Echoes of Vana'diel FFXI Alliance Raid

[Iscah]

Big Shantotto is back

I'm not a FFXI player so I might be mistaken, but are her proportions a bit off? Her head looks too big for her body.

I like the look of puppetmaster, blue mage, bard and rune fencer.

[Yuella]

Weird that one of the RDM AF will be the healer set. Why not use Dragoon for Maiming and Ranger for Aiming?

[Cidel]

...My possible take on why they didn't make other sets, of course this is my own speculation and may be with a lot of logic holes, people can decide if they make sense:

Samurai - We already have a lot of Samurai-y gear (but FFXI AF is quite unique, yes)
Scholar - We already have a lot of Scholar-y gear (but FFXI AF is quite unique, as well)
Black Mage - We already have a lot of Black Mage-y gear (Not having FFXI AF2 is a big bummer, not gonna lie)
White Mage - We already have a lot of White Mage-y gear (Not having FFXI AF2 is a big bummer, I wanted condom hat UnU)

It's actually amusing though; the same exact things could be said for PLDs and RDMs with that logic:
"Red Mage - We already have a lot of Red Mage-y gear (but FFXI AF is quite unique)"
"Paladin - We already have a lot of Paladin-y gear (but FFXI AF looks a little different from the 50+ heavy armors you could dye white)"

Far be it from me to take away your excitement for double PLD and RDM AF+AF2, but I hardly think those are the reasons why they didn't make other AF sets. The chief reason being they are beholden to their usual "We only made 4 sets, and 3 recolors," status quo; and unfortunately it's even more jarring when dealing with job-specific sets.

If I was to play devil's advocate for them and give reasons why these were picked, it's because:
1) These are 4 of the original vanilla jobs before expansions started hitting. And all save for PLD are base jobs. And I guess they just figured PLD AF better represents tanks than WAR's harness AF.
2) In a way, I guess you could argue RDMs could technically fall between healer and casters; but were originally more support-oriented.

As I said it previously, is a shame we didn't get randomized coffer sets at the end of the raid (since this is the last one), so everyone could get a shot.

Yeah, that thought did cross my mind back from the first alliance raid, especially with the tokens used in Jeuno to buy music sheets, but that's huffing some serious copium/hopium and was likely just a Nier raid caveat. We're in all likeliness just getting another set of FFXI orchestrion rolls to trade-in tokens for.

Weird that one of the RDM AF will be the healer set. Why not use Dragoon for Maiming and Ranger for Aiming?

Small indie company, please understand.

No, but seriously, like I mentioned above, RDM's AF was probably an attempt to split the baby for healers and casters by doing AF at all. I mean really though, it would have been lovely if they could have at least put in a little extra resources to give Maiming, Aiming and Healing their own AFs as well for the XI raid series' finale.

In the end, my issue with their choice of raid gear is that the whole thing now looks like they had 3 separate design teams working on the gear for each alliance raid set. The first group wanted to make cosplay outfits for players to look like the Ark Angel bosses (which I don't think anyone expected nor originally wanted when the XI raid theme was announced), the second group wanted to make cosplay outfits of important NPCs for players, like Ivalice alliance gear (again, I don't recall people getting hyped over NPC outfits, but people wanting DNC AF scored thanks to Lilisette). The third group decided they wanted to recreate AF gear- which I do recall being something people wanted to see. So we end up with a sort of mishmash of disjointed, inconsistent themes.

If they were going to do job AFs at all, they should have been consistent throughout all 3 alliance raids. At least that way, most healers, casters, melee, tanks and ranged DPS would have had one set that best represented them.

Alternatively, I think lots of people were hoping for iconic job-agnostic sets, some of which might actually be recolored feasibly (like casting/healing from the Second Walk).

Even reading reddit comments in the thread talking about it seem filled with more disappointment than hype.

[Luluna]

I loved getting the DNC af last time but this next raid gear is a bit boring and safe. I wish they had given way more than us always sharing all the time it is lazy.

There are so many amazing outfits in XI I feel this last lot is lacking

[Fawkes]

I'm not a FFXI player so I might be mistaken, but are her proportions a bit off? Her head looks too big for her body.

She looks ok to me. Tarutaru are shorter than Lalafell, maybe she got a scaled down Lala body and that's what looks off. I don't think Taru knees can bend that much.

[Iscah]

She looks ok to me. Tarutaru are shorter than Lalafell, maybe she got a scaled down Lala body and that's what looks off. I don't think Taru knees can bend that much.

Thanks for the comparison image, but it makes me more certain that the proportions look off. Her torso is smaller and the puffier hair is making her face look even wider.

[Fawkes]

Thanks for the comparison image, but it makes me more certain that the proportions look off. Her torso is smaller and the puffier hair is making her face look even wider.

She's also been in some Dissidia games and her proportions aren't always consistent.

[Vyrerus]

Hmm, so reused giant Shantotto assets from like 13 years ago. It does not inspire faith. :/
Pretty upsetti about the lack of giving us at least 6 different AF sets. No real excuse for it, either, since its also asset reuse.

And ughh, Windurst.

Smells like after this comes out, I'll finally unsub. At least until Coldilocks and the 7 Jotunn comes out. I'm like full doomer at this point.

[Fawkes]

I'm not sure what to think about how they've basically only shown Shantotto, I went back and watched the 6.5 and 5.5 trailers and they both show off multiple alliance raid bosses, basically just keeping the final boss a secret.

Hopefully it's a pleasant surprise.

[CidHeiral]

I'm not sure what to think about how they've basically only shown Shantotto

We'll be fighting gods in this one which will presumably be quite a spectacle, so they probably want it to be a fun surprise.