Multicolored horses... Great! But why no multicolor chocobos?

So the chocobo is probably one of the most recognizable icons of Final Fantasy, and yet with this last update, why are we getting multicolored horses?

I'm not terribly familiar with the chocobo and its history in Eorzea, however I feel that if you are ok with adding multicolored horses into the game, multicolored chocobos wouldn't be a big stretch.

Maybe if they add a barding system for chocobos we will see multicolor chocobos too.

just tell me first :" does any Mount in this game is useful or useless?"
for me i use my mount probably 1 to 2% of my gameplay time.

I see your point Miko, but for me final fantasy cornerstones are the summons/eidolons, chocobos, moogles, airships, cid, biggs and wedge! Moogles are a bit non present from ff14 as it is, outside of being mailboxes, and chocobos are all over, but a bit bland.

Mhrhn, when you say barding, do you mean stables and multiple chocobos? Like a breeding system? I would enjoy that myself.

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Originally Posted by Skullriot

I see your point Miko, but for me final fantasy cornerstones are the summons/eidolons, chocobos, moogles, airships, cid, biggs and wedge! Moogles are a bit non present from ff14 as it is, outside of being mailboxes, and chocobos are all over, but a bit bland.

Mhrhn, when you say barding, do you mean stables and multiple chocobos? Like a breeding system? I would enjoy that myself.

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Yeah exactly something like that. If you played FFXI they had something like that and we could raise our chocobo and breed it with other people chocobo and with some combination of the food we could get a colored chocobo.

I do believe that they literally plan on having a system to raise chocobos, it would affect their abilities as Companions and their colors too. The thing that everyone wants to reset your companion's skill points would also come with that.

There's no ifs about that, they are indeed going to be implementing a chocobo breeding option for home owners. I would assume we would have options to have different chocobos with feeding and breeding regiments, only time will tell.

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Originally Posted by Skullriot

Mhrhn, when you say barding, do you mean stables and multiple chocobos? Like a breeding system? I would enjoy that myself.

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Barding is the gear you equip to your Grand Company chocobo - it's a collective term for the saddle, harness and bridle it wears. At the moment, the barding is purely cosmetic, but apparently later on SE will be making it that it has actual stats like character equipment.

As for coloured chocobos, at the moment the closest we have to a chocobo of a colour different to the standard yellow is the little Black chocobo chick minion from one of the Veteran Rewards, so lore wise at least, it's entirely possible black chocobos at least may make an appearance later on in the game.

It should also be noted that lore-wise, chocobos in Eorzea have only just come back from the very brink of extinction, just prior to the Calamity a devastating plague called 'chocobo blight' was afflicting chocobos across Aldernard, forcing the Ishgardian stables to quarantine their birds and thus preventing them from providing them to the other city states. This was the in-game lore reason given at the start of 1.0 why players were unable to ride chocobos then.

Only later on did the blight diminish enough that Ishgard decided that the danger had passed and thusly allowed adventurers to ride their birds again (hence why it's a Grand Company that issues you your chocobo and not a regular stable - the chocobo population in Eorzea is still pretty low and hence the birds that can be spared are provided only to organizations who really need it, ala, the Grand Companies.). Maybe the chocobo blight also is responsible for rendering other breeds of chocobos (ala chocobos of different colours) extinct as well. Or maybe I'm just looking too much into this.

Well we had to attract the apocalypse crowd and the pony crowd. so we got the four fiends of the elements ponies.

In FFXI, we didn't get different-color chocobos until the chocobo breeding system was introduced in one of the expansions. So I would anticipate much the same, here... we'll see different color chocobos when breeding comes along.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

It should also be noted that lore-wise, chocobos in Eorzea have only just come back from the very brink of extinction, just prior to the Calamity a devastating plague called 'chocobo blight' was afflicting chocobos across Aldernard, forcing the Ishgardian stables to quarantine their birds and thus preventing them from providing them to the other city states. This was the in-game lore reason given at the start of 1.0 why players were unable to ride chocobos then.

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I did not know that, but that is a very good reason that chocobos aren't terribly diverse. However, horses are non existant in the game outside of player mounts, from what I know, so I'm still scratching my head as to why they went that way instead of chocobos. Maybe the model is easier to work with?

I presume you haven't played another FF game based on your above post, in which case, chocobos are basically Square Enix's mascot (and the mascot of the FF series in general) - in every FF game horses are virtually non-existent (often the only times a horse shows up is either as a generic enemy, like the so-called 'Crazy Horse' monster in FF1, or Odin's steed Sleipnir), and accordingly FFXIV keeps to that tradition.

Most FF games allow the player to ride a chocobo as a mount, whether just as a rental, one they have to catch in the field, or can actually breed their own at a stable, it all depends on the FF title. This page has all you need to know about chocobos: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Chocobo

Lore wise for FFXIV, horses are actually native to the Far East (the continent of Othard), and are not found naturally in Eorzea, other than a species of unicorn being native to Coerthas, hence the player mounts. The special event Heavensturn that happened at the start of the year fittingly dealt with why horses were not well suited to Eorzean conditions and why chocobos are preferable, albeit in a humorous way. ;)

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

I presume you haven't played another FF game based on your above post, in which case, chocobos are basically Square Enix's mascot (and the mascot of the FF series in general) - in every FF game horses are virtually non-existent (often the only times a horse shows up is either as a generic enemy, like the so-called 'Crazy Horse' monster in FF1, or Odin's steed Sleipnir), and accordingly FFXIV keeps to that tradition.

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Quite the contrary, I have played a massive amount of final fantasy, but i'm wondering why theres not as much chocobo love in this game. It's my favorite mount animal out of any

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

in every FF game horses are virtually non-existent (often the only times a horse shows up is either as a generic enemy, like the so-called 'Crazy Horse' monster in FF1, or Odin's steed Sleipnir), and accordingly FFXIV keeps to that tradition.

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Well, at least it used to. That's my real problem with the new additions. They're going to make Eorzea significantly less "Final Fantasy" looking. As Skullriot pointed out, it would have been a lot better if they had gone with Chocobos. Quite a few FF titles have had several different colors of chocobo, (though yellow is always the most common and the first you encounter).

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Lore wise for FFXIV, horses are actually native to the Far East (the continent of Othard), and are not found naturally in Eorzea, other than a species of unicorn being native to Coerthas, hence the player mounts.

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Correct, horses are in the Far East! Though, I do not agree that it is the same as the continent of Othard (it has not been stated that Othard is the Far East, just that it is east of Eorzea/Aldenard. I could be wrong, as there is no specification that it isn't, either. But, there is a lot of care taken by the localisation team when referring to an items origins from the Far East or from Othard, as seen in their descriptions. We have not had an item which links both those names together.)

However, are they truly native to the Far East? They could be. But, horses are present in at least one other continent - Ilsabard. The item description of Sea Bo provides this evidence.

I will also speculate that the New Continent (also known as the West), also could have horses on it - this is tentative on which continent the Miqo'te originate (I am uncertain as to where Miqo'te came from? The West? The South? The moon?). Here is why:

• Hipparions are an extinct relative of the horse in the real world.
• The K tribe of the Sunseeker have the hipparion as their totem animal.
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  The tribe names are originally based on traditional beastkin, scalekin, or cloudkin totems, which are said to protect the tribe.

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• Whilst the sounds of the tribe letters changed to match the Eorzean alphabet, the tribe names are based on animals before the migration - these animals should be native to the lands where the Miqo'te originate from.

Perhaps I am clutching as straws with the last one, but I think it is a convincing argument! :o