(12-30-2014, 01:15 AM)FreelanceWizard Wrote: In the general sense, I don't really mind what people ride so long as they have a narrative justification for it. There's lots of stories for how one could acquire a trained coeurl, run into a baby behemoth, overfeed a chocobo, etc. Rarity doesn't bother me because we're already playing rare beings (successful adventurers, even excluding the rarity of the Echo). In much the same way that the popularity of miqo'te (by lore, rare) isn't thrown because player characters make up a tiny percentage of the Eorzean population, "special" mounts retain their rarity because their riders are a tiny percentage, too.
Though, honestly, that means strange mounts should probably get even more raised eyebrows than they do.However, we also have to remember, IMO, that Eorzea is weird, wild, and magical place, where gods are summoned, intelligent machines wield laser cannons, ancient clones guide people into battles with 30 foot tall genetically engineered beings from thousands of years ago, and portals open up between dimensions. Weird is the norm in many ways, I think.
This.
I fully understand RPing your character arching a brow at someone riding something other than a chocobo around. Tiergan would be arching a brow too and wondering where the heck they got [x] beastie. All of my characters ride chocobos - seeing someone cruise by on a bomb chariot or a horse or a bear would make them boggle like nobody's business.
That said, I personally find it a little disheartening that something like someone riding a horse (not Odin's horse, but just a regular warhorse) or a drake, or a coeurl, a lion, or magitek armor is something that people would consider immersion breaking considering what regularly goes on in the world of the FFXIV universe.
To me, if everyone is riding standard yellow chocobos IC - it's boring. The variety and differences are what make RP fun. As long as people spin it in a way that doesn't break the lore, and give things some thought to really craft a great story - I feel it just spices things up and keeps things interesting.
