[Spoilers] I'm getting sick of shonen manga power-ups each arc

[Alleo]

Again I have said that they did that in the english version. I am just pointing out that it mostly dont exist in the german one and seeing how the english one sometimes likes to go out of their way to be funny then I wonder if that is simply just tongue in cheek because of the discussion that happened more than once already here on this forum. In the lore book which is from the view of a person living in Eozrea we dont have people with us in that cases. (If they wanted to make it canon which is fine, why did they choose in the lore book to make a difference between fights? Why have it stated that most primals were done solo, while other fights were with units of elite adventurers?) Why would they ignore these other really strong indiviualds like that? Why are the scions ignoring these other heroes?

In german with the susano fight Lyse and Alisaie simply say they they will hold them back while we go and defeat him. There is no mention of other adventurers and it makes sense that there are none. Where did they come from? Your Lakshimi example also reads mostly as humor for me. Somehow these adventurers which are never mentioned ingame know already that they need to help and are coming there on their own? How would that make sense.

Susanos info states that nobody can slay a primal alone, yet with other like Tsukuyomi, who is also a primal, we can slay her alone?

Ifrit with the cave makes no sense at all either. So they captured us but let us roam free? And somehow we use that to go outside the lake and not free the others too so that we can simply escape? And we escape, there is somehow a friendly NPC outside of it (what does he do there) and we also somehow find a whole group of adventurers with similiar strenght outside the cave that also have the echo, because at that time we did not know that they can temper. Then we go back inside with these people and instead of fighting there we wait until we are brought towards Ifrit? And somehow in the cutscene we are the only one not tempered? None of it makes sense with a group.

Thordan also makes no sense. We arrive on that unknown floating island after using one airship. The adventurers are not there. They are not in any cutscene afterwards. But suddenly with Thordan not only are 7 other people there (when the dungeon before that would only have 3 more) but Thordan only is scared about us again? Why? Shouldnt he be scared about all of them? (Especially with their magic of randomly being on a island which they have no knowledge of and could not just teleport there) And afterwards we simply peace out on Middys back and leave them all to die?

Beings like Omega are also done solo, seeing how Alpha only saves Cid and the WoL.

Shinryu would be strange too. First why should Zenos be happy if you bring three other people with you to fight him..(and still somehow just wants you alone to be his "friend") and then somehow a few minutes after he took over with Shinryu we are now 8 people. Were did these come from?

Also if we have such lovely and powerful echo users at our side that can come to our help no matter when and where, why did they not help with the steps of faith? Why did we need to go around trying to get help (many of them did not want to help out of fear) and then later have these very NPCs fight on our side (they are even for the first time shown in a cutscene at the end) when we have really powerful people that we know? Why did they not help there? Who are these? Why are they never mentioned ingame by any other NPC? Why do the scions only ever care about us when we are in dangerous situations and not all those others that would have been with us from the start?

In the end my whole point was: We have done quite some feats on our own, and the rise of our strenght against Ranjit so that we can suddenly defeat him while doing not much else, still does not make much sense to me..and honestly isnt that kinda boring too? That you know that no matter how strong that sudden out of nowhere NPC is, we will probably defeat him anyways.

[Jandor]

Adventurers not being in the cutscenes before or after doesn't really mean anything, your "adventurer friends" are actually a randomly assembled group created by the duty finder, it's probably just way too much effort to keep track of the most recent group you had so they can be inserted into your cutscenes.

In scenes where it easy to track, when they're in the instance with you, they generally do appear.

I'm not going to address every individual example there, because there isn't any real point is there? You're not going to suddenly go 'aha yes ok we had help' and I'm not going to go 'ok yes I guess we do solo most stuff'. Agree to disagree, I suppose.

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Ultimately I agree with your point anyway: Ran'jit was kinda underwhelming, good potential but ultimately not really that interesting.

[Gula]

Can someone name a JRPG that doesn't have shounen power ups?

[Iscah]

I think it's inherent to the long-running nature of the plot. We already powered up, the only things that can possibly threaten us have to be equally or more powerful than us, and then we have to beat those things. New expansion, new threat, and the cycle repeats.

If anything can be a "reset button" on our ever-increasing power level, I think it would have to be whatever lies at the end of the Hydaelyn vs Zodiark story. Something that brings us down to normal and not cosmically powerful.

Then perhaps any future expansions beyond it can start over with a less reality-threatening conflict.

[LineageRazor]

Is it just because we're the protagonist? If so, that expectation of complete and immediate plot armor seems a larger betrayal than the mere fact that we might otherwise have to deal with foes stronger than ourselves.

Unfortunately, yes, and this is something that's had me rolling my eyes from day one of ARR. As boring and poorly-written a character as Zenos might be, the character of the WoL is just as bad. Dig up the most terrible of self-insert fanfiction, and you'll see a lot of similarities between how the characters in those stories react to the self-insert and how the characters in FFXIV react to us. The characters, the plot, the world - all of them bend and warp under our gravity. We do the impossible six times a day before breakfast. Our allies ooh and ahh at our every action, and our enemies fear and respect us. Even the things we CRAFT are masterworks, practically from our very first ingot or scrap of leather.

It's almost unsurprising, then, that a character developed to be Our Great Rival is SIMILARLY super OP. The only reason I (grudgingly) give our character a pass while I flambe Zenos at every opportunity is that player-as-superman is one of the core concepts of this game. I may not like it, but it's been stated outright that the story design is INTENDED to make the player feel like a paragon among paragons. Additionally, as the player character, my background is up for me to choose - the game is sensibly reluctant to make assumptions about the character the player has created, so I can fill in the blanks however I want. I could be a cartoonishly bad self-insert, sure, but I could also come of with reasons why I'm so over-the-top.

Zenos doesn't get that pass. The writers have full control over him, unlike the WoL. And what we've seen that they've come up for him has been... weak at best. I'll admit, though, that it can be tough to come up with a convincing opponent for Superman.

[Iscah]

Even the things we CRAFT are masterworks, practically from our very first ingot or scrap of leather.

Oh my goodness, I got so sick of that.

It's fine that we're some kind (or all kinds) of combat expert, seeing as that's necessary to the main plot, but do we really need to be an exceptional crafter as well? Can't we just be an average guild member doing interesting story-driving but not monumental things?

[QT_Melon]

Oh my goodness, I got so sick of that.

It's fine that we're some kind (or all kinds) of combat expert, seeing as that's necessary to the main plot, but do we really need to be an exceptional crafter as well? Can't we just be an average guild member doing interesting story-driving but not monumental things?

Well, I mean I can see that though. If we're going to be able to craft and gather what good is it where we're bringing in mediocre stuff if there are quests for it. "Oh hey it's the mediocre WoL as a crafter, let's just humor him/her" especially if they're side quests we don't even have to participate in at all. We may as well be good at it.

Though at level 1 I think they should have had it where we had a cutscene montage of us failing a lot and then later having a success. Showing us that we were really bad, but practice made us better :P

Since the WoL is a self insert character expect a Mary Sue/Gary Stu character we can add in our own flavor but that's why a majority of the characters are adventure sexual towards us letting us build our own head canons on how much *into* our side characters are.

Zenos is a character that was offered multiple times where further development of his character could have been more interesting. His body hopping could have offered us a chance to see inside his head in a different body than conveniently showing up later in the story. Obviously, people are definitely into a more humanizing aspect of characters which is why once we got past the WTF of Emet just appearing everywhere towards the end of Stormblood, into a very passionate character in Shadowbringers.

But this is also a problem with the format where content is released in 3 months, but little to forward the story (which I kinda feel would help if they allowed a few cutscenes here and there that gave more character background like finding NPCs in patches that instead of word dumping actually gave a small cutscene flashback to give background on certain major characters).

[Iscah]

Well, I mean I can see that though. If we're going to be able to craft and gather what good is it where we're bringing in mediocre stuff if there are quests for it. "Oh hey it's the mediocre WoL as a crafter, let's just humor him/her" especially if they're side quests we don't even have to participate in at all. We may as well be good at it.

There's a long way between "mediocre" and "so brilliant you've surpassed the guildmaster within a week". I'm fine with being good at it, but I don't need to be the greatest ever.

[MrThinker]

There's a long way between "mediocre" and "so brilliant you've surpassed the guildmaster within a week". I'm fine with being good at it, but I don't need to be the greatest ever.

I guess you really dislike the Culinarian story then :P

Outside of that, the other crafter classes where it is expressed that we are of comparable or greater skill to the actual guildmasters are Goldsmith, Armourer and Blacksmith. I feel the other 4 (CRP, ALC, LTW & WVR) however imply that while we are good, the actual guildmasters still hold some greater level of mastery over us.

[QT_Melon]

There's a long way between "mediocre" and "so brilliant you've surpassed the guildmaster within a week". I'm fine with being good at it, but I don't need to be the greatest ever.

I'm not saying I agree with us being on top of everything. I just see it as a story standpoint why they went that route. I mean, crafting is end game to people due to a more complex system than other games (though it's been simplified even more now).