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

[kaynide]

I did always find it really awkward how hard they tried to push the Warriors of Darkness as villains basically right up until where they reveal the truth of their motives.

There was no logical reason for them to behave the way they did in universe and it mostly came across as a really forced effort to make the viewer think they were evil so there would be more shock factor when the opposite proved true.

Agreed there; I chalked that up to them being manipulated by the Ascians (do the thing for us, and we can save your world), but it was very weird/out of character for them to act evil when it really should have been them forced to do bad things. Especially in scenes where they seemed to enjoy being bad (evil grins etc).

[kaynide]

It's a forum, such is the nature of this place. It's just a discussion.

Villains in this game tend not to be unilaterally 'bad'. FFXIV has a fairly good track record of rehabilitating past expansion bosses, the main exceptions being Heavensward's Thordan VII and Nidhogg. It's not uncommon for you to find yourself fighting side by side with a previous rival. Likewise, having you fight for the 'wrong side' only to team up with a previously misunderstood rival is really just a variation on the same theme. Ysayle didn't really feel significantly different in that regard.

The constraint that I'm talking about is in the game structure. An expansion is going to have something like six dungeons and three trials, with the final encounter being the ultimate villain for that expansion. So how do you apply your concept into that narrative structure?

You can't really have an unwinnable fight as the final encounter. You can't have all the parties involved walk away from the conflict and agree to disagree. You can't persuade check the final boss. You still have to have that fight. So who is it going to be?

It can't really be your rival character now, because they're narratively in the right. It doesn't make sense to kill them off, briefly regret doing so, and then go back to farm them for drops. So that just leaves us with the mysterious and villainous third party that was pulling the strings from the background all along. Or maybe *surprise* Big Boss was the bad guy all along.

It's also worth noting that your 'character' isn't really a 'character' per se. There is no 'character growth', because they're by and large just a player avatar. So you're not really teaching them a lesson. What you're doing is artificially elevating this other character, which the playerbase may or may not buy into depending on how well they are written. And that ties back to the credit issue that I was referring to in other MMOs where you play side-kick to an author avatar.

That's why I was saying that certain concepts just work better in other mediums.

The thing is we're not having a discussion. I'm talking about X, and you keep trying to talk about things that are entirely unrelated to anything I've said. I've not been talking about the mechanical structure, just narrative. I've never talked about anything being unwinnable, or having to talk down a final boss.


I'm sorry, but as I'm reading your posts, it's essentially something like:

Me: I'd like cotton candy to be in this game.
You: Well, cotton candy has lots of artificial coloring, and besides you can't just eat cotton candy. Also, you can't have cotton candy with tea. It's just not a good match.

[Atmaweapon510]

Back of topic of the rivals, I'd like for them to expand a bit on what limited narrative choices you have, like how the ending of Bozja is slightly altered by your choices. For some people, "That I do" was one of the best feeling moments in the entirety of the story, and I think a properly crafted Rival might be able to reach a wider scope of audience (obviously you can't please everyone.) Again, imagine just being able to just flat out ditch Zenos and skip the final fight entirely if you wanted. Add in an alternate, more lighthearted scene of reuniting with your friends and segue back into the ending.

Other possible benefits of a dedicated rival:

-Dedicated contrarian. You can have a character who can butt heads with you in story without being part of the main posse. You can hate them, ignore them, or even respect their forthrightness. Since they're not part of the main group, you don't have to put up with their abrasiveness all the time.

-Familiar viewpoint in enemy territory. You can get periodic updates on the villain's side of the story from a limited viewpoint. Instead of constantly segueing to Zenos in a chair, you can have the rival doing various odd jobs while getting more varied viewpoints in the enemy side.

-Grey morality. The WoL is always in the right, but rival can be in a grey spot and again, this is where player choice can come into play. How does your WoL react to this pocket of grey morality? Compartmentalizing it like this can mitigate any logical effect on the overall narrative they want to tell.

[Lyth]

This is not a cotton candy machine.

I think that Bozja is at the upper limit of what they can achieve in terms of a branching narrative in an MMO and was a bit of an early test to gauge player reactions to this sort of mechanic. It's very tough, though, outside of the permanent end of a character's storyline that is designed to never come up in dialogue again. Some players are going to be happy to RP through and live with whatever decisions their character made narratively. Others are going to agonize over the decision, look up guides, and then have 'buyer's remorse' after actually watching the scenes play out or encountering a downstream decision tree. And there's a not insignificant time commitment associated with rerolling a character. You need to have a game designed for multiple playthroughs from the outset (which not everyone has the time commitment for), or one that lets you dynamically explore the decision tree as you wish (Radiant Historia was the single greatest example of this), or one that provides an optional questline that let you reverse your decision. It's the same reaction that players have to missables in 60+ hour games.

I like the idea of getting to temporarily play as your 'rival' in a parallel scenario, similar to what we've had with the Scions over the past couple of expansions. There are a lot of interesting possibilities with that.

[Cleretic]

FFXIV had a lot of issues with sympathetic villains before Natsuko Ishikawa took the reins. Estinien, Ysalye, and the the Warriors of Darkness go through some of the most bizarre 180° personality shifts in a very short timeframe, going from sadistic with maniacal laughter to their current incarnations. Zenos was a dumpster fire 2D character that she somehow managed to salvage parts of in the last moment, although she couldn't really write around the powerlevel metaplot he introduced which led to Ran'jit's questionable effect on the story. I really want to see where she goes if she can craft a rival character from the ground up.

Ishikawa wrote Ysayle.

EDIT: Actually, fairly certain she wrote the Warriors of Darkness, too. She wrote some amount of the 3.x patches.

[kaynide]

This is not a cotton candy machine.

I think that Bozja is at the upper limit of what they can achieve in terms of a branching narrative in an MMO and was a bit of an early test to gauge player reactions to this sort of mechanic. It's very tough, though, outside of the permanent end of a character's storyline that is designed to never come up in dialogue again. Some players are going to be happy to RP through and live with whatever decisions their character made narratively. Others are going to agonize over the decision, look up guides, and then have 'buyer's remorse' after actually watching the scenes play out or encountering a downstream decision tree. And there's a not insignificant time commitment associated with rerolling a character. You need to have a game designed for multiple playthroughs from the outset (which not everyone has the time commitment for), or one that lets you dynamically explore the decision tree as you wish (Radiant Historia was the single greatest example of this), or one that provides an optional questline that let you reverse your decision. It's the same reaction that players have to missables in 60+ hour games.

I like the idea of getting to temporarily play as your 'rival' in a parallel scenario, similar to what we've had with the Scions over the past couple of expansions. There are a lot of interesting possibilities with that.

There must be crossed wires- while you have been responding to me, nothing you have said is relevant or even a response to what I've been talking about. You have been talking about other games, You have been talking about mechanics. You've been talking about sudden 11th hour enemies appearing out of nowhere. You've been talking about having to talk down a final boss. You've been talking about branching stories

If these are something you're interested in, by all means pitch your idea.

The only thing I've been talking about, and will respond to with you from here on is my exact answer to the topic at hand:
Q: "Would you be ok with a good rival figure for 7.0?"
My A: "I’d like to be in a situation where our character does everything we can to help, but rather than be the savior, we are just in the way… ultimately deciding it is better to support the rival." and “our ways are not always the best, and we should be open to that”

Please see Cleretic's responses for example; we may not always agree, but she has genuinely good input and ideas regarding this.

[Lyth]

Hm? That response wasn't directed at you in particular, outside of the off-hand reference to cotton candy, having largely exhausted the value in discussing that idea further. You seem to want a story that this specific type of medium (MMORPG) isn't really designed to tell effectively. Your idea would work well as a book, or a movie. Each medium has its own narrative strengths and weaknesses that you need to play to, and not every story concept can be adapted to every medium. The plot of Great Expectations would make for a terrible video game, for example.

It's hard to have our voiceless protagonist reflect on how 'their ways aren't the best' when they don't actually have a personality. Or an inner monologue (outside of Frey, perhaps). Or even 'ways' to call their own. They just put on a determined face and punch whatever boss the fixed storyline asks them in order to get access to the next zone. Perhaps the writers trick us into punching out the wrong boss, who is actually a good person. That's unfortunate. Downcast face. Perhaps then we then join the correct side and punch out the proper boss when we get to the final trial. Happy days. You can try to get the player to reflect on a personal level through exploration, optional dialogue, and world-building (i.e. what games excel at), but you are very much constrained to design the story around a fixed structure (zone-dungeon-trial).

I'm just pointing out an implementation flaw. But please, don't let me get in the way of the suggestion box.

[Illmaeran]

I don't want to see a specific rival character that spans more than one expansion. As others have said, we're literally a God Killer and by rights, nobody should be able to match that. Granted, we had certain buffs that helped with that, and from what I could tell of the LL, we still have the Echo/Blessing of Light, so it doesn't seem to me that we've lost much, if any, of our personal power. I don't see any narrative path that would produce a character that can rival us in combat without there being some ridiculous work around, hand-waving, or retconning. Given that this is an MMO and the main mechanism for overcoming an obstacle is combat, having anyone who's a direct rival in the vein of Zenos or other antagonists, will require combat to overcome.

If they absolutely *must* give us a persistent rival, it would be better off being a character like Belloq in Indiana Jones, but even then, the ultimate confrontation would be some sort of solo duty or trial, and we get back to the problems with anyone being even the tiniest challenge to a God Killer.


We've had our five (six?) volume Magnum Opus. It's time we have our anthology of short stories full of adventure and derring-do on smaller, local, scales.

[Atmaweapon510]

We have New game+ for a story redo and there shouldn't be a third party gumming up the decision-consequence tree (Bajsaljen).

Ideally, there's also no story change warning to cause immersion breakage/power-gaming tendencies. The fact that you're told of there being story consequences just placed too much FOMO in the Bozja decision.

[kaynide]

I don't want to see a specific rival character that spans more than one expansion. As others have said, we're literally a God Killer and by rights, nobody should be able to match that. Granted, we had certain buffs that helped with that, and from what I could tell of the LL, we still have the Echo/Blessing of Light, so it doesn't seem to me that we've lost much, if any, of our personal power. I don't see any narrative path that would produce a character that can rival us in combat without there being some ridiculous work around, hand-waving, or retconning. Given that this is an MMO and the main mechanism for overcoming an obstacle is combat, having anyone who's a direct rival in the vein of Zenos or other antagonists, will require combat to overcome.

If they absolutely *must* give us a persistent rival, it would be better off being a character like Belloq in Indiana Jones, but even then, the ultimate confrontation would be some sort of solo duty or trial, and we get back to the problems with anyone being even the tiniest challenge to a God Killer.


We've had our five (six?) volume Magnum Opus. It's time we have our anthology of short stories full of adventure and derring-do on smaller, local, scales.

Agreed; I kind of think we're more in the Hercules: Legendary Journeys/Xena era of our adventures.

It really shouldn't be about a rival in combat power, but more about out maneuvering (if antagonists). Kind of the "Superman can't be everywhere at once" kind of thing, or as you said, a character like Belloq who uses underhanded methods to keep us at disadvantage.

Some of the Syndicate in Ul'dah are examples of this we've seen in the past that could be tapped.