Can 7.0 focus on a storyline without the philosophizing

[SquirrelDerp]

I'd prefer if they didn't. A lot of what was listed are the main reasons I love the story for this game.

[Lunalepsy]

We really don't need another lecture on the meaning of life or existentialism. We don't need to watch yet another monologue on how life is worth living and we can still have purpose even if we fail and suffer, or how humans have free will and we need to fight for our purpose and choose our purpose even if we might fail, defying our fate and the purpose others impose on us (basically existentialism).

It's quite enough, CBU3. Please find some new material. Please write a story with nuanced and interesting character development perhaps, that isn't just traveling with 7 people who just alternate between "you are my friend and I appreciate you" or "don't die on me".

EW had barely any character development, and now FF16 doesn't have it either (other than maybe Joshua). It's like character arcs no longer exist in CBU3 games, giving way to the philosophy and life lessons that CBU3 wants you to remember. Which is fine once or twice but it is seriously getting tiring and tedious when it's the twentieth time the same moral of the story gets repeated again and again.

Completely agree. Time to bury the hatchet and try something new.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Completely agree. Time to bury the hatchet and try something new.

New like what exactly? Have any ideas? Cause I can't say ARR, HW, SB, ShB or EW do the same thing or touch on the same story beats. People hyperbolize quite a bit

[VelKallor]

Strawman argument 101

Fact. There were posts here calling for SE staff to be fired. Criticism? You lot are so unhappy with all of it, the part that makes me laugh the hardest is that it doesnt matter WHAT the devs do , someone here will be complaining.

Each of you wants something different, each of you will yowl when you dont get your way. Theres no consensus, no commonality.

[VelKallor]

BTW Im going to ask what I asked Mr Art Critic Aveyond the OverLoud: how do you know what you want is what the players want? How do you know that the changes you suggest will be well received? How do you know what you want is what OTHERS want?

You DO NOT speak for the "majority", despite all the bleating we see here.

To go back to the earlier metaphor: you are in the restaurant telling the owner that your "new menu" is what the customers will want...when it could in fact have the direct opposite effect, you are in HIS business telling them "you know best" when in fact you have no way of knowing whether or not what you propose will even WORK? How do you know that your suggested changes are what others want?

How do you know that what you are demanding WONT cause the customers to go elsewhere? Clive Cussler didnt one day decide to go and kill off Dirk Pitt because "we should kill people off to make it interesting with a fresh cast", he was a successful novelist who KNEW because his books were all bestsellers that this is what his readers WANTED.

David Weber decided NOT to kill off Honor Harrington because he KNEW that wasnt what his readers wanted. Just the opposite. The setup and cast they have now in FF 14 are highly successful, and outside this little echo chamber NO ONE here knows whether or not what THEY think is good for the game...will actually be just that.

You DONT know for certain. Admit it.

All I see here is "this is what I think will work"..did it ever occur to any of you that you could be WRONG?

If that hasnt occurred to you, maybe you should.

[TheDecay]

The story doesn’t need to have a prominent story character die every single story arc. That will get tiring and lose any sense of shock value, especially if there’s no point except to cater to your own definition of “stakes” or to thin the cast out.


Many stories have stakes without needing to kill or maim characters.

You are right that characters do not need to die to create stakes and tension. However, the Scions have become incredibly one-note as of late, where everyone has roughly the same ideology, same worldview, same philosophy, same ethics, same morals, same Weltanschauung. It has become petrified and immutable. One can say they have completed their character arcs for six years now, since the end of Stormblood. Certain Scions have completed their character arcs since Heavensward even, like Alphinaud.

The story has thus become predictable. If there are a bunch of soldiers who hate your guts trying to kill you, out of misunderstanding, we already know what will happen: Alphinaud will say "hold your steel", and we won't kill them. Y'shtola might chime in and explain why they have the misunderstanding. We will fight them but not kill them. We will knock them out. They will then recover and stand up, and the writers now have two choices: to make these soldiers come to our side and stay stubborn. Because the writers require that their philosophy wins out, these soldiers will come to our side eventually. Maybe one or two won't, and will get cleaned off either by dying or becoming a villain and then dying, but the vast majority would. So these soldiers are going to stand up and ask "why didn't you kill us" and now the table is set for Alphinaud to espouse his pacifist philosophy for the ten thousandth time.

There are a few other ethical and philosophical positions that the game bends its own plot around to elucidate, often repetitively, and what you have is an extremely unrealistic portrayal of humanity, where it really starts to feel like this isn't an organic story but a few writers' fan fiction aimed at preaching some morals with the actual plot subservient to the preaching. There can be no tension once the player realizes this fact because by backwards-inducting one can easily figure out that there is no real danger or stakes because the preaching will not allow any dissonant story beats that can put its philosophy into danger. See for example the latest MSQ where the Garlean senators just came around and followed the writers' imposed political philosophy at the end.

[TheDecay]

I should note that no sane person would actually disagree with many of the morals that the game preaches. The problem is that it creates bad writing and is extremely uninteresting and frankly unconvincing. Many of the moral dilemmas set up in ARR have been slowly whitted away, such as the city states' war and racism against the beast tribes. But those dilemmas are good writing. Your philosophy is hollow if there are no dilemmas and implementing it is straightforward and trivial. It's why we don't consider breathing oxygen a philosophy, but we consider eating only plant-based food a philosophy.

[VelKallor]

The problem is that it creates bad writing

Thats your opinion. Not fact. Dont confuse the two.

Many of the moral dilemmas set up in ARR have been slowly whitted away, such as the city states' war and racism against the beast tribes.

Because, of course, no one ever realises what they have done was morally wrong, and seek to establish peace. Matter of fact, that change was in fact started during the interview between the Admiral and Yugiri, who planted the first seeds of doubt in the Admirals mind. That change came about because the Admiral had to accept the forceful reality "divided we fall". Faced with a common enemy, faced with a gigantic threat to all, she bit the bullet and did what she had probably been wanting to do for years, but never had the courage to take that next step.

[AwesomeJr44]

You DO NOT speak for the "majority", despite all the bleating we see here.

You say this, and yet you have the hubris to assume that you do. In your absolute failure of a metaphor that you keep insisting on pushing, you're a Karen that yells at people in an attempt to try and suppress opinions that you don't agree with because you find their very utterance offensive. You pretend that some invisible majority agrees with you because you know that your rants could never stand on their own legs as logical arguments. Odd that you would feel the need to do so in such an angry and defensive manner if such opinions were coming from mere 'malcontents'.

Kindly cease and desist.

The story has thus become predictable. If there are a bunch of soldiers who hate your guts trying to kill you, out of misunderstanding, we already know what will happen: Alphinaud will say "hold your steel", and we won't kill them. Y'shtola might chime in and explain why they have the misunderstanding. We will fight them but not kill them. We will knock them out. They will then recover and stand up, and the writers now have two choices: to make these soldiers come to our side and stay stubborn. Because the writers require that their philosophy wins out, these soldiers will come to our side eventually. Maybe one or two won't, and will get cleaned off either by dying or becoming a villain and then dying, but the vast majority would. So these soldiers are going to stand up and ask "why didn't you kill us" and now the table is set for Alphinaud to espouse his pacifist philosophy for the ten thousandth time.

This is so accurate that it's sad.

[DiaDeem]