PLD Stormblood Lore/Job Quests really got the shaft

[primarisgoazrr]

Hello friends, so I was looking back on the job quests and from 30 - 60 I felt was a really good progression. Then we get to 60 - 70, 80 and actual PLDs are no where to be seen. Don’t get me wrong the story it’s self is fine and I’m a sucker for a tournament arc, but it was such a sudden shift back to the gladiators. They should’ve expanded on the Free PLD stuff, maybe Solkzagyl could’ve founded actual Free PLD guild somewhere in corthous, where he enlisted other older/retired PLDs to help train the next generation and when we show up at lvl 60 they could be holding a tournament to commemorate the open of the guild, where anyone from near or far can enter. Then the lvl 80 quest could be the same as is just the Free PLD guild hall or something along those lines. I know it’s foolish to think that they might change the whole 60 - 70 job quest, but they did add that extra for SCH egi glam so maybe there’s a 0.05%? I just want PLD to have a good story that fits with itself like the other tanks, anyways thanks for reading

[Cleretic]

Stormblood has a lot of job quests that find a way to go 'back to basics' and bring in earlier NPCs. It's not just Paladin: off the top of my head Monk, White Mage, Ninja, Dark Knight to a degree, and Alchemist and Leatherworker if you count them (which you should, those quests are great) bring in NPCs from their first arc/class quest for a prolonged period. And a lot of those work really well.

But Paladin's a special case even among them where it basically just goes completely back to the Gladiators, and that's mostly because Paladin's HW story is so bad that it breaks Paladin's base concept. After that point they are nobody's definition of a Paladin, they ruin lives for no reason solely to foster a weird 'might makes right, only the strongest are worthy' outlook that doesn't fit any job, but especially not Paladin, which was all about order, duty, and protection. If anything, SB PLD actually fits the whole concept of FFXIV's Paladins a lot more than HW's, because it actually is a story about the order of the Sultansworn and their connection to the royal family of Ul'Dah.

Basically, to get a Paladin story that's 'more of a Paladin story', you have to start further back than Stormblood: we basically have to rewrite the whole of HW PLD into a form that actually leaves them with 'Paladin-ly' things to do.


Also, while I have no idea how much time you've given SB PLD so far, I urge you to stick through it; if your concern is about pure quality, SB PLD is competing for second-best of all the 60-70 tank questlines. ...and isn't even the most divorced from their base concept, because Warrior instead finds its footing by going full comedy.

[shadowclasper]

Absolutely real quote from Yoshi P during realm reborn development

'so kid, you're gonna have the absolutely best goddamn armor sets in the entire game, your character animations are gonna flare like nobody's business, but to balance that, I'm sorry. Your story quests are going to be flat out the most lame of any job past or future in any squenix game'

[Zero-ELEC]

The Heavensward Paladin quests are famously received really poorly and also even the game (in the English localisation, at least) makes fun of the daftness of the plot. I for one was grateful for the return to more Gladiator stylings after those quests.

[Cleretic]

Honestly if I were to go full fanfiction in rewriting the Paladin quests, I think there's some potential to be had in Heavensward Paladin by instead leaning into both Heavensward's setting, and an interesting unspoken part of Paladin's identity.

Final Fantasy's view of Paladin isn't really what a lot of western depictions of Paladin are: rather than being a 'holy knight of a religious order' FF more angles for a 'for queen and country' style chivalric knight of a royal order. I was going to say that it strays from the 'DnD model', but I believe the root is actually that FF's comes from an earlier DnD model: the first appearance of paladins in DnD didn't really have religion and gods as a huge part of its identity. It was there in the list of 'things a paladin should remain true to', and they had vaguely 'godly' magic, but the identity was more focused on things like chivalry and fealty to their kingdom. You can see that in Cecil in IV, but it comes through in XIV: there's a lot you can see in the fact that Paladin is rooted in Ul'dah, the city with a royal family and history, rather than Ishgard, the city with religion as its whole focus.

So if I were to try to salvage HW Paladin, I'd instead play on that dynamic between depictions of Paladin. Have the chivalric Sultansworn cross paths with Ishgardian holy knights, and learn from the experience of seeing both the vast differences and similarities. It'd actually also track with the fact that 50-60 is when Paladin starts getting the more 'holy'-themed and explicitly magical abilities, like Divine Veil and Clemency.

[Cilia]

The sharp decline in Job Quests is pretty much why they axed them and went with Role Quests for Shadowbringers and on; new Jobs still get a dedicated story that gives them some context in the world, but preexisting ones just get the Role Quests because continuing to add quality stories for an ever-increasing number of Jobs would just be too much.

[primarisgoazrr]

The sharp decline in Job Quests is pretty much why they axed them and went with Role Quests for Shadowbringers and on; new Jobs still get a dedicated story that gives them some context in the world, but preexisting ones just get the Role Quests because continuing to add quality stories for an ever-increasing number of Jobs would just be too much.

Yeah I realize that doing full quest lines for would be a lot, doesn’t stop me from missing job quest though. I wish they kept the ShB route and gave us a quest at max lvl to check in with the Npcs and see what they’re up to.