Bring in factions.

[Cleretic]

The most jarring moment of the game clashing with it's own theme for me was in Stormblood.
The MSQ is all about ending the tyranny of unfair governments by helping revolutionary armies. And then there's the lvl 60 to 70 samurai questline where we help the police fight against a man wanting to start a revolution against the clearly corrupt Hingashi government.

Of course there's some differences between the MSQ and the job quests, like the oppressors being the actual government instead of invading forces. Or Ugetsu killing around lords and people getting in his way like the police.

But the thing is, he was justified, the lords killed his family and oppressed the people. Things the garleans did in the MSQ that warranted a revolution.
But instead we work with the police to protect this clearly corrupted government.

It felt so at odds with freeing Doma and Ala Mhigo from their oppressors and then denying the same to Hingashi.
I would rather not have help the government in the first place.

A quiet undercurrent of FFXIV's general anti-authoritarianism and pro revolution context is the important underlining of 'while overthrowing a terrible regime is good, you can't do it without a good plan and alternative'. Perhaps most famously, Nanamo's plan to restructure Ul'Dah goes extremely poorly, but it's something that comes up several other times.

• Ishgard didn't exactly pass between governments peacefully, and while it lucked out in circumstances and by having someone like Aymeric to take the helm, it still needed to do complex compromises to get through it all, and multiple side storylines show that even afterwards it still had people who disagreed with it and people who were unjustly screwed over by it.
• Ala Mhigo both has the backstory of their revolution being agitated for by the Garleans solely so they could invade after, and the 4.x story of them trying to find a more equitable government form because all their previous ones sucked.
• While Doma did have the strength of a desired form to return to since nobody disliked Kaien's rule, there is definite understanding that even that still needed to improve.
• The Bozjan resistance didn't just need to legitimize their cause through Gunnhildr's Blades, it also had to grapple with the fact that the IVth Legion was actually better than their previous government for a lot of people.
• And Ugetsu in the Samurai questline is trying to bring back the Age of Blood that Hingans know was a terrible part of their history, and only wants to do that because he himself would benefit from that. He's essentially a bad-faith revolutionary. (By the way, Hingashi's social policies suggest they're actually in a slightly sanitized Tokugawa period, and the Age of Blood is Japan's Warring States period, so Ugetsu's plan is basically 'let's go from bad to worse'.)

Yeah, FFXIV agrees that overthrowing terrible regimes is good, and that's pretty much most of the story both around the Garlean Empire, and of Garlemald itself, as well as plenty of other examples around the place. But it's also aware that overthrowing the terrible regime is just one step of the process; not only can you not just skip to that step, you also can't just call it a day after overthrowing the government... both of which Ugetsu wanted to do.

Basically, the problem with Ugetsu was that he was a selfish bastard with a bad plan. He's an even worse version of Ilberd; at least Ilberd genuinely thought his plan would help people outside himself.

EDIT: Also, while the game never brings it up, Ala Mhigo's probably a cautionary tale for Hingashi as well; at the time they were right next to Garlean territories, who had already taken advantage of neighboring revolutions before. And you can't tell me that Zenos of all people wouldn't have relished conquering Samurai Central.

[thegreatonemal]

I'm not so sure as Hingashi at least with the history we do have about it seems to have had its Tokugawa period. That and at the start of the Meiji there was a lot of corruption and oppression still left over. That and it is hard to ignore the guns the few times we see them in the surrounding area. Either way trying to kill and or killing officials even if they're corrupt isn't the way to go about it.

The age of blood seems more Sengoku period and Kugane is based on the singular port that japan was forced to open and that's pre Meiji as well. The sekeisigumi are a stand in for the Shinsengumi as well.

[Videra]

Hey, I live in a colonized country (Brazil), I know A LOT, about the horrors of colonialism but hey, this is just a game. these are fake worlds into fake factions.

People pretend like Doma isn't a Feudalism just because Hien is pretty (and I love him but doesn't change the fact he is nobility) or that all three base nations are stupidly xenophobic by nature. but feel free to bat an eye to that just because I made an suggestion into this fake lore.

You know what, I'll hold this L. Was a pretty assholish move bringing real-life colonialism (a genuine problem) into silly video game discussion. Hadn't eaten my wheaties at that point in the morning.

[Kozh]

I don't know exactly what OP had in mind regarding bringing factions into ffxiv, but if for the sake of shaking things up and forcing the devs to innovate, I'm all for it. Maybe they can copy ESO system by having one region that allow pvp. As for branching storyline, perhaps it can be done by making player choose between two areas that contain it's set of quest. For example, if you choose to go to area B, when you go to area A you can't do the quests there, therefore you can only progress msq by doing your area B quests.

Also seconded the conqueror route idea. It'll be way more interesting than what we got until now.

[DPZ2]

I don't know exactly what OP had in mind regarding bringing factions into ffxiv, but if for the sake of shaking things up and forcing the devs to innovate, I'm all for it. Maybe they can copy ESO system by having one region that allow pvp.

How is this different from the Grand Companies and Carteneau Flats? Three factions, one region for contest. I suppose they could make it open PvP, but to what end? Does anyone truly believe PvP players enjoy getting ganked continuously while they level up?

Even ESO's PvP had PvE elements. The area was totally dominated by the most populous faction on any given server. Loads of fun. Not.

[sidurgu-12]

How is this different from the Grand Companies and Carteneau Flats? Three factions, one region for contest. I suppose they could make it open PvP, but to what end? Does anyone truly believe PvP players enjoy getting ganked continuously while they level up?

Even ESO's PvP had PvE elements. The area was totally dominated by the most populous faction on any given server. Loads of fun. Not.

Before i quit i tried esos pvp. Didn't like it at all since my faction sucked.

[AmpelioB]

You know what, I'll hold this L. Was a pretty assholish move bringing real-life colonialism (a genuine problem) into silly video game discussion. Hadn't eaten my wheaties at that point in the morning.

it's okay, I understand, I only cited resource exploration because it's the only recorded thing we have from the New world and the only things I can remember are from the Blue Questline and i'm not very fond of blue mage at all. But I would gladly take better takes into the subject.

like this

cleretic has a good view on the subject so I'd gladly take what approach you would take this.

[Cleretic]

Before i quit i tried esos pvp. Didn't like it at all since my faction sucked.

Yeah, that's not even a problem you had to leave FFXIV to see: three-sided PvP is terrible when it's actually tied to player-selected faction, because there is literally no chance of all three factions being of equal strength. In my experience you'll usually have one with the raw population win, one with less people but more of them being really into PvP, and one being the victim of a curbstomp because they had neither.

Before they mandated freelancing in Frontlines that was also true there; every match boiled down to Adder Vs. Maelstrom, with the Flames having no chance bar extreme luck on the later-night 8v8v8s. I'm not even entirely sure why that started, but once that population dynamic gets realized, it becomes self-fulfilling: the Flames never won, so people serious about winning never joined the Flames, so the Flames never had the people to win.

Even two-side PvP often has that problem, but at least fixing that is a much simpler prospect.

[Videra]

it's okay, I understand, I only cited resource exploration because it's the only recorded thing we have from the New world and the only things I can remember are from the Blue Questline and I'm not very fond of blue mage at all. But I would gladly take better takes into the subject.

To be honest, I think an exploration of the parts of The New World we don't know about would be pleasant. Namely, the Mamool-Ja kingdoms that we only have loose descriptions of, and more lore on the Whalaqee. And, if there had to be a form of conflict to drive the story, I'd be really interested in seeing tension between the Mamool-Ja and Whalaqee in particular. You could spin that in a lot of ways, and maybe some bullheaded dickery from outsider nations trying to butt into problems that aren't their own. Just to spitball a few ideas.

This is something of a crack desire, but I'd really like to see SE do something 'different' with one of the left-over ascians. Namely, Deudalaphon, Halmarut, and Altima. While I understand many players would like to see them conceptually gone from the story, they are loose ends. And I think exploring what they're now doing with their freedom to self-govern could make for some genuinely great storylines. Especially seeing as we have had no baseline interactions with those ascians in particular.

[Alleluia]

GW2 managed a Grand Company-esque kind of faction split in their story, but took it to the same level as city-state choice and had your faction choice influence which NPCs you met and diverge a chunk of your storyline, before it rerouted back to the shared storyline. Factions being used for that is a neat concept. And, with new game plus, we could theoretically still experience the other storylines if they did that. Though we'd have to be able to mark what your canon choice is somehow for any references going forward...? It'd be potentially complicated (and those complications are probably also why we can't experience the other city-states in NG+ right now). Still, could be fun.

Factions that actually divide the playerbase into seriously opposing sides is not a good idea imo. Especially if it kept the sides from communicating and cooperating for some reason. But they'd never do that anyway, so that's a moot point.