Valence

I feel like the fact that they're RPing lore breaking Sues in the first place kind of takes away the "awesome roleplayer" thing, myself. If they were great/amazing, they wouldn't be doing it in the first place, or at least would know how to roleplay that without making it awful. That's part of what makes a good roleplayer a good roleplayer. Granted, it's largely opinion, but that's how I feel on the matter. Allow me to rephrase what I had in mind: great writers with a real feel for acting.

That's a fair and good point, but I feel that a bit disingenuous that you chose to snip that particular excerpt without taking my whole post as a context for it.. I mean, that falls into common sense. That's why I mentioned credibility/believable (I did, did I...?). I'm also trying to make sure my point get across with easier references, and maybe that's the flaw of vulgarizing things. Otherwise, yes, take what I said as tropes, tropes, tropes. Some tropes are good, some are ultimately bad (Mary sues, etc), and some can be both. I thought that fell into common sense yes... Now then Seri, I know perfectly how you think on that, and I don't think I have ever had really diverging opinions, really. The art lies in bringing those tropes into characters that have their real life, their everyday life indeed, added to their unusual adventures. The problem with playing you or me though, is that our own RL tropes are fucking boring, to say the least, unless you have the luck to live a very interesting life. The idea never was to make a movie (though there is nothing inherently wrong with pre scripted stuff, just not my cup of tea). The idea is to use the tools that writers use: tropes. Interesting ones, preferably. The things that will make you read a book or watch a movie or anything, and prevent you to drop after 5 min. Our own RL selves would be tedious as hell to watch, unless exceptionally talented writing painting them in a very peculiar light perhaps, but then would they still be us? What makes the Lord of the Rings good and hooks you up? Reading the story of hobbit Farmer Maggot in his everyday boring life (though, maybe who knows it's actually super exciting heh), or reading the story of Sam, the gardener, that gets dragged in some cool adventures? Note that I'm not taking snowflakes like Legolas or perfect inhumane characters like Aragorn as example. I'm taking the real heroes here. The everyday characters that are not mary sues, and shine through their qualities and flaws. And ultimately their trope, that is way above the tropes some of the others from the Fellowship. I'm not talking about the epic proportions of the end of the story. Actually I would myself avoid those in our specific cases for various reasons exposed above already. I'm talking about the journey itself. The everyday life they live during their adventure. Just a matter of personal preference and opinion, because I definitely do not feel the same. Believe me, if you saw a few of the awesome roleplayers I saw, but that spent their time roleplaying lore breaking Sues... I wonder if you would still hold to that..

I don't know about other people but I don't run anything else than expert... Well except trial and leveling to xp other jobs... But I'll soon be done with other jobs... Since they cap the top tier tomes at a punny 450 per week I don't need to run more than 5-6 experts per week. Anything else goes into leveling... Which I'lll run out of at some point.

Keeper males are not part of Keeper societies. They wander lonely between clans or families and play games with the female folks when they pass through. There is no clear hint on how long they stay (days? months? years for some? hard to tell). In any case, males leave the family once they are old enough to go wander. But anyway, you can find either Keeper family nuclei, often composed of one single mother and her children. Or either in the wilderness those nuclei tend to gather together for the sake of survival and cooperation and form clans. Lore states that the usual Keeper clan is much smaller than the 26 big, wide Seeker clans composed of several Nunhs and their respective territories. Keeper clans are usually 3-4 families hunting and living together. That's hardly above 10-20 individuals. So yes, it's super easy to create a Keeper clan. Find similar families in need and start one!

I would rather disagree with the assertion that a bad or cheesy trope can be salvaged through excellent roleplay though. Both go hand in hand. If the former fails, you are gonna cringe and die a little inside everytime the cheesy and rubbish stuff gets mentionned, however good the RP is. If the latter fails, then you are just gonna get bored.

Getting inspiration from characters of novels, movies, games, often goes a long way to find the right things and chemistries... Because basically, it always boils down to the tried and tested tropes that continue to do the job again and again, and believing that re-inventing the wheel is the correct approach, is actually a flawed approach. You won't invent anything. Inconciously, you will always fall back to the tropes you grew up with, no matter what. And conciously, you can't just create something unique that has never been done before. No, the idea is to find the tropes you want, don't copycat them, but make them yours and bend them to the character concept you want. Find one or two main tropes that you can maybe complement with a few minor ones. But playing the "Fallen, brooding knight" (which is translated in the ffxiv setting as a fallen/wounded/crippled dragoon for exemple) is already enough in itself. The minor trope ou can add is that the character is an alcoholic and isn't able to live up to their expectations so they drink even more. An example among many. Then I find that finding 3-4 strong keywords to define your character is a step often missed by many people. If you roleplay a little with someone, but enough for them to get an idea, and ask them after to describe your character in 3 or 4 keywords... well, if they can't do that, then I think your character concept is not quite there up yet. A successful character is a character that sticks in people's minds for a few of its key defining traits, making them unique. And yes, you don't need much. Less is more is actually the way to go, unlike so many believe. If you always come down to reprocessing your characters because they tend to gather so many traits and things that it just looks like a huge mess and loses all its meaning, it's because you lack focus, and the character too. Believe me I know what you feel. I constantly have to deal with that myself, and while now I know how to deal with it, I didn't back then before. This tends to happen quite a lot because of several things: 1) RPers are also fans of the lore, and will probably find many traits of the lore they love. They will want to play with them and add them all into their RP (or they will just make up their own thing because they always wanted to play this and that, or because it's cool). On my own character I had to weed out the magical/hearer side that wasn't meshing that well with the tinkering side, even if it was by design at first. If it doesn't work, get rid of it, especially when it hasn't come into roleplay yet. Even if it makes you a bit sad. Look after quality and not quantity. 2) Characters, depending how often you roleplay, will often come to face many challenges, learning opportunities, etc. This will stack up pretty fast in the story and you might get tempted to make your character constantly get new traits out of it. My advice: don't, unless it makes an absolute sense for the story. If they get a new trait due to an important or traumatizing experience, then sure go for it, it's actually very important for roleplay, but at the same time it might mean that they may lose another one in the process. I left my old FC partly for those reasons actually: too many epic and gritty fights that would have tended to turn my green/young character into a grizzled awesome adventurer taking on evil for breakfast otherwise. As for new skills? Be reasonable and don't break suspension of disbelief, or it will kill the character believability pretty fast. You don't learn kung-fu in one month. Goals? Keep short term goals as well as goals on the long run. My character has been after a manacutter for eons. She still hasn't really made any progress towards it. If you reach all your goals in a few months, then you will be left with no motivation to continue, like your character will have none. Or at least you will have to find new ones. Goals are what makes you and your character strive, and that's what create story hooks. When your character have reached all the biggest goals they had, have changed an matured enough for a lifetime, then maybe it's time to retire them because there is nothing left to strive for... Or you can drop a meteor on their story and wreck their lives in their entirety so they have to start over, physically and mentally. In short, don't hesitate to weed out shit even before it becomes part of your character story if you don't think it meshes well with the idea. Or if you do because of "important things in story", then it might weed out other traits because of CHANGE. Older traits aren't static either.

Keepers as well as Seekers are broken down in two kinds, tribals and city dwellers. The tribal style is just different is all, but it's still tribal nonetheless. Naming conventions are, however, very different. Granted, the difference between city Keepers and wild keepers is less significant on the family structure since Keepers family model tends to fit in both cases, unlike a Seeker tribe. It's more significant for their way of life.

That's pure speculation however. The aether rich land may indeed spawn inhabitants with a higher potency to aetherial manipulation, but it can also just boost those for anyone that enters the land itself. Or both at the same time.

The first time the WoL brings along Sidurgu in the DRK questline to see the padjal and head of Stillglade Fane E-Sumi Yan, the dark knight looks for someone else to talk to even if E-Sumi Yan is facing him, then when he eventually notices it, he is very surprised probably not expecting to find a headmaster so young looking. E-Sumi smiles and tells him about padjals, and how he is himself very old:

It's ok, I'm only after the +3% xp for that kind of things myself... Cheapest food available is boiled eggs so... Doesn't bring anything either.

Biggest tribes actually have several Nunhs if I remember correctly. I don't remember the exact ratio of females per Nunh since I'm at work, but I believe it's hardly above a dozen. Or did I dream that?

I want to backpedal on what I said about Noctis as a main character. His blandness/apathy besides a handful of smart assed lines at the beginning, seems to actually be by design, as he gets a lot of scorn for that by some of his buddies the more it progresses.

Thanks, I wasn't totally sure how to wrap my head around some of those (primal ponies and the likes especially).

We still have Nidhogg's brood remnants, which probably explain partly why there are still a skeleton dragoon crew in Ishgard (to clean up all of that. I'm pretty sure though that you can brace yourselves for 4.0 because the dragoon job isn't going to disappear the day after for obvious totally OOC reasons, so the job might get fresh things pumped into it when the add on releases.

Besides chocobos, griffins (ala-mighi), horses (far east) and the few creatures tamed by beast tribes (thinking of the vanu and gnath here), is there any other creatures that can be tamed and used as mounts? Where does the lore stands here exactly? Not totally sure where all the mounts ingame stand here...

As long as you don't go into the super creepy offspring side of it, I don't even see why it should be a problem in the first place, unrequited or not?

Well I guess tastes and all that... I really like the 3 bros. They all have character. But the main character? Urg. He's the most boring FF hero I have ever seen, and not totally dissimilar to Cloud in my eyes. Better than Tidus or Van? Sure. Those were insufferably whiny or childish (though at least the story made them evolve, which was by design somewhere). But that Noctics is just flat out tedious and boring. He makes me want to fall asleep everytime he speaks, and fortunately he doesn't speak a lot. I don't know, he feels like an apathetic scrawny dude with a severe case of bad looks and totally uninteresting lines put directly in contrast with the nice flavorful lines of his bros. He is basically the least charismatic of the band, and maybe it's by design? He's supposed to be king and is actually as Cid tells him in the first minute of the game, like his father stripped of any dignity? I haven't been to the end yet of course so... Maybe he will change and mature too like Tidus does, which I hope. I must also disagree on Squall. I loved the hell out of that cynical ass and while his evolution is nice enough (and expected), the first part of the game is where he literally shines.

Magic is actually... composed of the same base universal building blocs, which is aether. All schools have the only difference of offering different ways of casting, learning and weaving spells, etc. As you say, conjury actually offers access to the full spectrum of the elemental wheel (earth, wind, water, fire, ice, thunder). The 2.0 changes are a purely gameplay concession, but can be explained by a shift in the schools themselves: the Ossuary for example, that shifted hands from the old master that got corrupt and used to teach thaumaturgy the way it is portrayed in 1.0,, to the Coco brothers that focus on a way different thing, which is elemental magic, and more precisely, ice fire and thunder. That is not to say that a THM can't cast stone, aero or water spells. The same way that a CNJ can cast fire, ice and thunder, but the thing is... in the way they do it. Thaumaturgy implies using a direct access to a strong aether potential, which is the aetherial body reserves of the individual. It can vary a lot between individuals, and people with enough of it to properly cast magic without killing themselves by draining too much are actually not legion (cf THM questline with the last of the Coco brothers, unable to cast anything, forced to live with alchemy instead). So, in short, you have access to a very limited aetherial reserve in your body, and you use it to focus it through the cane/rod (with conductive materials like noble metals, electrum/gold/platinum, or bone) directly to/from the gem (not sure in which direction?). The Coco brothers approach consists in cleverly recharging the body reserves when they are drained, since it can regen decently well (still takes time though). A BLM in comparison, draws directly from Hydaelyn through the gem of Shatotto (or not, but then they burn their insides), which means access to an unlimited amount of aether, turning them into... well, gods on earth. Conjury is kind of the opposite. The CNJ doesn't use their body reserves (unlike Sylvie in the CNK quest, and her mother that died of it for the same reasons it kills thaumaturges pretty quick if not mastered). They borrow from the land around them, which means they have access to a much greater supply of aether but also, must watch not to drain it (or elementals be very cross yo, which is probably also why casting fire and thunder is much harder considering the low supply in nature, and how destructive it can be, but it's possible, after all, of fire is born fertile ground, etc etc). It's basically a less forceful approach and involves a lot of prayers, attuned to nature, a zen attitude, etc. White Mages are like Black Mages though, they draw from Hydaelyn, but here with the blessing of the Elementals and the WHM soulstone. Arcanima is harder to define. It seems to use the same kind of conductive materials thaumaturges use (electrum/platinum ink, etc). The book is used to draw complex mathematical patterns in that ink with the capability to conjure spells out of them (esp the carbuncles). They seem to use their own aether body reserves, but also seem to recharge it through a good control of 'aetherflow', not totally unsimilar to monk chakras in my opinion. If Arcanima can use the elemental wheel or not, and if thaumaturges and conjurers can use advanced viruses and bio attacks weaved by mathematical patterns though, I don't know. Possibly? Note: CNJ actually have a sleep spell as well ingame.

I guess I'm always an odd ball when it comes to RPG tastes. I dislike open worlds (except in MMOs, but in the solo part of MMOs, I hate open worlds too), I loathe exploring for the sake of exploring, and I absolutely hate the very notion of sidequest (and if the sidequests are so awesome, why aren't they in the main story in that case?). I also never replay any game or RPG with choices differently. I always tend to do every time the same choices, the same customization, the same things (which is why I love the 100% jRPG linear models of old). I know it sounds weird, but I always choose what seems to fit the best for me. Added to an obsessional completionist drive, I always end up following the exact same path. So, what makes me replay things? The story and the universe, every time, and the gameplay has to be not too shabby either. So, generally I don't mind going through the same story again, provided the story is great. Though I bet after the 3rd or 4th time, especially in short succession, no matter the story, I would be bored and unwilling to cope with it once again. But my point is that, coming from that perspective and speaking about it with most players, I tend to notice I'm not interested in the same things. I can totally understand why some players would want to jump to the end of something they would consider like a very tedious grind, and get directly to the meat of things (to their eyes). I'm pretty sure less of them would care that much if the story was even greater, with huge cutscenes and awesome hooks, and no boring parts, but you would still get many people just not interested, period. When you kick up a solo RPG and play, you can do it for two things: either the gameplay and the progression/leveling, or either the story. Or both (which is the ideal state of things). But I know a lot of players that do it more for one than the other (and it's not binary either). So, when you start up a MMO, you can actually do it for many things (depending on the content offered). Leveling, RPing, just following the story and cutting the sub afterwards, end-game pve, pvp, crafting, trading, I don't know... Or a combination of things. It can be many things. Hell, some people don't even play MMOs for the multiplayer side of them, however sad that is. Why would you force them through the story, no matter how great to your eyes it is? And I think the problem with most people here is that they seem to assume that their own preferences apply to everyone else, or that the story has to somehow be the alpha and omega of everything for everyone. Hint: it's not.

As other explained above, I'm only mentioning him with tongue in cheek because he is one of the big hints over what happened exactly in the 13rd Shard of the FFXIV world. As you probably know he is the third boss encountered in the Void Ark, and is a Voidsent of pristine Rank One (the top of the Void cream). He is also mentioned in the lorebook as one of the fallen Warriors of Light of the 13rd shard, the same shard that turned into the World of Darkness, aka the Void. So the question would be, in your theory, which of the FF worlds would be the 13rd Shard, the World of Darkness? And which of the FF worlds would be the 1st Shard, the world of the Warriors of Darkness we learn about in 3.4 and that got scorched by the Light? We can go on over the idea, but I think the more you think about it, the more plot holes and inconsistencies would pile up pretty quick. And I didn't know Fernehalwes actually said something about it, but it seems to hint in the direction that they borrow, rather than integrate. The Shattoto, or the Gilgamesh you see in XIV, are not necessarily the same you see in XI or V, even if they are world hopping characters... Scratch that actually, they hop between shards of the XIV universe, which is vastly different.

So, which one of the other FF titles turned into the World of Darkness? Where a Warrior of Light among others was called Cuchulain? And where would FF15 (and the next ones) fit? Nowhere since they were released after?

Just wanted to add that besides the strongest points for me so far being the constant talk at every corner while driving, exploring, cooking and whatnot, making the world more alive, and the road trip atmosphere, I'm rather in awe with most of the work that went into animation. Those idle animations, or even character starting to do stuff instead of remaining static, are amazing. Everything really feels alive.

I really don't see the point of forcing players to go through it if they don't want to. The main fear is that we would get a legion of lvl60 players popping up with no clue at all how to play their class... Well, it's already the case even without jump potions anyway. Why would you need to do at least once the MSQ to 60? To be knowledgeable about your class? That's moot, the next alt or job you will level up with the jump potion will probably be another one anyway. Except if it's of the same role, you will be as brand as new, especially with a full 60 skillset. So, if not that, what then? To have witnessed the story at least once? Why would you shove that down the throat of people if they don't wanna? The problem is not so much people that don't know how to play their classes (they will learn in time, just like that huge flow of bad DRKs at lvl30 that never tanked in their life when 3.0 released), but the lazy, the idiots and the people willingly refusing to play by the rules. Those, you will get no matter what, and no matter what you do, they will not learn or change. Now then, I heard wow offers trials and challenges to clear before letting their newly jumped players into the wild. But my main fear is that, if we don't get jump potions, we will continue to get that endless trainwreck of people bitching and whining about how long and tedious cutscenes and quests and stuff are. They are toxic to the story itself, since they aren't interested in it. This is a whole different kind of people than just us being dissatisfied with the story, being critical and whatnot. It's about this huge part of players that just don't want to have anything to do with it. If they want out of the story I say, let them do. All the better for us.

I almost forgot. Watch Kingslaive before if you can, or you will miss on things constantly. It's almost mandatory to get a good feel on the story and what's going on, otherwise it's going to be pretty confusing. The story starts just at the end of the movie, so they really are a whole. ( On that not I think that's not a really good thing to make additional cross media almost mandatory and I think the game should stand alone on its own, where they could really have summarized things better where it was needed )

For the objective listing of how things are ingame so far from what I have seen, I'll list in italics below my subjective opinion about it. If you are just looking for how things are and a factual summary, don't read those. - You evolve on a huge map from the beginning, with a road layout on top of it. You can move around on foot pretty much freely (witcher 3 style), and you can drive the car (or sit as passenger) on the roads only. I never liked open worlds in solo games since I'm here for the story and I generally tend to drop from the game or get bored when I'm just thrown in the middle of nowhere with no clear storyline to follow. Fortunately this one seems to follow a Witcher 3 model and you can perfectly just follow the 'road' and the story without doing much of anything else. At least it's nice that you don't feel any invisible walls around, for sure. - The story makes you move around the map progressively, while you also have secondary quests around, or things to explore. - From what I have heard, the main story is somewhat shorter than usual, but the game tries to balance that by offering more secondary things to do, or explore. As said above, not my cup of tea, as I think open worlds can pretty fast detract on the story... Except for anomalies like Witcher 3 when done right. Secondary quests seem rather dull though. Lots of kill lists and ping pong basic quests, doesn't seem up to the FF usual standards of secondary quests (quantity vs quality here I guess, they chose quantity, unlike in other titles). You can see some scenery and explore for those who like it though. Overall I feel that this game follows a more western approach to RPGs when it comes to world building, rather than standard classical jRPGs. It blends with a very jRPG feel from the combat system though. - A lot of the dialog and story actually happens when you drive around. Characters talk between each other a lot like that. They do it too when they fight, although it's not plot oriented when they do, but just combat oriented. I think this adds a lot of flavor overall. It can get annoying though when they are talking and you suddenly enter an area that triggers a story cutscene or what you have, and it just cuts what people where saying earlier. - The Combat system is action RPG hack and slash style, where you control the main character and the AI controls the companions. You can momentarily take control or tell companions to execute an action, or a combo. The main character can blink/dash like in the movie as one of his main moves. Some of those moves deplete a MP bar, that regrows over time. Characters can wield several, different weapons. Oh yes, you also meet enemies directly on the map without any transition to combat. It's seamless. I don't mind that kind of combat but I think this one is rather mediocre. I quite enjoyed the one they offered in most Star Ocean games as they do it quite well there (the AI was okay-ish, you could still take control of mates when needed, and there was a depth of skills and mechanics different for every character). The main issue with that kind of system is how incredibly messy it can get. Well, SO did it well since the pace was slowed down a bit and attacks were made obvious enough so that the player had a feeling to at least know what was happening all around. Here in FFXV, not so much. The first feeling you will get is that its an incredible mess where things are being hack and slashd all around in a frenzy. You eventually start to get used to it a bit but you still have very little clue how some of the enemy attacks, or even worse, your own teamates attacks. They seem not to attack or do stuff very often, especially when you are the one spamming slashes on enemies. Overall, the AI is pretty bad. You constantly feel that you are alone fighting and doing all the work, unless you take control at times of your mates. But then better to play in wait mode... I just think that they fell into all the negative sides of the RPG hack and slash model. A huge mess would describe it perfectly. - You can switch combat mode to a more classical tactical combat closer to old FF titles. It basically freezes time at every action and adds timers. In part for all the reasons listed above, Wait mode seems better to me at the first glance, and closer to what made FF combat... FF combat. Except... It doesn't work at all to me either because it just freezes the game and turns the screen in black and white while you choose the action to do... again and again. You still don't get any control on the other members like you do with your own and actually do things exactly like in the hack and slash mode, except you have an active pause now. So it's NOT a tactical mode like in all other FFs, but just a stupid pause that cuts the flow of things and allows you to have time to choose your actions but nothing else. It remains a hack and slash game, and not a good one at that. I haven't been that way ahead so maybe it gets more interesting after, but it also feels way dumbed down tactically compared to other FFs, since well... action game. - There is some skill trees for each character. I haven't delved into it that much, but it seems pretty standard to me. - Music is composed by Shimomura Yoko (Kingdom Hearts, etc). I think it's a sign of quality here. Seems very good so far. - You get four characters, of which one is the hero you control for the most part. I really loathe the look of Noctis (the main character). He looks like shit in my opinion (hello Tokyo Hotel). I quite like the look of the three others though, even if the whole band looks very... edgy yeah, with their haircuts and clothes (but I have seen worse... heh). They all have their quirks and personality, I like that Prompto seems always afraid or nervous about stuff that should scare the shit out of anybody, that kind of stuff. Their overall casual discussions as you move around creates a nice synergy and atmosphere, and that's one of the main strong points of the game: the road trip feel. Noctis himself?... Definitely not the best FF main character so far, but definitely far from the worst too. Guy is pretty composed, but I feel like for now that he seems rather... bland. His personality is hard to see, except that he seems dead serious and a bit taciturn. I like how the team keeps teasing him about everything though. The universe is rather contemporary looking, with a few glimpses here or there of slightly futuristic or at least modern designs. Totally subjective I guess but the universe and the world overall leave a rather good feel of something with character. It's unique enough, and pretty. Lots of different places with different flavors. Now, then, please keep in mind that I haven't been very far into the game.