Universe Mechanics Conflict Often [Spoilers]

I tend to like the story, but the cosmos of FF14 seems wildly contradictory and it seems to get worse with every expansion.

I was down with some of the messages and thought processes in Endwalker. The Ea being depressed about entropy being a conclusion to existence is a dysmal prospect to immortality.

Only, the setting seems to have decided entropy isn't a thing at random. Like, I don't know, Valigarmanda creating eternal fires that don't even need fuel to burn. Endless energy? Or how about the Sin Eaters that the lorebook says don't need energy to function. Or how about the fact the story introduces those two voidsent who somehow spared their hunger by just feeding on each other?

One of the biggest reasons the primals were being hunted is they'd feed on all the aether on the star (Though the evidence of this actually being a worry is spotty) when you have infinite aether fires, how is that a threat?

There's just countless situations were energy is undiminishable is presented, and usually adds no story value to have it. Why have eternal fires for Valigarmanda? To show how powerful it is? A crater that bored through to underground lava vents would have show the same power without the need of perpetual energy.

On one hand, the lore has always come with a bit of an asterisk ("to be augmented as needed"). From the "Doylist" perspective, the definition of aether has changed over time; the definition of souls has changed over time; for a little while basically every new primal summoning seemed to contradict the stuff made up for the last in some way. Usually we get some form of "Watsonian" excuse that makes it feel less like something has changed behind the scenes (some so convincing that people will argue over whether you have any reason to point it out at all).

On the other hand...yeah.
(Though in some of the specific cases referenced there's some room for "NPCs don't always know what they're talking about".)

To me, it feels like we spent some years getting most of our novelty and excitement from providing some structure to the nebulous unknown and, now, since the game is still going, we have to get most of our novelty and excitement from carving exceptions and subversions out of that structure.

When it feels inconsistent - when explaining one thing contradicts the explaining of another - when an explanation is given but the events and dialogue appear to imply the opposite - I start to get demoralized.
Why pay attention to the details if it's becoming a gray soup?

But when we get well-thought-out changes that come with explanations that push the "consistency" to a higher level and makes the world feel alive, I start swinging back.
The real world has very few hard rules (as we conceive of them), after all; often what we thought we knew has more complexity to it than expected.

I'm sure it's a difficult balancing act behind the scenes, as well.

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Originally Posted by Kayetiln

Only, the setting seems to have decided entropy isn't a thing at random. Like, I don't know, Valigarmanda creating eternal fires that don't even need fuel to burn. Endless energy? Or how about the Sin Eaters that the lorebook says don't need energy to function. Or how about the fact the story introduces those two voidsent who somehow spared their hunger by just feeding on each other?

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Here's the easy way to swallow it: Short term versus long term. In this case, REALLY REALLY LONG term.

Valigarmanda's fires have been going for about eighty years, which is long for a fire. Sin Eaters have been going for about a hundred, and those two voidsent have actually only been doing that particular thing for like, ten minutes when we met them. (On top of that, I actually suspect both Sin Eaters and voidsent are more suffering from deficiencies rather than lacks, since they are made of aether, just extremely overwhelming amounts of one type of it; they're a magical version of malnourished, rather than a magical version of starving.)

Two of those are exceptionally long, long enough for it to be noticed as an unusual trait, but it's not, like... cosmically eternal, or necessarily actually understood to be infinite; we just know the fires have never gone out, that doesn't mean they won't eventually. Meanwhile, the Ea are thinking from a perspective of billions of years, they're scared of the heat death of the universe. They're working on such an existentially enormous scale that the notion that Valigarmanda's fires have lasted most of a century just feels like small potatoes.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Here's the easy way to swallow it: Short term versus long term. In this case, REALLY REALLY LONG term.

Valigarmanda's fires have been going for about eighty years, which is long for a fire. Sin Eaters have been going for about a hundred, and those two voidsent have actually only been doing that particular thing for like, ten minutes when we met them. (On top of that, I actually suspect both Sin Eaters and voidsent are more suffering from deficiencies rather than lacks, since they are made of aether, just extremely overwhelming amounts of one type of it; they're a magical version of malnourished, rather than a magical version of starving.)

Two of those are exceptionally long, long enough for it to be noticed as an unusual trait, but it's not, like... cosmically eternal, or necessarily actually understood to be infinite; we just know the fires have never gone out, that doesn't mean they won't eventually. Meanwhile, the Ea are thinking from a perspective of billions of years, they're scared of the heat death of the universe. They're working on such an existentially enormous scale that the notion that Valigarmanda's fires have lasted most of a century just feels like small potatoes.

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But mommy says pills are bitter but they are necessary to get us back to health

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

But when we get well-thought-out changes that come with explanations that push the "consistency" to a higher level and makes the world feel alive

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what changes specifically do you mean

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

what changes specifically do you mean

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I think my go-to example for a time we got an obvious retcon* whereby the change was well-thought-out and made the world feel alive is the reinterpretation of the elemental wheel in Shadowbringers.

* Using the word "retcon" literally here, retroactive continuity. There's a sub-type we all hate - the "subtractive retcon" - where they basically say, "There's a contradiction, so pretend that other thing never happened." The XIV devs seem to take it as a personal challenge to avoid them in favor of "additive retcons" wherever possible (the ones that frame the change as a new revelation; the old lore still happened but is now considered an in-world misunderstanding / mistaken assumption). From a "Watsonian" perspective, addition retcons are easier to see as part of the story itself, or even to mistake for planned misdirection or foreshadowing.

• In 1.x, Light and Darkness weren't part of the game; we only had the elemental polarities astral and umbral, which were clearly themed after "brightness/life" and "shadow/death".
• In 1.x, it was said that the polarities were an elemental phenomenon.
• In 1.x, it was said that calamities were of the elements and it was expected that there would be six, but it turns out there would be a seventh (implying the potential for at least an 8th if it turned out the fact they went in order, one each, was not a coincidence).
• In ARR, it was said that the Seventh Umbral Era (Bahamut) was all the elements at once with an astral charge.
• In ARR, it was said that the introduction of Light and Darkness was a new type of energy; Light and Darkness were not of the elements.
• If we were NOT going to break pattern, the Eighth Umbral Calamity should itself be all the elements at once with an umbral charge.
• Where the story was at the time, the creative team wanted a "Light Calamity" story.
• Remember: Calamities are elemental, astral and umbral are of the elements, Light and Darkness are not, and astral has already been used.
• Shadowbringers then comes in and says, ACTUALLYYY, Eorzean aetherology has it all backwards. Astral and umbral charges come from the influence of Light and Darkness, but LIGHT causes we call the shadow one and DARKNESS causes what we call the bright one, thus making it possible for an umbral-aspected calamity to be Light-themed.
• In doing so, they also made it so that "umbral" (which was always themed as "low" or "nether" or "underground") ended up being "closer to Hydaelyn" (making that more thematically important than its association with shadow), while "astral" (which was always themed as "high" or "heavens" or "sky") ended up being "closer to Zodiark" (making that more thematically important than its association with "brightness"). It also set up the "Ice is the closest element to Light" passivity-association angle that rhymed well thematically with other story beats like Shiva and all that.

Note that, in such cases, nothing relies on the fans just making stuff up to make sense of it. It's not one of the cases where there's no citation and people bypass "theory" in favor of "it makes sense to me so it's as good as canon". The writers themselves came up with, explained, and wrote stories consistent with a change to what was previously established in such a way that it feels almost like it was true the whole time.

An example of change that feels more unstable / inconsistent (to me) might be, say, the lore related Echo - what it is, what it comprises, why it provides immunity from tempering, and the implications on the world-setting. That feels less than smooth (to me) 1.x to 6.0 (especially between 4.0 to 6.0).

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

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No, no. The "retcon" didn't change anything. It's only for those who payed attention to past lore panels outside of the game. Nothing literally changed. Originally, umbral/darkness was associated with stillness and astral/light is associated with activity and life, that's found in the lore book probably or from Koji Fox's mouth. None of those concepts are ever brought up or used in-game until shadowbringers. Without establishing or even incorporating the mechanics beforehand, it absolutely made no difference what the definition of astral or umbral were other than they were one of the sides of polarity of any element. There wasn't any real plot twist when they finally established the physics of light and darkness for the first time in shadowbringer. Hydaelyn is finally defined as the goddess of stasis, but that's still literally the Light theme. The one with the newly defined definition of darkness is activity, it's still the god of Darkness affinity. Light crystals and dark crystals enemies are present in Occult Crescent, the latest content and they don't have switched visual themes. Ice being stated to be the element closest to Light is from the raid in Shadowbringers , yeah, obviously the story beats from the expansion that introduces the definition of astral and umbral for the first time is going to be in sync with the new narrative information. But it doesn't mean ice element is astral only. All the elements can have astral polarity as umbral polarity. That hasn't been retconmed out. Black Mage still has Umbral Ice after all (with zero explanation as to what that means, of course). It's just stated by Ryne who grew up education less so she can cosplay as Hydaelyn. That whole raid is constructed from her imagination where anything can happen, so I wouldn't really use that a source for anything

And true, Koji Fox did say the 7th umbral was the calamity of all the elements. But I don't think he ever said it was astral, but that's probably what he meant and what we all assumed. But again. It's never stated in the game. In Shadowbringers, they clarify visually it's the calamity of darkness. In the Exarch's house, you can clearly see the seventh reflection to collapse has darkness color themes going on. But it never contradicted what Koji said. It's still all the elements but this time it's umbral polarity. But since no one said what polarity was the 7th umbral, and there's no visual guide in existence before Shadowbringers, there's nothing to contradict

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Originally Posted by JepMZ

I don't think he ever said it was astral, but that's probably what he meant and what we all assumed. But again. It's never stated in the game. In Shadowbringers, they clarify visually it's the calamity of darkness. In the Exarch's house, you can clearly see the seventh reflection to collapse has darkness color themes going on.

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Originally Posted by Encyclopaedia Eorzea (Page 014)

Up until Dalamud's fall, many Sixth Astral Era scholars convinced themselves that the fact there had already been six Calamities – each representing one of the six elements – was proof that there could not be a seventh and that the Sixth Astral Era would last indefinitely. However, subsequent study of Garlean Empire legatus Nael van Darnus's Meteor project would eventually lead these scholars to the conclusion that the attack by Bahamut was indeed a Calamity, though one not represented by any one element, but rather consisting of all the elements charged astrally.

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Originally Posted by JepMZ

It's only for those who payed attention to past lore panels outside of the game. Nothing literally changed. Originally, umbral/darkness was associated with stillness and astral/light is associated with activity and life, that's found in the lore book probably or from Koji Fox's mouth. None of those concepts are ever brought up or used in-game until shadowbringers.

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I wouldn't argue that the distinction was a terribly meaningful factor in the game 2.0 to 4.0, but in 1.x (before the introduction of Light and Darkness), it was a bigger deal. It was Thaumaturge's entire identity.

The NPCs themselves spend the Shadowbringers explanation highlighting the ways Eorzea has things backwards - why bother having them say that if it was never an established part of the lore?

But I do agree that the explanation was only for a small subset of people paying attention to the nitty gritty; plenty of people wouldn't have even noticed there was a change to be explained away in the first place.

Personally I'm mad at the umbral/astral/light/dark reveal from a roleplaying perspective, because it's made it actually impossible to tell which one people mean when they first use it in conversation. I always need to ask for a clarification now, it's really annoying!

And it doesn't really add anything, it basically just exists to that Urianger can turn up having Learned A Thing in his intro scene.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

And it doesn't really add anything, it basically just exists to that Urianger can turn up having Learned A Thing in his intro scene.

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I remain suspicious that 100% of the added lore function/utility was: "Yoshida-san can table a 'Light Calamity' story without breaking any contemporary rules ('Calamities must be elemental - i.e. not primordial') or patterns ('all six elements and the astral polarity have already been used') that would make the nerdiest of lore nerds cry foul." (I mean, I would have cracked wise, probably, so ... well played, Oda-san!)

Similar to how I'm sitting here today curious why a second lightning calamity was on the Ascians' to-do list when it came to the Ninth. I can come up with my own excuses ("The planned astral calamity went off-balance and we got the element closest to Darkness instead!") but a little nod and/or lampshade to the oddity would be neat.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Similar to how I'm sitting here today curious why a second lightning calamity was on the Ascians' to-do list when it came to the Ninth. I can come up with my own excuses ("The planned astral calamity went off-balance and we got the element closest to Darkness instead!") but a little nod and/or lampshade to the oddity would be neat.

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I mean, my vibe on that one is simply 'there's only so many elements so they were gonna double up EVENTUALLY'.

If I'm really gonna nerd out there's a few extra arguments to bring in (namely 'we don't even know the list we've got is accurate, the Calamity of Wind is just an educated guess'), but that's kinda the big one to hit for me: with a plan that would eventually call for thirteen Calamities, and a setting that only has six elements, you're eventually gonna need to double dip.

I always assumed the plan was to double dip, just the opposite polarity. Like astral lighting vs. umbral lightning.

There's always the possibility that The Ninth was not part of the Ascian's plan, and something else messed it up.

7.3

Recent interviews with YoshiP suggest that the remaining Ascians are not going to be involved in a Rejoining-like plot so there could be other reasons for The Ninth's shift towards lightning. I might be wrong, but it was suggested that when The Thirteenth flooded with darkness, it caused a ripple effect to the other shards, corrupting them. It just might be the case with The Ninth, and the Ascians didn't bother with it because their focus was on the The First.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

'there's only so many elements so they were gonna double up EVENTUALLY'.

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I guess in my brain there's always been a ... "Doylist trapdoor" on that issue. In the current lore, is there any established (or even suggested) Watsonian reasoning for why the Ascians cycled the elemental wheel in the first place? To only do one of each? In order? To move to batched astral and umbral after the first set of six was complete? The fact that that's what happened felt very "because that's how the writers wanted the big picture mythology to look" (Thanks for the heads-up tho, Mezaya!) ... so I never even concerned myself with rejoinings beyond the eighth; it didn't feel like the writers would ever let that happen, anyway, lol.

But if we set aside the 30 year oscillation wobble and take the Ninth at its word that their calamity-scale war was about 1,000 years ago, the Ascians at that time were just moving past (wind, lightning, fire, earth, ice...) water (Sixth Umbral Era). Lightning being prepped then just sparks my curiosity from a Doylist perspective is all I was saying. Astral would end up being the ultimate winner. Was lightning being prepped for the next cycle? Was wind being prepped somewhere else? Or did an attempt to move things astrally just pool at lightning accidentally? (See Also: All the references to ice having the closest relationship with Light.)

I've had silly curiosities like this all along, and maybe about three-quarters of the time there's a contextual quotation somewhere that addresses it someday, if not right at the start.

The other 25% Oda-san just laughs and says, "Please do not think too hard about this." (Also fair.)

Why was your first crystal of Light always water regardless of where you started the story? [Because blue is the Final Fantasy brand-appropriate color; please don't overthink it.]

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

I guess in my brain there's always been a ... "Doylist trapdoor" on that issue. In the current lore, is there any established (or even suggested) Watsonian reasoning for why the Ascians cycled the elemental wheel in the first place? To only do one of each? In order? To move to batched astral and umbral after the first set of six was complete? The fact that that's what happened felt very "because that's how the writers wanted the big picture mythology to look" (Thanks for the heads-up tho, Mezaya!) ... so I never even concerned myself with rejoinings beyond the eighth; it didn't feel like the writers would ever let that happen, anyway, lol.

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I definitely dip into Doylist thought first and then backfill with Watsonian reasoning myself with these. So for me it always read as 'this is what we wanted the mythology to look/feel like', doubly so when you factor in, again, the fact this is literally the thought process behind the Calamity of Wind in-universe.

That said, there actually is an implied reasoning, I believe in one of the Emet-Selch Lodestone stories: it's mentioned that Ultima Weapon actually wouldn't have worked as a spark for another Rejoining, because another dark-aspected calamity that close to the last one just would've prolonged the effects instead of starting a whole new one. From that, we could reasonably intuit that the need for variety was that part of the Source's aspecting needs time to 'calm down', that they couldn't have just flooded the world thirteen times and called it there. But Ultima Weapon was always atypically soon for a Rejoining attempt anyway, so it's possible that wouldn't have been a factor for earlier Calamities.

I'm a bit late to this, but hopefully I can help elucidate upon some of these issues.

Let's start with the easy one. The Primals thing.

You're right that from all appearances, a Primal feeding on aether when aether doesn't seem to run out seems inconsistent, but there's two main factors to keep in mind. Firstly, a LOT of the "Primals will sap the land dry." mentality stems from in universe beliefs, at least some of which on this topic are pushed by the Garleans who are explicitely using the Burn as evidence, which is later explained to NOT be a result of aether being drained at all but rather it being stopped from flowing in, and the story about it being just propoganda to justify the conquests. The real issue from Primals, as demonstrated with the Eden raid series, is that they Aspect or Polarize aether to their associated aspects/polarity, which can lead to major issues in an environment. Remember, it was Eden forming and proceeding to do just that that led to everything else that happened in The First.

The next one is the Valigarmanda fires. This is actually a REALLY interesting case, because it ties into something that doesn't get talked about nearly enough, which is the impact that Regional faith has on the environment! Those fires are eternal because The local people believe that they are eternal. What I mean by that is that those fires, like Valigarmanda and other Tural Vidraal, or like Auspices, or Kami, or Tsukimogami, or Primals like the Twelve, are being influenced, and to an extent defined by, the collective regional faith of a whole region. in this case, the New World. Getting into the fine details on this one would necessitate an entire document on the matter (which is why i've been working on one.) so I won't go into fine detail right here, but if Valigarmanda were to be fully forgotten, and folks forgot the fires are supposed to be eternal, they'd likely go out. They're essentially enchantments that burn perpetually, rather than being "natural" fire.

As for the Voidsent and Sin eaters thing, you're actually right that there seems to be no loss of energy between them. their hunger is a result of an instinctive response to the aetherial imbalance they're formed by, but otherwise they don't NEED more aether to continue existing exactly, but they ARE noted to diminish in power over time if they don't feed SOMEWHERE. The fact they can reform after death given enough time is likely due to a reduction in the aetherial loss in the interim.

The rules aren't as inconsistent as you might think, they're just fed to us from a LOT of in-universe perspectives and views, and so are sprinkled all over hell and back rather than being any one collective place that'd be easy to parse. it's pain for those who don't spend hours researching it all, but for those of us who do, there's a lot more consistency than it looks at first glance. it's just SO NOT WELL LAID OUT. T.T

Also, on the Ninth thing, there's a LOT of uncertainty about the Ninth and the entire timeline surrounding it, even for those of us well versed in all the random bull that lore has. the Time dilation shenanigans of the Shards make it REALLY hard to say anything conclusive about the shards.

But the Storm Surge wasn't just lightning, it was also rain. Lots and lots of rain. We've had multiple instances referencing flooding that was occurring all over the 9th. The castle was fortified against the rising waters, and the past memory of Alexandria after the dome was erected was filled with water high enough to encompass whole buildings.
I would argue the lightning sickness might have been a bigger issue because of the rise of technology that relied entirely on ambient lightning aether. Water is *considered* more passive (oh hey, stasis) unless under the right conditions, while lightning is always volatile by nature. The tech they started using for everything, and even relied on for survival, was making them sick. I mean, it's not that far removed from how radium and LEAD used to be incredibly common in day-to-day products.

The first crystal is water blue as a brilliant masterstroke in long term foreshadowing, alluded to in 'Essences and Permutations - A Treatise of the Six Elements'. Within that text it states the following: - 'Lightning boils Water. Clearly a nod towards one certain scene which occurs post Dawntrail.
...Or perhaps just an amusing coincidence.
I'll uh, be takin' my leave now.