LET ME MARRY MY RETAINER!!!!

[Archaell]

Why would we waste resources on something like this? O_O

I don't understand what could possibly some NPC give you that other players can't...

Spending time together? Players can do that. Personality? Players can roleplay. Looks? Players can fantasia (Funny story I actually look like one of the retainers of my ex). Relationship? Players can not just do that they can also eRP and even more.

Maybe I should ask the question. What do you expect from the NPC that players can't do?

Try to persuade me to like the idea. Why would we need a dating sim when the game is used by many players as a dating site? It would actually make more sense to support the "dating game" with new features for the real eternal bond partners rather than focusing on marriages with NPCs.

[Lokier]

@Archaell

I can't speak for everyone here but I don't have any interest in dating anyone from a video game, I'd much rather marry a retainer. Said retainer can be anyone I want them to be, there's no real person to piss off, judge me or irritate me. If I don't feel like talking I've no obligation to, if I'm not in the mood for FFXIV anymore I'm not leaving anyone behind (besides maybe a few people I met in-game, but then I'd just hand over my Skype or FB details to keep in touch.)
I've played the dating game with real people in video games, it's not as great as people seem to think it is, it really isn't.

But that's just my personal preferences, and why I'd instantly choose an AI boyfriend / girlfriend over a real person when it comes to MMOS...

I am looking to marry a real person for the EB ceremony though, I need more people to do shit with. .-. But again, that's with no intention to actually date anyone either. It'd be a friendship marriage, lol.

I think it's the same as finding cartoon / 3D men more attractive than real men (which I constantly find myself doing), some people just find that weird and don't connect like that with a fictional character.

[Archaell]

....

Dating someone in a video game isn't the same thing as dating someone from a video game. There are many levels of dating/roleplaying. My main point is that anything NPC can do can also a player do. Of course it may take a while to find exactly the player you are looking for but it is possible. You can find a person willing to be what you want them to be, you can find a person that is unable to get pissed off due to their personality, you can find a person that is not judging you and neither irritating you. There are also people which would leave you alone if you needed space and also people who would let you go on a whim. Tho if you found the person witch all these qualities in pure form I doubt you would ever leave lol :P

The dating game is fun, it just requires a good match. I would not give up on that yet - and that's coming from someone who got eternally divorced with a perfect match. ^.^ (well clearly she was not so perfect, after the initial fun wore off)

I think it's the same as finding cartoon / 3D men more attractive than real men (which I constantly find myself doing), some people just find that weird and don't connect like that with a fictional character.

In my opinion this is logical. 3D men usually don't have flaws and when they do these flaws are used to enhance their attractiveness. They also work due to the main heroine syndrome - basically that the player would want to live in a fantasy world assuming they would get all the girls and special abilities like the main character does.

Because not everyone wants to marry other players, it might work for some but it does not for all and I definitely prefer my retainers than some stranger online!...

Love SIM in this game would be awesome, they just have to give options for everyone, like in real life which is the whole point of it!...

The people stop being strangers when you get to know them ^^ Eternal bond isn't the same thing as the rl marriage and it's not even eternal lol

As I said, love sim is in my opinion much better with actual players. So many endless possibilities that no NPC can provide.

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Idk, the eternal bonds are a great way to promote social behavior and this feature seems like it would promote the anti-social one. It's MMORPG, not a single player RPG, yet some players are trying their best to avoid the other people... maybe we should have some NPC in-game that would help players to make friends.

[SigmaOZ]

?

Because not everyone wants to marry other players, it might work for some but it does not for all and I definitely prefer my retainers than some stranger online!...

Love SIM in this game would be awesome, they just have to give options for everyone, like in real life which is the whole point of it!...

[Magic-Mal]

.

The reason why I believe promoting the "dating game" is a bad idea is because some, want to escape having to deal with it being a dating game lol. Simply because many times it goes very wrong once that wedding happen.. The "dating game" becomes a real thing to usually one of the spouses then problems start.

There are many many many that say they want to marry for friendship and that only. Does not necessarily mean they can have a deeper relationship.. it's more out of caution. Because people taking marriages too seriously is extremely common imo. There's a reason why many female posters in the hook-up thread here say "No IRL" in their posts

Promoting the dating game can promote that bad behavior.

[Archaell]

...

Everything where two people are interacting can promote the bad behavior :P I am just saying it makes more sense to expand the options for the people who are already eternal bonded / or playing the dating game on whatever difficulty they prefer, rather than to introduce NPC marriages.

There are many many many that say they want to marry for friendship and that only. Does not necessarily mean they can have a deeper relationship.. it's more out of caution. Because people taking marriages too seriously is extremely common imo. There's a reason why many female posters in the hook-up thread here say "No IRL" in their posts

The reason is that females are evil and males emotional crybabies :P It's a little bit amusing that the sexist notion is that males push for the iRL part. Why? The women were always believed to be the emphatic and emotional sex. lol

Personally I do take the eternal bond seriously - in-game. I am not gonna be having fun in another girl's chocobo house while bonded etc. But it's important to set up the rules clearly and follow them. I see it a lot that player A is flirting with player B all the time and then they are surprised when the other one starts to like them too much.

In my opinion a lot of issues come from the "no-irl" being in the post, yet the player actually hoping for something more and not enforcing the "no-irl" part afterwards...

Like any other multiplayer task it requires certain level of cooperation and it's important to understand that not all the players are there to cater to you and it takes some trial and error. Atm. the eternal bond is pushing players to interact with others which I find awesome. Were there an option to avoid that I bet it would affect the current EB and prevent many friendships from being made.

[Lokier]

snip

Couldn't respond last night, ran out of forum posts. Stupid limit!

This song > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4gPZPKJc0s

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They'll never understand our love, Haurchefant.

[LineageRazor]

*stuff*

While I have no objections to expanding options for the current Eternal Bond system, I think that that and this proposed NPC dating sim simply cannot be compared in any meaningful way. You can discuss all the ways that they could be similar all you want, but what it boils down to is this:

Eternal Bond involves real human beings, while NPC dating sim involves programmed waifus/husbandos.

With Eternal Bond, your partner is a REAL PERSON with real needs and feelings. NPCs are not. Real people have schedules and real-life obligations. NPCs do not. It's the whole reason you have freaks popping up in Japan insisting that 2D women are better than 3D women - there is no danger of hurting, or being hurt by a fantasy character.

I'm sure that folks in this thread are aware that the option exists to pair up with a real person via Eternal Bond, but that is not the fantasy they're trying to satisfy here. They want an in-game waifu or husbando that is always there for them at their convenience, has no needs that are not easy to satisfy, can never hurt or be hurt - an idealized fantasy romance. No matter how you might roleplay with your Eternal Bond partner, that's simply not something that you can achieve, because humans are humans, and humans are not ideal.

[Archaell]

...

It's going to cost resources and affect the eternal bonds.

Were this implemented we would have two options 1)Eternal Bond with a player 2)Being served NPC without free will ("Of course I want to eternal bond with you, I am programmed that way")

Players tend to seek the path of least resistence and that is in this case the option 2)

By allowing players to eternal bond with NPCs it's going to make life even harder for people who don't want to spend time with scripted slave, and discourage players on the fence from even trying to look for a real person - because instant gratification.

What about the eternal bond booking? Are the solo weddings going to eat space in these? It's already difficult to find a good time for the bond, and that's two players per a slot.

What about the eternal bond items? Are you going to expect getting these for half price - it happens a lot that one player pays the bills.

What about players with real EB partners? Will they have to unbond to use this feature? Or will they be able to cheat on their partner?

The player bond and NPC bond are connected and it affects the social behavior of the player base.

[LineageRazor]

*stuff*

Of course it's going to cost resources - any new feature added to the game is going to. However, it doesn't have to affect Eternal Bonds - and if it were added it most likely wouldn't. There's nothing that says you have to marry your NPC in the same cathedral as the current player Eternal Bonds do - and even if you did, it's not the case that it would have to work the same way. It could simply be a cutscene, rather than actually reserving the instance.

As for discouraging players from looking for a real person - that kind of thing was never encouraged in the first place. It's an option available for players who want it, not an in-game goal that SE wants players to try to accomplish. Your statements make it sound as though you believe that finding an Eternal Bond partner is something that every player should be trying to do, and that this addition would "distract" them from finding a proper partner. That is simply not the case.

Again, I need to emphasize that these are two completely different things. Players who want to hook up with a waifu/husbando and players who want an Eternal Bond with a player have completely different desires they're trying to fulfill. It's as ridiculous as accusing a married man who plays a dating sim as being unfaithful to his wife. In fact, if "marry-an-NPC" were added to the game, I strongly suspect that a large number of Eternally Bonded players would explore that content as well. They would not feel as though they were being unfaithful to their Bond partner - because they're not. An NPC is a chunk of computer code, not a real mate, even if they're programmed to act like one.

Edit: To sum up, NPC marriage should not be thought of as a replacement for Eternal Bond. It and Eternal Bond are not competing features. They are separate features. Some players may be interested in one but not the other, some will be interested in both, and some in neither. They do not need to compete for resources (and probably won't), with the possible exception of competing for developers' attention - but that kind of competition exists for ANY feature as whiners on the forums will be happy to inform you. ("Why did the devs waste time on X when they could have been doing Y???") Eternal Bond, though, is pretty much a complete product as it is, and there's no reason developers need to add more to it at this point, so even there, it's not competing with NPC marriage.