Hildibrand for relic? Really?

[RobynDaBank]

"Long"?

Oh I miss the old MMO community where people actually enjoyed playing the game instead of having everything handled in a golden plate.

Man, I may be one of those gosh darned zoomers but I'm willing to sit through wipes in Alliance Raids multiple times over doing a quest chain I'm really not interested in. It's why eventually people were weaned off of Job quests because they were forced onto people so much. Questing outside of MSQ is unengaging for me, but at least Eureka/Bozja had combat content in between.

[Seger]

Man, I may be one of those gosh darned zoomers but I'm willing to sit through wipes in Alliance Raids multiple times over doing a quest chain I'm really not interested in. It's why eventually people were weaned off of Job quests because they were forced onto people so much. Questing outside of MSQ is unengaging for me, but at least Eureka/Bozja had combat content in between.

Sorry you don't want to quest in a PvE questing based MMO.

Jesus Dude just do the damn thing and stop complaining.

Skip all the cutscenes and it will be done in a few hours.

[RobynDaBank]

Sorry you don't want to quest in a PvE questing based MMO.

Jesus Dude just do the damn thing and stop complaining.

Skip all the cutscenes and it will be done in a few hours.

You're complaining about people complaining... "Jesus, stop complaining, dude"!

What's with that tone? Need an afternoon nap? Jeez. I won't be doing it because I already had little reason to do Relics. Am I not allowed to say "wow, that's a kinda silly decision"? Oh, oops. I'm not.

[Seger]

You're complaining about people complaining... "Jesus, stop complaining, dude"!

What's with that tone? Need an afternoon nap? Jeez. I won't be doing it because I already had little reason to do Relics. Am I not allowed to say "wow, that's a kinda silly decision"? Oh, oops. I'm not.

You know what's silly?

OG ARR Relic questline.

That was silly... this is nothing.

[Raoabolic]

You know what's silly?

OG ARR Relic questline.

That was silly... this is nothing.

He's right, when the curtain closed for the segway in the middle of "that" scene in the waking sands I though "That's a bit silly".

[DeliNote]

TLDR:

- They're going for something different this time, it's not the end of the world. If you don't like Hildi it's okay to skip it, a lot of people skipped Bozja when it was yet again another political war looming piece of content.

- In my opinion this type of content fits the current low stakes story/game world wise after Endwalker ended a 10 year one. It's the best time for them to experiment with these types of more "casual" (Island sanctuary) and new content they've been wanting to add for a while (Variant and Criterion).

- The devs need to do something different/more silly from time to time or they'll explode, it's sometimes as simple as that in some regards in my opinion.

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I do understand that some people do not like the Hildi questline since it differs from what the game normally offers in itself, and in that perspective I can agree in part with their disappointment/dread of having to do a part of content they don't like.

However, at the same time you have people saying "Oh but Ivalice and Bozja were different!", and my question to you is: were they really?

I'm going to be honest: I was getting quite exhausted with constant political crap left and right in almost every single little piece of content that we do, X faction versus Y faction and war or destruction looming a certain country or city or people for whatever reason (the content itself was NOT bad at all don't get me wrong, but the premises all swirled around conflict and war).

So when I heard they were going for Hildi type of relic was I was like "Oh thank fluff... it won't be another war afflicted zone/faction that we need to craft a super strong weapon of mass destruction to obliterate the other side again." type of story that was predominant for the last 10 years (some good exceptions exist of course.)

Plus, it goes more into the type of current events that they want to go with: Endwalker finished the arc, so currently things are calmer and still developing, another freaking Bozja zone would make zero sense.
This patch, 6.25, lack luster rewards aside that I feel could be improved, symbolizes in my opinion the current low stakes story and world game wise things are going through-- tomb/map exploration with Variant dungeons and experimenting with Criterion for a more specific type of content, as well as a prelude with the Omicrons, with a more chill interaction with island sanctuary (it does need a lot of work though).

I saw almost no one complaining about Bozja when it was all political crap again, so why are people losing it so much with Hildi that it feels like it's the end of the world?
A few people didn't like Bozja either, a lot did. Some people don't like Hildi, A LOT of people do.

I feel that if the developers don't do something different/silly every once in a while they'll just explode.

[Midareyukki]

I saw almost no one complaining about Bozja when it was all political crap again, so why are people losing it so much with Hildi that it feels like it's the end of the world?
A few people didn't like Bozja either, a lot did. Some people don't like Hildi, A LOT of people do.

Ironic because I feel in the minority of people that actually genuinely liked Bozja o,o

I'm okay with political stuff, but I know very well that isn't people's go-to for media. FF12's story is very poorly seen specifically because of how much they focus on the geopolitical aspects of the plot rather than having the story feel interactive. Tactics has a better time at it, but people who enjoy tactics-style games tend to be more on the nerdier side, so... all in all, Bozja was a piece of content for people who were already predisposed to that. And what happens when you get Type-0 (war, brutal, really depressing) mixed with FF12 (dry historic textbook, political and philosophical)? That's right: not something most people enjoy xD

So I do 100% understand why people dislike Bozja so much. It's honestly far rarer for me to find anyone who liked it rather than the usual Hrothgar (and even then, a lot of the ones I talked to seem to dislike the way they and their lore were handled anyway) or someone who, again, prefers it over Eureka (due to tweaks and improvements from Eureka feedback).

So I'm legit surprised you see no one complaining about Bozja. Especially when you say "a lot did"; for me, "a lot" actually disliked Bozja and were only into it for the gameplay aspect and not the story and the events. I see that all the time in these forums, especially when compared to the Manderville stuff we're having, and most of the criticisms stem from exactly what you point out.

As for me, Hildibrand's a real hit or miss. I preferred the HSW arc over the SB arc, and I'm not exactly thrilled about this one either. I'd say the people who actually -hate- Hildibrand and are upset at the relic being tied to it are people who generally don't like slapstick comedy. Just the same way people who don't like war documentaries and political philosophizing (?) didn't like Bozja. But one thing that I'd like to say, especially to SE if they're reading this, is to not feel discouraged just because people aren't into the aforementioned slapstick/wartime docudrama. You're never going to please everyone. But maybe have something for everyone. A mix of Bozja\Werylt with Hildibrand to keep the scales balanced and not overload Shadowbringers with really heavy and gruesome moments.

...oh and one last thing. Even I who liked Bozja have to admit the gameplay gets stale fast, the story was poorly handled and they made really poor use of Yasumi Matsuno's usual style when blending it with XIV's style. I like to think that if they hadn't used Matsuno to begin with and only kept him around to expand Ivalice's lore (but not writing its plot), it'd have been far better off. What we got was Type-0 + Tactics. XIV, at its harshest and dryest, isn't comparable to those two. I feel like there was a disconnect there somewhere that ended up snowballing as circumstances kept piling onto eachother in Bozja.