Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[Soge01]

Isn't chocolate deadly for cat ?

Miqo'te have evolved specifically to withstand chocolate poison intakes. Not sure about Hrothgar though. xD

[DiaDeem]

I've got one.

Civilizations, also known as the "Lahee Song" sucks. It's obnoxious, grating and annoying. Love the meme and the meme potential. The actual song isn't great. It's the only reason I ever dread going to Rak'Tika, and I should love Rak'Tika. I love forests, I'm a Viera, and the home in the trees that the Viis ladies have (Fanow), and THAT area has a lovely peaceful piece from 1.0, but then you go outside and the freaking song starts again.

[Gordita]

Everyone hyped up the shb msq and it was actually extremely slow paced and boring until well into the patches. People begged for more drama in the msq during SB, and in typical Square Enix fashion, the went super extra on it. Sos theme song isn't good. Vauthry isn't hot. Bozja isn't better than Eureka. Empyrium was a waste of resources (should've been a housing district elsewhere). Add phase in e12n is just a waste of time. Alphinaud needs to be removed from the story. Lyse is a great character. Kaiten sucked and shouldnt have been added, ever (that's a joke calm down). Stormblood is the second best expansion, story-wise, next to endwalker. Catgirls aren't hot. Face 3 au ra females are by far the superior to all fem ra (croissant horns best girl, fite me).

I could probably come up with more but I don't feel like it. I wonder how many people agree with some of these takes. /Ponder

[Yuella]

Emet-Selch is not sympathetic.

Hermes is more sympathetic than Emet-Selch.

The Ancients were a failed civilizations that couldn't handle negative emotions.

The sundering was 100% necessary.

While the WRITING was great, the overarching plot of Shadowbringers is not that good. Kill lightwarden, restore darkness, repeat 5x. The character moments were good and that saved Shadowbringers story from being FF1 and FF3 level story.

Stormblood is underrated. After the boring ruby sea section, Stormblood story was perfectly fine.

Heavensward and Endwalker are 10/10, Stormblood and Shadowbringers are 8/10. A Realm Reborn itself is 7/10

[AnimaAnimus]

For a game were the story and lore are so incredibly important they are making a huge mistake by having the same core cast of characters throughout the entire game. Esp ones that are there for no other perpuse than to tell instead of show.

Let's face it, the scions only reason for existance is to explain the world to us. We do not get to learn about the world by experiencing it in any natural way. Whenever they need to relay any information to us, they just have one of the scions info dump it on us instead of letting us go out into the world at large, meet new people, immerse ourselves in different cultures and actually experience the world. When we have a problem they tell us what to do, why to do it and where to go to do the thing. They don';t even have a dialog amongst themselves either. There is a conflict, one person speaks up and explains things, then everyone nods and we do the thing. There is absolutely no discussion which could be a great way to relay a lot of information to us in a short time.

If more information needs to be discovered, they just go off camera and find it themselves and then relay that information back to us. Or we are no better than a hired sword to guide them through a dungeon so they could find the information at the end of it before info dumping it on us instead of letting us go out and find it on our own. And the only other way they seem to know how to do this is just to have enemies monologue, which is another literary sin.

And there simply is no real reason for it when there are ways to make us, as players, feel like we have agency while keeping us going on the very strict path that want us to follow, without just being a glorified errand boy. I know many of you do not want to hear it, but FFXI excelled at this. You felt like you were the main character of the game who was making connections, dealing with political struggles, solving problems and being an intrical part of the world while at the same time giving us those connections with NPCs. And for each expansion you were able to get to know a whole new roster while still going back to revisit the friends you made along the way. Which did nothing but make the world feel more real and allow you to learn more about the lives of the people, the history, the current conflicts, struggles, joys and celebrations. Where as in FFXIV you are made to feel like you are a supporting role in the scions story and are often just no better than a mercenary. Even FFXIV version 1 was much better in this aspect than the 2.0 and on version has been.

Telling instead of showing is one of the biggest literary sins and it really takes away from the real greatness we could truly be experiencing. How the story is told is just as important as the story itself. And for a game that has nearly it's entire identity wrapped around being story heavy, it is shocking they have gone about it in this way.

[Carin-Eri]

Everyone hyped up the shb msq and it was actually extremely slow paced and boring until well into the patches.

I wasn’t around for the hype so can’t comment on that element, but do agree that ShB was slow paced. It had lots of ‘standout’ moments, which is what I think most remember it for, but seem to take a while to get to them. And the pointlessness that was Ranjit didn’t help matters in that respect.

Vauthry isn't hot

Nope - and even if one were to argue that his ‘evolved’ form, when we fought him, was nice to look at his hideous personality was no different.

Stormblood is the second best expansion, story-wise, next to Endwalker

Actually agree. For reasons I can’t really explain, I recall my time playing through Stormblood more fondly than Shadowbringers. Not that I didn’t enjoy Shadowbringers – it was great, but if I were to New Game+ either of them, it’d be Stormblood.
And I'll confess that Endwalker is my favorite expansion. Not a popular choice here, but that's how I feel and that's is what this thread is about. And currently replaying the second half of Endwalker on New Game+

[Nononu]

lalafell ain't kids, never have been, the game has never represented them as such. edit: nor has yoshi-p, who has gone on record saying they aren't i think multiple times but at least once; short, flat chests, mannerisms and voices /=/ a child (super gross outlook there to begin with guys, this is how you get the florence pugh debacle); literally had an event (moonfire faire? i think? last year?) where they said children couldn't participate but i had no problem doing it on my lalafell, they didn't stop her; literally all the workers, merchants and soldiers that are lalafell; sastasha; momodi; pipin; tataru is crushed on by several npcs and has like, a dozen hingan admirers iirc; none of the ones i've ever met i would describe as child-like or acting with child-like mannerisms; to the people who are gonna disagree, you do you, fam. you don't care about my opinion and i don't care about yours.

i don't like any of the fortemps. neverminding that i immediately lose all respect for someone (fictional or not) who cheats on their spouse, edmont literally has a child working as a servant for one of his sons. yeah, absolutely, medieval fantasy, that's fine, and i do not care because yeah, illegal in real life but this is fiction so it doesn't matter, but i don't think he's a good person because of it and other reasons.

the post-endwalker patch quests are some of the best storytelling ever, flat out.

cool story, venat. don't agree with what you did though, and actually think you're pretty horrible for the sundering.

rp (every kind) is part of the gameplay and isn't some weird hobby that only basement dwellers participate in.

lyse is great.

hw is the weakest expac.

the msq is fantastic and the implementation is fine. i like visual novels, i like having npcs to run almost everything with nowadays so i don't have to deal with the extremely toxic community.

and yeah, there's one - the community is SUPER toxic nowadays. didn't used to be, but now y'all are. gg, wp!

[Anienai]

Vauthry isn't hot.

His first form is.

Fight me.

[Allegor]

lalafell ain't kids, never have been, the game has never represented them as such.

Hard disagree. The game itself often goes out of its way and infantilizes them, from emotes to voices to mannerisms. Look at Tataru specially, she's so uwu kawaii desu it's not even funny (at least JP Tataru). Lalafel are meant to be the 'small people' archetype, basically garden gnomes, but they could have, or rather, should have toned down the cutesy factor if they wanted Lalas to be taken seriously.

Japan is pretty big on chibi type characters and that's all Lala's really are. They may have the appearance of a child but it doesn't mean they are one. In fact we don't know how old most are.
Here's the definition from the FFXIV website.

"The Lalafell are a folk both rotund and diminutive. Small by any race's standards and possessed of a childlike countenance, it proves difficult for non-Lalafell to gauge an individual's age with any degree of accuracy."

Nobody is saying Lalas are literally children, but they are overtly designed to be cute and childlike (not just "small") so it shouldn't be surprising 99% of people see and treat them as such. There are people who have...less than pure thoughts about that, but that's a them problem SE can't control.

[Absurdity]

Part of the race description for Lalafell in the actual character creator:
"A wee people sporting short, rotund bodies, the Lalafell appear as no more than children to the eyes of most."