Gripes with Starting City and storyline

[Bombast]

What your complaining about is essential what every other sour RPer is complaining about - that FF14 is unable to accommodate your head canon. And there's no way to fix that, without simply removing the Warrior of Light from the story completely.

At no point during any story did anyone's Warrior of Light become a citizen of any nation - We're all wandering adventurers with no actual ties to Eorzea. So no ones got our backs. The closest we ever come to citizenship is our choice of Grand Companies, not our starting city, and even your standing with them is largely honorary - Your just a trusted merc to them.

[Cilia]

I'm not even asking for branching quests or story paths. I'm asking that at the very least my faction leader and others in the story make even a gesture of recognizing me as a Gridanian citizen. Simple dialogue tweaks, which the game can easily settle for.

This is something that bothers me in MMO's, why make people choose a starting city if it will not have any effect on their identity. Same as race, it becomes hollow and cosmetic when the idea behind all these races is to explore their culture.

To be fair, we were never granted citizenship in the city-state we arrived at. We joined the Adventurer's Guild and prevented a local debacle; nothing was ever mentioned about official citizenship. I'd rather not deal with the immigration forms anyway.

In regards to why they can't add special dialogue to certain cutscenes, it's (probably) because adding new or different dialogue based on something rather arbitrary isn't fair. "But the acting ACN guildmaster and Estinien had different dialogue in 2.5.5 depending on how far you've advanced ACN and DRG!" you say? That's within your control. The city-state you start at is largely arbitrary - it's dependent on your starting class, nothing else - while you can choose to do or ignore ACN and LNC/DRG. You have to join a Grand Company, though, and giving special privileges and dialogue to members of the Maelstrom or Twin Adder wouldn't be fair to people in the Immortal Flames.

Simply put... your starting city is largely cosmetic, as is your race. The starting city is determined solely by your starting class (I was under the assumption you immigrated to [City-State] because it had the guild for your class, not the other way around), and race was largely an aesthetic choice from the start. If they don't do it that way you'd see the same race/class combinations all the time - nothing but Lalafell BLMs and Elezen DRGs, f'ex - which gets old quick.

[Xenosan]

For me it's the apparent (ir)relevance of Grand Companies.

As hyped and inclusive as Merlwyb, Kan-E-Senna, and Raubahn appear, in truth they are little more than tertiary characters in ARR.

If they added the FFXI Signet + Region Influence element to Heavensward zones that could be interesting, but really at present only Frontlines PVP provides a sort of faction identity.

[Rannie]

Would you happen to have a quest name for that? I've been digging for any indication that time moves instead of just passes a la the "Simpsons Bubble," and I haven't found anything as concrete as "It's been one year since the game started."

so bad news and good news anonymoose. Bad news is it doesn't make mention to what Minfilia says in the journal or in cutscenes. Good news is I'm 2 levels away to 50 on my alt character so I will be getting a screen shot of it to show you as soon as I possibly can. I was talking to some friends of mine and they vaguely remember her mentioning the time passage as well. But I've made it my mission to get it for you.

[Anonymoose]

But I've made it my mission to get it for you.

Why, thank you! Some of the specifics about how the canon flows remain rather unknown. At least 2.55 taught us a nice chunk of it.

[Rannie]

I know and I remember when I read it ... I thought well hell the Lore mongers Anonymoose and the others are going to have a field day with this and nothing happened so i was more like o.0 but I promise i will get it even if it kills me. Cause my theory is the time line is at most 2 years and no less than a year

[Dualblade]

It would be no more than a year for sure, though it would be nice to see if it is actually said in the game itself.

[MXMoondoggie]

Not this one again. Even if you take out the one size fits all that has to exist in MMO storylines the reason you are claiming asylum in Ishgard is because they are a neutral territory that you have some good will and standing with due to the Scions assistance provided in their war with the Dravianians. Gridania can not harbour somebody who is a criminal in Ul'dah because of the alliance. It's politics. The alliance protects all three cities they want Ishgard to join because of it's strength but it hasn't yet which means it can do what it wants and nobody would make war on Ishgard because they want relations the same as why Gridania would not risk a conflict with Ul'dah and fracture the alliance. They have to think of their own people they say as much even if they want to get involved. Is it fair to drag a whole city state into a war over one person who has not been on trial for their supposed crime?

The main reason the Scions are fleeing to Ishgard is because they know they would be safe to figure out what is happening while nobody else could touch them.Some peoples head cannon is full of special snowflake syndrome. "I aided Gridania so they should all lay down their lives to defend me"

[Belhi]

Considering the importance of our characters political neutrality, overblowing our faction connection would be counterproductive to the story. If we were heavily pro Limsa or Gridania it would effect the ability for the other city states to trust us with their affairs and they do trust us with very delicate matters. We had a whole story point in the first patch going into the importance of remaining neutral and not be seen as favouring one group or another.

[axemtitanium]

If you wanted to be strictly lore-adherent, Duskwights would not be allowed to start in Gridania and male Miqo'te would not be allowed to be created at all. Obviously that would go against the goals of freedom of player expression, so in exchange for that freedom, you must tolerate a main scenario questline that does not cater to your special snowflake story.