Thread: Revelations from Patch 6.1

MSQ related. Something I did notice on a re-reading of the

Golbez / Four Fiends cutscene. They say they have waited 10,000 years (or thereabouts). Is this the first time we've gotten any kind of approximate confirmation on the timeline post Sundering? If so, it implies Emet, Elidibus, and Lahabrea took 2000 years to establish the Ascians, recover and raise up the shards of the Convocation, set their plan in motion, ultimately culminating in leaving the Thirteenth in its current state.

Originally Posted by Mieck

MSQ related. Something I did notice on a re-reading of the

Golbez / Four Fiends cutscene. They say they have waited 10,000 years (or thereabouts). Is this the first time we've gotten any kind of approximate confirmation on the timeline post Sundering? If so, it implies Emet, Elidibus, and Lahabrea took 2000 years to establish the Ascians, recover and raise up the shards of the Convocation, set their plan in motion, ultimately culminating in leaving the Thirteenth in its current state.

funny thing is the ascians called that rushing lol.

Originally Posted by Mieck

MSQ related. Something I did notice on a re-reading of the

Golbez / Four Fiends cutscene. They say they have waited 10,000 years (or thereabouts). Is this the first time we've gotten any kind of approximate confirmation on the timeline post Sundering? If so, it implies Emet, Elidibus, and Lahabrea took 2000 years to establish the Ascians, recover and raise up the shards of the Convocation, set their plan in motion, ultimately culminating in leaving the Thirteenth in its current state.

On a casual thought, this does seem accurate. It seems to take a couple of thousand years (give or take a millennium) to get a society up and dominant enough to cause a Calamity, whether on the shards or the Source. For the Thirteenth, this would also require enough auracite to go around to corrupt the champions of that star. It would take time for the Unsundered to recreate their Convocation, but also some time could be saved due to not knowing about needing to cause a confluence with the Source.

I'd assume Golbez has been waiting ten thousand plus years rounding down, rather than nine thousand plus rounding up.

I do admit I tend to assume a wide margin for estimates, to the point where gaining or losing a thousand years or so in the timeline is inevitable.

I agree that it's probably a lowball estimate, but the figure given was basically right in the middle of what my own estimates drew up.

Not only is a multiple of a thousand years an extremely appealing estimate to shoot for regardless of what the actual figure is (case in point, consider how many real-world empires we just go for the larger rounded number for), but my own math on the Calamities says that's 'about right but a lowball'. We know it takes a thousand to fifteen hundred years to set up another Calamity after one, from the figures in the first Encyclopedia Eorzea on the Fourth through Seventh Calamities. Extrapolating from that and picking up from the fact the Fourth Calamity was five thousand years ago, we can then reason that the First Calamity was somewhere between 8000 and 9,500 years ago. But then you have to factor in that preparing the Thirteenth for what was ultimately a failure also would've taken about that amount of time; therefore, we can assume that the Thirteenth's fall was somewhere between 9000 and 11,000 years ago.

Ten thousand is smack-dab in the middle of that range, so it's a perfect 'sounds legit' figure. But if I were being honest, I'd actually assume the Thirteenth shot would've actually taken less time since they'd need to prep one world instead of two, so my money is on it likely being longer than ten thousand years, just because the Ascians probably would've have taken less time on this one than their career average successful Calamity count.

(For people who've seen me run these numbers before and noticed they're different; previously I was running the '1000 to 1500' estimates for all the Calamities, but this time I remembered that we have a figure that the Fourth Calamity was 5000 years ago, so this time I was adding on the estimates for previous Calamities onto that instead of just going '7/8x1000 and 7/88x1500'!)

For my overall 6.1 feelings: I like it, although I admit to being disappointed with the MSQ itself. Not because I expected more, but because I expected different; I feel a strength of the early patches in a cycle is that they tend to ask 'now what do we do' about the places we went, and while there's some of that in 6.1, it felt like much more of an afterthought than it was in the other .1s. But I did like where it started going once it made clear it was going there, the role capstone was awesome (and I expect won't be the end of that story), the alliance raid has some interesting ideas and I'm curious to see where it'll go, and the PvP changes... well, they gave us /determined, I guess.

Originally Posted by YianKutku

There's also the issue of "time flows differently between worlds" that just makes me tempted to give up on matching timelines to each other.

That can be the answer to why the ascians took long to get into action regarding rejoinings.
Sure, they need a civilization, but it also lines with it being a rush as they said.

Originally Posted by YianKutku

There's also the issue of "time flows differently between worlds" that just makes me tempted to give up on matching timelines to each other.

Hm, there is that. Although, time on each shard would seem to flow at a steady rate, so ten thousand years to the people of the Thirteenth would always be ten thousand years.

If I had written myself into this place where a wibbly-wobbly time was justified to sort out the discrepancy of several months on the Source versus 100 years on the First, then I would just have all shards equalise on a long enough timeline. They might speed up and slow down relative to each other, but at a fixed point they'd all come out at the same number of years. Just for the sake of not having to wrestle 14 different relative timelines.

Main story:

A lot of light character moments, fitting for a change in mood after the Final Days. "Froth and Foam!" is gonna become the new "Sloppy!", though.

Unpopular opinion, maybe, but I like G'raha's enthusiasm. Most of the Scions are very serious and kinda dry most of the time, it's nice to have someone who actually just wants to come on an adventure for the sake of it rather than some ulterior motive.

It was nice to touch on the other Scions having their own goals and missions now, even if the Trust system means they'll still answer the WoL's call for the most part. And while I like the twins, it was good to not force them in, too. I also liked Thancred pointing out how some people might take too many Scions gathering in one place as a sign of trouble, considering how long we've spent being the ones to put out fires across the realm now.

I don't have much nostalgia for Golbez, so I didn't get the reference at first. I just took it as an obvious setup for a new bad guy. Wondering if they'll be the next trials, with one or more in a dungeon like Genbu of the Four Lords (though hopefully we'll actually participate in the finale rather than the bigger threat being a cut scene).

Zenos's avatar. Ugh. The guy's died twice and he still won't piss off.

Role quest:

Ehhh. This kinda follows the trend of Garlemald-focused stories feeling kinda rushed. Maybe if the originally planned Garlemald expansion had happened, Nerva as a blasphemy would've been a patch dungeon, to help build up the threat of the Final Days. As is, it felt like they were just trying to close the plot point of the Second Legion.

Kept looking for Julus to turn up. Hopefully his absence here means that they're saving him for MSQ content to give Garlemald more screen time. Fingers crossed.

Nero skulking around was kinda funny to me. I felt like he was just waiting for the right moment to make a more dramatic entrance, as he usually does, but then got spotted and just tried to roll with it.

Other characters dealing with the whole "Varis's heart" situation feels like another hint that this was supposed to be part of the cut Garlemald expansion, that that would've been a dungeon for us to clear, possibly with Nerva as the final boss guarding it. But forcing it on us now as a solo duty would've felt like more padding. Nice to see that NPCs can handle things without us from time to time, I suppose.

I did kinda like the proposal for the Garlean senate to take up interim leadership to try to get the country back on its feet. Not demonizing the old government or trying to push a democracy on them, but pushing them to step up.

Alliance raid:

The post-raid quests felt a bit drawn-out. Then again, most alliance stories prior had a ton of quests before the raid and very little after, so maybe it's not that different from usual, just shifted around.

The fights felt like most alliance raids do in the first couple of weeks. A ton of AoEs everywhere that slaughter half the raid, but soon enough we'll learn the dance and fly through it.

I have two theories on the Twelve. First: that they predate the Convocation, perhaps inspiring them. Second: that they're Hydaelyn's anwer to the Ascians, upraised reincarnations of sundered Ancients to serve as her voice in the world. Their tendency to stay in their realms and directly interfere as minimally as possible fits, and if they sometimes reach out to empower mortal champions, it would explain the inspiration for their various faiths (and also parallel Hydaelyn and the Warriors of Light). We'll see.

Deryk is pretty sus.