Looking to the Future: FFXIV v7.x and Beyond

[Yarathir]

I don't really care about Haurchefant either. He was okay, and there was a bit of a gut punch, but that was mostly when you had to tell his father about it, not with his actual death.

[eschatological]

People pitched a fit when Papalymo died? I must've missed that one. I actually thought Papalymo's death was handled quite well and was telegraphed pretty strongly well before it actually occurred. I mean I wasn't super-attached to Papalymo in ARR or anything, I actually found him kind of annoying in most cases - but I thought his death and his connection to Yda/Lyse, being a catalyst for her growth into a true character in the story, was a nice touch. Bonus points for how his death also mirrored the death of Louisoix, his teacher and mentor, in the same manner that he was for Yda/Lyse.

One thing I've noticed is that the Scions have such plot armor that I didn't believe the deaths of Scions like Minfilia or Papalymo were "real" until like 2 expansions worth of story later. Maybe because in the same event Minfilia died in, Y'shtola came back even though she was the epicenter of the event which killed Minfilia. This also made me not believe in Zenos's death, and I rolled my eyes when it turns out they just buried his ass instead of burning his body and scattering his ashes to the four corners of the world. Especially when they already knew Ascians could take over people's bodies, it wouldn't have been unreasonable to take that precaution with a dead body. It also made me disappointed in the non-death of the Sultana, which I thought was well-earned at the time.

Scions in the story seem to be reactionary at best, and the one time they've tried to be proactive, the writers used that to backfire on Alfie for character growth reasons. But even that just made him a self-doubting character when he had no real fault in the failure of his little order of Braves.

[Aucald]

One thing I've noticed is that the Scions have such plot armor that I didn't believe the deaths of Scions like Minfilia or Papalymo were "real" until like 2 expansions worth of story later. Maybe because in the same event Minfilia died in, Y'shtola came back even though she was the epicenter of the event which killed Minfilia. This also made me not believe in Zenos's death, and I rolled my eyes when it turns out they just buried his ass instead of burning his body and scattering his ashes to the four corners of the world. Especially when they already knew Ascians could take over people's bodies, it wouldn't have been unreasonable to take that precaution with a dead body. It also made me disappointed in the non-death of the Sultana, which I thought was well-earned at the time.

Scions in the story seem to be reactionary at best, and the one time they've tried to be proactive, the writers used that to backfire on Alfie for character growth reasons. But even that just made him a self-doubting character when he had no real fault in the failure of his little order of Braves.

I didn't have an issue with Y'shtola surviving where Minfilia didn't, especially in light of Y'shtola's considerable skill in magic and Minfilia giving off vibes of her plan to essentially sacrifice herself in any case - Minfilia didn't even die, not in any real sense, as she became an aspect of Hydaelyn instead. I knew Papalymo's death was likely to stick due to the strong parallels between Louisoix and himself, and that his death was likely to be a catalyzing event for Yda to take the stage more fully, which she did as she reassumed her original identity of Lyse. Zenos' death was kind of pointless in light of his power - even if they had burnt his body and scattered his ashes he likely would've still returned, and probably possessed the body of some random Garlean that he would later warp into an approximation of his original self (or something worse, given his tastes). The one heel-face death that bothered me most was the sultana's, though; I'm still annoyed at the story bringing her back when her death was such a poignant and catalyzing event for so many characters connected to her, not the least of which was Raubahn himself.

As for Alphinaud, I think his doubt arose less from his failure with the Braves specifically and more just the failure of his worldview at that time. Alphinaud considered himself simply a better all-around person, a superior mind, than those around him - and due to that, no doubt thought his plans for the Braves and for the Scions as a whole would be a revolution and renaissance all at once, with him at its center. He was arrogant and prideful albeit well-intentioned, and Ilberd used both Alphinaud's arrogance and considerable naivete against him when setting up the fall of the Braves. Alphinaud was distraught and humbled by someone he thought of as decidedly lesser, and it took him time to evaluate his own worldview and see its many flaws, eventually becoming a better person and a better leader because of it.

[Grinning Serpent]

Same with Tesleen. They used her as a shock moment, demonstrating that this fate can hit anyone, at any time.

And yet it never hit any character of substance thereafter. The only people we saw get turned, that got fucked up by the Sin Eaters, were meaningless nobody NPCs. You'd *think* the Scions would be the most at-risk given their profession of Lightwarden-hunters, but it's only the WoL that ends up at risk due to having to continually absorb increasingly absurd amounts of light aether.

Marvel is a really good comparison, because it's the same kind of story - just enjoy the ride but please for sanity's sake do *NOT* think about the ride too long, or you'll get a headache. WoW has this, as well (I've been watching compilations to catch up on post-Legion lore in prep for DF and I honestly think it's a lot better than people gave it credit for... but it's still very much comic book-level material, not exactly fine writing.)

I think of stories like this as junk food. Pleasing and simple to enjoy but you should probably not dine on it exclusively, nor would you ever want to try and mistake it for "actual cooking."

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I don't really care about Haurchefant either. He was okay, and there was a bit of a gut punch, but that was mostly when you had to tell his father about it, not with his actual death.

For sure. I literally laughed and made a crack about Ornstein when Horsefarts bit it, but it *sucked* having to bring the news to Edmont. That's where you felt the dude's death.

[Ghost of Cow]

I don't really care about Haurchefant either. He was okay, and there was a bit of a gut punch, but that was mostly when you had to tell his father about it, not with his actual death.

Agree, the scene with Edmont is where it hit me more.

However, on my wife's recent playthrough I talked Haurchefant up so much that she couldn't believe it when he died and threatened to quit. So evil.

[eschatological]

Haurchafant was just a weird geek who had a bizarre crush on me which I never once reciprocated. Meanwhile, Aymeric was tasty as heck, but the one dinner date you go on with him he's like a huge awkward nerd and you don't know if it is a date, or a really uncomfortable dinner between two acquaintances.

Just a total letdown all around in that aspect, for Heavensward.

[Granyala]

And yet it never hit any character of substance thereafter. The only people we saw get turned, that got fucked up by the Sin Eaters, were meaningless nobody NPCs. You'd *think* the Scions would be the most at-risk given their profession of Lightwarden-hunters, but it's only the WoL that ends up at risk due to having to continually absorb increasingly absurd amounts of light aether.

Given their combat proficiency, while encountering more Wardens/Sineaters, the Scions are actually MUCH safer than the average citizen, who is completely helpless against such a foe.

Not only can the Scions avoid them much easier, they also stand a realistic chance of defeating at least the smaller ones.

If you encounter a hostile Navy Seal as an average citizen, you're toast before you even know what hit you.
If you are another Navy Seal, you at least stand a chance, knowing their tactics and abilities in detail.

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I don't really care about Haurchefant either. He was okay, and there was a bit of a gut punch, but that was mostly when you had to tell his father about it, not with his actual death.

What hit me most was to see Ifalna suffer and blame herself for not being able to heal him.
Granted, there's a bit of head-canon here.

[Ghost of Cow]

Given their combat proficiency, while encountering more Wardens/Sineaters, the Scions are actually MUCH safer than the average citizen, who is completely helpless against such a foe.

Not only can the Scions avoid them much easier, they also stand a realistic chance of defeating at least the smaller ones.

If you encounter a hostile Navy Seal as an average citizen, you're toast before you even know what hit you.
If you are another Navy Seal, you at least stand a chance, knowing their tactics and abilities in detail.

Sure, but the point is the amount of exposure.

That Navy Seal is 1000x more equipped than me to fight bad guys, but they're also 1000x more likely to be killed by one just because I'm not out there doing the fighting. Yet after a certain point the Scions are just so invulnerable that even the poignant death scenes aren't believable at all anymore.

[Grinning Serpent]

Given their combat proficiency, while encountering more Wardens/Sineaters, the Scions are actually MUCH safer than the average citizen, who is completely helpless against such a foe.

Not only can the Scions avoid them much easier, they also stand a realistic chance of defeating at least the smaller ones.

If you encounter a hostile Navy Seal as an average citizen, you're toast before you even know what hit you.
If you are another Navy Seal, you at least stand a chance, knowing their tactics and abilities in detail.

I don't think the Navy Seal thing is an appropriate comparison. A Seal is just a human like you and me - fitter and better-trained but still just a human.

Sin Eaters, particularly above the basic rank-and-file, are explicitly supernatural and otherworldly creatures with abilities far exceeding a typical hyur's or whatever. This is, I'm assuming, how they justify fairly weak monsters slaughtering red shirt armies left, right, and center but it calls into question the prowess of the Scions - are they or aren't they just really fit and really well-trained dudes in armor?

This is why I think it's bad to try and closely analyze JRPGs. JRPGs as a general rule of thumb play it fast and loose with consistency and continuity in the game's setting, preferring to bend things in whichever way necessary in order to have more cool action scenes or whatever.

I mean, the very existence of lalafells and them *NOT* being basically permanently enslaved or eaten for food by predators shows how generally silly the setting plays things. Halflings and gnomes tend to be readily abused and victimized by the larger, more powerful races and the only way they survive tends to be through living in areas that cater to their small size (see also: kobolds and goblins) or by creating social constructs that make it unwise to abuse them. You could argue that the lalafells have accomplished this, especially in Ul'dah, but how did they survive long enough to get to that point? If we're talking about dudes with sticks picking up the pieces after a calamity wiped out most of civilization, how are they not just permanently enslaved (or consumed as food) to the indigenous highlanders and roegadyns?

You can write a narrative that explains this, but then when you try to explain why lalafells can fell dragons with toothpick-sized swords, it *has* to be handwaved is "idk aether (or dynamis) and shit." Apparently aether (or dynamis) is a force so potent that it can negate even the most fundamental laws of physics... I imagine that's how they got "to the end of the universe" so quickly?

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Sure, but the point is the amount of exposure.

That Navy Seal is 1000x more equipped than me to fight bad guys, but they're also 1000x more likely to be killed by one just because I'm not out there doing the fighting. Yet after a certain point the Scions are just so invulnerable that even the poignant death scenes aren't believable at all anymore.

Yes, this as well. There's something that's always bugged me with the murderhobo-focused tabletop settings - if adventuring were so comparatively easy and so profitable, why the fuck would anyone be farming or sweeping cellars or whatever else? Some settings, at least, state that a 1st level Fighter isn't just some random Joe that picked up a sword one day, but is already a veteran soldier or warrior with extensive experience and training... but the newer editions of many systems make it pretty clear that a 1st level character is pretty much a newbie.

When killing a half dozen goblins makes you better than a week's pay toiling in a smithy would bring in, for barely any more risk, you'd think goblins would be on the endangered species list.

If we're to believe in the stakes - that adventuring and saving the world is fucking dangerous - then you *have* to be willing to maim or kill characters as part of that narrative. I don't mean *pretend* to do so, as they've done with Y'shtola repeatedly, but *actually kill them.* If you have characters you are repeatedly insisting are just normal people who are simply very highly trained going into increasingly deadly scenarios and they keep coming out with no lasting harm, it becomes increasingly hard to believe those stakes.

If you're telling me this group of dudes and gals hopped onto an intergalactic space ship for what everyone was damned well expecting to be a one-way trip to go fight the literal manifestation of entropy and nihilistic decay and the end of the universe... I'd pretty well be expecting fucking none of them to make it back. Or maybe one or two make it back, and they're shattered by the experience. Instead we got a suicide conga line that we were *explicitly told was only temporary at the outset* followed by a very manly fisticuffs session at the edge of existence, followed by a weeklong beauty sleep, and everyone's up and walking around like nothing happened.

How are you supposed to believe "the stakes are real" after something like that?

[Granyala]

Yet after a certain point the Scions are just so invulnerable that even the poignant death scenes aren't believable at all anymore.

The main characters having absurd plot armor, surviving shit they shouldn't and getting rescued by freak coincidences is a problem you will find in virtually any storyline created by humans.
Even great works such as Lord of the Rings suffer from that one.

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Sin Eaters, particularly above the basic rank-and-file, are explicitly supernatural and otherworldly creatures with abilities far exceeding a typical hyur's or whatever. This is, I'm assuming, how they justify fairly weak monsters slaughtering red shirt armies left, right, and center but it calls into question the prowess of the Scions - are they or aren't they just really fit and really well-trained dudes in armor?

Well, the Scions do have magic at their disposal, fare more than the average citizen or soldier can wield. I get what you mean though, monster power is all over the place and what is a total pushover to the WoL should not be able to intimidate, let alone slaughter armies of men.

I think this is more an issue of gameplay than storytelling though, they simply can't make every creature we encounter a savage raid level threat.

RE Lalafell: just because they are physically weak and small does not mean they are prime targets for abuse. After all, we are talking about a world where magic exists to even the odds. If anything, Miqo'te seem to be enslaved somewhat.

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If you're telling me this group of dudes and gals hopped onto an intergalactic space ship for what everyone was damned well expecting to be a one-way trip to go fight the literal manifestation of entropy and nihilistic decay and the end of the universe... I'd pretty well be expecting fucking none of them to make it back. Or maybe one or two make it back, and they're shattered by the experience. Instead we got a suicide conga line that we were *explicitly told was only temporary at the outset* followed by a very manly fisticuffs session at the edge of existence, followed by a weeklong beauty sleep, and everyone's up and walking around like nothing happened.

How are you supposed to believe "the stakes are real" after something like that?

Yeah I don't have a problem with the cheesy resurrection at the end but I do agree that it is weird that there are never any lasting consequences, especially to our WoL.

I mean it could be as simple as e.g.: Thancred losing a leg in combat, no longer being able to fight and thus being relegated to an advisory / behind the scenes role.
Again: most series created by men suffer from tis. Not just JRPGs.

[KrayZ33]

It's called suspension of disbelief and everyone does it to some extend, some more than others.
It's really not that special.

I certainly don't need main characters to die left and right just to see the stakes at play.
I can get the same feeling from random people "dying around me" and accept the story as such.
In fact, more often than not I find it to be a cheap trick when they kill of a main character. Trying to get under my skin with that more often than not, feels just as forced as giving them plot-armor. Expecting someone to die for the sake of someone dying so you can feel it's dangerous seems just as silly and almost childish to me.
The argument is basically "Oh, what you did wasn't dangerous, after all you didn't get hurt".

For example, when we hopped onto that ship to fight the evil girl, it was established and communicated very well that this is a trip that has to succeed, because there is simply no other way to reach her after we do this and worst of all, no plan B. Not a single character had to die for me to consider that adventure as "dangerous" or "risky", because it was established as such beforehand... and not just by them "saying" it, the whole thing had a grim feeling attached to it and you were basically doing a huge bet.
The problem I had in that example was how easily we got access to the ship and HOW we got it, because that on the other hand felt like a cheap plot device as it felt like the father of the twins kinda gave it to us even though he himself doesn't even have the power to just give it to us. He acted like it was all his to decide. That's where my suspension of disbelief broke a little.

[zealo]

Yeah I don't have a problem with the cheesy resurrection at the end but I do agree that it is weird that there are never any lasting consequences, especially to our WoL.

I mean it could be as simple as e.g.: Thancred losing a leg in combat, no longer being able to fight and thus being relegated to an advisory / behind the scenes role.
Again: most series created by men suffer from tis. Not just JRPGs.

That's a limitation of it being an MMO as far as the player character is concerned.

It's far easier to do things like having the protagonist losing an arm and becoming a cripple in the story when you have a definitive end to work with, but when you need to have the player character remaining in fighting condition for years to come by nature of being a live service game heavy plot armour becomes an outright necessity.

[Ghost of Cow]

The main characters having absurd plot armor, surviving shit they shouldn't and getting rescued by freak coincidences is a problem you will find in virtually any storyline created by humans.
Even great works such as Lord of the Rings suffer from that one.

It's not the plot armor that I was talking about, it's all the fakeout deaths and such.

When you simply stop believing something even when the game is trying to put it right in your face, it's not a great sign, I guess.

[Yarathir]

Agree, the scene with Edmont is where it hit me more.

However, on my wife's recent playthrough I talked Haurchefant up so much that she couldn't believe it when he died and threatened to quit. So evil.

Lmao. You're the worst.

[Grinning Serpent]

Honestly the more distance I get from Endwalker’s MSQ the more I realize it kinda sucked. The pacing was atrocious, the fall of Garlemald was idiotic, half the zones were unecessary and personally the whole Meteion thing just didn’t work for me. I think almost everything about Elpis was a mistake and I think it’s even dumber we are STILL dicking around there, now in Pandaemonium. Endwalker is a huge swing and a miss for me. Hopefully future xpacs can pull something great off but I’m willing to bet Shadowbringers will be the height of XIV for me story-wise.

Not quite to the same extent but I mostly agree. Endwalker missed more than it hit, and while I thought it was a great Final Fantasy story... Final Fantasy has never been the series I go to if I want quality storytelling.

I think the whole "oh shit Zenos is in your body and he's gonna kill your friends, you gotta fucking move!" ending up doing FUCKING NOTHING pissed me off to the point it took me out of the story. Like, sure, you don't need him to kill any Scions, but there's a whole fucking long line of B tier characters present that the player knows and probably has some amount of affection for and who are quite substantially less powerful than the WoL that you could kill off to make the points stick, and who would be able to have impacts on the setting down the road. Cirina, Aymeric's bodyguard whose name I forget, Sadu, various representatives from the three city-states, Garlean defectors... Imagine if Zenos in WoL's body killed fucking Maxima or that one Garlean kid who the whole zone narrative centered around (or just had the kid witness Zenos-in-WoL murdering the shit out of people.)

The very start of the zone pounds it into your head that you are a fucking *MONSTER* to the Garleans. You're a fucking bogeyman to them, someone they tell their kids about to make them eat their veggies, to the point that those sisters *killed themselves* rather than let you find them after they ran away. They had a chance to show the player that "wow holy shit maybe we kind of are a monster to some people" by watching Zenos-in-WoL shredding NPCs that are known to be strong but still basically "normal" people like they're tissue paper and watching even the Scions fail to do much more than just slow them down.

Like... Imagine it. You collapse at the end of the duty, you get back up, you stagger forward, trying to make it. Zenos-in-WoL is shown walking towards the base camp, a Y'shtola spots them and runs towards them to greet them, stopping halfway as she starts to realize something is fucking wrong here. Zenos draws WoL's weapon, fade to black. WoL wakes up in their own body, player gets their PoV. People are fucking terrified of you, even the Scions look uncertain. Is it really you? Wait a minute, whose blood is this anyway? You don't seem to be hurt that much...

Give the player control, *make* them walk through the camp, see the wreckage "they" left behind. The people they killed. *Make* the player talk to the NPCs, confront what happens after the murderhobo WoL blows through town. If the Garlean kid survives, maybe the player gets to have a chat with him about what it's *really* like when people like the WoL exist. Maybe the player thinks back on all those fucking Garlean mooks they just casually killed by the bucketful in ARR and beyond. Those people had homes, families. Hell, a lot of the ones we killed our way through were conscripted Eorzeans, not even Garleans...

Or, you know. You could just go LOL TROLOLOLOLOLOL HAD YOU GOIN THERE DIDNT WE LMAO BYE LOSERS.

[Granyala]

It's not the plot armor that I was talking about, it's all the fakeout deaths and such.

When you simply stop believing something even when the game is trying to put it right in your face, it's not a great sign, I guess.

Haha, well I've seen to many movies using fake deaths.
Unless I see the mangled body on the screen, I do not believe it. :'D

Heck even when I see the mangled body, some dudes still managed to come back to life, like Dr. Jackson in Stargate.

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That's a limitation of it being an MMO as far as the player character is concerned.

Thancred is not the Protagonist though. He is an NPC, and nothing prohibits SE from wounding an NPC character. That's what I mean. People always yap on and on about deaths and how they give any story meaning. I'm 100% with @KrayZ33 on this one. Deaths usually aren't required to communicate the severity of the situation at all.

Agreed on the WoL. It would be difficult to impossible to have lasting repercussions on the player character.

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The problem I had in that example was how easily we got access to the ship and HOW we got it, because that on the other hand felt like a cheap plot device as it felt like the father of the twins kinda gave it to us even though he himself doesn't even have the power to just give it to us. He acted like it was all his to decide. That's where my suspension of disbelief broke a little.

As I understood it: he was our link to the Conclave and communicated their will.
I doubt Forchenault just made the decision by himself. That would be quite out of character since that dude is as "by the book" as it gets.

[Grinning Serpent]

It doesn't have to be deaths, but at the same time, simple lasting injuries will call into question many things. Yshtola got nearly bisected by Zenos in Stormblood, and while she was sidelined for the first two acts, she came out of it completely fine. Why? Was Zenos pulling his punches? Did he mysteriously stop deciding to murder at the last moment, because he knew that character was a really popular one and people would pitch temper tantrums if something permanent happened to the waifu?

Similarly, if we're shown the big bad monsters can just pick up and eat people like they're snack food, even people who are stronger than most others... why aren't they picking up our similarly people-sized cast of characters?

This is part of the "RPG problem" - the stats state that you shouldn't be killed in one bite by that house-sized dragon, but in any kind of remotely realistic scenario, the dragon is just going to grab you and squeeze you like a tube of gogurt or just bite you in half. Or they could literally just step on you. I don't fucking care how magical you armor and sword are, unless the rules explicitly state that physics no longer applies, getting stepped on by a creature the size of a house is immediate death.

But that tends to make for anticlimactic encounters, the way most systems are run and designed. So instead, house-sized dragon steps on you, take 4d8 damage.

[Granyala]

It doesn't have to be deaths, but at the same time, simple lasting injuries will call into question many things. Yshtola got nearly bisected by Zenos in Stormblood, and while she was sidelined for the first two acts, she came out of it completely fine. Why? Was Zenos pulling his punches? Did he mysteriously stop deciding to murder at the last moment, because he knew that character was a really popular one and people would pitch temper tantrums if something permanent happened to the waifu?


Similarly, if we're shown the big bad monsters can just pick up and eat people like they're snack food, even people who are stronger than most others... why aren't they picking up our similarly people-sized cast of characters?

This is part of the "RPG problem"

Even Zenos fears the wrath of the Otaku. :'D

Well if we're nimble it would be difficult to pick us up but I generally agree that house sized monsters are just a nonsensical thing to do. They're probably a side effect of the developers trying to give you more and more impressive foes to fight against.

E.g.: Nidhogg fighting us on a floating platform. One swish with his tail, one proper flap with his wings and we'd all fall to our death. It makes -0- sense, even lore wise to be able to defeat him unless you are a dragon yourself.

[Grinning Serpent]

It's why I try not to put gigantic monsters into my games if I can help it. After a certain point, you have to come up with excuses for why the 40 foot long dragon or 25 foot tall giant isn't just picking up your 6 foot tall players and squishing them like grapes. An 8 foot tall ogre could probably crush a human's skull with their hand, but stabbing their arm or whatever is still well within the realm of plausibility for why it doesn't happen.

[Ghost of Cow]

It's the same question about why - when Zangief gets ahold of you - he bothers to lets go of you.