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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11-02-2011, 10:34 PMClimmWHAT THE HELL ARE CHARACTERS?
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11-02-2011, 10:41 PMNaqaj...Quote:
Originally Posted by Renshi
...Quote:
Originally Posted by Renshi
..
. -_-
Sorry, couldn't resist :) -
11-02-2011, 10:41 PMLukeSelintl
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn." ~ Hemingway
"The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly." ~ Orson Scott Card
“Cellar?” “Gate to, uh … hell, actually.” ~ Ronald D. Moore
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... -
11-02-2011, 11:26 PMquantumsaint
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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11-02-2011, 11:28 PMWolfieYes, 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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeref
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.Quote:
I'm not illiterate, so I enjoy reading, thankyouverymuch,
Irrelevant. Crafting being awful is not justification for another part of the game being awful too.Quote:
secondly, you wanna complain about spamming x? go start a craft work,
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.Quote:
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,
Clearly, you have never played any other AAA MMO, FFXI included. I dearly hope you weren't being serious with this line.Quote:
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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11-02-2011, 11:29 PMAndrien
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.. -
11-02-2011, 11:41 PMPhysic
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. -
11-03-2011, 12:01 AMLiham
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 ? -
11-03-2011, 12:26 AMNayt
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.
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11-03-2011, 12:35 AMMrfox0707
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.