Brevity is the soul of wit: Request to fix the horrible writing on XIV's quests

OP, how would you feel about dialogue options for the quests, similar to, say, Mass Effect (and, don't quote me, but I believe the upcoming The Old Republic)?
That way, people who want all the (admittedly tedious) dialogue is optional to the player?

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Originally Posted by Falen

OP, how would you feel about dialogue options for the quests, similar to, say, Mass Effect (and, don't quote me, but I believe the upcoming The Old Republic)?
That way, people who want all the (admittedly tedious) dialogue is optional to the player?

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Not to comment completely off topic, but I'd say Mass Effect style dialog trees are pretty much a given in The Old Republic. Bioware is nothing if not formulaic. Don't get me wrong, it's a formula that works, but formulaic non the less.

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Originally Posted by Hulan

Not to comment completely off topic, but I'd say Mass Effect style dialog trees are pretty much a given in The Old Republic. Bioware is nothing if not formulaic. Don't get me wrong, it's a formula that works, but formulaic non the less.

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Yes, but, in respect, do you agree or disagree that making it like more flowing, two-sided dialogue could make it a better experience for the reader?

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Originally Posted by Savasana

- Some appreciate the lore and effort put into by the writers and localisation team but dislike the volume and verbosity (me included).

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I find myself in this category, as well. I'm a lore junkie, and I read everything each NPC has to say in every game I play. And in FFXIV, sometimes it's just plain exhausting.

I agree that sometimes the dialogue could be more concise without losing the flavor.

I do NOT want it toned down on wordiness.

With that said if they want to make it more engaging somehow by moving around or w/e fine go for it.

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Originally Posted by Hulan

I may be diverging slightly from the OP's point, but what I have taken away from the original point is this: Fundamentally, FFXIV lacks spice such as dialog. Now in SquareEnix MMOs, you play the part of a silent protagonist. This does not exclude the possibility of dialog, however. The best example I can think of off the top of my head from FFXI would be the Sleepga II line of quests (because they are neither main storyline missions, nor super important quests such as AF quests). In these quests, you follow the exploits of two Tarutaru who are competing streetvendors in Jeuno. The quest introductions are full of dialog between the two NPCs; sometimes they will turn to you, asking for your advice, pausing in the place of your response.

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I don't think having your character offer a response had much to do with what made those memorable.

It was the interaction between NPCs who were trying to deal with a problem, how their foibles and personality came across, and their continued appearances in various story and quest threads.

Not every Shantotto quest involved a cast of characters, but she consistently had the Santa Claus laugh and spoke in rhymes. She thought very highly of her abilities, and was well-versed in the vernacular to properly insult everyone else's. So whether it was when she tried to implicate your character for nearly murdering a snoopy reporter she'd cursed, or when she had the King of Hearts level up on one of Aphmau's puppets, it was always entertaining.

A dry, text-based soliloquy from an NPC you've never noticed before isn't really going to measure up to that. A telling moment is when someone had asked Yoshida in a recent interview what character he'd chose to put in Dissidia as FFXIV's representative and he had to admit they were all pretty weak.

Offtopic: Can't say I was really a fan of the PSP FFT dialogue.

Ontopic: I'm a story person so that's what I play for mostly, but I do think they could present better sometimes. Hopefully that's something that'll be worked out by 2.0.

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Originally Posted by Majidah

Its not about reading lore. Anyone can make up a bunch of stuff and call it lore.

FFXIV fails at delivering it.

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Yes the delivery is as cheap as any wow-trash quest but I honestly think the writing itself lacks any coherent theme and most importantly mood.

Every FF title had primary themes that were explored in different ways int the sidequests. Even XI that maintained the theme of repairable loss and the memories of war.

XIV main or sub-plots have no theme nor mood and the cheap presentation of the plot in the NPC-quests only serves to highlight how the story lacks any direction and emotion from it.

Where are the good writers? I think we can tell with 100% certainty that they aren't working on the XIII games... did SE fire them?

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Originally Posted by Falen

Yes, but, in respect, do you agree or disagree that making it like more flowing, two-sided dialogue could make it a better experience for the reader?

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I'd love to see something like this, not only because it would make the conversation seem a bit more natural, it would also keep the player involved and let you develop a sense of character for your...uh...character. When I see my character not talking in cinemas over and over, it really gives the impression that she's a mute.

They really put a lot of work into the flavor of the writing and I'm grateful for that, but it could stand to be a little less verbose, or at least involve the player a bit more.

Also, there are way too many alliterations, especially in enemy names. It's cute here and there, but they've gone wayyyy overboard.

Sorry, but I'm afraid I love it as-is and would find most any change to the writing very disheartening.

The quest dialogue is something I always find fascinating and nearly always read through, enjoy and understand. I realise it would not be the fix you'd prefer, but if it's a terrible bother to you, why not petition for a more effective skip function on NPCs instead?

Not that it's all too hard to skip through, even now. However this really does seem to be more an issue of differing tastes than a genuine problem, even if there are some improvements could be made with regard to choreography and so forth.

My biggest problem with FF xiv is that my char cant talk at all. Or rather doesnt.

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Originally Posted by Lebannen

My biggest problem with FF xiv is that my char cant talk at all. Or rather doesnt.

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Originally Posted by Pollyanna

I'd love to see something like this, not only because it would make the conversation seem a bit more natural, it would also keep the player involved and let you develop a sense of character for your...uh...character. When I see my character not talking in cinemas over and over, it really gives the impression that she's a mute.

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And do you know why they do it like that?

Because people that care what their character is like, and think up their personality, perhaps a backstory, or just like to imagine responses to dialogue and quests are as their character would be, get more than a little uncomfortable when the writers start telling them just how their character ought be speaking and behaving. The generally silent protagonist is the best answer available until someone comes up with a way for quests to be much, much more dynamic (which if you ask me is one of the current model's bigger flaws). They'd sure as hell write Forra completely wrong, I can say that for a start.

This is an MMORPG with free character creation, not one of those cheaper ones with little to no character customisation excused by taking character writing away from the player. I hate to use a tired and unkind turn, but if that's such a problem, why not go play Rusty Hearts, or Talesweaver, or Trickster, or any of the plethora of other chargen-less MMOs that take characterisation away from you?

Now, if there were more options with more effects in the dialogue, like if that scene where you get yelled at by a padjal for using the echo on her had actually let you go with one option or the other instead of forcing you to use the echo (which is bad enough) - that would be nice.

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Originally Posted by Fensfield

And do you know why they do it like that?

Because people that care what their character is like, and think up their personality, perhaps a backstory, or just like to make what few choices are given them in dialogue and quests as their character would, get more than a little uncomfortable when the writers start telling them just how their character ought be behaving. They'd sure as hell write Forra completely wrong, I can say that for a start.

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Right now they're telling me that my character is very patient and willing to listen silently to however much dialogue any given person has to spew at me. They're also telling me that she responds mutely to adversity. (And when she talks to other humans, they don't respond, so she's either talking in her head or so annoying that almost everyone ignores her)

But in saying so, I have to admit that I understand your point. When I see my character in certain situations, I think "that isn't how she should be acting", so I'm sure that feeling would pass over to certain dialogue choices as well.

Regardless, I still think I would enjoy the game more with dialogue trees. Having more natural conversation with at least some choices that fit my character would be a big enough positive to outweigh the choices that don't fit. It's not a big enough priority that it would drive me to another game, though.

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Originally Posted by Pollyanna

Regardless, I still think I would enjoy the game more with dialogue trees. Having more natural conversation with at least some choices that fit my character would be a big enough positive to outweigh the choices that don't fit. It's not a big enough priority that it would drive me to another game, though.

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Now, this I can agree on. As I said in my previous post:

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Now, if there were more options with more effects in the dialogue, like if that scene where you get yelled at by a padjal for using the echo on her had actually let you go with one option or the other instead of forcing you to use the echo (which is bad enough) - that would be nice.

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Did you ever play Mabinogi? I often refer back to it, but they had a very nice way of handling interactivity with NPCs in a format that makes complex dialogue trees (especially meaningful ones) difficult and expensive (although not impossible).

Until someone figures out a way for NPCs to respond and change dynamically based on player choices, I think Mabi's answer is one more MMORPG's ought consider learning from.

I hate npc's dialogue in LL. It all I aarrr am arrrr a piaaaarrrrrr. Hate it so I don't even bother to read it there. Main reason I deleted my LL char and made one in Uldah.

Thread title is misleading, the writing in this game is excellent in fact. That it is long is another thing, I suppose they could let us manage how much dialogue we'd like to actually read. Personally I have to read all of it and in such games with trees like Mabinogi and Bioware games I end up clicking through every possible choice... So to me the way FFXIV does it is fine.

Your character is not mute, you're supposed to fill in the blanks in your own head. Welcome to old school RPGs where the game let's you use your imagination, a dying breed.

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Originally Posted by Seif

Where are the good writers? I think we can tell with 100% certainty that they aren't working on the XIII games... did SE fire them?

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Huh, XIII, XIII-2 and Versus XIII (thus far) has good writing, just because you dislike it doesn't mean it's bad.

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Originally Posted by Gavyn

Such as the beginning of one of the Grand Company quests saying the word "thousand" twice in a row and making no sense in doing so.

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A thousand thousand is a million.

I'm all for lore, but when I walk up to a ! over an NPC and get a diatribe of Old English in my face telling me his life story where all he's essentially telling me is that he needs me to deliver some parcels - I feel like the game's writer took his job a little too seriously.

It gets really bad when you can't tell the personality of one character to another. Everyone just vomits these paragraphs of ye olde English and it feels forced. For good writing, it should only take a sentence or two for players to get an idea of who they're talking to, what they're like, and what they want. Not everyone you meet randomly on the street will just give you paragraphs of info without any provocation.

At least make it a conversation, if you're going to.

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Huh, XIII, XIII-2 and Versus XIII (thus far) has good writing, just because you dislike it doesn't mean it's bad.

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You made me nearly spill my morning coffee.


(see kids,? one sentence and you know 3 things about me already. that's good writing)

I don't catch the problem... I'm Swiss and I can undestand every word I'm reading.

I'll be honest... No FF for me has EVER made their world and lore feel believable for me. It has been more about the characters (and what you experience with them) than the setting. I feel like XIV lacks said characters that add that believable feeling to the setting and make the whole story feel complete. although classic FF games have somewhat laid back and common writing styles, I'm OK with the complex Shakespearean language. However, i agree that there are too little quests with interesting subplots to back up that writing.

In my mind, Final Fantasy Scripts have been all about going from one epic set piece to the next, with the context between each of them becoming better with each game....Well, until a certain point where the amount of epic moments got dumbed down and transformed into worthless text, cheap philosophy and cheesy melodrama of girls with Australian accents (cough, thirteen, cough). I mean, HONESTLY, all Final Fantasy stories are RIDICULOUS! Hell, some of them are laughable and filled with cliches. However, as i pointed out before, it's not about the plot or the setting, but the characters (well written ones) and what you experience with them what make these games so special in our minds.

...also, pretty cutscenes.

IN OTHER WORDS (TL;DR): XIV NEEDS BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS, CUTSCENES AND INTERESTING/EPIC MOMENTS EVERYWHERE......also humor....LOTS OF IT



also, #@$% realism.... this is final fantasy people...jeez

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Originally Posted by Renshi

I don't catch the problem...

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...

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Originally Posted by Renshi

I'm Swiss and I can undestand every word I'm reading.

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...

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. -_-



Sorry, couldn't resist :)

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And many more here for your brief reading pleasure: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html

I agree with the OP; brevity is beautiful. This topic has nothing to do with the complexity of the vocabulary. What complexity? This is perfectly understandable by anyone literate. This topic is not about lore being thrown at our faces--you tl;dr folks can still skip it. But for the players like the OP and me, whom like to read the lore, the delivery is terrible.

It's certainly not pervasive. I loved the Gridanian opening and the main storyline has been great, but ever since the Grand Companies came out...

I think the writing is one of the strong points of the game, in NPC dialogue as well as story missions. One thing that does bug me though is how all the new repair and shop NPCs just say "Well met, adventurer." How incredibly generic. They could at least plug our name in so it's a little more personalized.

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Originally Posted by Zeref

ok, first of all, not missing the point,

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Yes, you are. You're implying that people don't like the dialect and vocabulary. That wasn't the case. The OP was complaining about how much text there is and how little interaction there is with the NPC.

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I'm not illiterate, so I enjoy reading, thankyouverymuch,

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I never implied that you're illiterate, but I'm willing to change my stance on that now that I've seen two replies from you where you miss the point.

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secondly, you wanna complain about spamming x? go start a craft work,

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Irrelevant. Crafting being awful is not justification for another part of the game being awful too.

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pushing enter a couple times in a row because you don't feel like reading the discussion is neither time consuming nor physically tiring to anyone with the body older than three days,

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No, it's not, but it shouldn't happen because the dialog should either be compelling enough to read (meaning, more interactive than just reading your chat log, like spoken lines or cutscenes, or more than one NPC chiming in), or it should be short. Being presented with a mountain of text every time, for every quest, is BORING.

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second of all, if you want cutscenes and acrobatic NPCs you're free to play a single-player game, this is an MMO, and MMOs don't have super active NPCs.

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Clearly, you have never played any other AAA MMO, FFXI included. I dearly hope you weren't being serious with this line.

I hope they stop the horrible Pirate slang. It is painful reading Pirate talk.. I just skip through it...

edit:
I mean it is great listening to it, but reading it is a different thing..

maybe the writing is bad, maybe it is not, but consider that they didnt want to give players dialog because it may not represent the player.

SO for that situation you need either other people to do the talking, or you need to have assumed talking. What you get with your average npc is, it is assumed you are responding and prompting them for info. Also in this game setting, it appears the speaking style is in general more complicated, there are times, and social classes where this is the case in most societies. The npc he is talking to for ifrit is a learned man, probably the equivalent of a scientist or scholar, so he speaks to befit that.

Also keep in mind as far as doing a whole interactive scene thing, A some people would rather just read it, than wait for emotes, and also this is in general just a regular npc telling you stuff, its the equivalent of the random npc in town, its not a major plot moving scene.

far as charachters, yeah i love charachter development as well, but most MMOs dont have much of that. Especially when they choose not to give your charachter a voice/past/attitude. side charachters can have this, but at this point we have had very little exposition on what is probably the main storyline charachters, the most we get is probably our companion, who i was admittedly amused by.

I am a cutscenes lover and lore lover too
So of course i wish EVERY dialogues was amazing cutscenes dynamic and with VOICES.
But cutscenes are hard to be done >_<
So with "what they have" they are doing the best they can and focus on the importants part !

Now what i found outrageous is the small amount of "what they have" : when you see the generation and type of game FF XIV is, it would seem normal that they were more voices and cutscenes ! Not all dialgoues can be made into cutscenes but i think for FF 14 this is really too low ; ;

Type of Cutscenes :
A) CGI (opening)
B) True Cutscenes (with voices)
C) Cutscenes with no interface and no voices (which should be voiced !!)
D) Just text in game

I dont ask for cutscences of type A and B because they are hard to be made but there must be a lot more of cutscenes of type C and this one should be voiced !!!!


No ?

I agree with OP, the monologue trains from the npc's are terribly dull. I found it fun during the initial missions, but the side-quests and late company quests have been pretty boring to read. And as stated, not that what they're saying is boring, but the way it's delivered.

I love reading the lore and back story for the quests in the game. However I do 100% fully agree that the quest NPCs are far too long winded when telling you about the quest.

I could have swore FFxi had this same problem back in the day that they had to fix... So DEV team, write a great quest story but keep it short I would say. I don't wanna have to skip the story because of it's crazy length.

Can't we all just calm our tits and have a cookie?

*casts Cookiega on thread*

I like the writing in XIV a lot, and so far I enjoyed pretty much every single quest thanks to that. In other words: Don't change anything, thankyouverymuch!

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Originally Posted by Rau

"Ifrit is back, you Need to kill it, but get me inferno tapers so i can make you a lamp to get into his lair. "

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Damn, you should totally get the job for the game rewrite.

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Originally Posted by ellohwell

The NPC need to be a bit more concise. They are so verbose and fond of circumlocution, full of platitudes and roundabout ways of saying the most simplest of statements that might otherwise have been conveyed in half the words and a quarter of the time. It's such a waste of my time. Mine and yours.

Maybe if they add more voiceovers, then it will encourage the writers to pull back a little bit.

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Originally Posted by Denmo

It gets really bad when you can't tell the personality of one character to another. Everyone just vomits these paragraphs of ye olde English and it feels forced. For good writing, it should only take a sentence or two for players to get an idea of who they're talking to, what they're like, and what they want. Not everyone you meet randomly on the street will just give you paragraphs of info without any provocation.

At least make it a conversation, if you're going to.

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I completely agree with both of you.

I think there are several problems with NPC conversations and the way in which they are presented. I'll focus on just one, though.

In addition to unnatural verbosity, NPCs tend to use language more suitable for written as opposed to spoken English. That goes for word choice as well as sentence structure. I don't feel like I'm being spoken to. Rather, I feel like I'm reading an essay.

Take this example from the quest dialog in the OP:

"Ever since our founding, we have endeavored to archive all extant knowledge, that man might learn of his origin and destiny both."

This is a beautifully written sentence! Beautifully written. Nobody talks this way--not even very smart, very important people.

It may look OK on paper, but just try saying it out loud. Suddenly it's confusing and hard to understand. That's just not how people order their ideas when they talk. Furthermore, while I would expect that character to know the word "extant", it's unnatural to use it when speaking.

I think our localizers have an excellent command of the English language--much better than mine. Perhaps that's why so many of our NPCs sound like they're reading lines out of an essay from a graduate-level literature class.

I personally enjoy the text of quests when I take the time to read them. To say they're not well done is a stretch.

Verbose, perhaps, but you can continue to spam enter and not have an issue.

Final Fantasy has always been around strong plots. Don't encourage the developer to skimp in that aspect (not that I think they'd seriously consider it, anyway).

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Originally Posted by Volta

I personally enjoy the text of quests when I take the time to read them. To say they're not well done is a stretch.

Verbose, perhaps, but you can continue to spam enter and not have an issue.

Final Fantasy has always been around strong plots. Don't encourage the developer to skimp in that aspect (not that I think they'd seriously consider it, anyway).

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That is the thing, I don't think, at least I hope, that anyone is suggesting there be skimping of any kind. Quantity isn't necessarily the problem, neither is quality for that matter. It's the difference between reading an excellent autobiography or reading an excellent screenplay. Right now, FFXIV quests are like well polished biography. The writing is superb, the context is interesting but... Games aren't autobiographies, they are screenplays. What I believe "we" (being the OP and a few choice others in this thread) are saying, is that the game needs to examine it's choice in presentation.

Just look at the quest the OP posted, there is only one character, speaking over and over again with no interruption or interaction from other NPCs or environments. As I have said before, I love the writing, what I am posting here is a critique, in the most literal sense. I am offering advice on how I think they could take a good product, and make it spectacular.

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Originally Posted by Hulan

That is the thing, I don't think, at least I hope, that anyone is suggesting there be skimping of any kind. Quantity isn't necessarily the problem, neither is quality for that matter. It's the difference between reading an excellent autobiography or reading an excellent screenplay. Right now, FFXIV quests are like well polished biography. The writing is superb, the context is interesting but... Games aren't autobiographies, they are screenplays. What I believe "we" (being the OP and a few choice others in this thread) are saying, is that the game needs to examine it's choice in presentation.

Just look at the quest the OP posted, there is only one character, speaking over and over again with no interruption or interaction from other NPCs or environments. As I have said before, I love the writing, what I am posting here is a critique, in the most literal sense. I am offering advice on how I think they could take a good product, and make it spectacular.

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thing is, people do talk that way, i have met them. It depends on the person, but even if they are overdoing it, the other thing to consider is they cant have a dialog with your charachter, it doesnt speak, rather it is assumed to that you speak to them even though text doesnt show it, because they dont want to put words in your mouth.

Example, npc in limsa adventurer guild:

Heard there were another starshower o er the sea not but a few days past. Hm? ye say ye seen one yerself?

this line of text implies you told the npc that you saw one yourself, even though you literally didnt say anything. The npc is also a pirate type, and it speaks in a dialect, and basically has fairly simple sentences conceptually.

got to understand they havent wrote in any of the players dialog, because they didnt want to put words in your mouth that you would never say. It leads to a storytelling problem in some respects, but being an interactive game, some things are sacrificed.

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Originally Posted by Physic

thing is, people do talk that way, i have met them. It depends on the person, but even if they are overdoing it, the other thing to consider is they cant have a dialog with your charachter, it doesnt speak, rather it is assumed to that you speak to them even though text doesnt show it, because they dont want to put words in your mouth.

Example, npc in limsa adventurer guild:

Heard there were another starshower o er the sea not but a few days past. Hm? ye say ye seen one yerself?

this line of text implies you told the npc that you saw one yourself, even though you literally didnt say anything. The npc is also a pirate type, and it speaks in a dialect, and basically has fairly simple sentences conceptually.

got to understand they havent wrote in any of the players dialog, because they didnt want to put words in your mouth that you would never say. It leads to a storytelling problem in some respects, but being an interactive game, some things are sacrificed.

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Reminds me of the old days when I used to do text-based RP's on forums. There were a number of strict rules against controlling the way other characters acts or reacts, brought to the extent that even in private rp's which were worked out on beforehand, this wouldn't be allowed. That, however resulted in shallow, short posts which didn't get anywhere fast.

Suffice to say, it was dull.

Like some other gents above me posted, though, it doesn't feel like these npc's are really having a conversation with you, as much as excitedly waiting around to spew out lore and wisdom upon all those who would get in the vicinity.

Well, when I say dialog, I understand the difficulties with including dialog with a silent protagonist. But that doesn't exclude them from including other types of dialog. My only critique is the sheer quantity of quests that come down to solo acts by the quest giver. Where are the quests where another NPC comes up and demands his money? The quests where two NPCs have crushes on each other but are so terrible at social interaction that they need you as a go-between (believe it or not, I'm using an actual example from FFXI here).

The problem with the writing as it stands is everything is so isolated. Each individual quest is written well and quite interesting, but they feel so stranded. Quest givers could be in blank white-washed rooms with no windows or doors, alone in the universe save you and almost all of them would still work.

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Originally Posted by Lodestone

As I mused upon this, I absently bit into a cookie, one from a generous basketful proffered me earlier. It was at that very moment that I noticed what appeared to be traces of gysahl greens—aye, the selfsame leafy plant favored by chocobos—embedded within the half still in my hand, in a fibrous state that could only be described as digested. Here my chewing grew labored. For the sake of propriety, I forced down what was already inside my mouth, but not before breaking out in cold sweat at the implications of the discovery.

We might have bested the imps in the challenge, but I daresay the odious little devils managed to have the last laugh after all.

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Never change a thing, S-E.