Would you be ok with a good rival figure for 7.0+?(6.0 spoilers)

I think that the discussion was on 'people who have had fights against Azem where they weren't killed off in that encounter'. It's not like fighting ability is a static thing, and the player is story-bound to defeat every antagonist that they encounter eventually.

The difficulty with antagonists is that no matter how long you spend building them up, they'll eventually lose their fangs once you beat them once, and you can't really reuse them after that. It's a bit like creating a character for the express purpose of killing them off. I suspect that this is why so many of FFXIV's better written villains get rehabilitated rather than outright discarding their story potential.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

and Raubahn (if you count sparring), and Elidibus in Zenos' body, and Lyon, and Sartauvoir, and Elidibus in Ardbert's body, and Menenius, and Lyon again, and Venat...

There's actually been a good few people that 1v1'd us and walked away, it's just that not all of them went in for multiple rounds.

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Raubahn was pretty clearly outmatched the entire time, Elidibus had access to his full power even while wearing Zenos, Lyon, Sartauvoir, and Menenius all end up getting theirs, Elidibus was (as with Zenos before) still able to utilize his full power in Ardbert's body, and Venat was an Ancient.

Zenos and Ran'jit, however, were pure mortals that managed not only fight back but make it very clear they could have killed the WoL at various points up until they screwed around for so long they lost their advantage. The former allowed the WoL to grow stronger, while the latter simply lost the advantage of having an unfamiliar fighting style.

Yeah, as Lyth noted, the point of that list isn't 'people who beat the WoL', it's 'people who could go toe-to-toe with them in a fair fight'. The fact that we do win is less important than the fact they could have. (And with the Bozja duels, there is no way in hell you won that without a few tries, so they're clearly winning that race overall.)

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think that the discussion was on 'people who have had fights against Azem where they weren't killed off in that encounter'. It's not like fighting ability is a static thing, and the player is story-bound to defeat every antagonist that they encounter eventually.

The difficulty with antagonists is that no matter how long you spend building them up, they'll eventually lose their fangs once you beat them once, and you can't really reuse them after that. It's a bit like creating a character for the express purpose of killing them off. I suspect that this is why so many of FFXIV's better written villains get rehabilitated rather than outright discarding their story potential.

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But this is a bit of a rough one with recurring enemies in... honestly, any video game; if you make it so that they just lose every time then they never feel like a solid threat, and if they win the first few times then you have to find a way to sell that in a way that isn't either a cop-out or unfun. It's why so many recurring boss fights are intentionally comedic, like Gilgamesh, Ultros, or the Turks; that way you can just lean into the fact the script keeps making them lose.

One of the few counterexamples I can think of are, weirdly, the rivals in the first two Pokemon generations. Blue and Silver manage to retain being compelling opponents despite losing, partly through... well, being smug assholes, but also through being genuinely difficult fights that the game clearly expects you to lose a couple of times, so even if according to the story Red beat Blue seven to nine times in their journey (depending on game version and if you did the optional fight), we respect that Blue's a tough cookie because we know we didn't actually beat him seven to nine times in a row.

That's something that the Bozja duels have, but plot-losses like we get from Zenos and Ran'jit tend not to. We know Lyon can give us a run for our money because it took you four tries until you beat him, making it pretty believable if the game says 'hey Lyon's as tough as you'. But that's harder to swallow with Zenos and Ran'jit, because while the story is saying that they beat us, the gameplay is saying 'you were playing until you hit the arbitrary auto-lose point', which doesn't really play as well in terms of genuinely building up and selling their threat.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Yeah, as Lyth noted, the point of that list isn't 'people who beat the WoL', it's 'people who could go toe-to-toe with them in a fair fight'. The fact that we do win is less important than the fact they could have. (And with the Bozja duels, there is no way in hell you won that without a few tries, so they're clearly winning that race overall.)

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But as Absimiliard notes, and what you were quoting in response to before, the point is "people who can beat WoL". Raubahn, Elidibus, any of the Bozja duels, none of them could beat WoL. Saying "oh but you'll probably lose the duels" isn't a legitimate point, because chances are the player loses to tons of bosses the first time as well, but WoL in the story doesn't. The player could also eat every AoE against Zenos and get easily KO'd there as well, but that isn't what happens. What makes him narratively a rival to WoL isn't that Zenos is threatening from a gameplay standpoint, but because in the plot he completely overpowers WoL and could have actually killed them if he had wanted to. The same can't be said for those you listed, whose greatest accomplishments are "being capable of running away after losing to WoL".

With how the discussions on this thread have gotten I now officially despise Zenos and the effect he has had on the story with all my heart. Look at how the narrative has been warped concerning power levels. Meanwhile, we still have stuff like the Bardam's mettle dungeon text which implies that you're cheating while your npc allies aren't.

A rival can be something more than just a recurring antagonist you have to duel over and over again, but apparently the next worthy opponent is what most people are thinking of. I guess Zenos was more appropriate than I thought.

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Originally Posted by Atmaweapon510

With how the discussions on this thread have gotten I now officially despise Zenos and the effect he has had on the story with all my heart. Look at how the narrative has been warped concerning power levels. Meanwhile, we still have stuff like the Bardam's mettle dungeon text which implies that you're cheating while your npc allies aren't.

A rival can be something more than just a recurring antagonist you have to duel over and over again, but apparently the next worthy opponent is what most people are thinking of. I guess Zenos was more appropriate than I thought.

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I think what might be a good starter for this conversation is an example of the kind of character you're actually thinking of. The reason we're all jumping to Zenos is because he's the most ready example of a 'rival figure', so unless you give us a different one to chew on, that's our starting point.

If you are told that someone is capable of 'standing up to the WoL's full might head on', you can't directly infer from that statement alone that they are 'capable of beating the WoL'. It just means that you're capable of surviving as a sparring partner. One is a subset of the other. I do agree that you have to set aside any ludonarrative dissonance that players individually encounter in the form of in-game wipes, or else this sort of a discussion becomes a lot more complicated.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

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I think that if you want a villain to be genuinely menacing, then they have to be both unfamiliar and unpredictable. I think that the problem with recurrent boss fights against a rival is that it gives player a gauge of their opponent's abilities, and develops a sense of familiarity over the repeated encounters. An interesting counterpoint to this is Kefka, although it's worth noting that you really only have one proper fight against him, early on in Narshe. I think the critical step with Kefka is the General Leo fight, in that they give you control of this exciting new character with a powerful moveset, let you 'defeat' Kefka with him, and then brutally yank the rug from under you. After that, you're denied any further encounters with Kefka until the final fight, and you don't even get to directly see him for most of the second half.

I also think that it's a mistake to flag someone as 'the main villain' early on. I think this was part of the problem with Zenos in Stormblood (hey, check out our new expansion, here's a collectible statue of our new major villain!) In contrast, his father's introduction to the story was much more effective. The Garleans are having a succession war? There's a new emperor? What's he like? There's a gradual trickle of information that builds up into the character. It also helps if they're not outright antagonistic to you from the outset. A lot of RPGs like to try to copy the Sephiroth dynamic, but forget that Sephiroth himself spends a large portion of Disc 1 in the original game ignoring you. Likewise, Emet in Shadowbringers, as well as FFXV's main villain (whom Shadowbringers Emet is very much modelled after) have some outright warm and friendly interactions with you, up until the surprise shanking.

I think that the question shouldn't be 'who is the villain for the story arc?', but rather, 'who should be the villain for the final expansion of the story arc?' They don't need to be in your face, and you don't even need to fight them. You just need to slowly build up the player's motive for wanting to fight them. It's a long term investment.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

If you are told that someone is capable of 'standing up to the WoL's full might head on', you can't directly infer from that statement alone that they are 'capable of beating the WoL'.

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The specific mentions of Zenos and Ran'jit to begin with should really have been all that was needed to infer intent, even without the elaboration Absimiliard gave afterwards.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Unukalhai may have had the Echo, but I don't think that either Unukalhai or Cylva were officially designated as being Azem's counterpart on the Thirteenth. The impression that I had was that they were simply two heroes who survived the Flood of Darkness.

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Unukalhai is heavily implied to be Nyelbert's 13th equivalent in the quest with Taynor. The quest doesn't really indicate Cylva was Ardbert's but also didn't rule her out as the equivalent of one of the others.

Thought about this a bit, and honestly, I would like to see a rival that is actually legit better for the situation than we are.

As in, Alphinaud and our WoL come to save the day, with an offer to help but it turns out the other guy has a better solution and means to implement it.

Something like trying to resettle the Garlean people, but a legion leader with his people’s interests at heart with equipment and soldiers ready to go to lay groundwork TODAY, while the Eorzean Alliance has to debate things or something.

I’d like to be in a situation where our character does everything we can to help, but rather than be the savior, we are just in the way… ultimately deciding it is better to support the rival.

There are plenty of MMOs which have tried implementing a similar concept to this, because the player character is supposed to be one of a multitude of generic adventurers. What ends up happening is that you end up doing all the grunt work, and then the 'real' hero shows up for a few seconds during the cutscenes to take all the credit. We could have gone down that route back in ARR had Alphi's Crystal Brave venture been successful and we were his designated sidekick.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

There are plenty of MMOs which have tried implementing a similar concept to this, because the player character is supposed to be one of a multitude of generic adventurers. What ends up happening is that you end up doing all the grunt work, and then the 'real' hero shows up for a few seconds during the cutscenes to take all the credit. We could have gone down that route back in ARR had Alphi's Crystal Brave venture been successful and we were his designated sidekick.

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My meaning was a bit bigger-picture than that. Like an entirely different third party with a plan that is incompatible with ours, but still viable…and theirs ends up being better. Basically a “our ways are not always the best, and we should be open to that”

I didn't ever enjoy having Zenos as a rival - it was clear that the sort of person he was seeing was someone like the default WoL and not my individual character. It was always jarring and unsatisfying.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I didn't ever enjoy having Zenos as a rival - it was clear that the sort of person he was seeing was someone like the default WoL and not my individual character. It was always jarring and unsatisfying.

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I vibed with him as a rival in Stormblood (I played Sam), but man, my wife hated it. She was playing white mage through Stormblood and just kept saying “why does he even care about me, I have like one spell… why doesn’t he want to fight Hein!?”

Ultimately she just decided he was the schoolyard bully who secretly had a crush on her but didn’t how to express himself properly.

So yeah- it seems very built as if the WoL is a heroic/fighter type, not the more back row support type. Looking back I can’t imagine the solo duties being fun at all as a healer/caster…

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Originally Posted by kaynide

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That's not uncommon as well. You just team up with your misunderstood rivals to fight the 'real final boss' who was hiding out just offstage.

You're unlikely to have a scenario where you reach to the end of the story and everyone walks away from a boss fight to solve things with diplomacy and extended talking cutscenes. You do have to play to the strengths of the interactive medium.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

My meaning was a bit bigger-picture than that. Like an entirely different third party with a plan that is incompatible with ours, but still viable…and theirs ends up being better. Basically a “our ways are not always the best, and we should be open to that”

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I think the problem there is that you've back-loaded the part of Zenos and Ran'jit that people didn't like the start of. People don't like feeling upstaged for what feels like illegitimate or arbitrary reasons, and your idea is delivering that, but on a different level. A way that almost feels better, but if done poorly, won't be.

You'd have to answer the question of 'why is this person's approach better than ours', and it's going to be hard to answer that question in a way that's both A: widely plausible, and B: satisfying. And if the aftermath of 6.0 in this subforum has taught you anything, it should be that if you call someone else's plan 'good', people who don't like what that might say about them will twist everything they can reach to declare that plan to be Wrong And Bad Actually, no matter who says otherwise in or out of game. And, yeah, you're essentially ending up at the WoW Problem of 'NPCs get all the credit for your victory' from a different direction.

The one angle I think it could work is if you don't make them a rival to us, but to whichever ally of ours came up with our plan. A Counter-Hien or Anti-Exarch, if you will. That way you avoid putting the failure on the player and more on externals, which gives people more comfortable avenues to come at the argument; people who think the original plan still had legs have room to claim that or think of improvements (even if some of it only makes sense in hindsight), while people who disagreed with it from the start can have a good 'I told you so' moment.

EDIT: And for what it's worth, I did the final-final Zenos solo duty as an AST, and it's hilarious because a healer's fairly meager offensive output gives the whole thing an air of the WoL not even really trying, and still winning. For all his talk, Zenos lost a fistfight with a Yu-Gi-Oh player and died, and from some angles, that's a perfect ending for the guy.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

That's not uncommon as well. You just team up with your misunderstood rivals to fight the 'real final boss' who was hiding out just offstage.

You're unlikely to have a scenario where you reach to the end of the story and everyone walks away from a boss fight to solve things with diplomacy and extended talking cutscenes. You do have to play to the strengths of the interactive medium.

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I wasn’t really talking about any of that though.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

EDIT: And for what it's worth, I did the final-final Zenos solo duty as an AST, and it's hilarious because a healer's fairly meager offensive output gives the whole thing an air of the WoL not even really trying, and still winning. For all his talk, Zenos lost a fistfight with a Yu-Gi-Oh player and died, and from some angles, that's a perfect ending for the guy.

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wol: "the heart of the cards shall guide my hands, zenos!"

blows him up with fall malefic

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Originally Posted by kaynide

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You should probably try elaborating on your scenario.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I vibed with him as a rival in Stormblood (I played Sam), but man, my wife hated it. She was playing white mage through Stormblood and just kept saying “why does he even care about me, I have like one spell… why doesn’t he want to fight Hein!?”

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Prettymuch. My character is a summoner so she does at least have more potent magic, but it's still not at all the clash of two equal physical fighters that Zenos is seeking.

Plus she looks more like a Disney princess than the hardened warrior that Zenos seems to have mistaken her for, and the visual matchup just doesn't work. And the concluding fistfight was outright silly, but in a "how has this story gone so off the rails at the last moment" way rather than a funny way.

(Well, more exactly it went off the rails when we banished all the Scions back to the ship instead of fighting the Endsinger as a team, and then Zenos turning up soured it entirely. I don't think he earned his place there at all.)

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I think the problem there is that you've back-loaded the part of Zenos and Ran'jit that people didn't like the start of. People don't like feeling upstaged for what feels like illegitimate or arbitrary reasons, and your idea is delivering that, but on a different level. A way that almost feels better, but if done poorly, won't be.

You'd have to answer the question of 'why is this person's approach better than ours', and it's going to be hard to answer that question in a way that's both A: widely plausible, and B: satisfying. And if the aftermath of 6.0 in this subforum has taught you anything, it should be that if you call someone else's plan 'good', people who don't like what that might say about them will twist everything they can reach to declare that plan to be Wrong And Bad Actually, no matter who says otherwise in or out of game. And, yeah, you're essentially ending up at the WoW Problem of 'NPCs get all the credit for your victory' from a different direction.

The one angle I think it could work is if you don't make them a rival to us, but to whichever ally of ours came up with our plan. A Counter-Hien or Anti-Exarch, if you will. That way you avoid putting the failure on the player and more on externals, which gives people more comfortable avenues to come at the argument; people who think the original plan still had legs have room to claim that or think of improvements (even if some of it only makes sense in hindsight), while people who disagreed with it from the start can have a good 'I told you so' moment.

EDIT: And for what it's worth, I did the final-final Zenos solo duty as an AST, and it's hilarious because a healer's fairly meager offensive output gives the whole thing an air of the WoL not even really trying, and still winning. For all his talk, Zenos lost a fistfight with a Yu-Gi-Oh player and died, and from some angles, that's a perfect ending for the guy.

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lol@zenos

On your other stuff, I think this is a good point; especially since the main character doesn't speak, it would really necessitate using an ally we are working with who has the inferior idea. Probably the idealisy Alphinaud...although I would rather someone else since he's kinda had his moment of being wrong with the Crystal Braves. Maybe the alliance leadership itself.

Within game lore, I think it would ultimately be something like one of the remaining legions asking to set up a colony in the south, with (NPC) being overly insistant that they resettle fallen Garlemald. I see (NPC) being suspicious and trying to find foul play or alterior motives in the Garlean plans (eg conquest, not just permission to set up a colony). The twist being that the people indigenous to the area accept the Garleans, and that the Garleans genuinely want a peaceful transition.

Could easily be Thancred spying and getting mad that he just can't find any faults. Or Alphinaud.

I quite liked the final fight with Zenos, but I do think it was an odd route for them to go.

It worked very well for my character IMHO, but it was pretty obvious that a good chunk of the reason it was working was because of my choice of race and job.
The whole thing would have come across as pretty ridiculous to me if I'd been one of the short races, or pretty much any of the magic users (apart from maybe Red Mage.)

The redmage fight with Zenos didn't seem very ridiculous... its how I did it. I did love seeing my character punch him like he did though ^_^

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Originally Posted by Lyth

You should probably try elaborating on your scenario.

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I'm not sure what there is to elaborate.

Me: "Something like trying to resettle the Garlean people, but a legion leader with his people’s interests at heart with equipment and soldiers ready to go to lay groundwork TODAY, while the Eorzean Alliance has to debate things or something.I’d like to be in a situation where our character does everything we can to help, but rather than be the savior, we are just in the way… ultimately deciding it is better to support the rival."

You: "What ends up happening is that you end up doing all the grunt work, and then the 'real' hero shows up for a few seconds during the cutscenes to take all the credit."
>I was not talking about some last minute change, especially if we are "doing everything we can to help" before deciding to "support the rival".

Me: "My meaning was a bit bigger-picture than that. Like an entirely different third party with a plan that is incompatible with ours, but still viable…and theirs ends up being better. Basically a 'our ways are not always the best, and we should be open to that'”

You: "That's not uncommon as well. You just team up with your misunderstood rivals to fight the 'real final boss' who was hiding out just offstage."
>I was never talking about a fight of any kind, or misunderstood rivals.



I was literally talking about 2 groups having 2 viable solutions to a problem, probably social or diplomatic, and our heroes coming to accept the other point of view as the way to take, whether it's because it is what people want, or because it is actually a better plan. No last minute theatrics, no stealing spotlight, no 11th hour final bosses appearing.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Within game lore, I think it would ultimately be something like one of the remaining legions asking to set up a colony in the south, with (NPC) being overly insistant that they resettle fallen Garlemald. I see (NPC) being suspicious and trying to find foul play or alterior motives in the Garlean plans (eg conquest, not just permission to set up a colony). The twist being that the people indigenous to the area accept the Garleans, and that the Garleans genuinely want a peaceful transition.

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I think a general framework of war or war recovery is a good angle, because it sets up a framework where the WoL Standard of 'shake down the biggest guy around' is both a perfectly reasonable angle to take as well as an understandably potentially wrong one. Although I'm thinking more along the lines of perhaps Gabranth in Bozja, where there's an imperial ruler that we reflexively cast as Uncomplicated Bad Guy to overthrow and move on, and we maybe get Hien or Alphinaud's help strategizing that, but there's extra nuance we aren't immediately privvy to that a more local rival is working on the angle for. Using Gabranth as an ongoing example, he genuinely treated the lower classes better than the previous regime, meaning that just reinstalling the old government would've been very unpopular, so if you made a whole expansion about that then you could find out that the rival tactician has been instead planning a way to cut off Imperial support, leaving this better structure while picking off the problem people inside it and preventing their replacements.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

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Again, I'm not really sure what you're looking for narratively. This is still fundamentally an RPG and a video game, so there will always be stories that are better suited to either a book or movie format. You certainly could write a story where someone else is the 'true' protagonist, like the Garlean Legion commander in your story, and you're just there as a PoV character. But to work your way through that story, you're still going to have to work through a series of levels and dungeons, because that's the nature of the medium. So the player is left with the sense that 'I did all these tasks to progress the story, but this author self-insert character walks away with the trophy at the end of the day'. It still gets done fairly often in MMOs - Lost Ark being one of the more recent examples of this trope.

The 'my way'/'your way' duality is artificial because this isn't a choose your own adventure story. So 'my way' is whatever the author decides it to be. This is still an MMO, so while you can offer the player up different flavored variations on the same answer 'heroic/sarcastic/silent', all roads lead to Rome because you can't really have a divergent storyline with multiple endings (unless it's your last expansion ever). So you can tell me that this is my way, then tell me that I'm foolish and wrong and this other cooler character is right, but we're still eventually going to have to team up and fight Final Boss extreme because that's the narrative structure of this medium, and that's the constraint you have to work with.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Again, I'm not really sure what you're looking for narratively. This is still fundamentally an RPG and a video game, so there will always be stories that are better suited to either a book or movie format. You certainly could write a story where someone else is the 'true' protagonist, like the Garlean Legion commander in your story, and you're just there as a PoV character. But to work your way through that story, you're still going to have to work through a series of levels and dungeons, because that's the nature of the medium. So the player is left with the sense that 'I did all these tasks to progress the story, but this author self-insert character walks away with the trophy at the end of the day'. It still gets done fairly often in MMOs - Lost Ark being one of the more recent examples of this trope.

The 'my way'/'your way' duality is artificial because this isn't a choose your own adventure story. So 'my way' is whatever the author decides it to be. This is still an MMO, so while you can offer the player up different flavored variations on the same answer 'heroic/sarcastic/silent', all roads lead to Rome because you can't really have a divergent storyline with multiple endings (unless it's your last expansion ever). So you can tell me that this is my way, then tell me that I'm foolish and wrong and this other cooler character is right, but we're still eventually going to have to team up and fight Final Boss extreme because that's the narrative structure of this medium, and that's the constraint you have to work with.

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This is still not connected to anything I am talking about. I never mentioned having divergent storylines…? Or even choice?

I’ll repeat myself: a story about the hero learning that what is ideal for them/their friends might not be what others want, and coming to accept what others want.

I mean realistically what I’m saying here isn’t that far off from Heavansward where we learn Iceheart was not wrong in her plan despite being against us originally.

I’m not sure why this is even a debate- I posted my idea, which is all this thread was supposed to be.

It's a forum, such is the nature of this place. It's just a discussion.

Villains in this game tend not to be unilaterally 'bad'. FFXIV has a fairly good track record of rehabilitating past expansion bosses, the main exceptions being Heavensward's Thordan VII and Nidhogg. It's not uncommon for you to find yourself fighting side by side with a previous rival. Likewise, having you fight for the 'wrong side' only to team up with a previously misunderstood rival is really just a variation on the same theme. Ysayle didn't really feel significantly different in that regard.

The constraint that I'm talking about is in the game structure. An expansion is going to have something like six dungeons and three trials, with the final encounter being the ultimate villain for that expansion. So how do you apply your concept into that narrative structure?

You can't really have an unwinnable fight as the final encounter. You can't have all the parties involved walk away from the conflict and agree to disagree. You can't persuade check the final boss. You still have to have that fight. So who is it going to be?

It can't really be your rival character now, because they're narratively in the right. It doesn't make sense to kill them off, briefly regret doing so, and then go back to farm them for drops. So that just leaves us with the mysterious and villainous third party that was pulling the strings from the background all along. Or maybe *surprise* Big Boss was the bad guy all along.

It's also worth noting that your 'character' isn't really a 'character' per se. There is no 'character growth', because they're by and large just a player avatar. So you're not really teaching them a lesson. What you're doing is artificially elevating this other character, which the playerbase may or may not buy into depending on how well they are written. And that ties back to the credit issue that I was referring to in other MMOs where you play side-kick to an author avatar.

That's why I was saying that certain concepts just work better in other mediums.

FFXIV had a lot of issues with sympathetic villains before Natsuko Ishikawa took the reins. Estinien, Ysalye, and the the Warriors of Darkness go through some of the most bizarre 180° personality shifts in a very short timeframe, going from sadistic with maniacal laughter to their current incarnations. Zenos was a dumpster fire 2D character that she somehow managed to salvage parts of in the last moment, although she couldn't really write around the powerlevel metaplot he introduced which led to Ran'jit's questionable effect on the story. I really want to see where she goes if she can craft a rival character from the ground up.

I did always find it really awkward how hard they tried to push the Warriors of Darkness as villains basically right up until where they reveal the truth of their motives.

There was no logical reason for them to behave the way they did in universe and it mostly came across as a really forced effort to make the viewer think they were evil so there would be more shock factor when the opposite proved true.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I did always find it really awkward how hard they tried to push the Warriors of Darkness as villains basically right up until where they reveal the truth of their motives.

There was no logical reason for them to behave the way they did in universe and it mostly came across as a really forced effort to make the viewer think they were evil so there would be more shock factor when the opposite proved true.

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Agreed there; I chalked that up to them being manipulated by the Ascians (do the thing for us, and we can save your world), but it was very weird/out of character for them to act evil when it really should have been them forced to do bad things. Especially in scenes where they seemed to enjoy being bad (evil grins etc).

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Originally Posted by Lyth

It's a forum, such is the nature of this place. It's just a discussion.

Villains in this game tend not to be unilaterally 'bad'. FFXIV has a fairly good track record of rehabilitating past expansion bosses, the main exceptions being Heavensward's Thordan VII and Nidhogg. It's not uncommon for you to find yourself fighting side by side with a previous rival. Likewise, having you fight for the 'wrong side' only to team up with a previously misunderstood rival is really just a variation on the same theme. Ysayle didn't really feel significantly different in that regard.

The constraint that I'm talking about is in the game structure. An expansion is going to have something like six dungeons and three trials, with the final encounter being the ultimate villain for that expansion. So how do you apply your concept into that narrative structure?

You can't really have an unwinnable fight as the final encounter. You can't have all the parties involved walk away from the conflict and agree to disagree. You can't persuade check the final boss. You still have to have that fight. So who is it going to be?

It can't really be your rival character now, because they're narratively in the right. It doesn't make sense to kill them off, briefly regret doing so, and then go back to farm them for drops. So that just leaves us with the mysterious and villainous third party that was pulling the strings from the background all along. Or maybe *surprise* Big Boss was the bad guy all along.

It's also worth noting that your 'character' isn't really a 'character' per se. There is no 'character growth', because they're by and large just a player avatar. So you're not really teaching them a lesson. What you're doing is artificially elevating this other character, which the playerbase may or may not buy into depending on how well they are written. And that ties back to the credit issue that I was referring to in other MMOs where you play side-kick to an author avatar.

That's why I was saying that certain concepts just work better in other mediums.

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The thing is we're not having a discussion. I'm talking about X, and you keep trying to talk about things that are entirely unrelated to anything I've said. I've not been talking about the mechanical structure, just narrative. I've never talked about anything being unwinnable, or having to talk down a final boss.


I'm sorry, but as I'm reading your posts, it's essentially something like:

Me: I'd like cotton candy to be in this game.
You: Well, cotton candy has lots of artificial coloring, and besides you can't just eat cotton candy. Also, you can't have cotton candy with tea. It's just not a good match.

Back of topic of the rivals, I'd like for them to expand a bit on what limited narrative choices you have, like how the ending of Bozja is slightly altered by your choices. For some people, "That I do" was one of the best feeling moments in the entirety of the story, and I think a properly crafted Rival might be able to reach a wider scope of audience (obviously you can't please everyone.) Again, imagine just being able to just flat out ditch Zenos and skip the final fight entirely if you wanted. Add in an alternate, more lighthearted scene of reuniting with your friends and segue back into the ending.

Other possible benefits of a dedicated rival:

-Dedicated contrarian. You can have a character who can butt heads with you in story without being part of the main posse. You can hate them, ignore them, or even respect their forthrightness. Since they're not part of the main group, you don't have to put up with their abrasiveness all the time.

-Familiar viewpoint in enemy territory. You can get periodic updates on the villain's side of the story from a limited viewpoint. Instead of constantly segueing to Zenos in a chair, you can have the rival doing various odd jobs while getting more varied viewpoints in the enemy side.

-Grey morality. The WoL is always in the right, but rival can be in a grey spot and again, this is where player choice can come into play. How does your WoL react to this pocket of grey morality? Compartmentalizing it like this can mitigate any logical effect on the overall narrative they want to tell.

This is not a cotton candy machine.

I think that Bozja is at the upper limit of what they can achieve in terms of a branching narrative in an MMO and was a bit of an early test to gauge player reactions to this sort of mechanic. It's very tough, though, outside of the permanent end of a character's storyline that is designed to never come up in dialogue again. Some players are going to be happy to RP through and live with whatever decisions their character made narratively. Others are going to agonize over the decision, look up guides, and then have 'buyer's remorse' after actually watching the scenes play out or encountering a downstream decision tree. And there's a not insignificant time commitment associated with rerolling a character. You need to have a game designed for multiple playthroughs from the outset (which not everyone has the time commitment for), or one that lets you dynamically explore the decision tree as you wish (Radiant Historia was the single greatest example of this), or one that provides an optional questline that let you reverse your decision. It's the same reaction that players have to missables in 60+ hour games.

I like the idea of getting to temporarily play as your 'rival' in a parallel scenario, similar to what we've had with the Scions over the past couple of expansions. There are a lot of interesting possibilities with that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Atmaweapon510

FFXIV had a lot of issues with sympathetic villains before Natsuko Ishikawa took the reins. Estinien, Ysalye, and the the Warriors of Darkness go through some of the most bizarre 180° personality shifts in a very short timeframe, going from sadistic with maniacal laughter to their current incarnations. Zenos was a dumpster fire 2D character that she somehow managed to salvage parts of in the last moment, although she couldn't really write around the powerlevel metaplot he introduced which led to Ran'jit's questionable effect on the story. I really want to see where she goes if she can craft a rival character from the ground up.

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Ishikawa wrote Ysayle.

EDIT: Actually, fairly certain she wrote the Warriors of Darkness, too. She wrote some amount of the 3.x patches.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lyth

This is not a cotton candy machine.

I think that Bozja is at the upper limit of what they can achieve in terms of a branching narrative in an MMO and was a bit of an early test to gauge player reactions to this sort of mechanic. It's very tough, though, outside of the permanent end of a character's storyline that is designed to never come up in dialogue again. Some players are going to be happy to RP through and live with whatever decisions their character made narratively. Others are going to agonize over the decision, look up guides, and then have 'buyer's remorse' after actually watching the scenes play out or encountering a downstream decision tree. And there's a not insignificant time commitment associated with rerolling a character. You need to have a game designed for multiple playthroughs from the outset (which not everyone has the time commitment for), or one that lets you dynamically explore the decision tree as you wish (Radiant Historia was the single greatest example of this), or one that provides an optional questline that let you reverse your decision. It's the same reaction that players have to missables in 60+ hour games.

I like the idea of getting to temporarily play as your 'rival' in a parallel scenario, similar to what we've had with the Scions over the past couple of expansions. There are a lot of interesting possibilities with that.

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There must be crossed wires- while you have been responding to me, nothing you have said is relevant or even a response to what I've been talking about. You have been talking about other games, You have been talking about mechanics. You've been talking about sudden 11th hour enemies appearing out of nowhere. You've been talking about having to talk down a final boss. You've been talking about branching stories

If these are something you're interested in, by all means pitch your idea.

The only thing I've been talking about, and will respond to with you from here on is my exact answer to the topic at hand:
Q: "Would you be ok with a good rival figure for 7.0?"
My A: "I’d like to be in a situation where our character does everything we can to help, but rather than be the savior, we are just in the way… ultimately deciding it is better to support the rival." and “our ways are not always the best, and we should be open to that”

Please see Cleretic's responses for example; we may not always agree, but she has genuinely good input and ideas regarding this.

Hm? That response wasn't directed at you in particular, outside of the off-hand reference to cotton candy, having largely exhausted the value in discussing that idea further. You seem to want a story that this specific type of medium (MMORPG) isn't really designed to tell effectively. Your idea would work well as a book, or a movie. Each medium has its own narrative strengths and weaknesses that you need to play to, and not every story concept can be adapted to every medium. The plot of Great Expectations would make for a terrible video game, for example.

It's hard to have our voiceless protagonist reflect on how 'their ways aren't the best' when they don't actually have a personality. Or an inner monologue (outside of Frey, perhaps). Or even 'ways' to call their own. They just put on a determined face and punch whatever boss the fixed storyline asks them in order to get access to the next zone. Perhaps the writers trick us into punching out the wrong boss, who is actually a good person. That's unfortunate. Downcast face. Perhaps then we then join the correct side and punch out the proper boss when we get to the final trial. Happy days. You can try to get the player to reflect on a personal level through exploration, optional dialogue, and world-building (i.e. what games excel at), but you are very much constrained to design the story around a fixed structure (zone-dungeon-trial).

I'm just pointing out an implementation flaw. But please, don't let me get in the way of the suggestion box.

I don't want to see a specific rival character that spans more than one expansion. As others have said, we're literally a God Killer and by rights, nobody should be able to match that. Granted, we had certain buffs that helped with that, and from what I could tell of the LL, we still have the Echo/Blessing of Light, so it doesn't seem to me that we've lost much, if any, of our personal power. I don't see any narrative path that would produce a character that can rival us in combat without there being some ridiculous work around, hand-waving, or retconning. Given that this is an MMO and the main mechanism for overcoming an obstacle is combat, having anyone who's a direct rival in the vein of Zenos or other antagonists, will require combat to overcome.

If they absolutely *must* give us a persistent rival, it would be better off being a character like Belloq in Indiana Jones, but even then, the ultimate confrontation would be some sort of solo duty or trial, and we get back to the problems with anyone being even the tiniest challenge to a God Killer.


We've had our five (six?) volume Magnum Opus. It's time we have our anthology of short stories full of adventure and derring-do on smaller, local, scales.

We have New game+ for a story redo and there shouldn't be a third party gumming up the decision-consequence tree (Bajsaljen).

Ideally, there's also no story change warning to cause immersion breakage/power-gaming tendencies. The fact that you're told of there being story consequences just placed too much FOMO in the Bozja decision.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Illmaeran

I don't want to see a specific rival character that spans more than one expansion. As others have said, we're literally a God Killer and by rights, nobody should be able to match that. Granted, we had certain buffs that helped with that, and from what I could tell of the LL, we still have the Echo/Blessing of Light, so it doesn't seem to me that we've lost much, if any, of our personal power. I don't see any narrative path that would produce a character that can rival us in combat without there being some ridiculous work around, hand-waving, or retconning. Given that this is an MMO and the main mechanism for overcoming an obstacle is combat, having anyone who's a direct rival in the vein of Zenos or other antagonists, will require combat to overcome.

If they absolutely *must* give us a persistent rival, it would be better off being a character like Belloq in Indiana Jones, but even then, the ultimate confrontation would be some sort of solo duty or trial, and we get back to the problems with anyone being even the tiniest challenge to a God Killer.


We've had our five (six?) volume Magnum Opus. It's time we have our anthology of short stories full of adventure and derring-do on smaller, local, scales.

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Agreed; I kind of think we're more in the Hercules: Legendary Journeys/Xena era of our adventures.

It really shouldn't be about a rival in combat power, but more about out maneuvering (if antagonists). Kind of the "Superman can't be everywhere at once" kind of thing, or as you said, a character like Belloq who uses underhanded methods to keep us at disadvantage.

Some of the Syndicate in Ul'dah are examples of this we've seen in the past that could be tapped.