I am so freaking bored of Shadowbringer's story

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Originally Posted by DynnDiablos

I will admit that once we hit Il Mhaeg the plot slowed to a crawl and now I am in the latter half of the Greatwood and it still is pretty dull. I love the new areas, characters and story and it began with a bang, but this middle slog is really not interesting. I've been playing since Early Access and I am only 1/2 way through the MSQ because I decided to level up GNB/DNC and MCH all to 80 concurrently. I know the story picks up later but I am in no rush to finish it at the moment.

I will say I like it more than SB, which I hated.

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I actually enjoyed Il Mheg and Rak'Tika, the part that started getting a little dull for me was the 2nd half of Amh Araeng. I really just didn't care that much about the tracks or the Talos, lol. I realize it ties in later on but still.

I'm glad I found this thread, because I feel like I've been taking crazy pills. I have NOT skipped the story, and I am deeply regretting not doing so. This is the MOST boring stuff I've seen in the game since ARR. Aside from the moments we get to see Ran'jit or Ardbert, it's all SHAMELESS filler, like they're deliberately trying to pad it out to get more MSQ skip sales. The characters are utterly forgettable, the Ronkan ruins are a joke of quest design, it just keeps going how dull everything is for the most part. I want to spoon out my eyeballs. Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

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Originally Posted by Valira

I've been reading how amazing it was and how it rivals single player RPGs... and here I am, bored out of my mind, just skipping through textbox after textbox. And it doesn't even feel like I'm missing anything. It's just that boring and pointless.

The first few hours were amazing. I liked everything until the Greatwood. And since then it went downhill so hard that I can barely bring myself to continue. The entire Greatwood felt like filler to me - from start to finish. The only relevant parts were the very beginning and the very end. Everything in between had so much padding and felt like dozens of sidequests rather than the main story. And then I got to the desert... and it's the same thing again.

I'm about to start the golem duty, and everything that happened in this zone so far felt like 100% filler. I don't even understand how you can write a 'story' filled with so much trivial, menial and pointless crap. It honestly feels like they are trying to pad the hell out of this zone, as nobody can tell me that getting this golem was the best way to reach that area I'm supposed to go to. Every explanation for why I can't just go the simple route is idiotic and unsatisfactory to me. I just destroyed an entire army of sin eaters. Just let me go to my destination directly and find a more interesting way to extend game time, please.

I can honestly say that I'm just completely disappointed with the story so far. The main beats are there, and they are better than anything before, but the everything in between is so utterly pointless that I can't wait to get to the end of it. And I can say with 100% certainty that I could've skipped every single cutscene from the Greatwood until now and I wouldn't have missed anything substantial. I have absolutely no idea what you guys are seeing here, but to me this has the exact same problems every other expansion had as well.

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If you're skipping everything how can you even tell what the story is? I'm literally speechless to how to even respond to that. You probably did skip every single cutscene, and you know what? Shame on you.

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Originally Posted by GreyTigress

Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

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What choices did you have anyway? It was literally a war expansion between you and Zenos. Right.. Because there's no advertising of those "MSQ story skip sales" anywhere to be found in game. If you're flat out lazy and don't have the time to do the content or story, by all means buy one but I've never been pressured to by one because it's more of a experience to enjoy the content. Your accusation is invalid.

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Originally Posted by GreyTigress

I'm glad I found this thread, because I feel like I've been taking crazy pills. I have NOT skipped the story, and I am deeply regretting not doing so. This is the MOST boring stuff I've seen in the game since ARR. Aside from the moments we get to see Ran'jit or Ardbert, it's all SHAMELESS filler, like they're deliberately trying to pad it out to get more MSQ skip sales. The characters are utterly forgettable, the Ronkan ruins are a joke of quest design, it just keeps going how dull everything is for the most part. I want to spoon out my eyeballs. Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

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You know switch your experience with Shadowbringers with my experience with Stormblood and I'd entirely agree. Goes to show you that different people have different tastes because for me Stormblood was the sugary and vapid storyline, as the only time I felt my character had any agency, however false an illusion it might have been, was with the last patch. I can't tell you how much it irked me to sit through 4.0 up till 4.4 and watch my WoL basically scream into the void as the plot was pushed forward by the sheer stupidity of it's characters alone as almost every scenario could have been avoided by everyone sitting down to think.

4.1 and 4.2 were especially bad as that's when the idiot bat was especially harsh upon the characters. What with between Lyse's handling of the Ananta situation (which had no consequences even though logically that mistake should have killed a LOT of people) and the whole debacle with Asahi where from the very moment the Red Kyojin are mentioned you know he's evil but everyone else just keeps on bending to his whims for no reason except that the plot demands it. It isn't till they actually start the Black Rose storyline that it actually gains a healthy amount of stakes, but all that is set up for Shadowbringers in the same way the last few patches of Heavensward were set up for Stormblood.

Seems to me your preferred type of story is less philosophical and more action oriented and that's fair, but I have to question how much you were paying attention if you called everything but the stuff with Ardbert and Ran'jit filler. Especially since Ran'jit is really only there as a foil for Thancred.

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Originally Posted by GreyTigress

like they're deliberately trying to pad it out to get more MSQ skip sales.

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You can only skip to the start of Shadowbringers (at least for the next two years or so) but they do inevitably have an interest in making you spend longer getting through the game.

More generally though, I found a lot of the enjoyment in the game was just seeing the character interactions, and spending more time developing the personalities of the Scions. I was also eager to find out just what was going on with the Exarch.

Do you take interest in the characters, or just the larger plot?

Also have you done the Crystal Tower raids? That was certainly part of why I was intrigued by what might be happening.

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Originally Posted by GreyTigress

Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

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This is quite literally the opposite of reality. SB's entire story was based around "Garlemald bad, everyone else good. Zenos bad, us good." Not exactly nuanced. Shadowbringers, on the other hand:

- Involves a multitude of subplots in which characters are confronted with examples of the duality of good and evil, life and death, grief and closure. In fact, the entire narrative is focused on those narrative threads, including the following point;
- has probably the most interesting and sympathetic villain we've had in this game, let alone in the franchise for a very long time. Emet-Selch not only comes off as tragic but also as a perfect antithesis to the game's narratives of closure and the bonds of relationships. His inability to move on perfectly mimics Thancred and Ran'jit's plot with Minfilia (both Minfilias) which serves as a central basis for many of the story's themes.
- serves to turn everything on its head about our understanding of light and dark in the game's universe. Forget about the revelations in Rak'tika; up until this point, we're told and lead to believe that Light should win over Dark. We were told in 3.3 that Light isn't the end-all-be-all, but now we get to see exactly why Light should never win outright, why there must always be Dark, which runs counter to everything we were told before.

Seriously, did you even play the same game? I actually really liked SB, but nuanced it was not.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

You can only skip to the start of Shadowbringers (at least for the next two years or so) but they do inevitably have an interest in making you spend longer getting through the game.

More generally though, I found a lot of the enjoyment in the game was just seeing the character interactions, and spending more time developing the personalities of the Scions. I was also eager to find out just what was going on with the Exarch.

Do you take interest in the characters, or just the larger plot?

Also have you done the Crystal Tower raids? That was certainly part of why I was intrigued by what might be happening.

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Given that SE is actively reducing the playtime of the game in the last patch, and is praised by casuals for it, I dont think its about time spent in game. The perfect player is the one who pays but ultimately doesnt play.

I feel the same way OP. I loved Stormblood a ton, and think Shadowbringers is quite the bore. I am surprised by the community reaction to it haha. There is a ton of filler and irrelevance
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Greatwoods wasn't a filler lmao. Literally went into the entire backstory of the ascians? Maybe your problem was that you were skipping through textbox after textbox instead of actually reading.

I know my opinion is going to trigger a lot of people, but I honestly don’t enjoy final fantasy’s story either. I just skip every cutscene. Been doing it since ARR. I prefer a final fantasy single player’s story, as it feels more personal and immersive. Like FF7, FF8, and FF10. Something about a customizeable character with no voice actor, just nodding and making facial expressions, just seems lack luster.

I play FFXIV mainly for the content rather than the story, and honestly there’s nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has to like what you like.

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Originally Posted by Nandrolone

I know my opinion is going to trigger a lot of people, but I honestly don’t enjoy final fantasy’s story either. I just skip every cutscene. Been doing it since ARR. I prefer a final fantasy single player’s story, as it feels more personal and immersive. Like FF7, FF8, and FF10. Something about a customizeable character with no voice actor, just nodding and making facial expressions, just seems lack luster.

I play FFXIV mainly for the content rather than the story, and honestly there’s nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has to like what you like.

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You can't really expect there to be voice actors for each different race. I honestly prefer it because it feels like you're part of the story and not just playing another character through their story.

With a bit of distance and after reliving the MSQ through streams videos etc, I still think ShB is good but there is a good chunk where the pattern is repeating itself and you guess pretty much everything that will happen. I'd say the whole Amh Araeng part 2 to Innocence (with the exception of the "raid" on Eulmore) is not as good, you know that you'll get a Sin Eater at the end of the dungeon of the zone, and everything leading up to that moment is shameless filler (that goddamn mines part in Amh Araeng). Also the second part of RakTika in Fanow is a bit meh.

Yet the story is strangely focused and far more engaging for me than StB when I precisely remember asking myself "why am I doing this already?" several times (hello Lakshmi ark).

Perhaps ShB suffers a bit of the "New World" treatment, where we get to that new place and to make the story engaging there is a lot of lore dumps in fetch quests to set a tone (Nectarine part, Kai Shir part) in the first third/ half of the MSQ. So in a way it can be harder to digest, but I personally did not feel it was too much and it was well written compared to how disjointed Stormblood is (even if it was enjoyable).

Oh, look, someone I agree with. A reason why I came back to the game is because everybody said how awesome ShB story was and "even better than HW!" so I was expecting some awesome things.
The first part, where you go pick the twins, was nice, but after that it went downhill and never went back up for me. I haven't finished it yet but almost, and I doubt those few quests can change a whole expansion of boredom. It has some nice points, but very small ones. The whole plot feels very "catch them all", and ever since Il Mheg I wanted to skip (but I never did).
the trolley part was funny, the ruins were interesting, Ardbert is cool and I think the Exarch has a crush on me and so maybe Ardbert, the twins grew up a lot and I'm proud of them. But for the rest meh. I just can't wait to be done with it and move forward, so far I've been dvancing pretty slowly with it cause I can't tolerate more than a small chunk at a time. I hope it's not the way forward from now on.

And I say this as someone who loved ARR, which everybody seems to hate, cried profusely for HW, and so for SB, longing to meet the characters of those expansions again, always. Going from the heartbreaking Tsuyu's storyline to this was a huge fall for me.

If people disagree is fine, no point in insulting people because they don't like what you like though. I never got angry at people saying ARR and SB are meh, even though i consider it heresy.

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Originally Posted by Valira

I've been reading how amazing it was and how it rivals single player RPGs... and here I am, bored out of my mind, just skipping through textbox after textbox. And it doesn't even feel like I'm missing anything. It's just that boring and pointless.

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That's what makes the world go around. Not everything if for everyone. For me personally it's the best xpac to date and I've enjoyed playing it multiple times on a number of my alts. Overall Shadowbringers got great reviews from the media and I agree with them.

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Originally Posted by Tlamila

Oh, look, someone I agree with. A reason why I came back to the game is because everybody said how awesome ShB story was and "even better than HW!" so I was expecting some awesome things.
The first part, where you go pick the twins, was nice, but after that it went downhill and never went back up for me. I haven't finished it yet but almost, and I doubt those few quests can change a whole expansion of boredom. It has some nice points, but very small ones. The whole plot feels very "catch them all", and ever since Il Mheg I wanted to skip (but I never did).
the trolley part was funny, the ruins were interesting, Ardbert is cool and I think the Exarch has a crush on me and so maybe Ardbert, the twins grew up a lot and I'm proud of them. But for the rest meh. I just can't wait to be done with it and move forward, so far I've been dvancing pretty slowly with it cause I can't tolerate more than a small chunk at a time. I hope it's not the way forward from now on.

And I say this as someone who loved ARR, which everybody seems to hate, cried profusely for HW, and so for SB, longing to meet the characters of those expansions again, always. Going from the heartbreaking Tsuyu's storyline to this was a huge fall for me.

If people disagree is fine, no point in insulting people because they don't like what you like though. I never got angry at people saying ARR and SB are meh, even though i consider it heresy.

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It's mostly the 'first' and 'final' acts that people love. For me SHB drags a bit in the middle but the beginning (up through the fallout from the first dungeon) and the final stuff (level 79-80) was really good, and the ending leaves a hell of a good final impression. But the middle does drag a bit when it's in full video game formula mode of 'go to new place, kill a light warden' for a few zones.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

It's mostly the 'first' and 'final' acts that people love. For me SHB drags a bit in the middle but the beginning (up through the fallout from the first dungeon) and the final stuff (level 79-80) was really good, and the ending leaves a hell of a good final impression. But the middle does drag a bit when it's in full video game formula mode of 'go to new place, kill a light warden' for a few zones.

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I guess it's true, though people seem to love the whole fairies thing that I hated.
I'm also thinking that most people are into something very different than I'm into. People love reveals and all, of which this is indeed full, while I'm more about small things like personal connections, emotions and all. This expansion is more focused on the former, though I'm seeing that in the last part it gets kinda emotional.

Wait.....people actually read FF stories? Been playing games seen the 1980s, & I do not know what one single FF game was about.....

Why did people feed this stupid troll of a thread lmao.

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Originally Posted by GreyTigress

I'm glad I found this thread, because I feel like I've been taking crazy pills. I have NOT skipped the story, and I am deeply regretting not doing so. This is the MOST boring stuff I've seen in the game since ARR. Aside from the moments we get to see Ran'jit or Ardbert, it's all SHAMELESS filler, like they're deliberately trying to pad it out to get more MSQ skip sales. The characters are utterly forgettable, the Ronkan ruins are a joke of quest design, it just keeps going how dull everything is for the most part. I want to spoon out my eyeballs. Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

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It’s funny that you talk about the story being so “black and white” when quite a few things were muddied with ShB, the largest one being

Emet-Selch’s reveal that Zodiark and Hydaelyn are primals, which we’ve spent the last 6~9 years fighting against and believing are bad.

There was also the exploration of Light and Dark, and how a balance must be maintained between the two; because too much of one has catastrophic consequences—which is embodied by the First in its entirety.

SB didn’t nearly have the depth you’re claiming it did. We were basically hired muscle behind a subpar lead character that got outshined by literally every other character that showed up. Oh, and we spent the entire expansion fighting a villain who was mustache-twirling levels of evil and had about as much depth as a teaspoon.

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Originally Posted by He-Saiyan

Wait.....people actually read FF stories? Been playing games seen the 1980s, & I do not know what one single FF game was about.....

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And..your point is?

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Originally Posted by GreyTigress

I'm glad I found this thread, because I feel like I've been taking crazy pills. I have NOT skipped the story, and I am deeply regretting not doing so. This is the MOST boring stuff I've seen in the game since ARR. Aside from the moments we get to see Ran'jit or Ardbert, it's all SHAMELESS filler, like they're deliberately trying to pad it out to get more MSQ skip sales. The characters are utterly forgettable, the Ronkan ruins are a joke of quest design, it just keeps going how dull everything is for the most part. I want to spoon out my eyeballs. Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

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I am lost for words. If you think this story was black and white .... and sugary? I guess we must have played two different expansions. Shadowbringers is the most morally demanding and ambivalent episode in the story yet

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Originally Posted by GreyTigress

I'm glad I found this thread, because I feel like I've been taking crazy pills. I have NOT skipped the story, and I am deeply regretting not doing so. This is the MOST boring stuff I've seen in the game since ARR. Aside from the moments we get to see Ran'jit or Ardbert, it's all SHAMELESS filler, like they're deliberately trying to pad it out to get more MSQ skip sales. The characters are utterly forgettable, the Ronkan ruins are a joke of quest design, it just keeps going how dull everything is for the most part. I want to spoon out my eyeballs. Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

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I'm sorry but what consequences and hard choices were in Stormblood? We lost to Zenos twice but nothing bad actually happened. In fact the resistance didn't even have to abandon Rhangr's Reach after the first loss to him because Zenos got bored and didn't actually finish them off. We didn't even have to come back and reclaim it the resistance just kept it. Do you mean when we revealed our presence in Doma and attacked Zenos again? No consequences there, in fact it actually helped us because Grynwaht chasing us into the Steppe actually helped us rally the Xaela against the Empire.

SB was perhaps the most black and white expansion we've had with the most one note and boring antagonist to date.

SB could have been amazing. The Revolutions song had my hyped for a war story with costs and moral ambiguity, but it just wasn't there.

SHB isn't perfect but IMO it succeeds a lot more than SB did.

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Originally Posted by Valic

Why did people feed this stupid troll of a thread lmao.

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Bravo friend. I agree 100%.

While shadowbringers wasn't the best story ever, it still beats every other MMO storywise (admittedly its a VERY low bar).
FFXIV doesn't throw away all the story every new zone/expansion/whatever. All story always counts forever is sadly unique.

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Originally Posted by deadman1204

FFXIV doesn't throw away all the story every new zone/expansion/whatever. All story always counts forever is sadly unique.

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This is so big for me. Coming from so many years of WoW I was absolutely floored when I saw Aymeric, a faction representative, actually showing up and doing things after the HW campaign ended.

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Originally Posted by He-Saiyan

Wait.....people actually read FF stories? Been playing games seen the 1980s, & I do not know what one single FF game was about.....

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Regardless of whether or not this is bait, this is a pretty garbage thing to say. The stories of 4-10 are sources of considerable adoration by fans, mostly because their stories are excellent. Even 1 was revolutionary for its time for its subtle way of conveying its story, being told through NPCs and admittedly rudimentary cutscenes.

ITT: Fanboys who are angry that people don't worship the franchise like they do.
Also ITT: FFXIV good, WoW bad.

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Originally Posted by LittleChickenNugget

ITT: Fanboys who are angry that people don't worship the franchise like they do.
Also ITT: FFXIV good, WoW bad.

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More like: People questioning the OP when they start a thread about how boring the story is...but then say that they’ve skipped all of it.

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Originally Posted by LittleChickenNugget

ITT: Fanboys who are angry that people don't worship the franchise like they do.
Also ITT: FFXIV good, WoW bad.

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Football is the most boring sport ever (both of them). Why do people get so up in arms about the different teams? Why do cities have riots over wins/losses?

How dare other people have a different opinion than me on this subject. Clearly they are all fanboys.

I love how easy it is to rile up the FFXIV community. I've missed it here.

great community btw

I'm still on the fence, personally. One thing I miss about WoW is that faction leaders actually changed and they weren't encased in the same ridiculous amounts of plot armour as their FFXIV counterparts are. Looking back the only characters of note who die in FFXIV are antagonists and secondary characters temporarily elevated to importance. We rarely see anyone on the level as a major Scion or City State leader actually die and stay dead.

That's ultimately why I consider the story to be 'decent' rather than 'great'. The stakes aren't really stakes in the same way as they often were in previous Final Fantasy games. I don't exactly want Game of Thrones level culling of the main cast, but I'm seriously hoping that Zenos will put his money where his mouth is and cut down Cid, Nanamo or Alisae.

There's always some convenient plot device to prevent any meaningful losses. If something bad happens, it always seem to work out in favour of the protagonists. If there's an established rule in place that the antagonists are written to be limited by, the protagonists are made to play by different rules.

(Which'll probably be the method used to justify Zodiark being eliminated but Hydaelyn miraculously being allowed to stick around.)

FFXIV's story isn't terrible or without its redeeming qualities, though it only seems as good as it is due to the poor showing from other MMO's and the habit of JRPG's repeating many of the same nostalgic tropes over and over again.

I'll say one thing, though - for all its flaws, WoW still had some very impressive moments. It's a real shame that FFXIV isn't bold enough to have anything along the lines of the Wrathgate happen in FFXIV. The closest to that was the feast at the end of ARR and that didn't amount to much at all.

What Theodric said. I'm hoping in particular that they don't just reduce the Ascian plotline to tempering (or worse yet, mere villainy), and that they find a way to justify keeping Zodiark around, or otherwise ridding of both - there is Lahabrea's Praetorium dialogue, which they may pick up on in relation to Hydaelyn, since its meaning is still not fully revealed and may be behind why the Ascians elevated the urgency of their plans. I was a bit underwhelmed by the world design for the First, because for a shard with much thinner aether than the Source, and differential passage of time between them, it really should be much more different; Kholusia was particularly bland, but Rak'tika, Il Mheg and Lakeland made up for it. Still, the story for now is good enough to keep me interested and the gameplay is fun. SE has always excelled at telling a story, even if its world building quality can vary from okay to awesome.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Emet-Selch’s reveal that Zodiark and Hydaelyn are primals, which we’ve spent the last 6~9 years fighting against and believing are bad.

There was also the exploration of Light and Dark, and how a balance must be maintained between the two; because too much of one has catastrophic consequences—which is embodied by the First in its entirety.

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The first one is an unreliable narrator, however right he might be, the second one uh...we got all that layed out already back in HW when we met the gang, nothing new, just shown in pictures.

Imagine having more dialogues in bubbles, so NPC could talk while fighting, not staring at each other, while we reading visual novel. Well, majority of typical MMO players want that, weebs are fine with what we have and normal people just read anything, but it would take more than a year to finish everything in their pace.
And yes, this is jrpg, of course they standing, looking at each other and even have flashbacks with sad childhood stories. If you don't feel like you want to read little details about random NPC who you will forgot anyway - just skip.
Just follow main story in your head, use imagination to make what you see as whole picture and follow only scenes that you find interesting, and Shadowbringers have some of those, especially in the end. There is no crime in skipping boring stuff, just don't judge whole picture because of those.

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Originally Posted by yukiiyuki

Imagine having more dialogues in bubbles, so NPC could talk while fighting...

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But we already have that? Speech bubbles coming up over the screen during combat - just in the middle of the screen rather than over individual characters' heads where you might miss them if you don't have the camera pointed at them.

(The GNB Lv70 Instance had some 'unlogged' speech bubbles like you seem to be suggesting, and I think I missed some of the conversation because of it.)

I'm also not sure what's "weebish" about not wanting them.

I was actually disappointed, I was hoping that my character enters dying state because of the light corruption and actually be saved from death by our scion companions, and what's with us suddenly on par fighting Ranjit in Eulmore, I was expecting him to be a trial boss like Titania, like, he beats our asses easily every time we meet.

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Originally Posted by AriaEnia

and what's with us suddenly on par fighting Ranjit in Eulmore, I was expecting him to be a trial boss like Titania, like, he beats our asses easily every time we meet.

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Out of the three times you fought him, he beat you exactly once—and he didn't do so by revealing he was only using some arbitrary percentage of his power. He did so by, essentially, punching you in the groin when you weren't expecting it. The second fight was an even match that ended in him losing by technicality, and in the third fight you no longer need assistance to take him down. I guess maybe you realized you should start wearing a cup?

EDIT: And if you want to be really technical, there was his fight with Thancred, but that'd still leave him at a whole one win.

The hope of Alphinaud (or heck, both Leveilleurs) getting killed is what keeps me going through the MSQ =P

The forest and desert areas were some of the most boring points of the story of Shadowbringers in my opinion. Didn't skip them but they were dull. That said, don't give up on it just because of a few lame rabbit women and magical clay golems. Learning about the Exarch and Emet Selch is the highlight of the story anyways.