What lore do you ignore?

[Allegor]

I ignore the fact RPR feeds their avatar people's souls and just pretend they feed off my own aether instead, much like how Y'shtola and Vrtra compensate Zero for her assistance. I know, I know, Drusilla outright said something like "if you value the morality of your soul, piss off" right from the get go before we even accept the job crystal, but hey, a scythe is a cool weapon mkay?

[RyuDragnier]

I ignore the fact RPR feeds their avatar people's souls and just pretend they feed off my own aether instead, much like how Y'shtola and Vrtra compensate Zero for her assistance. I know, I know, Drusilla outright said something like "if you value the morality of your soul, piss off" right from the get go before we even accept the job crystal, but hey, a scythe is a cool weapon mkay?

I agree with this, it's just more efficient for both the Reaper and the Avatar. I'd like to believe the Reaper has a larger than average appetite for this reason.

[Larirawiel]

I ignore the EW lore completely. There are simply too many retcons, time travel paradoxons and a constant goofiness of the protagonists/antagonists to waste the time with the EW lore. It seems to me, that EW is a pure FF fanservice expansion.

Cheers

[Lheilara]

I’m late to the thread but I so badly wanna comment anyway! The way I see the lore is as a pile of mouldable building blocks and a pre-built scaffold… but how we want to construct the building itself is largely up to us as individual players. The number of questions the devs have been asked that have extremely vague responses or straight up ‘we don’t know for sure, what do you think?’ kinda answers, really says to me that this is OUR story - us, the players. I don’t think plot holes or lore conflicts in this particular game are down to failure or lack of care from the writers… I think they’re results of they themselves having fun with the story they’re writing for us.
There’s things we see and things we don’t see. Things we are educated on and things we are not. The answer to almost everything is just ‘well, maybe?’ Like, if FF14 isn’t a clear depiction of Yin and Yang then I don’t know what is. We literally exist in a grey are, always in flux.

As long as a player isn’t toxic about their personal take on the story, it really really doesn’t matter what ‘lore’ we ignore - a huge lot of it is only implied, and even then, I believe it is similar to real world history insomuch as ‘facts’ are only facts until proven otherwise. For example, the lore books give us a teeny bit of insight on the clans for each race, but the language used implies that most of these races do indeed have other clans or variants etc. that just aren’t as prominent or known about in Eorzea itself. Therefore we can say that the lore here is vague and open to our own interpretation, whims and fancies. Ditto with the world around us, the history, the intentions and wills of characters, the relationships between our WoL and the other characters that we do and do not see… just because we are told something, does not mean that it is true.

Now my little rant is over, I don’t really ignore any of the lore. I just twist it, add to it, assume things about it etc. in a way that befits MY interpretation of the story.
The only thing I’d say that I struggle to adopt is the idea that it’s all just been one year - however I think this is simply the result of the story taking place in an MMO time bubble… not to mention the real life phenomenon of time sometimes feeling quicker or slower than it really is. Maybe for the WoL, who’s had crazy things going on back to back since the first primal was slain, maybe it feels like it’s only been a year. But personally, I like to think there’s around 4 or 5 years between ARR and EW.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

I feel like the Void would have worked better as a sort of daemonic decadent feudal court system than what it turned out to be in story, especially after years and years of Voidsent being just past the horizon lore-wise. Integral to who knows how many major and minor plotlines, lurking around each and every bend it feels. The Encyclopaedias Eorzea even went out of their way to label Scathach the Shadow Queen and elucidate us to the fact Diabolos was apparently a Duke. It is what it is, and I'm not too satisfied with that we got in the end but neither do I have the time, motivation, nor patience to write a fanfiction about it haha.

It really is quite the stark shame, daemon realms are no fun without a little back-stabbing, eating of thy neighbour and haams that taste of despair after all~ xD

[Alleluia]

I feel like the Void would have worked better as a sort of daemonic decadent feudal court system than what it turned out to be in story, especially after years and years of Voidsent being just past the horizon lore-wise. Integral to who knows how many major and minor plotlines, lurking around each and every bend it feels. The Encyclopaedias Eorzea even went out of their way to label Scathach the Shadow Queen and elucidate us to the fact Diabolos was apparently a Duke. It is what it is, and I'm not too satisfied with that we got in the end but neither do I have the time, motivation, nor patience to write a fanfiction about it haha.

It really is quite the stark shame, daemon realms are no fun without a little back-stabbing, eating of thy neighbour and haams that taste of despair after all~ xD

I mean, I felt like that's what we got, though? Beatrice ran her realm like a court, all of Golbez's minions have domains they rule. Minions fight and eat each other for advancement and sustenance? "Scathach was queen of her domain" (3k years ago or w/e), "Diabolos was a duke in it", etc. is all in line with the void as we see it now.

The idea that the void isn't a phantom realm-esque separate plane, but instead an alternate Etherys; and that voidsent aren't some separate species of actual "demons" or ghosts, but afflicted normal people who are just suffering from a world in a state of aetherial overcharge-- those are new bits of lore. Well, "new" as of Unukalhai, I guess. Its a change/development from the original ARR understanding of the void, at least.

But the social structure we ended up seeing now is still the same as that hinted at by the Machi raids.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

snip

I guess I expected it to be bigger, haha?

'Tis fine, it's undoubtedly no more than a minor dissatisfaction on my part. I only mentioned it since I kinda have a way too large headcanon of how different I imagine it in my head that flits about like a faerie. Again though, I've not the time nor patience to put the ideas to paper so a mental ghost is what they shall remain.

[Asetoni]

The whole "ascians built in tempering into the summoning they taught to beast tribes and it's not actually a normal side effect of summoning" thing in EW.

Given the cases of spontaneuos or not-ritual-based summonings in the story (phoenix, susanoo, enkindu, etc.), I just find it hard to believe. It's true that we don't ever see any primals like these temper anyone, so it's not an outright plothole, but it's still strange that no one ever in history figured it out since summoning can happen accidentally.

It's not the only plothole in the game or anything, but it just rubs me the wrong way when it's dropped so casually and throws out a lot of thematic elements with summoning, and was clearly just written so that they can make a reference to the 1.0 trailer.

If this lore ever becomes relevant to the story in the future, I'll obviously just stop ignoring it.

[Larirawiel]

The whole "ascians built in tempering into the summoning they taught to beast tribes and it's not actually a normal side effect of summoning" thing in EW.

Yes, it is completely illogical. Because if tempering is something artifical then why did the ancients it to themself? Emet-Selch tells the player, that the summoners of Zodiark became tempered by him.


Cheers

[Cleretic]

Yes, it is completely illogical. Because if tempering is something artifical then why did the ancients it to themself? Emet-Selch tells the player, that the summoners of Zodiark became tempered by him.


Cheers

...this part was explained extremely clearly by Livingway, I thought. A primal as colossal in both size and power as Zodiark does temper, albeit potentially to a lesser degree (Livingway understates things a lot so it's hard to tell how much lesser). Primal summoning as taught by the Ascians was deliberately sabotaged to jack up the tempering power even for smaller primals. I compare it to engine sound; Zodiark is a honkin' huge jumbo jet, it's always going to be noisy/tempering no matter how much you try to dial that down. Meanwhile, Ifrit is like one of those really obnoxious motorcycles where the manufacturer deliberately makes the engine as loud/tempering-causing as possible. Basically, the Ancients didn't do it to themselves intentionally, but when you make a primal out of half the population of the planet, its aether will by nature be so strong as to cause tempering.

Hell, Asetoni pointed out that his own counterevidence is invalid: Phoenix, Susano, Enkidu, and other primals summoned completely without Ascian instruction didn't temper anybody. All of those scenarios happened in such freak accidents that I'm not terribly surprised that nobody managed to study that phenomena.