Discrepancy in lore (spoilers)

[Vyrerus]

Magitek armor can be captured, doesnt mean you see the Eorzean alliance using Reapers en masse, heck Garlean troops have instrutions to blow them up if capture is inevitable.

Elidibus is a freaking Ascian/Primal sorta thing, losing some of Zenos original skill doesnt mean squat when he can simply can go Palpatine mode in Vader's body.He can easily compensate that then add even more accounting his personal power.

Yoshi P words like it or not carry more weight than any of the headcanon we sometimes see here, and since Stormblood it hasnt been denied so its what we have, and no matter if Guts part is a tongue in cheek joke or not, the rest of the graph stands true since it compares against characters from FF14, and someone like Raubahn that is now considerable weaker than the Wol is considered a monster in the setting even despite losing an arm, and of Hien and co managed to not being killed against Elizenos mean they are cut above from the average fighter considering normal soldiers were like flies to Zenos

We see Eorzeans and Non-Eorzeans using captured Magitek more and more readily, the more they make content where we directly clash with the empire. Hell, the Bozjans were able to capture a Tunnel Armor and repurpose it to break down a castrum gate.

You either haven't played 5.3, or you're just arguing for the sake of argument. Elidibus can't replicate Zenos's real power. Period. The only way he's stronger than him is when he gets WoL devotees en masse.

Yoshi P is human just like us. If what he says doesn't make sense, it can be disregarded or at the very least questioned.

As far as Hien being a cut above normal soldiers, of course he is, but a cut above Eorzeans or other Domans is different than a cut above Garleans. Notice how every Shinobi in the sky cavalry scene is riding a Yol? That means they were all strong enough by story standards to best Bardam's Mettle, making them all a cut above normal fighters. Notice how Eorzea, Doma, Ala Mhigo, and Ishgard have no shortage of such capable fighters? When you have fighters like that, that can make Magitek look like a joke, then they're not really the plucky underdogs against a superior force. Outnumbered, sure. Outgunned, no.

[Alleo]

Cool, Yoshi-P's wrong too.

I am not even disagreeing with you on that since I dont like it when you compare strenght to someone that is not even part of the game but I wanted to make sure that this was not something a poster came up with.

In the end the devs will decide what they need at the moment. The WoLs greatest weakness is a cutscene after all. My character has every job at lvl 80. So when someone is taken hostage I could just be like "Well have a swiftcast sleep right in your face" but instead no matter how strong we are, as soon as a cutscene starts we are weak as lvl 1 adventurers.

[Vyrerus]

I am not even disagreeing with you on that since I dont like it when you compare strenght to someone that is not even part of the game but I wanted to make sure that this was not something a poster came up with.

In the end the devs will decide what they need at the moment. The WoLs greatest weakness is a cutscene after all. My character has every job at lvl 80. So when someone is taken hostage I could just be like "Well have a swiftcast sleep right in your face" but instead no matter how strong we are, as soon as a cutscene starts we are weak as lvl 1 adventurers.

Well, it is pleasing to know that Yoshida is a Berserk fan. I love Berserk, and I love Guts. Especially in the Berserker Armor. The power scaling for that character is nothing like the WoL's though, and many Berserk fans are even questioning how Miura is gonna write him to be able to actually defeat the Godhand.

[Bhearil]

I am not even disagreeing with you on that since I dont like it when you compare strenght to someone that is not even part of the game but I wanted to make sure that this was not something a poster came up with.

In the end the devs will decide what they need at the moment. The WoLs greatest weakness is a cutscene after all. My character has every job at lvl 80. So when someone is taken hostage I could just be like "Well have a swiftcast sleep right in your face" but instead no matter how strong we are, as soon as a cutscene starts we are weak as lvl 1 adventurers.

Remember during the banquet when you are lv 50 and some random mook guards detain you and tie you up like if you were a punk? On some jobs like monk (you have no weapons, so what? being unarmed doesnt instantly make your martial arts null) that has unlocked 7 chakras already is quite ridiculous unless Uldah guards are super beefed up and are Legatus level each one.

Wol has extreme cases of cutscene incompetence, plus most of the biggest threats were defeated due to external powers: Ultima got Hydaelyne personal intervention, Nidhogg got a Dragon Eye, Hades got 7 more Wols, Albert soul and the entire light collected till then, Elidibus got trapped in the Crystal tower forever due to Graha's help.

Its true that Wol defeated Thordan and Zenos with no external help amongst others, but the first by now is being power creeped as hell and the second is being stated to be a miracle to pull out a win. Other enemies like primals werent that strong, were weakened dut to story reasons, or the Wol was specifically buffed due to the Blessing of Light

Wol fame derives originally from being an Eikon Slayer due to the blessing of light making the tempering issue irrelevant and buffing the Wol during certain situations to godlike levels, something that Ysale even mentions in game during Heavensward.

[Veloran]

Remember during the banquet when you are lv 50 and some random mook guards detain you and tie you up like if you were a punk? On some jobs like monk (you have no weapons, so what? being unarmed doesnt instantly make your martial arts null) that has unlocked 7 chakras already is quite ridiculous unless Uldah guards are super beefed up and are Legatus level each one.

I just figured that was because WoL didn't want to slaughter a bunch of people. Later on Fray is like "Give up my weapon and go quietly? I don't think I'll be doing that again, thanks."

[YianKutku]

It's definitely improbable for Eorzea to have been given so many miracles that saved it from Imperial conquest in so short a time (relatively speaking), but it's not implausible the way it's written, and that has to be enough.

Regardless of how improbable it is, the starting three city-states have to be available to all players at all times if for no other reason than because they're where seasonal events are based so all players (who've completed a modicum of the story) can access them. Circumstances will always conspire to keep them free, regardless of how plausible those circumstances may be. The writers' job on that front is to make those circumstances believable, and other than Midgardsormr saving Eorzea in a deus ex machina moment pre-1.0 I'd have to argue they've succeeded.

(Just like we already know Zenos' and Danny Boy's nefarious plan to cause the apocalypse isn't going to succeed for gameplay purposes; it's just a matter of what's going to happen in the course of their failure, and what victory is going to end up costing us. Gameplay demands will always mean pre-6.0 zones are completely, totally untouched by the Final Days, regardless of how plausible that may not be. Only a big, Calamity-level event could end up actually denying us access to sections of the world, and well, given XIV is in a good way right now, I just don't see that happenin'.)

Yeah, I often have to keep reminding myself that above all, out-of-universe meta-explanations take vastly more priority than in-universe explanations for "why does this happen". That being said, it does cause some issues for lore discussions, since we have to take everything into account to assume a consistent setting, but what gets added into the lore is beholden to what the developers toss to the lore team to attempt to justify. I know the lore team makes a valiant effort, and I respect them for it, but sometimes I just have to look at the incongruities and shrug.

It does fall into the trap of escalation: we're supposed to believe that this time the world is actually in danger, if only to present a sense of tension, but we also know that stuff like marketing and sales and game development means it's not actually going to happen. But there's the idea, even among players, that the next threat has to be bigger, because we solved the previous threat. Hence the complaints I recall seeing on this forum about how Stormblood felt like a step back in terms of stakes, after Heavensward. And since this has to keep happening for as long as the game is around, all these improbable escapes from conquest or destruction start to add up.

[Vyrerus]

It does fall into the trap of escalation: we're supposed to believe that this time the world is actually in danger, if only to present a sense of tension, but we also know that stuff like marketing and sales and game development means it's not actually going to happen. But there's the idea, even among players, that the next threat has to be bigger, because we solved the previous threat. Hence the complaints I recall seeing on this forum about how Stormblood felt like a step back in terms of stakes, after Heavensward. And since this has to keep happening for as long as the game is around, all these improbable escapes from conquest or destruction start to add up.

That's fairly interesting. My first time through Stormblood my biggest question was, "But what has Zenos been through that makes him stronger than me?" It never really got answered, he just was. As far as the overall stakes went though, after seeing Omega and Shinryu go toe to toe, or electric laser beam to protostar breath... I thought the dragon Pope had been thoroughly one upped, and I looked forward to finding out how Shinryu vs. Omega concluded. Plus we visited and freed two nations, rather than just one.

Just interesting that people didn't perceive the stakes as being raised. Do you remember some of the explanations/whys for that?

[Alleo]

I just figured that was because WoL didn't want to slaughter a bunch of people. Later on Fray is like "Give up my weapon and go quietly? I don't think I'll be doing that again, thanks."

Which is still a bit strange since the WoL should be at least able to punsh a bit especially if you are a monk. Also its not like we needed to slaughter people. As a BLM you can sleep them. Ýou can even bind them or simply knock them out. The WoL is really lucky that Raubahn helped us otherwise would we really just have sit there and let everyone else die? After all, when Raubahn did lose his arm and we did run away we suddenly remembered that we can fight...or at least the Scions did.

And if they took away our weapon how did we get it back?

Wol fame derives originally from being an Eikon Slayer due to the blessing of light making the tempering issue irrelevant and buffing the Wol during certain situations to godlike levels, something that Ysale even mentions in game during Heavensward.

I do believe that the WoL is strong on her/his very own. Even when we "lost" our blessing of light we still managed to beat quite a bunch of stuff. Also its not the blessing that stops from tempering, its the echo. Having the echo does not mean that you will also have a blessing. And if I remember it correctly we have no real grasp on what the blessing does to us, at least not completely.

So yes the sad thing is that our character is a powerhouse...until the cutscene starts...

That's fairly interesting. My first time through Stormblood my biggest question was, "But what has Zenos been through that makes him stronger than me?" It never really got answered, he just was.

I remember that I thought in a similar way especially when we were suddenly able to beat not only him but a powered up version of him. The same with Ranjit...I have a really hard time believing that suddenly there are people out there that are not even on our level but much more beyond that. Its a problem (imo) when you have a character that already defeated primals like Thordan and dealt with beings like Midgardsormr or Omega. You find it harder and harder to believe that a normal person can be on the same level...and unlike us who had to constantly fight for their lifes against greater and greater enemies, Zenos seemingly did none of that. What world ending threat did he fight? How will they explain that suddenly in Endwalker he will be at our level or even beyond that again? Or will they truly wait for him to eat one of the elder primals?

I know that there are great fighters all around the world and that the WoL still can make mistakes...but just having someone there who is somehow so much stronger than the PC and us still being able to beat them at the end...it just stops being believeable and I wonder how they will solve that in the future.

[YianKutku]

That's fairly interesting. My first time through Stormblood my biggest question was, "But what has Zenos been through that makes him stronger than me?" It never really got answered, he just was. As far as the overall stakes went though, after seeing Omega and Shinryu go toe to toe, or electric laser beam to protostar breath... I thought the dragon Pope had been thoroughly one upped, and I looked forward to finding out how Shinryu vs. Omega concluded. Plus we visited and freed two nations, rather than just one.

Just interesting that people didn't perceive the stakes as being raised. Do you remember some of the explanations/whys for that?

To be honest it's been a while, so I've completely forgotten most of the explanations, except that while I disagreed with them, some of the posts were quite well-written and I could see their point.

One of the things that stuck with me was a post saying that the antagonists (and general conflicts) of Heavensward and Stormblood should have been swapped chronologically, since apparently ending the Dragonsong War and defeating Primal Thordan was proof of "more power" on our part, compared to eventually defeating Zenos and freeing two nations as an aside. I think it was indeed something along the lines of Zenos's power level being implausible when we already triumphed over Thordan (and Nidhogg), so going Gaius-Zenos-Thordan would be a smoother curve of believable power levels. Which, again, implies that there should be an upwards curve of power levels, and thus narrative escalation.

[Vyrerus]

and thus narrative escalation.

Ranjit

Y'all two's posts make me think that perhaps this is the best explanation for why they kept Zenos around, and why they showed Elidibus to flee from him. To quash the idea that there won't be a proper escalation. I mean, afterall, Fandango is just another sundered Ascian, and we've been stepping on standard red mask Ascian toes with relative ease ever since Nabriales. Of course, with the Eden raid series, they've shown what a red mask can do when given a powerful enough tool... makes me wonder how monstrous Nabriales may have become if he'd succeeded in keeping broken Tupsimati.

I'm hoping the idea that Emet-selch experimented on Zenos leads into us learning more of his backstory, and how he grew to be quite so powerful. Perhaps it's intended to be the villain's version of, "The Gifted?" Of course, my narrative hopes for Zenos might be held too high. He is probably just around for his dummy thicc power level. *sigh*

Also Alleo - Ranjit drove me crazy. I did his first instanced fight on DRK the first time around, and if you time tank cooldowns right, you pretty much take no damage... yet you're supposed to believe he's knocked you down for the count. I know it's a debuff all its own in plenty of fights where your HP doesn't get reduced, but even so... just UGH