Trust "Avatar" Mode -- Are the name changes necessary?

I love Trust mode. I use it to learn the new fights and to level DPS jobs.

In 6.0, if you decide to run with NPCs that weren't available for the story-mode run, you have to use "Avatar Mode." So instead of running with Y'shtola, Thancred, and Urianger, I'm running with "Y'shtola's Avatar," "Thancred's Avatar," and "Urianger's Avatar."

I just tried to run the 81 dungeon with my preferred party. There were two sets of duplicates in the cutscenes.

This is TOTALLY immersion-breaking for me.

I get that for story purposes, each 71-90 dungeon can't include every available character, but seeing " 's Avatar" next to the names feels terrible.

Please change this.

You decide to use the composition that cannot possibly run the story.. then are getting mad that it's breaking the story?

is that what I'm reading ?

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

You decide to use the composition that cannot possibly run the story.. then are getting mad that it's breaking the story?

is that what I'm reading ?

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She said immersion, the implication is that in avatar mode you are creating your own scenario. A "What If" situation.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

You decide to use the composition that cannot possibly run the story.. then are getting mad that it's breaking the story?

is that what I'm reading ?

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This is a ridiculous argument to make when the same situation applies to Holminster Switch and we don't have "Avatars" there.

Not only would I prefer they'd remove the "Avatar of" part, I'd also like them to adapt Zot. It's weird to run with a copy of Urianger, while the real Urianger runs with the other team, just a step away.

And no, this isn't witchcraft, it's pretty simple to implement, just like you can switch out members of your party in the menu.

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Originally Posted by MsQi

She said immersion, the implication is that in avatar mode you are creating your own scenario. A "What If" situation.

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Immersion usually being involvement in the narrative and world.. or story. If you're making up your own story and have already broken the "rules" of the encounter, then maybe it's not to big an ask to work doubles of magical fantasy characters into your private narrative.

To be completely fair I don't think the naming has any functional purpose other than not allowing someone to fake a run with the wrong characters and claiming it's how the story goes (which you could probably do with editing anyway)... but asking for them to also re-write the cutscenes to accommodate willfully broken party comps is work done for nothing.

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Originally Posted by Chie_M

This is a ridiculous argument to make when the same situation applies to Holminster Switch and we don't have "Avatars" there.

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Wh... what? Unless I'm misunderstanding you... Holminster switch does have Avatars.

https://i.gyazo.com/29064704fff4663f...f811c68031.jpg

The " 's Avatar" is recent, at or around 6.0. It was not like that throughout ShB. I ran Holminster Switch dozens of times leveling DPS.

Maybe it's just me, but the change is JARRING. I've run Holminster Switch with Thancred, Urianger, and Y'shtola for two years leveling all the DPS jobs. I went in there with reaper, and I'm in there with Thancred's Avatar, Urianger's Avatar, and Y'shtola's Avatar.

This change just feels bad to me.

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Originally Posted by Olinara

The " 's Avatar" is recent, at or around 6.0. It was not like that throughout ShB. I ran Holminster Switch dozens of times leveling DPS.

Maybe it's just me, but the change is JARRING. I've run Holminster Switch with Thancred, Urianger, and Y'shtola for two years leveling all the DPS jobs. I went in there with reaper, and I'm in there with Thancred's Avatar, Urianger's Avatar, and Y'shtola's Avatar.

This change just feels bad to me.

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Yeah, I didn't realise they had retroactively changed it for ShB dungeons as well. It did not function like this is Holminster Switch during ShB - I got Trusted Friend before it was nerfed.

It definitely does feel a little weird and I'm not really sure why they did it.

They added the avatar thing to lessen confusion with running them as trust players versus scenario mode.

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Originally Posted by MilkieTea

Wh... what? Unless I'm misunderstanding you... Holminster switch does have Avatars.

https://i.gyazo.com/29064704fff4663f...f811c68031.jpg

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It used to be just the name of the member, no "avatar" stuck on. That's like "Copy of" and feels just weird.

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Originally Posted by Shironeko_Narunyan

It used to be just the name of the member, no "avatar" stuck on. That's like "Copy of" and feels just weird.

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It worked well for Tower of Zot, but once I got my Trust to Tower of Babil and it was still present, it was very jarring and off-putting.

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Originally Posted by technole

They added the avatar thing to lessen confusion with running them as trust players versus scenario mode.

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Yeah, pretty sure this is the actual reason ahah. Like, imagine seeing your friend play the game in Avatar mode, but it just says Thancred, Y'shtola, and Ryne and they're in Holm Switch. I can see plenty of confusion from newer players regarding something like that.

If you get confused about something like this, I don't know what to tell you... lol

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Originally Posted by Shironeko_Narunyan

If you get confused about something like this, I don't know what to tell you... lol

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I'm sorry, but there are indeed newer players who don't understand the trust function. It's not as if they can look at someone playing Holm Switch with Thancred, Ryne, and Y'shtola and immediately know that access to that functionality is gated behind finishing up the MSQ and being in Avatar mode, leveling the trust avatars. Having it be "Thancred's Avatar" allows for newer players who may not understand the trust function to see that it's not just a feature they missed while playing through the story.

It's not as though we have players who don't even understand that they need to actually complete the MSQ to gain access to post-MSQ content, though, right? :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by MilkieTea

I'm sorry, but there are indeed newer players who don't understand the trust function. It's not as if they can look at someone playing Holm Switch with Thancred, Ryne, and Y'shtola and immediately know that access to that functionality is gated behind finishing up the MSQ and being in Avatar mode, leveling the trust avatars. Having it be "Thancred's Avatar" allows for newer players who may not understand the trust function to see that it's not just a feature they missed while playing through the story.

It's not as though we have players who don't even understand that they need to actually complete the MSQ to gain access to post-MSQ content, though, right? :rolleyes:

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People might be new, but they're not stupid. That's a very important difference.

There's alot that would love to have multiple yshtolas.....

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Originally Posted by Shironeko_Narunyan

People might be new, but they're not stupid. That's a very important difference.

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So you're saying that only someone stupid wouldn't be able to look at someone playing with Thancred, Ryne, and Y'shtola in Holminster Switch and figure out immediately that said access to that functionality is gated by completion of the MSQ and accessible only through the Avatar mode? That's fairly insulting to those who managed to glance at screenshots before entering Holminster Switch and were unaware that those characters would not be joining them.

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Originally Posted by MilkieTea

So you're saying that only someone stupid wouldn't be able to look at someone playing with Thancred, Ryne, and Y'shtola in Holminster Switch and figure out immediately that said access to that functionality is gated by completion of the MSQ and accessible only through the Avatar mode? That's fairly insulting to those who managed to glance at screenshots before entering Holminster Switch and were unaware that those characters would not be joining them.

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You can read what I said. I said exactly that. Please unlearn your FFXIV-Forum-habit of putting words in people's mouths.

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Originally Posted by Shironeko_Narunyan

You can read what I said. I said exactly that. Please unlearn your FFXIV-Forum-habit of putting words in people's mouths.

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I'm not "putting words in your mouth," though. The direct conversation was as follows:

> Like, imagine seeing your friend play the game in Avatar mode, but it just says Thancred, Y'shtola, and Ryne and they're in Holm Switch. I can see plenty of confusion from newer players regarding something like that.

>> If you get confused about something like this, I don't know what to tell you... lol

>>> I'm sorry, but there are indeed newer players who don't understand the trust function. It's not as if they can look at someone playing Holm Switch with Thancred, Ryne, and Y'shtola and immediately know that access to that functionality is gated behind finishing up the MSQ and being in Avatar mode, leveling the trust avatars. Having it be "Thancred's Avatar" allows for newer players who may not understand the trust function to see that it's not just a feature they missed while playing through the story.

It's not as though we have players who don't even understand that they need to actually complete the MSQ to gain access to post-MSQ content, though, right?

>>>> People might be new, but they're not stupid. That's a very important difference.

There's no reason for the line "People might be new, but they're not stupid," if the implication isn't that only someone stupid would not be able to figure out immediately that said access to the functionality behind utilizing certain characters is MSQ-gated and is only available through the Avatar system.

There was a question there, instead of answering the question or clarifying your statement, you skirted around to pull a tiny little "gotcha!" moment. I'm going to further assume that you indeed, meant to say that only stupid people would not be able to make the connections as stated above. If that's not an accurate assumption, you can further clarify. If it is, continue to skirt around, or whatever you please.

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Originally Posted by MilkieTea

I'm not "putting words in your mouth," though. The direct conversation was as follows:

> Like, imagine seeing your friend play the game in Avatar mode, but it just says Thancred, Y'shtola, and Ryne and they're in Holm Switch. I can see plenty of confusion from newer players regarding something like that.

>> If you get confused about something like this, I don't know what to tell you... lol

>>> I'm sorry, but there are indeed newer players who don't understand the trust function. It's not as if they can look at someone playing Holm Switch with Thancred, Ryne, and Y'shtola and immediately know that access to that functionality is gated behind finishing up the MSQ and being in Avatar mode, leveling the trust avatars. Having it be "Thancred's Avatar" allows for newer players who may not understand the trust function to see that it's not just a feature they missed while playing through the story.

It's not as though we have players who don't even understand that they need to actually complete the MSQ to gain access to post-MSQ content, though, right?

>>>> People might be new, but they're not stupid. That's a very important difference.

There's no reason for the line "People might be new, but they're not stupid," if the implication isn't that only someone stupid would not be able to figure out immediately that said access to the functionality behind utilizing certain characters is MSQ-gated and is only available through the Avatar system.

There was a question there, instead of answering the question or clarifying your statement, you skirted around to pull a tiny little "gotcha!" moment. I'm going to further assume that you indeed, meant to say that only stupid people would not be able to make the connections as stated above. If that's not an accurate assumption, you can further clarify. If it is, continue to skirt around, or whatever you please.

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This is hilarious. I'll stop here, don't want anything to do with this. It's only gonna end in forum bans.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Immersion usually being involvement in the narrative and world.. or story.

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To reiterate immersion is not limited to only one story. But as I pointed out you first statement is based on a false premise.

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Originally Posted by Shironeko_Narunyan

This is hilarious. I'll stop here, don't want anything to do with this. It's only gonna end in forum bans.

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I'm unsure as to why it would end in forum bans if we've both, to this point, been relatively cordial. ^-^ But thank you for clarifying that it is indeed an accurate assumption. Have a great day! /gen

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Originally Posted by MsQi

To reiterate immersion is not limited to only one story. But as I pointed out you first statement is based on a false premise.

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The problem being that they are breaking their own immersion by not being able to work in the fact that "avatars" might be a thing, since the developers decided that it was not right (for whatever reason) to just crowbar in a whatif of exact duplicates?

Interesting that they made the change retroactive as well.

In any case I was mostly asking for clarification, hence the initial response being a question. Thanks for clarifying I suppose.

the trust NPCs in levelling mode have always been avatar copies, and not the actual Scions. That's how the system got introduced in a live letter (or was it one of the fanfests? I don't remember) and is why you're able to run dungeons on 'non canon' party compositions.
the name change is probably to make this more clear, especially now that you can end up with double Y'shtola, Urianger and G'raha in tower of Zot

You can also make a case that, if you are someone who clicks on someone, or uses mouse over macros to heal, you can at least distinguish between the ones in your party and the other NPCs.

just curious... but is it not ALREADY "immersion breaking" to run the same thing multiple times?

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

The problem being that they are breaking their own immersion by not being able to work in the fact that "avatars" might be a thing, since the developers decided that it was not right (for whatever reason) to just crowbar in a whatif of exact duplicates?

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Funny thing is that now we are using term Avatars for 2 different things at once, which makes it a bit amusing to me. My char summons Avatar that is a demon thingy but also my friend's avatar which are the images created by Azem stone I suppose

Also it's funny how we can't recomplete the dungeons with the same Scions and need to "summons" their "avatars" but we definitely can kill any other thing multiple times, and not their Avatar/Memento.

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Originally Posted by Olinara

I get that for story purposes, each 71-90 dungeon can't include every available character, but seeing " 's Avatar" next to the names feels terrible.

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While it's not really a big deal to me, I agree. It does feel a little jarring to see the word Avatar besides the trust npc names.
I can live with it, but if it gets removed would be better.

This was done from a coding stand point. Avatars need to be leveled, scenario mode npcs don't because they will be set to the level required. SE did this so that you don't need to level them all up again in order to run a trust dungeon when your character reaches the level of it.

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Originally Posted by Olinara

In 6.0, if you decide to run with NPCs that weren't available for the story-mode run, you have to use "Avatar Mode." So instead of running with Y'shtola, Thancred, and Urianger, I'm running with "Y'shtola's Avatar," "Thancred's Avatar," and "Urianger's Avatar."

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I think it's because in 5.0, you had the scenario mode (i.e., running the dungeon with Trust when you first unlocked it), and otherwise you had to level the Trust characters to run dungeons with them. And I saw threads various places with people confused about "But I could run Malikah's Well with Thancred when I got there before, why can't I run it with him now when I'm leveling this alt job?" and thinking that doing the dungeon with the Trusts for the first time as part of story meant the trust had been automatically leveled up to that level permanently because "but Thancred was already level 78 before, how'd he level down?", etc.

I suspect that having Scenario mode repeatable (i.e., using the specific valid NPCs to run the dungeon, but giving them no XP) for leveling alt-jobs (or farming glamour/minions/whatever) was meant to make it a viable path, and then having the "you have to earn XP for these characters and level them" mode specifically denoted as "Avatar Mode" and making the versions of the trust characters who you must level explicitly labeled as someone's avatar even in the instance is meant to add clarity there.

I admit I was annoyed by seeing the "<name>'s Avatar" bit too, just because it felt clunky, but putting on my game dev hat for a moment I can also see viable reasons why they'd want to make a clear and obvious division between the modes that's hard to miss.

Makes sense to me, lore wise and immersion wise - like how glamour are illusions. FFXI did something similar with avatars, I believe they were memories or something like that.

I don't see any evil in removing the avatar from the nameplates, especially if it annoys people (that's not a helpful feature lol), but personally I think keeping it somewhere in the game itself as story logic makes more sense than not. There are situations that cannot happen with certain npcs- that is lore breaking, but using your special power to summon their embodiment makes a lot of sense. Especially given later story info. Such that they are still avatars (sans specific scenarios when they're 'actually' there), even if not explicitly stated by the UI, and may be explained as such in game - helping more, I think, if they choose to kill one of them too lol (so summoning them isn't some weird retcon / time travel / 'gaming logic- dealwithit.jpg').

Also I'd love to see the opportunity to grow these npcs at some point (actual growth mechanics, like how the squadrons had), and I think avatars as a conceptualization makes a lot of sense for that too, like if you had a crystal for each trust member (again akin to the story). I appreciate they took feedback on the whole gating of the current exp system though, I believe that was an element of listing to feedback. Yet I think it might flow better if the exp system was changed and there were no two modes of entry- you just picked people and entered (regardless of what their level was). If there was exp to earn you'd earn it, and perhaps then it's not really exp anymore but other progression mechanics that fit better / potentially more interestingly (like how squadron has their own interesting systems).

I always saw the "Avatars" as our Azem magic creating "Familiars" for us to run the dungeons with. Much the same way when we summon things to fight with us during big battles in the MSQ. (Because they are real people via DF, so referring to them as avatar is unnecessary but as far as the story is concerned, they are avatars).

Perhaps my take is wrong, but it really has helped make the game more immersive when I just keep referring to anomalies such as this as the WoL creating "familiars".

Thing is, even when running with NPCs who weren't there for the dungeon in MSQ, they'll give dialogue unique to their personality, like Y'shtola commenting at the last boss of Don Mheg when it does the tiptoe crossing mechanic. Not complaining about it, but it's realistic enough right until you see their names on the party haha.