In regards to something involving the main cast

[MikkoAkure]

First of all, I don't agree with applying modern day standards to the past, especially when the sundered world exists as a result of a crime against mankind. Frankly, if the sundered are struggling with anything the Ancients created 12k years ago take it up with Venat. It certainly wouldn't be the first or only thing her sundering left people ill equipped to handle.

The people back then had a hell of a time with rogue creations too. The researchers in Elpis allude to more than just simple injuries happening and it's why there's a rule there that people need to have their hoods off, in order for better peripheral vision so they're not taken unawares. Then there's all the deaths of Ancients caused by the creatures let loose in Pandaemonium and Akademia Anyder.

Third, saying good people wouldn't create apex predators is an inflammatory statement and that's all I'm going to say about it.

Saying they weren't good people is a bit far, but at the same time I don't know what kind of sane person decides that the world needs flying wolves that breathe fire or land sharks. It feels like at some point, it stopped being more "about the Star" and more just because they could and they kept escalating from normal things like migratory birds until they got bored and started making deadlier things, following trends, and deciding to craft whole sapient species like Lupin. When "everyone else is doing it" and everyone else is also bored, ideas like that stop being silly and they also need to make bigger and scarier monsters in order to balance out the ecosystem from their other big and scary monsters but to a little WoL who is being introduced to all of this all at once, it's a bit much.

[Cleretic]

The people back then had a hell of a time with rogue creations too. The researchers in Elpis allude to more than just simple injuries happening and it's why there's a rule there that people need to have their hoods off, in order for better peripheral vision so they're not taken unawares. Then there's all the deaths of Ancients caused by the creatures let loose in Pandaemonium and Akademia Anyder.



Saying they weren't good people is a bit far, but at the same time I don't know what kind of sane person decides that the world needs flying wolves that breathe fire or land sharks. It feels like at some point, it stopped being more "about the Star" and more just because they could and they kept escalating from normal things like migratory birds until they got bored and started making deadlier things, following trends, and deciding to craft whole sapient species like Lupin. When "everyone else is doing it" and everyone else is also bored, ideas like that stop being silly and they also need to make bigger and scarier monsters in order to balance out the ecosystem from their other big and scary monsters but to a little WoL who is being introduced to all of this all at once, it's a bit much.

Yeah, you're getting it more than Rulakir seems to. I'm not saying that the Ancients were by and large bad people, I'm saying that the Ancients were people, and that like any people they had bad people, be it bad in terms of actually meaning ill or just bad in terms of not being very good at their thing. Which is an answer to a theological question about gods and intelligent design; the answer to 'why would good creators allow bad things to happen' can in fact be 'because the creators weren't good'.

Perhaps 'apex predator' was an ill choice of words, but you're right that the Ancients didn't design with purely kindness and necessity in mind, Ancients had other priorities that we can call out as 'hey that was kind of a dick move for us, the people who now have to live with these things'. The world that they made includes giant bipedal sharks, the Nepto Dragon, manticores, malboros, everything Meletos made, and all manner of other extremely, fundamentally nasty things to try to coexist in the world with. They did not create the world we walk with the view of kindness and fairness to all within it. That's unarguable, and we can call it cruel and inconsiderate because it was. And to deny that would also be to deny the Ancients' inherent humanity and agency.

The Ancients are people, for good and for ill. And sometimes, people suck.

[Theodric]

Saying they weren't good people is a bit far, but at the same time I don't know what kind of sane person decides that the world needs flying wolves that breathe fire or land sharks.

People who live in a fantasy setting, where such whimsical elements are a deep and intricate part of the genre.

It's...it's also a Final Fantasy game. FFVII in particular has some strange creature designs but is by no means the first in the series to embrace the weird and wonderful.

[Tehmon]

People who live in a fantasy setting, where such whimsical elements are a deep and intricate part of the genre.

It's...it's also a Final Fantasy game. FFVII in particular has some strange creature designs but is by no means the first in the series to embrace the weird and wonderful.

Other Final Fantasy games don't make the origin of strange powerful creatures and how an all-powerful ancient civilization treats them a pretty important plot point in their stories though, so that would be the difference, I think.

But this specific topic is hard to argue when we don't really know much about how life was in the star, and what it truly meant to '' return to the star. ''
Ancients made it their job to make the star a better place, and one has to wonder what part ferocious beasts play in such an undertaking.

[Theodric]

Ancients made it their job to make the star a better place, and one has to wonder what part ferocious beasts play in such an undertaking.

The same purpose they play in the real world. Without ferocious predators to keep the population of other creatures in balance, a predator's prey will inevitably cause environmental destruction. As cute as a gazelle may be, if left to graze with no limit then there's not going to be much in the way of grass which negatively impacts many other species. So the existence of a lion to feast upon the gazelle will ensure that the delicate balance remains intact. Aside from feeding the lion, the gazelle's carcass will also provide much needed nurturing for the soil itself. Furthermore, as it decays even bugs will serve a purpose - hastening the decay.

It's a safe bet that the Ancients themselves came to such conclusions during the course of their research, especially since they had entire academies devoted to different fields.

[Tehmon]

The same purpose they play in the real world. Without ferocious predators to keep the population of other creatures in balance, a predator's prey will inevitably cause environmental destruction. As cute as a gazelle may be, if left to graze with no limit then there's not going to be much in the way of grass which negatively impacts many other species. So the existence of a lion to feast upon the gazelle will ensure that the delicate balance remains intact. Aside from feeding the lion, the gazelle's carcass will also provide much needed nurturing for the soil itself. Furthermore, as it decays even bugs will serve a purpose - hastening the decay.

It's a safe bet that the Ancients themselves came to such conclusions during the course of their research, especially since they had entire academies devoted to different fields.

Yes, I understand the concept. The Circle Of Life from The Lion King is playing somewhere in the distance.

What I'm wondering about, is how these apex predators and volcanoes make the world better, as they definitely can oppose a massive threat to people. If the point is to make the life on star as great as possible, what purpose do these sources of, ironically, suffering and death, bring to the '' humankind '' if we can call it that, if ancients were trying to make the star a paradise. Or were they trying to make it a paradise, or just some other iteration they had in mind that would suffice the star? And if they did come to the conclusion that misery is part of the life in the star, and that humans don't reign supreme for merely existing, it does put an even more ironic twist to the entire story.

But if people living in the star aren't threatened by any of these things and are almost if not as capable as ancients themselves, doesn't the entire '' returning to the star '' seem much more odd in retrospect?

But alas, because we know very little of the unsundered existence beyond Elpis, Amaurot and the stars Meteia visit, and what we are told by biased sources, I don't know how to argue this topic, and can only ask questions.

In truth, everything you say can make perfectly logical sense, but it's as much of a theory than any other. Unless I missed something vital, which definitely can be the case.

[MikkoAkure]

The same purpose they play in the real world. Without ferocious predators to keep the population of other creatures in balance, a predator's prey will inevitably cause environmental destruction. As cute as a gazelle may be, if left to graze with no limit then there's not going to be much in the way of grass which negatively impacts many other species. So the existence of a lion to feast upon the gazelle will ensure that the delicate balance remains intact. Aside from feeding the lion, the gazelle's carcass will also provide much needed nurturing for the soil itself. Furthermore, as it decays even bugs will serve a purpose - hastening the decay.

It's a safe bet that the Ancients themselves came to such conclusions during the course of their research, especially since they had entire academies devoted to different fields.

My whole point is asking why they thought they needed to escalate the ecosystem's arms race by making things that had no place to be there that eventually warranted more insane monsters. In our world, the food web is balanced and everything has their own ecological niche. When the environment changes or new species migrate in, some who can't adapt die and then the remaining ones will change to fill in any empty niches. When you introduce something that has no business being there, you upset the whole balance. Like how Australia decided to introduce cane toads to solve a beetle problem but the cane toads are poisonous and nothing can eat them and they went crazy on the environment and left the beetles alone.

The gazelles are kept in check by lions, there's no real reason to add the giant, flying, fire-breathing wolves unless you made them either because you felt like it or because the ecosystem is being thrown out of control by the humongous, antlered, lighting-calling panthers you made last week.

"It's a fantasy game and it's just a reason to explain monsters" is the meta excuse. But the Ancients didn't wake up one morning realizing they're in a fantasy game so they have carte blanche to recreate Street Sharks. Though I doubt we'll learn of how it got this way unless they make a Tales of the Dawn entry on the origins of Elpis, it was probably a slippery slope that led to where they got to at the point we arrived. I'm sure it started with better intentions but it ended with researchers wanting to see a bunch of things fight and creating life to keep up with the trends. When it's normal, you don't see it as a bad thing and I'm sure most of them see it that way. But then you have Hermes who was in the wrong position for someone cursed with caring too much and he decided he was going to end the world over it.

[Cleretic]

The same purpose they play in the real world. Without ferocious predators to keep the population of other creatures in balance, a predator's prey will inevitably cause environmental destruction. As cute as a gazelle may be, if left to graze with no limit then there's not going to be much in the way of grass which negatively impacts many other species. So the existence of a lion to feast upon the gazelle will ensure that the delicate balance remains intact. Aside from feeding the lion, the gazelle's carcass will also provide much needed nurturing for the soil itself. Furthermore, as it decays even bugs will serve a purpose - hastening the decay.

It's a safe bet that the Ancients themselves came to such conclusions during the course of their research, especially since they had entire academies devoted to different fields.

Like I've been saying: even if it works, it's not a kind world at all. I'm sure the gazelle isn't very happy that someone decided that the best way to keep them in check was to invent lions.

...and given that FFXIV's origin myth is apparently just a bunch of weird creatives, I'm wondering how the gazelle's inventor and the lion's inventor feel about each other. Like, was this a mutual agreement, or was Mr. Gazelle pretty mad about this?

EDIT: In fact, given we don't actually know about the in-universe origin of the gazelle-lion dynamic, do we even know that the gazelles came first in this case, or is it possible that the lions existed first and then someone decided the savannah needed edible lawnmowers? That's also not great news to the gazelles, mind you, but it does change how the Ancients might feel about the lions.