8.0 speculation

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

... [P]erhaps there's something going on with some echoes to what happened earlier in Dawntrail, so they call us to go 'hey we've got a mid-grade Zoraal Ja situation going on here, might need some help getting on top of this'. Which leads to the notion of an expansion that's largely focused around helping and securing a post-occupation Ilsabard, which is the 8.0 that I think seems the most likely and could be quite interesting, albeit not the one I want (mostly because it's not Meracydia).

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

Ah, there we go, the Letter from the Producer LIVE official English translation recap thingy came out and confirms that the Clyteum is Garlean, which I feel was only in doubt due to the uncertainty of the translation of what Yoshida said.

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Well, that kills that idea. Having said that, I don't think we're doing an Ilsabard expansion; one of the points of Endwalker was seemingly to fill in the gaps of the known world, and thus far issues with former provincial territories have been limited to "help a former Legatus save the territory he once conquered" (e.g. Werlyt). Considering post-6.0 has been nothing but dealing with reflections that serve as adaptations of previous series entries, it would be a strange pivot to make at this point. Not saying that's not happening, but the storyline trend doesn't support it.

I guess we'll figure out why we're going to Garlemald in about a month. Stay tuned, I guess.

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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

Going to change the subject away from garlemald. I’m really curious on what the next alliance raid will be in 8.0. There is a lot we can go through. But personally I think a dragon quest alliance raid based of the first trilogy would be a good pick for it.

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

I could really do without another Raid story that you need to have played the origin games to understand the story. FFXI raid is fun but the story is only references right now with an Explanation NPC for those who haven't played it only...

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We don't have any idea where 8.0 itself is headed yet; there's absolutely no way to know or even really guess what the Alliance raid will be. Trends towards "abridged adaptation of previous entry" (III - Crystal Tower; Tactics / XII - Return to Ivalice; VIII - Eden; XI - Echoes of Vana'diel), with some original content (Shadow of Mhach / Myths of the Realm) and second-party content (YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse). No way to say what things will be, but it's more likely than not not going to be something like Dragon Quest.

The XI raids have little to nothing to do with XI itself; they're basically just a hodgepodge of "Hey, remember these cool fights / characters?" for nostalgic players of that game. Not surprising, given as XI is one of those old-school MMOs that doesn't feature a compulsory, linear, cinematic MSQ. You don't need to understand anything from that game to understand it's plotline; just that Gulool Ja Ja is... pretty much the exact opposite of his XIV incarnation and Sareel Ja wants him to take his alter ego's place to usher in an age of Mamool Ja dominance (with himself as the true ruler behind the scenes, of course).

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

I could really do without another Raid story that you need to have played the origin games to understand the story. FFXI raid is fun but the story is only references right now with an Explanation NPC for those who haven't played it only...

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I actually think the Vana'diel raids are doing very well at that; the whole thing is obviously rooted in FFXI with plenty of references to that, but the actual story isn't; the story is that Sareel Ja accidentally made life while trying to do a holodeck episode of Star Trek where he tries to prove the greatness of some abstract fiction/history, and the people who know this world cannot and will not be theirs are trying to stop him anyway while he tries to prove the new Dawnservants to be unworthy.

This is not a story that needs to be FFXI necessarily, and you don't need to already know who Prishe or Alxaal is to get the gist of the story--hell, nobody knows who Alxaal is right now, including the FFXI fans, I've checked. There is an extra layer to the fact that they did use FFXI, though, and I think it deepens Sareel Ja's story; it gives a specific, understandable context and meaning to his desires. He's a man motivated basically by blind hatred of The New and a need to prove that it's worse than The Old (and the fact that he'd be in a higher status under The Old is probably a factor too); giving him the tools of FFXIV's ancestor is a great way to metatextually reinforce that.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

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You need a whole NPC there to explain those bosses because they are just thrown in references that aren't even mentioned again after that by the other characters.
Ultima and Omega aren't even really brought up again by even us given their importance outside.

I haven't played FFXI and me as well as some others, really don't even know who half of those bosses are or why they are there. Why should I be excited for Card-dude when his existence doesn't even matter in the very same raid he is in?
Prishe as well lives much off of previous knowledge about her and who she actually is (I have read about her) because otherwise she is just a random companion.

I don't mind taking from previous titles and forming them into the setting of FFXIV like Crystal tower (even back then when it was basically the only Allagan content) and to a lesser extent Ivalice (which was heavily tied to Garlemald) had been but this raid is much closer to Nier in that regard.
Why not have people in the setting speculate more about Ultima and Omega instead of ignoring their existence?
Why not have the last two bosses of the second raid actually be an overarching thing from the beginning instead of appearing just to get thrown away next?
The whole thing would matter more when we actually saw impact outside like Sareel Ja and his Dawn servant copy confusing the people outside for example or the whole "Copy of another world out of Electrope" impacted the the rest of the world more given it's extreme potential.

I don't want to take away from those who enjoy the story of it but as someone who doesn't know the background of the setting it is extremely disappointing outside of the fights and looks themselves and I know that I am not the only one who thinks that.
Because in the end it will end like Nier. A self contained story without impact.

Whatever the whole thing is off topic anyway and I don't want to discuss about obvious personal taste even from my side because it's a neverending discussion.
Don't want to derail the thread here.
Let's just say that I think they could have done a way better job at integrating Vanadiel and as of right now the whole thing really just feels like "Greatest hits" for someone who hasn't played FFXI.
And because of that I genuinely don't want another crossover in the next raid, even less with something that isn't even FF.

I have no real expectations or demands from a raid series (other than 'please don't all unite together to create another postgame full of Ancient glurge, Endwalker was torturous'), but I do hope that the next alliance raid series doesn't go for an 'excuse for cool boss fights' approach.

I'm not against that being the core structure of a story--this game is very capable of cool boss fights and some of my favorite stories are the ones that do that--but I think that only normal raids are actually well-situated for it. Omega and the Arcadion work because every boss has individual leadup and spectacle, letting all of them stand up on their own, including in difficulty; if Dancing Green is your guy, the one that makes the whole thing worthwhile for you, then he gets all the spotlight he needs and is very capable of being The Fight. An alliance raid series being three instances means that everyone is crammed together without much room for stunting on their own unless they're the final boss, and typically tend to lowball their difficulty to the point where the fights don't feel like good spectacles unless they're the final boss and get a couple cutscenes and a custom fight theme; Myths of the Realm showed that as a serious problem, because god damn, I hope your favorite member of the Twelve wasn't Rhalgr or Althyk, who get relegated to the pushover warmup rounds.

I think Vana'diel is nailing it as well as a 'reference-centric' alliance raid can (which it ultimately is, even if I think its story is an actual story outside of them); difficulty-wise everything's got hands enough that every fight gets to show its stuff, and while most fights don't have much leadup... well, it's all stuff from a pre-WoW MMO, if anything that's sort of in keeping with the themes, a lot of the big famous enemies in FFXI are just sorta there. But at the same time, that also shows the constraints of the medium; if the structure can't give every boss fight the attention it deserves, maybe don't sell an alliance raid on all the cool fights it'll have in it.

Other than that: I mean we should all just recognize that our predictions are all based in references to other games because we don't have any meaningful information that lets us guess anything else. If we're getting a Pandaemonium, Arcadion, or even a Shadows of Mhach, we have no capacity to guess that without even knowing for sure which continent the expansion's on. But hey, Chrono Trigger is just as likely now as it ever has been, that's an evergreen guess, if you're the type to find guessing fun, why not shoot that shot today?

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Originally Posted by Voidmage

You need a whole NPC there to explain those bosses because they are just thrown in references that aren't even mentioned again after that by the other characters. [...] I don't want to take away from those who enjoy the story of it but as someone who doesn't know the background of the setting it is extremely disappointing outside of the fights and looks themselves and I know that I am not the only one who thinks that.
Because in the end it will end like Nier. A self contained story without impact.

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This is my feeling too. A lot of the time it feels like the FFXIV writers think all they need to do to make a crossover engaging and understandable is to bombard the player with basic facts about the setting that are irrelevant to the story, instead of trying to weave interesting ideas from the other story into something naturally coherent.

Whether it's a crossover main-character wandering around going "oh, we have those too but they're kind of different", a talking cat lecturing us about how gameplay seasons work in Monster Hunter, or here making sure we understand that "this is the royal castle, and this is the new adventurers' forest", it's all a pattern of providing the sort of information that does nothing to actually build the plot or setting for us here and now. I'd rather have something that expands FFXIV's setting, and not by infodumping a different game's locations onto it.

It would be interesting to build a list of hanging plot points that could be explored. The G tribe's guarded Allagan ruins pops to mind, so long as they find another visual direction to take it instead of the eternal clashing neon. (And Gelmorra is a fallback answer to everything but I don't think an alliance raid is the right format to explore something interesting there.)

We have no way to guess what the Normal/Savage or Alliance raid series will be, since we have no idea what 8.0 is even going to be about, much less where it is; and the raid(s) are not necessarily connected to the main story narratively or thematically. On the contrary, it's a very rare event they do so. The only thing we can do is make educated guesses; and that suggests one or the other is very likely to be a loose, abridged adaptation of a previous franchise entry, while the other may be original content or (less likely) a second-party reference / loose adaptation. They are being very (I would say unusually) tight-lipped about where things are headed; I'm sure we'll get information once 7.5(.5) lands and FanFests kick off, but as of right now it's impossible to guess much of anything about what's coming in 8.0 - setting, plot, jobs, raids - and all we have to go on is the trends since post-6.0 which suggest it's some combination of a reflection that's fallen to some kind of elemental ruin that's also home to a fallen / dying civilization patterned on a previous franchise entry.

Even that's not guaranteed if they decide to pivot after Dawntrail's lukewarm reception. It's all just a big ??? right now.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I have no real expectations or demands from a raid series (other than 'please don't all unite together to create another postgame full of Ancient glurge, Endwalker was torturous'), but I do hope that the next alliance raid series doesn't go for an 'excuse for cool boss fights' approach.

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I would counter that to an outside observer without deep franchise exposure pretty much the entirety of the Omega raids are just excuses for cool fights with references that will go whizzing over their heads; the brief introductions provided by Nero do not adequately explain who it is you're fighting, and you have no real reason to care because they're just recreations of Omega's. The Arcadion, despite mostly following this structure, makes them real characters and even explains who they are to varying degrees (sometimes in side content) which is why it landed, in my opinion, better than Omega despite lacking anything in the way of legacy fanservice the way so much of this game relies on, especially the rest of Dawntrail.

I would also argue that Pandaemonium is not "Ancient glurge;" on the contrary, aside from being a II fanservice vehicle it was there to show us that the Ancients / Amaurotine civilization was not as amazingly perfect as Emet-Selch tried to portray it during Shadowbringers (if Endwalker did not drive the point hard enough yet). When your antagonist is based on Emperor Mateus and lacks anything resembling redeeming qualities, I'm pretty sure we left the realm of glurge behind (outside of interactions with Themis and to a lesser extent Erichthonios; we never get past "colleague" with Lahabrea, before or after reintegration).

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Originally Posted by Cilia

The Arcadion, despite mostly following this structure, makes them real characters and even explains who they are to varying degrees (sometimes in side content) which is why it landed, in my opinion, better than Omega despite lacking anything in the way of legacy fanservice the way so much of this game relies on, especially the rest of Dawntrail.

I would also argue that Pandaemonium is not "Ancient glurge;" on the contrary, aside from being a II fanservice vehicle it was there to show us that the Ancients / Amaurotine civilization was not as amazingly perfect as Emet-Selch tried to portray it during Shadowbringers (if Endwalker did not drive the point hard enough yet). When your antagonist is based on Emperor Mateus and lacks anything resembling redeeming qualities, I'm pretty sure we left the realm of glurge behind (outside of interactions with Themis and to a lesser extent Erichthonios; we never get past "colleague" with Lahabrea, before or after reintegration).

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Omega's unashamedly an excuse for cool boss fights (and some asset reuse, Exdeath and Kefka are just lifted right from Dissidia NT), but I think it holds mostly because the boss fights are actually cool. Even putting the references aside, Exdeath and Kefka are spectacles that get the point of their characters across very well, the interim bosses all get a fair amount of good spice to them that the source material could never quite manage, and the Omega fights are both great. I won't deny the Arcadion does it better, but Omega's a solid first attempt, especially on what I've always suspected was a low budget.

But crucially, they get there through a level of spectacle, leadup and difficulty that normal raids have the capacity for, that alliance raids don't. And I do think difficulty is an underrated component of video game storytelling; the fact the Myths of the Realm raids were pushovers actually did hurt their story, this doesn't feel like 'fighting ancient gods' at all!

And Pandaemonium I legitimately look at as worse now than I did when it was coming out, because the only way I was going to accept that level of full-force, earnest Ancient and Ascian fanservice is if they were never coming back, that this was a final farewell... and then goddamn Halmarut turned up in less than one expansion and confirmed for me that, no, we're never getting away from that nonsense. Even then, it probably would've kept standing of Myths of the Realm wasn't also Ancient fanservice at the end.

Also Pandaemonium isn't really 'II fanservice', it barely pays lipservice to II's Pandaemonium and is more just using the name and barely remembering the aesthetic. It's as much 'II fanservice' as Bismarck was 'VI fanservice'. It's not a good or bad thing, I'm just saying we should judge the spade for its qualities at being a spade.

Just watch the lore video about the horns and tablets that can gather fast amount of aether. While almost all of the horns and Tablets are gone, (although we have no idea if Tupsimati survived.) We have still have one Tablet left and that is currently in the depth of the ocean. It makes me wonder if we're going to see the horns and tablets again in the next expansion. I mean it would be fitting if Winterer want to survive the withering and they needed the tablets and horns to do it.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

I would counter that to an outside observer without deep franchise exposure pretty much the entirety of the Omega raids are just excuses for cool fights with references that will go whizzing over their heads; the brief introductions provided by Nero do not adequately explain who it is you're fighting, and you have no real reason to care because they're just recreations of Omega's.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Omega's unashamedly an excuse for cool boss fights (and some asset reuse, Exdeath and Kefka are just lifted right from Dissidia NT), but I think it holds mostly because the boss fights are actually cool. [...] But crucially, they get there through a level of spectacle, leadup and difficulty that normal raids have the capacity for, that alliance raids don't.

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Omega works for me, I think, exactly because the fights (while being cool) don't actually matter that much, so the writers don't spend time trying to explain the backstory and there's no need to dwell on it. Get in, do a cool fight, get out again and on with the actual and very FFXIV-centric story - and consequently those final few fights against Omega really do matter, because they fit into the story I am actually playing, rather than referencing something that only got properly built up in another game.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

About Arcadion

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Arcadion imo is what Omega tried to be.
I really like it in that it is it's own thing, knows what it wants to be and doesn't try to be more for a "feeling" thing.
It also is unique enough to not be a blatant copy from another game.
It also basically did correct what 7.0 did wrong, namely introducing new characters with their own quirks and story while not encroaching on the player characters turf (at least in my opinion).

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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

Just watch the lore video about the horns and tablets that can gather fast amount of aether. While almost all of the horns and Tablets are gone, (although we have no idea if Tupsimati survived.) We have still have one Tablet left and that is currently in the depth of the ocean. It makes me wonder if we're going to see the horns and tablets again in the next expansion. I mean it would be fitting if Winterer want to survive the withering and they needed the tablets and horns to do it.

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Tupsimati is gone as far as I remember or at least broken after sealing Shinryu.
Granted we don't know if fixing it is actually possible.
Honestly, using it would actually be a good idea because using old stuff that people forgot about is one of the biggest strengths of the writers here in my opinion.

I think in the end it's a bit too early to speculate too much.
YoshiP said before 7.4 that we would get more information for 8.0 with 7.5.
We only know that:
The Winterers will probably play a part,
At least 7.5 (and probably 8.0 to some extent) will involve the WoL (Digest),
That we have a Key for inter dimensional travel,
Some kind of calamity without the will of the star is taking place (7.4 end).

We don't even know if the Withering is only a Shard thing or if it also affects the source in some way.
Three Shards we have seen and all of them were in some kind of almost rejoining. I honestly wonder if all Shards are actually at the brink of collapse because of Ascian parallel working.