Tired of Zenos (spoilers)

[Bright-Flower]

Zenos is also a legitimate sociopathic scumbag whom everyone I ever played with in Ala Mhigo looked forward to tearing his head off and I look forward to actually killing him in 6.0. I don't want to feel sorry for this clown, I want to destroy him. Also hopefully get to slay "Asahi" as well. I have always loved remorseless sickening villains who think they're above God and loved when they died horrible but completely deserved deaths, sometimes fates far worse.

An irredeemable evil villain can be fun at times. I like Kefka, the Emperor from Star Wars etc. But Zenos just never had any appeal for me. Not every villain needs a sympathetic motive, but he never felt legitimately threatening becuase of how his boss fights were handled/lack of consequences for losing to him and his personality is just kind of dull IMO.

Without any sense of actual danger that bad things might actually happen because of him or an interesting personality etc I just had nothing to latch onto.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

An irredeemable evil villain can be fun at times. I like Kefka, the Emperor from Star Wars etc. But Zenos just never had any appeal for me. Not every villain needs a sympathetic motive, but he never felt legitimately threatening becuase of how his boss fights were handled/lack of consequences for losing to him and his personality is just kind of dull IMO.

Without any sense of actual danger that bad things might actually happen because of him or an interesting personality etc I just had nothing to latch onto.

The consequences were we couldn't kill him and he kept killing, leaving us alive to pick up the pieces and get more pissed at him as time went on. It's little different than joining a pvp game and getting permadominated by a player who hasn't been outside in the last year and a half. So of course we had to "git gud" or the freak wasn't going to stop.

[Bright-Flower]

The consequences were we couldn't kill him and he kept killing, leaving us alive to pick up the pieces and get more pissed at him as time went on. It's little different than joining a pvp game and getting permadominated by a player who hasn't been outside in the last year and a half. So of course we had to "git gud" or the freak wasn't going to stop.

If by he 'kept killing' you mean he goes and sits on his throne and doesn't really do much but wait for us to come to him.

And as for the 'git gud' thing that's another thing.

He soundly kicks our asses twice, then suddenly at the end we're able to fight him for no other reason than 'whoops it's climax time time for the WOL to win this one.' At no point did we go out of our way to do anything to become stronger. We didn't do anything to develop a counter to his abilities or a strategy to face him. We were able to beat him for the most boring of reasons: we kept doing the same stuff we'd done all through ARR and HW and our numbers went up.' Even Shinryu falls victim to this. In 3.55 he was such a big deal a character gives his life just to stall it awakening and we risked unleashing Omega rather than fight him ourselves, at the end of 4.0? We just stroll up and kill it like any other primal.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

If by he 'kept killing' you mean he goes and sits on his throne and doesn't really do much but wait for us to come to him.

And as for the 'git gud' thing that's another thing.

He soundly kicks our asses twice, then suddenly at the end we're able to fight him for no other reason than 'whoops it's climax time time for the WOL to win this one.' At no point did we go out of our way to do anything to become stronger. We didn't do anything to develop a counter to his abilities or a strategy to face him. We were able to beat him for the most boring of reasons: we kept doing the same stuff we'd done all through ARR and HW and our numbers went up.' Even Shinryu falls victim to this. In 3.55 he was such a big deal a character gives his life just to stall it awakening and we risked unleashing Omega rather than fight him ourselves, at the end of 4.0? We just stroll up and kill it like any other primal.

I was talking about through Stormblood. Also keep in mind we wouldn't even be able to get to him without amassing an army of our own to break through the door to Ala Mhigo. The only reason he didn't finish us off is because he was mildly curious about how long we lasted compared to everyone else. I would also remind you that it's literally the job of the WoL to kill primals, and this one was summoned from the dying prayers of Ilberd, his army, and both of Nidhogg's eyes which btw we didn't have access any longer to Hraesvelgr's eyes. Shinryu also could have been greatly wounded by Omega as when we meet the latter he's perfectly fine while FFV monster in a box over there was captured. We would have killed it eventually, but it's hard to take on a level 70 when you're level 63.

[Bright-Flower]

but it's hard to take on a level 70 when you're level 63.

This actually about sums up my power scaling options with SB.

Treating levels that literally in the story. DBZ esque power level incrases are boring. Getting our asses handed to us but then having our numbers go up so we're able to fight the bad guy on equal footing in the climax is not compelling storytelling. It'd be more excusable if this was in a new story, a fresh, inexperienced adventurer getting their teeth kicked in but then growing stronger over the course of the story. But by this point we've bee doing this a long time and nothing we do between Zenos beating us and us beating him is out of the ordinary for us at that point.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

This actually about sums up my power scaling options with SB.

Treating levels that literally in the story. DBZ esque power level incrases are boring. Getting our asses handed to us but then having our numbers go up so we're able to fight the bad guy on equal footing in the climax is not compelling storytelling. It'd be more excusable if this was in a new story, a fresh, inexperienced adventurer getting their teeth kicked in but then growing stronger over the course of the story. But by this point we've bee doing this a long time and nothing we do between Zenos beating us and us beating him is out of the ordinary for us at that point.

It's not. It's everything else we did in the story that made it so we could even get to him in the first place. And we had to whoop Shinryu right after. Zenos is hard to kill and even harder to corner. All the while he's being a cocky snake about it and goading us into losing our cool and going full Doom Slayer on him. I honestly hope he kills some characters that have been around since literally 1.0. If this is going to be a match worth building up, it needs to be personal, hard as that is to do for an mmo. I guess I like Zenos because he has potential to be Metal Face but with none of the flaws. And he has a most punchable face.

[Bright-Flower]

It's not. It's everything else we did in the story that made it so we could even get to him in the first place. And we had to whoop Shinryu right after. Zenos is hard to kill and even harder to corner. All the while he's being a cocky snake about it and goading us into losing our cool and going full Doom Slayer on him. I honestly hope he kills some characters that have been around since literally 1.0. If this is going to be a match worth building up, it needs to be personal, hard as that is to do for an mmo. I guess I like Zenos because he has potential to be Metal Face but with none of the flaws. And he has a most punchable face.

That's all it was though.

What changed between him whooping us in Doma and us us fighting him in Ala Mhigo?

We leveled up 7 more times. Doing the exact same sort of adventuring we've been doing since ARR. That's it. Nothing about that time was pushing us to our limits more than prior experiences, or doing anything outside of the norm. Zenos basically beat us because his power level was higher, and then in the third fight we win because we got our power levle higher by just grinding through more adventures. There was no actual effort to conciously grow stronger, learn to counter his abilities, nothing interesting. Just more of us doing the same stuff we've been doing and our numbers got higher so then we could beat him.

My propblem with fighting Shinryu isn't that we fought shinryu. It's that we were able to just stroll up to Shinryu and kill it, after 3.55 made such a big deal out of it. Not even a quick plot token thrown in or anything to explain it. People come up with fan theories to suggest Shinryu was weakened but nothing in the game actually says that.

In 3.55 Popolymo sacrifices his life to stall Shinryu and we risk unleashing Omega rather than fight it directly. In 4.0, we just walk up to Shinryu and kill it. What changed? Our power level went up, and that's boring.