Gamerant lists MMORPG's with best stories, FFXIV #6, WoW #1, uhh

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Originally Posted by linayar

Knowing a story by engaging in content doesn't contradict that you still have to receive any story either visually or audibly. The fact that you compare it to reading a short story in an anthology proves my point.

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It's not intended to. It's intended to contradict your claim that the only legitimate storytelling is storytelling that allows you to be passively spoonfed without having to mentally engage with the material.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

It's not intended to. It's intended to contradict your claim that the only legitimate storytelling is storytelling that allows you to be passively spoonfed without having to mentally engage with the material.

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What do you think you're doing when you are being told a story visually or audibly? It's a passive thing. Did you know some people have a hard time mentally engaging with a cutscene or a dialog box where they're forced to listen/watch/read so they tend to skip it?

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Originally Posted by linayar

What do you think you're doing when you are being told a story visually or audibly? It's a passive thing. Did you know some people have a hard time mentally engaging with a cutscene or a dialog box where they're forced to listen/watch/read so they tend to skip it?

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Maybe it's passive for you because that's the only way you want to engage with media or because that's the media you engage with, but that by no means makes it passive for everyone, and a lot of media pretty much requires you to engage with it in some way to get the most out of it. The world doesn't consist of only the likes of Die Hard and 300, which are meant to be entertaining, but not the least bit thought provoking.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

Maybe it's passive for you because that's the only way you want to engage with media or because that's the media you engage with, but that by no means makes it passive for everyone, and a lot of media pretty much requires you to engage with it in some way to get the most out of it. The world doesn't consist of only the likes of Die Hard and 300, which are meant to be entertaining, but not the least bit thought provoking.

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So, your only definition of not being passive is thought provoking? So a guy can be mentally engaged watching a TV on his couch all day, and as long as his thought is being provoked by what he watched, you would say he's not being passive?

If that's the case, then your criticism for FFXIV's storytelling doesn't make any sense because it certainly can be thought provoking and it does require you to be engaged with the content. Just because someone chooses not to be engaged with the story, as you've said, then that's the choice of the player.

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Originally Posted by linayar

So, your only definition of not being passive is thought provoking?

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The last post was mostly an attempt to politely inform you that your perspective is very limited because honestly it's kind of tedious and I'm rapidly growing bored of you.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

The last post was mostly an attempt to politely inform you that your perspective is very limited because honestly it's kind of tedious and I'm rapidly growing bored of you.

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Ah, of course, the usual, can't explain yourself so you get bored. Oh well. This at least explains your weird view on storytelling, getting bored easily.

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Originally Posted by linayar

Ah, of course, the usual, can't explain yourself so you get bored. Oh well.

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Many people make it very difficult to successfully explain anything to them.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

Many people make it very difficult to successfully explain anything to them.

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Many people can't explain at all, perhaps because they don't understand it themselves, but that's fine.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

Because the game world is still a deliberate arrangement and presentation of information to convey a certain set of knowledge, events, and perspective to the player. If you can't figure that out for yourself, then you've failed to grasp something very fundamental about some combination of stories, storytelling, and games. The fact that the game doesn't spell out every single thing for the player in fact puts it in excellent company with our culture's most cherished works of literature and cinema. That you may fail to be told some stories if you choose not to engage with certain content is little different than how you will not be told a short story in an anthology you've purchased unless you choose to read it. Certainly, this sort of storytelling is a little more deconstructed than what we're accustomed to from other mediums, but it's plainly storytelling nonetheless if you have any genuine grasp of what storytelling is.

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This is assuming that said deliberate arrangement is indeed trying to convey a portion of the narrative, and hasn't been arranged for another purpose. It assumes that the arrangement, if it has been wrapped to fit the game's narrative, isn't coincidentally adding or detracting from the story. This runs us into another problem with it. If we're to believe that every portion of a game that has environmental storytelling is trying to tell us a story, then the parts of the game that are trimmed down and clearly don't tell stories other than, "Hey the creators ran up against their deadline." cause a more dissonant clash with what's presented and what's there, storywise.

I don't think it's really a higher form of storytelling than a direct narrative. It's more fun, if you like to do a bit of guess work and fill in some blanks, but holes and inconsistencies affect it more than a direct narrative. There's only so far you can take it before it becomes cumbersome, and then in the next game, patch, or segment when you've got something wrong... well, tough on your imagination, heh.

FF14's storytelling as whole isn't even limited to MSQ to begin with. FATEs, Sightseeing log, items, levequests, side quests - all of this has a story behind it as well which you are free to explore if you want to know more about the world. Physical books and short novels at Lodestone are also there. There's even some lore info you can get only from re-watching old Q&A panels if no one wrote them down.

The way they did MSQ is fine - it's solid and doesn't have any major holes in it and you can get most of needed info about the world from there. If you want more - it exists too, but to get it you'll need to "engage with the world", either the in-game or real one. What it lacks at this point is time - the game is much younger than WoW's universe.