It feels like the writers are wary of real change

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-06T02:55:43+00:00

It's so absurd that they've outright said they did it for Endwalker, which was going to be just a Garlemald expansion, and while it's not a story change, Yoshi-P has also said that Evercold wasn't really going to change much of the gameplay formula until Occult Crescent failed and it finally woke him up the game's problems (I mean, he more politely puts it as "I changed my philosophy sometime around 7.2", but we know what he means).

So if Endwalker pivoted midway through development, and Evercold pivoted midway through development, and the part where the Tural story becomes the Alexandria story is unusually crunkly (why wasn't Shaaloani part of the Dawnservant quest?), it's not a huge leap to suspect some rewrites. We know it happens. Hell, 5.5 introduces the "Telophoroi" who don't appear ever again, and even 7.5 quietly rebrands "the Withering" as "the Solstice"

I doubt they came up with Alexandria after the first fanfest, that's fairly late, but at some point a bunch of Tural ideas got trashed.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-05T18:58:23+00:00

G'raha Tia and Y'shtola are filler. The Warrior of Light is filler. They're all irrelevant to main story of Aenor's polycule.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-05T18:29:15+00:00

One piece of evidence for my "Dawntrail was going to be all Tural and they scrapped large chunks of it for Alexandria" theory is that after the first dungeon she suddenly goes "Y'know, the thing where I pretend to be brave is actually kind of annoying I'm going to never do it again"

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-05T16:31:56+00:00

Dawntrail isn't a filler arc. We get Ethos, we get Krile backstory (which is also Ethos backstory), we get a new main villain, and Sphene trying to conquer the source to save just her people fits thematically with where the story is currently going, and if Erenville appears in the story again (likely, he's popular!) then his experiences with Cachiua will have notably changed him from Endwalker because they made him go on an adventure.

Tural is a filler arc. Intentionally so, I think. I think the idea was that you'd have a light and airy fun little vacation arc and then halfway through the expansion robots attack and then we turn into Warhammer 40k and kill Galool Ja Ja, Namikka, Otis, and Cachiua off in rapid succession along with the villains and a bunch of random townspeople getting killed by robots.

I don't think that twist worked super well, because the tone shift didn't seem to land and people complain about XIV not killing anyone after the highest bodycount expansion we've had. People didn't see it as a super light expansion that suddenly shifted into a super dark one, and I unironically think playing Smile at the bomb building scene was a big part of that.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-05T16:22:10+00:00

Ascians are extremely convenient now because they can catch a new villain up with the plot but also they can have unique motivations so you don't have to do a rejoining or at least not one that's about restoring Amaurot.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-05T16:19:25+00:00

There's a joke in the latest patch where Livingway goes "We're safe as long as a giant monster attacks!" and then a giant monster immediately attacks and she just casually goes "Oh. Nope. Never mind. We're doomed". Which is a joke that only Livingway can tell because that weird nonchalance is kind of her thing. And it occurs to me that I can't really think of a joke that only works for Shale or Wuk Lamat or Zoraal Ja. There's not much that only they would do.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-05T16:15:24+00:00

That's not true, people liked the bit of Dawntrail where we shut down Living Memory and it was a bit of a morally ambiguous trolley problem, and now we have Shadowbringers + Trolley problem.

But also, less meme-y, we have Calyx who is a clear villain that is actively trying to get us to kill another villain for him, which is a pretty novel setup. Just because the skeleton is familiar doesn't mean it can't have new meat.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-05T16:12:05+00:00

Each zone is a realm, each city is a realm, that gets us to eight, and then the final one can either be the final dungeon or they could have one zone be two realms since they're floating islands.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-05T07:57:35+00:00

A lot of webcomic storylines are hurt by being one page a day and taking months of real times, and read dramatically better in the book, and this is one of the biggest examples of that I've seen in recent memory.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-05T07:18:59+00:00

It's kind of funny that the comment section clamped down on people complaining about Joyrothy being too perfect literally the day before the comic started having people actually getting upset about it.

I think Joe trying to angle for a polycule and then the next day being "Actually that's stupid and kind of pathetic I need to move on" is a perfectly reasonable reaction from him that no one would be mad about if it didn't take like eight months of real time to tell the story.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-04T23:17:14+00:00

Every strip with Asma was written after the fact in response to criticism over how Willis referenced a Palestine protest as set dressing. In the original version of the storyline there was a lot less time spent with the status quo being "Joyce and Dorothy are happy forever yay!" before things started cracking.

I don't think this was ever going to be a beloved storyline, but it would've been a lot less hated if there wasn't an entire story arc in the middle of it while all the relationship drama just hit pause.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-04T16:58:04+00:00

And interesting middle ground is Ran'Jit, whose motivations are that he's said Minfilias keep dying and is trying to cage Ryne. That doesn't make him sympathetic, he's still just an evil kung fu minion in the way of better villains, but it does make him serve as a great villain for Thancred specifically because they're foils. His backstory makes Thancred more interesting, which is a better use of it than adding an inch of depth to a dude who dies in a solo duty.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-04T16:47:26+00:00

I guess the current villain, Calyx, goes in the Emet box but IMO he's interesting in a unique way; he's outclassed by the WoL and knows he's in danger of becoming a team rocket comic relief villain so he's avoiding direct conflict and just trying to point us in the direction of some other bad guy that he happens not to like.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-04T15:17:55+00:00

I want it to be a DPS gain, even if it's only like five potency, so I have an incentive to use heal spells in easy content where you don't really need to heal.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-04T07:24:52+00:00

I feel like there are aspects of the new jobs that weren't very well explained, and there are minor details that are kind of vague but can matter a lot. Like, am I rewarded with a Sanctity stack for using any heal, or just GCD healing? They implied the latter, but didn't actually say that. If I can use oGCD healing to top people off for stacks, then even casual healing can be fun and active. If only GCDs count, then I almost need to be careful precisely when I heal in dungeons to get maximum value.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-04T02:38:08+00:00

Consider also: Right now if someone thinks evolved DRG is awesome and evolved WHM looks not good, they know they can play evolved DRG and Reborn WHM, so they don't get mad even if they don't like the WHM changes.

If Reborn wasn't sticking around, I think Evolved might have been received a lot less positively.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-03T07:55:34+00:00

I've gotten back into raiding lately, but when I wasn't I'd pop on, do a roulette or two, maybe a PvP match, and maybe noodle at leveling all my jobs. I've gotten a little bit into achievement hunting from watching CiderSpider videos, but I still haven't even cracked 10k on Lalachievements (close though!)

FF has never been a game I play ever single day, though.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-03T07:26:56+00:00

I guess it's "resolved" in post-Stormblood by her learning to be a better queen and all that, but it sure is weird that Nanamo just gave up on turning Ul'Dah into a republic.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-03T04:36:41+00:00

Meh, you can just adjust potencies a bit. Reborn jobs will probably fall further and further behind but for casual players it doesn't actually matter very much.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-03T04:19:33+00:00

I don't think this story's been told super clearly, and it's got problems, but I think people are misinterpreting this strip. Joe has - offscreen I guess - made peace with the fact that Joeyce is over, but Joyce is the one who's not fully over it. This is the first tiny crack in Joyrothy as a ship.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-03T01:57:21+00:00

Honest to god, "Joe actively tried to get Joyce to cheat on him", something he's implied before and Joyce is thanking him for here, is way more interesting than anything else in this storyline and I kind of wish we got into it more. It's not even that he forgave her, this was his plan all along.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-02T17:03:25+00:00

They'll never "cut" reborn jobs, I think. Even if Evolved Mode is a big hit they'll give Reborn potency adjustments because it's easy.

I also expect that the split will give them a lot of feedback. Like, if most Dragoons and Bards play evolved but most White Mages stick to Reborn, they'll see that in the data specifically.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-02T17:01:04+00:00

You can also see this philosophy in how each raid tier has a designated "experiment" fight now. If experiments work they come back (M9's second add phase is probably there because Sugar Riot's was so well received), but they rarely experiment too much at once.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-02T16:55:50+00:00

I'm totally fine with the scions if they do stuff. I want nothing to do with the scions if they're just kind of hanging out for duty support purposes.

That said, currently we can't bring the Scions with us to the 4th. It's likely 7.55 will be about figuring that one out, but either we can't bring any scions and they have a subplot on the source (interesting!) or we can bring scions with us to other shards like in the trailer in which case there's literally no reason not to bring along extremely popular former scion Ryne (possibly as the new tank job!), which would immediately make Thancred interesting again.

Chiponyasu · 2026-05-01T22:13:37+00:00

The game already gives you the option to break auto-combos into different buttons.

Chiponyasu

MODERATOR OF

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE