What lore do you ignore?

[sidurgu-12]

I want to ask an important question that I think is being missed in a lot of these things people are saying they're ignoring.

Why? Not why as in 'why this thing specifically', but why as in 'why have you chosen to ignore it', why was that what you chose to do? Is it a functional thing, where you're roleplaying or writing fanworks and this element is too much effort to include or works against what you're going for? Is it a mental health/comfort thing where that part is personally triggering or upsetting enough that it's better to put it out of mind? Something else that's just not occurring to me?

I ask because I think a lot of people are just using this thread to air 'lore/story I don't like', and that... doesn't sound right. Sure, a game you like did a thing you don't; are you really ignoring that, or are you just here to passive-aggressively say they shouldn't have? And if you are ignoring it solely because you don't like it, is that how you handle any media doing the same? Are you trying to create some perfect internal FFXIV rather than accepting that it may have flaws or disagree with you?


In writing this, though, I did realize there is part of the game's lore I do 'ignore', but it is more complicated than that: the concerning amount of uses of sexual assault basically solely for 'darkness' and shock value in ARR especially. I don't entirely block it out, but I do my best to just leave that as far away as possible from both my roleplaying and lore discussions, including my videos (although unfortunately, my next one does have to touch on an instance in HW). I find it genuinely uncomfortable just how much it was done and with so little respect, but fortunately the devs both use it less now and treat it with more respect when it comes up; after HW it's basically only Yotsuyu, and that part of her is done quite well. I'll readily call ARR out for it when it comes up, but it's generally just better to put it out of mind for the most part.

For me its because of my personal beliefs actively hurt my enjoyment of the game so i try to either headcanon it or ignore it outright. But while i do have a few headcanons the lifestream is the only thing i ignore.
Edit: though tbh i dont actually ignore the ancients connection to everything despite being kind of bothered by it.

[Lalahee]

The "everything that has transpired since 2.0 to 6.0+ has been less than one year" nonsense. If there is anything that needs a retcon, it is the unfathomably stupid timeline.

As far as I'm concerned, it's been 10 years since the 7th Umbral Era's end. Years literally pass and yearly holiday events are numerous by *lore*. It feels like an excuse not to age up the Twins to me.

Please, Square, don't Ash Ketchum the Twins.

[Lyth]

As far as we've seen so far, Convocation stones just seem to be the precursors to job crystals (i.e. upon the surface of this multi-aspected crystal are carved the myriad deeds of Azems from eras past). The Sage questline suggests that not anyone can pick up a soul crystal and learn its secrets. It has to specifically resonate with your soul. The same is likely true for the Convocation stones, although we're yet to see what happens with that Chekhov's crystal in the conclusion of Pandaemonium.

I was under the impression that the convocation stones were how Emet reinstituted the sundered Ascians back to their former Convocation posts. Amon had vague memories of his former life in flashbacks, but it's only after Emet found him that he was able to confirm those memories were real, presumably against the crystal. But much like Gaia, those memories are also something that he views as external to himself. And they're still incomplete. He only remembers that you were on Elpis after you remind him of it, despite having flashbacks of the place.

I don't really think there's a good rationale from selectively 'ignoring' lore unless the writers have specifically gone back and rewritten an in-game event such that you have two conflicting versions of the same story. You could, of course, still make the case that both 'accounts' are simply different retellings of the same legend and take both with a grain of salt. Dogma is prevalent everywhere, though, so it isn't surprising.

[Lurina]

I ask because I think a lot of people are just using this thread to air 'lore/story I don't like', and that... doesn't sound right. Sure, a game you like did a thing you don't; are you really ignoring that, or are you just here to passive-aggressively say they shouldn't have? And if you are ignoring it solely because you don't like it, is that how you handle any media doing the same? Are you trying to create some perfect internal FFXIV rather than accepting that it may have flaws or disagree with you?

FFXIV is not just a story. With a book or show, if you don't like what it's doing, there's absolutely no reason other than sunk cost fallacy to not just drop it like a hot rock - the plot is all it has going for it. With a game, though, it becomes complicated because you can hate something about the writing enough that you'd be done under normal circumstances and still have a stronger motivation for staying. Maybe all your friends are playing it and quitting means not getting to socialize with them as much. Maybe you're really into some specific gameplay niche like savage raiding, or a social one like roleplay. Maybe you just really like Triple Triad.

In a situation like that, sometimes the only thing you can really do to keep enjoying the part you enjoy without experiencing cognitive dissonance is to blot you don't like out of your mind. (Again, this is only for stuff that would normally be so overwhelmingly offputting you'd wanna quit. For smaller complaints it's easy to just accept the game isn't perfect - probably people who say "ignore" in that sense just mean "dismiss")

To use your example, I would normally throw a story that used sexual assault as a throwaway plot point in the midst of an otherwise light-hearted, fun story out the window, but because I like the rest of it enough, I try to block it out of my mind.

[Alleo]

Well, the game does act like you've solo'd a lot of those primals. Hell, it's why the Grand Companies wanted the WoL so badly, they SOLO'D a primal, who wouldn't want such a person in their forces?

It does and doesnt. Like Susano and your fishing friends..so to make it all sense I just assumed that this is just some bad talk ingame and we did them all alone.

[Necrotica]

Ignoring plot points in an MMO is normal in my mind because of how much of it has to be adjusted because it is an MMO. Doing every job, being able to change race and sex with a potion and no one mentions it, the mountains of dead animals we have created in the process of leveling. While some of this is mechanics, a lot of it had nods to it actually happening in what npcs say.
Like some mentioned earlier, the Primal fights are reacted to like we did solo, while talking to npcs in the are before the fight mention you grabbing some friends real quick.

MMOs are a buffet. You don't have to do all the side quests. You don't have to level every class. You pick and choose want you want to take part in. The lore is no different.

[YianKutku]

I want to ask an important question that I think is being missed in a lot of these things people are saying they're ignoring.

Why? Not why as in 'why this thing specifically', but why as in 'why have you chosen to ignore it', why was that what you chose to do? Is it a functional thing, where you're roleplaying or writing fanworks and this element is too much effort to include or works against what you're going for? Is it a mental health/comfort thing where that part is personally triggering or upsetting enough that it's better to put it out of mind? Something else that's just not occurring to me?

I ask because I think a lot of people are just using this thread to air 'lore/story I don't like', and that... doesn't sound right. Sure, a game you like did a thing you don't; are you really ignoring that, or are you just here to passive-aggressively say they shouldn't have? And if you are ignoring it solely because you don't like it, is that how you handle any media doing the same? Are you trying to create some perfect internal FFXIV rather than accepting that it may have flaws or disagree with you?

That's a good question. As mentioned, in my case, I ignore the Yorha raids because they make themselves ignorable. So based on that, I would say it's a mix of "I personally don't like the story" and "functional issue", in that I personally don't like the story because it's a functional issue. It doesn't tie into FFXIV in any meaningful way, so there's a very strong sense of "why shouldn't I ignore it?" when it comes to working with FFXIV lore.

Compare to, say, the Ivalice content, which makes itself at home in FFXIV, for better or for worse. I don't personally like the Ivalice content either, but I accept them as part of FFXIV's world, including the retcon about "no non-pureblood Garlean can be a Legatus". So when discussing and speculating about FFXIV, I have to take the Ivalice stuff into consideration, even if I'm personally not that interested in it.

But the Yorha raids, as I often say, can be excised entirely from FFXIV with absolutely no effect on lore before and after. Hence, it is technically a problem of "too much effort" to include for discussions of FFXIV lore, where "too much effort" here means "any effort at all".

I suppose it's a form of frustration: "Why should I care, when it gives me no reason to care?"

[Rannie]

I think the only thing I would ignore and at this point it's only "word of God". Is Yoshi-P's explanation on how the races evolved from the sundered ancients. It sounds too much like an ass pull and something they just gave a 5 minute thought about instead of having anything planned....

[SilverArrow20XX]

I dismissed everything Meteion said pretty quickly, and chalked it up to her using outdated terminology or exaggerating.
The math just doesn't add up. She was only on a 108 year mission.
The terminology used by Alphatron in later patches seems to support me.

End of the Universe = Edge of the Galaxy.
All Stars in the Universe = A couple dozen planets in the galaxy. Then she assumed all planets would be the same despite the relatively small sample size.

I also kind of ignore Alphatron being destroyed.
There doesn't seem to be much evidence that they're not just still in standby mode, but everything in game acts like it was destroyed.
Meteion shouldn't really be able to even do anything to them, unless she just made Sir so depressed he ordered the entire civilization to self destruct.

[Iscah]

I want to ask an important question [...]

I ask because I think a lot of people are just using this thread to air 'lore/story I don't like', and that... doesn't sound right. Sure, a game you like did a thing you don't; are you really ignoring that, or are you just here to passive-aggressively say they shouldn't have? And if you are ignoring it solely because you don't like it, is that how you handle any media doing the same? Are you trying to create some perfect internal FFXIV rather than accepting that it may have flaws or disagree with you?

I think that is essentially what I am doing if I say I am ignoring lore, and I don't see a problem with it as long as I know what I am doing, and don't confuse it with actually claiming things happened my reimagined way.

Ultimately, this is a thing I am playing to entertain myself, and if I look at it and think "this bit wasn't very good, it could have been better if they wrote it in this specific different way" then I am going to get enjoyment out of the idea of the altered thing.

I think because the game involves a self-created character and/or silent protagonist, but I am at all times filtering this game through a thought process of, what would my character be saying in this scene? Does this make sense for her personally? ...so I'm already in that mindset of reconfiguring some parts of even the story unfolding right in front of me here. I tend to go over the other characters' dialogue with a proofreading sort of mindset as well, I think - not at the expense of enjoying it, but if I hit something jarring then I'll be imagining better ways to word it.

As far as I can remember, it's always been something I've done with similar character situations. Right back in Pokémon Silver, my teenage self was keeping lengthy fanficcy notes about my actual character versus the enforced single protagonist, and how "her version" of the adventure played out, hitting all the main notes of the story but varying in the details. (There's something quite MMO-ish about Pokémon, especially of FFXIV's "solo story plus ways to interact with others" approach, but with the individualised character aspect of it sort of dangling out into the real world rather than within the game itself.)

But anyway. This game. The things I will mentally tinker with are mostly those that won't be touched on in future. It's not trying to change the trajectory of the plot, but to deviate from it in ways that improve the story (to me) without disrupting the overall flow.

The game isn't perfect. I think they have had some dreadful plot point ideas, but they sit next to a lot of good plot and other things I really do like about the game, and in the long run it's a story I'm invested in and want to keep enjoying. And if that means fanficcing over the parts of it I dislike, then what does it matter to anyone else? All that matters is that if I'm discussing lore here, I stick to the actual lore.