Can we get choices that really matter and have a effect?

As fun as that'd be, this isn't your single player JRPG. Some tropes will be followed, sure, but in the end it's an MMO and the developers cannot take an MMO and split it to include every possible outcome a player could want.

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Originally Posted by Kidria

As fun as that'd be, this isn't your single player JRPG. Some tropes will be followed, sure, but in the end it's an MMO and the developers cannot take an MMO and split it to include every possible outcome a player could want.

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Again that is incorrect one of the first mmos aka Dark age of camelot pulled it off and pulled it off easily and I was in elementry when that game came out and it was able to pull it off just fine lol you don't need every possible just need the possible thats within the story in this games case you got 2 possiblitys. In a game like wow you got 4 choices

Also using Mmo as a special term to say not able to do this or that when there are over 50 cases of mmos that have pulled it just fine isn't a defense its a counter defense or is it special if its a Se mmo?

Has anyone even played dark age of camelot or even everquest both mmos both with a party system both with storys both pulled off everything Ive seen people say its not possible in a mmo to lol.. yet two of the oldest mmos did it and did it good.

Why bother now? Maybe they’ll do it in the next mmo they make?

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Originally Posted by gman1311

Why bother now? Maybe they’ll do it in the next mmo they make?

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Because they opened the door with the story thats why

lol why do anything maybe they will do it a next mmo they make why add a new dungeon when the next mmo they make will have it why make a new character if the next mmo they make they might do it.
basicly what you said lol

When you open the door to questions that if two people were in a elevator and the question poped and it leads to them debating you need to add the choice to them which one they choice to follow other wise your basicly forcing your own false morality on them and thats just wrong.

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

Because they opened the door with the story thats why

lol why do anything maybe they will do it a next mmo they make why add a new dungeon when the next mmo they make will have it why make a new character if the next mmo they make they might do it.
basicly what you said lol

When you open the door to questions that if two people were in a elevator and the question poped and it leads to them debating you need to add the choice to them which one they choice to follow other wise your basicly forcing your own false morality on them and thats just wrong.

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Its also not a choose your own adventure. The game follows a narrative. Its well hidden, and has to be, as you are playing your own character, but each set of the story, and especially the expansions, is written in a way that its presented from a specific persons viewpoint. Heavensward the story, is a memoir of the Count du Fortemps. Stormblood is the account of Lyse. Shadowbringers is the Exarch.

You aren't playing a story thats happening. You are going through a story that already happened.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Its also not a choose your own adventure. The game follows a narrative. Its well hidden, and has to be, as you are playing your own character, but each set of the story, and especially the expansions, is written in a way that its presented from a specific persons viewpoint. Heavensward the story, is a memoir of the Count du Fortemps. Stormblood is the account of Lyse. Shadowbringers is the Exarch.

You aren't playing a story thats happening. You are going through a story that already happened.

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if its really like that then we don't even have a story what we have is flash backs that don't really matter like watching an anime with 50 fillers before the next episode and thats a really dumb way to run a story when your the one thats carrying the weaklings that couldn't do anything without your character

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Originally Posted by Annihilism

I don't know why they bother having dialogue choices, I rather my character just nod as usual if they're just gona half heartedly implement dialogue options.

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A lot of the time when we get dialogue prompts, I think it's not so much about "giving the player choices" as giving a direct speaking line to our character.

The ending of Shadowbringers, after the final battle, is a good example. We're given a few dialogue options but there's really one clear intended choice ("good to see you..."). Still, framing it as a prompt means that we see that line, and know that is exactly what our character is saying, instead of the usual approach of them simply mime-speaking and leaving us to guess what they said from the other character's response.

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

Well that right there is a real choice you just gave that could have real effect rather you choice to believe him or believe the lies all others characters have told you up to this point and let that lead you down a path of being a warrior of either darkness/light permently wouldn't have to even split storys just change the object based on what your character believes.

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I think you're really underestimating how much impact such a choice would have on the overall story - you can't just swap out objectives that important without a fair bit of rewriting. It would also become quite complex to write a plot that allows both versions to play out simultaneously in terms of practical objectives while having such different motives and thoughts. (It's even more complicated when FFXIV is an ongoing story still being written, rather than a one-shot narrative where all the choices and story threads could be mapped out from start to finish.)

Describing the information we've received so far as "lies" is also severely misrepresenting things. Lying implies intent - that the liar knows the truth and is concealing it from you.

The Scions are not lying to us. They are working from what they believe to be the truth, and they are learning these revelations about Hydaelyn and Zodiark at the same time that we are.

Even then, it's important to keep in mind that we have not learned the objective truth, but what Emet-Selch believes to be the truth. It certainly seems to be closer to the real truth than our previous understanding - but however genuine his intentions are, he is not an impartial observer, and has a vested interest in portraying Zodiark in the best possible light and Hydaelyn in the worst.

More generally speaking, not every game has to give you "meaningful choices" and multiple story threads to be good. Sometimes telling one good enjoyable story is enough.

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Originally Posted by Razard

Doesn't make you any less wrong though. You have to provide some proof of the Scions, or us for that matter, being tempered though. Remember Her first words to us.

The whole point of this expansion was that while our lives do not matter to the Ascians. Our lives matter to us. To Alphinaud, Alisaie, Ryne, Y'shtola, Urianger, Thancred. To all the peoples of the Source, the First and all the shards that are left. That's not even going into that they may have made it impossible to make their world whole again thanks to their utter incompetence turning the 13th Shard into a literal demon dimension and nearly doing the same to the first. This tells me that they are just bumbling through not even giving a thought to what the heck they are doing or how many "Inferior" lives they snuff out. They're like psychopathic Mr. Magoo's at this point. It's not even like they are all that either. Gaius has killed, probably lesser, Ascians. And You are 2/3 on the Unsundered ones.

As much as I like Emet I have to admit his big speech in Amaurot falls flat on it's butt for 2 reasons
1) His point that the "Inferior races fight and War and really totally hate each other" falls flat because, unless he's forgotten, him and his are responsible for 90% of the conflicts on the source that we know of. And judging by the meddling on the first, the other shards too. Did he also forget that he himself was responsible for 2 of the most destructive, expansionist and warlike empires the source had ever known.

2) His talking about how "we wouldn't sacrifice half of ours to save the other" is outright BTFO'd by the Crystal Exarch even being there. He literally comes from a future whos people sacrificed themselves to give the people of another possible future a second chance.

It's also why his broken glass analogy doesn't even make sense. Have you tried to fix a broken mirror? It's nigh impossible.

Since you ended on a philosophical point I'll end it on one of my own. The Ends Don't Justify The Means.

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Just to clear up a couple of points for you.

Emet Selch suggests that the default solution for the Spoken races is war. He doesn't deny using that to his own ends but, had that not been their default solution, he couldn't have used Allag and Garlemald in the way he did. He claims to have looked often for more worthy characteristics in the Spoken races and been constantly disappointed. We can argue he was disappointed because his tempering made him so, but the short story about him does indicate that his feelings and reactions were genuine i.e. he believed them to be true.

The people in the Bad Future did not sacrifice themselves as you say. The short story from OMG clearly states that the majority opposed it, even going so far as to attack the Ironworks to try and stop it. One could therefore argue, if one felt inclined, that the Exarch is no better than the Ascians since he forced the sacrifice upon everyone in the Bad Future regardless.

If the story of Shadowbringers shows us anything, it shows us that our beliefs about the Truth are very much based on our perspective. Options to make meaningful decisions would therefore work very well in the context of this story which is what the OP is saying. However it wouldn't be possible in this game because that isn't how this game is designed. The story exists, we are there for it, but we're not the one making the decisions

Seeing how tons of people dont read a single thing and skip all dialogs and cutscenes, "choices" as they are now seems like the best way to handle them. I am worrying enough that the npc with the most logical argument i did choose in the valentione event will not come on top on my datacenter because "i didn't read anything, i did choose the red color i wanted", it would be nice to keep that out of very important things like the MSQ. Choices having no any effects at all is adapted to the way most people are playing the game imo.

OP, you're lacking a fundamental misunderstanding of how a good story is told. You seem to think that these types of stories have exact, preplanned beats they need to hit. And most stories do. But the best ones follow those beats as a direct consequence of actions taken. Look at how Game of Thrones ended: D&D clearly looked at the things that needed to happen and then just forced it to happen. Characters developed over nearly a decade acted completely against what they had been in the past, travel time made no sense, and overall it just became an absolute mess.

One of the big reasons Shadowbringer's story is so lauded is because much of our actions are a result of organic storytelling; decisions don't happen because they need to happen, they happen because that's what our character would do.