A thing or two about Werlyt

[MoofiaBossVal]

I do consider what he did at the Waking Sands to be something most people would do at war. Taking advantage of an opportunity. How many times have we sneaked in small groups somewhere and killed lots of people on the opposite side, really? Yes, we are the good guys here because we are not conquering imperialists, but in the end, using that tactic alone does not make him any eviler. These are other things that make him the villain, but sending soldiers to dispatch an enemy HQ is not one of them( must I remind anyone the assaults on Castrum Abania, or how Fordola got captured, these were basically us assaulting strongholds on the opposite side).

I believe that this is one of the failings of FFXIV, though there are few reasons behind this.

FFXIV is structured as a WoW style MMO, and during ARR and Heavensward the quests were structured as such. They pretty much boiled down to "accept quest, go here, kill X, talk to next NPC, watch cutscene, end quest, accept next quest". It wasn't until the Heavensward patches that they really began to eschew that, though the structure is still there. But Garlemald wasn't created during the HW patches. It was created in 1.0. They were created to provide a lore justification for a large number of fodder enemies to fight in an MMO. I guarantee you that the writers were not thinking about the moral implications of the player character casually killing untold numbers of humanoid enemies, because a nuanced story was simply not what they were focusing on. That came later. Had FFXIV not been structured like an MMO, and had the writers who came later been writing Garlemald since the beginning, Garlemald would have almost certainly not been created to just to be evil fodder you kill and forget about. I suppose it's a testament to the current team that this flaw is one of the few glaring faults in FFXIV's story that I can find and that they unfortunately can't really shake off, but it is nonetheless still a fault.

[EliTheGunbreaker]

I believe that this is one of the failings of FFXIV, though there are few reasons behind this.

FFXIV is structured as a WoW style MMO, and during ARR and Heavensward the quests were structured as such. They pretty much boiled down to "accept quest, go here, kill X, talk to next NPC, watch cutscene, end quest, accept next quest". It wasn't until the Heavensward patches that they really began to eschew that, though the structure is still there. But Garlemald wasn't created during the HW patches. It was created in 1.0. They were created to provide a lore justification for a large number of fodder enemies to fight in an MMO. I guarantee you that the writers were not thinking about the moral implications of the player character casually killing untold numbers of humanoid enemies, because a nuanced story was simply not what they were focusing on. That came later. Had FFXIV not been structured like an MMO, and had the writers who came later been writing Garlemald since the beginning, Garlemald would have almost certainly not been created to just to be evil fodder you kill and forget about. I suppose it's a testament to the current team that this flaw is one of the few glaring faults in FFXIV's story that I can find and that they unfortunately can't really shake off, but it is nonetheless still a fault.

I feel like you are missing my point. Not only do the examples I provided come from Stormblood, which is when the game already was past it's crisis, and also the aforementioned DRK quests actually tackle the player killing lots of people. The devs do not do it because "they don't care and it's a format flaw". It is clear that they know the player killing people is a thing and, touched upon the subject in different content, and continue doing so. My last post was not even about why or how Garlemald was created out of universe, in the end the point still stands that the player and their NPC allies have killed lots of people in-universe, by the same methods that you seem to condemn in the bad guys, making said condemnation pointless. This isn't limited to FFXIV either. How many heroic characters in fiction are seen raiding enemy strongholds? If we condemn every character in fiction that raided an enemy stronghold and killed lots of people and believe them to be eviler than the others in their setting for that fact alone( even when the other characters do the same), then most Star Wars characters should be condemned, and a lot of other characters in fantasy/ science fiction works that portray war. Because surprise, people do that shit when at war.

Like I said, Gaius has plenty of misdeeds. But talking how horrible him sending Livia to raid the Waking Sands is when the WoL's superiors do the exact same thing is a bit hypocritical, don't you think?