DRK Lore Suggestion

[Ashman]

Hi. I've been playing FF games since I was a little thing with my first nintendo. Due to the "stunted" releases of Final Fantasy in the states, I went directly from 1 to 4 (II on the SNES). I was absolutely obsessed with DRK/DRG and FF4 my entire adolescence (and adult life). When I started playing XI, at NA release, the first social linkshell I made was named "Knights of Baron". Everyone on Ragnarok knew me (Ashman) for my obsession with perfecting DRG (until abyssea era when the poor weapon assignments to drg forced me to move to a more "weapon versatile job") and later DRK.

Anyhow, I know that development for the expansion is probably already very far underway. I still would lose sleep at night if I didn't air out my idea for DRK storyline in the expansion.

[Ashman]

I started playing XIV and from day 1 told my friends "when drk comes out, i have dibs on playing it". I've been tanking for our Free Company so when I heard that DRK was going to be a tank i was overjoyed instead of disappointed. I feel this fits right into the whole concept of Cecil having to choose between the Dark Knight, and the Light Knight (Paladin).

So here's my idea: The name of the expansion is "Heaven Sward". I think we could play into this heavenly sward in the storyline. During the storyline we find out that the [spoiler]corruption within the paladin storyline goes deeper than originally thought.[/spoiler] You learn that if you are going to continue down your current path, you will eventually become corrupted yourself (dark knight).

[Ashman]

Introduce Seraph (an esper/summon in previous titles) as a primal. Seraph brings a mighty sward with her from heaven. In the cutscenes after the Seraph Storymode fight, you can use the holy power of the sward to cleanse the evil from your order and continue as a real paladin. Your other option is to give in to the might/power of the dark and corrupt the sward along with yourself. At this point, at least if i were the writer, Paladin and Dark Knight would be mutually exclusive on the job list. This would explain why DRK didn't have a "class", because it would require an already leveled "job" to use. It also agrees with the lore from IV: Cecil had to cast aside his dark knight ways and embrace paladin. This obviously should be reversible somehow (like talking to an NPC to re-enable pld instead of drk etc) but i like the idea of PLD/DRK being unable to be selected out of the armory list without a special flagging to reflect your choice.

[Ashman]

For hard mode/extreme Seraph fights, you could make the rewards fit in a slightly loose manner. Obviously, options for a Heaven Sward / Heaven Sheild. You could also fit in the storyline's evil version of the heaven sward (maybe Hades Great Sward?).

I think something else will also need to be done to alleviate the bandwagoning of leveling DRK. It's currently like a 3 day queue to do anything on ninja. Top that off with the gross deterioration of server integrity since 2.4 and you're more likely to get 90k'ed than to actually get into a daily roulette. Maybe work something out as an alternate addition route for exp with seraph and the sward? Maybe like a "low - mid level beast daily" option?

[LineageRazor]

It's good to see someone so enthusiastic about Dark Knight! Still, a couple of things you should know...

First, as a new poster here's a trick you can do to avoid having to post multiple posts in a row. If you're going to write a long post, write it in a notepad and then post only the first paragraph. Then, edit your post, and copy the rest of of your post into the edit window and repost it. This will get around the 1000 character limit and allow you to place your entire text into one post. It's what I did with this very post, which is 1913 characters long.

Secondly, a Sward is not a Sword. A sward is a grassy stretch of land, not a bladed weapon. Heavensward doesn't refer to a weapon. It probably doesn't even refer to a grassy stretch of land - they probably mean Heavensward to mean "in the direction of the heavens" or "toward the heavens". The idea of DRK using a special sword is a good one, though, and very much in-keeping with the lore of Dark Knights in some of the prior Final Fantasies, such as Cecil's dark swords in IV, and the Deathbringer granted to you by Zeid in FFXI.

I think that making Paladin and Dark Knight mutually exclusive will be a tough sell. Folks already whine loudly about having to choose which way to distribute points when playing Scholar and Summoner; I can scarcely imagine what the backlash would be like if everyone who has leveled Paladin would have to throw all that away just to play Dark Knight!

Lastly, I wouldn't be too concerned about DRK-bandwagoning making it tough to queue. The fact that it is a tanking job is going to scare a LOT of people away from playing it! While it may spark enough interest that many players who normally don't want to tank will try it out anyway, I very much doubt that there will be enough such people that we actually wind up with more tanks than can be supported by the groups seeking parties in the party finder.

[Alenore]

Considering there'll be a floating continent, Heaven-Sward could as well be a grassy stretch of land... In the sky

[Ashman]

http://images.lmgtfy.com/?q=sward

[Torquil]

Yoshi P has said the name is a reference to the fact that we are heading into the sky, moving heaven-ward, but since there are multiple heavens it's heavensward. The s is there to pluralize heaven, not form the word sward. (Double meanings always possible tho)

[Ashman]

you guys are ruining my fun.

*edit* i had actually assumed it was "heaven's ward" as in:

verb
1. archaic

guard; protect.
"it was his duty to ward the king"

[PupC]

Hi "ashman". I have a huge problem with all of your posts. It greatly offends me. I have self-diagnosed pretentious-self-entitled syndrome, and if you post multiple things in a row, I'm going to have to say something about it. I really am also offended by your post because it's oppressive. Why? Because I said so. I really hope you don't think you're smarter than me, because you sure are acting like it. Heavensword is not a sward. You obtain the sword by defeating Bahamut in Minfilia's private chambers. If you are going to act like such a fool here on the forums, I best hope you get the right idea on how to post about swords and heaven. You're offending me greatly just by being here on the forums. Please stop. You aren't smarter than me. We're a tight-knit community who are very opinionated and your words are destroying our thin wall of hierarchy. Thanks.