Actual lore regarding the current civilizations on Meracydia (potential spoilers)

[aveyond-dreams]

Regardless, wanting high fantasy in a game that has never been high fantasy, and saying most of the community will leave if they don't, is foolish and biased at best.

Please kindly replay Heavensward and Shadowbringers

I definitely also wouldn’t say no to things based off Ancient Greece, but given how the ancients are likely to exit the story completely in 7.0 I don’t see it happening. Gothic mixed with some steampunk of course is always welcome.

Architectural and general location design however does matter greatly-if the place looks boring, don’t expect people to take interest in going there. Case in point, people still hang out in Il Mheg and Ishgard these days but finding an RPer or GPOSer hanging out anywhere near Ala Mhigo’s copypaste zones is impossible.

I refuse to engage with the previous post that went on to completely twist and mischaracterize the situation-that was a poor attempt of seemingly trying to get me to back down or imply I’m isolated in my (correct) opinions. You’re not going to be able to sell people something they don’t want.

The JP crowd didn’t want bulky cat men-whatever lore attached to them was irrelevant because Hrothgar as of now remain the most limited option and the one that is most aesthetically unappealing to a region that has favored prettiness above all. Also, Bozja was a hideous set of zones. Like Ala Mhigo, it was a colorless wasteland and it seems that all the alleged Slavic inspiration was completely absent. I wonder if people wouldn’t have been so harsh in criticizing the design of these locations if they actually incorporated some of that into their designs!

Anyway I don’t think eastern fans will take kindly to an entire expansion of colonialism in the Americas or a setting entirely inspired by African tribes or Australia. You can choose to ignore this fact and promptly watch the catastrophe unfold, or you can give people what they clearly are telling you they want to see.

[_Koneko_]

pretty sure only hydelyne and zodiark's story is finished they said nothing about the ancient's being out of the story kinda hard to do when they basically had their hand in everything :P

[Lyth]

You can take any bit of architectural design and give it a unique twist to make it exciting. That has a lot less to do with the culture that provided the inspiration and more to do with the creativity and imagination of the area designer. With European castle designs the level designers have to work a bit harder to show off the uniqueness of an area. There usually ends up being more effort put into the place than 'Oh look, Europe, how exotic!' But even that isn't a guaranteed protection against generic medieval village design for the filler towns.

It's also important to make an area actually feel like it is actually lived in. The Royal Palace of Ala Mhigo looks architecturally very cool (ooh, desert castle), but it doesn't actually feel like anyone lives in the area. Which isn't all that surprising, because there's so much focus on Doma/Kugane in Stormblood that Ala Mhigo is very much an afterthought. The same problem exists with Garlemald as well, with the area being thrown in just so that we can say that we've been there. Imagine if it was a fully explorable city that you had to infiltrate, like Archades in FFXII.

Contrast is important as well. If all you have to show us are castles, pretty soon we're going to get bored of castles. Part of what makes exploring Amaurot interesting, for example, is the shock and surprise that comes with encountering a modern city in the middle of the Tempest, and the fact that it's so different to any other place that we've been to in the game. Usually when you introduce in an inhabitable area like a desert or wasteland, it's there with the intention to create that contrast. Eulmore is another example of a setting where the terrain draws a distinction between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'.

At the end of the day, an area is only going to be as interesting as there is detail put into it. Kalm wasn't less interesting than Midgar because it was less technologically advanced. It was less interesting because it was designed as a medieval filler town.

[Tlamila]

Please kindly replay Heavensward and Shadowbringers

You mean, Heavensward, the expansion that Introduces the Machnist job and has an heavy focus on the high tech facilities on Azys Lla?
Or Shadowbringers, the expansion that has a whole town make of pretty much skyscrapers? As well as have us deal a lot with Garlean mecha?

[aveyond-dreams]

You mean, Heavensward, the expansion that Introduces the Machnist job and has an heavy focus on the high tech facilities on Azys Lla?
Or Shadowbringers, the expansion that has a whole town make of pretty much skyscrapers? As well as have us deal a lot with Garlean mecha?

Yes lets continue pretending that the final zones we were in for 20 minutes each > the other 5 zones we spent a significantly longer amount of time in. Thank you next!

....

Midgar and Luca fit within their respective worlds seeing as how they had a consistent design throughout. This does not hold for FFXIV. You do not seem to understand this. Most aren't opposed to seeing cities like those in game *when it is appropriate* seeing as how they would be incapable of fulfilling the role of being our "home" or being able to carry a Heavensward-style expansion that people have expressed their desires for above all others.

When they're saying: "We want Heavensward again!" The last thing you want to do is throw them into Spira or introducing modern/high tech settings so early on at the start of a new story. It doesn't fit, not unless they want to set the entirety of season 2 in a Spira-like or FF7-like world. In the context of FFXIV they are not asking to go to those places, they want and are demanding this:



A widely appealing location for season 2's beginning, from where after 7.0 we can go on to visit other lands like Bukyo, some south sea isles inspired by Spira, etc. Everything can have its time and place, but 7.0 is when we need to go back to basics instead of trying to "be unafraid of being weird." Heavensward, our classic fantasy expansion that remains regarded as one of the most beloved.

Ignore their demands if you like, I've already seen what happens when that's the case. Good luck trying to pry the lovers of all things Ishgard and Heavensward away from Elden Ring and FFXVI when it comes out-I can already forsee the next Gladiolus style cult forming around Clive and everyone wanting to take screenshots in front of Castle Oriflamme in Sanbreque. If FFXIV doesn't give them Aymeric and Ishgard 2.0, they'll go find them somewhere else.

(Also FFXV isn't entirely inspired by "modern Americana" - the Leide desert was one of the most boring zones of the game and people usually can't wait to get out of there. The impressive sites of FFXV are Insomnia, basically Tokyo painted over with London, Altissia, drawing upon Venice, and Tenebrae the land of floating castles in the air. These are the places that people are reminded of when they think of that game, not a gas station in the middle of nowhere, goodness.)

[Cleretic]

Anyway I don’t think eastern fans will take kindly to an entire expansion of colonialism in the Americas or a setting entirely inspired by African tribes or Australia. You can choose to ignore this fact and promptly watch the catastrophe unfold, or you can give people what they clearly are telling you they want to see.

I don't think you know what a fact is. Gut vibes are not facts, and you have provided no evidence beyond them.

Again, last page I posted the actual highest sales figures of all Final Fantasy games, which run the gamut of aesthetics, including places I'm sure you'd have written off like the Middle Eastern XII or the Polynesian X. If you want a more Japan-centric result, there was a survey conducted last year in Japan, held by Japan's public broadcaster. Over 400k votes cast, so it's a pretty big sample size. Their answers for the top ten most popular FF games, along with my overall description of their setting:

1. Final Fantasy X (Polynesian)
2. Final Fantasy VII (cyberpunk)
3. Final Fantasy VI (steampunk)
4. Final Fantasy IX (Northern Europe and Southern Asia)
5. Final Fantasy XIV (mishmash)
6. Final Fantasy V (classical fantasy)
7. Final Fantasy VIII (Mostly modern, some ancient Egypt and Greece)
8. Final Fantasy IV (classical fantasy)
9. Final Fantasy XI (mishmash)
10. Final Fantasy XV (Modern Americana)

Again, all over the place. We do see a bit of classical fantasy further down the list, but remember that we're talking about a series with fifteen games; the lower end of a top ten is less 'widespread favorites' and more the middle of the pack.

Incidentally, this survey also included favorite characters, which gives us an idea of which ones in that list were actually top-of-mind for people versus the ones that were just generally not hated enough to be put down the bottom.

1. Cloud (VII)
2. Yuna (X)
3. Aeris (VII)
4. Vivi (IX)
5. Zidane (IX)
6. Emet-Selch (XIV)
7. Tidus (X)
8. Lightning (XIII)
9. Tifa (VII)
10. Zack (VII)

On top of interesting details here like Lightning apparently being more popular than her own game, since XIII isn't in the top ten at all and yet she swings into the #8 character spot, we also see that no characters from pre-VII hold on at all, despite all three of the SNES games being in the top ten. That suggests that while people are generally fond of those 'classical fantasy' games, they aren't actually widely-held favorites. (And incidentally, the one FFXIV character in that list doesn't exactly fit the 'classical fantasy' mold either.)

So, you want facts about how Japanese fans like Final Fantasy, there you have it: they like aesthetic diversity much more than they like any one specific setting. And while they don't hate a classical 'swords and castles' fantasy setting, Castle Corneria is a losing proposition for a central location compared to Midgar or Luca.

[Apothecarist]

Etheirys is more or less a mirror of the real world, albeit with different geometries and a looser blend of real-life culture.

Limsa is the British isles. Gridania is likely Germania with its foresty pagan theme. Ul'dah is Middle Eastern. Ala Mhigo is a blend of West Asia and Africa. Othard is East Asia. Hingashi is Japan. Thavnair is South Asia. Garlemald is the Russian Roman Empire. Sharlayan is however out of place with its Hellenic influence and maybe a play on Atlantis.

Based on this, New World (west of Eorzea and the name itself) will likely be analogous to North, Central and South America while Meracydia (south of Othard) is Australia/New Zealand/Pacific Islands. Meracydia being largely destroyed mirrors the fact that Australia is mostly arid.

If we infer further, America and Australia represent roughly 40% of landmass on Earth so this means that there is still potentially a lot of unexplored lands on Etheirys, and we have not even fully explored the clouded area of the three main continents.

[Veloran]

Meracydia is an unusual case because we simultaneously know a whole lot about how it was 5000 years ago and absolutely nothing about it in the current period. It's sort of like trying to discern the affairs of modern Eorzea from the existence of the states during the War of the Magi - And while you actually wouldn't get it totally wrong, you'd be pretty off the mark.

From what we knew then, Meracydia was made up of a bunch of different peoples and civilizations. A lot of Miqo'te, Hyur, Elezen, and Roegadyn, which we know from either migrational history or the makeup of Sophia's demiurges. Then there's the dragons of course, as well as the centaur-people who summoned Zurvan and the tree-people who summoned Sephirot. For that latter group in particular, I'd go out on a limb and say there's a 90% chance they'd be FFX Guado. So assuming that the Allagan devastation was a bit overhyped, most of these groups probably still exist there in various forms and societies.

I strongly doubt the area is made up of only tribal peoples. The Miqo'te maybe since that's deeply ingrained into their culture, but even if the Allagan invasion truly reduced everybody to cave-dwellers, that was five thousand years ago. Even without remnants of Allagan tech around to draw on, they could easily be just as or even more advanced than the peoples of the three continents, especially if they're not as hard-hit by Calamities as those to the North. On the topic of various colonial themes or storylines, I highly doubt that will have any actual relevance. If for nothing else than the fact that there is nobody left in the setting with either the will or the capability to go around invading other continents. At most, if WoL travels there with an expedition I might expect some reactions like "You really screwed us over by inserting yourself into our problems that you don't understand."

Generally, if I was to imagine Meracydia looking like anywhere else in the series, it would be Spira.

[Rulakir]

I definitely also wouldn’t say no to things based off Ancient Greece, but given how the ancients are likely to exit the story completely in 7.0 I don’t see it happening.

Their architecture isn't what I had in mind for Grecian though. Amaurot is basically New York City. I don't know what I'd call Elpis, but it certainly doesn't look like Athens, Mykonos, or even something like Meteora.

Then there's the dragons of course, as well as the centaur-people who summoned Zurvan and the tree-people who summoned Sephirot.

Ooh, I didn't know FFXIV had centaurs, I love centaurs!

[Veloran]

Ooh, I didn't know FFXIV had centaurs, I love centaurs!

We have centaurs at home.