[Spoiler] Story inconsistency

[LineageRazor]

MMOs always suffer from these kinds of problems

But they don't HAVE to. The quest could have been rewritten/reanimated to account for the missing character. While it would be less than palatable to treat Lolorito to dinner instead of Nanamo, it would be preferable to the current system.

Folks can talk about canon timelines and sidequest timelines and whatnot however they want, and I'd be willing to accept such a thing as a compromise - however, to my knowledge, there is no indication whatsoever that the Culinarian quests are taking place in the past, or as a flashback, or whatever. You just go in, do them, and Nanamo chows down as if there was nothing out of the ordinary, and that it's perfectly normal for her to be alive.

For us, who have been playing the game for a while and remember that this stuff was added in an earlier patch, that's one thing. But for a new player joining the game, who completed the Main Scenario first (cuz apparently that's what you gotta do before you can get any use out of the Heavensward expansion), and then took up CUL, the sudden appearance of Nanamo will be confusing to say the least. If you were to read a book and something like that happened, you'd think the writer was out of his mind.

I still maintain hope that the CUL quest will be updated sometime in the near future to account for the possibility of a player doing things out of the expected order; SE has been pretty good about this kind of thing in the past, having NPCs that SHOULD recognize you actually recognize you if you've been involved with them previously, and not otherwise. I don't want the CUL quests to become a precedent that will allow for lazy writing in the future.

Bumping off a major character like Nanamo was a bold and unexpected move, and I applaud them for that, but they really need to follow through.

[Fenral]

But they don't HAVE to. The quest could have been rewritten/reanimated to account for the missing character. While it would be less than palatable to treat Lolorito to dinner instead of Nanamo, it would be preferable to the current system.

Bumping off a major character like Nanamo was a bold and unexpected move, and I applaud them for that, but they really need to follow through.

Sick of repeating myself, so I'll link a post with someone else repeating myself. Cheers.

[LineageRazor]

Sick of repeating myself, so I'll link a post with someone else repeating myself. Cheers.

You repeat yourself with a point that I, myself, made even before any of us knew Nanamo was actually going to die. It doesn't matter one bit - the quest could have been modified to account for these differences. As I stated in the linked post, if Nanamo dies while the quest is in progress, all that needs to be done is to change the quest story so that it reflects the new developments. The example I gave is that you could present the meal to Nanamo's grave as an offering - just one possibility.

EVEN IF you were to argue that this is too much work to be expected, the fact remains that there is NO indicator at all that this quest is taking place in the past, and that is simply just sloppy. Even just fuzzing up the cutscenes echo-style would have been SOMETHING. A new player experiencing the story for the first time is not going to know or care about what order ARR content was released in. They WILL know and care that this chick who just died is now up and chomping away at dinner for no explained reason at all.

[Fenral]

snip

They'll figure it out pretty quickly, I think. I certainly did in another MMO I played that pulled a stunt like this one. At this point, I'm pretty sure it's only wrecking immersion for people who have already done it and just don't like the idea of it not changing after 2.55.

Are they supposed to patch out the Sultansworn once her death is made public? Write an entirely new Paladin storyline? It's not just the Culinarian quest, or the Paladin quest; it's also a bunch of little things that will take entirely too much time and energy to fix for too minor a gain. Ferne mentioned something to that effect about major world changes before, which, in retrospect, could very well mean he knew what was planned all along.

[Fenral]

Another one of these threads? This happens.

[Anonymoose]

Another one of these threads? This happens.

I like how the post refers to "the bubble" bursting when it's only about time passage (regardless of canonical continuity order).

Every MMO handles situations such as this in their own way, but we didn't know how FFXIV would because it hadn't come up. When Fusionx approached me about a "Before the Fall of Nanamo" post in January, I mentioned the CUL quest as a possible hiccup, but I didn't expect it to become evidence on all sides that something was hinky, just that - if Nanamo did bite it - that'd be where to look for the answer.

The "pretend it happened earlier" approach is a popular choice, but FFXI never went with it so I didn't think they would here - but here we are! We can now say with some confidence that Patch = Continuity. The time bubble still exists (at least as of 2.00 to 2.55; could change in Heavensward), but we now have "hard contuinity." You can say, for instance, that The Binding Coil of Bahamut happens before Syrcus Tower, and Syrcus Tower happens around the time Ramuh appears, and both are dealt with before defeating Bahamut.

World lore teams are often a little more meticulous than scenario writers (they have to juggle more without dropping things or letting them hit each other), so I admit a twinge of curiosity whether it was hard for them to accept Zombie Nanamo Dinner and Zombie Nanamo Nameday, or whether you just take it in stride and be comfortable with Patch = Continuity. It's at least better for the players than requiring a LV50 CUL to finish the main storyline before she kicks off.

[Fenral]

Well, I felt like bringing up "the bubble" mainly for it's implications about an indeterminate "when." What Ferne said about Simpsons time still technically holds true (still year 0), but we now have a much better understanding of what Yoshida meant at PAX East when he talked about the storyline being split into "seasons."

2.0's content is from season 1, and thus all takes place before the season finale "Before the Dawn." There are even some stray hints towards stories (mainly Coil) happening before you do them. No spoilers, of course, just enough to make you wonder if and when you do lack context.

Players getting around to leveling CUL afterwards will get multiple hints about it's place in overall MS chronology, the most obvious happening when we don't even consider poisoning Lolorito at level 30. And at level 50?
(Fringe season 2 spoilers):

Nanamo's just pulling a Charlie Francis.

For everyone else, time will tell. Some really good stories still manage to get away with only one or two game changing deaths near the beginning and never feel the need to kill anyone else off, because death has served its purpose. If nothing else, this will make Merlwyb's action scenes that much more gripping, simply by knowing that she could die, even if she never actually does.

[Anonymoose]

Well, I felt like bringing up "the bubble" mainly for it's implications about an indeterminate "when."

In that case, I, too, would say that ship has definitely sailed. I thought it was implying that Pac-Man Timespace had been broken by Zombie Nanamo, lol. Good comparison with Fringe's Unearthed incident, though. From now on we just have to say, "This episode was supposed to have aired earlier." when we see something out of place.

If nothing else, this will make Merlwyb's action scenes that much more gripping, simply by knowing that she could die, even if she never actually does.

A very big part of the reason I hope they don't reverse Nanamo it is the new sense of worry that we can feel for anyone in the story. When we first started tossing around ideas for how they might handle it, I was still worried this was going to turn out like the X-Files, where even after they've shown someone dying - rotting - getting found, put into a casket, given a funeral, and buried - and staying dead for a while - they still come back, because nobody important ever dies, lol.

Nanamo staying dead even makes me feel a little better about Moenbryda. I was really excited when her character showed up - a roegadyn female on Team Scion with a new personality and new interactions with the ones we know - and then just after I feel like I've gotten a feel for who she is, she gets a death that says I should feel something when I really just think a good character was wasted, and too soon at that. Now, seeing that meaningful characters aren't immortal and SE doesn't have to resort to the Moenbryda tactic for feelz, I feel like the incident was more like character development for the Scions - that we were an observer to their suffering.

[Metalsmith]

Think of the events of the quest as a flash back.

[Viridiana]

You two are seriously about to make me re-watch Fringe just to figure out what you're talking about. >_>