Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.3

Finally finished Castrum, so here goes.

Bozja Southern Front, or: Corrupt Bigoted Nobles™ Ruined It Again

Fairly straightforward until what was it, Rank 6, where Matsuno's seemingly ubiquitous Corrupt Bigoted Nobles™ are shown harassing Misija for her common birth, setting up the inter-class conflict and corruption that casts a pall over Bozja and for most intents and purposes the entire Hrothgar race. You thought Bozja was a simple kingdom but GOTCHA, it was a republic! No, wait, DOUBLE GOTCHA, it was actually an oligarchy with a highly stratified caste system! Corrupt Bigoted Nobles™ were Corrupt Bigoted Nobles™, and their influence persists in the Resistance! It was so bad that 7/10 of the population was below the poverty line, and 3/10 of the population was utterly destitute before the Imperial conquest! Bozjan society was stagnant in this way for over 5,000 years! You thought the ancient legend of Queen Gunnhildr was a good thing, but GOTCHA, she was just a puppet ruler put in place after the old one wouldn't use Save the Queen to protect Bozja from the Fourth Umbral Calamity! Wait, GOTCHA again, the puppet ruler had the Echo, so Gunnhildr's Blades killed her primal form so she wouldn't learn she was just meant to be a sacrificial lamb!

... Corrupt Bigoted Nobles™ being used as an easy source of drama once again. I don't like it. It's been done to death within this game and without. The instant I saw those nameless Corrupt Bigoted Nobles™ harassing Misija and then Marsak elucidating how Bozjan society really functioned, I knew it was gonna be a source of drama, so Misija's treachery was absolutely no surprise to me at all.

As it stands I have a hard time caring much about who wins. Corrupt Bigoted Nobles™ cast a pall over Bozjan liberation and history, while the Imperials are using whatever methods are available (Resonance, primals, Lucavi, voidsent, etc.) despite their supposedly superior military force. It leaves me wanting for confidence in the cause, and without that I have little reason to fight for it.

As I've said before, political intrigue isn't my favorite type of story, so the Imperials' machinations don't interest me all that much.

When everyone's a shitbag, it's hard to care about who wins and loses, who lives and dies. Bajsaljen and Marsak are really going to have to step up their game in Part III to rebuild my confidence in the cause, because as it stands my only reason to fight in this storyline is stopping Misija from abusing a primal. (Unless Alisae's tempering treatment actually works and she's deployed to aid the cause, kiss the reborn Gunnhildr's Blades goodbye!)

Anyway, none of the fights are terribly difficult, and my main complaint is how narrow the window for getting into Castrum is. Also that the new haircut clips though my GNB coat, but that happens with every haircut longer than shoulder length anyway.

Originally Posted by Cilia

Finally finished Castrum, so here goes.

In the end of all this it is not a matter of who wins this war and who will die. It is the matter of if the right people lives through this war and make the world a better place or not after the dust has settled. All sides in this war have their dark side of the conflict in any war that will only seek personal gain for themselves as we have seen even through the MSQ. Yet such is the way of war to always put good people against each other because of conflicting ideals and the ambitions of others.

Both sides have good people who, if they can just put aside their allegiances towards their own country and/or how things are handled, will certainly get along together and make a better country. However, like all wars the conflict of what and who will be the leadership of the territory and what standards they should have for these countries have always put each side at odds with each other even if they have common goals.

Bajsaljen and Gabranth most likely may get along just fine if they just put side their ideals of who should be leading the territories of Bozjan and Dalmasca since both seek the same thing being a new country that treats everyone as equals. Not to mention far better results in creating a country of equality despite certain resistance towards that equality.

Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

I'm still of the mindset that Gabranth is fully aware of who is against his plans. I won't be surprised if he sets up the people in a unit that will get completely destroyed so there will be nobody left who is still for the nobility system. So far the man has been a planner on the level of Vayne from FF12, so I'm anticipating us getting played pretty hard in the next part of the storyline.

It is rather a bit soon to determine what kind of person Gabranth is since we only seen the opinions of those who follow him and the opinions of others who only know about him through stories. We may have to wait until 6.X era content to really get to know what kind of person FF14 Gabranth is if speculations are right about Bozja Save the Queen storyline being just delaying the inevitable fall of the Castrum and Gabranth's story being continued in 6.X era within a new location.

Originally Posted by Kesey

That's the dramatic irony here. Because there is a war and both are born on different sides of it and come from different background and races they'll never know until it is too late.

Such is the way of war after all. As once said by the Doctor in Doctor Who series...

"This is a scale model of war!

Every war ever fought right there in front of you!

Because it is always the same.

When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die!

You don't know whose children are going to scream and burn!

How many hearts will be broken!

How many lives shattered!

How much blood will spill until everybody does what they were always going to have to do from the very beginning!

Sit down and talk!"

-12th Doctor

Originally Posted by EdwinLi

This was a hostage situation. You don't risk the life of the hostage unless you are 100% certain you can save the hostage and capture or kill the hostage taker especially when the hostage taker has a weapon at the throat of the hostage where they can instantly kill the hostage within seconds before anyone can act or give the hostage taker reason to kill the hostage.

But thats the thing. She was kicked away from her and the other had no gun out so the situation where there was a weapon at her throat was no more. Later Mikoto even runs towards the white auracite and is slashed and perfectly fine and saved by one of our friends that finally decided to run to her. In the situation before the primal we could have run towards her to use us as a shield (especially if you are a tank) while the rest could have attacked her. There is no reason on why we stood there. All of the people in the room (minus Mikoto and the tech girl) are great warriors. Heck Mikoto could have still been killed since it was only us they wanted (which is probably why they kicked Mikoto away). And if she had pulled a gun and shoot her we still would have only stood there..in a world where sleep spells and gap closers exist.

About the crystal: But they still could have charged towards her and as soon as we got out of it they could have taken her down or at least take us and Mikoto and run as far away from the other person as possible. Staying at one place and doing absolutely nothing when all three of us were in the memories is just strange.

But I guess at least Mikoto is safe (even though she could have run on her own instead of risking it for the crystal) and we only just lost a whole group of the best warriors (minus us) that the resistance had.

In the end its just so frustrating when you have a WoL that is a master in every job and that should be able to even do something as a healer and they stand there. Thankfully they at least remembered their shield power..which would still have broken if it was not for the surprise visitor that came at the perfect time and had the brains to just shot the woman...otherwise Mikoto and the WoL would have been the only ones left (and Mikoto would have probably died too since she was again down) which might have put an end to the whole resistance..all of that for one hostage.

Its great that our character tries to save as many, especially if the know them but sometimes I wish that they would not be afraid to let them do hard decisions too. Because after all saving Mikoto now meant that we lost some other NPCs that could have become great characters and are now forced to fight their own people...and a primal is lose..which could easily (if the plot did not just send her to rest) temper the rest of the resistance...

Regarding Bozja's ending...

I'm hoping we do actually manage to save the Blades somehow.

It seems more feasible then usual since a primal can remove the tempering on someone if it wants to, and if we restore Gunnhildr's memories back to their original state using the crystal focus, I don't think she'd have any issues with that.

We're definitely dealing with her in the next chapter considering the name of the instance, though (Delubrum Reginae or Gunnhildr Delubrum as it's called in JP, with delubrum being an ancient Greek word for "shrine", as per the usual Garlean style naming.

Originally Posted by Alleo

snip

That scene also really bugged me.

I feel like much of the reason for the WoL being so...inactive during heated moments like that is because they didn't want to bother having to adjust the scenes to be appropriate for every single job which is why when you do actually do anything it's generally when we have some plot device handy or are using our Echo which aren't tied to any job in particular.

Originally Posted by Alleo

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

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Cutscene crippling the WoL has been a issue since 2.0, more due to the fact they don't want to give the WoL any special animations during the cutscenes because of how the WoL can be any job and potentially scaling adjustment for the race the WoL is along with a lot of potential issues with constantly adjusting and implamenting all future jobs in future expansion into these old cutscenes.

A issue they most likely will never fix since WoL is designed to be too flexable with their currently played job and scaling with races while NPCs are in a set fixed class/job that they will always be in for that specific point in the storyline so they can be easily animated in special ways.

They can create cutscenes that has WoL doing combat during the cutscenes based on his/her job and adjust it to his/her race but that will required a lot of back tracking each expansion to adjust these cutscenes constantly with the new jobs and maybe new races every expansion.

Originally Posted by KageTokage

That scene also really bugged me.

I feel like much of the reason for the WoL being so...inactive during heated moments like that is because they didn't want to bother having to adjust the scenes to be appropriate for every single job which is why when you do actually do anything it's generally when we have some plot device handy or are using our Echo which aren't tied to any job in particular.

I guess its probably the reason (yet they still did that Lyse scene where I flew towards her ready to smack her with my books ) but it sadly does not take away from my frustration. Why not simply keep Mikoto at her side with the blade still at her throat? There great danger and realistically she would be faster then us. Or have them be surrounded by snipers that will hit them all if dont do what she wants. They could do stuff where it makes a bit of a sense. And really the rest of the story was interesting. I liked the different points of views and I absolutely loved that we got some notes on the characters (pleeeeeease SE adds these for every single old dungeon too..even with RNG droprate...I would farm them in a heartbeat)

But this finale just really brought me out of it...because now these other characters might (or might not) be forever lost.

Honestly when I watched Ethys stream today he also brought up something: How its really changing what a weapon can do or not. Why are we afraid of a gun if later the traitor is shot and seemingly quite fine? Or how seemingly no name NPC will often get cut down by one sword swipe no matter the gear but Mikoto getting hit by that slash only meant that she lay there and a bit later was seemingly quite fine...They really can just switch around what damage a weapon does...and his cutscene where Mikoto got captured was even more funny..because he was there as a machinist. So it would have all come down to who shots faster. Later when the traitor was shot someone just posted in his chat "so now people can shot again".

Originally Posted by EdwinLi

Cutscene crippling the WoL has been a issue since 2.0, more due to the fact they don't want to give the WoL any special animations during the cutscenes because of how the WoL can be any job and potentially scaling adjustment for the race the WoL is along with a lot of potential issues with constantly adjusting and implamenting all future jobs in future expansion into these old cutscenes.

Yeah sadly it wont be ever fixed but either they then have to plan around this by having the enemies plan it so that we simply cant react or give the WoL an action that is their action and does not depend on the job. A simple shield for example that they learned after Haurchefants death so that nobody ever takes hits for them. (As a story explanation on why we have learned it) Heck they already have the animation for this seeing how we suddenly started to cast the anti-tempering shields. (If I remember it correctly we could just do that against Lakshmi) Heck somewhere in ARR I think we got a certain dagger which we had to infuse with Materia. For fighting scenes in cutscenes you could use that. I mean our character is an adventurer, they should know some combat other than their current weapon. Giving us those kinds of items or attacks would then make it much easier to let the WoL be active..and not let them stand there as if they hadnt just defeated certains Ascians a few weeks earlier..

Originally Posted by Alleo

Yeah sadly it wont be ever fixed but either they then have to plan around this by having the enemies plan it so that we simply cant react or give the WoL an action that is their action and does not depend on the job. A simple shield for example that they learned after Haurchefants death so that nobody ever takes hits for them. (As a story explanation on why we have learned it) Heck they already have the animation for this seeing how we suddenly started to cast the anti-tempering shields. (If I remember it correctly we could just do that against Lakshmi) Heck somewhere in ARR I think we got a certain dagger which we had to infuse with Materia. For fighting scenes in cutscenes you could use that. I mean our character is an adventurer, they should know some combat other than their current weapon. Giving us those kinds of items or attacks would then make it much easier to let the WoL be active..and not let them stand there as if they hadnt just defeated certains Ascians a few weeks earlier..

If WoL does get full animated actions for a cutscene, I can only assume it may have to be during the time after WoL awakens his powers as Azem so they have a story reason why WoL can use X or Y skills during a cutscene when he/she is X or Y job.

It will certainly be interesting if those animated actions are choices based on what job's WoL unlocked or currently using but for this they may have to be limited to the job's role (Tank, Healer, Melee DPS, Range DPS, and Caster) rather than the job itself.