Thematic issues. Why all the sci fi.

[Ath192]

You may want to rethink that when there are literal ancient hunter gather societies still in the stone age deep in the Amazon and more on Earth today, so their statement is correct.






https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

We already had this conversation earlier in this thread, They do not represent large populations. The context matters too. None of these uncontacted tribes are influential in global affairs or, as aptly described "in contact". To say that Limsa + Gridania + Uldah are in the same league as any of the examples mentioned is laughable, in fact, they are a global super power at this stage. Not only did their combined forces alongside you beat back Garlemald but their alliance is the strongest on the planet when you factor in they added the East, Ishgard, and Radz as allies.

In this game, and as far as the map goes, we have no known enemies anymore and everything is under our control. Even the beast tribes settled down and have fought alongside us when needed.

[yesnt]

How is anyone homeless at this point? or starving?

Yeah. How?
https://unequalscenes.com/south-africa

[hydralus]

The game's had mecha since ARR.

[genuine_stranger]

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It really feels like they’re speedrunning their expansion ideas.

Endwalker alone had two full expansion-worthy stories mashed together into one. Which, for me, ended up feeling lackluster. They tried to connect them in, let’s put it kindly, creative ways, and then they crammed a third storyline about the 13th into the patches, instead of giving it the space it deserved.

Now, with Dawntrail, it seems like they had enough ideas for two expansions again, one about Tural and another about the 9th Reflection, but they mashed them together once more. At least this time, they seem to have slowed down a bit and haven’t introduced a third post patch storyline to wrap up in a rush.

I just hope 8.0 has more breathing room. Say what you want about Stormblood, but I actually enjoyed it and the lore it added. It introduced new cultures in a way that, honestly, Dawntrail just didn’t manage to pull off as well.

Maybe we could get something like Stormblood again, but without a sidekick this time? Or at least someone on Hien’s level.
Damn, I loved that guy.

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Unless Sharlayan is deliberately restricting teleportation of goods to control the spread of technology and population, or maybe nobody can afford the teleportation taxes.
After all, in-game teleportation fees are literally a tax to Sharlayan for using their service. So, who’s to say they aren’t doing the same on a global scale?

[BigCheez]

I was going to say, by OP's own logic, the only jobs we should have now are GNB, MCH, and SGE because every other job is "outdated and impractical" if technology was really that sweeping and all encompassing within weeks of being introduced.

Hell, we shouldn't even have medieval settings at all by this point, everything should be Garlean magitek MINIMUM because there's just that much of it lying around to "advance" the rest of the known world (and they're not in any position to stop us from taking it from them).

That said, I don't find the mix of fantasy and sci-fi jarring as a whole, given it's nothing new for Final Fantasy, but I can see how it might stick out awkwardly when the Final Fantasy game in question is a "living world" and not a one and done storyline like the rest of them, and where we just assume great lengths of time have happened between expansions but in actuality the game doesn't even act like a year has passed, which also creates the excuse for WHY technology hasn't suddenly super-advanced the whole world because as far as the narrative is concerned the world hasn't been exposed to it for very long.

As far as we know, we discovered Alexandria just a month after we walked into our first Allag ruin, hardly time to study it all much less re-create it and spread it to all our neighbors.

Even if you ignore Alexandria and electrope specifically, I find the mix of classical fantasy and modern/sci-fi in FFXIV a bit off. The fact that you can have a knight in a suit of armour and a catgirl in streetwear standing next to each other makes the game feel pretty aesthetically inconsistent.

In the older FF games, they would always blend fantasy and sci-fi a bit more consistently throughout the world. Some games leaned much more heavily into sci-fi and wouldn't have much in the way of fantasy beyond magic and swords, others were much more traditional fantasy and the sci-fi elements would be more steampunky.

It definitely feels like the devs have been leaning more and more heavily into the IMVU modbeast aesthetic since Shb and feels out of place to me.

[PercibelTheren]

I understand that sci-fi has always been part of FF. Yes, Allagans and Garleans are a thing. My complaint about the sci-fi is that the different looks of it are so incongruous. Allagan tech looks different from Garlean tech. Then you have the NieR raids which, once again, look completely different. And Dawntrail stuff looks like modern "cyberpunk" (which is mostly just cyber, very little punk).

And I understand the argument that if we have all this tech, why are some city states still using medieval ships? Why do people in them dress like middle ages peasants?

[VeyaAkemi]

And I understand the argument that if we have all this tech, why are some city states still using medieval ships? Why do people in them dress like middle ages peasants?

1. Garlemald was literally at war with the rest of the world until very recently, and therefor unwilling to share their technology.

2. Allagan tech is poorly understood by the everyman and generally (justifiably) seen as dangerous.

3. Nier raids literally exist in another reality(well, shard), they are also crossover stuff so it's questionable how much it should count.

4. Sharlayan was isolationist until very recently.

5 Alexandria was literally another reality(shard) until extremely recently.

6. Time bubble bullshit preventing things from dots 1, 4 and 5 from changing the world in meaningful ways.

I really feel half the complaints here are caused by the time bubble, an idea they decided onto over 10 years ago and it gets dumber and dumber the more is added to the world.

Even if you ignore Alexandria and electrope specifically, I find the mix of classical fantasy and modern/sci-fi in FFXIV a bit off. The fact that you can have a knight in a suit of armour and a catgirl in streetwear standing next to each other makes the game feel pretty aesthetically inconsistent.

To me the big thing is that glamour exists as a lore thing, that alone justifies so much of what are aesthetic inconsistencies, the knight in a suit of armor and the catgirl in streetwear could be wearing the exact same equipment as far as we know, but they have vastly different aesthetic tastes, so they choose to use the common illusion magic of the setting to express themselves in very different ways, and for that, both sides only need to exist in the setting.

It's also why glam limitations per job are incredibly stupid even in lore, glamour is literally illusion magic, there should be nothing stopping anyone from casting the image of anything over anything else.

[Supersnow845]

The thing that I have noticed is most off about aesthetics and technology (which I inherently have no problem with) is the fact that eorzea was originally said to be a “technological backwater” overly reliant on traditional magic compared to the rest of the world.

That is really only true comparing it to garlemald before it collapsed. Hingashi and orthard are pretty much just medieval far east (like how eorzea is medieval Europe), thavnir is medieval India and the new world is like “early colonialism” Americas. Besides garlemald who is more technologically advanced than eorzea because everywhere seems to be stagnating

[Basteala]

If you want to get technical, Eorzea is less of a high fantasy world and more an advanced society that has beat itself to the stone age in multiple senses of the word. Not just with technology (Allag being the biggest example, but even Mhach had some pretty wild magic-technology hybrids like the Ark), but magic itself. Esuna--back in ARR--was seen as a miracle in the SCH questlines. The most basic spell in FF14 lore. The OG spell. One of the very first. In the Second Astral Era. A lot of this came from knee jerk mob mentality against technology in the 4th Astral Era, and Arcanophobia in the 6th, in response to the wanton destruction of the respective Calamities, which also would have destroyed a lot of records.

[Basteala]

Allagan tech used to be this ancient mysterious technology that was hard to recreate and was LOST for a reason, now it seems that the plot farts out tech and modern things on a whim. THERE IS NO REASON IN THIS GAME TO HAVE MIDDLE-AGE VILLAGE TYPE SOCIETIES IF THIS IS THE CASE. Can't any of you people understand world building and how decisions like this affect it in the story and in the world they are supposedly trying to portray us?

Ah hell with it, I'll ball. I enjoy a good lore debate. Taking this separately because character limits suck.

So Allagan technology...yes. It was lost for two very, very good reasons: The destruction caused by the earthquakes of the Fourth Umbral Calamity, as well as the destructive movement against all knowledge created by mankind's panic in this Calamity's wake.

It is very difficult to recreate for multiple reasons. From what I recall--Allagan metal is difficult to destroy, but that also means its difficult to manipulate. The technology to manipulate that metal likely either does not exist, or at least does not on a widespread level.

However, there's also the matter of aetherochemistry which--in case you are not aware--is the application of magical arts to technology to enhance that technology's performance. In other words, to recreate this technology, you need not only the technological knowhow to do so, but you also need a competent enough mage to imbue the necessary magics into the machine in question. Competent. Mages. In the Seventh Astral Era. As far as humanity is concerned--from what we see in game--your most widespread job crystal jobs in FF14 for magic that isn't heavily restricted are most likely Sage and Blue Mage. Black and White magic is highly regulated, Scholar, Pictomancer and Red Mage are borderline dead arts that are at the very beginnings of revival--and Red Magic in and of itself is very difficult to get into because you essentially need to be a skilled mage who can lift. Summoner benefits from an Ul'dahn initiative of taking those who have faced a primal and lived with their wits to tell about it but this is kind of a limited time offer with the Beast Tribes no longer feeling the need to resort to primal summoning by and large--could that change in the future, sure? But only if the knowledge provided by the Ascians survives that long.

So where does that leave us? A bunch of Thaumaturges, Arcanists, and the odd Conjurer. You're basically, charitably, asking a bunch of level 30s to make Allagan tech run. And to be fair, you may have had some such people in those positions doing just that, especially Arcanists, but so as the mage is limited, so too is the technology that is created as a result. And this is before learning how all the technology works, and explaining to laymen how to use it. People are stubborn about their ways, look at real life--we can't even get off QWERTY keyboards, for God's sake.