A game for 4 year olds

[RyuDragnier]

This is why I was hoping that after EW was dealt with, the WoL would be depowered.

It would solve 2 problems: The problem of being too strong for more mundane threats. And the problem of new players coming into the game. While it was necessary to power up the WoL at first because the Garlean Empire and the Ascians were WAAAAY too strong for Eorzea, if they depowered the WoL after it was all over then not only could existing players who have already completed the story start fresh, but new players could use this as a new launch pad into the game without needing to complete all of the story that happened from say HW-onwards.

While on one hand, it's kinda awkward to play an MMO known for its story and skip it all, but on the other it's a lot to ask new players to do hundreds of hours of it in order to catch up to their friends who invited them to the game in the first place and get established and not burn out without reaching the part of the game everyone else is having fun together on.

That's why I'm a fan of the idea of 8.0 throwing a monkey wrench in things while being in The New World. At the end of 7.0, we will be at level 100, normally the stopping point for levels in Final Fantasy. But FF14 doesn't do horizontal grinds well. So how do we keep a vertical grind while "resetting" the levels (not the skills) and the WoL's power level in story? We lose our body, possibly through some form of death at the hands of the 8.0 expansion villain early on (who may have been testing out a weapon on some random stranger, ie the WoL). However, due to our soul being strong enough, we end up grabbing a body (possibly without a soul due to villain's evil magic testing) and are forced to basically train this body up after having made it change shape into our former look. It de-escalates our power (kind of considering how souls work), and gives us a threatening villain.

[Cleretic]

This is why I was hoping that after EW was dealt with, the WoL would be depowered.

It would solve 2 problems: The problem of being too strong for more mundane threats. And the problem of new players coming into the game. While it was necessary to power up the WoL at first because the Garlean Empire and the Ascians were WAAAAY too strong for Eorzea, if they depowered the WoL after it was all over then not only could existing players who have already completed the story start fresh, but new players could use this as a new launch pad into the game without needing to complete all of the story that happened from say HW-onwards.

See, I think this is an attempted solution to something that's not actually a problem, and just makes more in the attempted fix. We're not actually so strong as to completely invalidate all non-apocalyptic comers; we're exceptionally capable in a fight, no doubt about it, but we've been laid out flat plenty of times and don't actually do a lot of those tremendous victories alone; Shadowbringers and Endwalker did well by making that abundantly clear in the text itself, and giving us a way to bring in a group even when that's difficult through the Azem crystal, but it's always been there. We might be the among top of our respective fields, but that peak is by no means above the concept of there being believable competition or us needing help to throw down with a big beastie.

The story doesn't need to de-power us to make future content a challenge; they can just make that content a challenge and have us accept that we'll sometimes get our asses handed to us no matter how big our biceps are. No part of the game's text or mechanics says that's not completely possible; hell, Bozja told us that a guy with an axe and no shirt was our combative equal, and I don't see anyone arguing with that.

...plus, the notion of de-powering the character faces an insane amount of issues both with reflecting it mechanically and story-wise. We have dozens of different possible power sources, from the high-concept Summoner to the 'just angry and beefy' Warrior, how are you going to sell an in-universe de-powering that hits every single one of them? Even when superhero stories do that they don't try to make it one-size-fits all, because when they do it it's not to knock The Flash or Thor down to size, it's usually a story arc just set up around the concept of 'oh yeah Batman and Hawkeye aren't affected by this, we'll tell a story about that'. Metroid can de-power Samus no problems, because Samus is one person with a very specific power source; to depower the WoL, you need a concept that wipes out twenty different possible power sources and combat techniques in one. And you can't actually miss a single one, otherwise Monks or whoever you miss are gonna complain they should be the exception and should be the Batman in a 'depowered Justice League' story.

And it's a beat that's not going to feel like it means anything at all if it's not mechanically reflected, but reflecting it mechanically would kinda just mess up the rest of the game. If you've decided after Ultima Thule that we should be depowered to a degree where we can no longer compete in Ultima Thule... well, if you don't change things mechanically nobody will think we've been de-powered anyway and it'll feel like nothing, but if you make it so that we can't you've messed up all content in that zone.

[Lyth]

Power is relative. You really just need a sufficiently menacing villain. The problem is if that confrontation occurs too early, then they lose their impact. It's easy to fall into the trap of introducing a character and then immediately wanting to bring about a showdown. But then it quickly turns into monster of the week. This is the best time to start investing in an arc villain, for a payoff several expansions down the line.

I like the idea of removing players' sense of 'safety', but that's difficult to do in an MMO. Traditionally the way to do this is a point of no return. One of the best parts of the transition between ARR and Heavensward was the lonely journey to Ishgard, as a wanted fugitive on the run. But you also can't take away the player's ability to teleport back to Ul'dah and carry on there as normal. In comparison, imagine the impact of Cecil being stranded on Mysidia, only to be able to teleport back to safety to visit earlier shops at will.

I think the difficulty right now is that most places on the three great continents are going to welcome us as heroes and cheer us on. It's very different being stranded in a hostile environment as the underdog and trying to win people over. But I think it's tough to convey that in an MMO.

It would be fun to see some of the Ivalice related regions in southern Ilsabard, and I'm hoping that one of the 'other names' for Locus Amoenus turns out to be Archadia. But I'm in no particular rush to get there.

[Alleo]

To the people who are so worried about something happening to the source: Forge Ahead. Because right now there's a whole lot of nothing going on except for whatever Golbez is twirling his moustache over, and a competent writer would let that lead into either demon invasion or rejoinings.

Funny that you believe that any kind of "war" story or threat of another rejoining would lead to us losing. Right now the WoL has won any of these conflicts and stopped the rejoning of the First. What makes you believe that a another rejoining would happen? And why would it need to happen? The main Ascians are dead, none of the remaining ones should be powerful enough to plan something that basically makes a shard ready for a rejoining. Remember both the source and shard needs to be prepared for that...

We had a ongoing war since ARR...and here you still want a war as if that is not going to be boring after such a long time.

_________

About our power:

The WoL is the type of person that helps no matter what. So we will always help the weaker people. And for a main villain: Well we are still human, get some poison out, use some new world technic that temporarily knocks us out because we had no idea what it is (but will overcome later), overwhelm us in numbers, threaten someone we love or simply let the enemy be a person in power that we cant attack because it would lead to political conflicts. Things that FF14 has already used over the time.

If we ever go to another shard, they could easily explain that the density of aether is different and thus we need time to get used to that.

I just dont see a need to depower us permanently. Even against the Endsinger we had help and without the Scions and their prayers we would have died. We are not a unstoppable god.

[Iscah]

[Depowering] would solve 2 problems: The problem of being too strong for more mundane threats. And the problem of new players coming into the game.

The only way that could assist new players is by reducing the character's actual numeric level, and that would be such a massive can of worms. Why did any of us go to the bother of levelling additional jobs above 50 if they're going to get dropped straight back down there when we hit a certain point in the MSQ? Where would that leave the role quests, and indeed any sidequest requiring higher levels? It would completely defeat the structure of the game so far, and existing players would be rightly unimpressed.

And if you're not meaning to reduce levels, then I can't see it helping newcomers at all.

The simpler route is to get them up there quicker. If the devs want them to get into the new storyline immediately, that can be achieved in the current system by including one free story skip to the beginning of 7.0 and a level boost to 90 in the purchase of the game, allowing players to jump into "season 2" without having to compromise the linear structure of the storyline. Beyond that, boost the armoury bonus if it should be easier for them to catch up on additional classes.

[Alleo]

The simpler route is to get them up there quicker. If the devs want them to get into the new storyline immediately, that can be achieved in the current system by including one free story skip to the beginning of 7.0 and a level boost to 90 in the purchase of the game, allowing players to jump into "season 2" without having to compromise the linear structure of the storyline. Beyond that, boost the armoury bonus if it should be easier for them to catch up on additional classes.

Fully agree on that. If someone that comes to the game does not want do to the old expansions they can skip them. Otherwise SE would need to write two storylines at the same time...after all our character has a history with this world. If someone starts a new one and gets a new beginning at 7.0 they lack that. Which means that any interaction with any old NPC needs to be rewritten. And yes for a short while they could write that we only meet new people but that does not happen forever.

Why bother with that if people simply can skip.

If we are done with exploring our planet we still have the shards and the whole universe left. Places that could easily have other rules thus making us weaker by default.

[Cleretic]

What makes you believe that a rejoining would happen? And why would it need to happen? The main Ascians are dead, none of the remaining ones should be powerful enough to stake something that bascially makes a shard ready for a rejoining. Remember both the source and shard needs to be prep for that...

Something I've noticed from multiple people trying to predict future events, especially on the official forums but also elsewhere, is that there's a bunch of people who assert that a Rejoining must be in the future without any real care for how astronomically implausible that is. In fact, almost acting like it's an inevitability; that there must be a Rejoining in the future, it's just a matter of figuring out how. I think there's two general approaches that lead there:

A: People deciding that Rejoinings are somehow a good thing, or can be done peacefully and positively, rather than 'oh yeah that's unambiguously a bad thing for literally every living soul on all involved planets that only the Ascians ever had anything to gain from'. This I think is why the OF has this more often than elsewhere, because there's an atypically large pro-Zodiark/Convocation/Ascian segment of the population here; they want to see another Rejoining in part because either they want to see a 'good Rejoining' (which is akin to saying 'a good earthquake'), or they think all Rejoinings are somehow good Rejoinings.

And B: Just a general lack of originality; they go for a Rejoining as an apparently inevitable future event not because Rejoinings actually are likely or inevitable, but because it's the only thing they can think of. The only threat or game-changer they can imagine is a Rejoining because they just can't imagine the game having stakes or major players different than what they're already familiar with.

[KageTokage]

The "how" of a Rejoining without any Ascian interference to me felt as simple as reasoning that the natural order tends towards correcting itself if there's no longer any external forces keeping it from doing so.

In Zodiark's case, the aetherial currents he had weaved into a barrier around Etheriys immediately corrected themselves and started to induce aether sickness in wildlife as a minor side effect of the aether levels on the surface increasing.

When it comes to Hydaelyn, while there wasn't anything to suggest she was having consciously maintain the sundered state of the world, it is implied that she had created the boundaries/barriers that separate the shards from the Source. The goal of the calamities was to break those boundaries by intensifying a shard's connection to the Source, but it doesn't feel unrealistic to me to think they might begin to weaken on their own now that she's gone...or at least I'd like to think there'd be some manner of repercussions from a self-proclaimed god of stasis/stability disappearing.

The void storyline is already suggesting that something about the world has changed in recent times that is causing Golbez to pursue his scheme of 10,000+ years in the making, and I'm thinking the deaths of one or both gods are involved.

[Iscah]

In Zodiark's case, the aetherial currents he had weaved into a barrier around Etheriys immediately corrected themselves and started to induce aether sickness in wildlife as a minor side effect of the aether levels on the surface increasing.

I don't have quotes to back it up, but my impression was not that Zodiark rerouted the currents but is actively emitting a planet-wide shield to prevent the weak points from being an issue.

If that is the case, then with his destruction, the shield is gone and the weak points are again letting Meteion's assault through. Nothing else needs to have reverted to an earlier state for the situation to change.

[Alleo]

The "how" of a Rejoining without any Ascian interference to me felt as simple as reasoning that the natural order tends towards correcting itself if there's no longer any external forces keeping it from doing so.

I have a feeling that Venat also thought about this. Her plan was to be defeated one day so I doubt that she would have used something that would be gone after she is destroyed. Also if the natural order somehow wants a fully rejoined source back than the Ascians could have simply waited all the time to let nature do it, without having to risk their own lives and without having to build whole nations with the goal to cause a calamity. (And I still question what they would have done with the 13th...bascially they messed it up so much that the would have never gotten their original world back anyway)

Also what purpose would that have in story telling? That millions still die? Or that we somehow still find some deus ex machina that will stop it from happening?
Honestly I am happy if we move away from that plot line forever. I am quite fine with normal human level threats. Maybe a bigger enemy after a few more build up expansions but please no end of the world ones in the very next one...