"Ethics" of the Centurio Hunting Clan? SPOILER WARNING

[Zelmanov]

So, Hunt logs, things you don't really think about...things you don't really do these days either due to better means of gearing up. But you guys ever really pay attention to the hunt marks?

 

Yes we got the dhamels and sky worms and catoblepas, we have things such as Vanu Vanu, Gnath, very sentient, though hostile beings . And yet we are given a carte blanche to slaughter them quite indiscriminately. Even in the 50 hunts, we can be tasked with murderizing many a beastman..

 

What do you think of this? Just gameplay / lore seperation situation? Or is this truly indicative of how deeply terrible the eorzean people are to anyone that doesn't truly fit the "sons of man" description?

[Coatleque]

It's standard MMO content. Get weapon, commit genocide of , collect 5 gold, repeat tomorrow.

[Dat Oni]

I tend to utilize stuff like this:

 

Non-Sentient:

1. The target population is out of control and needs to be culled.

2. The target presents a real threat to nearby persons.

 

Sentient:

1. The target is inherently hostile to nearby persons.

2. The target has caused damage to persons or property.

[111]

We had to murder lots of garleans to finish our relics. AND INFUSE THE WEAPONS WITH THEIR BLOOD AND AETHER.

 

Adventurers are horrible people, they always are in all games.

 

It's basically a profession of glorified murderous grave robbers.

[Caspar]

Yeah previously your character essentially emerges from the mists to brutally murder a single garlean officer, leaving his friends terrified and wondering who's next.

[ɴᴘᴄ]

I suppose whether you view the Ishgardian Hunt as a necessary conservation act or purely as sport, the adventurers are essentially admitted into a 'gentle person's club' where they work for private scrip. Not state-sanctioned per se in the manner of the GC Hunts, but the mechanics are much the same. I imagine that many citizens would feel that, ethically, these activities are a program of lesser evil, though they may feel the contract killing of sentient but wicked beings nonetheless morally objectionable.

 

Interesting topic for consideration.

[Hyakki]

I like to look at the hunts this way: hunters are going after creatures threatening nearby settlements and only taking the offending marks, not trying to cause an extinction or genocide (unless it's dragons)

 

As for places like Churning Mists and Azys Lla, the marks are specimens collected for study.

[Faye]

Pretty sure it's just a gameplay mechanic. FFXIV embraces the philosophy of giving every mechanic a lore explanation to help the game feel more immersive, but really all it does is make the universe kind of awkward and raise some questions about continuity and plotholes, so I think most role-players use a lot of discretion in deciding what actually is canon. But even taking it for canon... it's strongly hinted, if not outright screamed, the that races of man do some sketchy things and often mistreat "beastmen" and monsters. I think it could still be easily written off as the "sons of man" completely disregarding any other living beings.

[Mia Moui]

I've had Mia wrestle with culling animals for whatever reason the NPC said they needed to be culled.  She recently killed four coeurls just for their whiskers - apparently just to make tea.  That really annoyed her.  But - she still did it. Gil is gil.

 

I ignore a lot of the slaying because it's just a game mechanic.  But I do sometimes include it.  I don't think it's possible to be an adventurer and not kill anyone at some point.  People are going to try to kill you and you either kill them first or fail to survive.  What I like to do in my head is substitute "slay" for apprehend.  She captures the Redbelly's, for example, ties them up and walks them back to town to meet their fate.  All this happens "off screen."

 

I know not everyone plays an adventurer.  Mia is not actually an adventurer herself, she's just someone wandering around trying to find her sisters and falling into sometimes violent misfortune and opportunity.  No where near as much as the game implies.

 

I think when playing an MMO one will always need to draw a line between what is a game mechanic and what's really real.  When I played Secret World, it kept a log of how many monsters and zombies my character killed. My zombie count was well over 100,000.  There's just no way that could happen in real life.

[Mia Moui]

Also, just to focus on the ethics question.  It's difficult to know how comparative Eorzea is to our world, not at all would be my guess.  But I would imagine that Eorzeans are very familiar with death, if not before the Calamity, then certainly afterward.  It's a strange inverse reaction, I think.  People today aren't all that experienced with death.  They don't kill their own food.  They don't bury their own kin.  Friends and family usually live very long lives.  Life is sacred, precious (sometimes).

 

It wasn't always like that.  Our actual past was far bloodier, brutal, and shorter than most of us realize.  People were simply more violent by nature and had a different point of view about death.  Maybe not the aristocracy, but history, usually written by the aristocracy, does a very poor job at revealing the lives of the common person.

 

I've read a really good book about the decline of violence over last few generations and how violence today compares to historical records of the past.  It was very eye-opening and changed the way I thought about "medieval themed" MMOs.

 

Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined