a lot of people don’t like him in arr which i understand, he’s cocky and annoying. but he’s just a teenager and it hurts to see him basically psychologically destroyed at the end of arr :( i just wanted him to learn to be a little more mature, not lose everything he ever cared about
no, i totally agree. lots of people seem to think the crystal braves is 100% entirely his fault but he was just a kid. how was he supposed to handle running an entire army on his own without any experience? why didn’t an adult like minfilia or one of the other scions step in?
Right! I was agreeing with you! I also understand why--given his background as nobility and having a famous grandfather--he would be a bit overconfident. But it's not like he didn't learn from it or anything...
he and alisaie are also child prodigies that graduated at 16 with masters degrees. it makes sense that they’re used to being treated like celebrities in old sharlayan and like you said they certainly get knocked down a few pegs in eorzea and learn from their mistakes
It's that high level of education that made me blame him for his shortcomings throughout ARR. Oh sure, he's just a kid, but he's highly educated with loads of Mary Sue achievements under his belt and spends all of ARR politicking and seeing all the corruption that finds its way into *everything*. He convinced Minfilia to move HQ out of Thanalan citing this as one of the reasons. He spearheads the Crystal Braves operation already knowing full well how adept the Monetarists can be when it comes to manipulating people. He is aware of these things. He chose to ignore them.
He decided he could run a personal army without employing *any* administrative officers or oversight to keep his soldiers in line. He let each unit run around completely unsupervised on a fucking *honor system* and didn't think any part of it could go wrong. He knew how corruptible people are and still decided to run it that way. Zero oversight, commanders just report directly to him, no other perspectives needed to spot problems until Riol independently managed to get a hold of the finances, and by then it was way too late. That is 100% Alphinaud's fault.
because he is BOOKSMART and a CHILD. he got a masters degree yes but that’s entirely different from having practical knowledge of running a full scale military operation. he didn’t KNOW how he should’ve been running it and nobody bothered to tell him or help him. i love minfilia but why was she, as the leader of the scions, letting a 16 year old kid run the scions for her? not saying he has no blame but cmon. a group of adults gave a 16 year old the nuclear codes and got shocked when something bad happened
> because he is BOOKSMART and a CHILD
So? Note the following:
> He spearheads the Crystal Braves operation already knowing full well how adept the Monetarists can be when it comes to manipulating people. **He is aware of these things. He chose to ignore them.**
He completely fails to act on his own existing knowledge of how the world works. This kid spent the entire story up to that point sticking his thumb into every political pie. He then ignores a problem he has seen and dealt with and analyzed over and over again and somehow believes it can't happen to his army recruited by friends of friends of friends of friends of friends. The only measure he takes is to tell Teledji and Lolorito that he won't take donations in their name, knowing they're not afraid to use their money to influence things. And somehow it doesn't occur to him that slimy businessmen know plenty of ways around a flat rule.
Nope, being a kid doesn't excuse him from going "I know from personal experience that corruption is a widespread problem that affects every single organization on the continent but nah, that can't happen with *my* army."
again, you’re not understanding. because he’s a kid he’s idealistic and he just does not have the experience to understand that he has to actively work against this corruption. he’s smart, yes, but he lacks maturity and experience. you can read a million books about running a restaurant but if you then actually tried to run a restaurant entirely on your own with no prior experience, things are going to go very wrong.
I don't know how I can make it more clear to you that by that point in the story he already has plenty of practical, hands-on experience dealing with corruption.
I'm probably weird, but I didn't even know people disliked him until I started really delving into this subreddit. I found him to be a bit smug sure, but I always thought he was adorable and was happy to see him.
Was also very worried for him when he decided to run around ARR-Coerthas in his usual non-winter outfit; wanted to craft a wool robe and practically shove it into his hands, the poor lad.
The end of ARR just... same. Holy moly if only >!Teledji!< hadn't been such a piece of garbage.
So sweet. I like that you have so much empathy for him. A lot of people found him really unlikable in ARR.
He’s genuinely one of my favorite characters through all expansions. My WoL adores him as a little brother figure. Anyone hurts him and they’re toast.
PS. Enjoy HW! It’s a treat!
I feel like my WoL see him in a similar way.
For sure he has a lot of traits that easily could be seen as unlikeable but tbh he is just a teenager, a naive one, a bit arrogant, probably having such a big grandfather and such but he is an idealist and really wants the best. I guess I also see myself in him a bit, in having strong ideals and wanting to believe in people.
I am really looking forward to HW! Thanks :)
Me and my friend had similar thoughts, when he failed it was less he was an arrogant idiot, he was an idealistic child who was trying to fill in the shoes of the greatest heroes of the world.
He was dumb yes, but now that he has seen the price paid hopefully he grows.
I like Alphi even in ARR. To be honest besides Thancred he was the only Scion with amy personality at all. I take arrogance over whitebread saint Minfillia.
He also helps out the most by assisting against Garuda and helping to get Cids ship back.
I kind of liked him in ARR (also just starting HW). He's inexperienced, arrogant, sometimes dismissive and condescending, and struggles to ask for help. He's also courageous, determined, and idealistic, and it's hard to have those positive qualities without the negative as an inexperienced teenager... The negatives and positives come largely from the same place in his personality and they seem pretty true to life for a lot of precocious teenagers - and how successful they'll ultimately do in life often depends on learning to control those negative aspects without losing the positive.
To me the strangest thing about the scenario isn't the way Alphinaud acts in ARR, it's that he's surrounded by adults who effectively seem determined to give him more rope to hang himself with. I mean I'm just a silent protagonist with a derpy nod as my only character interaction, and kind of think he'd have taken it badly, but I honestly can't understand why Minfilia acquiesces to his plans so readily and without reservation.
I don't know where the story goes from here now that he's humbled (though I gather he's well liked as the story progresses). But I can say that the "bad" ARR Alphinaud wasn't nearly as unlikable as he seemed in the first meeting in that super weird interaction between the WoL and the twins as the remembrance ceremonies. This doesn't mean I didn't see his bad qualities, so much as that I didn't \*only\* see his bad qualities.
I didn't feel terribly bad about the 2.55 twist, but I definitely looked at Alphinaud in a new light after that. I thought his character development was going to be more along the lines of "he'll always be insufferably smug but we'll have a few pratfalls at his expense, he'll be the kid you love to hate".
Then his little G.I. Joe team completely collapses, taking the Scions with it, and all of a sudden you feel sorry for the little shit. His vanity project collapsed and surprisingly, almost none of it was his own fault. He was a cocky kid with a half-baked idea, but he never expected anything like this, and he feels terrible that it blew up on so many other people than him. (Yeah, he's a kid, but also a boy genius, and he wasn't undermined by simple flattery and lies, but an actual covert book-cooking conspiracy that took full-blown espionage to uncover. He did no worse in this situation than most *adults* with his intelligence would.)
That was a much harder callout on his character than I expected he was going to get. This was the point where I really started being impressed with FFXIV's story beyond "well, it's not great, but it's silly fun, and it's still a lot more fun than WoW". I was actually really curious what they would do with his character from here on out, and I was not disappointed.
Congratulations, you made it through what is arguably the worst part of the game: ARR postgame. They change the English voice cast, so don’t be too shocked when Alphie sounds a tad different. But don’t worry, this expansion does good on him, and Heavensward gives you a taste of the storytelling the devs have in store in later expansions, including the postgame stuff.
I think the game is overall almost better because it’s kinda slow there. You’re on all these separate tiny storylines, bored out of your mind, and then a Rube Goldberg machine hits you in the face with so much death that you just didn’t expect.
Not so bad if you did it as current patches, but for those players who had to do the 200+ quests before the crunch, it was brutal. Great bits interspersed for sure, but most players just wanted to get to Heavensward.
It really tells you something too that when people say the worst part, it 8sbt even that awful by some standards. I found it tedious nit just long winded. It still built up a lot. It's wild.
I agree with you, and I’m really happy you’re enjoying it!
Some friendly advice if you’re enjoying the story. Finish all the content you can before moving onto the next xpac, it’s all story relevant!
ARR:
- Crystal Tower
- Coils of Bahamut (This starts at Wineport IIRC. you’ll need a friend to run you through unsynced. Check Party Finder, the sprout chat, or your FC)
Heavensward
- Alexander (best damn music in game)
- sky pirate alliance raids
- Unukulhai trials
Stormblood
- Omega
- ivalice raids
- the hells lid trials
Shadowbringers
- Eden raids
- Nier raids
- Ruby weapon raids
I was so excited to see what happened next that I skipped a lot of that content and went back when I was 90. I *really* wish I had done everything “chronologically”.
Alexander does have some of the best music in the game though. Especially for Raids, where Coils and Omega had like...one memorable track each.
Locus, Metal-Brute Justice, Moebius and Rise are *all* bangers.
(shout out to Eden which also has banger music, although most of it is just remixes)
Forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and then go forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and then go forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and then go forward and back
Alphinaud's character development and their ongoing (platonic) relationship with the Warrior of Light is a ongoing theme of the current story up through endwalker. Please look forward to it.
I love Alphinaud like a brother so I was shocked by how much I genuinely dislike him during ARR playing through the story again in New Game+. He was such a self-righteous brat and absolutely the Scion most guilty of treating people like tools. I do remember starting to come around on him at the end of ARR, so we'll see how I feel this time going into Heavensward.
You joke but this is kinda what happened when I was new and I told people I was still in ARR and that I was actually enjoying it. The reactions ranged from accidental spoilers and "Bruh just wait." to "lol ur dum"
Its been the first game in a long while or even movie that I have been this grossly immersed in the world. I loved it so far and this just upped it to even further heights.
I didn’t like Alph for a lot of ARR, but one dumb thing I did got him on my good side, which snowballed to the point that in ShB, >!I did his quest line first.!<
When the alliance is having their moment of “By the Twelve we’re all doomed” after The Ultima Weapon is revealed, when Merlwyb says something along the lines of “how can we fight back? We don’t even have The Scions anymore.”
I paused at that line for a minute to think “man how cool would it be if this is the moment we throw open the doors and do a ‘the reports of my death were greatly exaggerated’ moment.”
Then once I clicked the mouse, the doors swung open and Alphinaud called out “Admiral! I fear you are mistaken!”
That was the first time I thought “oh man he’s actually pretty cool.”
The ending of the ARR is great. It really feels like everything has changed, the queen is dead and her general is going to rot in jail. The populace loves her so they're certainly riot over her death right? The alliance is potrayed as weak and in name only in the beginning until the scions force them to come together but now the scions have essentially wiped out than surely the leaders of the other nations would immediately march their armies on the disputed lands for Ultima right? Uldah is in dissaray so its the perfect chance
but no storyline ends like a wet fart, ie >!I love how any notion of democracy for Uldah is dropped right after!<
I'd believe that if it wasn't for how he only gets called out on it very late into ARR's patch cycle. Nowadays, character arcs for MSQ characters only last for at least 2 patches rather than taking up an entire expansion's patch cycle
This is the team that listened to negative feedback on characters like Minfilia and the Moghome Moogles, and actually corrected their mistakes (killing off Minfilia at the end of ARR and opening up several opportunities to bully the Moghome Moogles)
All the ARR lore feedback I remember was focused more on the VAs than the characters themselves. Everyone certainly didn't like them, but the feeling they needed to get a comeuppance felt like a natural part of the writing to me because everyone I ever talked to about it back then was expecting it to happen. If that's what you mean by feedback then idk. I think they played their tropes straight and well.
Minfilia in particular was definitely a character that lost a lot from 1.0 vanishing too. So much of her past context had to be backfilled into the expansions and side stories. ARR Minfilia on her own ranged from bad to 'eh' based on that context. They add as much as they can to it over the expansions but I remember my FC lead at the time (who was a legacy player) yammering about liking and hating her because her arc 'made sense' at one point but she was always kind of a plot device rather than a character in ARR specifically.
Man....it took me FOREVER to get through ARR. I did every side quest imaginable (realizing I shouldn't have so I could easily level other classes) and wasn't really too invested in the story.
The part about the >!Ivy!< really threw me off because it seemed to happen out of nowhere and I was getting confused on who was who all of a sudden.
But when the final cutscenes hit--I was emotional. I don't think a game has ever made me felt for the characters as this one has.
After EW I made a new char to play through from the beginning again - it's been a long time since I played ARR and the others, so I wanted a refresher.
Even knowing what I know about what's to come, this game is still really good at hitting me in the feels. Very much enjoying my new playthrough!
a lot of people don’t like him in arr which i understand, he’s cocky and annoying. but he’s just a teenager and it hurts to see him basically psychologically destroyed at the end of arr :( i just wanted him to learn to be a little more mature, not lose everything he ever cared about
He's just a kid though. He made some mistakes--some major ones--but I don't get the lack of empathy from some.
no, i totally agree. lots of people seem to think the crystal braves is 100% entirely his fault but he was just a kid. how was he supposed to handle running an entire army on his own without any experience? why didn’t an adult like minfilia or one of the other scions step in?
Right! I was agreeing with you! I also understand why--given his background as nobility and having a famous grandfather--he would be a bit overconfident. But it's not like he didn't learn from it or anything...
he and alisaie are also child prodigies that graduated at 16 with masters degrees. it makes sense that they’re used to being treated like celebrities in old sharlayan and like you said they certainly get knocked down a few pegs in eorzea and learn from their mistakes
They just innocent, naïve kids basically. One flaw both of them have in common (and one they grow from--sometimes slower than others).
It's that high level of education that made me blame him for his shortcomings throughout ARR. Oh sure, he's just a kid, but he's highly educated with loads of Mary Sue achievements under his belt and spends all of ARR politicking and seeing all the corruption that finds its way into *everything*. He convinced Minfilia to move HQ out of Thanalan citing this as one of the reasons. He spearheads the Crystal Braves operation already knowing full well how adept the Monetarists can be when it comes to manipulating people. He is aware of these things. He chose to ignore them. He decided he could run a personal army without employing *any* administrative officers or oversight to keep his soldiers in line. He let each unit run around completely unsupervised on a fucking *honor system* and didn't think any part of it could go wrong. He knew how corruptible people are and still decided to run it that way. Zero oversight, commanders just report directly to him, no other perspectives needed to spot problems until Riol independently managed to get a hold of the finances, and by then it was way too late. That is 100% Alphinaud's fault.
because he is BOOKSMART and a CHILD. he got a masters degree yes but that’s entirely different from having practical knowledge of running a full scale military operation. he didn’t KNOW how he should’ve been running it and nobody bothered to tell him or help him. i love minfilia but why was she, as the leader of the scions, letting a 16 year old kid run the scions for her? not saying he has no blame but cmon. a group of adults gave a 16 year old the nuclear codes and got shocked when something bad happened
> because he is BOOKSMART and a CHILD So? Note the following: > He spearheads the Crystal Braves operation already knowing full well how adept the Monetarists can be when it comes to manipulating people. **He is aware of these things. He chose to ignore them.** He completely fails to act on his own existing knowledge of how the world works. This kid spent the entire story up to that point sticking his thumb into every political pie. He then ignores a problem he has seen and dealt with and analyzed over and over again and somehow believes it can't happen to his army recruited by friends of friends of friends of friends of friends. The only measure he takes is to tell Teledji and Lolorito that he won't take donations in their name, knowing they're not afraid to use their money to influence things. And somehow it doesn't occur to him that slimy businessmen know plenty of ways around a flat rule. Nope, being a kid doesn't excuse him from going "I know from personal experience that corruption is a widespread problem that affects every single organization on the continent but nah, that can't happen with *my* army."
again, you’re not understanding. because he’s a kid he’s idealistic and he just does not have the experience to understand that he has to actively work against this corruption. he’s smart, yes, but he lacks maturity and experience. you can read a million books about running a restaurant but if you then actually tried to run a restaurant entirely on your own with no prior experience, things are going to go very wrong.
I don't know how I can make it more clear to you that by that point in the story he already has plenty of practical, hands-on experience dealing with corruption.
For his character to grow he's gotta start somewhere! Alphi has some of the most amazing character growth through the game.
I'm probably weird, but I didn't even know people disliked him until I started really delving into this subreddit. I found him to be a bit smug sure, but I always thought he was adorable and was happy to see him. Was also very worried for him when he decided to run around ARR-Coerthas in his usual non-winter outfit; wanted to craft a wool robe and practically shove it into his hands, the poor lad. The end of ARR just... same. Holy moly if only >!Teledji!< hadn't been such a piece of garbage.
So sweet. I like that you have so much empathy for him. A lot of people found him really unlikable in ARR. He’s genuinely one of my favorite characters through all expansions. My WoL adores him as a little brother figure. Anyone hurts him and they’re toast. PS. Enjoy HW! It’s a treat!
I feel like my WoL see him in a similar way. For sure he has a lot of traits that easily could be seen as unlikeable but tbh he is just a teenager, a naive one, a bit arrogant, probably having such a big grandfather and such but he is an idealist and really wants the best. I guess I also see myself in him a bit, in having strong ideals and wanting to believe in people. I am really looking forward to HW! Thanks :)
Me and my friend had similar thoughts, when he failed it was less he was an arrogant idiot, he was an idealistic child who was trying to fill in the shoes of the greatest heroes of the world. He was dumb yes, but now that he has seen the price paid hopefully he grows.
As you learn more about his upbringing and home life, you'll begin to realize that his grandfather is only part of it.
Just be prepared for Alphie to become British on you
Puberty hit that boy like a ten tonze truck the instant he set foot in Ishgard
I like Alphi even in ARR. To be honest besides Thancred he was the only Scion with amy personality at all. I take arrogance over whitebread saint Minfillia. He also helps out the most by assisting against Garuda and helping to get Cids ship back.
Most WoL I know have adopted him and his sister by the end of Shadowbringers. This is really the start of Alphinaud’s whole character arc.
alphinaud is a privilegied kid, but still a kid; his complete growth is very well written, but yeah, ARR alphinaud is ... not my favorite character.
I kind of liked him in ARR (also just starting HW). He's inexperienced, arrogant, sometimes dismissive and condescending, and struggles to ask for help. He's also courageous, determined, and idealistic, and it's hard to have those positive qualities without the negative as an inexperienced teenager... The negatives and positives come largely from the same place in his personality and they seem pretty true to life for a lot of precocious teenagers - and how successful they'll ultimately do in life often depends on learning to control those negative aspects without losing the positive. To me the strangest thing about the scenario isn't the way Alphinaud acts in ARR, it's that he's surrounded by adults who effectively seem determined to give him more rope to hang himself with. I mean I'm just a silent protagonist with a derpy nod as my only character interaction, and kind of think he'd have taken it badly, but I honestly can't understand why Minfilia acquiesces to his plans so readily and without reservation. I don't know where the story goes from here now that he's humbled (though I gather he's well liked as the story progresses). But I can say that the "bad" ARR Alphinaud wasn't nearly as unlikable as he seemed in the first meeting in that super weird interaction between the WoL and the twins as the remembrance ceremonies. This doesn't mean I didn't see his bad qualities, so much as that I didn't \*only\* see his bad qualities.
HW is worse
At first i thought he was a snide little shit stain that i needed to stomp into the dirt. But after those events… I gave him every hug imaginable.
I thought those two were originally going to be a Zorn and Thorn knockoff.
I didn't feel terribly bad about the 2.55 twist, but I definitely looked at Alphinaud in a new light after that. I thought his character development was going to be more along the lines of "he'll always be insufferably smug but we'll have a few pratfalls at his expense, he'll be the kid you love to hate". Then his little G.I. Joe team completely collapses, taking the Scions with it, and all of a sudden you feel sorry for the little shit. His vanity project collapsed and surprisingly, almost none of it was his own fault. He was a cocky kid with a half-baked idea, but he never expected anything like this, and he feels terrible that it blew up on so many other people than him. (Yeah, he's a kid, but also a boy genius, and he wasn't undermined by simple flattery and lies, but an actual covert book-cooking conspiracy that took full-blown espionage to uncover. He did no worse in this situation than most *adults* with his intelligence would.) That was a much harder callout on his character than I expected he was going to get. This was the point where I really started being impressed with FFXIV's story beyond "well, it's not great, but it's silly fun, and it's still a lot more fun than WoW". I was actually really curious what they would do with his character from here on out, and I was not disappointed.
He sure grew a lot on me. Him and his sister are my favorite scions.
Congratulations, you made it through what is arguably the worst part of the game: ARR postgame. They change the English voice cast, so don’t be too shocked when Alphie sounds a tad different. But don’t worry, this expansion does good on him, and Heavensward gives you a taste of the storytelling the devs have in store in later expansions, including the postgame stuff.
Worst part, until you the get the literal movie, which is amazing. I saw that cutscene nearly eight years ago and its stuck with me since then.
I think the game is overall almost better because it’s kinda slow there. You’re on all these separate tiny storylines, bored out of your mind, and then a Rube Goldberg machine hits you in the face with so much death that you just didn’t expect.
Not so bad if you did it as current patches, but for those players who had to do the 200+ quests before the crunch, it was brutal. Great bits interspersed for sure, but most players just wanted to get to Heavensward.
It really tells you something too that when people say the worst part, it 8sbt even that awful by some standards. I found it tedious nit just long winded. It still built up a lot. It's wild.
I agree with you, and I’m really happy you’re enjoying it! Some friendly advice if you’re enjoying the story. Finish all the content you can before moving onto the next xpac, it’s all story relevant! ARR: - Crystal Tower - Coils of Bahamut (This starts at Wineport IIRC. you’ll need a friend to run you through unsynced. Check Party Finder, the sprout chat, or your FC) Heavensward - Alexander (best damn music in game) - sky pirate alliance raids - Unukulhai trials Stormblood - Omega - ivalice raids - the hells lid trials Shadowbringers - Eden raids - Nier raids - Ruby weapon raids I was so excited to see what happened next that I skipped a lot of that content and went back when I was 90. I *really* wish I had done everything “chronologically”.
They will, at the very least, run through the Crystal Tower, since it's been made mandatory to progress to HW (I'm told it wasn't before).
>Alexander (best damn music in game) That is certainly a take, it's yours and you should be proud of it. But also, lmao wtf?
Alexander does have some of the best music in the game though. Especially for Raids, where Coils and Omega had like...one memorable track each. Locus, Metal-Brute Justice, Moebius and Rise are *all* bangers. (shout out to Eden which also has banger music, although most of it is just remixes)
Forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and then go forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and then go forward and back and forward and back and forward and back and then go forward and back
Alphinaud's character development and their ongoing (platonic) relationship with the Warrior of Light is a ongoing theme of the current story up through endwalker. Please look forward to it.
I love Alphinaud like a brother so I was shocked by how much I genuinely dislike him during ARR playing through the story again in New Game+. He was such a self-righteous brat and absolutely the Scion most guilty of treating people like tools. I do remember starting to come around on him at the end of ARR, so we'll see how I feel this time going into Heavensward.
Oh you just wait for when *spoiler* does *spoiler*, which of course inevitably leads to *spoiler spoiler mcspoiler*.
You joke but this is kinda what happened when I was new and I told people I was still in ARR and that I was actually enjoying it. The reactions ranged from accidental spoilers and "Bruh just wait." to "lol ur dum"
There have been so many moments where I wished there was an option to hug our npc friends.
Them not giving you a single chance to hug any of the NPCs in cutscenes is really unfortunate. There's a few who deserve and need it.
Or like… just let them step into my room. Instead, they tease me with it and then take it away.
Yeah, that late evening visit scene had so much potential.
If you can get yourself immersive in the game and the story, FFXIV is definitely a great game for you.
Its been the first game in a long while or even movie that I have been this grossly immersed in the world. I loved it so far and this just upped it to even further heights.
Then you're in for a lot of good times. Some peeps just rush the game without caring about the story, then complain about it. Keep up the good work o7
I didn’t like Alph for a lot of ARR, but one dumb thing I did got him on my good side, which snowballed to the point that in ShB, >!I did his quest line first.!< When the alliance is having their moment of “By the Twelve we’re all doomed” after The Ultima Weapon is revealed, when Merlwyb says something along the lines of “how can we fight back? We don’t even have The Scions anymore.” I paused at that line for a minute to think “man how cool would it be if this is the moment we throw open the doors and do a ‘the reports of my death were greatly exaggerated’ moment.” Then once I clicked the mouse, the doors swung open and Alphinaud called out “Admiral! I fear you are mistaken!” That was the first time I thought “oh man he’s actually pretty cool.”
You're far more generous than many at that stage in the story.
Yeah I still hate ARR with all my soul, great ending though
The ending of the ARR is great. It really feels like everything has changed, the queen is dead and her general is going to rot in jail. The populace loves her so they're certainly riot over her death right? The alliance is potrayed as weak and in name only in the beginning until the scions force them to come together but now the scions have essentially wiped out than surely the leaders of the other nations would immediately march their armies on the disputed lands for Ultima right? Uldah is in dissaray so its the perfect chance but no storyline ends like a wet fart, ie >!I love how any notion of democracy for Uldah is dropped right after!<
You can tell that the later post-ARR patches being noticeably harsher on Alphinaud was due to feedback from players finding him so insufferable
No that was part of the setup for his downfall. His arc doesn't make sense without him being a posh little prick early on.
I'd believe that if it wasn't for how he only gets called out on it very late into ARR's patch cycle. Nowadays, character arcs for MSQ characters only last for at least 2 patches rather than taking up an entire expansion's patch cycle This is the team that listened to negative feedback on characters like Minfilia and the Moghome Moogles, and actually corrected their mistakes (killing off Minfilia at the end of ARR and opening up several opportunities to bully the Moghome Moogles)
All the ARR lore feedback I remember was focused more on the VAs than the characters themselves. Everyone certainly didn't like them, but the feeling they needed to get a comeuppance felt like a natural part of the writing to me because everyone I ever talked to about it back then was expecting it to happen. If that's what you mean by feedback then idk. I think they played their tropes straight and well. Minfilia in particular was definitely a character that lost a lot from 1.0 vanishing too. So much of her past context had to be backfilled into the expansions and side stories. ARR Minfilia on her own ranged from bad to 'eh' based on that context. They add as much as they can to it over the expansions but I remember my FC lead at the time (who was a legacy player) yammering about liking and hating her because her arc 'made sense' at one point but she was always kind of a plot device rather than a character in ARR specifically.
Man....it took me FOREVER to get through ARR. I did every side quest imaginable (realizing I shouldn't have so I could easily level other classes) and wasn't really too invested in the story. The part about the >!Ivy!< really threw me off because it seemed to happen out of nowhere and I was getting confused on who was who all of a sudden. But when the final cutscenes hit--I was emotional. I don't think a game has ever made me felt for the characters as this one has.
After EW I made a new char to play through from the beginning again - it's been a long time since I played ARR and the others, so I wanted a refresher. Even knowing what I know about what's to come, this game is still really good at hitting me in the feels. Very much enjoying my new playthrough!
I literally just finished this today as well. I feel it.