Valentines day event fail

Pretty meh event overall from the sounds of it. At least the hat and pants are neat.

I had completely forgotten who Marcette actually was. (I haven't done side quests on alts for quite some time.) Now I feel bad for having picked Astrid - on the characters that I did - in the first place.

Though, to be honest, all of their suggestions weren't too great, nor too terrible.

I went with one of each and went with Rodrigault a second time.

I think people are taking Rodrigault's comments out of context.

I think he more so saw Sylphie as a better matchmaker than Astrid? while Astrid is more childish and lovey dovy (and gave the wrong advice...oh dear) Sylphie is more like a little sister or niece who just wants to help her big brother or uncle find someone?

I went about it sort of the other way around; I liked the red version best, but Astrid was the most boring/obviously-expected choice so I went with Bert for meme potential. I paid attention to the story previously, but when the vote winner today ended up being Romance Loli I skipped the cutscenes for the continuation and wrote the event off. :D

Wow, what a complete and utter surprise. /sarcasm

Was discussing this in my FC on the first day how obviously biased the quest/vote was towards Astrid on multiple levels. Even had a tinfoil conspiracy theory that the devs were so sweet on Astrid that they didn't bother making scenarios for either of the other two candidates even if they somehow accumulated more votes and could simply claim Astrid won on every server (surprise, surprise, she did) and nobody could actually verify if the votes reflected that. Even still though, wouldn't put it past the playerbase to vote purely on aesthetical reasons and subliminal encouragement towards Astrid from the quest itself anyway, so...

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Originally Posted by Limecat

I skipped the cutscenes for the continuation and wrote the event off. :D

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Ditto. Would have skipped this part of the event entirely but there's an achievement held hostage by it.

They shouldn’t have had Astrid to begin with.

Knowing this community, picking between a cutesy wutsy Elezen girl, a male highlander, and a male Elezen, the choice for the vast majority of said community members would be Astrid, not because of her idea, but because she’s cute. You see way more cute/waifu races about then Elezen or Highlanders, it’s no small secret that the community prefers cute/sexy things, so this event might as well have been rigged.

Would’ve been better to have three males, maybe not a lalafell as people see them as cute, or a female Rogadyn, Highlander, or Elezen instead, just to minimize the amount of people picking based of cuteness (Or sexiness if Astrid was replaced with a female Au Ra, Viera, or Female miqote) and instead the merits of ones idea. Ridiculous

(guilty of the cute/waifu race myself at the moment, still deciding on whether to switch back to male Xaela or maybe give male Elezen a shot)

So many speculate why ... ppl just ran for the red one skipping cutscene, Forum has always been a minority. A lot of players dont read the lodestone or updates so im sure 80% of players dont even know it was dyeable to begin with.

When my partner told me the results are out i asked "did the aura girl win" this is how little i even cared about the whole deal, why am i doing it? Glam/Achievement. But it goes to show that while many believe this to be a big thing ... trust me, most just want "ooooh red works on V-day"

It also did not help that the only female in the race was aligned to that color i think.

If they wanted to do this neutral they would've needed 1 per race and gender giving out a neutral while one which you can dye yourself or get asked how you'd like to dye it.
And even then it would've been between the female miqo, aura and the hyur with long ears.

Marcette may be a terrible match, but, at least it gives the guy a chance to learn to be more assertive, and he learns more about what to avoid in the future. I still hold that at least he's gaining experience.

Ah, so that's what it was about.
On my server there was someone ranting in shout about people chosing Astrid just for the red outfit.
Was wondering why they were angry about people making obvious decisions.
Didn't even know it had some majority vote result / effect that would affect anyone else in the server (or well, those who cared).

I didn't really care for either of the 3 NPC's and went with the red choice cause it seemed the least likely to look bad on my char.
..still looked bad, so probably gonna discard it anyhow. And the story was mildly amusing (at least the WoL's helpless smile and shrug at the end).

The 2-player valentines trial is quite fun though, but only did it once so far - may quickly get repetitive if doing it more often.

Overall I feel it's like any other event so far - some light fun and distraction with cosmetic rewards that may be hit or miss.
Don't really have an opinion on the vote thing. It's something they did, maybe tried it out as an experiment for future reference.
Now they know how easily player votes may be swayed very one-sided depending on presentation of the event / choices, and will maybe do better if something similar comes up in the future.

Honestly, a lot of people just skipped the story and chose Astrid because red, from what I can tell from asking around.

It's kind of sad people just chose based on appearance instead of actual substance, but that's this game's community in a nutshell.

I'll be honest - once I'd ticked off picking each of the three options on at least one alt, I just went with red (not Astrid) for the others. The colour seems most appropriate for the outfit theme, and "Rose" sounds nicest and is most associated with Valentine's Day. Petty, perhaps, but there wasn't much else to go on.

Honestly I feel cheated, because I never would have voted to set up poor Ywain with Marcette. She's awful. But we had literally nothing to go on.

(Then again I would have felt just as cheated having the 'best choice' outfit locked behind voting for that prospect. Can't win either way.)

I don't think we'll see this mass voting system again - not without some contingency plans anyway. It seems like an idea that sounded good on paper and they didn't think through the 'wasted work' angle of it.

You don't like who won so the event was a failure and votes rigged, eh?
I'm sure I did read same thing on more serious things.

Someone is kicked out a duty and that's fine because "majority" decided that, but when the same "majority" made Astrid win, that is no good? Talk about double standards.

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Originally Posted by Chyro

And the story was mildly amusing (at least the WoL's helpless smile and shrug at the end).

It's something they did, maybe tried it out as an experiment for future reference.
Now they know how easily player votes may be swayed very one-sided depending on presentation of the event / choices, and will maybe do better if something similar comes up in the future.

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What happened to Ywain at the end of Astrid's quest and Lisette laughing it off and calling it a giant success was amusing?

With their track record I have zero confidence they would ever implement something like this and not screw it up, so I for one hope they never do majority voting for anything ever again. And if they do, keep it client-side. You vote for this, this happens for you. Would have prevented this whole debacle from happening in the first place. Especially when it was so painfully obvious one of them would garner all the votes.

And may the other two storylines, nobody will be able to ever experience ingame, rest in peace.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

You don't like who won so the event was a failure and votes rigged, eh?
I'm sure I did read same thing on more serious things.

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Personally I feel like the failure is more that every single world voted the same way when the whole concept of the event was that there were three possible outcomes with scenarios already written and ready to play out.

If not a single person gets to play two of those three scenarios, ever, then something has gone wrong with the overall design of the event - regardless of the content of the individual stories.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

You don't like who won so the event was a failure and votes rigged, eh?
I'm sure I did read same thing on more serious things.

Someone is kicked out a duty and that's fine because "majority" decided that, but when the same "majority" made Astrid win, that is no good? Talk about double standards.

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For some people, it's less about that their favourite didn't win and more about the fact that you have no way to experience the other Questlines, not even on YouTube. (Reading a script is just not the same.)

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Originally Posted by Cithaerias_pyropina

What happened to Ywain at the end of Astrid's quest and Lisette laughing it off and calling it a giant success was amusing?

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Mildly amusing, yeah. How he got dragged off by a bossy researcher and then the WoL's reaction to it. Didn't really care for the dialogue afterwards with Lisette, didn't seem interesting to me.

I'll never know how the other two quest lines would go, but even if I had tried to decide by 'best outcome' based on what the characters suggest to try - it's a (three-sided) coin flip either way.
Any of the three options could have led to finding a proper love interest for Ywain. Any of the three options could have turned out horribly wrong.
What if the person that came to the carpenters guild as a client hadn't been a bossy researcher, but the love of his life? Love isn't something that has a predetermined path on which it will be certain to happen.
Heck, even the bossy researcher may actually come to fall in love with Ywain if the stars align and they actually get to know each other.

Players are people. People have different things they value and enjoy. And many players when they go into an event care more about the thing they will keep after the event ends rather than which dialogue / cutscenes happen.
Also a lot of players go the 'way of least resistance' - I don't think it's a majority that go to look up the details of what the choice means, if the outfit is dyeable etc. And even if realizing its dyeable, it's still easier to just pick up the one in the color you like if its available.
The outcome is more or less inevitable, if looking at how most people vote. Most may not even be aware that it 'is' a vote.

If the developers wanted the choices to be more balanced, a simple solution (reward-wise) would be that any of them give the same outfit - in white, but with some dye bottles in the respective color as an addition depending on the choice.
This makes it 'click' to even a non-informed player that no matter the choice, they do get the outfit they want and can make it whatever color they wish.
Can be argued that they'd also have to change the third choice to not be so different from the others as a NPC (Astrid), though I think that could stay the way it is - still means its the player's choice which NPC to go with, unaffected by possible rewards.
(would possibly still end up with the same vote results then though)

It's funny because I find hitting on your clients a wack idea. She didn't won because of her idea imo

Its not really a surprise that she won seeing how she was the only girl, wearing red and we already knew her..I am just disappointed that SE did not have the foresight again for this..(even worse since she imo has the worst piece of advice...dating clients can go wrong so fast..)

Why not just give us one outfit (maybe in pure white) that we can dye and Lisette just gives us the three piece of advice without any hint who it was that said it. That way people might just vote for the advice they like.

Edit:

It would have also been a great way to end it, if they all worked together instead of just using that one advice. (Okay other than Astrid because I found her advice bad no matter what) If you first start out and find yourself and know what you want, you can afterwards also choose a hobby that you truly like.

the other two had no chance against the female child with the most popular color combination in the world

Meanwhile when I point out that Ywain may be in more trouble than he bargained for, she pointed that perhaps Ywain is a man who likes being a Pen-Picked Husband and we shouldn't really worry about it while her husband Hortefense gives a happy thumbs up in the background.

Not gonna lie, I laughed.

I think you are all going far too indepth on this. The 90% of players dont read quest texts, or watch cutscenes. Nobody I knows cares for "story". They either randomly pick the first option available to get to the rewards ASAP, or pick the female option. If given the choice of 2 female options, they take the blonde/pretty one. Goes for girls AND guys in both my guilds.

Hitting on your clients, while being on the way out in RL, is something a lot of people would actually like if they could do it. Its a common fantasy/wish, just that the reality of it doesnt work out so we have to create this newish taboo around it. But almost all romantic ideas of todays concept of love are deeply problematic. Doesnt mean people dont desire them.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

You don't like who won so the event was a failure and votes rigged, eh?
I'm sure I did read same thing on more serious things.

Someone is kicked out a duty and that's fine because "majority" decided that, but when the same "majority" made Astrid win, that is no good? Talk about double standards.

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Some people are saying rigged, but that really isn't the right word. Rigged usually means someone is altering the actual vote and since they haven't given us numbers there isn't much we can say about that.

The issue is the built in bias. If their objective was to produce a variety of results (some worlds choosing differently) they didn't really try to even the playing field. Assuming the devs know their player base, and a little bit about people in general ,they seem to have intentionally skewed it in favor in Astrid.

1. Cute Girl - You need only look at the game population to see this.
2. Familiar Character - Astrid was a part of previous V-Day events.
3. Color - Blue and Red are far more popular than yellow, and since this is a V-Day event, and the dress has a heart motif there would be a bias in favor of Red.

The factors that seem to even the playing field:
1. What the candidates said. (honestly none are great)
2. The outfits can be dyed the exact colors, or any color

Both of those require that people read, either the quest dialog or the website. If you have experience with dye in this game you may be skeptical that the match is exact, and why would you worry about dyes if you can just get the color you want?

People were predicting a landslide victory for Astrid before the event began. I pushed for Bert mostly because I knew he would be the least favored, hoping there would be some variety. I also find his suggestion the least bad.

You see it’s not that people are doubting the majority, but that the devs' objective was not to provide a varied experience. I think this shows that players care more about what they get than content. I’m guessing that the devs suspected this, but wanted something that demonstrated this.

In my opinion I think everyone is taking this waaaay too seriously

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Originally Posted by Niyuka

I think you are all going far too indepth on this. The 90% of players dont read quest texts, or watch cutscenes. Nobody I knows cares for "story". They either randomly pick the first option available to get to the rewards ASAP, or pick the female option. If given the choice of 2 female options, they take the blonde/pretty one. Goes for girls AND guys in both my guilds.

Hitting on your clients, while being on the way out in RL, is something a lot of people would actually like if they could do it. Its a common fantasy/wish, just that the reality of it doesnt work out so we have to create this newish taboo around it. But almost all romantic ideas of todays concept of love are deeply problematic. Doesnt mean people dont desire them.

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Oh come on, 90%? I don't believe that for a second. Yes, lets play a STORY based MMORPG and totally IGNORE the main reason this game exists. I do know people who do that, but I think it's more in the 20/30 percent range.

As for the whole work romance fantasy.....No, just no. Sure it's a common fictional romance theme for various media, but I would like to think people aren't stupid enough to consider it. Even if it was not so taboo and was allowed, it's simply not a good idea to pursue romance in an environment which you frequent often whether it be work or otherwise. If things go south in the romance attempt, that environment can be a rather uncomfortable place to be at.

As for the whole Astrid thing, it's as others said: female, familiar character, and red outfit. Those 3 things combined guaranteed her the win. The bad job idea barely had any effect on her voting.

Most people were probably just lazy and didn't care what the candidates actually said. And why should they - I mean, it's a storyline so it's totally up to the questwriter if they fail or succeed and all three suggestions would probably just end with the same outcome anyway.

Me, I'm lazy too so I just picked red because I didn't want to dye.

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Originally Posted by EpicOverlord85

In my opinion I think everyone is taking this waaaay too seriously

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Take my vote for instance, I voted for Astrid. Why did I vote for her? It’s simple really;
1. I know her
2. I like how motivated she is to live up to her sisters skills.
3. I find her blundering a bit cute
4. I like the color red and liked the her outfits name.
It didn’t matter to me what the story was going to end like, I simply picked the character I liked best.

Branching story was a nice idea. Letting cutscene-skipping masses decide how the story ends for everyone was not so good. I would have liked to see the elf guy's version.

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Originally Posted by Wissp

Oh come on, 90%? I don't believe that for a second. Yes, lets play a STORY based MMORPG and totally IGNORE the main reason this game exists. I do know people who do that, but I think it's more in the 20/30 percent range.

As for the whole work romance fantasy.....No, just no. Sure it's a common fictional romance theme for various media, but I would like to think people aren't stupid enough to consider it. Even if it was not so taboo and was allowed, it's simply not a good idea to pursue romance in an environment which you frequent often whether it be work or otherwise. If things go south in the romance attempt, that environment can be a rather uncomfortable place to be at.

As for the whole Astrid thing, it's as others said: female, familiar character, and red outfit. Those 3 things combined guaranteed her the win. The bad job idea barely had any effect on her voting.

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I ve been running a large RL office and now my own company for years. Workplace romance is frequent. Workplace romance is normal, because romance happens where people meet, and doesnt care about the surroundings. The Fallout , inevitably, is a pain to manage, but that hasnt deterred anyone yet. Its one of those areas where I believe trying to taboo it is fighting windmills, but we will see.

90% is probably wrong. I would put money on 70% though - the MSQ is not an indicator at all, because its the only story that people sometimes consider interesting (and even then my guildmates and linkshells mostly consist of people skipping and watching the cutscenes on YouTube to preserve limited game time, while they can watch them on their daily commute, travels or whatnot. You STRONGLY overestimate how many people play a PvE raiding/theme park MMO for the story, and this is a dainty little event about a "holiday" tons of people find extremely pointless and annoying because its really just a consumer excuse and fully artificial - so yeah, for everyone who made a choice, there are easily 5 who just picked the most convenient option - hence every single server deciding in favor of exactly that behaviour.

I mean it really doesnt matter, but this is not the first time we have seen that majority behaviour is FAR FAR different than story-loving RPG player behaviour.

Also, rewards. In MMOs, its about rewards, and Red is the universally accepted color of the love/roses/heart theme.

None of the advices or outcomes were that great, so eh. Went with Astrid because I knew her and red.

He might learn a few things by being with Marcette, or might even pick up a few kinks.

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Originally Posted by EpicOverlord85

In my opinion I think everyone is taking this waaaay too seriously

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You are essentially missing content. Programmed, meant to be seen in game content because of other people's shallowness.

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Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

...Not really, according to the line "...And where it has carried him is directly into the company of a most fetching young lass. A remarkable success, would you not say? Now come. Lisette will want to hear all about my success, and with all haste." suggests that his plan was actually to set Ywain (who is in in his 30s) up with Sylphie who is like 14.

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I actually think Rodrigault’s ending is the best ending. He’s not going to date the young girl, she’s giving him great advice. He’s clearly ignorant of the fact he stinks and has a tacky outfit. She’s going to improve his chances at hunting down some of that pelt he was after once he learns to shower and dress like a pimp.

Astrid’s ending is far worse. Him embarrassing himself in front of Geva and then being taken away by that bossy bitch, Marcette, is way worse than taking a shower & new clothes, or Bert’s ending where he learns to love his wood by Master Beatin. I have 2 real life friends who ended up with bossy bitches as their wives and, trust me, they are miserable. It’s the worst situation to find yourself in. That’s not love, but slavery.

With Rod’s ending, he increases his chances at love, with Bert’s ending, he might find love at the Woodworking place, but with Astrid’s ending, it’s nothing but misery if he stays and if he doesn’t, he didn’t learn a thing and in the end, he stays lonely.

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Originally Posted by Gula

You are essentially missing content. Programmed, meant to be seen in game content because of other people's shallowness.

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Then I guess the content must now have been all that important.

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Originally Posted by Berteaux_Braumegain

It's kind of an unfortunate combination of jokes.

Marcette has been a questgiver since 1.0, so she has something of a reputation of being a terror and somehow gets away with being horrible in-universe. Either her first (or second) quest that she gives to the Warrior of Light involves having them collect some spore samples from a fungus that could potentially take over their body and kill them. Which she doesn't inform them of until after the fact.



2.0 gives her similar quests in Central Shroud, complete with a guy who continually begs you to save him from her whenever you chat with him, if I'm not mistaken. One of her quests involves having you kill one of those huge Morbols over by Haukke Manor for its stomach, after which point she basically calls you useless and refuses to thank you. The next quest involves collecting some fungus, after which she immediately forgets you did anything for her. And then comes her final quest to collect a Lightning Sprite...



Eventually, a Postmoogle quest was added for her and the Moogle is absolutely terrified at the prospect of delivering a letter to her, having you go in his stead. What follows is a quest wherein she threatens both you and another assistant (Hobriaut) with bodily harm multiple times while insulting you. The quest ends with her tormenting a live mole as well, purportedly in the name of science.

She also has an acquaintance, Atelloune, in the Stormblood Leatherworker questline. I believe she's name-dropped for the first time in the Postmoogle sidequest, but she may have been mentioned earlier. At any rate, while she is initially set up to seem like a terrible person by virtue of being said to be an acquaintance of Marcette's, the rug pulled from under you when Atelloune is revealed to actually be a pretty decent person who actually treats you with respect and never really throws you into dangerous/potentially life-threatening situations.

Marcette also cheats at Triple Triad, incidentally. And, I mean, most NPCs do, but it's still worth noting as a black mark against her!

My point is that when you see Marcette in the Valentione's quest, the message is less "It's okay for Marcette to treat Ywain like this" and more "Oh Lord, not her; Astrid, please reconsider", with the gag being that Ywain has no idea what horrible situation he's getting himself into. Unfortunately, without the benefit of knowing Marcette in advance and/or the fact that this is supposed to be an event where you're trying to match Ywain with his ideal partner based on the outcome of a vote, it can come across more uncomfortably than the writers probably intended! It's kinda like the whole "Rowena keeps Gerolt in eternal servitude" thing all over again.

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Oh, I did not know that at all. Thank you so much for the in-sight on Marcette!

It's more than just the quest endings too, the decorations were supposed to change with winner. Since Astrid won, nothing changed. I really wanted to see the other two's decorations as well, maybe they were recolors of the old valentines day housing items that we have never seen since you can't recolor them. Or maybe they were new valentines day decorations. Now we will never know.

I also skipped it since such quests were boring, i rarely do that normally, but then to add ot the confusion, friends todl me cloths are deyable but also boughtable again from the session trader, so choosing was still a thing from the looks as many said here, i mean what was the game team thinking here? Bad NPCs, bad story as far i can tell, rewatched some scenes if you wonder, and overall bad event overall in my eyes, no effort unlike other events in comparison.

So with regard to people voting based only on the color of the outfit.... I'm not surprised that so many people didn't even bother to watch the cutscenes and just picked red because Valentines. Another solution to this for future events might be make the outfit grey, and make the dyes purchasable from the seasonal vendor for all three colors for something like 100 gil. Nothing extreme, but giving you the option to display who you wanted without much of an investment, and without incentivizing people to just pick based off lazieness of not wanting to dye the items later.

But beyond that.... I feel like something else here is that they split the vote. People who wanted the cute, probably underage, female to win had one choice and one choice only. Those who didn't had two. This makes people who were voting based off that alone split between two choices. If Astrid were just running against one of the other two, I do think there's a chance you might have seen her lose on some worlds. Or they need to make the choices more even, like with the Songbirds. I'm willing to bet there was a pretty even split between who people picked to headline the show a couple years back because the options were move fair.

It seems the only real area people were actually evenly divided were the people who read the options and picked based off the quest dialogue. So to that end, I think they nailed that part.

Well, another factor to consider is that realistically Astrid should never have been a candidate in the first place. Though we already saw nepotism at play with Lyse, so Eorzea seems to be prone to such things...

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Branching story was a nice idea. Letting cutscene-skipping masses decide how the story ends for everyone was not so good. I would have liked to see the elf guy's version.

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Those who want to compare the three:

https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Bert%27s_Big_Idea

https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/R...27s_Revelation

https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Astrid%27s_Acumen

If they wanted Red, Blue, Yellow as the colors they should have just used the Songbirds. Astrid could have been their supervisor or something. That would have solved the cute and known vs not bias at least.

I chose red because I liked the color scheme more. It actually had nothing to do with the holiday. lol If it was sort of "rigged" to begin with, however, that was kind of a jerk move.