Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[Liam_Harper]

Hot Take: Villainous characters with sympathetic backgrounds are too damn prevalent in this game. We need more despicable characters like Valens that don't overstay their welcome.

Honestly I think this is intentional and the game itself, lore and design, is somewhat built around the type of community they wish to foster.

A game like WoW has a strong theme of war, faction divide, competition and a good dose of purely despicable characters. They even refused to add things like personal gathering nodes because they felt players should "compete" for resources. We all know the type of community WoW has.
FF14 has a strong theme of teamwork, cooperation, understanding and a large majority of the villains are redeemable. Resources are shared. Even PvP is under mutual consent by lore. I do feel this is reflected somewhat in the community. We're far from perfect, but you don't have the same level of sheer aggression towards fellow players that you have in other games.

[BaconBits]

Honestly, all I want is an antagonist I can look at and say "This is my favorite character, I hate this guy ". Valens Van Varro came close to that. The unrepentant megalomania, the moments of blind fury and his jealousy of Gaius, the entire "Burn out the bad" scene. And when he inevitably got his comeuppance and had his head popped like a grape, I was genuinely happy. He had his time to shine during the Sorrow of Werlyt series and was killed off before he could overstay his welcome and start wearing thin on player's nerves, unlike a certain blonde haired menace who honestly should have stayed dead after slitting his own throat. My only regret is we didn't get to slap him silly ourselves, though Gaius besting him in single combat made up for it in my opinion.

[jameseoakes]

Honestly, all I want is an antagonist I can look at and say "This is my favorite character, I hate this guy ". Valens Van Varro came close to that. The unrepentant megalomania, the moments of blind fury and his jealousy of Gaius, the entire "Burn out the bad" scene. And when he inevitably got his comeuppance and had his head popped like a grape, I was genuinely happy. He had his time to shine during the Sorrow of Werlyt series and was killed off before he could overstay his welcome and start wearing thin on player's nerves, unlike a certain blonde haired menace who honestly should have stayed dead after slitting his own throat. My only regret is we didn't get to slap him silly ourselves, though Gaius besting him in single combat made up for it in my opinion.

I do agree with this, I also feel that most of the 'sympathetic' villains are really badly done and the sympathetic part feels really tacked on and in no way makes up from the monster they are and just results in messy uninteresting characters

[VerdeLuck]

It's frustrating that people never die in this story. Villains who die come back from the dead with some conflicted emotions and become good. Supporting characters who die in emotional scenes are immediately brought back.
It feels like there's a lot of cheap emotional moments at the cost of killing characters only for them to just come back. G'raha Tia has died 3 times so far. Y'shtola has died 3 times and had a close call in Stormblood, each of the scions has died once, Gaius died, Zenos died twice, Gosetsu died and then came back after sacrificing himself, and so on.
I don't think anyone significant has stayed dead since Haurchefaunt and Moenbyrda, despite there being death scenes for supporting characters in every single expansion since.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

It's frustrating that people never die in this story. Villains who die come back from the dead with some conflicted emotions and become good. Supporting characters who die in emotional scenes are immediately brought back.
It feels like there's a lot of cheap emotional moments at the cost of killing characters only for them to just come back. G'raha Tia has died 3 times so far. Y'shtola has died 3 times and had a close call in Stormblood, each of the scions has died once, Gaius died, Zenos died twice, Gosetsu died and then came back after sacrificing himself, and so on.
I don't think anyone significant has stayed dead since Haurchefaunt and Moenbyrda, despite there being death scenes for supporting characters in every single expansion since.

Papalymo? Ysayle? Minfilia?

[Rosenstrauch]

Papalymo? Ysayle? Minfilia?

Papalymo, Ysayle, and Minfilia all tend to be forgotten about by folks complaining about a lack of character deaths. Conversely, their deaths tend to be bemoaned by people who believe they were carelessly thrown in the trash during Heavensward, or in Minfilia's case Heavensward and Shadowbringers.

Maybe it's the carelessness of their deaths that makes them not register for both folks, but in opposite ways? Dunno.

[iheartlove42]

Papalymo, Ysayle, and Minfilia all tend to be forgotten about by folks complaining about a lack of character deaths. Conversely, their deaths tend to be bemoaned by people who believe they were carelessly thrown in the trash during Heavensward, or in Minfilia's case Heavensward and Shadowbringers.

Maybe it's the carelessness of their deaths that makes them not register for both folks, but in opposite ways? Dunno.

Ysayle's death was not careless or bad writing at all. The reason they stopped killing off main characters after Heavensward is because everyone kept getting mad at the writers for it, at a certain point they decided their mental health is more important than receiving hate mail from some some neckbeard who's custom body pillow character got killed off in game.

[Conundrum]

Ysayle's death was not careless or bad writing at all. The reason they stopped killing off main characters after Heavensward is because everyone kept getting mad at the writers for it, at a certain point they decided their mental health is more important than receiving hate mail from some some neckbeard who's custom body pillow character got killed off in game.

And there it is.

Shitty writing is actually the players fault. You heard it here first folks.

EDIT: And frankly I don't believe there were any credible threats anyway. Certain people always claim they were threatened with all manner of nasty things on the internet but never go to the police nor do they produce any even slightly credible evidence of it. It's just a convenient way to deflect criticism.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Papalymo, Ysayle, and Minfilia all tend to be forgotten about by folks complaining about a lack of character deaths. Conversely, their deaths tend to be bemoaned by people who believe they were carelessly thrown in the trash during Heavensward, or in Minfilia's case Heavensward and Shadowbringers.

Maybe it's the carelessness of their deaths that makes them not register for both folks, but in opposite ways? Dunno.

Not really forgotten. For all intents and purposes Minfilia died in ARR. We havent had a prominent character death since HW. Papalymo was HW patches so still HW.

[Kakurady]

Not really forgotten. For all intents and purposes Minfilia died in ARR. We havent had a prominent character death since HW. Papalymo was HW patches so still HW.

Good. I don't want to see any more characters sacrificing themselves for the Warrior of Light.