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”

[Iscah]

I didn't ever enjoy having Zenos as a rival - it was clear that the sort of person he was seeing was someone like the default WoL and not my individual character. It was always jarring and unsatisfying.

[kaynide]

I didn't ever enjoy having Zenos as a rival - it was clear that the sort of person he was seeing was someone like the default WoL and not my individual character. It was always jarring and unsatisfying.

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!?”

Ultimately she just decided he was the schoolyard bully who secretly had a crush on her but didn’t how to express himself properly.

So yeah- it seems very built as if the WoL is a heroic/fighter type, not the more back row support type. Looking back I can’t imagine the solo duties being fun at all as a healer/caster…

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[Lyth]

...

You should probably try elaborating on your scenario.

[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.)