*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Cleretic]

I personally suspect the Loporrites were possibly underselling it a tad, maybe in order to not seem rude.

Not so much that Zodiark tempering isn't a big deal, more like 'the weak sauce primals you lot can muster aren't going to be a problem, but I don't really want to say that...'

The way I'd put the 'primals tempering was mostly an Ascian plot' thing would be: You know how engines in cars and motorcycles are sometimes designed to be louder, for no other reason than because their core market expects louder engines?

Zodiark was a big enough engine that he was always going to make noise, even if it's less noise than you might expect. Hydaelyn might be, too, except that she's an engine running so far away from anything with ears that nobody can hear it anyway. The primals made with Ascian instruction, though, were deliberately designed to have engines so loud that they rattle the windows they drive by.

...which, incidentally, might explain why one of the only primals outside of The Big Two that never tempered anyone, including its summoners, was Alexander. If Ascian-assisted primal summoning is a deliberately faulty and inefficient build, then it only makes sense that the guys that found and solved the engineering problem were the society of engineers.

[Rulakir]

I expect that to be a plot point going forward since I would assume without Hydaelyn around the sundering should fade in time unless magic just lasts forever even without the source maintaining it.

I have often wondered about this. First, because it could be argued the sundering has caused all to exist in an unnatural state that will essentially fight to correct itself over time (and thus the Ascians were merely hastening the inevitable). Second, because without Hydaelyn, does the barrier separating them still persist?

Personally, I have always been bothered by everything being split. If someone told me my soul was splintered I would seek to make it whole, but in game no one seems to care which is odd. Given humanity's fascination with ancestry, DNA, finding long lost relatives, etc. the lack of interest anyone shows in learning of their previous life as an Ancient or meeting their other soul shards doesn't seem realistic.

I certainly would have chosen to spend a lot of time with Emet learning about myself as Azem and would've been interested in finding the other parts of my soul. Beyond that, it's hard to say. I would've preferred to find a way to bypass the barrier that separated the shards so that as people naturally died on the reflections their souls would be funneled to the Source. Were there a way to make that happen, everyone would've returned to being whole in a far shorter time span than what the Ascians were doing and without having to obliterate anyone.

[SgtPepperUK]

-We learn that summoning being at the level of Zodiarc does not mean tempering similar to eorzean primals, that was simply an addition to the summoning spell, for beings such as zordiarc you still feel a "tug" which can be described as a form of tempering but nothing like what we expect from the average tempered individual, Emet Selch himself was evidence of that after all since shb.

-Zodiarc was not an evil cunning manipulative entity, like all primals he was a tool serving a function, most should have known that since Shb. Meaning as long as he existed, he would have kept the celestial currents going protecting eithyris from the song of oblivion giving the convocation enough time to figure out what to do.

-The souls that were sacrificed to summon Zodiarc where still around, within Zodiarc, so we know absolutely know Zodiarc could bring them back if additional sacrifices were given. And then the WoL goes in and kills them all by killing Zodiarc (The good guy btw)

-We know that the concept of dynamis already existed even though not as widely known, and they also knew that the events of the final days first appeared in areas where the celestial currents were weakest, given time it only makes sense it would have been figured out.

1) The Ascians were tempered. Emet-Selch even admitted it. All through earlier parts of the FFXIV we saw them refer to Zodiark as their one true god.

2) Zodiark was a tool but most likely out of control, why this is is hard to say. Could be because it was the most ambitious piece of creation magick, or because it was done in a panic. I believe he was sundered as there was no knowing when his thirst for aether would end. We know about aether thinning so conceivably to keep doing the role, Zodiark would have needed more. We'd already gone from half the population, to half again of what remained, to that of future new races.

3) We can't be sure those souls could have been brought back. Maybe they could have been, maybe it was manipulation from Zodiark. What we do know, is those souls he had, could now return to the aether after the WoL kills Zodiark.

4) The Ancients knew that the final days first took hold where the celestial aether was thinnest. But the concept of Dynamis was highly theoretical and they never made the link.

[Elladie]

Correct me if I'm wrong - by which I mean, tell me where in game it says this - but I was very much under the impression that concepts certainly don't get souls.

The short story where Hades has to deal with the phoenix concept shows how horrified he is that it somehow has a soul when it shouldn't..

Any creatures remain concepts until Hythlodaeus passes them for 'general use'; before that, no souls. They still die, of course, if they're 'discontinued' but the Ancients seem to collectively see this not as death but as a change of form; they go back to aether and get used again in some other concept

[Elladie]

It wasn’t sacrificed though. There’s an entire short story on the official site going into what happened after. The 8th astral era.

However no one involved in the Crystal Tower experiment expected that timeline to survive. And large numbers of the people involved were against it, so much so that they attacked the Ironworks to try and stop it. Even G'raha expected to die when the possibility of the 8th Calamity was finally destroyed.

So the fact that it didn't end is irrelevant when considering people's motives and whether they are entitled to take the moral highground. Yoshida himself has drawn parallels between G'raha and Emet-Selch and intimated that the only thing that makes one of them the villain and the other the hero is that G'raha's team won

[Katie_Kitty]

No, because Emet-Selch's plan was to kill countless innocent people through his rejoinings. It's a morally repugnant plan.

[YianKutku]

I'm kind of puzzled by how there are apparently a lot of players who feel that Emet-Selch was correct, but I haven't seen many (or indeed any thus far) who feel that Fandaniel was correct.

Both of them had a member of the Scions go "well they have a point", after all.

[Garnetiferous]

Correct me if I'm wrong - by which I mean, tell me where in game it says this - but I was very much under the impression that concepts certainly don't get souls.

The short story where Hades has to deal with the phoenix concept shows how horrified he is that it somehow has a soul when it shouldn't..

Any creatures remain concepts until Hythlodaeus passes them for 'general use'; before that, no souls. They still die, of course, if they're 'discontinued' but the Ancients seem to collectively see this not as death but as a change of form; they go back to aether and get used again in some other concept

Basically, the ancients can't create souls. Anything they do create, if it works with the laws of nature, can get a soul. In the case of the phoenix concept, it was an accident that created a terrified being, scared to die and it kept hurting itself in its fear. And that's how Emet-Selch saw the modern sundered people.

To answer the topic question, I don't think joining Emet would have been a good idea because I feel like he was doomed to failure pretty much as soon as the world was sundered. It just involved too much death and regardless of what he thinks about the sundered people they were always going to fight back and eventually win. And in the end, he even admits this. But I do think he's right that the ancients were a good society and I don't think they deserved what happened to them.

[Cilia]

I'm kind of puzzled by how there are apparently a lot of players who feel that Emet-Selch was correct, but I haven't seen many (or indeed any thus far) who feel that Fandaniel was correct.

Both of them had a member of the Scions go "well they have a point", after all.

Unfortunately, arguing the merits of nihilism is a lot harder than saying "It's all perspective."

[Cleretic]

I'm kind of puzzled by how there are apparently a lot of players who feel that Emet-Selch was correct, but I haven't seen many (or indeed any thus far) who feel that Fandaniel was correct.

Both of them had a member of the Scions go "well they have a point", after all.

I feel like all the people who would've responded 'FFXIV's world sucks and should die' probably aren't playing Endwalker. Although I welcome them to; not because I think it'll change their mind, but because I'm curious about how someone who doesn't like FFXIV feels about an expansion that's basically FFXIV doing a victory lap.