Infantilized Aesthetics

[FoxPaw]

The usual house cleaning when I get bored with an idea.

[HyoMinPark]

Where I think its gotten overly cartoony is in player usable things such as mounts, weapons, and attire. . . .
What I’d like to know is if anyone else thinks this is an issue, or what peoples preferences are regarding the exaggerated visual elements. I’m specifically referring to “glowing”, “oversized”, “cartoonish” items… almost all of the new mounts would fall into this category.

No, I don’t think this is an issue. For any “silly” costume or “silly” mounts, there are still “normal” costumes and “normal” mounts for people that don’t want to use the “silly” ones. If someone else wearing something that doesn’t fit your aesthetic breaks your immersion, well, I would suggest playing a single-player game, then. You cannot force one sense of immersion — one sense of style — onto hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, of other people.

Another thing that occurred to me while writing this was a hidden benefit of being able to loose items in the game to being PK’d. It would force players to either “guard” certain items and created an enhanced sense of value around things that were difficult to obtain. If you obtain something once and have it for life I think your treat it differently. I don’t know that there is a way to do this in the new world of theme park MMO’s but it was something I hadn’t thought of before.

This would involve making open-world PvP a thing in FFXIV, which I disagree with. I’d rather not work hard for something like a relic or an Utlimate weapon, and then run the risk of any player being able to “steal” it from me by trying to kill my character. No, thank you. I would legitimately unsubscribe from the game if something like this was ever a thing. But I doubt this would ever become a thing in this game. Thankfully.

[Elamys]

So what I'm getting from your post is that you feel like items that glow, really special mounts, etc are too normal to truly be special. You also feel that the new mounts we have gotten are too cartoonish.

First of all, on the mount subject, I'm not sure I understand this complaint. Off the top of my head, the most recent mounts we have gotten are the manta ray from the kojin, the marid from the ananta, the mikoshi from the namazu, the dodo from heaven on high, rathalos, the pink t-rex from eureka, I may have missed some. Oh, and the primal wolves. of those, only the dodo and t-rex truly seem silly. the rays and marid are both very important to the cultures of the tribe they come from. a mikoshi is an actual thing; it's more commonly known as a palanquin. and rathalos is...rathalos.

as for the weapons, i haven't found any of them to be particularly egregious in the cartoonish department. perhaps to you it is, but different aesthetics appeal to different people. a glowing weapon to me is an enchanted, magical weapon. i play casters. why wouldn't the (arguably most) powerful caster in eorzea have an enchanted weapon? the base designs of most recent weapons and armors, while perhaps...subjective in their visual appeal, don't strike me as "cartoonish" or "exaggerated." also, we're talking about square enix, a company that has "belts, inc" as a subsidiary. se has ALWAYS been known for kind of outlandish armor designs.

when it comes to mounts the most special mounts are coming from the most special achievements. kirin even had a story behind it, a legitimate mythology. of course, it is easy to obtain now, but storywise, that was an absolutely legendary feat, to defeat all the primals and gain control of the horses they had created/tamed. why wouldn't they deserve a legendary mount in return? but it would be silly to lock that mount to just one or even a few players, so it ends up being common.

in the end, it's unfortunate that you feel the recent trend of armor and mount design is going against what you find an immersive or cohesive story, but i don't really find this to be the case. you are welcome to, yourself, use gear and mounts that you feel are more fitting, but different people have different goals in the game. i am entertained by flying around on my obese moogle while accompanied by two harp playing moogles. it brought a huge smile to my face the first time i saw it. i don't want this game to be serious all the time.

[ko_]

Eh, ffxiv has always been cartoony if you ask me. It's pretty much a anime. From the character designs right down to the plot. So everything ingame to me looks normal. Nothing here looks that serious to where a costume is gonna snap me out the game. Like carby shoes and moogle shoes would like to have a word with you. Keep in mind I'm also looking at the art style and nothing breaks it. It all fits the normal SE anime style most people love.

[Iscah]

For example, to me riding a dragon should be significant and not something everyone would have access too. To me it seems that the creators have decided everyone should be able to make their character look anyway they want and ride any mount they want regardless of any connective to a world narrative.

That's more a matter of the multiplayer world conflicting with the single-player story. The single Warrior of Light made friends with a single dragon and we can summon it as a mount. That's significant at an individual level. Nobody else in the story is able to ride that dragon, just you.

But every other version of the Warrior of Light made the same bond and now we can all summon the same dragon simultaneously if we so wished. That's just a matter of accepting you're engaging in a multiplayer, multi-reality world. Any deep emotional connection you felt between an NPC and your character played out exactly the same scene with every stranger you walk past.


As for people wearing bizarre things - I got used to that long ago. Just roll your eyes, think "oh, another one" and get back to admiring your own character in whatever gloriously setting-appropriate costume you dressed them in.

[NessaWyvern]

Considering the fact that monsters with small wings can fly, and how high our characters can jump compared to irl humans, I would say Hydaelyn probably has less gravitational force. Or the aether in the world changes the properties of the world. Either way, it doesn't seem unreasonable that our characters can carry larger weapons.

[Sebazy]

I've seen this decline in previous MMOs. As the game aged the creators loosed the strings on what players could make their characters look like and it always marked the beginning of the end for that games “prime”.

The two things are typically related in MMOs, but perhaps not in the way that you think they are.

Successful mmos tend to be led by one or two people with firm vision of what they want and the will to exercise that creative control and direction over the rest of the team. This tends to keep things feeling coherent and focused. Pretty much all the genre leading MMOs are great examples of this, Vanilla WoW, 2.0 ARR, even Everquest maintained a very coherent feel throughout it's earlier tiers of content despite the underlying technology evolving so rapidly.

MMO's tend to start to falter and fall into their twilight years as these people pulling the strings in the background either lose interest or simply get moved onto new projects. This is usually accompanied by rapidly shrinking art and development budgets causing the game to both drift away from the original artistic intent (aka those neon dyes in UO) as well as massively dropping in terms of art consistency and quality (Later expansions in some MMOs often look like college grade art projects compared to earlier content. Everquest was a massive offender for this).

As far as the PKing thing goes, having both factions and the fear of death and loss to rivals scratches that little tribalism itch that is an old part of human nature.

[MomomiMomi]

Stream of consciousness:
For example, to me riding a dragon should be significant and not something everyone would have access too. To me it seems that the creators have decided everyone should be able to make their character look anyway they want and ride any mount they want regardless of any connective to a world narrative. Each player is a visual island unto themselves and their appearance is entirely at their discretion. This provides great freedom to the individual but undermines any semblance of a cohesive world that we’re all in on.

Before even getting to this point, you must put it into the context that every single person you see running around is THE Warrior of Light who is saving the world. At this point, any semblace of a cohesive world has already fallen apart. Cue suspension of disbelief.

Of course, everyone has their own limits of how far they are willing to suspend disbelief. For example, on the subject of mounts: my suspension of disbelief reached its limit the moment the yokai watch mount came into existence. And then I simply stopped caring. Flying elephants, t-rexes, warsteeds? I don't care, do whatever you want. At this point they should just make everything fly!

[HyoMinPark]

@HyoMinPark


Understanable.
I feel that you're look at the short game here tho - I'm not trying to change your mind per se but I wonder how many people have that exact reaction but then get board with the game and leave for months at a time or permanently, or delete characters and start over every 12-24 months. I think the value of the things in the game, including your character are far more flexible than you might think to a lot of people depending on their immediate feelings of engagement with the game. Would you rather get the benefit of possibly caring a little more about your items while you're interested in the game, or not care as much about them and "loose" them when you inevitably quit playing anyways. I see it as a matter of perspective - considering that I've had dozens of MMO characters in my life and they're all gone now as well as their items. It's all just pixels on a screen that only possess the value we give them in the moment so why not make those moments more potent as they'll soon pass from pixels you care about to meaningless bits on some archival HDD.

I don't know if that makes sense or not. Food for thought tho.

No, I still disagree with a PK system, especially one where I could lose things I worked hard for. Despite your musings, I would not return to a game with such a system.

I've already given my characters more than enough meaning to not be trivial. I would suggest you stop assuming that, to me, they're nothing more than worthless pixels just because I would quit the game due to systems in place I do not like. Thank you.

[MomomiMomi]

On the topic of item value and being able to lose them, such a system would actually make the items have less value to me. I would take the game less seriously than I already do and would not even bother to obtain them in the first place.