The Warrior of Light and tournaments...

So far I saw only 3 tournaments - HW MSQ Alliance Tourney, which was not for glory, but to strengthen ties and act as a military exercise, the Paladin 60-70 Job Quest, in which WoL participates because he happens to be a famous free paladin and the Steppe thing, which is EXACTLY about beating the nomads down and forcing them to follow you through superior strength.

I really get the feeling that you want to find something just to make the WoL look bad. ^^; There arent that much MSQ tournaments and in SB its only the one that we are kinda forced into to help Doma. At the end you will always have someone that is stronger then the rest (normally the winner) which will make the losers feel bad. Even if you are a normal person and you win, you will still destroy dreams of the others with that. THis simply is the result of only having one winner in any tournament, even if its something like chess. (And the tournament in HW was done to raise the spirit of the knights after revealing the truth of the past. The other city states were completely fine with it and Raubahn was really looking forward to fight against us and enjoyed it. So we did not destroy anyones dream there, we even helped them)

And we are strong (and I believe that SE made us too strong way too soon, because I kinda wonder who will come next to stand a chance against us) but we are not that strong thanks to our blessing or echo. Unlike some plotpoints at the end of SB it was never shown that the Echo makes you strong, otherwise people like Minfilia and Krile would be able to kill primals too. You might be able to see AOEs or predict movement (if that is truly how our echo functions..I still remain skeptic on that) but without the power and skill behind it you will only manage to evade someones attack. The blessing itself only protected us in important fights like the Ultima one and without it we were still growing stronger.

So yes we might have some advantages thanks to the Echo but deep down we are just a very good fighter, that learned it through training and battles. Our old level 15 WoL could have never defeated Raubahn even with the Echo simply because we did not have the skill to do so. So we trained hard over the times by defeating more and more powerful enemies.

You kinda have that in the real world too: You will have people that have a natural talent for things that needs to train less to be really good at it and then you will have those that have to work extra hard to get to that point or even will never get to the point because sometimes in life even if you train hard does not mean that you will ever reach your goal. Should those people that have a natural talent be excluded from any tournament too? Arent they in some way a motivation for others to get better?

So no I do not find it bad that we participate in those tournaments. Both times (in HW and SB) we are asked to join and we did it to help other people. Also nobody had their dreams truly crushed and imo its always shown in the story that our fighting skill and wins are a motivation for a lot of people. We are their role model and them wanting to be like us often means that they will train harder. This can be seen in a lot of quests.

It's a difficult thing to measure, the result of combat and the concept of "powerlevels" do not really measure up in reality, and I gather it is the same in ffxiv(a veteran of combat can still die to a weapon the same way a raw recruit can). The Warrior of Light, while they have the capacity of slaying gods that other fighters lack it does not fully translate into fighting lesser opponents the same way. To everyone else not a deity, they are a skilled fighter, still in the limitations of flesh and blood, unlike other users of the echo, which often take their gifts past this limits in the realm of the truly unfair.

This might push the envelope of gameplay and story segregation, but consider the other potential cutscenes where the WoL hits their limits and is "defeated", namely, the steps of faith and the limitless blue. In steps of faith, they are facing waves of nonprimal opponents, who end up piling on with numbers and strength until the last gate falls against our will.

Same with the limitless blue, Bismarck stays back and sends in waves of Vanu Vanu to hit the WoL while it attacks the island, until both are worn down enough for bismarck to finish off. I think the Vanu Vanu play the major role for the former.

It might actually be easier to defeat the WoL with non-supernatural opponents. We are still the protagonist, game wise, but to everyone in Eorzea that isn't supernatural, we are still a mortal being, with limitations to our senses and endurance, that we either cannot or will not, break in the same manner as with facing the likes of ascians and primals.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

I really get the feeling that you want to find something just to make the WoL look bad. ^^;

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I don't get that feeling from them at all, I think it's a legitimate concern and a good question. In addition to this, I feel like the WoL themselves may actually struggle with a similar question. Here's why (DRK job quest spoilers):

In the DRK 60-70 questline, much of it is about "atonement" and reuniting people with those they lost who were close to them. In accordance with the popular theories going around at the moment, the whole reason Myste comes about in the first place it due to the WoL feeling guilty about all those they've had to kill in the line of duty. They may be all powerful, but they're still a thinking, feeling human being. It's one of the reasons I love the DRK quests so much: it explores the "other" part of the WoL you don't get to see through the MSQ. The "dark side", or, in actuality... the human/normal side.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

The spoiler tag is HB. It prolly stands for "hide box" or something similar.

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Thank you kind sir/miss, you are indeed a life-saver. ;;;;

@Miyha: But in these job quests its more about killing things which is something you dont really do in tournaments so I dont believe that the WoL feels bad about doing them.

@Kallera: Yeah I feel this is really a bit of a "problem" in this game. The powerlevels are sometimes a bit off (at least for me) since we can defeat void creatures, primals, normal people and yet in cutscenes we are often standing around, letting people go or need help even though those should not be a problem to us. I do believe that a very skilled human can still keep up with us (but it should need a good explanation for us to lose in single combat) but our weakness comes from being attacked by lots of people at the same time. So if you have a big enough army I do believe they would be able to kill us.

Am I the only one that found it a little strange that the Echo version of Fordola was more like a power up for her? I mean I was able to beat her at the very beginning of SB and yet as soon as she got this she became invisible? If her echo is able to predict in such a way (like reading the future) why cant we truly do that too in scenes where we are defeated or where others had to give their lifes to save us? Does this mean we are still not good with it? Or is this just a increased feature of the fake echo? I really hope that they will not mass produce this and use this as a reason for later defeats..because we should be able to be on that level too since we have the natural echo.

@Alleo. I always figured powerlevel comparisons meant that "there is no way the lower powerleveled opponent can win against the higher powerleveled opponent." I'm saying it isn't so cut and dry in these cases.

I just remembered, the 50-60 DRK job quests have another occurrence. When you are getting out of the city with Rielle and are chased down by Ishgardian knights on chocoback. the journal mentions that the knights are relentless, and that Rielle's conjury comes to the rescue as you begin to tire against the pursuit. The issue wasn't that any one knight stuck out or was blessed with powers, but that the WoL was on the run and attacked persistently, one knight after another came to fight.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Am I the only one that found it a little strange that the Echo version of Fordola was more like a power up for her? I mean I was able to beat her at the very beginning of SB and yet as soon as she got this she became invisible? If her echo is able to predict in such a way (like reading the future) why cant we truly do that too in scenes where we are defeated or where others had to give their lifes to save us? Does this mean we are still not good with it? Or is this just a increased feature of the fake echo?

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A friend of mine presented for consideration that our Echo

does allow us to predict enemy movements, at least outside of cutscenes.
http://i.imgur.com/IKgqVbM.png

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Originally Posted by Rongway

A friend of mine presented for consideration that our Echo

does allow us to predict enemy movements, at least outside of cutscenes.
http://i.imgur.com/IKgqVbM.png

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I just find it bad that it stops when you are in a cutscene. It just doesnt make any sense and feels more like "well if we want the situation to go that way we will force it that way even if the WoL should be able to move away". Also we have NPCs that have no echo that can still avoid AOEs so not sure about it.

I'd say that the PLD 60-70 job quest is the kind of thing the OP's argument is particularly targeting, as there are really no higher motives for participating in that tournament except to test your strength against other fighters.

In response to that, I think we can accept what was touched on earlier in this thread: Hydaelyn's blessing does NOT imbue us with any kind of boost to our fighting strength. It serves as a shield against supernatural dark forces. Since the folks in the tournament are NOT wielding supernatural dark forces, we are fighting them on an even footing, our strength against theirs. Now, in addition to having this blessing, we also happen to be ridiculously powerful on our own merits, but there's no rule against that. The tourney is totes legit!

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Originally Posted by Alleo

I just find it bad that it stops when you are in a cutscene. It just doesnt make any sense and feels more like "well if we want the situation to go that way we will force it that way even if the WoL should be able to move away". Also we have NPCs that have no echo that can still avoid AOEs so not sure about it.

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It bears remembering that the Echo manifests differently for each individual (with some common ground), while it's generally understood as "the power to trascend the soul", in 1.0 Minfillia's Echo let her see the future while we can see the past; this was somewhat dropped in 2.0 then brought back with Krile who can communicate with animals, and since we DIDN'T need the aetherial gimmick for

the fight with Zenos, it's likely he didn't have the same type of Echo as Fordola, whose "soul attunement" may have been her own personal manifestation.