[Salone]

Call me a whatever you wish here, but I am vehemently against any sort of shop NPC being in any sort of major story. I know it's about as fun as using IcyHot as eyedrops, but shop owners generally don't go around having adventures. They can do mascot work, have their own little mini tidbits, but if the first thing that defines someone is "shop owner", then generally they have enough things going on in their life with said shop that the most adventure they have is correcting an error in a ledger or actually trying to procure merchandise. They don't really belong in a main story, save for being a cameo or minor reference. At most they should be brought in only if a character needs to actually purchase something, and once again, only if it's story related.

A lot of the NPC's are just written as a complete mess. Some are salvageable, and some have been used to a much greater degree than I would have ever thought possible. But there are so many in the Character sections that read like D-list superheroes. I won't name any specifics, because generally I like you guys a lot and I know if I mention one it'll probably be the creation of someone I'm fond of and my aim was never to insult. But there's no point trying to build on to characters that are about as developed as a third-world country. It's like Pokemon, or even Chocobo breeding. Do you hold on to the failures, or do you set them free in the pursuit of a much better end result? Allusions to eugenics aside, I think we are standing before a great opportunity to end the old stories, archive them for new and old users to browse through and see what was, and then look forward to a grand new chapter to see how far our storytelling has grown.