Thematic issues. Why all the sci fi.

[Basteala]

Part 2 because character limits still suck.

Now for Alexandrian Technology...it's made pretty clear you need Electrope, and there is no known source of it at this current time on the Source, aside from--obviously--raiding Everkeep to do so--and doing so comes at great risk because in the current political climate, you'd be engaging not only Alexandria, but their diplomatic ties and proximity to Tural suggest Thavnair could get involved too.

But say despite all that, an attacker succeeds in procuring all the electrope Alexandria has to offer--that's still finite. At the most you'd have one nation, maybe a couple of trading partners, with goodly amounts of electrope. It would still be rationed to a degree, or incredibly expensive due to short supply--remember, even with all the Electrope on its native shard, wars were fought over its alleged scarcity. Even with current Eorzean technology there's a wild imbalance between what each nation has access to and considers commonplace. And I'm not even counting Sharlayan in that mix. That reflects real life, too.

Now, all of these problems could sort themselves out in due time, and you could be right--that in the future, the fantasy from FF14 is gone and we all live in a pseudo cyberpunk reality.

But here's the thing, none of that is going to happen before the twins hit their legal drinking age. And we all know that's never going to happen.

[Gwenkatsu]

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?

Because the Sci-Fi technology sucks.

When Garlemald attacked Eorzea with battle mechs and laser guns, they were repelled by axeman and magicians. When Garlemald threw a moon(!) with a terrible demon inside at their enemies, it was repelled by a guy with a staff.
When Alexandria's Star Wars Army attacked Shaaloani, they were repelled by some cowboys with rubber bullets /s/, and a guy with a lance.

Why would the classical Fantasy population want to use a technology they do not understand, and which is proven to be inferior to their axes and fireballs?

That being said, I'm absolutely ok with some level of Sci-Fi in FF14 - Magitek, Allagan, time travel, and the like. But a future mega city with neon lights and Starbucks? That's just a big no in my book.

[Rinoa_353]

Part 2 because character limits still suck.

You can bypass the character limit by posting the correct limit and then editing and adding the rest to your post.

[Basteala]

Because the Sci-Fi technology sucks.

When Garlemald attacked Eorzea with battle mechs and laser guns, they were repelled by axeman and magicians. When Garlemald threw a moon(!) with a terrible demon inside at their enemies, it was repelled by a guy with a staff.
When Alexandria's Star Wars Army attacked Shaaloani, they were repelled by some cowboys with rubber bullets /s/, and a guy with a lance.

Why would the classical Fantasy population want to use a technology they do not understand, and which is proven to be inferior to their axes and fireballs?

That being said, I'm absolutely ok with some level of Sci-Fi in FF14 - Magitek, Allagan, time travel, and the like. But a future mega city with neon lights and Starbucks? That's just a big no in my book.

This is actually an interesting point. I think the "magicians" are being understated here a little bit. In a combative sense, the gap between the two isn't that large, if at all.

Which might make sense. All magitek does is manipulate the six elements of aether to create a desired result--this is literally no different than what a mage does. Magitek devices ultimately just create a surrogate body to manipulate the aether that Garleans can't (obviously past a certain size like transport vessels this becomes an entirely different argument, but at a footman and fireball vs walker argument it kind of pans out).

You can bypass the character limit by posting the correct limit and then editing and adding the rest to your post.

You are my new favorite person on these forums.

[Rinoa_353]

This is actually an interesting point. I think the "magicians" are being understated here a little bit. In a combative sense, the gap between the two isn't that large, if at all.

Which might make sense. All magitek does is manipulate the six elements of aether to create a desired result--this is literally no different than what a mage does. Magitek devices ultimately just create a surrogate body to manipulate the aether that Garleans can't (obviously past a certain size like transport vessels this becomes an entirely different argument, but at a footman and fireball vs walker argument it kind of pans out).



You are my new favorite person on these forums.

You're welcome lol.


To add to the tread topic, Electrope technology is also magic based where the circuits imprinted on the Electrope is based off the Arcanist runes from the South Sea Isles. So it actually fits into the lore, it just looks like Mass Effect but they explain the underlying concept of how it functions. This is speculation but I think it's reasonable that the Source would also have deposits of Electrope since the Reflections are all based off of the Source. It's just that Allag existed and developed their advanced technology that didn't need Electrope since holograms, robots and spaceships exist in the Source from Allag without Electrope. Another theory could be Allag did use Electrope in their technology and maybe exhausted all deposits since their empire spanned nearly the entire planet at their height and the Fourth Umbral Calamity may have buried any remaining deposits deeper underground perhaps?

[TaleraRistain]

Garlemald was over there with cars and trains but we didn't see that in their occupied territories like Ala Mhigo and Doma. So even with a situation where Garlemald was in control of them, there wasn't a requirement to abandon their own traditions. There's nothing that says Tural has to embrace technology and they're more likely not to because tradition is heavily valued there.

And we have like, what, two sci-fi places? The moon, which was intended to be a spaceship to shuttle everyone away from certain doom. And a fragment of an alien culture with advanced technology that developed on Etheirys completely isolated from the rest of it for 30 years. It's not going to be business as usual there.

Final Fantasy games have been doing this since the original. You go through nearly all of FFI traveling from little medieval village to little medieval village. Then boom, you're in a flying fortress created by the Lufenians that has a completely different technological appearance and where you can run into robots. Then you go to another place where you can travel through time.

[Loggos]

I like the fusion of sci-fi and more "traditional"/medieval-inspired fantasy. If done well you can mix these themes up very creatively for world-building and storytelling. Whether it's done well in Dawntrail/FF14 is another debate (I think there are hits and misses) but I'm a fan of the core idea.

[Basteala]

You're welcome lol.


To add to the tread topic, Electrope technology is also magic based where the circuits imprinted on the Electrope is based off the Arcanist runes from the South Sea Isles. So it actually fits into the lore, it just looks like Mass Effect but they explain the underlying concept of how it functions. This is speculation but I think it's reasonable that the Source would also have deposits of Electrope since the Reflections are all based off of the Source. It's just that Allag existed and developed their advanced technology that didn't need Electrope since holograms, robots and spaceships exist in the Source from Allag without Electrope. Another theory could be Allag did use Electrope in their technology and maybe exhausted all deposits since their empire spanned nearly the entire planet at their height and the Fourth Umbral Calamity may have buried any remaining deposits deeper underground perhaps?

Good points regarding the application of arcanistry to electrope--I forgot about that. Where Electrope is concerned I feel there are two possibilities--either the fact that there is electrope somewhere on the Source as you're saying, or it could be a side effect of the shard becoming so heavily aspected towards lightning, thus putting the conquest and submission of lightning and stone into a slight imbalance, allowing certain stone to become what we now know as electrope.

The theory you have with Allag is interesting, especially given the striking similarity between electrope's application and the art of aetherochemistry. The fact that the calamity the Allagans caused being the calamity of Earth might really give that theory legs.

Those are some very interesting thoughts.

[Exmo]

OP has never played any other Final Fantasy game in their life.

[Asari5]

as far as i remember there was a limited amount of electrope on the shard.
when they relied more and more on it the balance tipped and created more electrope which resulted in them relying even more on electrope and fighting for it... which made the whole shard spiralling down faster and faster