Summoners viable without facing Primals?

[Tla]

What happens in gameplay doesn't necessarily have to match lore at all.  Gameplay always trumps lore.

This. Because, if you really count gameplay for roleplay, we're all heroes carrying relics and able to be a master in 8 fighting specialities. I think what makes a RPer special is the power of imagination. Being able to see behind game mechanics, which are clearly not made with RP in mind.

 

I once I did an IC run as a healer. My character is an archer, but the run per se, oocly, needed a healer. I just told everyone I was in reality being an archer, descrbes my looks, and during the run reminded that with my actions. You'll say, we should be able to use what we can see since it's not pen & paper, but I find only using what we can see terribly restricting.

My main OOCly is a white mage. A friend has the habit to always be IC, and since I've been caught once in whm robes, cause I was ooc, I've been ICly asked about them. I just replied it was a costume, but I might as well have said none of those clothes were there IC.

 

Fact is, each of us has very different ideas, it's normal, that's how it always goes into communities, and what someone likes or accepts may not be valid for others. I don't think there can be a fanon about such big things, because we will never agree.

[Ildur]

What happens in gameplay doesn't necessarily have to match lore at all. Gameplay always trumps lore.

 

That is true. Just as Tlamila said, if we used only gameplay, we would all be using Relic weapons, which are in most cases unique. However, there's a big difference between a Relic Weapon and a White Mage: the Relic weapon does not give you new skills. It's just a stat booster. Being a White Mage, on the other hand, grants you a set of unique skills that no other Job can use. What's more, we can induct that Relic weapons of which replicas can be made because they are objects. White Magic, however? There doesn't seem to be any in-lore way to replicate the powers of Succor.

 

Story informs gameplay. I know what potential spells I can make up for a Black Mage because the Job has a bunch of specific spells unique to it and its base class. I don't need lore to come and tell me "Your class can cast ice spells" to accept it as a lore friendly fact. I only need gameplay to tell me, because gameplay is informed by the lore. In the same way, I know what classes my character can be because gameplay allows me to be one.

 

I think what makes a RPer special is the power of imagination. Being able to see behind game mechanics' date=' which are clearly not made with RP in mind. [/quote']

 

And with the power of imagination, you can very well imaginate that the Padjal have been teaching White Magic since after they taught "the hero". Imagination doesn't just serve to see behind game mechanics, but also to see behind lore. And logic helps with silly lore restrictions that are detrimental to lore play, like this particular bit from the White Mage questline. Why punish all those people who had the very sensible assumption that their characters could ICly be what the game allows them to be?

[Whittledown]

So... not sure this will add much to the conversation but Hornet is a level 50 WAR and 50 DRG.

 

ICly, literally all this means is that she's pretty good with axes and spears.

 

Her armor is stuff that she bought or had commissioned.  The DRG AF armor?  Bought cause she thought it looked sexy.  It's not magical, just well made.

 

She just got armor out of CT, the Armor of Light.  ICly, she bought it and is frankly disappointed because she thinks it makes her look like a man (an IC mistake that has been made several times now by other players).

 

So yeah, I take class specific Lore as kind of... well whatever.  People can buy axes.  They're just there in the store.  You don't need to go through a huge trial to get good with it.

 

I'm not putting down that style of RP, if it's in your character to have some kind of epic or spiritual connection to their class or their equipment that's fine.  For my girl though, armor and weapons are just tools.  Even her class abilities are just a fighting style when you get down to it.  They're just fancier ways of putting the sharp end into something until it stops moving.

[Naunet]

I choose that the lore is bollocks because the existence of every in-character White Mage contradicts it. And I prefer to have many potential interactions with those characters than to have none. Because that's what accepting this particular bit of lore does: it asks me to reject all player characters who are White Mages and who "do not have a very good reason", when we should be asking them to just have consistency and coherency. But how can we ask them to have coherency with this bit of lore when the lore isn't coherent nor compatible in any shape with roleplaying on a massive scale? Hell, not even Squee is consistent about it: the website tidbit (which, let's say it, holds less authority than in-game lore) contradicts what is implied by the game.

 

I agree with Liadan in that the WHM quest does not in any way support a broader disseminating of white magic/succor knowledge (I'm that "consultant" friend Ildur spoke of haha). I also agree with Ildur in that the lore is complete bullshit for an MMO setting, and we, to borrow a phrase, must needs adjust it to allow for smooth roleplay.

 

Never in all my years of roleplaying in MMOs (and I've been doing it for a long while) have I seen the lore for a class one can play in game be so utterly, uncompromisingly restricted from RP. Now, I've seen some limits on backstory - such as Death Knights in WoW - but it's never to the degree that we as roleplayers have to struggle against the lore itself to actually roleplay. It's absurd, and I firmly believe Squeenix made a huge mistake in writing it in such a way. If we as players can pick up the class, then we have every right to roleplay that class (job, whatever).

 

So yeah. The lore is pretty clear in that the Padjal are not teaching non-Padjal (except for the one lone WHM story quest character) white magic. What I also think is pretty clear is that we need to just toss that single point out the window to allow for characters to access their chosen class ICly.

[Sounsyy]

I think a lot of the grandeur of the FFXIV Jobs is overlooked by the RP community because the lore behind them is inconvenient. But let's break down what the classic FF jobs are in the XIV lore. They are the professions of Legend, many of them lost for thousands of years. They are special snowflakes in their own right, and why shouldn't they be? If everyone could walk around as an Azure Dragoon then there would be absolutely no point in having a beautiful legend and richly crafted lore behind the title. You lose the gravity of the job. Yeah, dude, I got the Godsbow out of the cereal box!

 

 

But this debate over what jobs can and can't be used in RP according to lore has no right answer that will satisfy everyone. The undeniable fact is that certain aspects of the game are not RP friendly. Because while the lore in this game is beautiful, there is a huge population of players who will play this game and never know it. Never even care. So the game itself must stand alone without aligning 100% to the lore. A game needs a healer, regardless of whether or not only one such healer should exist in lore. 

 

I hear a lot people complain about how the story and lore support a lone Hero viewpoint in a Massively Multiplayer game world. But when you think about Final Fantasy, which games come first to mind? FFVII maybe. VI. FFIX. X. XIII. Final Fantasy has a rich tradition of single player games that are small ensemble or singular hero based. All FFXIV is doing is staying true to that tradition. They're keeping to the wonderful hero-based storylines that captivated us and made us raging FF lunatic fans in the first place. I honestly believe, if they had not done the lore in this way, (which I personally believe FFXIV has some of the most wonderful lore) the game would really feel just like any other MMO and not a Final Fantasy MMO. But maybe that's just me?

 

 

It ultimately boils down to a choice each roleplayer has to make. Do you:

A) Respect the lore for this world as imagined by the creators, or

B) Ignore the lore to some degree or entirely in favor of doing things the way you want to do them.

[LiadansWhisper]

What happens in gameplay doesn't necessarily have to match lore at all.  Gameplay always trumps lore.

 

That is true. Just as Tlamila said, if we used only gameplay, we would all be using Relic weapons, which are in most cases unique. However, there's a big difference between a Relic Weapon and a White Mage: the Relic weapon does not give you new skills. It's just a stat booster. Being a White Mage, on the other hand, grants you a set of unique skills that no other Job can use. What's more, we can induct that Relic weapons of which replicas can be made because they are objects. White Magic, however? There doesn't seem to be any in-lore way to replicate the powers of Succor.

 

Technically Conjurers already access Succor - they just don't get the full access that White Mages get.  So what Conjurers don't have that White Mages have are Regen (a HoT), Holy (an AoE stun/damage), Presence of Mind (um...a Haste boost that is useless), Divine Seal (makes all your healing better for a short duration) and Benediction (an "Oh shit!" tank button that works 50% of the time due to the animation/log parse issues - don't get me started, I have many rants about this spell!).

 

I don't think that not having access to those spells is a game breaker.  In fact, I feel that the spells they DID attach to White Mage were disappointing.  I was hoping Holy would be some big Heal or something, something truly awe-inspiring to use, but I guess they didn't want to go that route.  If anything, it makes it easier to simply be a Conjurer and not a White Mage.

 

Story informs gameplay. I know what potential spells I can make up for a Black Mage because the Job has a bunch of specific spells unique to it and its base class. I don't need lore to come and tell me "Your class can cast ice spells" to accept it as a lore friendly fact. I only need gameplay to tell me, because gameplay is informed by the lore. In the same way, I know what classes my character can be because gameplay allows me to be one.

 

The problem is, mechanic and class design are not, in any way, inhibited by Lore.  In fact, the two are not even tied together until after the fact, and in many cases mechanics simply ignore Lore.  I really am not comfortable with looking at a mechanic and deciding that it "creates" Lore, because it doesn't.  Lore is written by storytellers.  Class mechanics are put together by game designers.  Often, they don't even talk.

 

And with the power of imagination, you can very well imaginate that the Padjal have been teaching White Magic since after they taught "the hero". Imagination doesn't just serve to see behind game mechanics, but also to see behind lore. And logic helps with silly lore restrictions that are detrimental to lore play, like this particular bit from the White Mage questline. Why punish all those people who had the very sensible assumption that their characters could ICly be what the game allows them to be?

 

It's not a punishment.  But there's nothing in the Lore to support this at all.  And saying, "Well, there are tons of people playing White Mages in the game and its an available class" doesn't change that.  It's an available class for reasons of game mechanics.  It's patently obvious that the devs, for whatever reason, decided to craft Lore that had nothing to do with the game mechanics, and that the two are completely separate in this instance.

 

From what I understand, this is much the case in the Dragoon and Black Mage questlines, too.

 

Is it disappointing?  Yeah.  But seriously, there's almost nothing a White Mage can do that a Conjurer can't do.  The only thing a Conjurer doesn't have is unrestricted access to Succor.  That's it.  They can heal the snot out of everyone, they can raise people from the flipping dead.  They just have their access to Succor restricted and monitored by the Elementals.  That's really it.

 

Look, people can play whatever the hell they want.  You don't have to follow the lore.  There aren't any (I hope) lore police out there who will show up with billy clubs to beat you if you choose to disregard the lore as it's presented in the game and do whatever you want.  But you can't expect people who do know what the lore says about White Mages (for instance, that the magic is still forbidden) not to look at someone in askance when they claim in public to be a White Mage.  My character would either think they were out of their minds or lying.

 

Edited to Add: I thought about this for a moment, because I feel like I'm not putting things into words the way I mean to. What I'm getting at is someone wandering around announcing to people that they were a White Mage would drive me up the wall. Because I don't think it's something you would announce - even if you were one of the people who the Padjal were teaching the magic to. That's one thing that I really hope never to see. :-\

[FreelanceWizard]

What I'm getting at is someone wandering around announcing to people that they were a White Mage would drive me up the wall. Because I don't think it's something you would announce - even if you were one of the people who the Padjal were teaching the magic to.

 

All else aside, I'm 100% on board with this sentiment. This is an art that has historically been forbidden and completely under the control of the Padjal. That alone, I would think, would have prudent characters thinking twice about announcing skill in it; who knows what that might provoke, from assassins to throngs of people demanding services to angry zealots who don't view you as worthy of the power.

[TheLastCandle]

That's pretty much how I feel about it. If you're not shouting it from the rooftops (and you shouldn't, for reasons already given) I don't care if you're playing your character as the bastard son of Titan and Merlwyb and a Black/White/Salmon Pink Mage to boot - from all outside appearances, you're just a guy/girl in a dress with a funny-looking stick like any other. A rose by any other name.. et cetera, et cetera.

 

- Yvelont, nottadragoon, with tongue planted firmly in cheek

[Lost River]

Here is also another method to see things and RP while still adhering to lore.

 

You can be a White Mage, Dragoon, Whatever; as the world itself isn't set in static. As we all have the same type of personal story quests, with some of those aforementioned being a "first in a long time, et cetera" guess what, it doesn't mean it is the last.

 

I look at it like this, the personal story quests for each job is basically a NPC perspective to pave the way for such Jobs to become back in full force of the player population. The Dragoon recruitment is becoming more relaxed now that people are showing the spirit, the White Mages are being granted and shown (still regulated) in power are reemerging in force to help with the new upcoming threats.

 

In short, I see it as a coming of age type tale when it comes to the personal story as its so singular in its approach. So, sure, you can be so and such due to that one person that started the new chain of events. As well, as people with such professions in 1.0 also, perhaps they could teach their ways as well.

 

[TheLastCandle]

Honestly? When the "classic" jobs were first implemented pre-ARR, my supposition was that they would actually replace the original classes eventually, the job quests back then representing these lost arts being rediscovered as part of ushering in a new era. I'm STILL surprised that didn't happen with ARR. As it is, I rarely if ever see anyone playing one of the base classes after unlocking its job, even when playing solo. But I'm drifting off topic here.

 

I guess I just don't see what the big deal is about titles. If you don't have the light of Succor, you're still a conjurer and a very powerful healer. I'm not a Dragoon/Paladin/Legendary Warrior IC - but I'm still a buff, pointy-eared dude who is decently adept with a small variety of weaponry and no magic. The Formulaic Final Fantasy Flavor is still there in full force. And that was a lot of alliteration, I know, but I had to roll with it once I started.