The WOL and Mass Murder

[Tridus]

Now then... the main issue is that our primary way to interact with the game world is "kill stuff". You kill stuff to level, to progress quests, and in general to do nearly everything. The body count is staggering, but most of them are nameless random things. If you added them all up, though?

In the real world, the WoL would be seen as a lunatic lethal weapon that has to be kept on a tight leash all the time because of their penchant for killing everything in sight. Because in the real world, the primary way of interacting is NOT killing things. You don't gather fleece by eradicating the local population of sheep. You do in the game. So there's a mandatory suspension of disbelief that the game mechanics that require killing tons of pointless stuff effectively don't count in your reputation.

I tend to think the only way you'd see things turn against us in Eorzea is if we start acting overly independently. It's a cozy relationship with the leaders right now. We're their unstoppbable super weapon, and we more or less go along with what they like us to do... even when the problem is at least partially self inflicted (see: Limsa and the Kobolds). We take sides, and the side we take is theirs. They're pretty happy with that and will not toss out their super weapon.

If we ever started acting independently, though? That would be a different story entirely. A WoL that has no problem telling the leaders of Eorzea that they're wrong and refusing to help because of that would be seen by said leadership has far more of a threat, and that's when they might decide we're more trouble than we're worth.

[Alleo]

Now then... the main issue is that our primary way to interact with the game world is "kill stuff". You kill stuff to level, to progress quests, and in general to do nearly everything. The body count is staggering, but most of them are nameless random things. If you added them all up, though?

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The problem is that we look at this from a gameplay perspective which means that someone could have killed over 200k enemies to get that one achievement but that would not make sense if you look at the main story. And if we want to find out if we are truly a mass murderer than we have to see it from story point. Which makes it not very easy too since we dont even know if we truly kill all the things or knock them out. Are there really so many monsters/people in a dungeon? I mean we had a few test or training dungeons where we normally should not have killed anything at all. So how many did we really kill? In the end murder is still seen as bad in Eorzea (Raubahn murdering that Lala for example) so killing people in battle or for self defense is not that bad otherwise we would have been punished by now. At the same time most of our kills go towards monsters. A lot of the story dungeons have monsters in them and I am quite sure that this would not be murder.

Also I know that your picture was meant as funny (and it is) but our WoL has shown quite a lot of emotions especially in dungeon against human bosses. We did not smile when we had to kill Edda so the WoL does feel quite the emotions too.

What would the city states truly do if we refused their help (which we could)? Suddenly say that all of our past actions are somehow wrong? Why would they kill us or try to imprison us? What if a worse enemy was on the run which is the reason why we could not help them? I can just never see Raubahn, Nanamo or Aymeric turn on us. Not only did we do something personal for them but we also helped saved their countries more than once or were the reason that their country still exist at all. Gridania might turn if the elementals would want us death but why would they? The only reason I would accept them betraying us would be something truly horrible from the WoL himself. Or if we need to sacrifice a state or something. But I am not sure if our WoL would ever be in such a situation.

Its worse than you know. Soldiers returning from warzones are often afflicted with PTSD simply from witnessing the horrors of war. As the WoL, we have died HUNDREDS of times and while we may be restored, we still carry the memory of each death. Combine that with the fact that we sometimes stay awake for Eorzean weeks at a time (3 hrs = about 10 eorzean days), and the fact that we have seen SO. MUCH. DEATH. We’ve seen our friends die, beastmen summoning monsters that would give any normal person nightmares for the rest of their lives, witnessed war, famine, rape, and, possibly the most cruel of all, all the people we couldnt save. Point is, despite the stabilizing influence of the operator on the other side of the screen, I think every single warrior of light has long since gone completely insane, just waiting for the right moment when the players’ attention stays to snap entirely.

Gameplay mechanics =/ story. We as the story WoL never died. Heck they even use the echo as a reason for our ingame "deaths". All of our failures are just visions of what could have happen but the WoL itself never died. Things like times never should be factored in this because you could also argue that the WoL never sleeps at all. Or that we are still living in a time bubble even after ARR, HW and SB (and even though it will take months to reach Kugane from Eorzea)

Also the WoL does suffer from stuff which is the point of the dark knight but at the same time they bear the burden and carry on because they also know that they are the last hope of the mother crystal. The journey did leave some marks on the WoL which can be seen in his behavior but he seemingly also handle stuff much better too.

I dunno? I didn't say it had to be US? Just that something got invented. I'm pretty sure that in a world where tempering can happen that somebody would always been trying to think of a way to reverse it. Try not to get stuck on only that though, like I said I'm no writer nor a lorehound. Other reasons for public opinion turning could be found.

But they told us that people tried to find a way to "cure" them but that they are not successfull. The problem is that they cant just simply put them away somewhere and nothing will happen. Give those people a bit of crystal or let them break free and suddenly you have another primal at your door..and unlike now where they have the WoL, a summon of another primal mostly meant the death of a huge amount of people. If this was truly a disease that just affected the person then they would have probably left them alive but the risk is way too high.

[BillyKaplan]

Which makes it not very easy too since we dont even know if we truly kill all the things or knock them out.

That's a good point, yet the story is very fickle about that. They sometimes explicitly say you killed people and a plot battle can go either way (Nero being alive, Gaius' other henchmen, not so much), but sometimes they outright say you didn't intend to kill them (BLM 50-60 quest where you end up killing them because they were in bad health to begin with, but the implication is that you were holding back and only meant to neutralize the threat).
Thing is, it's enough to take this one example to say that maybe we ALWAYS mean to just knock them out, in which case unless stated explicitly, we haven't killed anyone - which really reduces the body count. And also makes us all the more hotshots at what we do because damn, that's some skill required to do that.

[KaivaC]

snip

Which brings up the question (story and gameplay segregation), how exactly do you knock somebody out if you're a mechanist. I'm going down the route of wild mass guessing, but you can't exactly knock somebody out if you're shooting them with bullets, or using Flamethrower. This might be skirting a little too closely to our reality however.

[BillyKaplan]

Which brings up the question (story and gameplay segregation), how exactly do you knock somebody out if you're a mechanist. I'm going down the route of wild mass guessing, but you can't exactly knock somebody out if you're shooting them with bullets, or using Flamethrower. This might be skirting a little too closely to our reality however.

Hard to keep them alive if you're slashing at them with a great-axe, or even if you're shooting fireballs at them. This is one of those places where gameplay stands apart from the story, but as is always the case, the story wins over the gameplay and you just need to hope your suspension of disbelief is strong enough.

[KaivaC]

snip

True. I appreciate the gameplay and story segregation. But going down this little tree on a more serious note, I suppose it could be argued that Eorzeans in general are more resilient than we are, given that even the ladybugs, squirrels, and lambs could easily kill many NPCs who happen to be wondering around and accidentally aggro them. If we were to take just storyline body counts by our own hands, I think it might be comparable to what Zenos did during his reign.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Which brings up the question (story and gameplay segregation), how exactly do you knock somebody out if you're a mechanist. I'm going down the route of wild mass guessing, but you can't exactly knock somebody out if you're shooting them with bullets, or using Flamethrower. This might be skirting a little too closely to our reality however.

1. Machinist
2. Plenty of ways to shoot someone non-lethally, plus we've seen Y'shtola take a katana cut and live. We took a sword wave and lived. Eorzea's a fantasy realm; I'm sure there are degrees of force that can be applied, otherwise everything a Black Mage, Red Mage, Samurai, Warrior, and Dark Knight might do is just lethal. As said before, suspension of disbelief is definitely due here. Overdue at this point.

[Delily]

This premise of this thread is a person trying to take his morality and view of murder and apply it to an environment that is not appropriate. Eorzea is a violent place. Even if a person is not an adventurer, he's going to need some basic combat skills because the realm is filled with monsters that want to kill him, or bandits seeking him. Beyond that, there's the constant threat of the beastmen and their primals as well as the Garlean military. Death is a part of the peoples' lives. No one is going to hold the WoL to account because no one considers him a murderer. If the beastmen or the Garlean Empire captured us, sure they'd execute us, but a prisoner of war and some form of judgement.

The conjurer quests dealt with this issue, since the girl wasn't willing to hurt anything. The conclusion was the elementals themselves mandated she has to, because she has to defend as well as heal. The DRK quests touched a bit on this, but it's not because we've killed people, its because we've had to kill so many people, since we're always fighting.

[Rokke]

The conjurer quests dealt with this issue, since the girl wasn't willing to hurt anything. The conclusion was the elementals themselves mandated she has to, because she has to defend as well as heal.

The WHM quests had nothing to do with damage vs. healing. The little girl wanted to heal using her own aether instead of drawing from nature. As that is lethal, you spend the entirety of the early quest line showing her that you can borrow form nature without damaging it :I


Haven't finished DRK quests yet, but so far its been my WoL being torn over being tired of helping everyone and yet still wanting to help everyone. Also moogle punching.

[Pells]

But they told us that people tried to find a way to "cure" them but that they are not successfull. The problem is that they cant just simply put them away somewhere and nothing will happen. Give those people a bit of crystal or let them break free and suddenly you have another primal at your door..and unlike now where they have the WoL, a summon of another primal mostly meant the death of a huge amount of people. If this was truly a disease that just affected the person then they would have probably left them alive but the risk is way too high.

Even keeping the tempered imprisoned isn't good; leaving them alive makes it easier for the ones who are free to summon a primal. Faith is nearly as important as crystals, when it comes to summoning.