Patch 2.5 Part 1 release date Jan 20 2015

[The47thSen]

One of the problems with ARR's writing is that every chapter ends with a new big bad being summoned.
Every single time, it's the same silly thing. Oh no, the beast tribes have somehow amassed a huge amount of crystals that we did not know about, now we must send it our useless agents to prevent them from summoning their god. You should go along anyway since they'll probably fail.

We know the events are fixed, we need new primals to be summoned. Ok, fine. But surely there's a way to weave in a story without it being so obvious?

The little individual parts of each story are interesting, assembling the ship to defeat leviaton, the childish cabbage people and their antics, hunting down heretics to get to shiva. But they all concluded in the same way, which is disappointing. I was hoping that defeatng Ramuh didn't actually mean de-summoning him, but just the battle ending in a draw with Ramuh remaining as a guardian of the forest while we learn to work with a 'living' primal.

[Rocl]

Eh? The only chapters I can remember not explaining the crystals was Moogle and Ramuh. The Sahagin sent reavers to ransack trade routes in Ul'dah and the Ishgardian heretics fucked up traders between Coerthas and the Shroud/Mor Dhona iirc. Typically we know they're going to summon something way in advance, and it typically fails, yes. Then again, if the Scions did stop them from summoning how the hell would we get Primal battles!?

All the extremes have more or less been "they did this new way of summoning which required less crystals and a sacrifice" though this doesn't seem to be the case for Shiva, we can assume she was given a way to tap more into the aether via our mystery Ascian who observed us in Hard mode. Not to mention "we did not know about" could literally be like a fucking Amalj'aa miner going out and mining somewhere for fire shards, lol.

Ramuh's disappearance is honestly better imo, the Ascians mention his "acquiescence" which seems to be surprising for them; he regarded us as a better defender of Eorzea than himself. This is also important because any "living" primal (one in the material realm) is a direct detriment to the planet, so he gave up ane said "okay, you're stronger than me, you can handle this shit"

[Rocl]

and, honestly, the only thing Heavensward needs to do (or I suppose the 2nd expansion) is not completely retcon and feel disjointed as fuck like ToAU/WoTG/SoA did.

we're told forever "life returns to the mothercrystals" except if you go to Einherjar or Hades or are swallowed by Atomos? Fucking Atomos shit literally ruins everything. Promathia exists individually in each reality (Shinryu exists in a confined reality) but Altana doesn't? wtf? Why on the entire planet of Vana'diel do all 5 mothercrystals and 7 protocrystals exist in the Middle Lands? Like, at fucking least FFXIV acknowledges that Eorzea is fucking important as the world's greatest concentration of aether/center of the lifestream. FFXI was just like "the Zilart were the only people on the planet and their capital was here, so gj this is most important area" FFXIV's ancient race at least came to Eorzea BECAUSE it was important rather than their ruins MAKING it important

idfk the more i think about XI lore the more mad i get

[Shenrien]

The only thing that gets me mad is I want to know how big this fucking planet is, there is a fucking reconstructed Dalamud SOMEWHERE UNDER THE FUCKING PLANETS CRUST. Along with a whole space ship and used to have a huge fucking dragon corpse in it that from a distance looked bigger than any city state we have.

I'm also very concerned as to how hallow the planet is!

[Lucavi]

Waiting for the Lunar Whale. I know its out there in one of those oceans. Whether the Allagans built it or someone else, we're going to be raising that fucker out of the ocean and riding it at some point.

[Shenrien]

Lunar Whale, new cash shop exclusive mount for 3.0 only $35. Will feature the same mount music that you've listened too on your chocobo!

[solracht]

The regeneration grid is only the innermost part of Dalamud and it's actually fairly small compared to the whole thing. Wil repost the artwork if I find it.

The Ragnaroks aren't that big either: you don't literally walk through a 7000 yalm long spaceship, you teleport between fragmented Ragnarok parts.

[Alkar]

I hope Odin drops Sleipnir, I wanna see the meltdowns in the OFs.

[Shenrien]

Sleipnir with 6 legs pls.

[Spider-Dan]

idfk the more i think about XI lore the more mad i get

Give XIV 10 more years/6 expansions and you'll feel right at home.

[Jem]

iirc they said they'd try but later said it'd be impossible ?


i thought they answered that canonically they were dead but not 100% sure tbh

I just remember there being a prompt about it saying that Legacy players would be able to view 1.0 CS'es in their inn room but some aspects may be changed (which I assumed would be any character models or areas that got slightly changed).

And did they say that about our companion? I completely missed it if that was confirmed somewhere in story. They were alive before the calamity occurred and then I never saw them mentioned at all in ARR.

[Sho]

I think the only bad part about the 1.0 cutscenes is the fact that they have the Adventurer "stroll" into every conversation all casual and shit. It's pretty annoying to see this in almost every conversation, but I deal. They are pretty much the same as 2.0, outside of the fight of the Scions vs Gaius, which was pretty bossmode.

2.0 story would have been much better too if it wasn't split amongst 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3... etc and dropped all as one story from beginning to end. Alas, we knew this would happen because Yoshi and team wanted to release something with every major patch. This seems to be the difference with XI too, who's team would at times forgo releasing story on entire patches so it gave them time to pile on the story for a release (worked well for CoP and ToAU, not so much with WoTG).

[Ayn]

I hope we'll see more "badass" scenes, even if its just more of the hilarity of the Manderville Ultros post-fight CS

Manderville quests need to be required for every update from now until the game ends.

Also an Allagan did it.

[Edelweiss]

And did they say that about our companion? I completely missed it if that was confirmed somewhere in story. They were alive before the calamity occurred and then I never saw them mentioned at all in ARR.

They could probably just shoehorn our retainers into the role if they're willing to do so. Maybe even weave some bullshit about knowing our beloved path companion or something too. I'd just hope they'd be at least mildly useful for open-world bullshit, unlike their XI counterparts.

[Spider-Dan]

The 1.0 companions have been fully replaced by summonable chocobos, so I'm not sure what purpose they would serve in 2.0.

[Damane]

Give XIV 10 more years/6 expansions and you'll feel right at home.

well lets say heavensward is equal to the zilart expansion... if they dont deliver with heavensward then they loose storywise. Zilart delivered great story as the 1. expansion of FFXI. It only became better with the forthcomeing expansions tying in, but the Zilart expansion set allready a high standard there.

So no you dont need 6 expansion, you need 1 really good expansion to set the standard and work on from there.

for whats it worth even the shadowlord story/nation storylines were better and more climatic then what we have now in 14 atm ¬.¬

the only story that came even close and hooked me up (although in a creepy way) was Tam-Tara hard... That CS was fucking gold. I think their biggest problem and mistake was introducing the player as the warrior of light, that shit takes away so much momentum... because no matter how many NPCs you introduce you are automaticly the only hero that can save the planet no matter what the rest of the NPCs do.

There were so many relevant NPCs in 11 that save the world in different ways and had awesome backline storys. Karaha-Baruha is a great example, Lion is another great example, list goes on. Here it feels like dust, the only one comeing close to something like that is our SSJ grandpa with wings! The NPCs just feel more relevant in 11 and more involved.

[Ayn]

Greg and Enkidu are absolutely relevant.

(I get your point).

[Eurell]

for whats it worth even the shadowlord story/nation storylines were better and more climatic then what we have now in 14 atm ¬.¬

Is this real? lol

I honestly can't tel if people are fucking around or just wearing a couple pairs of nostalgia goggles. Nation storylines were 22ish quests (per nation) where half of them were just filler. I mean, come on. They may have had a few interesting story points, but its like people have already forgotten XIV shit in the past year. Everything from when Ultima shows up and fucks up ifrit/titan/garuda at once up until praetorium and the 30 minute cs after was pretty goddamn amazing (ignoring serving soup inbetween cape westwind and castrum lol).

After that we had Thancred Yugiri and the admiral fucking up sahagins, Ascians waltzing in and smacking Minifilia around, some good side stories with tam-tara, and Hildy. Some of the moogle mail ones are goddamn great too. Shit, even the stupid cutscenes for the allied beastribes were pretty funny. There is tons of good stuff/story in this game (and we're only a year and a half in ffs), but for some reason people don't really pay attention to it. I won't even get into the amazing quality of some of the FCoB stuff.

[Ratatapa]

COP or bust

[Prothescar]

everyone in our base never got murdered in XI

tbh to this day i still don't remember why Lion was relevant. probably because she was only in like 1 cutscene for more than 3 seconds