(09-25-2013, 06:41 PM)Naunet Wrote:

(09-25-2013, 06:33 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: The NPC in question is a minor noble, so he should have had access to good healthcare, especially considering the quests covering escorting "Phurgions" (sp?) between strongholds.

A "minor noble" can mean a lot less than one may think. Many nobles lived just over the edge of poverty, their holding of land basically being the only thing securing their "status", and often you had minor nobles essentially demoting themselves to peasants when they realized they could not keep up with the financial demands of nobility.

Feudalism, nobility, and the noble life are not nearly as shiny as a lot of people often assume, and there is generally definite, severe sub-stratification within nobility that leaves some nobles with a lot and many with just barely enough.

[edit] Incidentally, we have not run into any NPCs from Ishgard who isn't nobility - again, bearing in mind the fact that nobility itself can have many different levels. I might be wrong, but if I'm recalling correctly (and nobility and feudalism are incredibly complex topics), simply becoming a knight tends to automatically grant you "noble" status - but you never actually get a lot of the perks that comes with being A Noble. You just get the name. So a lot of these "minor" nobles, soldiers, might very well be extremely "low class" in this context.

(09-25-2013, 07:06 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: But they're all sworn, and their liegelords, as part and parcel of their oath, should be taking care of them.

(09-25-2013, 07:06 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: I just really don't see any indication that most or all of Eorzea is at the industrial age.  There's no sign of it.  Yeah, there are mining operations and a few oil derricks out in Thalnalan, but neither of those are "industrialized."  Where are the factories?  Where are the refineries?  Seriously.

(09-25-2013, 07:18 PM)Naunet Wrote:

(09-25-2013, 07:06 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: But they're all sworn, and their liegelords, as part and parcel of their oath, should be taking care of them.

Should and do are completely different things. There are a lot of things our current "rulers" should be doing for those they "rule" but aren't as well. This is the same society that is obsessed with rooting out and eliminating heretics and tosses innocent people to their deaths to... prove their innocence. I highly doubt those living potentially comfier lives do a whole awful lot to help out those lesser nobles and might even see them as a threat, depending on how Ishgardian social structures work. Which, we don't know how they work so it's impossible to say any which way.

There are refineries for those natural resources Eorzeans harvest - it comes part and parcel with the mines and the oil fields and whatever else. Ceruleum is one resource in particular that gets a lot of attention in lore.

And look, it's not like I'm saying Eorzeans live nice and shiny lives. In fact, I think I've been saying quite the opposite. However, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say late 20s/early 30s qualifies as old when we've seen quite a few clearly aged individuals in-game (particularly individuals who tend not to be involved in the obviously deadly activities of adventuring or the military, such as caretakers or cooks or other such things).

(09-25-2013, 05:55 PM)Salty Lake Wrote:

(09-24-2013, 09:29 PM)Naunet Wrote:

(09-24-2013, 07:45 PM)Salty Lake Wrote: Here are two screencaps I took today that support my hypothesis that there are high-mortality rates for commoners (very light spoilers):

Aside from the death during childbirth and the understandable infant mortality rates (considering it doesn't look like Eorzea has things like NICU, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong during pregnancy), honestly I think the greatest danger comes from being a mercenary or part of the military (or being an adventurer!). The thing with the 27 laborers killed by the coeurl seems like a fairly "freak accident", so to speak - you don't get powerful beasts like that every day. Keep in mind also that things might be more dangerous now than they were prior to the Calamity. We've got all that aether disrupting things and the elementals are peeved and things are just generally going very, very wrong in the world. This makes everything far riskier than it may have been 6 years ago, and it's possible that a lot of the problems we see NPCs running into while questing would not have been nearly as common back then.

Alrighty!  Show me some screencaps suggesting that folks have long, healthy lives and I'll concede.  I personally think freak monster attacks are the new normal, as there are plenty of Fates right outside of the cities.  For the mean time, I'll assume life is hard and short for many people, based on the NPC whose wife died giving birth and daughter/grandchildren died of illness.

Re: the feudalism.  I made it to Central Coerthas and there are lords and people serving them.  That's where I encountered the NPC whose dialogue I screencapped.  Not feudalism?

(09-29-2013, 02:06 PM)LandStander Wrote: I agree with you about the monster attacks being a bit more "normal" It was revealed in 1.0 that as Dalamud grew closer and closer to the ground it drove the animals more wild which made them more dangerous. You can even see in FATEs; I think the one in Camp Overlook has a bunch of sandworms who have "evolved" and developed a hive mind, giving them the ability to think as a unit and storm the camp at once. There is another one (and many more) out in LL that suggest that the Chupacabra (wolf NM) has been terrorizing locals and eating them. Or right outside of Ul'dah there is the toad NM that captures it's victims and drowns them, not for food, but just because it is freaking insane lol. Or the demon lady who finds women and rips their faces off!

Anyway, what I think I am trying to get at is that it would suck a lot to live anywhere outside of the city walls. Probably which is why there are not really any homes out there (every one I have come across has been dilapidated and abandoned) and mostly just military encampments or strongholds. Before the descent of Dalamud things did seem to be relatively more calm though.