Myxie Tryxle

I've noticed this discrepancy as well, which was part of the reason I've been writing posts like this. I haven't found the desert tribe of Seekers Aysun mentioned, so having only seen the city Miqo'te that have mostly assimilated into the larger multi-racial culture, it seemed the implementation of Miqo'te in the game didn't match the vision described in the character creator. I would equate it to the culture clash between colonists and Native Americans. Some of the tribes were very cooperative and assimilated. Some were suspicious but still willing to trade while maintaining their own cultural strength. Others were xenophobic and went to war to protect their culture and way of life. I would expect to see a similar culture clash with the Miqo'te, where the 26 different tribes would each have a different take on how much to integrate into the melting pot of society. However, I would be surprised if it became more than a footnote in the in-game lore.

Most of my sarcasm tends to be self-denigrating. I've learned that on the internet this is interpreted as a sign of weakness and an opening for attack. Thus very little sarcasm from me. I agree that on the whole, this community is a lot more civil than the internet at large, which is quite nice.

Kyatai has the right of it. Mostly I included that section in this thread as a lighthearted joke in reference to the previous thread which was full of biology. I wanted to point out that when it comes to sociology and culture, I'm a hobbyist at best and would like some real input from those more familiar with the field as well as with the lore. You'll notice that nothing I wrote has any particular depth. It's almost plagiarism if you go to some of the Wikipedia pages for the different types of dueling. Most of my contribution here was offering a little bit of creative writing in the alternate forms of dueling I brainstormed and a general push to get the ball rolling.

I've actually been doing these posts to encourage a spectrum of roleplay and tribal values. I was arguing that there should be a spectrum of acceptable roleplay for Miqo'te from lost Amazon tribe to big city socialite, which is why some of my suggested challenges are brutal and some involve little to no bloodshed. This would affect every level, from individual Seeker up to the tribe level. For example, if the raptor tribe became a civilized tribe, they might dominate the goldsmithing and gemcutting trade due to fine eyesight, extra patience, and an attention to minute detail (assuming by "raptor" they mean birds of prey like hawks and owls). This would lead to a very high standard of living. Perhaps in that refined city culture, their means of challenging the Nunh would involve crafting skills or business acumen rather than combat skills. My point being that culture is learned and readily transferable. A Miqo'te as a sentient creature would be the product of their environment and education as readily as any human is. I read Kyatai's quote completely differently. To me it had literally nothing to do with tribal versus city culture. The problem I ran into occurred when I suggested a behavior that was feline or animal in nature based on a different natural history from that of primates. It tended to get a bad reaction. As if somehow the only possible distinctions were human behaviors and less than human behaviors. Though I didn't lay it out specifically in the other thread, my perspective is that Miqo'te are derived from predators. They may be omnivores now, but my assumption is that they would be predator turned omnivore which is likely to have a very different outlook from herbivore turned omnivore. The notion that this difference in natural history would lead to some potentially different values (namely the value of life) and different behaviors just seemed to rub some of the readers the wrong way. Thus my own exasperation with the notion of Miqo'te as "humans with fluffy ears and tails" came from a biological perspective, not a cultural one. I personally feel that when comparing the two species, Miqo'te would be more confident, aggressive, and predatory (though there would obviously be individual variation). I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that my view on this point is very unique given my scientific background, and that I shouldn't expect it to be reflected in the community at large. I do, however, enjoy educating others and engaging in healthy debate. [incidentally, the primary reason scientists believe all feline species are predatory and that none branched out to eat plants has to do with their taste receptors. The entire cat family, from house cats to tigers, lacks an essential protein for building the sweetness taste receptors. No feline is capable of recognizing the sugar content of its food, thus there is no gustatory attraction to sweet foods (like fruits and vegetables). Only salty, fatty, and umami flavors would be attractive to a feline, leading us as humans to consider them 'finicky.' If that were also the case in Miqo'te, they'd remain staunch predators, and any attraction to sweet treats like cakes, pies, etc. would likely be an appreciation for the fat content or flavoring agents like chocolate, not the sugar.]

I must admit I can't figure out this sentence, so I may be reading it wrong. I blame Square Enix for not really fleshing the two races out in 1.0. I never understood why they left male Miqo'te and female Roegadyn out in the first place, aside from it being a holdover from FFXI. I view the lore gap for these races as unfortunate, which is part of the reason I'm encouraging discussion on the topic. When it comes to people RPing, I think a lot are playing them like humans just due to the lack of lore. Hopefully that will change as the community catches up on this three year gap with the other races.

Part of the reason I've been doing these posts is as a writing exercise. I'm a teacher, and it's summer, so I have a lot of time on my hands. I've been reading Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card, and he brings up the idea of being diligent in your writing about questioning cliches, especially the ones you may not even realize you're accepting. He posits that these cliches, while easy to accept from the point of view of immersion, are also boring. However, there's also the balancing point of believability. You can't change everything in a story away from the cliche or it will become too unbelievable. Pick one or two that will lead to a good story and run with them. In the case of MMOs like this, the lore is the cliche. Being lore conscious is important. I'm not challenging that point, because I certainly don't want to see werewolves (were-Miqo'te?), vampires (and while sparkly vampires are not cliche, they do show that avoiding the cliche is not always the best move), super-heroes, etc. But relying 100% on things only verified in lore is accepting the full cliche, which according to Mr. Card is boring. As Kyatai pointed out in the other thread, a lot of people seem to be accepting and even defending the notion that Miqo'te are just "humans with kitty ears and tails." I'm challenging that notion, because I feel we'll get more interesting stories if we recognize the cliche and actively avoid it. As an example, several people were very uncomfortable with my suggestion that some tribes may practice infanticide the way lions do. I agree that it challenges a lot, but what if that character came from a tribe that revered scorpions and had been living under the boot heel of the Empire for 500 years. Perhaps the only way to become a Nunh in that scorpion tribe is to join the Empire's Special Forces and prove yourself as a ruthless assassin in service of the Empire, willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Now imagine the culture shock and potential for a character from that tribe who finds themselves stranded in Eorzea and forced to interact with free tribes and races they've been told are their enemies since they were born. Whether this character is an NPC soldier in a guild's plot line or someone's actual player character, due to the culture shock there's a lot of potential for some fantastic story there! Just realized I have no idea how old the Empire is, so ignore that 500 years reference. I can't remember if the Empire is that old.

I respect that. Hopefully I made it clear in the introduction of this thread that the only part that is confirmed lore is the part I put in the quotation from the naming conventions.

Some friends of mine are big fans of the zoo and always get yearly passes for the zoo at San Diego. They told me an interesting story where the zoo was having trouble getting some of their larger herbivores to procreate (zebras I think). The solution they found was to move the enclosures around so the zebras were right next to the lions. Apparently being able to see and hear their predators was all the incentive they needed. Proximity to death sparked a desire for new life. It's likely this response is a natural mechanism to prevent overpopulation and thus starvation, but I think the analogy would hold for Miqo'te. If a Nunh is at war and knows he could die any day, I doubt you could stop him from fulfilling the duties of his position. Not to mention that a tribe at war is probably going to be losing a few warriors and needs to be growing to replace any casualties. It's more likely a ban on challenges during wartime would be viewed as a necessity to keep all their warriors in top fighting form, because otherwise the entire tribe may suffer for a Tia's ambition. As for conjecture, conjecture away. This thread isn't so much about what is but what could be, since as I stated there's lots of room for players to expand on different tribes and cultures within the Seekers for their own RP. I very much doubt Square Enix is going to produce a solid body of lore for every one of the 26 tribes. You can always retcon it if a conflict does arise later. As the saying goes, "I'd rather beg forgiveness than ask for permission." Thank you for the Princess Bride videos as well. If you're a big fan of Princess Bride, you should check out the 7th Sea Roleplaying Game I mentioned. Princess Bride was one of the principal inspirations for that system.

My guess is that this is likely the reason they don't necessarily hold key positions of power, as mentioned in the naming guide. Depending on the culture and the inherent danger of the challenges, the challenge itself could become a tool of assassination for political ends. As for the danger of imminent challenges being nerve-wracking, well they should know what they're in for when they apply for the job.

Thanks

Can anyone tell me the command for doing an emote animation without it posting in the chat log? I remember something like this existing previously but can't remember what it is you add to the emote to prevent the text.

Dominance Challenges: Seeker Cultural Conflict Explored Purpose of this Guide Reading through the different backstories as well as some of the discussion posts on the forum, it seems like the ritual of combat between a Nunh and a Tia will be a big concern for those playing Seekers of the Sun. Whether it appears in your backstory or as part of a character or guild’s plot, it would be nice to have some discussion to make this an interesting and vibrant topic. I’m not actually playing a Seeker (my character is a Keeper), so hopefully I can provide an air of objectivity to get the discussion started. I’m hoping for a lot of input from the community, since I’m not much of a social scientist, as you’ll see below. My Credentials I took two sociology classes in college over ten years ago. I had breakfast with Jared Diamond once. (He wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel, and came to my college to give a talk about it. He’s a pretty awesome guy to meet in person.) Seekers of the Sun Given that there are 26 established tribes, and the potential for players to introduce even more, that leaves a lot of room for diversity among cultural practices. I haven’t encountered the Seeker tribes in the game yet, so I don’t really have any information in the form of established lore, but I’m guessing that even when more of the lore is established, it will likely come from only a handful of the 26 tribes. This will leave room for players to be inventive with their tribe’s culture, and that’s what I’d like to encourage through this discussion. I think it would be pretty boring if every tribe dueled in exactly the same way. Human tribes and cultures came up with a variety of options and rituals associated with their duels, and it’s likely the Miqo’te would do the same. Given that humanity has generated innumerable cultures with a variety of practices throughout its history, I’ll be using human examples as well as a little bit of brainstorming on my part to get the ball rolling. Some of these may be reasonable for Miqo’te and some not, but it’s all thought provoking. Depending on how tribal or modern/cultured you wish to play your tribe, the rules will likely vary widely. As a comparison to human society, many of these practices started out very brutal with duels to the death and evolved to be more gentlemanly or even outlawed due to social pressure and changes in attitudes about the value of life and human/civil rights. Dueling in Human History For as long as humans have been in conflict with each other, there have been established rules (both written and oral tradition) for settling those disputes. Duels occurred in the United States and many European countries well into the 1800s, despite laws being leveled against their practice. In some countries and some cultures (and some counter-cultures) the practice persists to this day. I’ll mostly be referencing the Western notion of a duel, as that is what I’m familiar with. Depending on the situation, rules could vary widely, but generally followed a similar structure. All duels start with a challenge, sometimes referred to as a “demand for satisfaction.” To refuse a challenge is considered dishonorable or cowardly. Each participant appointed another man to be his second. The duty of the seconds is to agree upon a time and location for the duel as well as assure that all aspects of the duel are fair. Once a suitable location had been found and a time for the duel set, all parties would meet and discuss the conditions or terms of the duel. These tend to vary between cultures and historical periods. Some common choices for conditions include: Victory conditions: first blood, submission, incapacitation, death Weapon choice: matched weapons versus individual preference Limited resources: three shields in a Viking duel, a certain number of shots or volleys in a pistol duel Stakes or consequences for winning or losing the duel Once terms had been decided and the seconds agreed that the terms were fair, the duel commenced and resolved based on the skills of the duelists. Historical Archetypes I’ll now go into some of the different historical methods whereby humans engaged in dueling. Hopefully these will inspire some interesting methods and culture for those playing Seekers of the Sun. If any of these interest you, I suggest looking them up on Wikipedia (where I researched most of this information) or other sources, as I’m only giving a short paragraph for each. Jousting One of the early forms of ritualized dueling, this involved knights with lances riding each other down and trying to knock the other off his horse. Originally, the joust would often be followed up with a fight using hand weapons like swords, maces, and flails to settle the terms of the duel. Later jousting became much ritualized as a sport, with points being awarded for dismounting your opponent as well as breaking your lance against his armor/shield, and the winner declared by points after a certain number of rounds. Renaissance Sword Fighting This sort of duel began as a means for gentlemen to settle courtly disputes. Many different styles of swordsmanship were developed for fighting such duels. For those interested in these sorts of duels, I suggest looking into the roleplaying game 7th Sea by AEG and its less insightful bastard son Swashbuckling Adventures in d20/D&D. There are expansive rules and a long list of fully detailed swordsman schools (which includes schools for fist fighting, spears, bows, and a variety of other weapons) for inspiration. Iajutsu/Iaido This is the Japanese art of quick-drawing the sword from its scabbard and striking your opponent in the same swift motion. While I’m unsure if this was ever used in historical Japan as a means of dueling, it was expanded greatly as a means of dueling and dispute resolution in the roleplaying game Legend of the Five Rings by AEG and its d20/D&D derivation Oriental Adventures. Holmgang This is the ancient Nordic practice of dueling. When a challenge was made, the participants would meet at a specified location and set out an animal skin on which to duel. It evolved over time to have a variety of conditions, but in general, a death in Holmgang was not considered murder and may or may not require restitution in the form of weregild. Later versions of the practice instituted a very small maximum payout to discourage dueling for profit. Another form involved each man producing three wooden shields and taking turns striking each other until the shields broke. The first man to lose his third shield or submit lost the duel. Pistol Duels This famous type of duel involved each man taking a loaded pistol, walking ten paces while the seconds counted, turning and firing on their opponent. Rules varied between one to three shots, with any more than three being considered barbaric, and the loser being the first person to suffer a gunshot wound. This later evolved in the American frontier to be a contest of both speed and accuracy with participants quick drawing revolvers at high noon. (As far as this could apply to Miqo’te, I suppose it’s possible a tribe could do this with bows or even magic.) Just Plain Weird Duels There have been a handful of duels noted in history for their exceptional strangeness. These are referenced on the Wikipedia page for dueling. They include a duel by two Frenchmen in hot air balloons trying to shoot out each other’s balloon and force them to fall to the ground as well as another duel by two Frenchmen in which they threw billiard balls at one another. The final, and weirdest, involved a challenge between two Germans in which one suggested they be presented with two sausages to eat, one of which had been infected with Trichinella (though historians apparently doubt the validity of this scenario). My Own Brainstormed Ideas These are ideas I came up with that have some cool potential for Seeker tribes. Some might recommend themselves well to existing tribes. Others may only see exploration through a guild specifically designed by the community to introduce a new or lost tribe with very different culture from the norm. Machiavellian Disclaimer: I’ve never read The Prince, despite many times deciding I should, so my input here will be little informed to the details of that text. What I envision here is a culture where cunning is valued over strength. Likely this would be associated with tribes that revere animals like snakes, spiders, and scorpions. The males would be political animals, the duel would involve maneuvering and backstabbing, and due to the need for subterfuge there would be no direct challenge. Rather, all males would be rivals and seek to secure and maintain the position through whatever means necessary. They would need to be prepared at all times for an assassin (or a poisoned drink) and go to great lengths to secure and maintain power. Survival Challenge This would be something along the lines of the recently popular survival shows on the Discovery Channel. Each male would be stripped to a limited wardrobe and given a knife before disappearing into the wilderness, most likely a desert or jungle. For one week, they must try to survive to the best of their ability. If both survive the entire week and return on the seventh day, the elders of the tribe will decide based on their health and condition which one performed the strongest. Alternatively, this could be combined with the endurance test below, where both men enter the desert, and whoever survives the longest before returning home is declared the victor. I imagine in this case there would be certain historical grounds, say a pair of five by five malm squares marked off and designated for this purpose, just so they could observe the challenge and know when to declare a winner. Tightrope Joust It’s been stated on several of the wikis that Miqo’te are renowned for their excellent balance (a typical trait of species with long tails). In this case, the challenge tests their agility and balance as well as strength. Each of the participants mounts a tightrope or balance beam with a spear, lance, or staff. I can see options for a single tightrope, two tightropes, or even a field of upright logs or pegs so the challengers can leap around the field in an attempt to gain high ground or some other advantage. You could even make it more complicated by having swinging pendulums or starting the two rope duel with acid dripping onto the ropes or a portion of the ropes on fire to add an air of urgency. Whichever challenger stays on the rope the longest claims victory. Endurance/Willpower Test This would be a challenge specifically designed to test the participants’ endurance, stamina, and willpower. Basically the idea is to see which one of them is truly the most driven and the most dedicated towards the goal. Examples would include the legendary swimming challenge described in Beowulf or the more modern challenge of the publicity stunt where a car or motorcycle dealer will give away a vehicle to whichever person can keep their hands on the vehicle the longest. In Conclusion I hope that this has inspired some of you to come up with different possibilities for your Seeker tribe to experience the duels associated with dominance among Seeker males. I expect that if you’ve fleshed out the culture for your tribe, that will suggest a certain kind of dueling, certain terms, and values associated with strength, honor, and life. If you haven’t fleshed out that culture yet, perhaps figuring out how they duel will give you more insight into their cultural values as a society. I haven’t even gotten into the rituals that would likely surround these duels, but I consider that an effort for those of you writing culture for your tribe. I’m sure that as long as these duels have been practiced, they’d develop a wide range of ceremony - from immediately grabbing a spear and drawing a circle in the sand to elaborate pre- and post-duel ceremonies along the lines of The Hunger Games. In fact I can see a tribe where when the Nunh dies or steps down, they have an event for all the eligible Tia similar to that of The Hunger Games. I’d love to hear ideas other people have for how their tribe undertakes this very important rite. Protection or Warding Duel I just had another idea for an interesting type of duel where there is either a fragile item (like a clay pot or effigy of a baby) or a second included as part of the duel, and the objective is to destroy your opponents guarded item or strike a blow on their ward. The idea here being that nunhs are protectors of the tribe, and whichever is more capable of protecting something or someone precious deserves the position.

It would be nice if we could also have a section on the wiki for guides. I've gotten a lot of good feedback from people on my own guide for crafting/gathering equipment, as has Akki-Chan for Crafting 101, but they keep drifting off the first page of the forum, making the information less accessible. I've never coded a wiki before, so not sure how much effort that would require.

My friends and I play a tabletop game called Fiasco that has an interesting take on the notion of a scene. It's a short game, designed to take just a few hours and result in generally terrible outcomes for all the characters involved. Here's how it works: You take turns going clockwise around the table with each player making a choice about what type of scene they would like to play. You have two options as the primary: choice of scenery or choice of outcome. If you choose the scenery, the primary gets to set up what sort of scene you want to have and which characters, locations, and other plot points are involved, but everyone else gets to decide the outcome. If you choose outcome, the primary has no input into what sort of scene their character is thrown into but reserves the right to choose how the scene ends for his or her character. Whichever option the primary doesn't choose is then determined by the rest of the group. It should be noted that the outcome is held in reserve and doesn't need to be stated before the scene starts. In fact it is encouraged that you don't state the outcome at the outset of the scene. You can play the scene halfway through, see which way the winds are blowing, then decide the most logical outcome or even invoke an unexpected change in the character's fortunes. Also, the notion of success or failure with unforeseen consequences is encouraged. While I'm not sure if any of this would be applicable to Final Fantasy roleplay, you may enjoy trying Fiasco out to get a feel for a system where the scenes are the core mechanic. It's a quick game as well. Every time I've played it, it's been hilarious and terrible (the good kind of terrible), and it only takes about two hours for four players.

Someone datamined the different carbuncles way back in phase 2. There was also a ruby carbuncle, and I think it was the tank version if memory serves. It sounded like the different versions were unlocked by class quests (the same way THM gets their instant blast spell and CNJ gets their water blast at level 15).

Myxie would love to be there! She's a low level 1.0 character, but I did get every crafting skill up to level 10, which is fine for making gear up to level 15 or so. I'd just need to collect materials, as all she had on her when I copied her to phase 3 was a load of hempen yarn and some cotton. It would also give her an opportunity to reveal her new and improved "Myxie Tryxle's Powdered Water System, Mark III" and hopefully find a group of willing test subjects. :angel: As for some suggestions, it would be cool if you could come up with some sort of puzzle, game, foot race, hide & seek, or some sort of activity with a goal and a prize or prizes for the winners. Maybe a few pieces of HQ gear, winner's choice of a stack of 100 crystals, vouchers for a guided dungeon run, pretty much anything. You could even do an HQ scavenger hunt, where people split up into groups of four and have to return with at least one HQ item of each type from a list of 5-10 things (mostly low level stuff like copper ore, muddy water, marmot meat, oranges and carrots, etc.). If most of the items were cooking ingredients, it would even support the barbecue idea, and you could call it a grocery list!

I'm not too familiar with bards in Final Fantasy settings, but they seem very similar to D&D bards. In that system, a bard gets several different types of songs for buffing their allies. The general explanation given for the songs and their effects is that they raise the morale of affected allies, inspiring them to spectacular feats. Kinda like "Eye of the Tiger" in the Rocky movies. It just gets you pumped up and ready for a fight. Most of the D&D bardic music abilities are spell-like or supernatural effects, so they are magically based and don't work in areas where magic is blocked. Also, what's the point of playing such a pretty game if you're going to skip all the cutscenes?

As the originator of that post and the target of most of the behavior for which you are apologizing, I'd like to express my gratitude for this post. It shows a lot of courage. Reputation +1 I can see why you would be frustrated that most of the discussion surrounding Miqo'te at the moment revolves around their reproductive biology. I even put forth an hour's worth of research and writing to try to expand the topic to include a discussion of the senses idea you requested as well as suggesting that it could be balanced from an RP perspective. For the response to that effort to be a personal insult followed by two directly contradictory rants about how uninformed I am as a biologist while putting words in my mouth is insulting. I understand the desire to expand the discussion to other aspects of Miqo'te biology and culture, and I wholeheartedly approve. I'd like to see and engage in those discussions. If the discussions are rational and respectful, I'll be right there offering my own insights, considering others' viewpoints, and modifying my own perspective on the subject.

Reposting this from the other thread to continue the discussion. To clarify what I actually said in that post. I didn't include lions on the list of animals because I couldn't find any source to tell me "Lion sense of smell is X times stronger than humans." I suppose it is slightly implied by the comparisons, but I never stated explicitly that Miqo'te sense of smell should be on par with house cats. In fact.... Here I assert that I would be cool with someone playing a character whose scent capabilities fall anywhere within the range between house cats and wolves. In D&D, a character can absolutely develop a sense of smell capable of tracking someone by smell, it just requires them to expend two of their feats and invest skill points in survival/wilderness lore, and skill penalties accrue for every hour since the scent trail was laid. Since those two feats and skill points are a limited resource, it's balanced by the fact that you're giving up an opportunity for attack feats or stealth skills by improving it. If you can find some way to do that in an MMO where we don't have RP character sheets or stat points to balance between a large number of character options, I personally would be cool with it. Mostly this comes down to a balancing act. In tabletop systems, you have a limited pool of resources (experience points, feats, skill ranks, etc.) to balance powers so that every character conforms to some sort of par and encounters can present a reasonable challenge in order to be fun. MMOs are more of a balancing act since there are no stat points, so this kind of discussion is good to help establish what is reasonable and what is overpowered/god-moding.

To clarify what I actually said in that post. I didn't include lions on the list of animals because I couldn't find any source to tell me "Lion sense of smell is X times stronger than humans." I suppose it is slightly implied by the comparisons, but I never stated explicitly that Miqo'te sense of smell should be on par with house cats. In fact.... Here I assert that I would be cool with someone playing a character whose scent capabilities fall anywhere within the range between house cats and wolves. In D&D, a character can absolutely develop a sense of smell capable of tracking someone by smell, it just requires them to expend two of their feats and invest skill points in survival/wilderness lore, and skill penalties accrue for every hour since the scent trail was laid. Since those two feats and skill points are a limited resource, it's balanced by the fact that you're giving up an opportunity for attack feats or stealth skills by improving it. If you can find some way to do that in an MMO where we don't have RP character sheets or stat points to balance between a large number of character options, I personally would be cool with it. This will be the last I say about the senses argument on this thread. I'll be moving this discussion to the thread Khaze'to and Alothia started here.

I'll take a stab at the second part first. From the private messages I've gotten regarding this thread, the vast majority want this information to inform their character's backstory. Because the male Miqo'te are new to the setting and because their social structure is different from normal humans due to their different mating strategies, people have a lot of questions without any answers leading to a lot of discussion. As for the other discussion you mention about the senses, I'd be very interested to see that thread. I did a little digging and got a couple ideas. For your quote about the Miqo'te sense of smell, I found this quote from 1.x: "Midlanders do not possess the endless stamina of the Roegadyn, nor the hawk-like eyes of the Elezen, nor the hound-like noses of the Miqo'te, nor the deer-like ears of the Lalafell, nor even the muscle-bound builds of their cousins, the Highland Hyur." It's the only one I could find equating Miqo'te to hounds. Considering this comes from an NPC description of Midlander Hyur rather than a description of Miqo'te, my take is that it's a little bit of poetic license, and that they were likely exaggerating a little bit to punctuate the notion that Midlanders were the "jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none." Just as I would doubt that Roegadyn all have no limit to their stamina and that Elezen have eyes that are literally capable of telescopic vision like many birds of prey. Further searching yielded this quote, which seems to come directly from a description about Miqo'te. This same quote appeared on several wikis. Although I couldn't find its source in game, it sounds like it came from the character creator: "Adaption to a hunting lifestyle has fashioned them with a keen sense of smell, powerful legs, and a tail which provides them with exceptional balance." Doing a little bit of internet research, I came up with the following numbers. Real-world cats have senses of smell that are roughly 14 times as acute as humans. For wolves, their sense of smell jumps to 100 times the strength of humans (about 7 times more powerful than cats). Bloodhounds are the terrestrial kings. Their sense of smell is around 300 times more powerful than humans (3 times that of wolves and 20 times that of cats). Given the source in game is NPC dialog and the fact that bloodhounds are the result of 1000 years of artificial selection by humans to specifically strengthen their sense of smell over all other traits, the idea that Miqo'te have scent capabilities equivalent to bloodhounds is unreasonable. A shark, for example, can detect blood in the water at concentrations as low as 1 part per billion, but it dedicates a third of its brain to olfaction in order to do so. The other problem with a super-human sense of smell is that it's game breaking for a variety of scenarios. If you're throwing a murder mystery event and someone's character can just smell the butler's scent on the bloody candlestick as well as the victim's blood on the butler despite him washing his hands, the story ends in three minutes and no one had any fun. It becomes an arms race where the storyteller has to bend over backwards to find a means to completely negate the player's ability just to have an interesting story, leaving both parties aggravated. If we consider the second quote as giving a more reasonable interpretation for a Miqo'te to have a sense of smell somewhere in the real world cat to wolf range and limited the capability of the trait to something along the lines of the scent feat from D&D 3.5, I think that would be more reasonable. Personally, I'm curious about Miqo'te night vision. I was watching a documentary on lions yesterday and learned that their night vision is far better than humans can achieve even with military grade night vision goggles. Real world lions do a lot of their hunting at night, and often sleep through the heat of the day, so they differ from Seekers in that regard. While not explicitly mentioned anywhere that I can find, I wouldn't think it unreasonable that at least the Keepers would have really good night vision.

The original inspiration for this thread was a thread about inbreeding by Swift a few days back. In it, he and others were asking questions like: Why don't the Miqo'te suffer from inbreeding? Would the Miqo'te have traditional father figures? Could my character have a Seeker father and Keeper mother? Most people just wanted to flesh out a good back story for their characters, despite the lack of lore. We got some good discussion going there, and Swift asked me if he could reuse the information on other forums, so I decided to write a more cohesive thesis and bring all those questions together. There was a lot of good feedback on that thread as well as this one, and it became obvious a lot of people were asking these sorts of questions and valuing the input. As far as ERP goes, I find it a little far-fetched to say that this discussion is ERP or encouraging ERP. As far as I can tell, character background or lore are not a consideration, and hardcore ERPers (the ones that most roleplayers despise for giving the community at large a dubious reputation) care about two things: how hot is my character and how sexually explicit is the interaction? Looking back at the entire thread, the most sexually explicit posts by far are the flames against it. I'm rather impressed and proud of this community that 95% of the discussion has been intellectual and informative. If it weren't, I would have already petitioned a moderator to lock or delete the thread. As for the notion of someone using the lore to justify blackmailing others into creepy, unwanted RP, that would likely happen regardless of what the lore is, because that person is a creep. At the very least, it would come out over time. Most people will back down if you send them a tell that you're not comfortable with being pressured into a certain type of roleplay. If they don't, blacklist them and move on. Plenty of better people than that out there to RP with.

Doing a little research on the subject, I found these results from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR). "In a sample of 669 action, shooter, and role-playing games selected by EEDAR in 2012, only 24 (4%) had an exclusively female protagonist, and 300 (45%) provided the option of selecting one. Examining the sales data and review scores of these games, EEDAR found that the games that included the option of selecting a female hero obtained better scores, but the ones with male-only protagonists sold better than the others. However, games with a female-only protagonist had, on average, only 50% of the marketing budget of female-optional games, and 40% of the marketing budget of games with male-only protagonists." Not only are games with female protagonists less common, when they are made, there's less effort to advertise them. The trend is changing though, which is good. I'd be interested to see a breakdown of American versus Japanese games, but I couldn't find that information, if it exists. It's rather interesting and counter-intuitive that games with the option of a female protagonist receive higher ratings yet don't sell as well as games with no female options, though that probably has to do with the marketing difference. I think it's encouraging, though. The game industry seems to be evolving towards more equitable and realistic female roles. I think as more games like this appear and attract more female gamers, this perception in the industry that female protagonists aren't as profitable as their male counterparts will disappear.

What a lot of Mary Sues don't realize is that the flaws of a character tend to be more defining than their strengths, because the flaws will define which situations end up being tense and dramatic as well as giving them a hurdle to overcome. Let's consider for the moment a skilled warrior facing off against a mounted opponent. The warrior is at a slight disadvantage, but since he's a PC, he has that PC edge, so after a long fight with a few close calls he prevails. Now consider that same warrior, except he has a crippling fear of horses (or chocobos) because he was thrown from one as a child and broke his leg. Now, in addition to having to face the challenge of the mounted combatant, he has to find a way to conquer his own fear or flee the fight. Depending on how he overcomes the situation, there's potential for real character growth. The balancing act comes in picking the right flaws. As an example, I made a character once in an MMO with amnesia. Trying to meet new people to RP with generally went something like this: "Hello, I'm Flavius McRoleplayer. Who are you?" ".... I'm not sure." "..... Okay. What do you do?" "I seem to be pretty good with a sword, so I guess I'm a warrior." ..... ..... That character didn't last long in my roleplay efforts. Googling "character flaws" will lead to quite a few resources with lists of examples as well as a little bit of advice on what makes generally good or bad flaws. It's best to pick one or two, as more than that can become debilitating or unrealistic. Another good idea is to pick out a quirk. This isn't a flaw, per se, just a peculiar characteristic of your character that can make them more memorable. There's a ton of websites with suggestions for these as well if you need inspiration. One or two will make your character feel a little more human, because we all have some little things we do that are unique to our personality. For example, in real life I always need to have something in my hand. If my hands aren't occupied, I'll reach for something nearby to roll around or manipulate without even realizing I'm doing it (just realized I'm doing it right now with my glasses while I reread what I've typed). Much like flaws, any more than one or two quirks and your character risks becoming a caricature.

I think that actually puts you in the majority. I've seen way more city-dwelling Miqo'te males than traditional tribal males, both among Seekers and Keepers. I'm of the opinion that a lot of this is happening in some sort of off-screen or behind the curtain manner. For example, if you go outside Ul'dah, there's a single farm, whereas outside Limsa, there's quite a few farms and orchards. Is one farm supporting the entire populace of Ul'dah? Probably not. The vast majority of populations for all these races are never seen, because a truly realistic world would be too expansive to be captured in the game. The major cities, however, need that sort of description. You misunderstand. I'm not talking about NPCs nor the environment. I'm talking about PCs. I think a vast majority of roleplayers who play male Miqo'te do not roleplay tribal or traditional characters. Ryu' said that he feels hes in the "small percentage" of characters who don't understand or identify with traditional Miqo'te cultures. I'm arguing that characters like that are not a "small percentage," but instead a vast majority. Those who play traditional male Miqo'te characters, I feel, are in the minority. Especially Seeker males. Sorry, it makes better sense now that I know you meant players. It's a shame they waited until 2.0 to add in male Miqo'te and female Roegadyn. We could have avoided the need for discussions like this. Hopefully we'll see a lot of Miqo'te lore fairly quickly.