What happened to SB (story)?

[Cenerae]

The only two quibbles I have with the SB story are:

1) Zenos. We go from getting our asses kicked up and down Rhalgr's reach to casually marching in to his throne room and kicking his ass up and down it. At no point in the story do we look into any particular kind of training or devise a plan to deal with a man that's clearly far beyond our scope in power, and I don't buy the level gap as a reasonable excuse. Most of our campaigning involved kicking around Garlean mooks, that's hardly going to enable us to suddenly match someone who is presented as overwhelmingly powerful.

2) Shinryu. Pretty much the same as with Zenos...we are told that we can't possibly stand up to Shinryu and it's too powerful. We need to have Papalymo kill himself to buy time, and then sic Omega on it in the hopes that Omega will win. And yet we casually give this supposedly mighty monster the beatdown without a second thought, the moment it re-enters the story. So Papalymo's sacrifice was pointless, because obviously we were strong enough to fight the thing in the first place. And there was no need to risk everything on Omega behaving.

Again, there was no special preparations or tactics in play here. All we did was level from 60 to 70 without really pushing the WoL's limits at any point in the story save when Zenos gave us the beatdown twice. With no clever strategy or advantage in play, yet we suddenly just run these supposed bad asses over with a truck really breaks my immersion in the story.

I've already gotten over it, mind you, but hey.

[Vexander]

So Papalymo's sacrifice was pointless, because obviously we were strong enough to fight the thing in the first place. And there was no need to risk everything on Omega behaving.

I think the implication of the narrative was that as we progressed through the story, as we encountered new people, new problems, we grew stronger for it. So when Papalymo sacrificed himself, we were too weak. By the time we marched into the Royal Menagerie, we had a chance.

Also for conspiracy theorists, this adds up with the, 'The Warrior of Light brands all he meets and gains power from them.' We ran out of people to brand in Eorzea, so we found new strength in the Far East.

[Avatre]

1) Zenos. We go from getting our asses kicked up and down Rhalgr's reach to casually marching in to his throne room and kicking his ass up and down it. At no point in the story do we look into any particular kind of training or devise a plan to deal with a man that's clearly far beyond our scope in power, and I don't buy the level gap as a reasonable excuse. Most of our campaigning involved kicking around Garlean mooks, that's hardly going to enable us to suddenly match someone who is presented as overwhelmingly powerful.

This is basically why I feel that the story was rushed. Zenos should have been end of 4.1 or 4.2 boss. Everything just seemed...lacking. Was the story good, if otherwise rushed? Yes. Should it have been more flushed out with other concerns/situations? Definitely. Do I think I know why they did it? Probably because of all the people who non-stop complained about the mass amount of filler quests(yes, there were tons, but it could always have been worse...those quests helped build the story...if in a slightly annoying manner).

[Malzian]

2) Shinryu. Pretty much the same as with Zenos...we are told that we can't possibly stand up to Shinryu and it's too powerful. We need to have Papalymo kill himself to buy time, and then sic Omega on it in the hopes that Omega will win. And yet we casually give this supposedly mighty monster the beatdown without a second thought, the moment it re-enters the story. So Papalymo's sacrifice was pointless, because obviously we were strong enough to fight the thing in the first place. And there was no need to risk everything on Omega behaving.

For the fight with Zenos, all I can say is that we learned his secret when we fought Fordola, but I can't say how we exploited it. However, for Shinryu we can say 2 things for certain: 1) Omega did significant damage to Shinryu prior to us fighting him, therefore he was already somewhat weakened. 2) After Shinryu is beaten, Estinian specifically says that the eyes are almost completely empty, which means Shinryu was almost to the point of disappearing -anyway-, so therefore we just shoved him over the edge.

[Cenerae]

For the fight with Zenos, all I can say is that we learned his secret when we fought Fordola, but I can't say how we exploited it. However, for Shinryu we can say 2 things for certain: 1) Omega did significant damage to Shinryu prior to us fighting him, therefore he was already somewhat weakened. 2) After Shinryu is beaten, Estinian specifically says that the eyes are almost completely empty, which means Shinryu was almost to the point of disappearing -anyway-, so therefore we just shoved him over the edge.

After beating Fordola, we knew that Zenos had the same source of power. But we also needed a special device to weaken Fordola so we could best her in combat. We employed no special tactics against Zenos, we just beat him down like anyone else. Which implies that Fordola is far stronger than Zenos (which is not how the story presents it).

As for Omega damaging Shinryu heavily, I want to point out that a relatively long time went by in game time between Omega and Shinryu fighting, and us getting to fight Shinryu. It certainly didn't look very hurt when we went to battle it, and I doubt that it being imprisoned by the Garleans had done more than make it really angry.

I'll take your point about the eyes, though. Though I suspect that Shinryu would have tried to raid somewhere with a lot of crystals, were it running out of aether to stay corporeal.

[Malzian]

After beating Fordola, we knew that Zenos had the same source of power. But we also needed a special device to weaken Fordola so we could best her in combat. We employed no special tactics against Zenos, we just beat him down like anyone else. Which implies that Fordola is far stronger than Zenos (which is not how the story presents it).

As for Omega damaging Shinryu heavily, I want to point out that a relatively long time went by in game time between Omega and Shinryu fighting, and us getting to fight Shinryu. It certainly didn't look very hurt when we went to battle it, and I doubt that it being imprisoned by the Garleans had done more than make it really angry.

I'll take your point about the eyes, though. Though I suspect that Shinryu would have tried to raid somewhere with a lot of crystals, were it running out of aether to stay corporeal.

Actually, it was imprisoned by Omega, not the Garleans, and we don't know all the effects that field had on Shinryu. On top of that, all other Primals need worshipers to maintain themselves in addition to crystals, hence why Primals 'temper' people. Shinryu's initial "worshipers" all died before he was manifest and he didn't have time to put anyone under his sway.

For Zenos, I did say that I can't speak to how we exploited his weakness to overcome him, but we had already shown signs during the second encounter that we were starting to rise up to his level. Once more, there's a LOT we don't know about the Echo and how it actually works at this point and that really becomes our "plot armor" in the end.

[anzamoni]

After beating Fordola, we knew that Zenos had the same source of power. But we also needed a special device to weaken Fordola so we could best her in combat. We employed no special tactics against Zenos, we just beat him down like anyone else. Which implies that Fordola is far stronger than Zenos (which is not how the story presents it).

As for Omega damaging Shinryu heavily, I want to point out that a relatively long time went by in game time between Omega and Shinryu fighting, and us getting to fight Shinryu. It certainly didn't look very hurt when we went to battle it, and I doubt that it being imprisoned by the Garleans had done more than make it really angry.

I'll take your point about the eyes, though. Though I suspect that Shinryu would have tried to raid somewhere with a lot of crystals, were it running out of aether to stay corporeal.

Zenos vs Fordola, I don't think it implies that she is stronger than Zenos. Like we have seen powers the Echo can give varies wildly from the pedestrian understanding all language to flat out being able to become/control a primal. Where Fordola could see/feel disturbances in Aether to know what attack we were about to do without a trick it would've been a stalemate since our Echo gives us the same power essentially. Zenos' echo has yet to have been explained, it could be an entirely new form of the echo we are dealing with. Or it could be as simple as he is a battle hardened BA, and our journey to Level 70 along with our 3 'adventurer' companions were finally strong enough to over power him to the point where he needed to use his Echo.

Don't Primals also require fervent belief in them to maintain themselves as well? That is most likely why we defeated Shinryu, with everyone at the wall who 'believed' in the liberation of Ala Mihgo being mostly dead there are no faithful followers for him to feed on. Add into it that we don't exactly know how primals 'heal' perse. We saw that Bahamut needed the Coils not only to contain him but to restore himself, I don't recall reading anything about a primals ability to naturally heal itself like a physical being living being. I would assume it would need to absorb more aether which would require followers/crystals.