Personal Lore

[SorceressVal]

Are you an individual ? Do you have a story ? Where did you come from? What was your home like? Do you have family ? Did you leave a love behind ? What is your story ?

We all go through the same quests we repeat each others footprints . So what makes us different from one another?

We should have our own personal lore a quest that with a series of choices sets the outcome within at least a few options to give our own warrior a past a life a history other then blinking into existence.

there should be a quest " Returning Home "

Your scion friends ask you to talk about your life before joining their fight . Through choices you choose - if you had both parents 1 or none , brothers or sisters or both or none , a original teacher ( the basics the default skill ) a love interest or best friend or none , where your hometown is and visit speaking to the people set by your choices and seeing a movie or two connected to that . with just a small amount of content you could have thousands of different choice patterns picked because in real life we are unique . It is time the game reflected that more and gave us a past .

Our voices as players is important . I make this suggestion as well as bring up the lack of a active romance system and a voice actor for our player characters NOT TO PUT DOWN THE GAME I LOVE FFXIV AND I WANT TO SEE IT CARRY THE BEST THINGS GAMES CAN HAVE FOR IT REGARDLESS IF ITS SOMETHING I WOULD USE OR NOT ITS IMPROVEMENT IS WHAT MEANS THE WORLD TO ME .

i know all of you who love the game and want to see it grow feel the same . weather its further action with whats in game or adding more to it we all want the same thing a better more complete ffxiv.

[Cilia]

Unfortunately, the nearly-unlimited possible backstories players can come up with for their PCs is at odds with what the developers are willing and able to put in-game. I can't speak for everyone, but I would argue that new content and advancing the story is more important than our personal backstory and how it relates to what we're doing.

You do get a few options to define your backstory - the opening sequence on the carriage, for example - but the unlimited possibilities are prohibitive in implementing concrete backstories. If you want something like that a tabletop game is a better fit...

[Fenral]

It also indirectly benefits the player for them to be as vague as possible about player backstories. Rather than railroad players into one of a list of predefined origins, simply not saying anything allows players to head-canon whatever they want as there is nothing to contradict. Granted, it means any earlier relationships you had will never be depicted in game, but I believe that's what other players are for.

[Gula]

Absolute pass. One of the reasons I hate Korean cash shop games is because they sort everything out for you, in Archeage's case, even your voice and body type. XIV being open ended and up to the player is one of the best things about it. Your past doesn't really matter when there's Garleans knocking [read: shooting] at Eorzea's door and you got Primals to kill.

[Iscah]

Your scion friends ask you to talk about your life before joining their fight. Through choices you choose - if you had both parents 1 or none , brothers or sisters or both or none, a original teacher (the basics the default skill) a love interest or best friend or none, where your hometown is and visit speaking to the people set by your choices and seeing a movie or two connected to that. With just a small amount of content you could have thousands of different choice patterns picked because in real life we are unique. It is time the game reflected that more and gave us a past.

Even if there are "thousands" of exact combinations, they're going to be minimal fill-in-the-blanks differences. "I grew up in [town] with my [parents] [and siblings]. I learned to [skill] from [teacher]...."

It would make everyone's backstories less unique, not more - right now we are free to choose any concept we like for our characters' past, but by laying it out in a quest like that, they're all forced to become similar.


If they were ever going to do something like that, it needed to be much earlier in the game to establish your character's backstory, instead of leaving you to invent your own ideas for so long.

You do get a few options to define your backstory - the opening sequence on the carriage, for example

The carriage ride "establishing moment" annoys me, actually - because the only motivation options you get (other than not-answering) are fame, money and power. What about "for the adventure"? Seeing new places? Learning things? It seems such an obvious answer, and I dislike that the only choices we get are 'selfish' ones.

And then they do it to us again when Yozan and Koharu are asking us why we became an adventurer - those three options again, and a vague one (to the other characters) about going where the wild rose blooms. Couldn't we at least come up with something a bit more inspirational to tell the kids?

[Draginhikari]

I much prefer our character backstories to keep relatively vague and up to interpretation. Makes writing and considering character stories outside of the MSQ far more interesting to think about.

[Jyera]

It's a cool idea for variegating the situations our characters might be able to give personal answers, but for this specific iteration of that idea, I know immediately that my character would 100% not fit into those constraints at all.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Are you an individual ? Do you have a story ? Where did you come from? What was your home like? Do you have family ? Did you leave a love behind ? What is your story ?

Why yes, my character is an individual. He does have a story. He comes from the Cieldalaes. His home was ruined by Leviathan's tidal wave, the same disaster that destroyed much of Western La Noscea. He did have a roegadyn mentor who introduced him to arcanima when he as a child, but she died during the tidal wave that devastated his home island. He didn't leave any lover behind, but he did find his love in Eorzea, and they're now married, and have set up a home in Mist.

That's Lyland's story...

...and, guess what, it's totally unique. It's mine and mine alone. No amount of pre-determined choices conjured up by the writers and the development team could have possibly come up with the range of options that would have led to Lyland's story as I described it above.

I know what you're asking for and, for what it's worth, I enjoyed the way origins and background stories were plotted in Guild Wars 2 but, no, if what you want is choices and, more importantly, the freedom to make the choices as you see fit, then pre-scripted narratives really aren't the way to go. As it were, there are enough people who aren't happy with the way our characters are forced to act, according to script, otherwise the grand narrative just wouldn't work.

So, thanks but no thanks. Count me among everyone else here who's against your idea.

[Bright-Flower]

I have RP backstories for my characters, but for the WOL honestly I think they may as well leave it vague. Let players do what they want with it, the limited options the game could give you would pale in comparison.

[Jonnycbad]

This is a JRPG. The story isn't about YOU. You're just bearing witness to the events that unfold before you, but your history is largely irrelevant. All that matters is, you were born with the echo and you received Hydaelyn's blessing and you and your band of adventurers (also with echo) are very good at killing primals and general do-gooding.