Oli!

...Hot button topic incoming, but after reading all of this stuff, does anyone else think this new quest chain sounds unfun and awful?

Knights, and in particular Dragoons, seem to be taken from all walks of life; Ishgardian officials look for lots of angry children from the Brume with nothing to lose to turn into Dragoons. As for class structure, Hyur only seem to reach the Merchant Class, from what we can see. It's possible as a hyur to be very wealthy, but if you have any political power, you're an Elezen.

*The reason I added this is that Raya-O apparently unlocks my ability to wield Succor before ever handing me the soulcrystal in the next text box. This is just what I was getting at, so I'm glad that there's a proper quote for it now, thank you. If anything, judging by the way that she speaks of it after unlocking your power, and the similar way that she speaks of WHM's garments, the Soulstone and related materials are likely just a way to streamline the process / make channeling Succor easier. But since she's granting you the ability beforehand, it's more likely that the Soulstone has less to do with it than assumed. Also is it really necessary to go into the proving of statements instead of logic by arguing over the existence of toilets? I feel like we're taking whatever personal points we have to prove with each other too far.

It will be resuming soon, hopefully. I was caught up in some other things, which were compounded by some Real Life busyness.

My mistake, then.

I'm not Teadrinker so I'm not sure how he's trying to go at this, but just from reading, there are two ways that this can be thought of / handled, in my mind. The first is this: Yes, this is all true. We cannot assume that people use the bathroom / have sex / live on a planet and not in fact on a set of interconnected planes that result in total darkness when exited. However, this fact still has no bearing on what is true and not true within the setting, and therefore only highlights a person's preferred interpretation of what is actually so. This, in fact, makes what is right and what is wrong even more binary. The second is this: There is a difference between creation and representation. The World as it is made by Square Enix is intended to be a representation of our own, with additional, created elements that do not represent anything, and are therefore fictional. Debate of "Lore," therefore, is focused entirely within the created elements. Representational elements, such as whether or not that thing on your screen is Dirt on the Ground or a Texture placed on a Polygon Mesh, are not included in lore debates.

There is no disservice to answering "No" to their stated question, because the fact of the matter is, there is nothing within the game that is not conjecture on our part that points to the answer being a "Yes." It is not a "warning," it is an answer to a yes or no question. It's great that you're for the building of possibility and such. But, as I have stated, that is not what the OP has asked for. If the OP came in and said something along the lines of, "I don't care what the lore says; give me avenues for creating a White Mage," then that sort of mentality would have a place in an answer offered to them. However, the OP asked, "does the lore we have say this is possible?" Which is an entirely different question, with an entirely different answer. Regarding the idea of an echo chamber, we have to realize that such a thing goes in both directions. Believe it or not, there are people out there who prefer to stick to the lore rather than go with whatever possibilities they like not because they are "elitists" or bullied into doing it or some such, but because they in fact find that a ruleset makes their roleplay more enjoyable. If this is the case, then if we truly care about neutrality, and upholding people's decisions to play in whatever ways that they want, then we shouldn't be forcing "freedom" on them if that's not what they care for. It's a two-way street; just as forcing lore onto people can be seen as wrong, forcing lore away from people can be seen as equally unfavorable. We must therefore act within the system that those asking have put forth, which, in this case, is stated lore.

To my knowledge, no one was "cherry-picking," and no one failed to acknowledge the presence of said method in their argument; I even did so in one of my posts. However, our lack of information on it, compounded with its lack of presence within the game at this time, mean that very little can be done with it in this regard. Personal viewpoints on how people have handled being wrong in the past, additionally, have no bearing on the actual argument of living and operating within present lore. The OP asked their question specifically within what we definitively know, by their own choosing. As a result, we can only give an answer within what we definitively know. Doing otherwise would be a disservice to them and their question.

Like everyone who kept saying you cannot RP DRGs over and over, even after the Heavensward trailer came out show many of them, in AF, with Gae Bolgs? Or that people often gloss over the fact that we have been told by the main lore dev/guru, Koji Fox that there is another way to get at White Magic that is nefarious? Or any other bit of Jobby Job in Heavensward that has started becoming openly trained in places? (Leaving that one vague for now because spoilers.) One can break lore just as easily by denying things that are out there in favor of their accepted/preferred world view. Saying one type of player is doing that, while another type is not is a silly statement. Particularly when we exist in a state where we do not know everything and can made out to be wrong down the line. Yar. This tangent is mostly off topic anyway, but it's worth noting that there's a difference between being right in retrospect, and actively ignoring current rules or evidence. The lore changes, and what's wrong today can be right tomorrow, and we all adapt in order to suit that. However, if someone, such as the OP, asks a question within the current framework of the lore, that question must be asked within that framework, regardless of the possibility of future change.

Some things are very specific. Astrology (the magic, not the practice), for example, was created by Sharlayan, an incredibly stingy magical civilization that doesn't like to share, so you likely wouldn't run into people using it on the roadside in places that aren't Eorzea. Other things, such as the specific pugilist style of Eorzea, and Conjury as it is known within the setting today, seem to be Eorzea-specific things; that is not to say, however, that you cannot use a healing art or fighting style pioneered by your own people. However, it is worth noting that, at least on the Magic side of things, Eorzea, supposedly, has a much higher concentration of Aether than anywhere else in Hydaelyn (if I rememeber correctly). So, it's possible that this environment is directly responsible for certain forms of magic, though I can't say for sure. Either way, it's easy enough to say that you can do various arts that look like what would have been used in Eorzea even if they aren't. If you want to know more about a specific class or job, however, tell us, and we'll help.

When following given and stated Lore, without theory-crafting, alternative interpretations, bending, assumptions, and use of grey-areas, the answer to this is Yes.

This sounds like it'll be super cool. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with for people!

Perhaps there's lore somewhere that refutes this view, but I find myself doubting the "find a soulstone" angle to begin with. From what we know (and / or guess) about Soulstones, they are basically contained knowledge and memories, not actual aptitude for something. If they contained the actual ability to do a job, then giving a handicapped man a MNK soulstone would give him the ability to do kung-fu and backflips, and giving the Gem of Shattoto to the aetherless Thaumaturge brother would make him the world's most powerful wizard. With the boxes and boxes of PLD soulstones that Ul'dah apparently has, they could hand a stone out to every man, woman, and child, and have the most powerful military on the continent. Additionally, before you're given any of these Soulstones in the first place, you're already accomplished in the foundations of what makes those jobs possible, to the point of maybe even being the best at it in certain cases. Finding a WHM soulstone seems like it might give you the knowledge to control Succor, but I highly doubt that it would give you the succor itself, considering we apparently have evidence that suggests that Succor was given, and not created. If this is indeed the case, then it wouldn't be possible to gain control of Succor simply by gaining a Soulstone, you would still have to go to the source. If I had to guess, the "nefarious second way" that someone quoted one of the devs as saying would be something along the lines of "finding a Padjal or Elemental and kicking the Succor out of them," since that still involves getting Succor from the source material in some way.

I see SE greatly enjoys their new free camera feature.

no

Since the jury is obviously still out on lore compliancy, I think you might have an easier time if you look at your dilemma from a character-construction standpoint, OP. Start with Kismet's question while taking into account the other character-development based pointers from people on the first page, and see how far you get.

8OdazEVnFDM Apparently no one's heard of this album.

It'll probably be fine. I doubt anyone will raise a big fuss over it. The lore compliancy of it (at this time) may vary depending on whether you're going with Full-On Historical Accuracy or Doman Guy With Sword, but I doubt anyone will really care much. If people give him too much shit about it, just tell him to play his character up as one of these guys instead. That way if anyone complains you can safely tell them to Get Out.

Thaumaturgy as a form of magic requires very special materials in its focus, specifically bone / metal topped with a gemstone. Without this, it'll either not work, or you'll hurt yourself. Apparently WHM during 1.0 had control over Ice, but considering there are some people who believe the 1.0 lore was retconned, and the fact that there is much debate over whether one can be a WHM at all, I'm not going to touch that in my post. TL;DR, Umbral Ice requires a focus made out of THM materials, as far as we can tell (unless you eat a crystal and become Shiva I guess).

Turn based is boring. Gimme that button mashing goodness.

It makes sense, and I would say he's right regarding exploration, but there is so little to do in many of those zones afterwards that unlocking flying ultimately just seems like a waste of time; if there were some motherload of additional content hiding up somewhere in a flying-only zone then it wouldn't be a problrm. But there isn't. So now regardless of intention, the concept of Flying in this game just feels like an afterthought. By the time I had finished all my flying quests and gotten all my nodes, I was over leveled for the area and looking for new things to do. Even if he might have had a reason, it just wasn't done well at all, especially with the story content gates placed on most of them. If they just let you do all the quests and exploration as soon as you entered the zone, it might be a little better, but for a lot of people, as soon as the story quests take them out, they're not coming back.

I've been toying with the idea of putting together an Air Race event for a bit now. The big thing that will decide whether or not this will actually work is whether or not I get a set of referees. They will be expected to: -- Hover next to a race checkpoint -- Keep tabs on who goes through it -- That's it. If the event goes well and I end up doing more of these, it's likely referees will have a hand in creating the circuit in future events. Maybe even this one, if things have to be switched around a bit. If this is something that interests you, let me know.

Even as a not-new person this baffles me to high extremes. I basically have to do everything that there is worth doing in the zone and explore it completely before I can use something confined specifically to that zone, which I will never visit again because that zone is now basically done. By the time you unlock flying, it's practically useless. What the hell, SquareEnix.

At this point I couldn't care less if Satan was developing this game with his personal studio. I need Psychonauts 2.