Thematic issues. Why all the sci fi.

[VeyaAkemi]

I actually don't disagree that Sharlayan and Alexandria should change the landscape of the world now that they are an open part of it, but it also won't happen overnight, it's a bigger issue with how the game handles the passage of time, or rather how it doesn't, the 7th Calamity was still 5 years ago, and the change our newest tech savvy friends will bring should take decades to fully take form, it needs infrastructure, it needs people to be willing to adopt those technologies, and all that should take 10 to 20 years minimum to start happening, when they have been around for, like, I dunno, 0 minutes according to time bubble rules? time bubble is dumb.

I could also point out that FFXIV is also a setting where people can train their bodies enough that guns are just not all that, and ultimately exist alongside swords and bows, not simply supplanting it like in our real world, even the big wondrous ships of Alexandria were taken down by a singular dragon, who is at half-power at that, and we have a whole lot more of those, we have seen as far as Yotsuyu, a completely normal woman who has no martial training, while completely drained after we just finished beating the shit out of her Primal form, take several gunshots and still be able to stay awake for a few more minutes after, just long enough, even Sol 9 soldiers are shown to use swords as much as they use guns, because it's just the nature of the setting, physical strength is so much higher than IRL.

[Ath192]

I actually don't disagree that Sharlayan and Alexandria should change the landscape of the world now that they are an open part of it, but it also won't happen overnight, it's a bigger issue with how the game handles the passage of time, or rather how it doesn't, the 7th Calamity was still 5 years ago, and the change our newest tech savvy friends will bring should take decades to fully take form, it needs infrastructure, it needs people to be willing to adopt those technologies, and all that should take 10 to 20 years minimum to start happening, when they have been around for, like, I dunno, 0 minutes according to time bubble rules? time bubble is dumb.

I could also point out that FFXIV is also a setting where people can train their bodies enough that guns are just not all that, and ultimately exist alongside swords and bows, not simply supplanting it like in our real world, even the big wondrous ships of Alexandria were taken down by a singular dragon, who is at half-power at that, and we have a whole lot more of those, we have seen as far as Yotsuyu, a completely normal woman who has no martial training, while completely drained after we just finished beating the shit out of her Primal form, take several gunshots and still be able to stay awake for a few more minutes after, just long enough, even Sol 9 soldiers are shown to use swords as much as they use guns, because it's just the nature of the setting, physical strength is so much higher than IRL.

I agree with you here in a lot of ways, I will counter though that the reason crossbows replace bows was because they required little training, it's not that bows weren't deadly. But the amount of people you could train to be proficient archers was no where near the mass produced soldiers with a crossbow a nation could pump out, and now guns. The same can be argued for anything that requires training. So to the individual and exceptional adventurer this wouldn't pose a problem, but it would for most of the worlds citizenry, after all, we don't see most denizens of Eorzea at those power levels, or even using much magic for their daily lives. So it stands to reason nations would change around this same concept.

And again, the time bubble is the key component of the entire issue. We have rebuilt infrastructure in the game, quite a bite, so yeah, its just a huge issue we are forced to ignore. And if we don't, we realize nothing is cohesive and everyone just lives in gray area denial that the world has moved on time wise so if the world were to remain cohesive, it would be keeping up with the time.

Time that hasn't passed, and yet it so obviously has.

[BigCheez]

I was going to say, by OP's own logic, the only jobs we should have now are GNB, MCH, and SGE because every other job is "outdated and impractical" if technology was really that sweeping and all encompassing within weeks of being introduced.

Hell, we shouldn't even have medieval settings at all by this point, everything should be Garlean magitek MINIMUM because there's just that much of it lying around to "advance" the rest of the known world (and they're not in any position to stop us from taking it from them).

That said, I don't find the mix of fantasy and sci-fi jarring as a whole, given it's nothing new for Final Fantasy, but I can see how it might stick out awkwardly when the Final Fantasy game in question is a "living world" and not a one and done storyline like the rest of them, and where we just assume great lengths of time have happened between expansions but in actuality the game doesn't even act like a year has passed, which also creates the excuse for WHY technology hasn't suddenly super-advanced the whole world because as far as the narrative is concerned the world hasn't been exposed to it for very long.

As far as we know, we discovered Alexandria just a month after we walked into our first Allag ruin, hardly time to study it all much less re-create it and spread it to all our neighbors.

Even if you ignore Alexandria and electrope specifically, I find the mix of classical fantasy and modern/sci-fi in FFXIV a bit off. The fact that you can have a knight in a suit of armour and a catgirl in streetwear standing next to each other makes the game feel pretty aesthetically inconsistent.

In the older FF games, they would always blend fantasy and sci-fi a bit more consistently throughout the world. Some games leaned much more heavily into sci-fi and wouldn't have much in the way of fantasy beyond magic and swords, others were much more traditional fantasy and the sci-fi elements would be more steampunky.

It definitely feels like the devs have been leaning more and more heavily into the IMVU modbeast aesthetic since Shb and feels out of place to me.

[Kaurhz]

I don't mind Sci-Fi as much as the next guy, but it has to be done naturally, with purpose, and proper meaning. With the latter half of the story in this expansion, and with Cosmic Exploration, neither feels like it was done naturally, and feels very much in your face.

Like I don't mind the whole let's incorporate this in a natural way, but the way they're doing so just feels like it is coming at the expense of destroying a story they worked so hard to build.. Imagine going from stories like Shadowbringers and Endwalker where the soul was very much a pivotal point of it, for the next expansion to just turn around and go "Your soul is just a mere AA Duracell battery."

[Kunzite_Lockhart]

They opened Pandora's box with Solution 9, and there's no going back to typical fantasy anymore. Can't imagine returning to a regular fantasy setting—maybe if the WoL got isekai'd to another shard or something. I guess the game will end up with an FFXIII-style setting.

[Zakuyia]

Im shocked ppl dont realize ff has always been sci-fi theres a build up to show you that. How many of the franchise show sci-fi elements.

[AvoSturmfaust]

Like someone stated already there was since ARR Technology, the game was not once without it, be it the allagan, the garlea, our moontravel, heck even if you consider sidequests the shb weapon series, you fought as a big roboter i mean heck you even played star trek with your travel the beat up meteion

[genuine_stranger]

The whole thing with advanced technology made sense when it was just ancient Allagan tech and the Garlean Empire reverse engineering it with Ceruleum-based advancements, at least to a certain extent. (I might be misremembering on that.)

Back then, it was rare, dangerous, and mystical, but also lucrative, something the denizens of Eorzea sought after, tried to adapt, or feared outright.

But all of that went out the window as we got closer to Endwalker. The writers seem to have grown tired of the old setting and, like many in the entertainment industry lately, decided to "improve" on it instead.
-Cough GoT, Rings of Power, Star Wars cough–

Now, it’s all over the place, and we’ve got a colorful mix of whatever the writers feel like exploring. On paper, that sounds great - total creative freedom, right?

The problem is, if they don’t rein it in, it leads to not just writing inconsistencies, but a major disconnect between the pre-established world and their new ideas. At this point, it feels like they’re just throwing things in because they can, rather than because they fit.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I liked the giant mechas in the Werlyt storyline. The Alexandria plot was interesting but it feels like there has been a missed opportunity to explore how a sci fi country arriving in this setting would affect it. Could have subplots about seeing countries trying to court Alexandria for favor or to take its tech and try to reproduce it.