of wich none was "of aiming" hahahaha . . . . . :,(

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Ala Mhigo is, perhaps, the game's weakest storytelling to date. We didn't need three zones devoted to the region as far as I'm concerned.

Gyr Abania might have been received better if the three zones weren't just slightly different variations of Turkey, whereas Othard had three very different environments (tropical islands in the pacific, Japan, and then the Mongolian steppes).

Maybe if the Gyr Abanian zones had been: a forested area (like that forest in the Fringes but way bigger), Turkey, and then maybe a city like Ala Mhigo has a whole zone (like Suramar).

And it goes without saying that Gyr Abania needed to be fleshed out more. In Othard, you met half a dozen different factions: Hingashi, the Confederacy, the Kojin, Sui-no-Sato, Doma, and a few Xaela tribes. And the local Garlean Legion. Whereas in Ala Mhigo, you just meet... Ala Mhigans, Garlemald... and I guess maybe you meet the Ananta for 2 minutes.

[Granyala]

Y'Shtola is entertaining though, to me. She actually has a function within the group, as an expert on Aether and such, that gets used frequently.

I love Y'shtola. :3

She has such a fun personality.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Ala Mhigo was not as good as Doma (Which was better than HW imo), but it was still good enough. I'm still in the SB > HW camp. Currently going through ShB and it's...ok? I just got to the rakita greatwood and things are getting better, but I haven't been super impressed so far.

People rave about ShB because it has a really good beginning (great first impressions), a meh middle people forge about, and then it has a good last 1/3rd. Endings are important because those are the freshest memories in the minds of people. Contrast that with HW and SB, which had meh beginnings (what's the hype?), a good journey in the middle (the only thing people really like about those expansions). People's opinions on the last 1/3rd of HW tend to vary. I thought everything after the Vault in HW was meh, and I don't see other people talking about that part as their favorite part of HW. Whereas I quite liked raiding Ala Mhigo and overthrowing the tyrant, but I don't see too many people talking about that part either so I guess it was meh to most people?

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, Lyse is very wooden and bland.

She wasn't my favorite character, but at least I remember she existed. Unlike that HW girl. I'd say she was actually wooden and bland.

Stormblood was also the perfect time to build on the nicer side of Garlemald that had been established with Gaius and Regula, yet instead decided to double down on the worst aspects so we could miss out on nuance and have the Ala Mhigans portrayed as poor victims...even though literally every time an Ala Mhigan showed up in the plot prior to Stormblood they were trying to backstab each other or someone else.

Yeah, Garlemald being turned into a simplistically evil empire was pretty disappointed. It would have been interesting if you had gotten to infiltrate Ala Mhigan settlements that were actually sympathetic to Garlemald/assimilating into the empire. Maybe the WoL and Lyse enter into a village, hoping to rile up the people to join the Resistance... only to find that the Garleans were constructing water and irrigation pipelines, and then people. You'd get to wander around and talk to NPCs, get their perspectives. They see a mother seeing her son off as he volunteers to join Garlemald, who thinks that they're making things better. Ofcourse there would be some dissatisfied patriotic oldtimers, but the overall opinions on Garlemald in that village would be mixed. When the WoL and Lyse finally announce their intentions and try to get people to join them, some people would be on board, but many others are quite fine to be a part of the Empire.

Then, in a hypothetical Ala Mhigo city zone (like Suramar), you'd infiltrate and find that most people are completely fine. You'd see that they have TVs and maybe cars. People are sending their children off to newly constructed schools and such. So if the expansion did end with the Eorzean Alliance defeating the XIIth Legion in Gyr Abania, it wouldn't be perceived as a "liberation", but more as a conquest by the Alliance. Could have very interesting post patch content with a new Ala Mhigan resistance movement forming trying to push out the Eorzean Alliance and bring back Garlemald, lots of tensions between Ala Mhigans and the Alliance occupiers, etc.

As far as the simplistic "fight against the evil empire" story we actually got, I thought it was satisfying.

- - - Updated - - -

This is where I'm at as well. I think a lot of the Doma storytelling was good, especially in the post-4.0 content. I also never really understood the hate for Lyse. She's not my favorite character but I thought she was alright.

I think a big problem with Lyse is that she is competing with Alisae. They're both the same character: the fiery lad-ette. Unfortunately for Lyse, the audience is more inclined to like Alisae because she was introduced before during the WoD arc in the HW patches, whereas Lyse only really gets introduced towards the very end of the HW patches. So Lyse is having to compete with a character that the audience probably likes more. Lyse is a redundant character, but fortunately she gets written out of the story relatively soon after 4.0.

A similar problem happens later on in the MSQ, when (ShB 5.4) a character is almost exactly the same character as Alphinaud is introduced, and the two are fighting for screentime (when both are in the same scene, one or the other talks, but rarely both, because they would only say the same things). And unlike Lyse, this new character isn't written out of the story, so he continues to hang around and is redundant.

- - - Updated - - -

With Minfilia, it was how she was praised so much by absolutely everyone, yet she ends up becoming princess peach (im still salty she didnt do shit to try and save Moenbryda)

With Lyse, her obsession with liberating ala mhigo, yes, its her people lands yadayada, but they just came from losing god knows how many to Ilberd plot and you want the remaining few to also go and die just because this time its totally going to be different?, also, Ilberd did more for ala mhigo than she could ever dream

Yeah, FFXIV has some rather bizzare morality on Illberd. The narrative seems to condemn Illberd for trying to drag the Alliance into a war with Garlemald to liberate his homeland... but then after the false flag incident, the Alliance never attempts to try to contact Varis and say "no no Baelsar's Wall wasn't attacked because of us, we won't invade, let's stay at peace please". The Alliance just jumps straight into invading Ala Mhigo and it's presented as a heroic thing, like "yes we're finally fighting the evil empire! Let's go become liberators! Let's send our people off to die for some other poor sob!" which is the opposite of what the game had been saying before (let's not send our people off to die for some other sob, peace between the empire and the alliance is possible, Ala Mhigo's situation might be able to be improved without resorting to war).

[Lex Icon]

i liked stormblood way more than heavensward. HW was just a bunch of french named elfs with attitue issues and the ugliest designed dragons i've ever seen.
i liked the evil archbishop part though.

stormblood i felt had better stories seeing both the leadership of ala mhigo and doma coming into place and it had some pretty damn dark plots.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I too don't really understand the hate for Lyse. She's not the most interesting character, but she does actually see some character growth.

Compared to Y'shtola / Yugiri, how can anybody call her bland? Yugiri is the most boring character by far, and Y'shtola is almost as bad.

Y'shtola has a vaguely appealing waifu design, and her personality (at least in the English localization, dunno about other versions of her) is snarky which jives with American sensibilities. So ofcourse she is waifued (regardless of how uninteresting she is). Whereas Lyse doesn't get a vaguely appealing character design until she dons the dress near the very end (also Alisae looks cuter and has a softer voice, which might contribute to why Alisae - despite being the same character as Lyse - is more liked by the audience).

[Thestrawman]

I think a big problem with Lyse is that she is competing with Alisae. They're both the same character: the fiery lad-ette. Unfortunately for Lyse, the audience is more inclined to like Alisae because she was introduced before during the WoD arc in the HW patches, whereas Lyse only really gets introduced towards the very end of the HW patches. So Lyse is having to compete with a character that the audience probably likes more. Lyse is a redundant character, but fortunately she gets written out of the story relatively soon after 4.0.

I find this an odd thing in the fandom, and it's not just you Val. Everyone says Lyse showed up at the end of HW even though she's been around since 1.0. Just under a different name.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I find this an odd thing in the fandom, and it's not just you Val. Everyone says Lyse showed up at the end of HW even though she's been around since 1.0. Just under a different name.

She was a background NPC nobody cared about until she was reintroduced end of HW. I only remembered her not because she was an interesting character, but because she was the constant companion of the one of the few ARR Scions I liked: Papalymo.

- - - Updated - - -

Similarly, I forgot Urianger really existed until his reintroduction in ShB. ShB Urianger is much more likeable than his prior incarnation.