(02-04-2015, 03:12 PM)Warren Castille Wrote:Alright, that makes sense. To be clear, I recognize there is, of course, at least some level of story and gameplay separation and the rule of cool is frequently in effect for anything to do with guns (as even movies will fudge ammunition counts just for the sake of keeping the action flowing).(02-04-2015, 03:04 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote: rebuttal
I should clarify where I'm coming from re: fighters dodging bullets:
I come from a background playing D&D where debates over exponential wizard power and linear fighter power were a constant. Some of the justification for the sheer disparity between the two classes at higher levels was along the same lines: "it's not realistic for a fighter to keep up with magi!" and other such things. The problem with this is that the fighter ends up becoming largely irrelevant once high enough levels are reached. Why even bring the fighter along once the mage can just put up a barrier, ignore everything heading their way, and blow up the opposition in a single round?
In many ways, FFXIV faces the same problem. BLMs are absurdly powerful. Hell, even garden-variety thaumaturges (remember, swiftcast comes at level 26) could wipe the floor with people who would be astonishingly badass IRL. You're NOT getting up after taking a blast of red-hot fire to the face, sorry. That's not even getting into some of the ridiculously oversized and overpowered things they face on a regular basis.
So how do you solve this problem? Well, you have to give the fighters an out of some kind. Either they're absurdly tough, have some kind of magic enhancement, or you give them straight-up superpowers to keep up with the equally supernatural wizards and sorcerers and stuff. You can't keep them on a 'realistic' baseline because the game world itself is not playing on a realistic baseline. Would you, given you had training and the best equipment money could buy, be willing to face down something like a morbol or a giant boar with your extraordinary-but-still-reasonable human prowess?
Sure, a lot of roleplayers AREN'T going to RP as high-level characters. They may be using the 1.0 intro as a reference for everyone's baseline abilities. And that's fine. But some of us RP higher-level characters, and straight-up stating that "that can't be done!" is extremely limiting in a dangerous way (literally, because it would mean our characters are so vulnerable as to be offed by a single stray bullet). And I can't accept that. I won't accept that. Whether Yda is supposed to be extraordinary or not, whether or not everyone in the 2.0 intro is supposed to be on a different level from the rest of the planet(???), it just doesn't feel right to me that realism is treated with so much reverence given just how much of the game largely ignores it.
I realize this is slightly off-topic, and I realize we're kind of retreading old ground here, but we have so many problems if we decide to treat "guns are lethal and cannot be dodged" as a hard and fast rule in Eorzea. If anything, as others stated, guns should be largely on the same level as magic in the universe, not something to be pushed entirely out of the picture because they're so overpowering. And indeed, yes, simply ruling that 'armor negates it' is equally boring and I'd rather we not go down that route as well. Even if dodging bullets is something limited to the most extraordinary, it should be an option given how the rest of the game world operates, especially since, quite frankly, it is the least boring option available. I mean it just looks so cool! Surely that gives it at least a few style points, eh? Ehhh?
And, you know, once 3.0 rolls around I don't want everyone to be treating T'rahnu as some kind of untouchable because she's walking around openly carrying a firearm. If someone wants to pick a fight with her I'm not going to say they can't do it because she shoots them and they die, you know?
