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A progressive lore companion for the MSQ #1071

@ProjectAcquiesce

Description

@ProjectAcquiesce

Plugin Description

A progressive lore companion for the MSQ

Something that's bothered me for a while: A Realm Reborn drops you into a world full of proper nouns, factions, empires and historical events and just... expects you to keep up. Nations are referenced before you've set foot in them. Titles are spoken as though familiar. The Calamity is treated as common knowledge before it means anything emotionally.

For a lot of new players, it's quietly overwhelming. Not overwhelming enough to quit immediately, but enough to create a low-level sense of confusion that compounds over time. I think it's one of the reasons ARR has a reputation for being a slog even among people who eventually love the story.

I've been thinking about what a plugin solution to this could look like for a while now, and I wanted to put the idea out here because I genuinely want to see it exist.

The core idea: when a key lore term appears in dialogue -- something like "Garlean Empire" or "the Calamity" --

Image

it's subtly highlighted. A different colour, a gentle underline, whatever feels least intrusive. Hovering over it opens a small contextual info box: a sentence or two explaining what it is and why it matters right now.

That last part is important. Not a wiki dump. Just enough to make the moment land.

Beyond that, the idea expands into:

  • Highlights and entries that are quest-aware -- only terms relevant to where you currently are in the MSQ are surfaced, so nothing feels out of place or spoilery
  • Info box entries that expand as you progress -- early in ARR, "the Garlean Empire" gets a single line. By the end, the same entry reflects everything you've learned
  • A small glossary window you can open at any time to browse every term you've encountered so far
  • Customisable highlight colours so it fits however you have your UI set up
  • The aesthetic target is something in-world -- I keep thinking of it as a Sharlayan archival document. Understated, scholarly, not something that feels bolted on

I've made a start — there's a rough code skeleton and the data structure is built, with two quests indexed as a proof of concept. The repo is here if you're curious: https://github.com/ProjectAcquiesce/ProjectAcquiesce

I'm not a developer, I have little to no coding knowledge... so this is very much me putting an idea into the world and hoping it finds the right people. If any of this sounds interesting -- whether you have thoughts on the concept, the technical side, or just want to tell me it's a terrible idea -- I'd genuinely love to hear it.

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Original Requestor

I truly hope this is a unique/good idea <3
And I would love this to be a flourishing community effort!

Request Terms

  • I checked if this request wasn't already proposed
  • I made sure this request follows Dalamud's plugin guidelines

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