A game for 4 year olds

[Cleretic]

Dude. The Garleans began as a democratic republic and stayed that way for over 600 years before their government was hijacked to become an Empire for a tenth of that time, keeping the senate through all of that. What exactly is your problem?

Aveyond doesn't even understand or adhere to the content they actually claim to like. You can tell by the fact they don't even have something as simple as the extremely evidenced language and naming of the Garleans right. Like, that's not exactly something you can claim is obscure.

I kind of wonder what they actually spend their time in-game doing. I'm sure they do play the game, I'm just not sure what they're doing in it, because they don't really have any understandings of the game that I'd expect from someone who even had a cursory glance at the story going on.


On the actual subject of the Omicrons: yeah, this quest was really nice, and carries through in a way that I expect doesn't quite become evident in datamining; from what I'm aware cutscenes can't really be datamined, so you don't get those in any way (I think the only thing dataminers actually got was the journal?). I find it interesting that it revolved around giving a cake more as an expression of kindness and understanding than as actual food; the dragons aren't really interested in food like any of the other races, but the one that comes over still recognizes the gesture when we recreate something that they recognize.

Plus, the notion of 'cakes that look like things' is something I'm surprised the game hasn't touched on before now! Feels like a natural place to go for a game that has 'Culinarian' as a playable class.

[SannaR]

It doesn't fit his headcanon, it's as simple as that.

I just can't wait for the "I don't care if there's actual differences between the new governments. I'm just going to label them all as democracies. Even label some of them wrong before their change in governance." Reply that tends to spring up when this comes up.

@Cleretic the only thing he's claimed that he does do is log in to do leaves.

[Iscah]

I do think the "cake that looks like your sacred mountain" was a bit... trite? I think it would have just been nicer to present the dragon with the flowers that Vidofnir said were like ones from the Dragonstar, but maybe that doesn't play out quite so prettily for miner/fisher.

Also, I would have liked them to get a larger accessible area for the dragons to sit in Elysion. The vista approach is neat though. We've got a whole star to fill and not a lot more established races to put there.

[kaynide]

I really don't know what the writers are going to do going forward. While every side having realistic motivations and not being mustache twirling villains is better writing, it creates a problem when your hero just goes around committing mass murder.

Tempering was a useful excuse for the wholesale butchering of large groups of sentient beings, but they got rid of that excuse for reasons unknown.

I would say they could just add soulless robots for us to kill but even soulless robots are being written as loveable good guys now.

Even the void demons of figurative hell have been shown as being redeemable and not completely evil.

The devs have said since as far as 2.0, the entire point they wanted to get across is that there isn’t a “good guys” and “bad guys” faction. Every story they try to establish that these are just groups of individuals with different points of view. For better or for worse I guess.

Like you said, I often question why we only have option A when there is a super obvious B. Or why it’s perfectly ok to essentially go into genocide mode on an entire faction but oh no, can’t touch that one syndicate guy…

That said I wouldn’t have minded just a cosmic horror level monstrosity that is just pure evil to deal with….but again, that’s never ever been the theme. …again for better or for worse.

[Cleretic]

EDIT: ^^ Kaynide, I'd like to see a citation for them saying that as far back as 2.0, because while I do know that ideal was stated later, to my knowledge it came about around the Stormblood patches/Shadowbringers writing. Which tracks for me, because in the 4.x patches you can very clearly see their approach to the Empire go from 'evil empire doing the usual evil empire things' to something considerably more complex. Still accurate to how they write now, but to my knowledge that wasn't a direction they landed on until around 2016-ish; can't imagine what would've happened around 2016-ish to make them realize that they didn't want to put more stories about plain good-versus-evil into the world.

@Cleretic the only thing he's claimed that he does do is log in to do leaves.

Out of everything, I never would've gotten even remotely close to guessing leves. I was going to say that Aveyond is the only person on the planet that FFXIV 1.0 was designed for, but... I mean, even that wasn't written anything like what they want.

I do think the "cake that looks like your sacred mountain" was a bit... trite? I think it would have just been nicer to present the dragon with the flowers that Vidofnir said were like ones from the Dragonstar, but maybe that doesn't play out quite so prettily for miner/fisher.

Also, I would have liked them to get a larger accessible area for the dragons to sit in Elysion. The vista approach is neat though. We've got a whole star to fill and not a lot more established races to put there.

I feel like the cake is more the Last Dregs working within their means than us. They're a cafe first and foremost, they need to use what they've got to serve their customers, and what they've got is 'food preparation'.

A lot of the crafter/gatherer tribes have an interesting situation where the story isn't quite inclusive for all the classes that can do it. The Ixal have the famous 'airship made out of bread' situation, the qitari had to find a way to make fishing useful for spelunking. And for the Omicrons, while there's some quests that sit weird for some gatherers (Fisher has to get a fish for that particular cake, which feels strange), I'd think most often it feels weirdest for miners. Feels like a bit of a stretch to bring rocks back to the cafe and say that's useful.

[kaynide]

Out of everything, I never would've gotten even remotely close to guessing leves. I was going to say that Aveyond is the only person on the planet that FFXIV 1.0 was designed for, but... I mean, even that wasn't written anything like what they want.



I feel like the cake is more the Last Dregs working within their means than us. They're a cafe first and foremost, they need to use what they've got to serve their customers, and what they've got is 'food preparation'.

A lot of the crafter/gatherer tribes have an interesting situation where the story isn't quite inclusive for all the classes that can do it. The Ixal have the famous 'airship made out of bread' situation, the qitari had to find a way to make fishing useful for spelunking. And for the Omicrons, while there's some quests that sit weird for some gatherers (Fisher has to get a fish for that particular cake, which feels strange), I'd think most often it feels weirdest for miners. Feels like a bit of a stretch to bring rocks back to the cafe and say that's useful.

Whoooooole lotta vitamins and minerals in dem fish cakes. Probably high in salt too….

[RukoBoshi]

A lot of the crafter/gatherer tribes have an interesting situation where the story isn't quite inclusive for all the classes that can do it. The Ixal have the famous 'airship made out of bread' situation, the qitari had to find a way to make fishing useful for spelunking. And for the Omicrons, while there's some quests that sit weird for some gatherers (Fisher has to get a fish for that particular cake, which feels strange), I'd think most often it feels weirdest for miners. Feels like a bit of a stretch to bring rocks back to the cafe and say that's useful.

Cooking a tank is among the greatest achievements my WoL accomplished.

[kaynide]

@Cleretic: I'll try to dig out a source, but I wanna say it was laaaater 2.x since most early 2.x was just talking about like..dungeon or art direction...and showing how they had to scale DOWN graphics from 1.0 to make the game run better etc.

I'll try to find it, but essentially they talked about how even Gaius (from his point of view), feels he is doing the right thing and just isn't evil. They talked about the Garleans and how they felt they were "civlilzing the savages"; The final scene with Ultima (this was not my intent!) where it shows the Garleans as not being on the same team as the Ascians was a nod to that.

They also talked about making a point to show bad actors in play in one the "Good" side (eg the Monetarists). Or that "Bad" sides are not necessarily evil (eg. Ramuh).

To be fair, they don't really talk a lot about their design philosophy in the 2.x live letters, just the constant new features/content..so it might have been Heavansward when that actually came up.

Will see if I can dig it up.

...or I could be hallucinating, that was like 6+ years ago...

Edit: 30 minutes later, I give up. I know it was stated but I will concede to it might have been something said in 3 or 4.x where they might have said something like "From the beginning we wanted to show everyone as not being good or evil, but as having differing points of view".

[Alleo]

On the actual subject of the Omicrons: yeah, this quest was really nice, and carries through in a way that I expect doesn't quite become evident in datamining; from what I'm aware cutscenes can't really be datamined, so you don't get those in any way (I think the only thing dataminers actually got was the journal?). I find it interesting that it revolved around giving a cake more as an expression of kindness and understanding than as actual food; the dragons aren't really interested in food like any of the other races, but the one that comes over still recognizes the gesture when we recreate something that they recognize.

Plus, the notion of 'cakes that look like things' is something I'm surprised the game hasn't touched on before now! Feels like a natural place to go for a game that has 'Culinarian' as a playable class.

Yes I really liked the quest. The dragons there are simply too tired to even want to fight the Omicrons, they also know that this wont bring their star back. Yet when the dragon hears that we have talked with a dragon that is alive on another planet he does come to the cafe, even if its just to honor Vidnofir. And there he gets a glimpse of his past back. Or at least what he thought it could be. The dragon is like "how could we forget something like that and now I dont ever want to forget it again" and bascially says that a place that gives them that feeling back cant be bad.

N-7000 still claims that the original dragons and Omicrons would not have found peace that easily and that it was this place that bascially made it possible. He is also getting way more lively in his interactions with us, bascially deactivating himself because he does not want to be part of the discussion anymore. (Stigma-4 still has the best humor though)

I just love them and I have read at least two different threads on reddit where people also says that they love it and that for some its even the best beast tribe to date. Seemingly we are all four year olds. :P

Only negative thing (which is a bit greedy since we already have Elysium): I wish the cafe itself changed more. Maybe include more parts of it with each step. I had hoped that with the dragons we will get the outside too, since they are too big to even fit into that small cafe but sadly that is not the case.

[aveyond-dreams]

I’m sorry the classic trope of the power of the heart/hope/friendship overcoming adversity is too carebear for some people. I like it well enough, though. At least so far. Saying FF14’s world is “in shambles” is just melodramatic. lol

Well I suppose I could've used any number of words, others like boring, non-compelling, and uninteresting come to mind when it comes to the state of the world after Endwalker's MSQ.

Most of the nations of the world are holding hands singing kumbaya together after having their unique political systems homogenized into cookie cutter democracies.

The world's main empire lies in ruins with no hope of resurgence as a faction worth my time under the current writing direction, which is intent on turning it into yet another cookie cutter democracy instead of sparing a single member of the royal family to carry them into the future like an Ashe or Larsa character.

Yoshi choosing to wrap up Ivalice in field notes instead of continuing to deliver content related to that universe because the same sort that are enthralled by the cafe of hopes and dreams apparently couldn't tolerate a war story.

Both major deities are dead with none arising to inherit their wills like they did in the Dissidia universe.

This game's afterlife lore is unironically worse than WoW's Shadowlands. Here everyone just melts into the Lifestream as an endless reset button. At least in WoW's universe some people face accountability for their actions after they die.

The First, which was about as high fantasy as this game has ever gotten, did not undergo the originally planned partial rejoining and is still locked in another plane.

The remaining Ascians are dead, or Yoshi has so little interest in them that he has no plans to dedicate anymore storytelling to them.

The Void's inhabitants are about as scary as the pixies from the Persona games, instead of being something that can be taken seriously or induce any sort of fear.

Much as I like the look of Troia Castle and the aesthetics of the Void, there's nothing stopping the Source from having similar traditional high fantasy locations - except oh wait the Source is utterly devoid of such elements for no reason at all.

The world of FFXIV isn't worth spending time in or caring about in its current state. The only way to save it now is to drop another moon on it, rip open Voidgates everywhere and let demons have the run of the place or something similar. We don't have an RPG world anymore, we have Yoshi's playground, and I'm not interested in sitting around playing tea party with the terminator robots and rabbits. A game with no identity, one that I can no longer recommend to anyone with a straight face.