Would you be ok with a good rival figure for 7.0+?(6.0 spoilers)

[Lyth]

There are plenty of MMOs which have tried implementing a similar concept to this, because the player character is supposed to be one of a multitude of generic adventurers. What ends up happening is that you end up doing all the grunt work, and then the 'real' hero shows up for a few seconds during the cutscenes to take all the credit. We could have gone down that route back in ARR had Alphi's Crystal Brave venture been successful and we were his designated sidekick.

[kaynide]

There are plenty of MMOs which have tried implementing a similar concept to this, because the player character is supposed to be one of a multitude of generic adventurers. What ends up happening is that you end up doing all the grunt work, and then the 'real' hero shows up for a few seconds during the cutscenes to take all the credit. We could have gone down that route back in ARR had Alphi's Crystal Brave venture been successful and we were his designated sidekick.

My meaning was a bit bigger-picture than that. Like an entirely different third party with a plan that is incompatible with ours, but still viable…and theirs ends up being better. Basically a “our ways are not always the best, and we should be open to that”

[Lyth]

...

That's not uncommon as well. You just team up with your misunderstood rivals to fight the 'real final boss' who was hiding out just offstage.

You're unlikely to have a scenario where you reach to the end of the story and everyone walks away from a boss fight to solve things with diplomacy and extended talking cutscenes. You do have to play to the strengths of the interactive medium.

[kaynide]

That's not uncommon as well. You just team up with your misunderstood rivals to fight the 'real final boss' who was hiding out just offstage.

You're unlikely to have a scenario where you reach to the end of the story and everyone walks away from a boss fight to solve things with diplomacy and extended talking cutscenes. You do have to play to the strengths of the interactive medium.

I wasn’t really talking about any of that though.

[Cleretic]

My meaning was a bit bigger-picture than that. Like an entirely different third party with a plan that is incompatible with ours, but still viable…and theirs ends up being better. Basically a “our ways are not always the best, and we should be open to that”

I think the problem there is that you've back-loaded the part of Zenos and Ran'jit that people didn't like the start of. People don't like feeling upstaged for what feels like illegitimate or arbitrary reasons, and your idea is delivering that, but on a different level. A way that almost feels better, but if done poorly, won't be.

You'd have to answer the question of 'why is this person's approach better than ours', and it's going to be hard to answer that question in a way that's both A: widely plausible, and B: satisfying. And if the aftermath of 6.0 in this subforum has taught you anything, it should be that if you call someone else's plan 'good', people who don't like what that might say about them will twist everything they can reach to declare that plan to be Wrong And Bad Actually, no matter who says otherwise in or out of game. And, yeah, you're essentially ending up at the WoW Problem of 'NPCs get all the credit for your victory' from a different direction.

The one angle I think it could work is if you don't make them a rival to us, but to whichever ally of ours came up with our plan. A Counter-Hien or Anti-Exarch, if you will. That way you avoid putting the failure on the player and more on externals, which gives people more comfortable avenues to come at the argument; people who think the original plan still had legs have room to claim that or think of improvements (even if some of it only makes sense in hindsight), while people who disagreed with it from the start can have a good 'I told you so' moment.

EDIT: And for what it's worth, I did the final-final Zenos solo duty as an AST, and it's hilarious because a healer's fairly meager offensive output gives the whole thing an air of the WoL not even really trying, and still winning. For all his talk, Zenos lost a fistfight with a Yu-Gi-Oh player and died, and from some angles, that's a perfect ending for the guy.

[sidurgu-12]

EDIT: And for what it's worth, I did the final-final Zenos solo duty as an AST, and it's hilarious because a healer's fairly meager offensive output gives the whole thing an air of the WoL not even really trying, and still winning. For all his talk, Zenos lost a fistfight with a Yu-Gi-Oh player and died, and from some angles, that's a perfect ending for the guy.

wol: "the heart of the cards shall guide my hands, zenos!"

blows him up with fall malefic

[Iscah]

I vibed with him as a rival in Stormblood (I played Sam), but man, my wife hated it. She was playing white mage through Stormblood and just kept saying “why does he even care about me, I have like one spell… why doesn’t he want to fight Hein!?”

Prettymuch. My character is a summoner so she does at least have more potent magic, but it's still not at all the clash of two equal physical fighters that Zenos is seeking.

Plus she looks more like a Disney princess than the hardened warrior that Zenos seems to have mistaken her for, and the visual matchup just doesn't work. And the concluding fistfight was outright silly, but in a "how has this story gone so off the rails at the last moment" way rather than a funny way.

(Well, more exactly it went off the rails when we banished all the Scions back to the ship instead of fighting the Endsinger as a team, and then Zenos turning up soured it entirely. I don't think he earned his place there at all.)

[kaynide]

I think the problem there is that you've back-loaded the part of Zenos and Ran'jit that people didn't like the start of. People don't like feeling upstaged for what feels like illegitimate or arbitrary reasons, and your idea is delivering that, but on a different level. A way that almost feels better, but if done poorly, won't be.

You'd have to answer the question of 'why is this person's approach better than ours', and it's going to be hard to answer that question in a way that's both A: widely plausible, and B: satisfying. And if the aftermath of 6.0 in this subforum has taught you anything, it should be that if you call someone else's plan 'good', people who don't like what that might say about them will twist everything they can reach to declare that plan to be Wrong And Bad Actually, no matter who says otherwise in or out of game. And, yeah, you're essentially ending up at the WoW Problem of 'NPCs get all the credit for your victory' from a different direction.

The one angle I think it could work is if you don't make them a rival to us, but to whichever ally of ours came up with our plan. A Counter-Hien or Anti-Exarch, if you will. That way you avoid putting the failure on the player and more on externals, which gives people more comfortable avenues to come at the argument; people who think the original plan still had legs have room to claim that or think of improvements (even if some of it only makes sense in hindsight), while people who disagreed with it from the start can have a good 'I told you so' moment.

EDIT: And for what it's worth, I did the final-final Zenos solo duty as an AST, and it's hilarious because a healer's fairly meager offensive output gives the whole thing an air of the WoL not even really trying, and still winning. For all his talk, Zenos lost a fistfight with a Yu-Gi-Oh player and died, and from some angles, that's a perfect ending for the guy.

lol@zenos

On your other stuff, I think this is a good point; especially since the main character doesn't speak, it would really necessitate using an ally we are working with who has the inferior idea. Probably the idealisy Alphinaud...although I would rather someone else since he's kinda had his moment of being wrong with the Crystal Braves. Maybe the alliance leadership itself.

Within game lore, I think it would ultimately be something like one of the remaining legions asking to set up a colony in the south, with (NPC) being overly insistant that they resettle fallen Garlemald. I see (NPC) being suspicious and trying to find foul play or alterior motives in the Garlean plans (eg conquest, not just permission to set up a colony). The twist being that the people indigenous to the area accept the Garleans, and that the Garleans genuinely want a peaceful transition.

Could easily be Thancred spying and getting mad that he just can't find any faults. Or Alphinaud.

[Cleretic]

Within game lore, I think it would ultimately be something like one of the remaining legions asking to set up a colony in the south, with (NPC) being overly insistant that they resettle fallen Garlemald. I see (NPC) being suspicious and trying to find foul play or alterior motives in the Garlean plans (eg conquest, not just permission to set up a colony). The twist being that the people indigenous to the area accept the Garleans, and that the Garleans genuinely want a peaceful transition.

I think a general framework of war or war recovery is a good angle, because it sets up a framework where the WoL Standard of 'shake down the biggest guy around' is both a perfectly reasonable angle to take as well as an understandably potentially wrong one. Although I'm thinking more along the lines of perhaps Gabranth in Bozja, where there's an imperial ruler that we reflexively cast as Uncomplicated Bad Guy to overthrow and move on, and we maybe get Hien or Alphinaud's help strategizing that, but there's extra nuance we aren't immediately privvy to that a more local rival is working on the angle for. Using Gabranth as an ongoing example, he genuinely treated the lower classes better than the previous regime, meaning that just reinstalling the old government would've been very unpopular, so if you made a whole expansion about that then you could find out that the rival tactician has been instead planning a way to cut off Imperial support, leaving this better structure while picking off the problem people inside it and preventing their replacements.