Does anyone else miss the feeling of fantasy in this game?

[StormChase]

I think its less the ancients themselves existing (because it is in and of itself a fantasy concept to have a long-dead mystical people who wore masks and wielded insane magic) but the writers/dev team's insistence on OVER EXPLAINING everything. we didn't need to know "what the twelve really are," because they were just part of the lore and worldbuilding of the game and frankly the explanation was boring and extremely non-fantastical. likewise, I don't need an expert dungeon quest to tell me point blank "these cultures share similarities because they had an origin point in the unsundered world." thats a lot more fun of a conclusion to arrive at on my own through speculation.

there also seems to be, in DT at least, a fundamental incuriosity and lack of interest in making the world fantastical at all. weirdly uninspired expac all around that's definitely heightened the feeling that I'm barely playing a fantasy game at all anymore. really not sure how this happened...

I enjoyed the Twelve questline but I definitely agree that not everything needs an explanation. Also this isn't totally on topic, but my personal issue with it was that it made the Eorzean interpretation seem the "most valid" even though it's established that other deities were inspired by them too.

[StormChase]

I enjoyed the Twelve questline but I definitely agree that not everything needs an explanation. Also this isn't totally on topic, but my personal issue with it was that it made the Eorzean interpretation seem the "most valid" even though it's established that other deities were inspired by them too.

If any of you play Dungeons & Dragons you might've heard of the Eberron setting, and that leaves a lot of story elements unexplained, because the creator wanted DMs to be able to make their own interpretations. The closest thing they have to the Twelve is a pantheon called the Sovereign Host and Dark Six, and we don't even know for sure if they actually exist or not. There's speculation that deities from different cultures share an origin, but it's never 100% confirmed what this common origin is. Best guess they have is dragons.

[Shikiseki]

Especially the feeling of adventure as well"

Honestly that boils down to playstyle - I thouroughly enjoyed the DT scenario, I RP walked when it feeled right to do so (during escort games), haven't really used mounts to just let the environment sink in, sometimes just standing there with the night time piano playing during heavy rain while you stare into the distant mountains.

What I do agree on the fact that the recent zones feel too much "copied from earth" and applied to continents like FF14's Americas etc.
That and that the world doesn't really feel interconnected. The world building really took a massive hit when they started to go to faraway distant single zones. Like Eorzea remains one of the nicest connected area you could just travel from one place to another for funsies...

[Anvaire]

i do, but i dont think its because of the ancients. Its because weve not really had "fantasy" for a while, instead we have magic technology that can do everything. Im not opposed to the sci fi stuff, but i miss the days of heavensward when it was much more fantasy based.

I also think that the writers have written off too much of the stuff that was speculative and in doing so has made everything feel much more mundane. I would rather have kept Ky and Zodi about and not known about their creation Or at the least kept the twelve mysterious but have them take interest. When the gods are reduced to nothing more than simulated life or a fantasy version of a gundam suit, the fantasy aspect is lost.

The most egregious reason is the addition of so much technology like stuff. Its handled where the Sharlayans in my opinion know too much. They shouldnt have been able to build a space ship, but its been a long time problem, the technology of alag was too understandable by the garleans. Im not against fantasy technology, but it needs to be grounded. Currently in XIV it is not. At least with the new gate story thread they made a point of making it so no one knows how it works or how to use it.

[Vinter]

We need FF14-2

Reboot, have a plan, make it more immersive. No more everyone being the main character in cutscenes, everyone is there and interacting with NPCs and fighting and stuff. Less single player more co-op.

[Doopliss]

I think its less the ancients themselves existing (because it is in and of itself a fantasy concept to have a long-dead mystical people who wore masks and wielded insane magic) but the writers/dev team's insistence on OVER EXPLAINING everything. we didn't need to know "what the twelve really are," because they were just part of the lore and worldbuilding of the game and frankly the explanation was boring and extremely non-fantastical. likewise, I don't need an expert dungeon quest to tell me point blank "these cultures share similarities because they had an origin point in the unsundered world." thats a lot more fun of a conclusion to arrive at on my own through speculation.

there also seems to be, in DT at least, a fundamental incuriosity and lack of interest in making the world fantastical at all. weirdly uninspired expac all around that's definitely heightened the feeling that I'm barely playing a fantasy game at all anymore. really not sure how this happened...

I agree 100% with everything you said here. It's really well put. However, I wanted to mention that this has felt particularly egregious since Endwalker, not actually for most of the game's lifespan--though, for me, personally, the signs were blaring around 5.3, when they started making up somehow-more-convoluted-than-usual magical-science solutions that led to more, extremely convenient magical-science solutions.

I would also say the fundamental incuriosity and lack of interest in making the world fantastical was also at the front in Endwalker. Hilariously, I personally think Thavnair--a region that gets a measly two zones to it--has more flare and thoughtfulness in it than the entirety of Tural, especially with its mixing of both fantasy cultures and several real life cultures (surprise! it's not strictly fantasy India) to make something unique and respectful (at least in its most recent iteration... you'll have to unfortunately ignore some of the previous expansions' treatment of Thavnair...).

Unfortunately Sharlayan pisses me off though. It felt like they strove to make it as modernly appealing as possible while keeping the known architectural designs we'd seen in the Dravanian Hinterlands. Why does the whole thing feel like an upper-middle class college campus. Why does every NPC feel like your wacky-yet-palatably-relatable fellow office worker. There's absolutely no way this was the initial idea for Old Sharlayan, when characters like Matoya, or places like the Antitower, or insane groups like the Bibliothecs were all related to it. What happened to their implied, fantastical-levels of highhandedness?

Anyway, Tural feels to me a lot like basically EW Old Sharlayan but on a large scale. Everything is so sterile and unmysterious and essentially conflictless in spite of having a great set up for, you know, being the opposite. Sorry for the rant. This has just been something I've been stewing on too long.


Also I have never wanted to forget an entire questline before doing Myths of the Realm. God, I'd almost pay to forget it.

[StormChase]

I agree 100% with everything you said here. It's really well put. However, I wanted to mention that this has felt particularly egregious since Endwalker, not actually for most of the game's lifespan--though, for me, personally, the signs were blaring around 5.3, when they started making up somehow-more-convoluted-than-usual magical-science solutions that led to more, extremely convenient magical-science solutions.

I would also say the fundamental incuriosity and lack of interest in making the world fantastical was also at the front in Endwalker. Hilariously, I personally think Thavnair--a region that gets a measly two zones to it--has more flare and thoughtfulness in it than the entirety of Tural, especially with its mixing of both fantasy cultures and several real life cultures (surprise! it's not strictly fantasy India) to make something unique and respectful (at least in its most recent iteration... you'll have to unfortunately ignore some of the previous expansions' treatment of Thavnair...).

Unfortunately Sharlayan pisses me off though. It felt like they strove to make it as modernly appealing as possible while keeping the known architectural designs we'd seen in the Dravanian Hinterlands. Why does the whole thing feel like an upper-middle class college campus. Why does every NPC feel like your wacky-yet-palatably-relatable fellow office worker. There's absolutely no way this was the initial idea for Old Sharlayan, when characters like Matoya, or places like the Antitower, or insane groups like the Bibliothecs were all related to it. What happened to their implied, fantastical-levels of highhandedness?

Anyway, Tural feels to me a lot like basically EW Old Sharlayan but on a large scale. Everything is so sterile and unmysterious and essentially conflictless in spite of having a great set up for, you know, being the opposite. Sorry for the rant. This has just been something I've been stewing on too long.


Also I have never wanted to forget an entire questline before doing Myths of the Realm. God, I'd almost pay to forget it.

I think the three things that've been left unexplained with Tural are how the Alexandrians built the gate in the first place, how proximity to the gate gave the Yok Huy visions of the Golden City, and what it was the ancient Haragin people saw when they sailed east. I was so convinced it was gonna be Solution Nine, but that materialized later in the expansion.

Tural not having much conflict makes some sense because it's been in a period of relative peace for several decades, but the patches should be used to set up more tension. A lot of Alexandrians probably see Gulool Ja as a puppet ruler, especially since his guardian's the leader of another state. There are Turali people who were stuck in the dome for thirty years, and some of them have children who've never known the outside before. How will this affect Tural in the long run?

[StormChase]

We need FF14-2

Reboot, have a plan, make it more immersive. No more everyone being the main character in cutscenes, everyone is there and interacting with NPCs and fighting and stuff. Less single player more co-op.

If they ever make another MMORPG I want it to be a new setting loosely based on FFXI and FFXIV. Seeing Etheirys after a timeskip would be cool, but a blank slate with new things to discover would feel more satisfying.

[Doopliss]

I think the three things that've been left unexplained with Tural are how the Alexandrians built the gate in the first place, how proximity to the gate gave the Yok Huy visions of the Golden City, and what it was the ancient Haragin people saw when they sailed east. I was so convinced it was gonna be Solution Nine, but that materialized later in the expansion.

Tural not having much conflict makes some sense because it's been in a period of relative peace for several decades, but the patches should be used to set up more tension. A lot of Alexandrians probably see Gulool Ja as a puppet ruler, especially since his guardian's the leader of another state. There are Turali people who were stuck in the dome for thirty years, and some of them have children who've never known the outside before. How will this affect Tural in the long run?

Yeah, I am aware Tural not having much conflict makes sense with how they have written it, I just think it’s a really, really lame plot point for a lack of better words. Something about the Coolest Dad In The Whole Continent nigh-flawlessly uniting everyone just felt a little…I don’t know the words. It just didn’t feel…interesting? Thoughtful? This is a completely personal opinion of course.

I do think the mysteries with Alexandria are neat but I do hate that they basically had to insert a fraction of another shard into a giant, unexplored-to-us continent to introduce any of those potential mysteries. And admittedly I just don’t currently trust them to make it interesting. Every character, inside and outside of the dome, severely underreacted to what a horrifying situation that actually was. Especially since it also served as a time warp…


Of course I do want to be proven wrong and/or surprised. I also don’t like being too harsh on writing for MMOs, since it is always a kind of weird, cumbersome task… Just, god damn.

[CuteBucket]

I don't think the Ancients ruined the fantasy feeling at all. For me, they added to the fantastical feeling of the world. It's not even the first time that Final Fantasy has done something with "Ancient but advanced civilization that fell to ruin for a mysterious reason" thing. That's actually a trope in a lot of fantasy worlds, and finding out some of the lost secrets of the Ancients is part of many fantasy stories.

No, I think what has killed the feeling of fantasy in this game is that they tried to wrap up as many loose ends as they could with Endwalker (which should have been two expansions). The end of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga didn't need to mean the end of everything even tangentially related to 2.0-6.0 them, but that's where they seemed to have taken it ever since the end of Endwallker. So I was hopeful that Dawntrail would introduce us to some new mysteries or give us a hint as to what to set up for the next story branch. But...it didn't. We got the Azem Grail (or so I've been calling it), which has a little bit of mystery to it, but also not really? We already know what it does, we just don't know how to use it. What else remains in Tural that's mysterious and unexplored that we still got a hint or glimpse of in the MSQ? ...Yeah, I got nothing. There's things I would like to see, like more parts of Yok Tural, but nothing that the actual, canon story events hinted at.