Please don't harass people for ignoring/disliking the story

I need to stress that if you love the story and think more people should experience it, that's fine. I also need to stress that I'm not talking about players who skip everything & write essays about how bad the story is. Those people are dumb, and I honestly don't think they're common enough to be worth complaining about.

What I want to highlight is the alarming number of players who think it's okay to literally bully people for not being invested in the story. I recognize that much of the community loves the narrative, and that it's a considerably large component of the game. But it's not the only thing it has to offer, and you don't have to care about the writing at all to enjoy it as an MMO.

People are not going to enjoy the same things you do, and that's okay. People are also going to enjoy things different from how you enjoy them, and you need to be okay with that. Bullying people for playing it the 'wrong' way doesn't give any life-changing realization about the narrative. It just builds resentment and makes folks even less likely to play it the way you personally feel is 'correct.' Or worse, they'll quit playing entirely, even if they otherwise enjoy the core gameplay. And that's not a good thing.

I'm a little biased because I'm speaking from personal experience, having faced the brunt of this harassment myself. It doesn't matter how important the story is, or that it's 'a Final Fantasy game first,' harassing people for having personal preferences should not be acceptable behavior.

Please be better than this.

Neat? Skip away I guess? Seems like a waste when story is like 80% of the game, but whatever.

After the caveat that bullying them is not OK regardless, I have 3 replies to this:
1) People complaining about the existence (as opposed to direction) of the MSQ/story in FF14 is like complaining about cars being the focus of a Forza game. I mean c'mon, what on earth were you expecting? If you come into a game with this severely misaligned expectations I am guessing you rarely research or enjoy ANY game you play.
2) Crazed head-canon junkies: These people feel that because it wasn't the way THEY would have written their own personal fantasy novel that it makes the FF14 story objectively bad. Some of these guys are in for a complete rewrite, making it sci-fi or trying to mutate the entire world into a replica of their "other" favourite MMO. Just because Game of Thrones didn't feature magical rings doesn't mean it's "bad" compared to LOTR, its just a completely different story. Different =/= bad, just ... different.
3) Hot-take haters: Idiots just looking for their 15 minutes of internet fame with absurdist QAnon level takes.

If you don't fall into one of the above categories then feel free to have your own preferences. If you do fall into one of the above then you decided to pull your intellectual pants down in public.

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Originally Posted by Zaniel

1) People complaining about the existence (as opposed to direction) of the MSQ/story in FF14 is like complaining about cars being the focus of a Forza game. I mean c'mon, what on earth were you expecting? If you come into a game with this severely misaligned expectations I am guessing you rarely research or enjoy ANY game you play.

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I don't think it's THAT wild to expect a lesser focus on story in XIV, even disregarding the fact that it's in a genre that doesn't usually focus on linear storytelling.
First off, there was actually a time where the story was minimal and a secondary part of the game back in the 1.0 days, secondly it's not like there aren't games in the mainline Final Fantasy series where the story takes a backseat - XII and XV come to mind.
XIV's story isn't there out of necessity or anything, it was a deliberate choice to make it the focus of the game.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Neat? Skip away I guess? Seems like a waste when story is like 80% of the game, but whatever.

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I thought it was catgirl ERP that was 80% of the game. I've been lied to.

It's your sub, play however you want. Just don't come complaining that you don't understand what's going on when you skipped all the story that explains it.

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Originally Posted by Mat13295

I thought it was catgirl ERP that was 80% of the game. I've been lied to.

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more like 90%

Semi joke post but here's how we get people to stop buying story skips.

Delete ARR. It's hot garbage.

I feel like we're missing an important part of this story which is how the subject of story skipping even comes up. Depending on how you present this, it can affect people's response.


I have a friend that told me about their skipping and the reason was they just wanted to get to the action. It's not like they don't enjoy a good story, as we've discussed other movies and series. I understood where they were coming from, but at the same time, it seems odd to go through all these fights and such with no real context.

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Originally Posted by hagare

more like 90%

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Hey Viera have a portion of the pie and don't forget dragon girls.

And if you want to skip skip it's fine. Like who is going to know anyway.