Eva

Weaver made the most sense for me since we're talking about class here. I think White Mage may have probably made more sense overall if we were also including jobs and not just classes, but I have a hard time identifying with the Conjurer storyline as it is by itself. Besides, Weaving has sort of underscored most everything Eva has done, even with the couple of other jobs she's involved herself with. And it was the one I started out with. And the first one I got to 50. And the first one I was really passionate about even before there were 'jobs' as we know them now.

Kind of answered all of the questions with reckless abandon in order to get all of the answers out, even the ones Eva probably wouldn't have addressed IC, particularly depending on who was doing the asking:

I did something like this back in 1.0... Eva's father (sans tattoo): Eva's mother (probably deceased): She has no siblings that she is aware of.

Wowowow, really awesome stuff Abai!!!!!!!!

Arguably, it might help marginally if you're healing someone outside of your own party where the targeting mechanics are a little more complicated (I find mouse clicking works best for this, personally). This is probably a less common occurrance anyway, but I thought it might be one worth mentioning. In almost every game I've played it's been as a healer as well. But you should definitely choose the race/type/height/whatever you like best rather than for any sort of advantage. :thumbsup:

Soooooo excited to see the new Coerthas. Love the new music too!

Awwww... I'm gonna miss Nikolai, but it's good to see you're back in the community. Welcome back!!

First, the line about the smaller pool of overall RPers on Gilgamesh was relevent to MrHeat's query. It wasn't like I was willfully targeting a Gilgamesh thread and taunting or anything like that - which is feeling to me what is being implied. I invite you to re-read posts #20, #21, and #22 on the thread itself to read over this within the scope of context as it applies. Moreover, there's no assumption here - at least not for my part. People have stated in no uncertain terms upon which server they'll be playing. Look at the polls. This is fact. The assumptions I see being made are by the OP in that people in support of Balmung are somehow berating those who've opted for Gilgamesh. I would be interested to see the specific examples that prompted this thread's creation, since it appears to be more than just mine. I'm fairly certain in each and every case there was no intent to "lord our superior population size" over the smaller community, as is being suggested. Frankly I find this a bit offensive. "Gift wrapped" to me implies that these sentiments aren't genuine. I enjoy RP. And I enjoy RPing with a variety of people. That even a small subset of these people will be unavailable to me is an unfortunate thing. I'm sorry if you assumed I was being insincere or using that as some sort of excuse. I wasn't. The problem here, as I see it, is not with the way thoughts and opinions and ideas are being broadcast but rather with how they are being received by those who are choosing to play on Gilgamesh. Until I see references to specific posts that clearly display the sort of disrespect and passive-aggressiveness that the OP mentions, I'm left to wonder at what the true purpose of this thread actually is. These are my thoughts on this matter and I see no reason to post anything further in this thread because I don't see any references to specific posts that display any of the perceived disrespect that the OP mentions. I see statements of fact used appropriately and a subset of the community finding convoluted reason to take offense to it. I do find it a little alarming that a thread like this has been made so soon after this agreed-upon division and I will continue to wonder if this really was the right thing for the RPC. I hope that I am wrong. Good luck on Gilgamesh.

If this thread's creation was prompted by this... Oh, the handbook is meant to be more of a guideline than any sort of rigid rule. You could make a post with your ideas/plans in the RP Discussion area to solicit feedback. With so many different RPers with so many different backgrounds, it is likely that there will be some folks or a group that will have similar ideals. Then again, it also looks like Gilgamesh will have a smaller pool of RPers overall, so I may be mistaken. But I would certainly take your ideas to the discussion board if you have any concerns about how they may be received. ...than let me assure you that I meant no ill-will towards Gilgamesh or those planning to RP there. I realize this thread was geared towards those on Gilgamesh, but the poster remarked on the RP Handbook which I helped author, and I felt compelled to reply. It was merely an observational statement and intended to help MrHeat and had nothing to do with my opinions on the separate server at all. I know my views on the matter have been stated in the past and are pretty clear and I am sorry I will not be able to RP with those who are adamant on choosing to play there instead of with the majority, but this was genuinely not intended as a passive-aggressive jab. If that's what you thought, than I'm sorry that I gave that impression. Part of choosing to be on a server that will inevitably have a smaller population of RPers is that this matter is going to come up from time to time throughout discussion, and it would be nice if it was not knee-jerked and distorted into being a passive-aggressive thing when that happens. I agree to some extent with Vanschiver's post. If there was a separate forum or subforum geared specifically for those planning to play on Gilgamesh, I would be happy to click the little "Mark as Read" pearl and never see any of that stuff. Perhaps this is something the RPC can help facilitate if everyone agrees it would be to everyone's advantage.

Oh, the handbook is meant to be more of a guideline than any sort of rigid rule. You could make a post with your ideas/plans in the RP Discussion area to solicit feedback. With so many different RPers with so many different backgrounds, it is likely that there will be some folks or a group that will have similar ideals. Then again, it also looks like Gilgamesh will have a smaller pool of RPers overall, so I may be mistaken. But I would certainly take your ideas to the discussion board if you have any concerns about how they may be received.

No, no, nothing to be sorry for!! I have some pretty convoluted theories about the Garlean war and some unlikely alliances and other political stuff. I just encountered an issue in some RP a couple years ago where a sort of theory was conjured up by someone about what aether is, and while there was nothing to really refute most of the points that were made, there wasn't much to support it either, and there was an expectation on one person's part that everyone acknowledge this. I think it would be like if someone started talking about white magic in terms of cells in the body and stuff. I wouldn't assume that the technology exists to be able to discern that sort of thing. And obviously we know in RL that maybe something like this could be how white magic actually works to repair hurts - but it assumes a knowledge that I don't think should be there. Also I like that not everything can be explained. And that some things truly are just... "magic".

I think in terms of the game's mechanics and the given name of the various attribute scores, I generally don't ever look too far into the meaning behind the words given. I don't think characters generally go around asking each other to quantify how strong or how pious they are. I can't think of any RP exchange where that would have any bearing on an attack either. Things - at least from my practical experience in the past - are much more reliant on what makes sense. In FFXI I recall that "Attack" power was a factor of the Strength attribute of the character combined with their aptitude with whatever weapon they were using, but if you think about it wholly and logically, more precise hits could potentially do more damage. Being able to tilt the blade of a weapon to attack a creatures neck would be far more damaging than a strike to its leg, for example. And this, to me, seems more a factor of manual dexterity than strength. As far as I'm concerned, 'Piety' could have been called anything else - Wisdom, Faith, Willpower, Self-Control, FactorX - and still have the same impact. I think when looking at it from a RP angle, we shouldn't be getting too hung up on these sort of metrics and how they are named. I don't like to get into philosophical debates about what mana or aether is specifically though, preferring to just regard it as something magical that can loosely be quantified. It probably doesn't hurt that my character isn't really scientifically-aligned or feel any desire to know how these sort of things work. It is something of a pet-peeve of mine when theorycrafting happens and others are expected to fall into a particular line of thinking as a result of that. If it's something that derives specifically from the lore and cannot be disputed, than that's great. But speculation often breeds dismay and contempt (moreso when others are expected to fall in line with it) and I'd prefer to avoid it where possible from an OOC standpoint. IC, if a scientifically-oriented character wants to speculate on things like this however I think that is fine and well. (Sorry for the mini-rant.)

Just wanted to add a little tidbit here since Ishgardian nobility was briefly touched upon earlier and has some bearing in Eva's own backstory. From this gamerescape page: "Among the noble houses of Ishgard's class structure, four are known as "high houses" that have considerably more power than the rest; among them are House Durendaire, House Fortemps, and House Dzemael, the latter of which holding the most influence."

This is primarily where I've derived Eva's use of magic from as well - however that's also because 'weaving' is something she can relate to. I've also felt emoting "casts a cure spell" is just rather bland. It may be that this is something that will just vary from one mage to the next and is highly subjective to the RPer and the character. Regardless, that is great literature! Another point of discussion I'll go ahead and introduce along this same vein is I've heard most mages learn through some sort of education process, whether it be formal instruction with other more experienced mages, reading from books, or what have you. I've known one other to RP this similarly to what Eva does as having a sort of natural born talent for it (in Eva's case white magic). This is akin to what a Wilder would have been described like in the Jordan books. Her block is that when she starts to think about what she's doing rather than just allowing it to happen, the efforts usually collapse. For her it's very much an empathy thing and more about "feel, don't think." I've seen nothing specific to either confirm or deny this is appropriate for the lore of the game or not.

I've been meaning to input my own thoughts here. It's been interesting reading about some others' creative processes and how certain things elements sort of materialized. Like a few others did in the time leading up to the release of 1.0, I decided to create my new character as the adult child of my character from FF11. A lot of the lore needed to be transitioned in such a way as to make sense. Details about many things were limited and we were left to our own devices for much of it. Much has since been illuminated for us and minor alterations here and there have been made to keep things plausible. Dyterium was an extremely skilled San d'Orian dragoon whose wife left him for another man after they had a baby girl together. I felt San d'Orian lore transitioned most smoothly to Ishgard - though we still know precious little about Ishgardian culture. I've taken a few (and only a few) liberties with regard to this, keeping most of the details veiled. Both moved out to Coerthas and lived a pastoral lifestyle shortly after Eva's mother left the scene. Eva has no memory of her mother nor Ishgard - which makes things simpler regarding the fog that is Ishgard lore. I should also point out that I take a very psychological and sociological approach to the structure and creation of this character and had input from a number of sources (including my own RL father - a licensed counselor) about what her development would have been like, how she would have grown up, etc. It's also hard to talk about what went into Eva's character without delving a bit into the events of her past and looking at the various chains of cause and effect. Eva's name also isn't actually Eva. It's Kes. For those familiar with the Star Trek franchise, this is derived directly from the Voyager series. The character's personality in many ways is also similar, though this worked out to be more of a happy coincidence than being rooted in her namesake. While we're on the subject, 'Ianeira' derives from greek mythology - a water nymph. Water in all forms has been an important element throughout Eva's story - swimming, rain, etc. We were left figuring out what it would be like to grow up, the child of a single father who was a fallen knight and a broken man. His story from the point was about his inability to cope with his loss - his wife, his status, and eventually even his sanity. Her story bears tragic elements as well, though arguably nowhere near as severe. Her story also deals a lot with learning to let go, and living after loss. I deleted a few paragraphs that were basically just talking about character history. Suffice it to say, there was an accident that happened at the age of 7 that caused a lot of stress and prompted a move to Gridania, she gained a significant amount of weight, which led to her having issues with her self-image even to present day. She also met a boy, fell in love, had 7 wonderful years with him before he died tragically, and it can be said that in some ways she is still grieving that loss, even having sort of moved on from it. There is also the element of her duskwight culture, which has been handed down. Again, without a lot of detail from lore we're left to draw our own conclusions here. She was also never really intended to look exactly as busty as she does, either. At the start of 1.0 she was still working through her weight loss and was supposed to be regarded as much better, but still rather 'fluffy'. After running through the original character creator it seemed that certain face types were tied to certain bust sizes and another member of this community remarked about Eva's from our initial "show your character" screenshots, so that wound up getting factored in which sort of worked out nicely for her as a matronly or motherly character, though has made for some awkward moments in RP - which in and of itself is kind of awesome too. Throughout the course of the 2+ years of her story, she has become much more disciplined and trained hard and much more of the weight has been shed, but we have left her on the chesty side and RP this from a more realistic angle rather than sexualizing her the way I imagine most would. She experiences back pain, and has problems fitting into certain clothing and armor, for instance. Most of what has happened from the game's launch has been less a factor of what we inject into the character and more a factor of how she reacts to those around her. From early on we sort of figured if she was somewhat susceptible to peer pressure, in part as a result of her self-image and wanting to be accepted. We decided if she was befriended by bandits or mercenaries, she would go that way, and such. There was no "alignment" metric figured out at the onset, or an argument can be made that she was initially True Neutral. But she's not a natural leader (which will make for some awkwardness in ARR when she eventually gets prodded into the role), but she does well as an advisor and counselor. She's also very motherly and nurturing. There was an accident some years back that left her [supposedly] barren, and being a mother was always something that was important to her since she never had a proper mother of her own. More recently the 'barren' diagnosis turned out to be false, and this wound up being the result of a really fluky dice roll, but we went with it, and this will be a critical and unexpected turning point in her story as well as her pregnancy (with twins, another fluke, praise Nophica!) progresses into ARR. So this got rather longwinded (though the ones above all are as well so I don't feel so bad), however I think there might be room for a... ...TL;DR: Inspirations came from FFXI character as a parent, lore transitioned from XI to XIV stuff, names came from Star Trek, Greek Mythology, character personality evolved as would be expected from the daughter of a fallen knight in a broken family, and cause and effect surrounding two or three major life events dictated pretty much everything else. Almost everything else from 1.0 release and on has been governed by her interactions with other RPers. And her ginormous boobs were unintentional and kind of a fluke, but a happy one. ...TL;DR for the TL;DR: FFXI>FFXIV transitions + RP happenings = Eva

<-- buxom lady duskwight elezen priestess type Also it's really interesting to see how the results have shifted a bit since the census only a few months back what with the influx of RPers that have joined the community since that time. :thumbsup:

Yeah, Eva's father kept a journal which would have a lot of details about stuff that she would be privy to. Basically her father left Ishgard when she was too young to remember, so she only has his words to go by. We're just left having to make these sorts of excuses when the matters come up. Apart from combating against dragons, there's really little I could say at this point that her father was really involved with. You picked a tricky place to try and springboard from. There will probably be a wealth of information with future expansions, and possibly even a good deal more whenever the Coerthas region gets unlocked. I feel your pain though. And I wish we had more info.

Being a pretty big follower of anything pertaining to Ishgard lore (which indirectly ties to Eva's backstory by way of her father), I can say there's really not a whole lot of specific information out there. You might go to Youtube and search for "FFXIV dragoon cutscene" and check out some of the videos there for a bit more background. You got this bit of info on the official site about wyverns which you already have mentioned. A lot is still left to speculation. Which is a key reason I am keeping the Ishgard aspects of Eva's story kind of under wraps until we know more about it. I do strongly recommend watching the DRG cutscenes though on YT if you haven't already done so. That might help with some of your questions.

I think maybe that's the point of this thread? Some RP is more fun to some folks than it is for others? Different tastes, different preferences, different reasons why folks won't all ever exist in one all-encompassing linkshell because different styles draw different sorts of RPers with different interests. In short, what makes ya happy may not always make another RPer happy. I know this was touched upon earlier in this thread. And while it's your character to do with as you please, if you want to interact with a particular individual or group, it's also important to give some acknowledgement to their styles and preferences. To give an example, I could never belong to a group where members ran around performing heroic feats all the time, patted each other on the back, and all went out for ice cream afterwards and there was never any [in-character] sort of drama. That might work for some folks and if it does than that's great, but for myself I need more than what would feel to me to be the RP equivalent of a diet of candy and cake all the time. I need the meat and popotos - the grit and the drama of [again IC] hurt feelings and sorrow and betrayal and guilt and all the other sort of stuff that makes real life more than just that. I can understand the view though. Real life can suck sometimes, and people want to get away from it to a place where they can be happier by living vicariously through their happier characters. I understand it. And I'm not knocking it at all. (Can you tell I'm concerned someone's going to read too far into this and take offense?) It's just not my own individual preference. Real life sometimes ends on a down note, and I like RP that immitates real life. But we're a community of RPers with a broad spectrum of preferences and styles across a number of topics. The fact that so many interesting (and sometimes unfortunate) debates crop up is testament to this fact. This isn't something that should be regarded negatively but rather celebrated. Generally any new RPer coming to the RPC is going to be able to find some group of like-minded individuals to RP with, regardless of his or her style. And this is a very good thing. That we can all come here to the RPC and speak to each other and express these opinions while still [usually] remaining tolerant of others' differing opinions is also a good thing.

This statement sort of matches my view on what I consider to be the most immersive or most fun RP. When characters are behaving as they ought, and events are happening realistically - sometimes bad things happen, sometimes good things happen, sometimes things are just dull and we scrape together our own entertainment. But I agree insofar as I don't like it when characters "win" all the time, or are eternally successful. By the same token, it's just as offputting when drama is forever constant and there's never any sort of respite or celebration. I like the middle of the road where I can be dragged along on the dangerous, gritty missions... and then get dragged along [usually via peer pressure for my own part] to "tavern RP" or [my favorite] "tea party RP" - which sounds a lot more dull and uninteresting than it usually winds up turning out to be. Good RP, to me, is a realistic balance - one that provides multiple avenues for developing characters and sharing background realistically.

These are fun but waaaaaaay time-consuming. I'm glad I've already done this cuz it's kind of a busy day. I'll post them here, if you want to take it out of the quote in the OP Asyria:

On Topic: These all look great! I like how you fixed the eyes, Aysun!!

Whoa!! This is really amazing stuff Torn! Great job!!!

I think I have remarked on this topic at least once before so I'm going to spare the longwinded rant and skip right to the... TL;DR: RPing that you have expertise (not to be confused with varying levels of experience) at a large number of disciplines may be construed as Mary Sue behavior. Having multiple areas of interest and multiple skills at which to practice makes sense and makes for a multidimensional character as long as those talents are at varying and realistic levels of skill. That's my 2 gil.

This was more time-consuming than I thought it would be. Here's Eva (sans face tattoo but I'm not fussing with it):