Grossly problematic quest (The Past Is a Story We Never Tell)

[Tracewood]

I remember doing that quest a long time ago and didn't like our character just stood there. We fell gods, yet we could have offed the guy or at lease scare him off right then and there.

Another disturbing story arc I found was in Sharlayan with one of the main crafting quests where a student wants to hook up with her teacher and you help the teacher get over his shyness. At the end of the quest they end up married.

[MistakeNot]

I remember doing that quest a long time ago and didn't like our character just stood there. We fell gods, yet we could have offed the guy or at lease scare him off right then and there.

Another disturbing story arc I found was in Sharlayan with one of the main crafting quests where a student wants to hook up with her teacher and you help the teacher get over his shyness. At the end of the quest they end up married.

While teacher-student relationships are a bit iffy for several reasons, I did not find that particular story arc disturbing as such. It is clearly an advanced student, so likely in her mid-twenties or so, with the teacher in question not that much older (perhaps mid-thirties). So age-wise no real problem.

[Post]

When you're trying to make a world, there's going to be awful bits to it, too.

As the game's gone on in years a lot of the seedier stuff has kinda been washed away. Maybe this is because of a more focused storytelling team with a more unified direction, but for better or worse that older stuff is still there, just like how horrible things are rampant in our world's history and its today. The Moogle quests in particular weren't designed to simply be necessarily fun and cute, but vignettes to further develop groups and individuals throughout ARR that had always been there. This one's about the Courelclaws, a brigand group of poachers that are outlaws living in the Shroud.

I didn't read the story as deliberately idolizing harem and grooming culture, nor deliberately shocking or edgy. The Courelclaws are not exactly cast in a positive light throughout the game to this point, mostly just serving as villains in FATEs, levequests and sidequests where they exist at all (you can in fact "kill" the Courelclaw King in the South shroud in a FATE chain). This quest served to color them further to show that many people among what is basically another faceless 'bad guy' group are suffering because they're outcast and marginalized from a society that could be protecting them, and only isn't because of racial prejudice.

Spoilers for 5.4 and later expansions:

Likely, at this time the story feels worse even outside of context of the real world, because Ul'dah and Limsa have started dealing with their skeletons a lot more in recent patches. And, 6.0 had an excellent opportunity to revisit a lot of these old zones, especially with the major threat of the expansion, but it largely didn't as expansions tend to largely focus on new zones, partially due to advertising requirements (it might not have gone over as well if EW only had 3 or 4 new zones, or had them all but spent more time in ones they've been in since 2013). Given that the story's still being written, there's some chance that their story might be developed more in the future.

There's clearly a line that they do enforce, so maybe if it really does bother you and you really think it should be removed for the game, push for it: They have changed things before for similar reasons. I remember the original t9 savage achievement name was "The Crying Game," but some folks thought that reference was in poor taste. It's "Scent of a Woman" now, and I'm still not really sure how that reference is supposed to make sense... Anyways, I think the quest's most egregious factor is as others have said it can kinda come out of nowhere, but that's often how the world is.

[JohnLakeside]

What do you mean by re-examined? As in remove from the game? They should continue and resolve the story and give justice to the sisters, but the story should not be removed just because it is "problematic." That would be crazy and totally against any idea of art.

[Minali]

What do you mean by re-examined? As in remove from the game? They should continue and resolve the story and give justice to the sisters, but the story should not be removed just because it is "problematic." That would be crazy and totally against any idea of art.

Adding another quest where you actually solve the issue, report the shitty Wailers treating the sister like that in the most vulnerable position of her life, and punch the hell out of this abusive leader of this group, would be sufficient for me at least. An actual good ending where the sister (and hopefully the other members of this group) walks free in the end and gets a chance to start over. No need to delete the quest, just add something that doesn't result in the person who just destroyed the Ultimate Weapon and saved Eorzea standing there when the sister runs back being like "eh" and going back to the postmoogle for the next letter.

Like.. we eat gods for breakfast. Please let me do something about some abuser who holds people hostage with lies and a bunch of corrupt "cops" who give his lies some extra weight.