Story?

To avoid myself from going into a small rant, I must simplify this post as best as I can. As of now, I'm at 'The Horde' quest in Heavensward when *slight spoiler below*

Ser Aymeric, Alphinaud and myself [Warrior of Light] journey'd to Zenith for an audience with....the Dragon. And at that time, all that's going through my head is "when does the story get good?" Obviously, this is all opinionated, but the sheer fact that everywhere I go, there's constant praises about the game's story and how better it gets in Heavensward. Yet, it hasn't given me that same feeling portrayed that varies from forums to reddit posts alike. It's as if my expectation were brought high and to be measly disappointed and brought down low. As of now, as silly as it may seem, what's pushing me to finish all of this are 4 things:

1. The Ascians

2. Stormblood's villain

3. End-Game content

4. Mandatory

Could it be me? Is my perspective or mindset wrong?

I can only speak for myself, because the obvious answer is, "Maybe this just isn't the story for you...?" but...

If you're merely mashing through main scenario quests waiting for it to "get good', you're probably not experiencing what garners the story so many compliments: its depth, identity, consistency, etc. Think of the plot like a cruise - you can't always count on sitting in a lawn chair on the deck and wait for the view to "get nice". What kind of shops and services are on board? What performances are being offered? What ports are you stopping at? Get off the ship entirely when it docks, visit some towns, go scuba diving.

XIV's strength is mostly in that at almost any time, if you get curious and look closer at something, there's more to see. Everything has its own identity and its own history. Hidden bits of backstory and folklore are everywhere, even in many of the bored-to-tears fetch quests that mostly exist just to give you free EXP and gear and keep you chugging along to the next plateau. The more about the world and its people you know, the more hidden connections you can put together and the more the story means. The narrative events aren't quite as powerful as their context, sometimes, and the story's richness is what makes it for most people, I think.

For every person I know who thought the story was great the first time around, I know someone who wasn't terribly impressed until they made an alt character, with no pressure to get to the top quickly or accomplish anything, and played the story again just exploring, talking to everyone, doing all the sidequests at the point in the story you were supposed to be there, etc.

Orrr...maybe it's just not your style, lol.

Sounds like the story just isn't to your taste.
The arc you're doing right now is my favourite in the game and one of my favourites in all of FF as well. I just felt really invested in the characters, locations, music, everything.

If it doesn't do anything for you that's fine. No story will appeal to everyone.

The end of 3.3 was great and it sounds like you aren't there yet, so I'd wait until then before judging whether HW was good or not. 3.4 was when we got some significant information about the grander scope of what problems Hydalyen is dealing with from her end. And what us failing could mean, which we hadn't had hard confirmation on since the game started. 3.5 is set-up for Stormblood.

All that said, if you're at 3.2-3.3 and are waiting for the story to "get good" then I honestly think you'll be disappointed with Stromblood as well. The Ascian conflict is the large overarching conflict and they're pretty much not in Strormblood at all. Me personally, I liked HW's story overall more then I liked SB's story. HW seems like it's had fewer pacing problems then SB is currently having. I'm less excited about what's happening in SB then I am in how it's setting up the conflict for 5.0. HW was great all on it's own, I never really felt like I wanted it's story to hurry up and be over sooner rather then later.

From what I've seen, FFXIV's storytelling is as much about implying lore and worldbuilding as it is about telling a good story and having good characters. It likes to take it's time with things and there's lots of lore tidbits/world building in the side-quests. So if you are here for world exploration/lore digging over an extended period of time, you'll probably like how the game tells the story. If you're here for a story that will tie up all the ends nicely and finish in a satisfying manner, then you'll be waiting for a long time.

It's amazing how I remember your name vividly, and your response to my post last year some time. Your response was somewhat along the same lines as this one. But, nonetheless, the presentation and style isn't for me. I prefer a linear start and finish. I'm not the exploring type. However, when I get to the point when there's nothing else to do, I'll go on my alt and do the story over.

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Originally Posted by Moomba33

Sounds like the story just isn't to your taste.
The arc you're doing right now is my favourite in the game and one of my favourites in all of FF as well. I just felt really invested in the characters, locations, music, everything.

If it doesn't do anything for you that's fine. No story will appeal to everyone.

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If you don't mind me asking, who's your favorite character(s) and why?

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

From what I\\'ve seen, FFXIV\\'s storytelling is as much about implying lore and worldbuilding as it is about telling a good story and having good characters. It likes to take it\\'s time with things and there\\'s lots of lore tidbits/world building in the side-quests. So if you are here for world exploration/lore digging over an extended period of time, you\\'ll probably like how the game tells the story. If you\\'re here for a story that will tie up all the ends nicely and finish in a satisfying manner, then you\\'ll be waiting for a long time.

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Is there a site or YouTube I can go to for these lore bits?

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Originally Posted by Bl4ckSnow

Is there a site or YouTube I can go to for these lore bits?

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For FFXIV lore YouTube videos, there's always Ethys Asher's channel.

As for websites, there's the Lore Train on Gamer Escape.

(1)
Regarding the story — building on what Anonymoose said, and speaking as a player of MMORPGs since Ultima Online, not to mention MUDs — FFXIV's lore is, in my opinion, one of the best and most cohesive I've come across in years.

The thing about stories in MMORPGs is that, in the past, much of it involved a fair bit of puzzle-solving on the player's part. It requires some degree of proactivity as, unlike in a single-player RPG, the full story isn't delivered to you. Rather, the player often has to piece together different bits and pieces scattered across multiple quest lines, or even hidden in the flavour text of various items and locales.

Take the origins of the miqo'te for example. Players came to a fairly strong consensus that the miqo'te originated from the southern continent of Meracydia, not because this was directly revealed by the story, but because of fairly sound inferences based on flavour text contained in certain materials gathered from the wild (I still don't agree that the miqo'te came from Meracydia, but that's just me :p).

Over time, this process of proactive discovery will help a number of players get emotionally invested in the story, and in the development of several characters. It's simply a function of the time and effort players had put into it.

It's not unlike the process of "learning" the story in the now mostly obsolete adventure-game genre, the likes of Myst and the more recent What Remains of Edith Finch.

(2)
I'd also add that the nature of MMORPGs is such that there's a lot of room left open for players to use their own imagination and creativity to fill in the apparent "gaps" in the story.

Older MMORPGs like Anarchy Online and EverQuest, and to a certain extent Final Fantasy XI as well, often provide only the very basic lore about the world and surroundings, and it wasn't until very recently that the genre started featuring overarching storylines that connected the dots together.

As an older player, I do actually miss some of the creative freedom that the older games allowed. There was much more room for you to develop your own "head canon", to explain your character's background and motivations for being involved in the game world. Players today, I find, tend to take things very literally, and much of the discussion in FFXIV lore forums, whether here or elsewhere, tend to be arguments over what officially revealed or not.

Maybe it's just me. I'm the type of role-player who has no qualms "bending" the official story to suit my needs. For example, according to the lore book, there are less than 20 or 10 dragoon knights left alive in Ishgard, due to the high rate of attrition. This kicked up quite a bit of furore in a certain forum, as the revelation made a mess of the backstories developed by a number of players for their own characters. The issue didn't directly affect my character, but even if it potentially did, I would've just ignored the information.

Similarly, the ongoing story of my character, a summoner main, has departed fairly significantly in important respects from the official summoner storyline. The key points are still rooted in the official lore, but I've "bent" other details to fit into the narrative that organically grew around my character as I went along.

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Ultimately, FFXIV still manages to engage me at some level because of the major themes explored in the story.

A Realm Reborn was broadly themed on the quest for an "Answer". An answer to what really happened in the immediate aftermath of the Calamity. An answer to why people aren't able to let go of old hatreds, despite all they've gone through. The expansion set in motion the idea of a cyclical motion between light and dark, and how bringing about a sustainable Seventh Astral Era isn't going to be as simple as having the "good guys" beat up the "bad guys".

Heavensward introduced us to the 1,000-year Dragonsong War, which is itself another example of a neverending cycle of hatred and war. Because it was more focused on just one key aspect of the broad theme of cyclical change, the storyline itself was more streamlined. So, it's no surprise to me that so many players were swept up by it. Not to mention, the character drama arguably also had much more impact. New friends were gained, even as old ones were lost. Those that survived were all marked in some way. No one came through unscathed. More so in Heavensward than in A Realm Reborn, there's the sense that all actions involve a cost, that all progress involved sacrifice.

(I'd strongly disagree, though, that pacing was better in Heavensward than in Stormblood. I remember being very annoyed at how the story in Heavensward kept punting me back to other parts of Eorzea at inexplicable junctures in my character's journey through Dravania and Ishgard. In my opinion, Stormblood followed a more consistent path, as the main characters journeyed through Gyr Abania, to the different countries of the Far East, and back.)

And we come to Stormblood. Personally, I've enjoyed this expansion the most. Because, to me, the dilemmas and the experiences of many of the characters mirror those I've come across and know in real life. The challenges that the characters faced in Stormblood felt much more real to me than the fantasy dangers they faced in earlier expansions. The issues raised by war, by oppression, by reconstruction, by forgiveness — these were themes that may have been touched upon earlier in the story, but in Stormblood they take centrestage.

So, emotionally, I'm all in. I want to know how it'll all end. Not necessarily for my character any more, but more so for a sense of closure for all the other characters involved in the grand narrative.

Maybe it's just me, but I do get the sense that Stormblood is tying up several loose ends left behind from as far back as version 1.0. The level 60-70 alchemist storyline, for example, would be enormously emotional for version 1.0 players, especially those who started in Ul'dah, because it closed one of the biggest questions left open from those days. In the most recent patch, we've seen closure to the story of the Doman refugees who arrived in Revenant's Toll years patches ago to make a new life for themselves.

I've been taking the hints, and have begun plotting the end of my character's story in FFXIV as well. Things appear to be coming full circle, and that's not far-fetched, given that we're in the third act of a grand story that officially begun A Realm Reborn. The first act typically lays the foundation. The second act deepends the conflict and the drama. The third act is when resolution occurs.

It's time to resolve the revolution. :)

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Originally Posted by Bl4ckSnow

If you don't mind me asking, who's your favorite character(s) and why?

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Sure. My favourites have changed over the years so I'll talk about a few characters if that's alright.

Back during the A Realm Reborn days my favourite character was Y'shtola. While I enjoyed playing the people's hero that slayed primals I appreciated her for calling out Merlwyb on the fact that some of the problems were self inflicted with the Lominsans breaking their treaty with the Kobolds leading to the summoning of Titan. It helped to flesh out that there were two sides to every conflict. I also liked smaller details that connected her to the world like when I leveled summoner and met her sister (the trainer).

During Heavensward my favourite was Aymeric. The idealistic leader committed to the well being of the people is an archetype I enjoy but I also appreciated that his idealism didn't always work out for the best. For example, when his poor decision to confront his father led to the loss of an ally at the Vault.
For Heavensward as a whole I consider it to have the strongest soundtrack of the game so far. When I reached the final steps of faith I felt the weight of my journey so far as well as the excitement of the battle in later phases.

I won't give specific examples for my favourite Stormblood character since you haven't met him yet. I'll just say that he's a leader that wanted to make sure that war was the path desired by his people before charging in. For an expansion centered around revolution I liked that some time was spent considering if it was the right/necessary way forward.

For the game as a whole....I'll be in the minority that actually likes Alphinaud. I feel he's the character that has most benefited from this being an MMO instead of a single player game. His arc from an arrogant youth to losing everything to trying to pull himself back up to help the people he cares about feels very real to me because of the years I've spent watching him grow. At this point I imagine my WoL sees him as a kid brother she's seen rise and fall and shared some of her best and worst moments with.

I guess overall I can say the game hits a sweet spot for me where I can play out my heroic fantasies but still has enough moments of darkness that I don't feel infallible . The music elevates what could be just a bunch of cliches into something emotional and meaningful. And seeing these characters change over the years has helped to endear them to me compared to characters in single player games.

Yeah the story is overrated. To keep it very short : Stupid things happen, production value in cut-scene is low and quest design is lamentable. But it's very long so it's easy to forget all that and remember just the good parts (essentially the boss battles, the best thing in the game by far)