Main Story Disconnect and World Altering Events

Devs naturally have to provide ways for anyone to enter the world at any time and generate content that can be reused for every player. This is very efficient when it comes to how much play time they can generate across all users, but because anyone can access this content at any time, it creates a disconnect with the world, making the story far less immersive compared to what can be done in a traditional FF.

I think that world altering events, executed like holiday events, could greatly improve immersion provide a sense of shared progression among the players. Rather than centering around the player's role as the chosen one, which I'm not all that fond of, these events could center around politics and general adventuring. For example, a city could be attacked by the Garlean Empire or the alliance could assemble a warship and attack a Garlean military base. Even simply adding an in-game event for expanding the map would make the world way more immersive.

At least I wouldn't skip as much dialogue from quests if the world had current events that actually shaped the landscape and were well written; witty dialogue can only go so far.

Does anyone else think that this might make them more interested in the story and its details and dialogue? or does anyone have any better ideas or thoughts on how to improve this?

That's why we can't have nice things and that is also why nothing will happen in Ul'Dah like many people believe... It would break the story coherence of other players if the statu quo was to be permanently changed by the story and too many quests would require changes aswell.

If something does change though... I'll be very surprised and I like to be surprised! ;3

What you're stating was exactly what happened with the original version of FFXIV (version 1.0) - but that was a way of sending 1.0 off with a bang as the original game was planned to be shutdown for good, thus making any changes to the world at large moot. ARR itself is essentially a reflection of those changes.

The lead up to the expansion looks like it may be featuring a special event (touted as 'the Battle of Ishgard'), so it's possible SE may be doing something similar to the 'Seventh Umbral Era' events in 1.0, but nothing is known for certain as this stage.

Also, hasn't Revenant's Toll in Mor Dhona been evolving somewhat over time?

Visually, yes, though from a story perspective, it doesn't hold any significance to the plot.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Visually, yes, though from a story perspective, it doesn't hold any significance to the plot.

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Isn't the fact that it has been steadily expanding the reason behind the Scions moving there, Doman settlement and Crystal Braves formation?

If you were playing the game as those updates were hitting and doing the quests, it was significant enough imo.

It's more like a nod to continuing players than a drastic alteration to the core experience. A nice little touch.

If anything big does happen, it'll be in the shift from 2.0 to 3.0. From what I understand, 2.0's purpose was to win back the gamers (which I'd say it succeeded at, considering we now have 8 times the subs they were originally expecting), while 3.0 would realize the game's true vision and pick up from 1.0 to an extent. The stereotypical "Chosen One vs Empire" plot was probably chosen for being completely no-risk, but the recent stuff with Midgardsormr might be leading to a deconstruction of the concept... *shrug* One can dream.

Actually there's quite a bit that changes with the story.

NPCs will react to you differently depending on how far you are in the story or what city you started in or what GC you're affiliated with.

Crystal Brave's will show up throughout Eorzia after you've encountered them in the story.

The Scions move from Thanalan to Mor Dhona.

Of course the growth of Rev. Toll.

I'm actually quite surprised by the amount of things that actually change as you go through the story. Of course they can't do something like totally destroy a city but there are still big changes happening. But they are done in such a way that your progress doesn't affect another adventurers world.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

Isn't the fact that it has been steadily expanding the reason behind the Scions moving there, Doman settlement and Crystal Braves formation?

If you were playing the game as those updates were hitting and doing the quests, it was significant enough imo.

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I meant that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter too much. For someone who was with the game since 2.0, yeah they can see the changes happening and can see why and how. For anyone else joining in later on, they wouldn't have missed out on anything important. Jacost summed it up best; the upgrading Toll is a nod for players who stuck by since 2.X while newer players get to see something cool from the get go.

Obviously they can't destroy a whole city, but considering how much of Ul'dah's current political landscape is discussed in optional quests around the city state... It comes down to three choices:

1) Encourage an understanding of the place individual quests have in the world's chronology
2) Propagate every change across every single quest that ever mentions anything related to it, consuming a ton of resources that could be better spent on new content
3) Risk nothing, change nothing


What I'd like to see happen is for all 2.0-2.5 quests be flagged in some way as "Seventh Umbral/Astral Era" timeline quests, while 3.0-3.X quests will be "Expansion" timeline quests. Kind of like how clearing the Praetorium unlocks a bunch of new quests that can only happen after the Main Scenario, new players going through for the first time won't know a thing about what comes next until they get there, and won't need to. They can do whatever they want to on their road to completing the main story without getting spoiled on things that come next.

And once they get to the turning point and the expansion, the other shoe drops. Quests they still haven't completed will, of course, still exist, but rather than propagate every single little change to the perpetual setting back across every single little quest, the understanding will be that these quests are, chronologically, episodes from "last season." Since FFXIV's world hasn't really moved forward much since the Praetorium, I understand this is an extremely difficult concept for many people to visualize, but I assure you I'm not talking about anything that will destroy the integrity of the setting with regards to other players. Rather, it's a way for every player to move through the timeline at their own pace without the need for an eternal status quo.

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Originally Posted by Cutie_McSnuggles

Actually there's quite a bit that changes with the story. [...]

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I think that's not what the OP was talking about, though. I think that their complaint was that yes, for player A who has done 90% of the currently released story quests, the game looks like that and has evolved, but to player B who just started it looks just like it did when player A had just started. Except for the buildings in Mor Dhona and a few more additions of areas (rogues' guild, beast tribe camps etc). And what they wanted was more things that would actually change the outlook of the world for everyone.

But like has been mentioned, that would more or less require a complete drop of the majority of all quests prior to that moment, since they most likely wouldn't be in synch with the new outlook of the world/city/whatever. And I don't even want to imagine the amount of work required on the behalf of the developers to change a game into that kind of more fluid shape. If they'd started out with that kind of premise, sure, but... No. o.o

As it is, the expansions will change some parts -- for those who buy the expansion in question. And other changes as the main story questline progresses will in all likelihood continue to be individual the same as it is now.

But at the same time, if the OP is asking for some grand dalamud-style game changer at the end of 2.0, it's not likely that that'll happen. You have to keep in mind that the end of 1.0 was followed up by a complete overhaul of the game. They aren't rebuilding the game completely for 3.0, they're just adding an expansion. But for me at least, the fact that there are players who can look back on certain bits of lore and say "I remember that, I was there," and the gradual changes to certain areas of the game like Mor Dhona (not only as updates are added to the game but as you progress through the main storyline too) still manage to make the story feel dynamic.

Though sure, new players will miss out on some of these things while they're getting caught up, but there's not much that can be done about that. They'll just have to get caught up to the rest of us and keep playing, and watching events unfold. I started half a year after the game was released, it's what I had to do. With OP admittedly skipping cutscenes though, they're probably not as likely to take notice of some of the changes that are being made to the game in context.

I'm not expecting the devs to rewrite everyone's story quests and the entire lore of the land to fit every adjustment they make to the world; that'd be crazy talk. I'm talking about a parallel storyline, one that can run adjacent to the main storyline without interfering directly with it.

First, like I said before, the game has to have a complete framework for players to follow their main storyline quests. That means keeping the 3 starting city-states intact as well as every other location specifically involved in these quests untouched.

Second, the world storyline has to be understandable from the perspective of anyone who has reached the physical location where any changes are taking place. Obviously, anyone within the city-states could have just logged in for the first time, but someone in Mor Dhona had to complete their main quests up to a certain point. Simply having the world update with your main quest progress is exactly the kind of disconnect I was talking about.

The easiest way to pull all this off would be to simply avoid the main storyline altogether and introduce all new elements specifically for this world story, everything from characters to city-states. This may seem like a tall order, but nobody's expecting them to double game content in a single update. Simply introducing one element at a time is more than enough; they already do so with each expansion.

The biggest hurdle for all this would be the way that the main storyline dialogue is performed like it is dealing with current events. I myself haven’t gone through my whole main quest line, but from what I’ve gathered and seen myself, it deals mainly with the Scions, Primals, and Garlean Empire, among other things. A simple solution might be introducing a secret society that is not directly dealt with in the main storyline or just introducing new regions where these conflicts have no major influence.

Honestly, I just feel that there is a disconnect between players, like in any MMO, and I think this might be a good solution. Content is added to the endgame which constantly diminishes the value of pre-level-cap content, making the game a race to reach level 50. Generating content that involves players from across the board and turns the world into a dynamic place seems like a great way to break out of the mold. I’d welcome it if the devs took a chance at making the world of ARR into an immersive and lively place, even if they screw up a bit or try something that turns out to be a dead end.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

I meant that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter too much. For someone who was with the game since 2.0, yeah they can see the changes happening and can see why and how. For anyone else joining in later on, they wouldn't have missed out on anything important. Jacost summed it up best; the upgrading Toll is a nod for players who stuck by since 2.X while newer players get to see something cool from the get go.

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That's not entirely true. RT is considered a strategic location. In one of the 2.4/2.5 quests, it's mentioned that the entire reason that Ishgard is providing them with supplies is because they provide a buffer between them and Castrum Centri.