Ildur

I think it is quite clear that Squee's intention is to use housing as a huge gil sink, except they a doing it wrong. The smallest houses should be accesible to all FCs, while medium and big plots should be the ones were considerable investment is needed. But even then the greatest investment of housing should come in furnishing the place. Not to mention the current pricing is probably going to kill any furniture crafting enterprises (if that was going to be a thing, anyway). The purpose is clearly erasing gil from the economies, but also to give players a stupidly long term goal. Because, you know, having a broken economy means the only reliable way of makingmoney will be grinding mobs. And that is something that will keep your players playing and subscribing for three months, as long as you give them the correct carrot. Or in this case, housing. It will also melt their brains, increasing the chances that they will keep subscribing and accepting all your shitty design choices! On a more positive note: at least we will have three new urban areas to roleplay in!

There doesn't seem to be any kind of language barrier in Eorzea's societies, I'm afraid. The naming conventions only reflect certain styles of pronunciation and etcetera because that's basically how each race spoke long, long ago. While it's probable that some scholar or knowledge-hoarder would know how to speak ancient Miqo'te (or whatever), it would be like latin in our world: it's not used anywhere. There's only "Eorzean", as far as we know. And Ancient Roegadyn, but that's only used for naming. I would say they seem to be based on African words. However, the conventions theirselves seem pretty classic. Romans traditionally had three names: the name given by the parents, the family name, and a nickname (used to differentiate them from other people with the same two names). Miqo'te females are only missing the nickname. Sunseeker males have only the name and the nickname denoting their social status, dropping the family suffix for no apparent reason more than Author Bias. Interestingly, Moonkeeper males have a nickname in the form of the suffix that can be translated to "the first", "the second", etcetera. So they are the most 'classic' of them all. So yeah, Ancient Rome as far as conventions go. The tribe prefix on Sunseekers could be considered the "Name from City", which people used when they left their homes.

I'm finding the game fun overall, but I'm finding combat's design is completely imbalanced and the mining isn't particularly fun. Mining is very slow. Digging through dirt becomes really easy very soon, but mining ores takes lots of time. Coupled with ores being scattered in small pockets until later planets. But in those the ores you need are still in small clusters. Except the ones that have the mobs that one shot you. Why they one shot you? Because you don't have the armor. Why don't you have the armor? Because you need the ores. Which ores? The ones in the planet with the mobs that one shot you. A partial solution I found was to search the wiki for planets with the best gun dealer in the sector and buy one of those. Then you end up one shotting a lot of the mobs and having an actual opportunity to kill the others as long as they don't catch you first. So yeah, fun game but has a lot of balance issues. "It's a beta" and yadda yadda. I know! But I fear some of these problems might come from design decisions the devs might not be willing to change. I already feel the recent changes they made to combat were to 'clarify' the system and not overhaulingit. We'll see. It's still early, after all! One reason to set up a home planet is farming. Not that it's needed right now, mind: I have survived up to the Gamma sector with nothing but 10 slices of meat and picking the wild fruits and vegetables of certain planets. But if you want to have enough land to grow some food, you'll need a home planet. But besides a random farm in a planet I quickly forgot about, I too keep all my crafting stations and chests on the ship. It's so convenient! Wish they add a way to make it larger, because it's getting a bit cramped and all the chests are full already.

There is no hero. The problem is that the "chosen one" plot most MMOs use, including ARR, cannot be redeemed with a roleplaying enviorement. As you have said, the whole "hero" who "did this things" is tossed out of the window. He cannot coexist logically with a roleplaying enviorement. And I say "logically" because a hero that did all the things our characters do on the main storyline would be pretty damn famous (as evidenced by quest NPCs that recognize us). If the hero existed, he would have a name, a race, a class, a personality. None of these things are possible because the writers decided that each player character is the "chosen one". There is no other solution but to take out the "hero" as presented by the storyline. The alternative is to stablish a "fanonical" hero, but this comes with a mountain of troubles, the first of them being the coordination and enforcement of the "fanon" to the roleplaying community. It is an impossible task. So instead the "hero" never exists. All the elements that include him are made generic. And we have a really nice tool to do that: Grand Companies. Who defeated the first Titan summoning since Limsa Lominsa broke their threaty with the kobolds? The Maelstorm did. Not a particular hero, or a band of adventurers, but troops of the Company. Maybe adventurers helped. It doesn't need to be particularly detailed. Then you do the same with all other events. There is no hero. There cannot be one.

What we know about Elder Primals for sure is that they used to be locked in some kind of prison. The Allagans locked Bahamut in the moon, and someone else locked Odin in a crystal in the Shroud. This and the Odin FATE tells me that Elder Primals can manifest without help, unlike the other Primals. This doesn't tell us anything about their origins, but I'd wager the "metaphysical" difference between a Primal and an Elder is simply the ammount of aether they were summoned with: an Elder Primal has absorbed the maximum ammount of aether it could, it's very essence becoming a part of the world instead of just existing with no shape in the lifestream. But that's just speculation on my part. Squee might throw us more bones once they unlock more turns of the Coil.

That quote kind of debunks itself. Emphasis is mine: There's also the detail that you might still need a special permit to evem board an airships. So there would be two locks on airship travel: the permit (which is apparently given by very, very important people, if Kan-E-Senna is to be taken at face value) and then the payment of the ticket, which makes sense if you consider the expenses of mantaining an airship. Another interpretation that comes to me is that Kan-E-Senna might be actually refering to the airship travel that pertains to that specific quest. Not everyone needs a permit, you just got one that says "Official Messenger" that allowed you to travel for free. In light of what you quoted, Merri, I will say this is the most likely explanation.

Are they? Losing a battle doesn't mean they lost the war. The game becomes a bit silly after the main scenario, what with the city-state leaders declaring a new age only because So I'm not sure we can state that the garleans are effectively weak after the main scenario. Unless, of course, the garleans are stated to retreat en-masse from Eorzea after it (I forgot a lot of the details, so feel free to correct me). But that makes no sense and can't be enforced in-game, where all the garlean enemies and forts remain right where they were.

I would refrain from using any kind of traditional FF summon that isn't in game yet. There are a number of reasons for this. There's no evidence of their existence in the ARR universe. You'd need to make your own "fanon", which will become invalid as soon as Squeenix decides to introduce official lore. If they do that, then whatever you write has a big chance of becoming completely invalid, canon-wise. If the creature is in game, however, and you can find evidence of their summoning in game then feel free to use it. For example, voidsents and golems are constantly summoned or created by enemies, so we can safely assume that they are things you can summon. From there you can infer other types of creatures that could be summoned, but the key is that such a thing must be grounded in some in-game creature. What I'd do: First, search for a creature thematically or physically similar to Anima. If there's one, go to step two. Adapt that creature into being Anima-like. Otherwise, you'll have to adapt Anima into being something else. Not a summon in the sense ARR's summoners use it (so it's not the essence of a Primal), but it could be some other type of creature. Maybe a type of voidsent or a golem.

A name change is the easiest thing to roleplay. "From now on, I shall be named...Alex Action!" And you are done. You don't even need a name voucher to change your name in-character. The reason we identify Fantasia as an actually canonical item is that Squee gave it an lore-friendly description. Why bother to do that if it is not part of the world?

You could always consider pull a Comic Book Industry Gambit and use a Retcon: your character was always female, and all interactions in the past with her are retroactively changed to reflect that or are handwaved as never happening if they weren't appropiate (like, for example, if your male character flirted with a female who is strictly uninterested in other females). This is the simplest solution if you can get everyone you have interacted with in the same page. I will assume that you want to have some kind of character arc for this change, though. I would copy-paste and tweak a similar plot from the Baldur's Gate 2 game, where a excessively arrogan magician called Edwin searches and finally gets hold of a strange magical scroll fabled to be "too dangerous". He casts it, and all it does is change him into a woman. Hilarity might or might not ensue. The plot is eventually resolved by Edwin dispelling the effects of the scroll. In your case, the plot will never be resolved with that. Also, your character, according to your wiki, is a marauder and not a magician. With that in mind, I propose the following: Instead of the scroll Baldur's Gate used, make it an actual artifacl. A rod, a wand, anything. Then specify that its power is shapeshifting. Have your character (and maybe other to tag along) be contacted by someone (a scholar?) to search ruins or whatever locations you can think of where the artifact might be. Then you can do a couple of things depending on how fast you want this particular portion of the plot to go. You can just have your character recklessly touch or use the object (for whatever reason; it could be accidental) and releasing the spell on him. Or you could have the scholar/employer try the object on him once acquired. Why? Fear of it being broken, or fear that it would transform him into a rabbit forever. The accident is problably the best bet, since the second option really throws your employer into villain territory. A third option I can think of that is relativelly painless and quick is to blame the change on a potion. Your character acquired it from some shady individual and, for some reason, decided to drink it. Maybe it was suppoused to be a really, really good healing potion, or a very expensive wine. Except it was nothing of that, and it was really a bottle filled with the Fantasia draught. Then you can have the shady individual drop to a side and never be seen, or start a plot about hunting him down for explanations and then elaborate a larger plot from there.

No, they are nothing like saints in Christianity. They are like gods in ancient Greece or Rome. Certain greek city-states had a patron god because they valued that god more, for whatever reason. In Rome, for example, Jupiter was the main the god for Roman mythology but, in practice, Mars was more important because he was the god of war (and the Romans liked their military victories very, very much). Basically, the gods in those societies are diverse aspects of reality. In Eorzea, this is also the case. Ul'dah gives importance to Nald'thal because he's the god of commerce. Limsa to Llymaen because they are seafaring. Gridania to whatever the goddess of harvest was. Ishgard to Halone because she gave them a divine command to wage war to the dragons (and is the goddess of war). Each society/community gives more importance to one god above the others because he or she is the most prominent aspect of reality in their life. But that doesn't mean there is no worshipping to the others. It's just that most of their important rites, celebrations and customs will be tailored to favor that particular one.

It wouldn't be hard to imagine some Duskwights left the Shroud to live somewhere else. Factors like the Woodwrath (the Elementals hating you and setting the whole forest against you) or Gridania's rampant xenophobia are good reasons to leave that cursed wood and go live somewhere else. Adopting an irregular naming convention can also be justified as a form to differentiate themselves from those elezen who come that place or Ishgard.

There's no need to be heartless about it. Just play the situation as it is presented: K'raqi has been kidnapped and nobody knows who or why did it. You can poke (on-screen or off-screen) the Brass Blades or the Immortal Flames for information. You can have your characters react to the lack of actions to be taken over the matter. Get angry or depressed! Or comfort those characters that see the hopelessness of the situation. Spend a week or two with the matter. Or not. That is, of course, if the kidnapping can even be confirmed ICly. Otherwise, he's just another K tribe missing member. On another note, K'airos is somewhere in Ul'dah's territory. Since she's a Brass Blade, I can arbitrarily drop her anywhere in Thanalan and justify it with "orders". She's been in Drybone for a while now.

We can always pretend the NPC is lying or insane. With that said, we should remember that this is fantasy and we can twist reality a bit. What's more, we can twist it a bit further because this isn't just fantasy but also cooperative storytelling, and nobody wants to spend a month roleplaying walking from one city to the next. Sure, you could go ahead and make a time skip, but then people are just going to get confused, and there are many things that could happen in a month of in-universe time. With the interests of rapidity but also of consistency and coherency in mind, I think stating that it takes a week of travel from Gridania to Limsa Lominsa is decent enough. It gives you time to roleplay the journey if you want, and if you decide to skip it for whatever reason you do not break the flow of everyone's micro-canonical chronology too much. Though, of course, if you want it to take a month you can also go with that. But I do not feel that is fast enough for a fantasy setting where most characters are controlled by a person. We all have things to do, after all.

I wouldn't give Cure and Stoneskin so much credit as skills on paladins. On a dungeon enviorement they are meaningless. The heal is not significant enough to make a difference unless you are fighting exactly one trash mob (and if you are, your healer should have your back anyway), it eats a lot of MP which is better used for Flash, and while you can recover MP by using that one combo move, your skills are better used on enmity generation. I haven't leveled White Mage on my Paladin enough to get Stoneskin, but really, paladins don't need it. In fact, I'll go ahead and say that the only reason a paladin would get conjurer up to 15 is because is is a Job requeriment. Sure, Cure and Protect are nice for soloing or overworld questing/FATE parties, but they get absolutely nothing useful from conjurers as far as tanking goes. With that said, I do like Warrior's changes. I should probably level mine up so I can pretend to know what people are talking about when discussing this changes!

I'm sorry, K'ailia, but that lalafell is definitely not relaxing. That's not how a child would relax on a bed. However, it does look suspiciously to how they would sleep. Just look at this face. That's not the a face anyone would have if they were relaxing, but it is the expression they'd have during deep sleep. I do agree that maybe Squee went for a 'lay down and relax' animation, though. Except for lalafellin, for whatever reason. Just as the Miqo'te are subject to oversexualization, lalafellin are subject to overcuteness. If they wanted to convey that he was relaxing (and not necessarily sleeping), they should have picked a pose that conveys it better. Just like the one the Miqo'te has. The one they showed of is more appropiate for a 'sleep' animation than a 'relax' one. We'll see once the animations for the other races come up. Maybe lalafellin are the only ones who actually sleep during the /doze.

For being so worried about players making inappropiate imagery with the emotes, they sure gave Miqo'te women a pose that has a lot of potential for creating those. Just add a male and have him /grovel or /kneel above her and you have an instant inappropiate image.

It could be that the soul is a metaphysical entity,. If you think about it, aether is a very physical thing. It can be measured and you can create devices that let you 'see' it (like the googles the Scions wear). Souls, however, cannot be seen or measured. Though there are some enemies called "souls" that appear in ruins or areas where the dead would be. I don't think it's ever mentioned if these 'soul' creatures are really souls or just some kind of monster that just happens to be called that. It would also explain why an afterlife (Thal's realm) can exist along with the idea of the ever recycling Lifestream: aether is what makes the physical realm possible, but isn't linked to the metaphysical. It also explains why the Primals need it to manifest or why their manifestations would eventually kill the planet: they are literally eating on the substance of physical reality.

There are three problems I can see with your interpretation of the "aether cycle". First: there's nothing implying that "physical aether" does not go back to the lifestream, in that scenario. Dead bodies are eventually destroyed (either by decomposition or other means), so once that happens, the aether that was in that body should go back to the Lifestream too. It's just not an immediate process. Second: it is never specified that the aether is divided 50/50 between soul and body. Maybe the ratio is 99/1. Or 999/1. We don't really know, and dividing it on a 50/50 ratio is just arbitrary. So it is very possible that whatever aether goes into forming a body is meaningless compared to the aether needed for a soul. This could mean that the aether is eventually recovered, or that maybe it doesn't really leave the system since, again, bodies decompose and whatever matter was in them is absorbed by the enviorement. Third: Maybe the aether needed for making a normal soul/body isn't significant at all in the grand scheme of things. Maybe the aether "lost" by the death of normal living creatures is like a natural evaporation on a pool of water. You might be losing water, but it's so slow and minimal that it doesn't really matter. Primals, on the other hand, consume large ammounts of aether to manifest. So a primal summoning isn't like evaporation: it's someone with a bucket stealing the pool's water and dumping it into a lava pit. It might take him a long, long time to deplete the water, but it will happen much faster than if you let the pool be and evaporate on its own.

Any biological or ecological oddity can be solved with this statement: "A wizard Dalamud did it." I'd also like to point out, on a more serious note, that the fact the level designers stink at ecological consistency does not mean we should take that as part of lore. Oddities that make no sense in the real world should be considered as oddities in the game world, too, and theories about why they are as such can be formed on a speculative scale while completely in-character.

Kipih Jakkya might just be missing the tribe letter. Or Squee flucked on their own lore. Again. I remember they had an NPC back in the day that also had the same "Looks like a Seeker, is named like a Keeper" problem and they solved it by claiming she was a half-breed or something. Also, the only think in Sunseeker society shaped by the nunh is the last name for females and the adquisition of territory to the tribe. There's nothing implying that the nunh takes ownership of it for himself, or that he has more authority than the females who go with him. The only way you could apply patriarchy to their society as described by the lore, is to put too much importance on the breeding aspect of the nunh. Which is, really, the only aspect they have. That's all they do: have children. Any other type of authority is a coincidence. The U tribe should be seen as the exception to the rule rather than the rule itself (which I know is problematic because there are no other tribes despicted in game). Again, I'm sure Squeenix just flopped on their own lore, but we have to work around their sillyness and the way to do that is to consider the U tribe an anomaly. Or, I guess you could consider anything that isn't in the game as the anomaly. I guess that depends on where you think the Authorial Intent is. EDIT: Woops! And this is what happens when you take too long on a post, folks. You miss on the post that was posted one minute before yours. Still, leaving everything there just to state why I don't think the U tribe should be used as the go-to of Seeker culture.

The fact Sunseeker women take the name of the father has little to do with patriarchal power and more with easy information. Since a tribe's territory is (traditionally) related to the local Nunh, other tribe members could identify where a Miqo'te woman comes from by knowing her father. "Oh, so you're one of Borlen's daughters. How are things on the other side of the river?" A patriarchal society would have the fathers be important in society or family by giving them authority. The only thing the nunh have is a right to have children because they are the bravest/best. That's not leadership. It's eugenetics. Then again, it's likely Squee just made up a bunch of arbitrary things to cater to the 'OMG harem catgirl society!' factor and then forgot to follow up on it beyond that (as evidenced by the U tribe).

There really isn't much lore anywhere in game about the religious traditions or rites of Eorzean gods, except maybe Ishgard, and even then all we get is that they have the silliest method to discover heretics. Everything else is vague and all we have is that there's reverence to those who died (seen in the graveyard north of Drybone: people make offerings to the dead) and that you can pray to the gods. Do they have specific prayers? Specific offerings to them? How is their priesthood? What we can infer is that some priests seem to be of the catholic-ish variety (again, from those in the church north of Drybone), but then I have no idea who they are supposed to be priests of. Nald'thal, maybe? Let's go back to the relationships between gods. I can't find why you think Nymeia is Rhalgr's wife. She is his master, but Halone and Byregot aren't childrens of her. At least there's nothing in lore suggesting that. Though I guess you could imply that Rhalgr had to be with a goddess in order to have those two. However, since the gods seem to be more metaphysical than physical (unlike, say, the Primals, who continuously manifest in the world with a body), any relationships between them must be by definition metaphorical. So, let's see. We have Fate (Nymeia) and Time (Althyk) being brothers. Time is the father of the Sun/Inquiry (Azeyma) and the Moon/Love (Menphina). The Moon is married with the Wandering (Oschon), who is brother with Trade/Death (Nald'thal, who are actually Nald and Thal, two aspects of the same god, often refered to as twins). Then we have that the Sun/Inquiry (Azeyma) and Knowledge (Thaliak) is mother of Fertility (Nophica) and Navigation (Llymlaen). To finish, we have that Destruction (Rhalgr) is father of War (Halone) and Craftmanship (Byregot), with the later being also pupil of Knowledge (Thaliak). With all those relationships, and with my stomach empty, I can deduct the following: -Nymeia, Althyk, Thaliak and Rhalgr are the main gods, as they are the only ones that weren't created by divine marriage. I should probably spend more time thinking on this subject, but anything that sprouts from there will be just speculation. There's not much in-game (that I have seen, anyway) to infer, induct or deduct about the religion of the place besides "Yeah, gods. They are a thing and you can pray to them!"

Well, most of these questions have good answers, so I'll add my cents to only a few of them. Ul'dah's damage seems to have been limited to the Milvaneth Sacrarium, which I -think- is a Thaumaturge building. It's been on repairs for five years, though, so some people think there's actually something else going on in there. The large ammount of refugees going to Ul'dah after the Calamity also suggests it was the least damaged of the cities, though there's also its popularity as the richest nation, and the fact that Limsa requires sea travel to get there (which is not something refugees can afford). There are a bunch of soldier NPCs in Fallgourd Float who emote taking two hours to get there from Gridania, trotting. So that would imply Fallgourd is 30kms apart from Gridania, if we consider a trotting speed of 15km/h and no slow downs at all (which isn't realistic, but it's Fantasy!). However, I think it was stated by the devs that the game world is not made in scale, so even with this measure we can't really know how far things are from each other. My rule of thumb is that it takes one day to cross one full area. So Vesper Bay would be one day away from Ul'dah, and Gridania would be five days apart. A better way to measure it, though, might be to actually make the trips in-game by walking and seeing how many in-game cycles pass until you reach your destination. Then make a couple of adjustements (add time spent eating and sleeping). I'd treat it as having a horse in the modern world unless you are part of a Grand Company (or an organization that would have easy access to them). There are no naming conventions for chocobos. If the game allows it mechanically, then it should be all right to use during roleplay. You can take certain liberties as long as they make sense, but you have to stay away from becoming a "Master of All". For example, while it might seem like a mage should be able to use Thaumaturgy, Arcanima and Conjury at the same time with the same efficiency, he actually shouldn't in most cases. Conjury requires a staff or scepter made of untreated wood, and Arcanima is heavy on mathematics and numbers (hence why people use books). You can work around this in some ways. Maybe your character has inscribed some Arcanima formulas and glyphs (or whatever they are called) on his blade, so he can use it with some efficacy, but not as much as if he had an actual magical book with him. Balance and logic are the things you need to use when mixing classes or making things up, really.