[DISCUSSION] Primal Replacements

[Aonns]

As much as I loved the concept, SE has been very open about Primals being a thing of the past. But Primals filled a narrative niche for Trials and were the primary way of showcasing Final Fantasy's iconic summons and monsters.

What do you think will fill their absence? Dawntrail was uncommitted to the concept, only having 4 Trials in base so who knows how it will look in the future.

What do you theorize? What do you hope for? Or would you rather Trials just go the way of the dodo?

[Gwenkatsu]

Or would you rather Trials just go the way of the dodo?

This, a hundred times. In raids you can find some of the most spectacular settings the game has to offer. But trials are always the same: a single bland room, a damage sponge, 10 minute DDR. From the things I (have to) engage with, Trials are the content I cannot stand at all.

[Rabblerabble]

Trials kind of feel forced at times in terms of narrative interference and Gwenkatsu nailed it for me there.

An occasional one here or there would be cool , and another concept that would interest me is giving the player more agency in how they go about the msq. One choice may lead players through a dungeon, and the other perhaps a trial. This may lead to longer queue times for both but, it would at least give incentive to re-experience the msq to open both encounters, or just open both after fully completing that patcg/expac.

I would like to see something done to spice the game up. Stilllove it, still enjoy playing with my friends and meeting new people but the game needs some basic formula changes and the sooner the better.

[Daudream]

??? Trials have never been exclusive to primals, not even in ARR, yes they've been the primary target for it but that doesn't mean we can't fight anything else and we've already seen them replace primals plenty of times. Trials are just bosses we beat to shake up the content so we don't just do dungeons and solo duties in the MSQ, they also offer different content and difficulty than normal and alliance raids do. (less so normal as they did away with the structure from ARR and HW)

Also no, DT haven't been uncommitted to the concept, we just haven't gotten the optional trials yet and also the story isn't over, most trials per expansion are linked to the MSQ after all.

I do think they way they wrote off primals at the end of EW as "problem solved" is stupid, like the concept don't have to be discarded just because tempering has a cure now but they will never do away with trials, be that for good or for bad.

[Jeeqbit]

We moved away from Primals a very long time ago at this point.

The Four Lords in Stormblood, between 2018-2019, were not quite primals, but rather creatures that lived long enough (over 100 years) to, I assume, consume too much surrounding aether or somesuch and gain the ability to talk. This concept continues throughout the game, such as with Seto the Amaro and vidraal such as Valigarmanda.

In Shadowbringers between 2019-2021, a lot of them are not so much primals as soul-corrupted beings: a light warden born of titania born of a faerie born of a child, a lightwarden and an Ascian. The Sorrow of Werlyt trials technically transform themselves into primals, so that half of the fights are against a machine and half of them are against a primal. Elidibus is a primal, to be fair, but based heavily on the Ascian Elidibus and using Elidibus' aether.

In Endwalker, only two of the trials were primals and I don't need to say which ones. Three if you include the Hildibrand trial. The trials we fought were mostly soul-corrupted people from the Thirteenth, who are quite a mess considering they've combined with numerous souls and feasted on the aether of a dragon. And of course there is Endsinger, which technically isn't a primal since it's not actually sucking up aether endlessly or trying to recruit others to its cause, which is what distinguishes primals from the creations of the Ascians. Far from trying to recruit others, it's simply trying to destroy others, due to an unforeseen error in its design.

In Dawntrail, we fight Validarmanda who is similar to the Four Lords, Zoraal Ja that used the power of numerous souls to corrupt their own aether, and whatever Sphene and Zalenia are.

Really it's been replaced with just robots (Sorrow of Werlyt), vidraal/kami that exceeded their usual lifespan and soul corruption (light wardens, archfiends, gorging on souls with a regulator including beast souls). And they probably haven't completely abandoned the possibility of summoning, given how we had an example of it right before Dawntrail with Asura. So we have enough precedent to know what they are doing going forward.

[Gortys]

I like trials and I'm not sure why they have to go away just because primals will? They had trials before that didn't involve primals. I don't think they need to go away, but there are no rewards for doing it outside of extreme versions I think? People can say savage is better and it's not just a room, but they are also just a room. People judge it more harshly based on loot because that's how players are. They use the loot to decide the value so lets go with that if you want to talk about changes to trials.

I'm actually okay with less trials if only because there are some old trials I really dislike to the point I can't remember the mechanics. I do feel the first trial in DT felt a bit forced in regards to the story. I think there were some solo duties that would make better trials in this game or even an extreme. I'm not saying a solo extreme either, I'm saying that maybe some solo duties should be made into extremes at end game because they were fun and could be good group content.

... another concept that would interest me is giving the player more agency in how they go about the msq. One choice may lead players through a dungeon, and the other perhaps a trial. This may lead to longer queue times for both but, it would at least give incentive to re-experience the msq to open both encounters, or just open both after fully completing that patcg/expac.

MMO's will never give players agency if it involves locking people out of current group content needed to complete the main story. People would quit the game and rightfully so. The player base would eventually reach a consensus of which choice is "better" and the word would get out to not choose the non-optimal choice. The queue would eventually be much longer as less and less players choose the "non-optimal" content or just quit the game. Nobody is going to wait 3-4 months for a content patch to complete the MSQ. Then, the posts in the forums would start about why they decided to make this dumb move and give players agency.

WoW has put "meaningful choices" into their content, but none of it affected the time to complete the expansion main story (and they weren't that "meaningful" to the story in the end either).

[Daralii]

we just haven't gotten the optional trials yet

What makes you think optional trials are coming back when Zelenia was MSQ? Endwalker had one at the very end and that was it.

[Striker44]

As much as I loved the concept, SE has been very open about Primals being a thing of the past. But Primals filled a narrative niche for Trials and were the primary way of showcasing Final Fantasy's iconic summons and monsters.

What do you think will fill their absence? Dawntrail was uncommitted to the concept, only having 4 Trials in base so who knows how it will look in the future.

What do you theorize? What do you hope for? Or would you rather Trials just go the way of the dodo?

Just because we don't have "primals" anymore hasn't prevented them from getting some of those "iconic" summons and monsters in. DT started with Tritoch/Valigarmanda, EW had Anima, etc..

[DiaDeem]

We could replace Primals with real life dinosaurs, like so:

[0blivion]

I don't care if they're primals or not, I care if they have narrative value. Valigarmanda didn't. Some of the primals in ARR/HW/Stormblood were narratively worthless.ShB did it right, so did EW until post-patches, which just kinda sucked. Werlyt is YMMV but I kinda hated it lol. Four Lords was decently written despite the premise. Warring Triad is a bit whatever but Unukalhai is good. What else... Memoria Misera was okay but super low effort because it didn't even get its own boss music lmfao. Zelenia is... a choice they sure made. Would've been good with setup. There was no setup.
So yeah, go back to 5.0/6.0 style trials. Please.