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I'm not sure if "fickle" is exactly the right word, but the elementals have a pretty-well-established behavior pattern of doing nothing about a problem for a long time and then hugely overreacting, frequently at someone who is not actually the one responsible for the problem.
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Mar 27, 2023 02:02
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That's just nature.txt
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Mar 27, 2023 02:05
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm not sure if "fickle" is exactly the right word, but the elementals have a pretty-well-established behavior pattern of doing nothing about a problem for a long time and then hugely overreacting, frequently at someone who is not actually the one responsible for the problem.
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Mar 27, 2023 02:07
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Argas posted:That's just nature.txt That's kinda the thing about the Elementals: they're just classical nature spirits, particularly borrowing a lot from the kami of Japanese myth. They're inflexible and unreasonable because their root inspiration were people trying to ascribe agency and personality to nature, and because nature isn't actually something that can be negotiated with, all those mythologies have a built-in reasoning of 'sometimes our god just decides to make the mountain explode and we have to accept that'. The Elementals are actually more reasonable than most of the real-world equivalents, because they actually do listen and help when the chips are down! In fact I'm not actually sure what Rand Brittain is thinking about when they're saying they have 'well-established behavior' of doing nothing for a while and then overreacting, because... well, I've actually looked at all the things the Elementals did, and none of their actions even remotely fit that description! A brief shortlist of Things The Elementals Specifically Did, by the way: -Un-Padjali'd a Padjali for unwittingly helping a man hurt a tree; unclear what happened to the other guy -Petrified a kid for burning a tree -Un-petrified said kid when asked -Made someone into some kinda zombie for helping with the tree burning -Put up the Irmin Hedge to protect the Shroud from the Calamity -Didn't help a sick Ala Mhigan (his people made him medicine, he's fine*) -Requested help three different times in the CNJ/WHM quests, with three different varieties of problem they couldn't do anything about themselves -Helped bring Y'shtola back from the Lifestream -Re-erected the Irmin Hedge to deal with the Blasphemy after being beseeched and aided in dealing with their own problems *He's actually not fine, we reunite with him in SB DRK, but that's for reasons unrelated to the Elementals That... doesn't sound at all like the behavior of people who 'do nothing about a problem for a long time and then hugely overreacting, frequently at someone who is not actually at fault'! In fact, only one of the people involved there actually was arguably 'not at fault', and that was definitely not after some amount of inaction!
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Mar 27, 2023 02:59
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list seems notably short some 1.0 greenwrath
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Mar 27, 2023 06:41
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I've mentioned this before, but I still think Elemental-haters would be a lot happier if they stopped imagining Elements as capricious gods and more like... a giant dog maybe. Not too bright and from a bad home, perhaps.
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Mar 27, 2023 07:09
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Valentin posted:list seems notably short some 1.0 greenwrath Mostly because the greenwrath wasn't really a specific thing that led to specific strong effects or events. Greenwrath was just indistinct negative karma by the Elementals' own criteria, and the vast majority of instances of it were just unfamiliar foreigners who got responded to by getting nasty nature-monsters sicced on them. I kinda picture it as essentially the Shroud's antibody response; they're more going 'I don't recognize it, ew' than anything else, and it's not really direct or premeditated. They also say woodsin is an element in their greater actions, but at least in terms of the MSQ the only instance of that was the petrification and a case of zombification (there are more zombies than just that one guy though). If there are other examples in sidequests and the like they're really hard to find; I've heard rumors of the mythical Disintegration Scene, but I can't find it.
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Mar 27, 2023 07:18
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hexwren posted:there is no context in which the words "skill issue" are not rude Yeah that's why I say it.
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Mar 27, 2023 12:36
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Cleretic posted:Mostly because the greenwrath wasn't really a specific thing that led to specific strong effects or events. Greenwrath was just indistinct negative karma by the Elementals' own criteria, and the vast majority of instances of it were just unfamiliar foreigners who got responded to by getting nasty nature-monsters sicced on them. I kinda picture it as essentially the Shroud's antibody response; they're more going 'I don't recognize it, ew' than anything else, and it's not really direct or premeditated. i don't know what "mythical disintegration scene" means but here's the scene where the wood wailers go "oh poo poo the garleans are burning the forest, the elementals are absolutely about to just start murdering people indiscriminately" and then the elementals start murdering people indiscriminately. i started it a little early below for fuller context but the key lines happen at 32:20 ("Listen well. The Imperials seek to unleash the greenwrath upon us. The elementals do not distinguish between forestborn and Garleans. By turning the Twelveswood into a raging inferno, the Empire means to make us victims of the very beings we revere.") which is just before wood wailers start getting zapped. so greenwrath is real and consistent enough that the garleans can invoke it as a reliable element of their plan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN4rv0hk400&t=1868s so i think you can add "- killed a number of wood wailers because they happened to be standing roughly near where garleans were firebombing the twelveswood", at least. it's not even "ah poo poo they nuked everyone in a wide zone," either, the elementals show up and look at the wood wailers and specifically target them because it looks like you have to greenwrath people one at a time (and you actually don't really see any garleans greenwrath'd but i'm willing to chalk that up to 1.0 cutscene issues and assume that probably they got greenwrath'd offscreen). after the fight (35:41), swethyna even tells you that there won't be time today to erect the irmin hedge because "Gridania has far graver issues to deal with, between mollifying the greenwrath and expelling the Garleans in spite of our diminished numbers." so the elementals saw this event coming, warned the wood wailers about it incredibly cryptically, then made the whole situation even worse and more likely to result in damage to the twelveswood by indiscriminately killing garlean and gridanian alike despite being most famous for their skills in the field of magical racism, and that greenwrath will continue to be an issue until the elementals can be calmed down. an indiscriminate, disproportional response to a problem they were already aware of. for me this adds even more confusion to the "okay so can elementals recognize and punish individuals or not" problem, since they're allegedly precise enough in their racism to recognize anyone from ala mhigo (....except yda, but don't worry about that) but apparently make zero distinction in greenwrath target selection despite the fact that "some of these spoken we can't recognize are garlean, some are gridanian" seems like it's a judgement they have to be able to make based on the other things we've been told. but frankly i think how much elementals can identify individuals is a completely arbitrary issue the game goes back and forth on depending on what any random quest writer thinks should happen. e: lmao if you scroll back to the scene right before what I linked you can watch gaius and nael argue about allagan tomestones and if they're important or not Valentin fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 13:28
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Valentin posted:i don't know what "mythical disintegration scene" means but here's the scene where the wood wailers go "oh poo poo the garleans are burning the forest, the elementals are absolutely about to just start murdering people indiscriminately" and then the elementals start murdering people indiscriminately. i started it a little early below for fuller context but the key lines happen at 32:20 ("Listen well. The Imperials seek to unleash the greenwrath upon us. The elementals do not distinguish between forestborn and Garleans. By turning the Twelveswood into a raging inferno, the Empire means to make us victims of the very beings we revere.") which is just before wood wailers start getting zapped. so greenwrath is real and consistent enough that the garleans can invoke it as a reliable element of their plan. Ahh, see, that I didn't have before now (probably because the video I was going off didn't actually get to it), thankyou! Definitely not a point in their favor, but also clearly a moment of actual malicious provocation and panic that hasn't happened since, and the Irmin Hedge afterwards surely counts for something as counterpoint, they seemed to learn better fairly quick. By 'mythical disintegration scene' I mean that there's rumor of a 1.0 scene where the Elementals just straight-up vaporize a person as punishment, but if that scene ever existed I've never found proof of it.
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Mar 27, 2023 14:31
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What would seem reasonable with regards to the elementals casting detect Ala Mhigan is some combination of "did you, literally, come from the direction of Ala Mhigo, in association with a cluster of other people with discernible similarities, perhaps carrying Ala Mhigo flags and saying 'ala mhigo' all the time" and "do you revere that nation in your heart, esp. with bitterness and such." It also seems plausible that the Padjal who one would have hoped would have explained "no, these guys are not an army, it's refugees" might have opted to not do that, and I misremember if the Ala Mhigan refugeeswere at least able to go through the Shroud on their way to their exploitation hovels in Thanalan.
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Mar 27, 2023 15:52
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the thing is that the elementals identifying any of that should also be easily and obviously true of garleans, who show up clad head to toe in steel and presumably reeking of ceruleum, and more importantly true of gridanians who the elementals perceive literally all the time. if they can identify ala mhigans readily it doesn't really make a ton of sense that they can't identify gridanians. I just think it's kind of not really a reconcilable part of the lore and you simply have to take it as true (without trying to dig for a single unifying explanation) that the elementals personally have and recognize individual identities (the guardian tree calls kan-e-senna by name!) and can recognize spoken nation-states but somehow have massive gaps in their understanding of other things that should seem roughly equivalent. I honestly find them insufficiently alien and weird (if you hate/fear other nation-states and get mad about unauthorized resource exploitation those are...normal concerns for a government) but there's too many layers of lore now to really unring that bell Valentin fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 16:05
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The weekly lockout on totems for current ultimates is dumb
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Mar 27, 2023 16:28
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Valentin posted:the thing is that the elementals identifying any of that should also be easily and obviously true of garleans, who show up clad head to toe in steel and presumably reeking of ceruleum, and more importantly true of gridanians who the elementals perceive literally all the time. if they can identify ala mhigans readily it doesn't really make a ton of sense that they can't identify gridanians.
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Mar 27, 2023 19:08
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can't believe they didn't show anyone on earth listening to the radio during that cutscene
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Mar 27, 2023 19:40
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Badger of Basra posted:can't believe they didn't show anyone on earth listening to the radio during that cutscene My shitpost prediction for the Allied quest is that the Arkasadora and Omicrons will be trying to get the radio crew to play advertisements for them
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Mar 27, 2023 20:43
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the only people who own a radio on etherys are the garleans
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Mar 27, 2023 20:50
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Badger of Basra posted:can't believe they didn't show anyone on earth listening to the radio during that cutscene I think they want to give the message of "It doesn't matter if anyone's listening as long as they dream or hope" but yeah, that aspect felt pretty bitter.
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Mar 27, 2023 21:03
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Blockhouse posted:the only people who own a radio on etherys are the garleans They suspect Sharlayans got their hands on one and
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Mar 27, 2023 21:34
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“Thing that’s in 1.0” in general is only half canon unless later stuff has touched on it. Like it’s broad strokes canon but not the exact details.
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Mar 27, 2023 21:36
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Electric Phantasm posted:They suspect Sharlayans got their hands on one and they did because that's where dreamingway got blueprints for a radio
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Mar 27, 2023 21:43
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Garlemald obviously also had radios, as we saw. The technology doesn't seem that difficult, I'm a little surprised it hasn't been monetized in Ul'dah or something. Unless that's what orchestrion rolls are... e: wait, Nero was intercepting our linkpearls. That poo poo's just magic radio!
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Mar 27, 2023 22:24
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i'm kinda surprised there's no spots in either garlemand or sharlayan where you can watch people listen in on the loporrit radio show, at least that i have found, but there's always a chance that'll happen during the epilogue quest a week from now plus the odds of the radio show being vital to solve part of whatever problem the tribal alliance quest raises is like 95%. assuming we get one this time around anyway
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Mar 27, 2023 22:35
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Garlean refugees huddled around a trash can fire in their train station. Suddenly the radio crackles to life, and a tiny voice tells them the weather in Meracydia
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Mar 27, 2023 22:59
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hopeandjoy posted:“Thing that’s in 1.0” in general is only half canon unless later stuff has touched on it. Like it’s broad strokes canon but not the exact details. At the very least, that Garlean scene with the Elementals was after Yoshi-P and the ARR crew came on board, I believe; Gaius was their inclusion as part of the setup to ARR.
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Mar 27, 2023 23:27
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skywatchers have been reeeeaaaal quiet since radio free loporitt came online
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Mar 28, 2023 01:42
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Vitamean posted:skywatchers have been reeeeaaaal quiet since radio free loporitt came online has anyone been out in the world and found people listening to loporitt radio at all? who is even receiving these radio waves?
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Mar 28, 2023 03:45
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FuturePastNow posted:Garlean refugees huddled around a trash can fire in their train station. Suddenly the radio crackles to life, and a tiny voice tells them the weather in Meracydia "Helloooo Garlean Wasteland it's me Three Dogway bow-wow"
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Mar 28, 2023 04:05
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Valentin posted:I honestly find them insufficiently alien and weird (if you hate/fear other nation-states and get mad about unauthorized resource exploitation those are...normal concerns for a government) but there's too many layers of lore now to really unring that bell It is of course a complete mystery why the writers don't seem to want to poke Gridania very hard and give it the same treatment the other city states got. However the solution to the "problem" of there only being one flavor of Gridania issue (Elementals are upset about <thing>) is to.... not do that. I don't think there's much narrative space to do anything big in MSQ wrt to Grid now, but you can still do things in the smaller space of variant quests, flight to the new world (Ixal), etc. Talk about the mortal side of the equation and how they've hosed up currently and historically. How "the will/voice of the elementals", that was just recently shown to be uh pretty vague on the specifics of day-to-day life, has been used as an excuse for being xenophobic jerks. Just loving anything but retreading old ground.
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Mar 28, 2023 11:41
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there's plenty of non-elemental stories in Gridania, you probably just did them all a decade ago because they're from ARR - the only time we go to gridania now though is to talk to everyone's favorite kneebreaker or seasonal events.
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Mar 28, 2023 13:30
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I think a sticking point with Gridania is that its status quo hasn't really tried to change. Limsa had a really good progression in how it dealt with its local tribes, and while Ul'dah hasn't changed it at least had a whole story about why it hasn't changed, and they've both had smaller ways to challenge power structures in job quests and the like. But Gridania really hasn't; all the problems that existed there at the start of ARR exist at the end of it, and it hasn't really had acknowledged stagnancy like Ul'dah, either. Even the tank role quest, while framed as a change to the status quo, is a very soft one; everyone already generally respected the Elementals, they're just committing to actually doing things about that now. Personally I'd be more interested in picking up on the Ixal than the Elementals, though, because that actually does seem like a genuinely interesting problem that you can't just resolve quietly. The Ixal need wood and live in a lovely mountain range that can't grow enough of it; the root of their conflict is a straight-up resource shortage. It's not like all the other tribal conflicts, you can't just throw down your guns and commit to peace, this one actively needs a solution!
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Mar 28, 2023 14:17
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I love the Ixal and would love to see more of them.
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Mar 28, 2023 14:24
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It all just comes back to what I've said before, Gridania's biggest issue as a place in this setting is that they just don't wrote for it at all, so every other city state either talks about their issues or solves them, we still have the racially discriminate forest nation ruled by unaccountable envoys for series of petty, fickle and kind of stupid nature spirits whose solution to problems is to harm everyone even if it doesn't fix anything. It's Basically Ul'dah if no one ever talked about what a piece of poo poo the Montererists are.
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Mar 28, 2023 14:25
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Ixal airships to the new world would be a good chance to wrap up that dangling bit, though I'd expect them to gloss over unpleasantness because "we're all just friends now after EW, don't sweat the details" I would also accept Kobolds building the first secret of mana cannon travel station to get us there EDIT: can someone remind me what positive interactions we've had with the Ixal besides the tribe? Other than the EW scenes with all the tribe leaders are they just "bad bird guys what summoned garuda" for non-crafter players? GloomMouse fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Mar 28, 2023 |
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Mar 28, 2023 14:39
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GloomMouse posted:EDIT: can someone remind me what positive interactions we've had with the Ixal besides the tribe? Other than the EW scenes with all the tribe leaders are they just "bad bird guys what summoned garuda" for non-crafter players? More neutral than positive, but we did cross paths with some in Fractal Continuum Hard, and see them learn the truth of their origin and then try to communucate it to others.
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Mar 28, 2023 15:18
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Cleretic posted:More neutral than positive, but we did cross paths with some in Fractal Continuum Hard, and see them learn the truth of their origin and then try to communucate it to others. Also we came to their defense when the Telopheroi invaded Xelphatol.
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Mar 28, 2023 15:26
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GloomMouse posted:It is of course a complete mystery why the writers don't seem to want to poke Gridania very hard and give it the same treatment the other city states got. However the solution to the "problem" of there only being one flavor of Gridania issue (Elementals are upset about <thing>) is to.... not do that. I don't think there's much narrative space to do anything big in MSQ wrt to Grid now, but you can still do things in the smaller space of variant quests, flight to the new world (Ixal), etc. Talk about the mortal side of the equation and how they've hosed up currently and historically. How "the will/voice of the elementals", that was just recently shown to be uh pretty vague on the specifics of day-to-day life, has been used as an excuse for being xenophobic jerks. Just loving anything but retreading old ground. i think i brought this up last time gridania discourse came around, but my guess has always been that their original plot development for gridania in ARR got overwritten when they decided on how the deeper cosmology actually works around 3.2 and that the void would be put on the backburner for a while, so it just sort of sat there, another accidental casualty of the 1.0-2.0 transition
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Mar 28, 2023 15:50
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Cleretic posted:More neutral than positive, but we did cross paths with some in Fractal Continuum Hard, and see them learn the truth of their origin and then try to communucate it to others. Aren't they from the Ehcatl Nine?
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Mar 28, 2023 15:51
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Electric Phantasm posted:Aren't they from the Ehcatl Nine? Yep.
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Mar 28, 2023 16:14
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Yeah I was including fractal hard in tribes content in my head bc of the npc but since you can unlock it without touching Ehcatl Nine then it counts a separate. Still not much positive Ixal stuff out there!
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Mar 28, 2023 16:30
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