Here's how FFXIV can realistically be competitive in the MMO market: Stories

If you think about FF games at every point in time, their gameplay mechanics were never really THAT novel. Most other rpg companies had something similar, maybe even better. What made the FF's shine, however, was the intricate characters and stories the creators gave us.

Let's face it, rehauling the game mechanics is going to take a long time to do. Even with a talented and well meaning team, it's going to take several months. New NM's/dungeons, at least one month.

But SE can deliver something engaging right now with the current flawed battle system and no additional zones. Give us quests with truly interesting sidestories. Even if they're not super challenging, even if the battle is not that fun, I'd stick around for that. I'm not talking about some stupid quest where I have to retrieve cursed lenses to help out some no name NPC. Remember in Chrono Trigger, those sidequests you'd do to get uberweapons for the characters where you'd learn the mystery behind Sir Toad's past. That's what I'm talking about.

Think about manga or comic books. One writer can come up with like 10 pages that engages a reader to the point where that reader is hooked for years. That story takes time to draw. FFXIV has a premade canvas. Imagine if they hired 4 writers to just write stuff on the premade canvas. A couple good stories per week. If these were good enough, people would stay around for sure until the rest of the stuff was ready for launch.

The thing I hate about MMO's is the story is generally garbage. Chains of Promathia was the first one I played that was really satisfying. And it wasn't the gameplay (as good as that was). It was really the story. Don't you remember looking to the next quest to figure out what was going on? They can do it again. They can do it now.

Give us tools to make our own stories, make our own place in the world, actions that affect the lanscape and politics. If they did this, they wouldn't need to hire writers.

I like that idea.

Speaking more generally, gaming player bases are really creative and powerful. I like how this dev team is trying to tap that with tenative steps (i.e. forum, player polls) but if they empowered us more, maybe we could really do something.

Best example is Counter Strike and Dota. Who plays half life or wc3 anymore? People to this day still play CS and def dota and those were all player mods.

Also, dev team, one thing i'd say is part of why people are so frustrated is they really care about this game and want it do well but feel powerless to do anything but wait. Let us help you. Take that frustrated energy and challenge us to help you turn it into something productive.

In the mmo world theres' role players and non players, but in FFXI and FFXIV you are supposed to be super attached to your character and it breaks the barrier sometimes between rpers and regular players because you are your character and you like to see them be a star in a cutscene. More cutscenes, I enter a new zone, I should get a crappy lalafell up to no good with some whimsical music in the back lol

Zavier, that's a good point.

The involvement of the player in stories is different. Can't have thousands of main characters. And I think it's a minority of players that want to roleplay

But it's still possible to feel involved. Have you ever played mafia wars or starfleet commander? They're very limited web games but there's a lot of interaction that goes on and the forums are filled with drama. This guild attacked this guild. There are spies in each other's guild. This guild leader is a major jerk. This person betrayed that person. Without being the main character, without roleplaying, people are vested.

Not sure how to integrate that with ffxiv, but i'm sure there's something there