Valence

First, black magic IS illegal. This is the first thing that you learn during the 50-60 part of it when confronted by a conjurer and Hearer from Gridania (Zaia'a Nalhah), sent specifically to investigate a new cult of black magic wielders and bring them to justice. He washes everyone under the same blanket and is at first rather hostile to the WoL and the black mage NPC trainers (Lalai, etc). I'm too lazy to look for all the specific references in that quest, they are legion. If you need further proof, look no further than in the lorebook: I'm also not sure what makes you say that Black Magic is taught at the Ossuary as "an option"? The very beginning of the BLM quests at lvl30 start with Ququruka, the only black magic practitioner that imprisoned himself in shame for what he did to his friends. He's certainly not welcome here. His disciple Lalai, who is a priestess for the order of Nald'Thal, always stays outside of the Ossuary as well. The only "hope" we see for black magic starting to develop could be at best other people looking for clues, painstakingly slow as it was the case for Ququruka and his beastmen friends (who didn't even have a gem of Shattoto, like all those poor wanabe black mages of the 50-60 quests that burn themselves from the inside). Or maybe the art just starting to spread from Lalai who's just an apprentice... Anyway, the only true, full fledged current black mage is the WoL, and Shattoto, except she... is no more again after her brief appearance for the lvl60-70 quests. This is not to say that black magic can't be a thing with other people. But you'll have to dabble with a character that only knows bits and sparse clues about the art itself, and is lucky enough to carry a gem of Shattoto not to kill oneself in the process. As for how hard it is to cast a spell... How hard is it to be a monk and open a chakra? How hard is to be a bard and sing a powerful and moving battle song? I'm afraid we don't have much clues about that except that well... it's a job, it has specific skills that have to be learned and mastered. Also, keep in mind that black magic seems to have always been centered on the elemental wheel and threatened the elemental balance so much that it caused the 6th Calamity. So in essence it's close to the thaumaturgy of the Coco brothers except in the source of aether used, at least more than the previous art taught by their crooked predecessor that focused on other things (cf 1.0 THM).

Even if my character isn't really a researcher per se, I generally tend to keep it at purely applied science rather than big theoretical research and whatnot. So I mostly get to play with what already exists in lore and my fun is mostly finding new ways to play with it, or find new toys.

Ishgard is roughly a thousand years old yes. Gelmorra was founded in year 740 of the 6h Astral Era in the Black Shroud, the forest that invaded the old plains of Amdapor, and that served as a thick reclusive fortress for the Elementals after the Great Flood of the 6th Calamity. Gridania was founded in 1020, so a bit less than 3 centuries after Gelmorra. The Autumn War takes place in the 1470s, we're now past 1500 (and into the 7th Era now anyway), so that makes Gelmorra roughly 800 year old, and Gridania half a millienium. All in all that would put the founding of Ishgard by the king of the Elezens around 500 if I'm not mistaken with all the dates here. That king, Thordan I, decided to leave the confines of the Shroud with a caravan of their people, all under attack around the old lands of Amdapor by the huge Hyur migratory wave settling in. While the majority of the elezens that stayed behind in the Shroud were still skirmishing against their Hyur invaders on one side and the Elementals on the other, Thordan did what the HW storyline tells us, then founds Ishgard slightly north in the Alabatian Spine. A bit more then 2 centuries later, Gelmorra is founded when the Hyur and Elezens in the Shroud make peace to escape the Elementals and their Ixali servants. The fact that they only stayed for less than 300 years underground is certainly enough to alter their vision, hearing, and complexion yes. But you have to take into account that more than 500 years happened when the Wildwood got out while the Duskwights stayed inside. It's possible that the Duskwights we know today are even more changed and adapted to their Gelmorran undergrounds than the old Gelmorrans before the split. Those 500 years were also widely enough for the Elezens and Hyurs having left Gelmorra to get back to a more normal physiology, skin complexion, eyes, etc. Now then for Ishgardians, honestly, I think for one there is the game and development limitations that just made the devs use wildwood and duskwight models for their ishgardians. And then if you take a look between duskwights and wildwoods, what's the difference? A few facial traits to differentiate them but nothing more than what could set apart two different individuals of the same race. So the difference is mostly, skin complexion, night vision and hearing. Things that can adapt in the human body very fast in individuals, and on a more macro scale, on mere generations. That's my take on it anyway.

Ishgard got founded before the foundation of Gelmorra, so you have the top elezen ancestry of the 5th Astral Era branching into two offshoots: Ishgardian elezens, following the first circle of Thordan (the first), that all partook in the blood of Ratatoskr and are now all "contaminated" by dragon blood, albeit diluted over the generations, and Gelmorran elezens that later went to live in the underground of the Shroud. When the Pact of Gelmorra was made with the Elementals, the gelmorran elezens branched into two bloodlines: Wildwoods and Duskwights, the ones that stayed behind.

What I like with Omega is the battle royale / death tournament idea behind. I tend to agree with that.

Keep in mind that if your character is born in Ishgard, it's likely they have ishgardian ancestry I suppose? Which means you'll have to deal with the ishgardian elezen bloodline (unavailable ingame but the models are identical to wildwoods and duskwights anyway). This bloodline is very distinct from duskwights and wildwoods (born from gelmorran elezens), who are more or less like their cousins.

Near the end of the ARR storyline in Mor Dhona, Cid brings you with him to design an EM jammer able to jamm through garlean electromagnetic transmitters, which are the main source of communication for garleans in general. We only learned recently during SB that garleans were able to jamm linkpearls too, but it's unclear how they do that.

Every villain or character that gets recycled in this fashion just means that we won't be able to see their like used in the actual plot of FFXIV which I find regrettable especially because a lot of the characters introduced in recent patches are very forgettable. Like the kid who takes you to Ivalice. What even was his name, idk. Or the one in the village in the MSQ? Forgot him too. It's weird. With Heavensward I felt like the world was this constantly churning, fluid mass and I was always greatly anticipating the next patch and the MSQ and wanted to see what would happen to the characters and Stormblood is very....I can barely even stay tuned tbh. Also, from the trailer, I feel like this is pretty much going to be like Star Trek VI and all our characters are going to sit around the table and discuss making nicenice with the Garleans. Except this version lacks the interest and complexity of a character actually being against the proceedings. Tbh most interesting thing I saw was Krile possibly discussing the Isle of Val. Give me more of that pls. Yeah I'm in the side that is far from impressed with the Omega raids. To be honest, I wasn't either with Alex until the last tier where the story really kicks up, but at least Alex had a unique atmosphere and neat steampunk aesthetics. Omega looks awful in comparison and just re uses old FF stuff without even trying to insert it into a ff14 story (and I hate alpha, who thought a disney styled character would have its place here anyway... at least Nero is awesome). As for the characters of the main story, be it ARR, HW or SB, they feel bland and uninteresting to me. I've never felt that characters were the forte of the writing team for ffxiv (or ff12), unlike other FF titles. The only characters I love are their villains (Gaius, Nael, Nero, Thordan... not fucking Zenos though). I think though, that world building is their strong suit. The world of Eorzea took me time to get into because it just looked like a mishmash of various fantasy things, but when you really get into it you can see the depth it has. And I feel that SB added a huge deal on top of that by giving us a lot of info either through the MSQ/sidequests or jobquests.

I don't understand why they're buffing warrior. SMN deserved their AoE nerf. I've always felt that house hoarders have been the convenient scapegoat for players to bring out their pitchforks and torches. While I don't really like multiple house owning or anything, I feel that while they prove not to make the system feel any better right now for sure, that they are actually probably a minority, a drop in the ocean of players just trying to get one single house. Maybe I'm wrong though. I don't have numbers. Anyway, I'm happy about their changes, but if they decide to tell every player exceeding their new criteria to get rid of their extras, that would be pretty shitty, even with a partial reimbursement. You don't tell people they can do something to change that later and tell them "actually nope lol". I don't see SE doing that anyway. Just let the issue disappear over time... I don't really see the problem. FC housing is a house shared by all members that benefit from its exclusive content. You already benefit from a FC house even if it's not yours. Why would you need to buy another one on another character? That's already verging on house hoarding.

You can also find the ping while the game is running by running under windows /resmon (Resource Monitor) and take a look in the Network tab: finding the ffxiv process running and the latency is written just next to it. Note that with a VPN active, the new ping will not be shown under the ffxiv process anymore since you're tunneled through the VPN proxy, but you should find a similar process in latency that's named something like "putty" or else.

Okay so, we always assumed that White Magic is also called and referred to as Succor. I have parsed through Sounssy's compilations and the lorebook, and besides Sounssy's own words, I have only found mention of succor once, and that is in the lorebook, page 230 on white mages, but it is unclear if it is referring to its proper name (Succor), or just you know, the act of succor, a common word. Thus I wonder if you know of any other source that speaks clearly of White Magic also being called Succor somewhere? We also have a few sources here: http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=13072 Which doesn't exactly call White Magic The Art Of Succor, but it's... ambiguous, if you see what I mean? It's often referred to as bringing succor yes, but is it a proper name for White Magic as well as we assumed it was? Good to note also that it isn't used in lore blurbs with a capital S.

Lore wise everything seems well anchored in lore to me. The fact that your character is an orphan outsider to the U tribe and that it stirs trouble is good since yes indeed, the whole point of the Seeker breeding system is that only the most suitable male produces offspring, and offspring of the tribe, so you bet that an outsider taken in would get much scorn, and his mother even more. I think you should even feel free ICly to play and abuse a lot with that fact because that's really something that would get you shunned pretty quick from most seeker traditional tribes.

I'd really like to know what you mean by this? I honestly find myself hard at making connections since there's so many good allied players and the fact that I just can't tell them directly that "hey I'm a thief! Let's do some rp!" It removes any genuine reaction to the unveiling imo and well just defeats the purpose. I'd really like to know if I'm in the right in doing this. As I said with the Bilbo reference really. Just go with the flow. You don't have to tell everyone OOCly "I'm a thief" immediately. You don't have to try stealing a purse immediately, or breaking into someone else's house immediately. You can because it gives a nice and convenient hook for sure, and you'll have to OOCly agree with your target about it before the act, but you don't have to. If you're creative enough you'll often find ways to relate your skills or bring them on the table over various situations. Also as I said above, I tend to value more what and how that job/occupation shapes a character and defines them rather than what it allows you to do. It's the same for me. I don't get around telling everyone "hey, I'm a pilot, I can do things" until something happens. Sometimes, the opportunity presents itself, but most of the time what I like about it is what it implies on the life of my character on an every day basis.

The potential easy hooks to be had with strangers aside as said already above, to me burglar is the exact same thing than for most jobs. I just find that RPers tend to try to stick to them too literally and let themselves be constrained and imprisoned by the primary definition of their RP job/occupation. What I find the most interesting with a burglar for example, isn't necessarily the act of breaking into someone else's room or house, or stealing coinpurses. It's just the background it gives your character and how it fleshes said character out. It's exactly the same with combat RP: action RP can be fun for some of course, but why bother if you never have any slice of life parts where you can actually flesh out your character on the experiences they got during said actions earlier? How do they deal with it, live with it, etc? Also, being a burglar brings a sheer amount of very specific emotes and personality quirks that you can use. If you think about The Hobbit and how Bilbo is considered a burglar, and what he actually does during all the story... well you'll see that even the small time where he actually gets to play the part related to his skill with Smaug, isn't exactly your typical burglar stuff either. I myself play a character that's into racing and flying mostly. The game isn't really suited for that kind of RP. Maybe I could over mediums like Discord but that's beyond the point. I care more about what it brings to my character, what opportunities and businesses it can bring, the kind of struggles it can bring, maybe incidents too? Someday she might show up messed up and people will wonder why, or maybe they will actually know why immediately (and that's where you know your RP is successfully ingrained in that last case). Some other day she might be starving because business isn't exactly fruitful or had complications, that can also be RPed.

For BLM yes. I don't remember any specific black mage spell besides maybe Foul that wasn't used by soulstone-less wanabe black mages in the quests. They cast Flare a lot for example. But Foul is too recent with SB to have a clear idea about it. Maybe Meteor is specific to the soulstone though? Speaking about the LB here of course, not the grand Meteor/calamity of the lvl70 quest series. For MCH however for example, no. You need the aetherotransformer to convert your aether into levin aspected aether so it can power your abilities.

I don't remember well what is exactly said in the AST questline, but we know for example that a soulstone isn't required to cast black magic powerful spells. It's just that it cooks you alive if you don't have one.

Yes, supposedly, you do retain them. They are just repositories of knowledge with the extra entry level checking if you're worthy of that knowledge or not, and that knowledge has various degrees of mastery required depending on the info you're looking for. It teaches you only what you've "unlocked", basically. But it won't erase your memory or skills or reflexes or whatever if you unequip it. I'm still trying to figure out which soulstones are required or not to be honest. I know it's not the case for Ninja period as it's stated as soon as you get the quest, but for SCH, MCH, BLM, WhM almost certainly as well, we know it's required... What about the rest of them? MNK? BRD? I have doubts there. Worth investigating I think. Especially Monk and chakra access. Basically there is a difference in my view between knowledge and access to certain energies specific to the job.

That's possible. Or maybe the dev team didn't think about it, or forgot. Or deemed it not important... I think it could be a good question to ask to the lore team someday.

I didn't answer to that thread because there is not much in the lore covering Allag's form of government or their flag. I'm not sure I totally agree with your analogy and I believe that it might just be a case of Occam's razor in that no lore about it can also mean a flag actually exists but isn't covered by the lore (yet). I agree that nationalism is not that old IRL for the reasons you presented, but heraldry is, and was widely used as flags since the dawn of humanity. Just with a different meaning behind. And while nationalism as a true doctrine didn't show up until 20th century, actual states started to real form and act as nations as early as late middle ages (especially during the Hundred Years War where the ideology started to appear). Kingdoms like England, France, Spain, etc, all had their flags even in the early middle ages, even if it was more related to the king's heraldry. Overall it's hard to tell, but the Allagan Empire was a true Empire, spanning almost all over the planet at its peak as well as in space, and seemed to boast a big amount of corporate and military labs and scientific complexes (like Azys Lla or Seal Rock), and while it seemed to work more as a very autocratic regime backed up by an overblown military, they still had an active population and a certain amount of national culture of active military service.

Ah well that's not a problem. Some tanks just casually head over to the pull without doing anything to pull properly when they have the time to make coffee and do their laundry in the meantime.

Lazy tanks that don't shield lob / tomahawk / unmend to pull and that just like to go in the middle of the pull to throw their first AoE move. Half of the time it's mess because they miss some. Have seen a lot of those recently.

Hi, that's interesting, what kind of RP are you usually into?

If we had to be ultra realistic about everything we would have to consider bullets way deadlier than arrows, spears would rule most battlefields without magic... Since it's fantasy a lot of things can be arranged, explained in many ways... And it also depends on the power level and tone you play with.

Don't sweat it, it's not much of a big deal. I chose to answer nevertheless because 1) I felt I had to represent a point of view that isn't exactly mainstream, and 2) I wouldn't have taken the time to fill that survey if I truly had a serious issue with it. Good luck!

Thank you for the clarifications. They still raise some concerns to me and I will respectfully disagree that half the questions weren't biased toward a goal, which you implicitly admitted below (to give another image/perspective of our server). I feel that the part on ERP tries to push people to vote for the only option where it was mentioned "for character development", which naturally leads to wash away all the ERP centric image we often see associated with Balmung. Similarly, the absence of RP elitism answers where the only answers were about "FCs are too lore strict" or "FCs are fine and diverse", will naturally make the result seem more attractive and less cliquish to readers. The fill in answers sure help to alleviate the issue quite a bit, but they don't remove the bias of the survey. Not that with something more neutral I expect to see much difference in the results anyway, since that bias seems to represent pretty well the mainstream of the community: people naturally tend to answer that they do less ERP than they do in reality (a lot), and not a lot of people are concerned about the lack of strong RP themes in FCs anyway. So I guess my issue lies more in a problem of principles/form, and that form tends to smother even more the minorities. I sincerely hope that will be taken in account in the article. In short, I don't like the agenda behind, it biases everything. This is just my opinion of course. On a matter of principles, I also would be very happy if you could delete all the characters names once you did your character check. I'm not that annoyed that someone knows exactly how I feel on most of those questions since they aren't especially personal, but I certainly feel uneasy knowing that all those names and their preferences are kept in the care of a single person. Now then, if you don't, that's fine. We chose to answer and knew what we were going into. I just feel it's a matter of good etiquette. I hope you'll understand.