Death or ego?

I have often wondered why after a battle the person or persons whom loses the battle can die or be badly wounded but then you have those who only have a bruised ego and walk away, as if they have suffered nothing more than a splinter.

Is there something I am missing here with the the lore or reasoning? Are there real fights and play fights?

Depends on the situation. Unfortunately it's a necessary story concession to gameplay and the limitations of the game engine, where an enemy is defeated gameplay wise (HP reduced to zero or near enough), and yet some are story/lore wise specifically killed, where as others are just beaten down but are still alive, and the battle system depicts both in the same way.

And the flipside of that, is much later in the game, there are a number of situations where it is turned around on the player, where due to an enemy plot coupon they are beaten down to within an ilm of their life, despite you managing to 'defeat' the enemy anyway (I don't think you're up to that part yet so I won't spoil anything more).

It's an unfortunate requirement of this being an RPG where battles are still fundamentally about numbers representing states of characters and how they attack and their resulting condition, and are depicted gameplay wise in the same way regardless of the story outcome (just like in old style FF games like FFVII where the enemy disappeared upon defeat, even those who weren't actually killed). Battles are actual gameplay, not interactive cutscenes.

In final fantasy, reducing someone's health to 0 doesn't always mean you killed them. A lot of the time you just wounded them or made them tired. To see whether you killed them or not you just have to see the scenes that follow and accept whether the story wanted you to kill them there or not.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

Depends on the situation. Unfortunately it's a necessary story concession to gameplay and the limitations of the game engine, where an enemy is defeated gameplay wise (HP reduced to zero or near enough), and yet some are story/lore wise specifically killed, where as others are just beaten down but are still alive, and the battle system depicts both in the same way.

And the flipside of that, is much later in the game, there are a number of situations where it is turned around on the player, where due to an enemy plot coupon they are beaten down to within an ilm of their life, despite you managing to 'defeat' the enemy anyway (I don't think you're up to that part yet so I won't spoil anything more).

It's an unfortunate requirement of this being an RPG where battles are still fundamentally about numbers representing states of characters and how they attack and their resulting condition, and are depicted gameplay wise in the same way regardless of the story outcome (just like in old style FF games like FFVII where the enemy disappeared upon defeat, even those who weren't actually killed). Battles are actual gameplay, not interactive cutscenes.

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Yes. If you mean 'my pride has taken a knock' or 'I will get them next time'. I would imagine why sometimes it has that 'wtf' moment is were they have failed to portray the moment correctly making it feel somehow wrong.
When you have many teams making a game like this I think that sometimes things get misunderstood as to how they should unfold. Even more so when it's such a long and complex story.

My personal take on HP is that it's more like a shield of constant self-restoration and you take no physical damage so long as you have HP to spare. Once you hit zero, then you start getting injured and that ends the fight fairly quickly.

The inconsistency of a persons power and ability's can break immersion at times and I wish there were more excuses for it. Lets say that the warrior of light was at their strongest on a Monday and Friday or when there was a strong westerly wind. I know that's a stupid example but you get my meaning.
Same thing for if someone in battle was Injured dead or had a small scratch. It would help if there was a excuse or reason for it. As Iscah mentions you can make your own reasons up but it's finding one that your comfortable with.

I don't know about you but I find myself drawn into the story quite deeply at times and it's at those times when things like this stand out more than they should.

It only breaks immersion if you can't accept that beating someone doesn't necessarily mean you killed them.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It only breaks immersion if you can't accept that beating someone doesn't necessarily mean you killed them.

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Good point and well said.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It only breaks immersion if you can't accept that beating someone doesn't necessarily mean you killed them.

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Exactly. But it's not necessarily me that doesn't accept it but those NPC's involved in the story. "I'm going to kill you" and not "I am going to slap your face". And yet they get away with a slapped face. It can't help to be somewhat jarring.
The story overall is well thought out and flows as best it can when you take into consideration that it's tied to a game but there are points were the delivery could do with a little work.
What would work better with the small addition of..

Goodie says to baddie "I'm going to kill you"
Fight takes place and goodie wins.
Baddie says to goodie " Please don't kill me. I have a child and 14 wives to feed"
Goodie returns with "oh okay then but don't do it again"
Baddie hobbles off into the sunset.

Lets see if i can put some coherent thoughts here. Based on your other post on this subject, im going to assume you started thinking more deeply about this following the final fight on Baelsar's Wall. Ill use that situation for my example. And i guess ill toss it all behind a spoiler tag, just incase someone who hasnt gotten that far stumbles in.

So this is how i saw that situation. You came to stop the Griffin. Defeat the commander, and get the troops to withdraw before the skirmish turns into a full on war with Garlemald. The overall plan was probly to bring them to the eorzean alliance leaders so they could argue their case for us liberating ala mhigo, though obviously we never got a chance to find out for sure. Since we wanted them alive, we would have been pulling punches here and there. We would have avoided a killing blow if we could just knock him out or in some other way incapacitate him. Once the fight stopped, we would have been willing to let him talk(at least a little) since we wanted him to go along with us.

Ilberd went to the wall to die. He had an army of believers to lend faith, he had at least a rudimentary understanding of the summoning process(likely from Elidibus), and he had the recovered eyes of nidhogg to provide the necessary aether(and mayhap a bit of rage). He knew that his death would be the final step of the ritual. He would have fought with everything he had, he would have taken chances a normal fighter wouldnt, and it would have taken a good deal of effort to get him to stop fighting. Given the chance to talk, he was happy enough to explain his plan because at this point he had "won". His people were already sacrificed, and stopping him from killing himself to finish the ritual would have been hard if not near impossible. And sure enough, once we realized his plan he proceeded to jump off the roof to hasten the death part.

I hope that made some sense. I should know better then to type these when im short on sleep.

I had come to the same conclusion but they should have been fed up with Ibered always getting away and put him down proper this time. When do they learn?
It was more than obvious to me that not only was Ilberd evil, he was also quite raving mad. I would not have held back.
The thing is with FF14 is you never know when the characters are going to show mercy and when they are going for the kill and the reasons for how they act is not always clear. Some you want dead, they spare, yet some you would spare they put to the sword.
It's one of those were you have to read the book to understand the reasoning. If there was a book. ;)

In D&D terms, your opponent drop to 0 hit points. If you used subdual damage for that last strike, they are still alive and breathing. If you did not, they are dead, dead, dead, but only after three unsuccessful death saves.

Personally, I enjoy either outcome as the story requires it. It is still better than watching some Horde ex-Warchief interrupt your perfectly good battle to take the points for the kill himself.

You don't usually kill someone unless you actually need to because they didn't lay down their arms or other behaviour before you got a killing hit on them.

You don't always succeed at killing someone because they get away or they are that good that they can survive a warrior like you.

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Originally Posted by Tarryme

I had come to the same conclusion but they should have been fed up with Ibered always getting away and put him down proper this time. When do they learn?
It was more than obvious to me that not only was Ilberd evil, he was also quite raving mad. I would not have held back.
The thing is with FF14 is you never know when the characters are going to show mercy and when they are going for the kill and the reasons for how they act is not always clear. Some you want dead, they spare, yet some you would spare they put to the sword.
It's one of those were you have to read the book to understand the reasoning. If there was a book. ;)

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Once more, cause spoilers.

Canonically, your character didnt know that you were going to the Wall the fight Ilberd. You knew that the Griffin was running a ploy to trick the empire into thinking the alliance had attacked. You didnt even know if it was the man himself leading the attack, or his body double. So you went to find the person leading the attack, and convince them to withdraw and stop fighting. An offer to speak before the alliance leaders was likely to be your opening bid. When Ilberd took off the mask, it was likely not only too late to change the plan, but too late to change the outcome of the fight.

Lets say you were given the option and you put him down at the end of the fight without the long speech. His people are still sacrificed, the eyes are still there to lend aether, and his death still completes the summoning ritual. Shinryu still forms, only now its "your fault". Either Y'shtola or Papalymo would recognize the pieces of the ritual and give you the requisite lore dump. Then Papalymo still dies because we have to try to contain the newly forming primal.

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Originally Posted by Frizze

Once more, cause spoilers.

Canonically, your character didnt know that you were going to the Wall the fight Ilberd. You knew that the Griffin was running a ploy to trick the empire into thinking the alliance had attacked. You didnt even know if it was the man himself leading the attack, or his body double. So you went to find the person leading the attack, and convince them to withdraw and stop fighting. An offer to speak before the alliance leaders was likely to be your opening bid. When Ilberd took off the mask, it was likely not only too late to change the plan, but too late to change the outcome of the fight.

Lets say you were given the option and you put him down at the end of the fight without the long speech. His people are still sacrificed, the eyes are still there to lend aether, and his death still completes the summoning ritual. Shinryu still forms, only now its "your fault". Either Y'shtola or Papalymo would recognize the pieces of the ritual and give you the requisite lore dump. Then Papalymo still dies because we have to try to contain the newly forming primal.

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Funny how the whole party shouted at once " I knew it was him" :D