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Kellach Woods · **06-09-2016, 07:31 AM**

(06-09-2016, 01:34 AM)Caspar Wrote:
(06-09-2016, 12:26 AM)Kellach Woods Wrote: I did not expect to see Ferdiad again after that roflstomping we gave him.
They clearly foreshadowed his return with the cackling cutscene after you finish Amdapoor Keep HM, but I didn't think he'd be relevant in a storyline of any sort, just another last boss in a dungeon.

That's the thing with the void, it has an annoying tendency to not permanently die (unless you use the Nullstone correctly).

(06-09-2016, 06:13 AM)Aya Wrote: They write their story, obviously, to be a video game story rather than to provide a setting for original stories, and if I really want to I should be able to write something similar to what I was planning on. Â But given that I was looking to make a major summer writing project of it I'm really rather disappointed at the moment. I should probably be happy there being absolutely nothing at all keeping Aya from returning to the city, but its about as anti-climactic as it comes. Â That isn't the way I'd wanted to go about it.

If one path is blocked, there's always another. If SE isn't providing you with the backstory necessary for your goals, you can make it more into a personal one.

To be less douchey-cryptic, if there's nothing within the 3.3 story preventing Aya from returning to Ishgard, could there be something else that's unmentioned?

Saravahn · **06-09-2016, 07:48 AM**

(06-08-2016, 09:21 AM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: We all saw that face the PLD of Darkness made. He wants those balls dragon eyes.

Now that WoL has the Echo and Hydaelyn's Blessing and the Crystals of Light and a fucking dragon eye, it only seems fair that the Warrior of Darkness go pick up what they didn't destroy. Nidhogg might be dead, but his eyes were poorly disposed of. The moment they were tossed off the bridge, I went "well, these are going to come back later because someone's just going to go pick them up...."

Emphasis mine.Â

Unless I missed something in the cinematic/text... the WoL no longer has the eye. When he's flying next to Hraesvelgr in the goofy cutscene at the end... I could've sworn I spied his eye returned.

Again, perhaps I saw wrong or something... or just missed something in the text.

Either way, the WoL is a blizzard of snowflakes that will surely have some way to defend himself from the evil plans of the WoD.

Edit: Just went and rewatched the cutscene in mind (Litany of Peace #4). He has his left eye once more.

Sylastair · **06-09-2016, 08:53 AM**

After finishing 3.3 I had to do the Dragoon related questline in Churning Mists to start doing my moogle dailies, and in those I saw something I had thought before but hadn't really seen. Dragoons are changing. In a large chunk of the Churning Mist quest line they are more skilled explorers, taking aether readings, noting new sections of land, and setting up communications with the moogles. They still are fighting monsters that interfere, but it seems to me what a Dragoon is has become more like Star Trek, exploring the final frontier and serving as warrior diplomats/scientists/cartographers. All of this was from levelling quests in 3.0, and seeing where 3.3 has lead, I think the next generation of Dragoons are going to be very very different. The Dragoons who have lived and fought in the war will become relics of a different time, Estinien showing us that in his example, and the empty room with his broken helm.Â

Personally, I think this is pretty awesome. Sure there will be wiggle room for the 'scattered' forces, but I think Dragoons having to address this large change is even cooler.

Aya · **06-09-2016, 09:23 AM**

(06-09-2016, 07:31 AM)Kellach Woods Wrote: If one path is blocked, there's always another. If SE isn't providing you with the backstory necessary for your goals, you can make it more into a personal one.

To be less douchey-cryptic, if there's nothing within the 3.3 story preventing Aya from returning to Ishgard, could there be something else that's unmentioned?

It's not SE's fault, though I really do not care for what they have done to Ishgard in HW. It's not impossible to still pursue a story similar to the one I have mapped out, but all of my ideas for it are presently spoiled and that has me bummed. It also seemed apropos to the question posed by the OP, so I posted about it. I can rewrite my proposed storyline entirely within the lower secular class, but there goes the impact of setting, class, and faith in the story. Hooray?

Just 'bleh'. All of the punch and substance of the Ishgardian setting has been sucked out of it and replaced with Star Trek-esque bubblegum (thanks for the inspiration of how to put it Flynn!). What had been my favorite and, I thought, most interesting of the city states is now the least.

S'imba · **06-09-2016, 10:26 AM**

I seriously doubt Ishgard is going to be a happy joyful place. With the separation of church and state a lot of people are going to be losing a lot of power. They probably won't be as open about how they were functioning last patch or the one before, where they were kidnapping and all that stuff. Probably slowly and carefully undermine the new Republic.Â

The other thing is that these people who have been influenced for longer than a a thousand years are still going to be influenced by those teachings. They may know there's a lot of lies but it's doubtful they're going to just give up their beliefs entirely.Â

You've got this new government with two ruling bodies, the lowborn aren't going to just start liking the highborn.now that they got more power they're going to use that against them.Â

Those are just my personal opinion on the matter, though se will probably just go with happy land.

Sylastair · **06-09-2016, 10:44 AM**

(06-09-2016, 10:26 AM)S Wrote: I seriously doubt Ishgard is going to be a happy joyful place. With the separation of church and state a lot of people are going to be losing a lot of power. They probably won't be as open about how they were functioning last patch or the one before, where they were kidnapping and all that stuff. Probably slowly and carefully undermine the new Republic.Â

The other thing is that these people who have been influenced for longer than a a thousand years are still going to be influenced by those teachings. They may know there's a lot of lies but it's doubtful they're going to just give up their beliefs entirely.Â

You've got this new government with two ruling bodies, the lowborn aren't going to just start liking the highborn.now that they got more power they're going to use that against them.Â

Those are just my personal opinion on the matter, though se will probably just go with happy land.

I don't think we will see super happy hand holding land, but I do think the foundation has been set for the next generation or the one after to be. Much of what was done to me implies that, the old ways and people of Ishgard are on the way out (from how SE will continue to depict things), it won't be perfect but they are going that way. Maybe it is thinking far too into it, but Dragoons are kind of representation of Ishgard, and the journey of Estinien parallels the city itself. He's still got his issues and stuff to figure out, (as does the city) but things systemically are changed permanently. Dragoons roles are different, the churches role is different, the high born and low born are different. There will be hiccups, but the path SE sees is very much there.

Warren Castille · **06-09-2016, 10:49 AM**

I'm not so sure we'll be dealing with Ishgard's new issues going forward, at least not primarily. Consider that after 2.55 we have not gotten a single accurate glimpse of Ul'dah's condition: We get some closure involving the Sultana and that plot, but the city-state itself? Nothing outside of some commentary. It's been more than a real life year since then (and in two weeks, a full year since HW resolved it) and we still don't know what is happening there.

Ishgard's direction in the future is probably going to end up being a grey area, and with as many interpretations as there are in play right now...? I don't envy anyone using it as a central tenet of their stories.

Kilieit · **06-09-2016, 10:51 AM**

Here are some factsheets about the UK government, to those interested: [link]

I don't know if Ishgard's houses will be the same as ours. Though if they are, that means we have some splendid real life examples to base things off in terms of how everything can and probably will go horribly wrong.

:3

***Nero*** · **06-09-2016, 11:03 AM**

I'm apprehensive at best.

I found the finale to be headache-inducingly saccharine. There's no real weight or tension to Ishgard as a setting anymore, at least not any weight or tension that hasn't been done in the same setting before.

The part that interested me the most about Ishgard were, well, the things that made it Ishgard. Specifically its status as a despotic militant theocracy waging a genocidal holy war against a superior force amidst a tumultuous climate of political ambition, religious zealotry, and class warfare. There was something fascinating about the dichotomous nature of Ishgard's politics and culture, being ostensibly built around order and a single-minded goal yet also being unstable without the unifying threat of the dragons and built on the foundations of a lie (or at least, a historical misrepresentation). The terrifyingly absolute power of the Church and the Inquisition lead to a pervading sense of tension as well.

It was a unique location with a unique context, as far as the FFXIV setting goes. I'm afraid that post-3.3 Ishgard will be mundane and watered-down.

The despotic theocracy bit has been effectively neutered by the reformation of the government into a secular bicameral republic that, according to the ending, faced little to no resistance in its implementation.

In the context of the narrative and the circumstances, the peace with Dravania was achieved practically effortlessly--basically, the Warrior of Light went around and talked to people and did all of the actually significant fighting--and said peace has made it so that any mention of Ishgard's militancy--another interesting cultural aspect that only Garlemald really shares--would be made on a small scale at best. I mean, Nidhogg's brood is still out there, sure, but the narrative is in a corner as far as they're concerned. If Nidhogg's brood is still a legitimate threat, then it cheapens Nidhogg's death, and if the brood is viewed as little more than an annoying remnant than it still drastically reduces the militant aspect of Ishgard's culture.

Now that's not to say that something has to be grimdark doom-and-gloom in order to be interesting, and that's not necessarily to say that post-3.3 Ishgard will be sunshine and flowers (although it probably will be), but conflict is the soul of drama and basically, I found that the larger-scale conflicts that were possible by pre-3.3 Ishgard were more interesting than any conflicts that will be possible in post-3.3 Ishgard.

Class warfare? True, with a bicameral republic the conflict between highborn and commoners is not only still present but particularly more pronounced with the House of Lords and House of Commons, but the class warfare concept is represented--or was represented, depending on your opinion of 2.55--much more effectively by Ul'dah. Replace "plutocrats" with "aristocrats" and replace "wealth" with "bloodlines" and you have the exact same conflict in a context that is nearly identical with a little bit of racism for spice.

You don't really have any large-scale conflicts with dragons anymore unless they got the Nidhogg's brood thing as mentioned above, which carries with it its own problems narratively speaking. I mean, what's the point of killing the leader so dramatically if you have to end up hunting down every member of his horde anyway?

About the only thing Ishgard retains that remains unique of it Church attempting to retain political relevance after what seemed to be a unanimous movement towards secularism, for some reason.

I'm disappointed.

Parvacake · **06-09-2016, 11:06 AM**

(06-09-2016, 10:44 AM)Flynt Knoltros Wrote:
(06-09-2016, 10:26 AM)S Wrote: I seriously doubt Ishgard is going to be a happy joyful place. With the separation of church and state a lot of people are going to be losing a lot of power. They probably won't be as open about how they were functioning last patch or the one before, where they were kidnapping and all that stuff. Probably slowly and carefully undermine the new Republic.Â

The other thing is that these people who have been influenced for longer than a a thousand years are still going to be influenced by those teachings. They may know there's a lot of lies but it's doubtful they're going to just give up their beliefs entirely.Â

You've got this new government with two ruling bodies, the lowborn aren't going to just start liking the highborn.now that they got more power they're going to use that against them.Â

Those are just my personal opinion on the matter, though se will probably just go with happy land.
I don't think we will see super happy hand holding land, but I do think the foundation has been set for the next generation or the one after to be. Much of what was done to me implies that, the old ways and people of Ishgard are on the way out (from how SE will continue to depict things), it won't be perfect but they are going that way. Maybe it is thinking far too into it, but Dragoons are kind of representation of Ishgard, and the journey of Estinien parallels the city itself. He's still got his issues and stuff to figure out, (as does the city) but things systemically are changed permanently. Dragoons roles are different, the churches role is different, the high born and low born are different. There will be hiccups, but the path SE sees is very much there.

Pretty much this ^^^^^^

I've heard a lot of people say they're disappointed at how Ishgard and the game turned out for this patch. At the same time...I feel like most roleplayers aren't taking time to sit and actually comprehend the true gravity of what happened and the views that we do not see.

1000 year war just ended. That's huge. That's over ten generations worth of fighting and suffering and heartache and dragons and mortals alike being slaughtered. SE wrapped it up pretty nicely because as a WoL you're sort of at the top caste with a lot of help and bigger things to worry about but shiiiiiiiitttttttttt. People like Estinien who have lost everyone and everything is the norm.

Nobles aren't going to stop being petty and manipulative. The lower class will not stop being destitute. While the foundations of change have been laid down and we're led to believe that the majority crave this peace...at the same time? There's likely dozens of smaller problems and bellyaching that are just as significant for stories and roleplay. Hell, my main's daughters are descended from Ishgard on their father's side. I had a big ol' story for them too but when the MSQ pointed in this direction? I'll just keep going because their dear old great uncle is going to be a dick regardless of the current peace.

SE incorporates a lot of selective perspective in their story. The MSQ is just one angle that we get to see of a much larger story. It's centric on the WoL and the allies they have along the way. While we glean lore and insight from that selective perspective, it's still just a selective perspective on the story. This is an entire world we're dealing with and SE can only cover so much at a time. As roleplayers, we fill in the rest of the world with living, breathing stories of our own.

As long as you're not wanting to suddenly fight a primal or become king of Ishgard? I say go for whatever stories you have. Tweak here and there to make it a bit more believable but otherwise just go for it.

S'imba · **06-09-2016, 05:48 PM**

As much as I'd like to see what's going on back in Ul'dah and those other places, I don't think we're going to get an entire patch dedicated to then. Maybe at most we'll get a quest or two focusing on them but I think they'll keep the focus on Ishgard until the next expansion.Â

We may get quests that start leading into the next expansion. Similar to how we started getting highly involved in Ishgard back in 2.0. Then like we did to the Grand companies of Eorzea we'll ditch Ishgard and represent a new Providence.Â

My guess of what's going to happen story wise will be more focus on the Garleans and the ascians. Now with Nidhogg dead it gives the scions time to focus on fighting them again. Probably start trying to find a way to return strength to Hydaelyn. Warrior of Darkness will probably cause chaos, maybe use the eyes to regroup the horde.Â

Oh and probably do more stuff with dragons.

McBeefâ„¢ · **06-09-2016, 05:51 PM**

My prediction is a new Ishgardian based GC.

Caspar · **06-09-2016, 06:15 PM**

It would be interesting if the country descended into an unstable collection of feudalistic lords now that there is no reason not to move into open lands near the dragons, and due to a lack of a strong unifying foe. However, I don't think this will happen. I think Ul'dah would benefit narratively from doing this particular story development better than Ishgard, myself. What will happen now if Nanamo goes through with abolishing monatchy? I think it will lose its punch. What are they going to do, assassination again?

McBeefâ„¢ · **06-09-2016, 06:17 PM**

(06-09-2016, 06:15 PM)Caspar Wrote: It would be interesting if the country descended into an unstable collection of feudalistic lords now that there is no reason not to move into open lands near the dragons, and due to a lack of a strong unifying foe. However, I don't think this will happen. I think Ul'dah would benefit narratively from doing this particular story development better than Ishgard, myself. What will happen now if Nanamo goes through with abolishing monatchy? I think it will lose its punch. What are they going to do, assassination again?

Buy votes, same as the US.

Aya · **06-09-2016, 08:30 PM**

For me, it's not strictly that it's uninteresting, but that it's simply no longer interesting in the way that Ishgard is. I think comparisons to Uldah, with a snowy, early steam sort of vibe is not far off the mark. It's almost like they decided they wanted something like that in the game and then decided to turn Ishgard into that, rather than actually working from the setting and story they had crafted originally.

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Ishgard, post 3.3 (OBVIOUSLY SPOILERS FOR MSQ)

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes