We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The issue with gear and progression isn't raids or anything it's simply the lifespan at which content is designed.. and that includes raids. the moment 4.4 lands even the top tier gear raiders have from sigma scape will be trashed by crafted gear with a few melds tossed in. the other issue is the gear stats ahve been dumbed down and simplified so much that the only option they have is just keep throwing out bigger numbers. and that ultimately makes all previous content obselete and expired... when you look at it this game actually has a shed load of content. yet players never have anything to do. because 99% of that content is obselete and a total waste of time... everything is trash or dead on arrival not because of raids but because of design. even if you ignore the rewards content is still DOA.

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In theory, the random routlettes was a system to solve this. If evenly spaced out, you'd only do a repeat once every 2-3 weeks if you did it everyday and you got a universal currency that helped you. Yet somehow when I was leveling my Dark Knight in Stormblood, the leveling roulette sent me to Sunken Temple 4 times in a single week, which only made me take a good long break from tanking. The system definitely could use some work.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

there's no satisfaction in getting gear or rewards either because it's all so incredibly bland and worthless junk that will be tossed in a month or glamoured over in minutes because it's ugly as hell all it really does is boost your strength or int by a few points.. wowwwwwwww.. nothing ever actually changes.... look at spell speed as a stat. a level 50 blm with something like 300 spell speed casts flare at the exact same speed as a level 70 player with like 1500 spell speed. so what does that stat actually doooo... absolutely nothing..... and that is a major factor of why stats are soo boring and uninteresting... the game just isnt a rewarding one to play and thats why retention is so bad. everything is soo easy that theres no accomplishment or satisfaction in clearing it. and often the lack of difficulty actually destroys the sense of atmosphere the story tries to create.

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Yeah, stat inflation is really bad. It was amazing how when playing the original KOTOR game, just getting +5 Strength gave my character such a massive boost in damage. Whereas in this game, if I add +100 Strength to my character, I don't even notice a difference. If feels like all that's left to care about is the gear level, and that's somewhat just a matter of prestige now. While some other games might give you actually game numbers to tell you what +1 Strength does, the character menu in this game only tell you what the stat does and what number it is. I think you have to use 3rd party sites to even know what the numbers even mean. I'm not surprised most casual players don't even care.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

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While I was mainly talking about new player retention, I completely agree with pretty much everything in your post. +1.

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Originally Posted by Magic-Mal

While I was mainly talking about new player retention, I completely agree with pretty much everything in your post. +1.

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Yeah but I think new players are often heavily Influenced by existing or former ones.

Some of my friends see me playing xiv on steam or psn depending which I'm using at the time. Ask me if its any good or should they buy it. I generally say not really. The main reason I play is because I have some very long standing connections. Some over 15 years...

Or friends look through the store find final fantasy 14. See that loads of there friends have played it. But then wonder why none still do... can't be that good won't buy It...

It doesn't create a positive image if people are getting to 70 smashing a content patch in a day and then not playing for several weeks or even months... no point even getting to 70 if that's what they see players doing....

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Yeah but I think new players are often heavily Influenced by existing or former ones.

Some of my friends see me playing xiv on steam or psn depending which I'm using at the time. Ask me if its any good or should they buy it. I generally say not really. The main reason I play is because I have some very long standing connections. Some over 15 years...

Or friends look through the store find final fantasy 14. See that loads of there friends have played it. But then wonder why none still do... can't be that good won't buy It...

It doesn't create a positive image if people are getting to 70 smashing a content patch in a day and then not playing for several weeks or even months... no point even getting to 70 if that's what they see players doing....

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I mainly only had friends/newbies who were just starting and really wanted to play with the much stronger FC members but just couldn't make it through the story. Approximately 0 made it to the end of base SB/HW story. ARR is just that bad.

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Originally Posted by Magic-Mal

I mainly only had friends/newbies who were just starting and really wanted to play with the much stronger FC members but just couldn't make it through the story. Approximately 0 made it to the end of base SB/HW story. ARR is just that bad.

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That sounds like a problem of them wanting to be carried through everything.

SE should stick to it's guns and not ever nerf the storyline. They put the cash shop jump pot out there, the community didn't want that, but we also realize that some players just want to play with each other and don't have a week to commit to doing the entirety of ARR. It doesn't help that players who roll a DPS get blocked by DPS queues.

Which if that's true, that means MMORPG's are too much of a commitment for casual "get friends together" and SE should instead make something like Mario Party Online.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

That sounds like a problem of them wanting to be carried through everything.

SE should stick to it's guns and not ever nerf the storyline. They put the cash shop jump pot out there, the community didn't want that, but we also realize that some players just want to play with each other and don't have a week to commit to doing the entirety of ARR. It doesn't help that players who roll a DPS get blocked by DPS queues.

Which if that's true, that means MMORPG's are too much of a commitment for casual "get friends together" and SE should instead make something like Mario Party Online.

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i think its an issue of how much junk there is in the story.. admitedly expansions have had less of the junk.. but in ARR for example there's 44 maybe 48 quests just in that section between killing titan and going to do battle with garuda.. and how many of those 44 or 48 quests have any relevence to the actual plot..............

most of them exist for the sole purpose of handing the player some exp.

i think at present theres something like 600 msq quests in total.. i honestly think you could delete more than 300 (half) and not impact the core story at all... because most of them aren't relevent they're just tacked on as an excuse to throw some exp at you.. and often times you get a string of 4 or 5 quests that could quite easily be 1..

there's never any epic moments in the story either and when there is a high point (i.e fighting titan) its immediately followed by a soul crushing grind of another 44 quests before you get to the net one... and most of those high points are so easy there's no real satisfaction from clearing them. so its like
ok cool i gotta fight titan >> what the hell was that it???? >>>>> slog grind slog grind bash head against wall >> ok cool gotta fight garuda >>>> wait that was it??? what the helll???

i use that part as an example because thats the bit where i've had quite a few friends just give up because its so tedious, monotonous and unsatisfying

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

That sounds like a problem of them wanting to be carried through everything.

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That's not them wanting to be carried, I brought some friends with me here and all of them got bored with MSQs and quit.

The quests are just boring and most mmo players don't play mmos for story, they play it for the content/gameplay. Forcing MSQs and then locking content, expansions, and even jobs behind it is bizarre in the mmo world. I mean want MMO makes you play the entirety of an expansion as a class you don't want to play at all?


That's nothing to do with commitment, that's just dumb design.

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Originally Posted by OurMom

The quests are just boring and most mmo players don't play mmos for story, they play it for the content/gameplay. .

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I'll disagree. If you are playing a MMORPG, you are playing it for the story or role-play component. Especially a Final Fantasy game, which has long story components to it (where the "oh no unskippable cutscene" meta-joke comes from.) It's true some of the MSQ feels more like it was padded out, but consider that was the initial game, you wouldn't want people to burn through all of it in less than 60 hours, and you need to get 50 levels out of it.

If ones friends don't like story, they are playing the wrong genre, and should step away from RPG's entirely. If you like playing the game, and your friends do not want to play it, then you can't force them. The complaint I've heard from people who play MMO games and won't play MMORPG's anymore is not the story, it's the "gear grind". So they don't want to repeat content in order to progress. You can play the entirety of ARR without repeating any dungeon if you do the sidequests, or you can skip all of them and play the FATE's or repeat each level 30+ dungeon twice as you get it, since you've missed the sidequest-unlocked dungeons.

The expansions are less of an issue because you only need to get 10 levels out of them, so the story for the expansion can usually be done in a day.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

I'll disagree. If you are playing a MMORPG, you are playing it for the story or role-play component. Especially a Final Fantasy game, which has long story components to it (where the "oh no unskippable cutscene" meta-joke comes from.) It's true some of the MSQ feels more like it was padded out, but consider that was the initial game, you wouldn't want people to burn through all of it in less than 60 hours, and you need to get 50 levels out of it.

If ones friends don't like story, they are playing the wrong genre, and should step away from RPG's entirely. If you like playing the game, and your friends do not want to play it, then you can't force them. The complaint I've heard from people who play MMO games and won't play MMORPG's anymore is not the story, it's the "gear grind". So they don't want to repeat content in order to progress. You can play the entirety of ARR without repeating any dungeon if you do the sidequests, or you can skip all of them and play the FATE's or repeat each level 30+ dungeon twice as you get it, since you've missed the sidequest-unlocked dungeons.

The expansions are less of an issue because you only need to get 10 levels out of them, so the story for the expansion can usually be done in a day.

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I will disagree with you. An MMORPG is a game where you get to pick your class, pick your character, pick your path, gear your character, etc. That in itself covers that "RPG" factor nicely. It does not mean that you also have to enjoy story telling in order to play the genre. That is why MMOs generally have so much varied content - to appeal to a broad spectrum of players. Story lines do exist in MMOs, but it does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that these games are not for you if you don't like the story.

Not everyone plays an MMO for story. While personally I do enjoy a good story within an MMO, I will definitely agree (mostly on the 2.1-2.55 MSQ) that the ARR MSQ is dragged out a lot longer than it should. I damn near quit trying to get through it but the reward of DRK at the time is what kept me going. For many others that's probably not the case. They really should try to consolidate the 2.1-2.55 MSQ.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

I'll disagree. If you are playing a MMORPG, you are playing it for the story or role-play component <...> If ones friends don't like story, they are playing the wrong genre, and should step away from RPG's entirely. If you like playing the game, and your friends do not want to play it, then you can't force them.

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The crux of your argument is that because an MMO'RPG" has 'RPG' in it and you only play 'RPG's for the story. It's your view, but it really looks like a very narrow and one-line one.

People don't need to enjoy the story to enjoy the game, but if the only way they can enjoy the game is to enjoy the story than already sounds like a game design problem.

Even more so when their solution to the story issue was jump potions. xD

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Originally Posted by Dzian

i think its an issue of how much junk there is in the story.. admitedly expansions have had less of the junk.. but in ARR for example there's 44 maybe 48 quests just in that section between killing titan and going to do battle with garuda.. and how many of those 44 or 48 quests have any relevence to the actual plot..............

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I think the worst part is how the quests are even written to show that they're wastes of time. It's just "Haha! We're acknowledging that they're pointless filler quests that serve only to pad out your play time. Aren't we so funny?" They acknowledge that it's a problem but they don't want to do anything except lampshade it hIlArIoUsLy because that's what MMOs do. Rather than actively try to improve the flow of gameplay.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

I'll disagree. If you are playing a MMORPG, you are playing it for the story or role-play component.

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You don't get to decide what other people play mmos for. BDO is a pretty popular mmorpg, it *barely* has a story/lore and majority of the playerbase have absolutely no clue what's going on lore wise. They only care about grinding to 60, pvp, and grinding silver. I mean I personally tried to get into the lore of BDO and there really isn't any. I played Archeage since before Trion picked it up for NA, I have no clue about the story, same with most people that play that game and I can provide a ton of example of other mmos.

This being a FF game means nothing once they slap "MMO" onto it because mmorpg players just simply play mmorpgs regardless of the lore. The only reason I'm here is because it's a mmo I've never played a FF game outside of this and most likely never will.

Well considering people are playing as flame hurling mythical races etc, I’d suggest the role part is present no matter your style of gameplay.

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Originally Posted by OurMom

You don't get to decide what other people play mmos for. BDO is a pretty popular mmorpg, it *barely* has a story/lore and majority of the playerbase have absolutely no clue what's going on lore wise. They only care about grinding to 60, pvp, and grinding silver. I mean I personally tried to get into the lore of BDO and there really isn't any. I played Archeage since before Trion picked it up for NA, I have no clue about the story, same with most people that play that game and I can provide a ton of example of other mmos.

This being a FF game means nothing once they slap "MMO" onto it because mmorpg players just simply play mmorpgs regardless of the lore. The only reason I'm here is because it's a mmo I've never played a FF game outside of this and most likely never will.

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Archeage has a story, it's just not in exclusively in cutscenes like FFXIV. It's usually a wall of text by the quest giver, and the occasional cutscene. It's cutscenes were not really any more impressive than Wizardry Online's, and Wizardy Online had a story with familiar cues, like FF's MMO's.

The point is that if you are playing a MMORPG, especially one with "Final Fantasy" in it, you do not get to decide for the rest of the fan base what part of it is boring. There are parts of the MSQ IMO were padded out in a way that felt like they could have cut some steps out, or reduced the amount of map traversal for an intermediate step, but everyone points to the Company of Heros quest chain before Titan that leads to Brayflox Longstop, all for cheese. Every quest chain has you do something "important", which leads to the dungeon in the MSQ. It could be argued that the dev's probably should have had the first dungeon at level 5 or level 8, instead of 15, because unlike a single player game (where you're usually thrown directly into the combat) the point of the level 1-15 quests is to show you that there is more to the world than just the starting city.

One of the things that SE fumbled, was when they removed the ability to progress through the storyline as anything other than essentially a DPS. Tank and Healer? Combat is still Combat. You can't start as DoL/DoH, and V1.0 let you get through the MSQ storyline as those. If players are going to play a MMORPG and they prefer to RP as a crafter/gatherer, they are not afforded a means through the MSQ in pretty much every MMORPG, because MMORPG's are principally RPG's to begin with.

A pen and paper RPG, is pretty much all storyline with combat, and a bad GM would recognize when their story-telling is terrible and just improvise ways of putting the party in danger to go back to combat.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Archeage has a story, it's just not in exclusively in cutscenes like FFXIV. It's usually a wall of text by the quest giver, and the occasional cutscene. It's cutscenes were not really any more impressive than Wizardry Online's, and Wizardy Online had a story with familiar cues, like FF's MMO's.

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I never claimed Archeage doesn't have a story/lore I said most players don't care enough about it to read it.

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The point is that if you are playing a MMORPG, especially one with "Final Fantasy" in it, you do not get to decide for the rest of the fan base what part of it is boring.

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Good thing no one said that or suggested anything like that, actually you're the one that said if you play mmorpg you have to play it for the story. No one is trying to dictate anyone else's playstyle but you.

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Every quest chain has you do something "important", which leads to the dungeon in the MSQ.

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It's only "important" to the people that care about lore/story which again a lot of mmo players don't. In almost every mmo there is lore that provides reasoning as to why you're in the new map, why you're going into this dungeon and why you're killing this boss. My point is a lot of mmos don't force this on you and a lot of mmo players don't care about the reasons why.

If you're going to create a game like this with tons of throw away content and the "fun" is only ever at end game. You shouldn't gate it behind hundreds of forced fetch quests. This game would probably have a better retention rate if they simply made it where you can at least access the dungeon without being forced to do quests you aren't going to read.

There are definitely quest chains that can go without ever changing the story. Brayflox chain, the Tataru tea chain, the chain in 2.5 where Tataru is searching for a professional, honestly most things with Tataru are complete wastes of time really. Especially since none of them change the story whatsoever.

I'm not a big fan of WoW, but one thing I like that I praise the game for, is letting newer players jump right into the new stuff unhindered. You want to start playing now? You get a free level booster with pruchase. The game never says you have to go back and do the older content but its also not gated behind 100's of arbitrary quests. The devs at blizzard know that things have progressed, and the game world shows it. You can go back and experience those events, but as it stands in the actual game, Arthas is Dead, Deathwing is dead, Garrosh is Dead. They are gone, and Final just doesn't do that. Every player is in different spots in the game, and while its nice to let them experience it on their own if they so choose. Is it really so bad if they miss out now so that we could actually get and keep newer players? But really this is only 1 stone in the wall of problems this game is facing right now....

I really dislike the argument of "If you don't want to enjoy the story, XIV is not for you". What that fails to take into account is that XIV is an MMO, not a single-player game. If anything, we should be comparing how story is handled with SE's only other MMO, XI, as these are actually in the same game genre.

XI has a massive story, which has stretched over each of their expansions, but most of it is entirely optional. Normally you would just need to do a handful of quests to unlock the latest endgame content, then you were on your way. You could unlock what you wanted, and leave everything else alone. They never forced the entire backlog of MSQ on players just to give them access to the latest things. In this case, XI seems to have understood the spirit of an MMO far better than XIV does. Options in an MMO are rarely a bad thing.

Seeing that XIV is the shiny new MMO, you'd think that they would have continued along that line and improved upon it. Instead, they forced full MSQ completion on players. But hey, I guess they were kind enough to introduce paid MSQ skipping potions. -.-

I play FFXIV for the story, mostly. I can't invest in a game that doesn't have a decent story.

With that said, the biggest mistake of the slow burn in ARR is that there isn't really any payoff. How much time was spent on Ul'dah at the expense of Gridania and Limsa only for the Ul'dah story to end in a way that was both predictable and wrapped up a little too neatly?

I wish the developers had been bold enough to kill off Nanamo. It's becoming a little too predictable to work out who is likely set to be on the chopping block and who will be spared again and again.

I've not cared about the story since 2.0 after certain revelations in 3.0. I still enjoy the game and I can't be the only cutscene skipper who is happy to spend my time on other things. Perhaps it's a Balmung (and Mateus?) thing as RP servers tend to have a ton of player interaction both running content and purely social.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I wish the developers had been bold enough to kill off Nanamo. It's becoming a little too predictable to work out who is likely set to be on the chopping block and who will be spared again and again.

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Still hoping Y'shtola gets the axe.. The backlash would be glorious!!

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

I really dislike the argument of "If you don't want to enjoy the story, XIV is not for you". What that fails to take into account is that XIV is an MMO, not a single-player game. If anything, we should be comparing how story is handled with SE's only other MMO, XI, as these are actually in the same game genre.

XI has a massive story, which has stretched over each of their expansions, but most of it is entirely optional. Normally you would just need to do a handful of quests to unlock the latest endgame content, then you were on your way. You could unlock what you wanted, and leave everything else alone. They never forced the entire backlog of MSQ on players just to give them access to the latest things. In this case, XI seems to have understood the spirit of an MMO far better than XIV does. Options in an MMO are rarely a bad thing.

Seeing that XIV is the shiny new MMO, you'd think that they would have continued along that line and improved upon it. Instead, they forced full MSQ completion on players. But hey, I guess they were kind enough to introduce paid MSQ skipping potions. -.-

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I dislike it that argument as well. I've seen this line so many times uttered by people as if it was the only and/or best thing the game had to offer. If the story was the game's only and/or best selling point, then there'd be no point in tacking on the myriad of features that the game provides.

You'd just be playing FF13-4, the interactive story redux, now with some form of multiplayer coop.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I play FFXIV for the story, mostly. I can't invest in a game that doesn't have a decent story.

With that said, the biggest mistake of the slow burn in ARR is that there isn't really any payoff. How much time was spent on Ul'dah at the expense of Gridania and Limsa only for the Ul'dah story to end in a way that was both predictable and wrapped up a little too neatly?

I wish the developers had been bold enough to kill off Nanamo. It's becoming a little too predictable to work out who is likely set to be on the chopping block and who will be spared again and again.

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See I enjoy the story, but I dislike how stop-and-go it is. I want the pacing of FF5/FF6, not FF7/8. With FF5/FF6/CT/MRPG/SoM/etc the typical quest chain is begets combat, and the side-quests you actually have to find. So you could actually miss things, and find new things on a new playthrough. You could also just grind a little to get past spots you have trouble with, and you likely saved the game before hitting that combat segment rather than a sequence of non-combat things followed by "haha you died" wall of death. With FF7 and FF8, you had long sections of combat, cutscenes and combat again all. You know the thing that players complained about with the MSQ Roulette in FFXIV.

FFXIII, I was less impressed with because it felt like the game never got to the "overworld", and by the time you get to Pulse, you never go back to Cocoon. Thus 90% of the game was this linear thing that pushed you along without really getting to explore anything. Sure the characters and story were pretty good, but once you're on Pulse, it seems like the developers just gave up and filled it with hunting quest beacons with no real payoff, almost the entire game is done already, why bother with these?

To which I find when people complain about the storyline of a MMORPG, yet continue to play it, do realize that you're playing a storyline-intensive MMORPG. Where there is common ground between people who don't care for the story is with people who have already played the story and don't want to sog through it again at the pace it was originally. I created two characters (one on each data center) and played the same way on both, and I found that there was nothing wrong with the pacing until about level 35-40, which is right after the Company of Heroes MSQ sequence comes up. I don't think this quest chain really deserves the flack it gets, seeing as how they are supposedly "the guys who defeated Titan before", but the way it's setup as "fetchquests for your own banquet" comes off as intentionally bad comedy, to which Y'shtola calls out the pointlessness of it, and they respond with "we'd only give the information to one who is worthy" aka, someone willing to do pointless quests for total strangers. The irony is lost on those who didn't read the text of it.

Lv. 33 A Final Ignominy

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Wheiskaet requires your assistance with the banquet.

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Lv. 33 As You Wish

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Wheiskaet truly intends to tell you how you may face Titan this time.

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Ignominy = Humiliation.

Anyway, all things considered equal, I'd rather take a game with an entertaining storyline over one that put the lore in as an after-thought, or opted not to have any. A MMORPG that is all combat and no lore, really is just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. The result is always messy.

I do love a good story and FF14 is alright in that part since its a MMO (but if FF14 was a single player I would find it more medicore) but a MMO cant survive on the story alone. Its something that is done once and then people need other stuff to continue to sub. And this is were I find FF14 lacking. Especially in the long term content that is also still fun even if it would be a grind.

(And to be honest after some stuff in HW and now SB I do find the story even less interesting because we are railroaded into this and have to accept that our character acts in a bad way just so that the story can happen...)

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Originally Posted by Alleo

(And to be honest after some stuff in HW and now SB I do find the story even less interesting because we are railroaded into this and have to accept that our character acts in a bad way just so that the story can happen...)

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What I always hated was how our character was written to like and dislike certain people and things. Our characters are written to have certain moralities and ethics..

When special-elezen-guy died, I felt completely detached from my character when I saw her react. I was thinking "I don't even like this guy... Why is my character acting like this? This looks weird.." If it was Aymeric, I'd probably be fine. I like Aymeric and our characters have way more interaction with him.

I really wish we had more choice when it comes to the personality of our characters. We can't say no or yes to certain things. It would be nice if there were branching story paths that all come back together regardless when something important is supposed to happen. Or give us choices to react in ways that don't really change the story. It's hard to be immersed when your character that you create isn't really controlled by you.

@Magic-Mal: Interestingly the death of that certain elezen guy was one of the reason why I like the story less. But unlike you I really loved his character and found it really stupid how he died and how we let it happen because the story wanted it to happen that way and not because it was a logical conclusion of it. It was only there to create some drama and I dislike such deaths a lot...

FF14 really has a conflict between them keeping us a blank slate so that we can play our own character and giving them their own view of things which makes the WoL less of our character. Blank slate characters only truly work (imo) if you play a game that has choices. FF14 does not have that and it IMO really shows in SB. You just gave Isghard its freedom back, lost some good people and yet you are just forced into another conflict. I honestly was asking myself "why is the WoL, the only barrier between the Ascian and their goal, forced into another human conflict instead of trying to find a way to defeat those Ascians and still maintain the balance that is somehow needed to not destroy the worlds?" FF14 still only tells the story of its creators with a character that should be us but that is forced to do things a certain way.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

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Yeah at least when we went to Ishgard, we had a very specific reason. We

became wanted criminals in Ul'Dah and were wanted with the Crystal Braves at the same time. So we escaped out of Eorzean Alliance territory and went to Ishgard to seek refuge. They let us stay in exchange for helping them

and then found out about the Ascians being involved and doing a Rejoining so we had to stop them. That was our real kind job. Then our friend got "mentally captured" and tried to start a war. Had to stop that and free him.

With SB it was that we as the Warrior of Light felt that we needed to get involved for whatever reason. And then the Far East we got involved 100% because we just felt we should. It wasn't even needed. We just went there because Garleans.

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Originally Posted by Magic-Mal

Yeah at least when we went to Ishgard, we had a very specific reason. We

became wanted criminals in Ul'Dah and were wanted with the Crystal Braves at the same time. So we escaped out of Eorzean Alliance territory and went to Ishgard to seek refuge. They let us stay in exchange for helping them

and then found out about the Ascians being involved and doing a Rejoining so we had to stop them. That was our real kind job. Then our friend got "mentally captured" and tried to start a war. Had to stop that and free him.

With SB it was that we as the Warrior of Light felt that we needed to get involved for whatever reason. And then the Far East we got involved 100% because we just felt we should. It wasn't even needed. We just went there because Garleans.

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Is that bad?

I don't know, I feel like the we have a reason to oppose Garleans at this point given what we've seen and with the power we have there is also a responsibility to make sure we're putting it to use. Hydalen didn't choose us for us to live a quaint life out in a cottage.

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

Is that bad?

I don't know, I feel like the we have a reason to oppose Garleans at this point given what we've seen and with the power we have there is also a responsibility to make sure we're putting it to use. Hydalen didn't choose us for us to live a quaint life out in a cottage.

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Well we (the characters) stick our nose in a lot of things that don't concern us...and people complain if they get unasked advice...cough

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Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

Is that bad?

I don't know, I feel like the we have a reason to oppose Garleans at this point given what we've seen and with the power we have there is also a responsibility to make sure we're putting it to use. Hydalen didn't choose us for us to live a quaint life out in a cottage.

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There was no dire situation or world at risk, it really was pretty much just Lyse asking us to help liberate Ala Mhigo because she wanted to do it, and we accepted. It was entirely personal for her. Otherwise, we the WoL, had no real reason to be there. And then "Maybe we should liberate Doma too!" happened and here we are.

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Originally Posted by Magic-Mal

There was no dire situation or world at risk, it really was pretty much just Lyse asking us to help liberate Ala Mhigo because she wanted to do it, and we accepted. It was entirely personal for her. Otherwise, we the WoL, had no real reason to be there. And then "Maybe we should liberate Doma too!" happened and here we are.

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Are you forgetting Ilberd's framing the Alliance for attacking Baelsar's wall? If Eorzea didn't push on from there, they would have gotten retaliation from Garlemald for a dead man's actions of summoning a nearly Bahamut-tier primal on their doorstep.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

If Eorzea didn't push on from there, they would have gotten retaliation from Garlemald for a dead man's actions of summoning a nearly Bahamut-tier primal on their doorstep.

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They got retaliation anyway. Successful, too. Then, after a contrived saturday morning plot point that put the situation on the mainland in stasis, we spent a couple ingame months overseas and only "then" made any real push anywhere, while the baddies were doing nothing because reasons.

The whole thing was painfully forced to the point that Zenos dramatically challenging the champion of Eorzea to a Blitzball tournament to decide the fate of the world and us going to Doma to recruit kickers would've made just as much sense. I don't see why I shouldn't have just gone fishing, they'd just have had to make up some random other random reason why we aren't overrun.

The months long boat ride does hurt a lot of the pace of the story, I'll agree. But fine, screw Eorzea and its silly alliance: Omega Weapon, a weapon we released to combat Shinryu, was across Baelsar's Wall. Our direct responsibility. Not to mention the actual Shinryu was still missing in action.
Maybe the story could (and should) have focused more on that aspect but as we learned,

the Garleans had Shinryu in a cage anyway. So we'd have gone to war with them anyway.

OP argument automatically invalidated by suggesting removal of flight. There’s no flight in Eureka and yet that’s not even a discussion point in why that place (Pagos in particular) sucks ass.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Are you forgetting Ilberd's framing the Alliance for attacking Baelsar's wall? If Eorzea didn't push on from there, they would have gotten retaliation from Garlemald for a dead man's actions of summoning a nearly Bahamut-tier primal on their doorstep.

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The Empire is just the worst part of the FFXIV story. Generic evil bad guys with super tech. They conquer Ala Mhigo, but why? They killed so many people and ground the local economy into nothing. The salt mines and quarries remain unworked and the Empire has depopulated the place to the point it can't even meet basic resources quotas as the locals are starving. And they only respond to this by beating their own workforce out of commission. It's the exact same thing with Doma. Their chief exports seem to be rice and fish. But they've killed and conscripted so many farmers that they the locals can barely feed themselves and the Viceroy they love so much just goes off the purge the citizens of a fishing village for no reason. What is the Empire getting out of Doma? Why would they even want to keep the Viceroy that ran that country into the ground? Why did they even conquer it in the first place if it's just going to drain a ton of materials, manpower and resources to hold it for absolutely no benefit? (While the British Empire has invaded most of the countries of the world, they did so over rational reasons like money and resources, the Garleans don't even basic motivations like that). Doma also exported paper but the Empire destroyed the paper mills and also took all of Doma's good tools so that it can't efficiently harvest or build. What's the point of that? Are Doma tools really that much better than Garlean tools? Do the Garleans not understand how Empires work?

Even the Empire managed to tarnish Heavensward. They have almost no reason to be involved in the story, and Ysayle, whose story is deeply tied into the fabric of the Dragonsong War story, gets randomly ganked by an Imperial Battleship that shows up out of nowhere. What a terrible end to her story. The Empire is just terribly written bad guys that just kill for no reason. I can only hope these idiots destroy themselves before the next Expansion starts via a Chernobyl-like event so they can stop bring down the story with their terrible writing and motivations.

Garlemald is more in-depth than many credit. The issue isn't that they're 'generic bad guys' - because they aren't. Neither Gaius or Regula were shown to be completely irredeemable. The issue with Garlemald from a story perspective is that the developers are taking far too long to get to the rather predictable point where we put aside our differences and team up with them to deal with the greater threat that is the Ascians. The story is slowly heading in that direction. We just need more focus to be put on the simple fact that Pureblood Garleans are acting the way that they do because they have been persecuted throughout history right up until they decided enough was enough and put themselves first. Furthermore, Garlemald never had the luxury of a 'Warrior of Light' to conveniently solve all its issues. Eorzea does, thus Eorzea never has to ever be at risk of truly dirtying its hands.

With that said, Zenos did feel like he was creating purely to justify reclaiming Doma and Ala Mhigo with no real backlash. It never felt like a war. Personally, I find the likes of Hingashi and Garlemald far more engaging than Eorzea because the bulk of the Eorzea story has revolved around plot points that led to no real payoff. Ul'dah was given the lion's share of attention...only for everything to wrap up neatly with no lasting consequences. Nanamo didn't die. Raubahn lost an arm...but it doesn't affect his fighting ability in the slightest. Teledji was the only real loss and that was of great benefit to the protagonists.

Ideally, Garlemald's story will go in a similar direction to how things played out with the Archadian Empire back in FFXII. Or, perhaps, the Shinra Corporation from FF7. In both games, they served the purpose of major antagonists but as we learned more about each we realised things weren't so black or white. By the end of each game's story both aren't eradicated - they undergo some reforms, but don't lose their 'bite' or influence. I believe things are heading in that direction, though. My predictions regarding Garlemald have been spot on so far. When many people were convinced that Regula was going to be 'Kefka' I called him being an honourable figure instead...and that is what happened. When Yotsuyu and Fordola were considered as having no redeeming qualities I stated that we'd see things from their perspective...and we did. I also said we'd spent time working alongside more and more Garleans...which is what happened with the crew of the Prima Vista as well as Maxima.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Garlemald is more in-depth than many credit. The issue isn't that they're 'generic bad guys' - because they aren't. Neither Gaius or Regula were shown to be completely irredeemable. The issue with Garlemald from a story perspective is that the developers are taking far too long to get to the rather predictable point where we put aside our differences and team up with them to deal with the greater threat that is the Ascians. The story is slowly heading in that direction. We just need more focus to be put on the simple fact that Pureblood Garleans are acting the way that they do because they have been persecuted throughout history right up until they decided enough was enough and put themselves first. Furthermore, Garlemald never had the luxury of a 'Warrior of Light' to conveniently solve all its issues. Eorzea does, thus Eorzea never has to ever be at risk of truly dirtying its hands.

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It also defies logic that a small nation that was mistreated by everybody somehow control most of the world while being obsessed with "purity". The Spartans were obsessed with "purity" and they never went very far in history. Yes, the I can see parallels between the Roman Empire and Garland but the Romans were in it for the money. I can also see parallels between the Japanese Empire and the Third Reich, but they were in it for the resources. If the Garleans only care about revenge and purity, they would never have built an Empire (they would have just razed their enemies to the ground and then left wastelands in their wake, they would not have stayed behind to occupy lands they don't care about) and they especially would not conscript those of all races into their military. They also hate primals but they also do everything they can to drive people into summoning them. It's bad writing.

i actually dont like regula for 2 reasons first is the fact its cuz of him we lost ysale n second he called non garleans savages yeah not honorable to me atleast.

I thought Zenos was such a awesome baddie. The fact that the Ascians might be possessing his corpse, gave me goosebumps. We know they worship Zodiark but mentioned Eden at the end of the ARRs first arc. I’d love to fight a city sized primal.