Gripes with Starting City and storyline

[Crescent_Dusk]

One of my main gripes with MMO's is when they make you choose a starting city and a race and then those end up having little bearing on how the world reacts to you.

I've never liked Alphinaud, so that definitely doesn't help when I'm made a Scion first and a Gridanian as a very distant second.

I want options in the game outside of PvP for showing my allegiance and my race. It would be neat if dialogue were more sensitive to your race and city, and that when given quests or engaging in quests, your home city and leader would be the ones asking for you.

I don't even understand, why we moved to Ishgard. I'm a Gridanian, the other city leades saw what was happening in Ul'dah. They would never extradite me to Ul'dah or permit the monetarists to enter Gridanian territory to apprehend me. I've saved Gridania countless times, from Garuda and then Odin and then I've dealt with Ramuh.

I don't see the point in relocating to Ishgard or why I'm abandoning my city for another, and why Limsa Lominsa and Gridania just book it and let Ul'dah fall into chaos when just before they were talking about the looming threat of Garlemald.

I'm not some wandering adventurer. I chose Gridania in my story it is my home and the Twin Adders my organization, not that obnoxious Alphinaud or Minfilia's factions.

Hell, I'm not sure I even understand why the game insists and I must accept to be a neutral party. I'm Gridanian, I have loyalties to that city, why should I behave in the game as if I'm removed from its interests?

[Cilia]

Same reason we couldn't do anything about 2.x's tragic but avoidable ending: the game can't assume anything about your character. Having some unique dialogue or circumstances depending on your hometown / Grand Company would be neat, but the game can't account for every permutation you could possibly choose.

Consider that you can start in any city-state's capital and enlist in any Grand Company. That leaves you with nine possible combinations, only four of which aren't tied to Ul'dah (Gridania -> Twin Adder, Limsa Lominsa -> Maelstrom, Gridania -> Maelstrom, and Limsa Lominsa -> Twin Adder). Consider it a time constraint or something, but there aren't enough resources to develop (a) branching story path(s) based on these possibilities.

We have to "move," or seek asylum, in Ishgard because we really have no other option. While Merlwyb and Kan-E-Senna have decreed us free in their city-states, they can't be openly hostile towards any Ul'dahn authority who might visit and seek to apprehend you. It's just like the street soldiers in Ul'dah; they're fine as long as they turn a blind eye to you, but they can't really openly support you because you're a fugitive from Ul'dahn law. Opposing the Monetarists would also show a chink in the Alliance's armor, and Garlemald would pounce in an instant. Plus Ul'dah hasn't descended into chaos; it's still held together, albeit with the fog of deceit (no public information on the feast has been released yet, other than that Raubahn lost it and is now confined in the Marasaja Pit).

Short answer:

I'm Gridanian, I have loyalties to that city, why should I behave in the game as if I'm removed from its interests?

There isn't enough time to develop a story path that says you're [W] race [X] class from [Y] city-state enlisted in [Z] Grand Company.

[File2ish]

Technically you are a wandering adventurer. Our characters aren't native to any of the starting cities.

As for the other stuff... Ibdon't want to go into detail because typing on phone: development time and a coherant story.

It would take an obscene amount of time to make everything with multiple dialogues work coherantly across all allegiances and everything you want. The devs have been on a 3-4 month major patch cycle, that isn't enough time to do that.

[Shuon]

Based on the storyline, you were a scion first.

You joined one of the GC (armies) following the requests from the organizations after defeating Ifrit cuz you became famous and everyone wanted a piece of you. Your affiliation to twin adder is honorary - you are not a Gridanian citizen.

All your endeavors have been the result of your role as a scion (and Alphonsus's chess piece) - you fought garuda and ramuh because of the Scions.

You are not relocating to Ishgard - the scions are. And the scions are not hunted by Ul Dahn soldiers but the crystal bravesz who by that time became a separate and distinct political entity. Well.. Ul Dahn too for regicide but gridania would not extradite you because you arnt a citizen as I said before.

[Crescent_Dusk]

Based on the storyline, you were a scion first.You joined one of the GC (armies) following the requests from the organizations after defeating Ifrit cuz you became famous and everyone wanted a piece of you. Your affiliation to twin adder is honorary - you are not a Gridanian citizen.

All your endeavors have been the result of your role as a scion (and Alphonsus's chess piece) - you fought garuda and ramuh because of the Scions.

You are not relocating to Ishgard - the scions are. And the scions are not hunted by Ul Dahn soldiers but the crystal bravesz who by that time became a separate and distinct political entity. Well.. Ul Dahn too for regicide but gridania would not extradite you because you arnt a citizen as I said before.

Not true. I was in Caravan headed to Gridania far before Papalymo and Yda interevened on an attack in Gridania and I got to meet them. The very beginning of the story takes place at the behest of your starting city, it's only the Scions who butt in and scoop you with the first primal threat to the city that you become a scion.

And citizenship by birth is hardly the only test for citizenship. Maybe in your country that's the case but in many other countries people are immigrants and adopt the nationality.

I'm a wandering adventurer of Keepers of the Moon miqote clan; most keepers of the moon are located in Gridania it's not like I was a keeper of the moon that randomly appeared from the nether after the clan exodus to Gridania. That is my land, as much as the game likes to pretend that I don't belong to any city for convenience's sake.

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I'm not even asking for branching quests or story paths. I'm asking that at the very least my faction leader and others in the story make even a gesture of recognizing me as a Gridanian citizen. Simple dialogue tweaks, which the game can easily settle for.

This is something that bothers me in MMO's, why make people choose a starting city if it will not have any effect on their identity. Same as race, it becomes hollow and cosmetic when the idea behind all these races is to explore their culture.

[Viridiana]

This is something that bothers me in MMO's, why make people choose a starting city if it will not have any effect on their identity. Same as race, it becomes hollow and cosmetic when the idea behind all these races is to explore their culture.

Except XIV doesn't make you choose a starting city. You choose a starting class and the game assigns you a city.

[Cilia]

I'm not even asking for branching quests or story paths. I'm asking that at the very least my faction leader and others in the story make even a gesture of recognizing me as a Gridanian citizen. Simple dialogue tweaks, which the game can easily settle for.

This is something that bothers me in MMO's, why make people choose a starting city if it will not have any effect on their identity. Same as race, it becomes hollow and cosmetic when the idea behind all these races is to explore their culture.

To be fair, we were never granted citizenship in the city-state we arrived at. We joined the Adventurer's Guild and prevented a local debacle; nothing was ever mentioned about official citizenship. I'd rather not deal with the immigration forms anyway.

In regards to why they can't add special dialogue to certain cutscenes, it's (probably) because adding new or different dialogue based on something rather arbitrary isn't fair. "But the acting ACN guildmaster and Estinien had different dialogue in 2.5.5 depending on how far you've advanced ACN and DRG!" you say? That's within your control. The city-state you start at is largely arbitrary - it's dependent on your starting class, nothing else - while you can choose to do or ignore ACN and LNC/DRG. You have to join a Grand Company, though, and giving special privileges and dialogue to members of the Maelstrom or Twin Adder wouldn't be fair to people in the Immortal Flames.

Simply put... your starting city is largely cosmetic, as is your race. The starting city is determined solely by your starting class (I was under the assumption you immigrated to [City-State] because it had the guild for your class, not the other way around), and race was largely an aesthetic choice from the start. If they don't do it that way you'd see the same race/class combinations all the time - nothing but Lalafell BLMs and Elezen DRGs, f'ex - which gets old quick.

[Conradus]

I'm not even asking for branching quests or story paths. I'm asking that at the very least my faction leader and others in the story make even a gesture of recognizing me as a Gridanian citizen.

But you aren't one. It's stated repeatedly that adventurers are not citizens of their city-states and that they do come from Eorzea at all.

[Samcaesar]

But you aren't one. It's stated repeatedly that adventurers are not citizens of their city-states and that they do come from Eorzea at all.

I'm really not a fan of that honestly, it makes forming a backstory next to impossible for roleplayers. It doesn't make much sense in the context of the story either, like where could we have come from, especially when we know next to nothing of the outside world?

[Whiteroom]

I'm pretty sure you aren't native to your starting city either. You pretty much are thrown into the whole scion thing as soon as you arrive as an outsider to the city. I wonder what amount of time has actually passed since you arrived, story wise. Doesnt seem like much.