What's your opinion about the game's story?

Let me explain something first: I know this game is based about story and I know many love it because of it, however I do know there are people who don't like the story and simply go for the gameplay - just like me - but I often see this going into fights and arguments that often ended bad. Annoying to say the least.

So my reason for asking this at the forums is to see how "divided" we are without causing any internal fights. I don't want to cause trollings or anything silly with this thread: I simply want to see what the playerbase thinks about the main story and what's their reason for liking or disliking it. No more, no less.

With that said, here's my starter: "I dislike the story because I think it's boring and it takes too long to become interesting and I think the english writing could've been fine without the "olde english" style it uses. And I also think the characters are boring too but this could be related to the above statements"

Addendum about job quests: I actually enjoyed some of them, like gladiator's, dragoon's, pugilist's and even warrior's a little bit (I liked the final battle quite a bit: liked the meaning behind it). However a lot of them just felt rather uninteresting, especially job quests: I barely cared about the monk one, Scholar was interesting but only at times, Bard had potential but it once again felt uninteresting at best and Paladin (especially from 30-50) felt really silly. If not bad, they're just uninteresting or boring.

But my favourite remains the 1-50 DRK quest: Fray was an awesome teacher who not only spoke normally (which for me was a plus), but also thought the same way I did. I'm not evil, but the fact that sometimes evil actions are necessary and how they can drag you in if you succumb is quite charming, if not thrilling, in a game where it's all about light and goodness and kindness and rainbows.
And the final quest is probably one of the most "blasphemic" , considering who your character is, but it made so much sense and I would love to see more quests like this, where the hero's morality is questioned and teased.

And while not amazing, the 60 quest kind of surprised me because I thought it would end in the usual way without anyone dying. I guess I was wrong: not bad there, that got me out of surprise for sure.

It doesn't even feel FF to me.
I feel like I'm always alone in this game lmao. The story is a single player with our characters having no personality whatsoever.
The Scions are boring, and the only time I felt like I had 'friends' was Haucthersadasfant and Ayermic and the time we climbed up to Sohm Al and
the camp fire thing with Ysayle, Eisesitnen and Alps...names are hard...>>;.
It felt like I was on a journey with friends. So 3.0 made me feel like I had friends around.
2.0 was God awful and so slow...so boring...The game is climbing up for the better though, so I'm
hoping 4.0 is really good!

I just wished our character felt like actual main characters instead of some bystander that literally just watches the NPCs do kool stuff. I get why it's that way but I still wished the main character was your character and acted like one more tho. Like when you get into fights instead of just standing there I wish they let our character actually like fight in the story. It feels like what you do in gameplay doesn't relate to what happens in the actual story.

Even though I know what this thread is in relation to, I won't harp on the creation since it does warrant a separate thread. Personally, 2.0's story was pretty hit or miss. Some stuff was engaging while other things were either just weak or went on far longer than they should have. 3.0 started off weak imo but got a bit better as things went on and I was personally satisfied how everything has come to a point in 3.4. The thing about stories in any games (not just mmorpgs) is that everyone likes different things and the Final Fantasy franchise alone has expanded over various genres if you think about it. They've gone steam-punk, pure fantasy, midevil, etc and not everyone likes each equally. This game is definitely a mixture of every genre and with doing so, some elements will hit while some won't.

I always wanted to bring this thing up as a side note about cloud's bike. People are saying that cloud's bike wont work on a ground level since it wouldn't be realistic, but how realistic is it for your company chocobo to fly as fast as your Magitech Armor? Realism in a fantasy game, people's defenses really make sense sometimes /endsarcasm.

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Originally Posted by KitingGenbu

Even though I know what this thread is in relation to...

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If you're talking about the Stormblood story lock in the other thread then no, this thread is not related to that: I simply made this thread on my own for seeing the overal opinion of the playerbase and that's all.
Unless I assumed wrong, then I don't know what's the topic in mind sorry.

I'd classify our character's lack of vocal involvement in the story as something of a weakness, especially when we're involved so deeply in it. All that really happens is that people tell us where to go and what to kill, and we give a stoic nod. The game even lampshades our "stoic nod"! It's 2016 on the verge of 2017. I think we should get past the concept of a silent protagonist at this point.

But there are several moments in the story that got me emotionally stirring. The death of Noroxia, saving Estenien and vanquishing Nidhogg, the end of the Alexander raid storyline, so on. With that in mind, I'd give the storyline an A, but our lack of character in our character keeps that grade from being an A+

I have thoroughly enjoyed the story overall, however A Realm Reborn certainly had more than a few shares of missteps. Chief among them is whenever "filler" quests reared their way into the story and everything grinded to an abrupt halt. This is no better exemplified than during the much maligned Company of Heroes arc-- the only questline in the entire game thus far I seriously considered skipping through. While I like the Scions, they weren't well developed throughout 2.0. We just sort of met them and... became friends. That isn't to say I find any boring-- far from it, in fact. I merely wanted to discover more about them and their individual motivations. Heavensward improved upon this in spades. Not only do we get some inside to Y'Shtola's history, we finally see what motivates Thancred. Oddly, I never disliked Minfilia, even if I did want to ring her neck for the constant "come back to the Waking Sands so I can tell you what I could just tell right now via Linkshell." Alphinaud easily stands as one of the series' most well rounded and developed characters. This arc from The Crystal Braves onward to where he is now has been fantastic. Shifting to Heavensward, the story really began to reach its stride. Deciding to focus on only a select few characters and split away from the ensemble cast significantly improved their individual storylines.

Perhaps my favorite arc in the game is the "campfire" segments with Ysayle, Estinien and Alphinaud since we actually learned about them as people not just their cause. Aymeric, while not a standout necessarily, felt far more interesting a lead advisor compared to Minfilia, I suspect because there were flaws to him, whereas Minfilia came across flat at times. From a villain perspective, I have very few complaints towards either Gaius or King Thordan. Unsurprisingly, Heavensward once again takes the edge, though that may be my personal love for political conflict.

One aspect I cannot praise enough is the challenges depicted once the truth of The Dragonsong War was revealed. Too often in stories do the masses simply accept radical changes in philosophy when realistically, you would see frequent upraises not unlike what happened throughout 3.1 and 3.2. The maid woman in particular deserves props for well crafted storytelling.

Alas, the biggest hurdle to the storyline remains ourselves. While I appreciate the WoL cannot have too branching an opinion given we are the story's catalyst. It would be nice if we had any in lieu of coming across as a static brick. They did attempt to allow some characterization through dialogue choices, even if they were ultimately meaningless, but those options were too few and far in between. What I would like to see is our choices have some impact on the characters we interact with. Let the Scions chastise us for being smug, allow us to show some exasperation. And maybe even have one or two small arcs where our decisions impact the overall plot. Nothing too expansive, however any form of characterization would be nice. Regardless, the WoL doesn't hold the story back, they just do not wholly contribute to it either. At least from a personal perspective.

Overall, I feel the story is quite good and the characters all interested; some more so than others. Heavensward certainly improved upon the areas A Realm Reborn fell a bit short. Hopefully, Stormblood only continues that trend with the Scions.

Edit: Pondera brings up an example point. Silent protagonists is yet another hindrance to our character. Even a few spoken lines with, perhaps us being able to choose from 2-4 options might help give the WoL some life.

it's ok. i've been enjoying it ever since i've been max level, enjoying the bi-monthly updates. i hated it before that though, because i was forced to go through the whole thing before i could be the class i wanted, and then HW story was constantly locked behind level limits that the MSQ didn't give you the experience for, so it wasn't a smooth experience and ultimately just a frustration

in hindsight i've enjoyed the story and i enjoy it now that i'm up to date and can follow it at my leisure. but the act of actually playing through it and catching up was just a pain in the ass, which is why i have a lot of sympathy for the weekly "wtf do i seriously have to do ALL THIS" threads

Spoiler to start heavensward:

I do not like how my character shows no interactions or objections what is going on. I found it ridiculous that my character would not detect the sleep thing and not poison since she was a healer main. Also being skilled in crafting, means you need to be need to be skilled in selling such things, and this requires negotiation skill/ communication skill. So she would be able to know why Teledji Adeledji suddenly spouted nonsense. It was simply get the focus off himself as a cover up. But then you had Raubahn that clearly saw though it. Also there was talk about the major conflicts of the syndicate and the saltaina, so something like this should been expected to happen sooner or later. The exodus of Uldah felt so forced to get your character to Ishgard it was not even funny. There really needed to be a more realsic reason to go to Ishgard. I was very,very disappointed with the way the story went for that.

~~~Momo

I've tried to enjoy it, I really have....but.....to me it doesn't feel like its either breaking new ground or doing anything differently then past Final Fantasy games. It feels like I wanna say its a generic Final Fantasy story with all the elements to be expected. Magic rocks, light vs dark, etc. It just doesn't feel "new" it just feels like a change of hairstyles.

Secondly as others mentioned...being the silent protagonist doesn't help matters either. Adding nothing but an emote here and there. If my own character doesn't feel or seem to be really involved, its kinda hard for the real me to feel involved either. Even though it does kinda go against my last issue, the npc voice acting. Though that opinion isn't FFXIV exclusive. I've always felt Final Fantasy changed and not for the better when the day came where they decided to give characters voices as most characters deliver their lines in either the most bland, emotionless or awkwardness way possible. It was always more fun imagining what they sounded like as they spoke. I think that is one of my biggest annoyances on how the game likes to swap between voice acting and silent text. Sadly enough the silent text parts at least for me make it feel like I'm imagining characters voices and reactions again. Then they speak and it just ruins it.

I can agree that ARR wasn't exactly "great", but it was good enough for me. HW has certainly been an improvement overall (Dark Knight is still one of my favorite job stories, both 30-50 and 50-60.)

I somewhat agree with the WoL being a silent protagonist being a flaw thats still going...I DON'T agree that just because its 2016 means there should not be a silent main character. It can still work for some games. But for this one, where our character is considered central to the plot rather than just being one of many of the more exceptional adventurers, it doesn't work quite as well.

I've had mixed feelings about it.

First off, the good parts I would say was mostly on 1.x and 3.x. 1.x seemed well-executed to me, doesn't have much cheesiness in the story and the cinematics were very immersive that I don't get bored of watching cutscenes, and the nice music also helped.
3.x's story felt like I had companions and I was having an adventure with them. The general story was good and the characters were likeable/memorable. The cutscenes weren't as good as 1.x but the major cutscenes had improvement from 2.x.
In short, 1.x's MSQ has a good atmosphere to it and 3.x's MSQ felt like an actual adventure with friends that FF has been about.

The bad parts have been most of 2.x and some other parts. The 2.x MSQ is a mess because it sometimes strays away from the actual story, and then you have to do fetch quests in order to continue. Examples have been the things you have to do for the Company of Heroes just to get information about Titan's location, and for your feast. The things you have to do for the Ishgardians in order to get back Cid's Airship, so you can get to Garuda. etc. There's a lot more to even name.
The characters weren't very interesting. Sure, Thancred had a moment but I still don't really like him much. I'm not someone who hates characters because they're useless but Minfilia didn't catch my interest either as a character. I kind of expected a lot from Lousioux' successor.

Both 1.x and 2.x's stories didn't feel much of an adventure with companions which 3.x had. It was more of going around the continent doing errands.
1.x lacked some action, but 2.x and 3.x felt anime-ish.

Spoilers:

I hate how they kill off characters very easily.
Gauis seemed like he didn't get the treatment he deserved. I got a good impression of him in 1.x but we was got rid of in 2.0 so quickly.
Moenbryda only got about 2 and a half patches worth of screen time. It was sad to see her go when I was already liking her.
The Sultana and Scions' "deaths" was really cheap. A cheap way to get us into Ishgard. It left a bad taste in my mouth. It was a very bad ending for 2.x and a bad way to start 3.x.
Haurchefant's death was very sudden and felt cheap. He was a character most people actually like and he gets a very cheap way of dying that he doesn't deserve. He could've died in a heroic way like fighting alongside the WoL to the bitter end or just didn't die at all. I guess it was made for the tears.
It was sad to see her go but Ysayle's death is how you make a good death scenario. It felt special...until they said the airship Ysayle destroyed got fixed in no time (and never seen it since) but that at least she bought time for her companions to escape I guess.

In the new patch, I grew to like the Warriors of Darkness but they were got rid of too soon by the writers in my opinion, with Minfilia joining them. It's an okay end, not really what I expected to happen but they really did not seem very important for where the direction was supposed to be heading which has been something that bothered me since the very beginning.
There was some stupid and predictable things like Nidhogg's eyes coming back into play. I knew throwing both of them on the same side of the bridge wasn't a good idea.

I'm honestly not much of a fan of the class/job quests. They're always a hit or miss for me.
Other than that, the story is the most I look forward to in this game. I'm very much excited about Stormblood and all the new lore!

I do wish they continued on with the city-state MSQs, even if optional. I think FFXI did something like it and had a pretty long story for each nation?
It would be nice if the other city-states and regions got some attention while there's also the MSQ you can do. Ishgard had an expansion's worth of moments, why not the other city-states?

For the silent protagonist part people are talking about: I agree, it's another bad part of the story. I'm not sure if it's just challenging for the MSQ devs to give the WoL some involvement but I do know making your character actually fight in a cutscene would be so much work for them since they have to do versions for each race, each gender + every job and update it for new jobs and races. Still, outside combat the WoL doesn't feel "alive" much.
The WoL being the main character, usually the center of attention but for it being the character the devs have the least freedom to work into cutscenes is not a good mix.

It seems a bit weird to me when people excuse certain multiplayer issues this game has by claiming that "it's a single-player game at heart" when the single-player components themselves are often painfully shallow imo. I can more or less get behind the general story, especially say from 2.45 to 3.2 and again in 3.4 (the end of the Dragonsong War arc felt painfully rushed for me), and its characters aren't bad by any means, but it just feels underdeveloped between the awkward 'destination' interactions, lack of any soft phasing, no player party interaction, poor NPC AI when they're you're combat companions instead, no freely explorable core NPC depth, no core NPC interactions outside of the set quests, little to no relation between MSQ activities and what else you've done, so on and so forth.

I really want to be able to explore the story and give a damn about the NPCs come 4.x. Thus far that just hasn't happened for me yet, leaving the story faint and unimmersive.

On silent protagonists:

The thing with silent protags is that they need a solid cast of support characters in order to work. This is why something like, say, Chrono Trigger still managed to get us to care about everyone despite the protag being mute. I think part of the problem is that we don't have much of a strong and constant support cast. We thankfully got some of that during the MSQ for Heavensward, and hopefully we see more of it moving forward.

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Spoilers. You've been warned.

I've been "meh" about the whole thing, though I don't let it bother me because it's better than what WoW passes off for lore. The Scions do feel pretty throwaway to me, and I feel we've been cheated out of two actually interesting developments (one being Thancred during ARR, the other being Urianger in this latest patch). I also didn't like how they handled Moenbryda at all, but that's because I can't really care for a character that dies when I barely know them.

Then we hit the game's first loreLOL milestone, which was the resolution of the Ul'dah cliffhanger from 2.55. And yes, I'm comparing the resolution of that to forest elves stealing space ships from alien goat people.

Heavensward was nice up until we hit the FF trope of disproving religion. I was expecting Heavensward to be about both sides of the dragon war before hitting the resolution to bring the war to an end, not the overused "the faith of a nation was built on a lie" thing. Don't get me wrong; I liked it back when it was used for Final Fantasy Tactics, but it's been almost 20 years since then and it's old to the point of being ridiculous. Still plenty of good moments, and I did like the fact that Ysaele, Estinien and Alphinaud actually felt like my companions over the course of the journey.

The warriors of darkness thing sounded cool, since I expected them to do their own thing as I was doing mine. Sort of like a rivalry where they'd be active in the world like I was. And then that got sacrificed to introduce a convoluted concept (the thing with the worlds, and the source world, etc) that reminds me too much of the negative aspects of Kingdom Hearts.

I personally have mixed feelings.

When I started out, I kinda liked the story, or rather, having "a" story - I liked that bit in guild wars 2, too. It's nice to have some major plot to the setting. It got soured by the fact that it's long, everything is gated behind it and thus I had to do it on six different characters. That pretty much made me hate it as a whole - I just skip it now, I don't care anymore.

To be fair, though, I wasn't exactly a big fan of the characters or storytelling before. I don't really like any of the scions and was happy to be rid of them, only for them to come back anyway (just like some other people >_>). Seeing as we get neither voice nor choices nor really act in cutscenes beyond making a dramatic step forward or drawing our weapon, my character strangely doesn't really feel like a part of the story either, despite being the main protagonist. It's no wonder people joke a beggar could beat the WoL if only he caught them in a cutscene.

The sidequests IMO tend to be more interesting, or at least entertaining. I liked the postmoogle in particular.

i like the story soo far, do it feel like everything is perfect, maybe not. do the filler part bother me? nope, since i don't forget a point, before be the WoL i'm an adventurer a sort of handyman.... then get mission where i'm not the superduper hero allows me to not forget this point.

about the fact that our character is silent or don't show emotion is more because it's our character, is not geralt de riv or any know character, i see it like an avantar of us. do i can't answer one of them question? with my word that will be different of many people. since they have decide to go with the avatar type of hero, they can't come and begin to make our character react like they want, since it will not be our avatar anymore.
they have said while the fanfest that they will try to offer some similis choice... or difference based on the jobs we play, but honestly that all they can do for the cut scene. because honestly they are cut scene we are not in mass effect. they can't work on a tree of discution too complex...

mostly because we are in a mmorpg! not a solo game. a monk, warrior, etc... will not have the same reaction than another jobs, how adapt the talk in function of our race, origin or jobs? it will be an impossible work... especially when, they have a cycle of patch soo short.

some people find that the story is too cliché, that some character lack deepth...we did learn quite a lot about the scion overtime, if you don't care for them is your choice and your miss...

Main Story Quest
The story it fine, but I do think they rushed the story in 3.4. I get the feeling that they wanted to started the Ala Mhigo storyline as soon as possible and needed to get rid of those characters in 3.4. Aside from that, I see alot of improvements, our character is showing more facial expression and we get the option to pick a dialogue, like western rpgs.

Class/Job Quest
The class/job storyline on the other hand (can not speak for DoL and DoH, but I have finished all DoW and DoM classes) realy need some improving, they are boring and most of them are fetch quests, the best storyline is the Dark Knight 30-50. I realy hope SE improves class quests in 4.0, because aside from 3 questline (PUG 1-30, SCH 30-50 and DRK 30-50) most of them were a snoozefest.

There is still alot of room for improvement, but Main Story is the one thing that SE did did well 3.0.

I enjoy it. I dont mind that our player character doesnt feel like the "main character", even when we are the WoL, and I am interested where the story will go from here on.

This post could contain some HW spoilers! Please stop reading if you arent that far into it!

Well I did feel kinda as being part of the story even with our silent WoL until they decided to kill of a well liked character in Heavensward just for the purpose of creating drama...since then I kinda still follow the story because I am a little curious how it will end but barely anything really touches me anymore and I wont let any NPC near me anymore since I kinda have the luck that three of my most liked characters are death..

I do like some of the sidequests in the game because they tell you more about Eorzea and its people and I hope that in the future we will get more of them (just dont make them all that tragic like the little girls one..)

I never really felt much for a lot of the scions, the only ones that I like are Alphinaud, thanks to him traveling with us and having a nice character arc, and Tataru for at least trying to help the Scions in her own way. All the other scion characters felt flat for me and even HW did not do much to make me like them more. Thancred and Y'sthola are two people that I even like less now than before HW..I never hated Minfilia but I also never felt like she was a friend for the WoL so I dont really care what will happen to her. The characters I truly liked are Haurchefant, Ysayle, Moenbryda and Estinien..welp you know what happens to most of them..so in that way HW was quite the catastrophe for me.

I did like the story about the dragonsong war even though I thought that at the end it was over way to fast, the same with the WoD. I wont talk much about the U'ldah arc because that was IMO a complete disaster. It just shows that SE kinda wants to go that way only to halfway say "well lets change nothing much because that might be too complicated.." I hope for 4.0 that we might be a little more free from the scions and I did answer in that last dialog that I just want to go on adventures and fight strong enemies.

I would love to have more possibilities to answer in a dialog and that maybe sometimes it would truly change something. For example that dinner in 3.5, I did not want to go there, because for me that character is not that important for me and I did not feel like I want to party..yet even though I was able to say that I dont feel like it, I was still forced to go there and my character did not react different than the ones that wanted to go there..such things like that really take one out of the story even more..this would have been a perfect chance to just jump over that part of the story and just let us go to Fortemps directly or have a little cutscene where we see the NPC disappointed and us getting the news that we should go to Fortemps manor. After that its the same for everyone..with that it would feel more like we do have some kind of choice. At least for smaller things like the dinner it would be nice to have one..I can understand that they dont want to create x amounts of possible story lines but I am sure that something small can be achieved if they want to.

So in the end I did like and enjoyed it till that death happened and after that I was more like a spectator and even after I still liked some aspect and discussed it I never felt like I did before that point..I am also a little wary if 4.0 is just another war that the WoL will kinda solve..I am tried of politics and I fear that it will play a big part in 4.0 again...

Oh and I am also a little annoyed that we are not threated better by the city states..I mean come on, how many times have we saved their cities and Eorzea? At the end of 2.0 we where the one that defeated Gaius while the leaders and the whole scions stood outside..yet we barely get anything from them..heck at the end of the dragonsong war I did hope for some kind of recognition from Isghard for being the one that put an end to this..yet there was no party for us, some people still dont even know how we look...sometimes it would feel nice not to be so modest all the time..

And I would love if SE would stop trying to tell us that self sacrifice is the best thing ever..show at least some people being appalled by it or at least the WoL being against it..sometimes there might not be another way but they often even dont look for one..

Actually I'mma go more in detail. I don't care that my character doesn't talk ingame. I care that my character doesn't ACT in game movies. I hate that npcs can do all this crazy Street Fighter Anime battle crap but my character stands there like a little princess waiting to be saved. I'm the goddammed WARRIOR OF LIGHT! I save YOU! you don't save me. That is my issue with the story. Let me feel like the BA I'm posed to be. IF that means more solo instances where I have to actually fight things then bring it on. I'm posed to be the BAMF of this plot.. LET ME BE THAT. Show me, stop TELLING me.

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Originally Posted by cammi

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When you said that, I automatically thought about the forelands bit after a certain someone (re)appears. That whole thing really upset me.

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Originally Posted by KitingGenbu

When you said that, I automatically thought about the forelands bit after a certain someone (re)appears. That whole thing really upset me.

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I KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm BA!!!!!! I should've beaten them ALL in my sleep. I mean.. I PUNCH GODS IN THE FACE!!!!!!

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Originally Posted by cammi

I KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm BA!!!!!! I should've beaten them ALL in my sleep. I mean.. I PUNCH GODS IN THE FACE!!!!!!

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If we don't get at least one scene somewhere in 4.0-4.55 like the Stormblood trailer, I'm gonna just go back to spam clicking/skipping because the build up of some of this stuff only to be side-lined by our "comrades" each and every time is very annoying and aggravating.

It's decent and better than what most MMO's offer but it needs to start raising the stakes and avoiding cheap 'just kidding' moments where major injuries and death are concerned. There were so many fascinating consequences that could be explored with Raubahn's lost limb and the Sultana's 'death' only for the status quo to remain afterwards.

Furthermore since the main cast are effectively immortal this puts the more interesting secondary characters and antagonists at risk of being killed off instead - to a predictable extent at times. In regards to antagonists I feel as though they need to be made easier to sympathise with - something I hope becomes the case in 4.0.

Weakest out of all the Final Fantasy games but for an MMO I guess it's okay? But that doesn't really say much since there's really nothing else to compare it too in the genre.

I just find the plot to be extremely forgettable, the pacing is awful, the English localization makes the game's story confusing when characters be vague for whatever reason (Switching to Japanese voices helped a lot and yes I know the language, Koji Fox's succor speak REALLY brings the story telling down for me too, not because I can't understand it but it just comes off as lame and whenever urianger speaks I end up reading the quest summaries) for Final Fantasy in general I could tell you the synopsis of every mainline game, but for this game? I couldn't tell you and that's a real shame, maybe it's more of a personal problem but very few moments have stuck with me and I don't see characters like Haurchefaunt being as remembered by Final Fantasy fans in general compared to others like say Galuf, because when are you ever going to see him on a top 10 list?.
Heavensward came VERY close to feeling like a Final Fantasy game but it just ended up falling flat again.
Sucks how it took an expansion to feel Final Fantasy but I guess what's Final Fantasy to some people is very subjective]

Like OP I just play for the gameplay now and the Final Fantasy Fanservice.

This is a separate matter and I understand why it had to be done but I think the animations really take away from the experience too. This is a mainline Final Fantasy game, why are they using stock emotes in cutscenes? Final Fantasy XI square's other MMO is a lot more expressive.

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Originally Posted by Yasuhiro

Weakest out of all the Final Fantasy games

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It's weak but I wouldn't say it's the weakest.
*cough*FFXIII*cough*opinion*cough*.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

It's weak but I wouldn't say it's the weakest.
*cough*FFXIII*cough*opinion*cough*.

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My bad, I like to forget about that game tbh. lol.

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Originally Posted by dinnertime

It's weak but I wouldn't say it's the weakest.
*cough*FFXIII*cough*opinion*cough*.

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No FF13 had a stronger story than most of 2.0. I know people like to shit on 13 but I can't agree it's weaker than the beginning of XIV.

I have mixed feelings about the main story.

1-49 story was fairly forgettable.
50 storyline picked up and I loved the story for 2.4 and 2.5/2.55
51-59 story was great
60 storyline was great at patch 3.0
60 storyline was forgettable 3.1-3.3
60 storylinewas decent 3.4

All in all, I'd give it a low rating. This is simply because they cannot seem to keep the quality up to keep me interested throughout. It'd be like watching a 10 episode season of a show, loving 2-3 episodes, finding 1-2 alright and feeling bored for the other 5.

Most of above is to do with plot lines and execution. I also have mixed feelings on characters. I strongly dislike Urianger. In 3.4 his character was slightly improved, but he is notably boring and his olde english doesn't help his case. I also don't like Moenbryda and could not have cared less with what happened to her. It's been awhile, but IIRC she was introduced and simply because other NPC's cared for her, it made it seem like the writers figured that would be enough to make us care for her. There was no time to develop any sort of interest in her character.

Outside of those two, I either don't mind or like the NPC characters we've run in to. That said, certain characters greatly improved or got worse in Heavensward. I'd say Alphinaud and Y'shtola got way better and more relatable in Heavensward. Conversely, I think Minfilia's character got a lot worse.

I find Cid, Biggs and Wedge are three characters that I feel pretty meh on. I am pretty much bored when they are on screen, but I cannot really put my finger on what is wrong. I think the story tries to make them seem smart by having them be very technical. However, I don't really care about the technical workings of whatever they are working on, and it doesn't really make them seem smart to me. It simply makes them seem arrogant and boring.

Following that, I feel I should note on Alexander story. This story started really poorly. The first iteration was incredibly cliche. The second iteration didn't help much either, but it didn't make things much worse - it just sort of happened. Finally, the conclusion I thought was pretty good. It helps a lot for this story ending on a strong note, but that doesn't negate it's very weak opening.

I played and watched it (though forget most) until level 50. Once I got to Shiva I started to nod off with the constant back and forth that it just irritated me. Run here and watch a 5min cutscene, run back and watch another. I just started skipping the cutscenes unless they were part of a job I enjoyed and pretty much have skipped every scene since then.

It's not bad for an MMO...but it's not great. I think by far though the most recent patch hit the absolute lowest. They have a strange problem with drawing out some aspects pointlessly (ugh for years) and then wrap up other portions in a few patches.

Best example (SPOILERS)


WoD was walking on the moon. THE MOON. THIS GUY WAS ON THE MOON! Then bam, wraped up quicker then anything. You don't just get rid of the guy who was walking on the moon in like 2 patches. The hell???

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Originally Posted by cammi

Actually I'mma go more in detail. I don't care that my character doesn't talk ingame. I care that my character doesn't ACT in game movies. I hate that npcs can do all this crazy Street Fighter Anime battle crap but my character stands there like a little princess waiting to be saved. I'm the goddammed WARRIOR OF LIGHT! I save YOU! you don't save me. That is my issue with the story. Let me feel like the BA I'm posed to be. IF that means more solo instances where I have to actually fight things then bring it on. I'm posed to be the BAMF of this plot.. LET ME BE THAT. Show me, stop TELLING me.

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Idk, I would love for our characters to actually do some combat in CS's rather then just standing still or unsheathing your weapon and just stare at the enemy and let someone just hop in front and protect us... because that literally happens all the time. Now obviously it would be hard to make every job do a unique action, so just give our character a universal weapon, I think the best go to weapon in that case would be a Sword of some kind, I don't think a Mage using a Sword in a combat scene would be too unorthodox if a certain ACN uses one. Just my opinion though, would make our characters feel a lot more alive.

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Originally Posted by Katana190

Post limit REALLY needs to be sued

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Naw they can use our job weapons. If they can put enough animation to have them pose in the battle stance then we can fight in the CS, there is no excuse SE. NONE. I mean it wouldn't even be a BIG change, it'll make our characters more believable being he BAMF they are and make the story more fun. They really should try it. Lets yell at SE to make this happen, I believe we can do it.

I like certain... parts of the story. I like Y'shtola and Urianger. Some of the job quests were pretty good (particularly BRD and BLM). But there are two main components to why I feel like this story is all-around unimpressive.

1. The presentation. The cutscenes are so static. Any emotion characters should be feeling is completely stifled by the unnatural delays caused by either having to click through dialogue or these weird delays in expression that are built into the cutscene. A character will say something, and then it cuts to another character for reaction, and there's this couple second pause before their face twists into this unnaturally exaggerated surprised expression or somesuch. And if I tried to count the number of times SE tried to convey a serious interaction by having two characters take ten seconds each to stiffly nod at each other and then walk away like mannequins, I'd run out of fingers and toes. The voice acting leaves much to be desired as well, with some exceptions. But overall, the story is hindered by wooden cutscenes that disrupt the flow of conversation.

2. The quality of the writing. I'll set aside for now the hilarity that is how many characters in the story have white hair (my husband and I joke about it constantly). But the characters themselves really haven't grabbed me, with a few exceptions. Y'shtola is one, who steps out of a bland shell with the firm (and importantly: consistent) characteristic of her opinions on the Grand Companies' treatment of the beast tribes. Urianger has been handled well so far, starting out as a quiet book nerd we know little about, and SE has actually introduced hidden pieces of his personality and given him depth in a pretty natural progression. He could have easily remained that static archetype, but he doesn't and it's well done. I also enjoyed Aymeric's introduction in ARR and thought his character presentation balanced snobby traits with an underlying compassionate lean nicely. But those things are the exception to the rule. For the most part, characters are bland and predictable.

In addition to the characters, the plot itself leaves much to be desired. I won't go into detail about how sluggish and dull the ARR story is (and how poorly presented it is through unending fetch quests) - I think that's something many people in this thread have already touched on. What I will turn to as an example instead is peculiar and nonsensical plot choices. ARR's storyline is awash with missed opportunities to create a much more interesting and complex story. Thancred's "betrayal" is a great example. Instead of pulling a cheat card out of their butts, they missed the opportunity to really subvert the Scions' story in the Thancred/Ascian plot. Thancred was exhausting himself. Take that a step further and portray him struggling with a fight that seems futile. His struggle is so great that he begins wondering if all their fighting is for naught. This alone would be enough of an opening for an Ascian to begin influencing him, but I think an important point to make would be that Thancred's actions aren't JUST the will of an Ascian puppeteer. It was Thancred's own feelings that originally stirred him, and these should come to light. As he performs one minor sabotage after another toward the Scions, disrupting their own struggles against the Garleans, Thancred on his own becomes more and more sure that it's simply not worth fighting anymore. That they can save far more lives by allowing the Garleans to conquer than they would by resisting. At this point him and the Ascian are pretty much working together. This, in the end, would make the reveal that much more dramatic. The Scions would still try to save him, still try to rescue Thancred from what they perceive to be Ascian control. But then when they do expel the Ascian from his body, the blow is all the greater when Thancred reveals his own motivations. The Scions' feelings of betrayal and grief for Thancred would be countered by his belief that he's doing the right thing for Eorzea. Such a dichotomy would have a much greater impact than the very simple, "Oh, it was just the evil Ascian and now everything is better!" tripe that we got in the actual story.

That's one example, but there are a number of such poor story choices made by SE where they took an easy out to quickly resolve what should have been (and COULD have been) a very complicated and multi-faceted issue.

The Garleans alone are nothing but a toothless specter for the most part, which is a shame all on its own. SE never quite figures out how to make them the terrifying, dominating force that they are claimed to be in dialogue by more than a few characters. And that's one big problem: SE's story is inconsistent in how characters react vs how the story is written.

Specific to Heavensward, I also find that SE's decision to heavy-handedly lay every single Evil Catholic Church stereotype in existence upon Ishgard as just utterly unnecessary and really damages my ability to connect with the story. Oh, of course the Fantasy Pope is secretly evil. Oh, of course the Fantasy Church is restricting people's access to information (see as an example the Galileo plot copy of the AST quests, which gets the whole Galileo thing wrong anyway because the Church actually funded his research quite happily). Oh, of course they have "Inquisitors" who are pretty much universally and exaggeratedly cruel and harsh about their judgments. Oh, of course Fantasy Religion are the bad guys and us Pure Spiritual Outsiders are going to make everyone see the light. I could go on, but to sum it up: it's a cheap ploy to set up another Big Bad. They could easily tell the story of the Ishgard-dragon war without turning Ishgard into an obnoxious and stereotypical caricature of Catholicism.

And, uhm... I feel like my post has gone on long enough so I'll stop there. To be honest, there are a lot of other plot points I could bring up, but I think I've hit the main points. xD

"1. The presentation. The cutscenes are so static. Any emotion characters should be feeling is completely stifled by the unnatural delays caused by either having to click through dialogue or these weird delays in expression that are built into the cutscene."

......except for ''that' cutscene......watched when I happened to be peeling onions....not getting watery eyed at all at the cutscene....no, definitely the onions.....sob.

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Originally Posted by cammi

Naw they can use our job weapons. If they can put enough animation to have them pose in the battle stance then we can fight in the CS, there is no excuse SE. NONE. I mean it wouldn't even be a BIG change, it'll make our characters more believable being he BAMF they are and make the story more fun. They really should try it. Lets yell at SE to make this happen, I believe we can do it.

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Don't get me wrong, I would love for my character to do some crazy warrior stuff like the WoL does in the End of Era ARR Cinematic trailer, BECAUSE THAT S**T IS FREAKEN COOL. The only problem with making every Job do something unique is there are 13 jobs to cover (At the moment! With more to come, even if they did this in 4.0, more jobs in 5.0, they would need to backtrack and re-do the scenes for the newer jobs.) And if they did a really cool animation, people would be complaining that they want the said animation as an ingame skill.

Of course there is the solution of us just doing pre-existing skills like if it came to your character fighting multiple enemies they would do an AoE from their toolkit which is most fitting, or a when it comes to single target combat they would do the most flashy one, Royal Authority from PLD for instance. The problem with this is it would either come out really cool or really lame, but I think the latter as CS's have impact to them. Take one of the most recent CS's, where the Paladin of Darkness charges at us and Thancred steps in, rather then Thancred stepping in, we defend ourselves. As a MNK you would do something like the Forbidden Chakra, which sounds cool on paper but would probably come out lame.

BUT, if our character just used a Sword, which is a pretty iconic weapon, they could really pull some amazing scenes off with our character and have as much creativity with that as they want. Just my opinion though, I don't disagree with you! Just saying it would be hard to do, not like we shouldn't expect SE to not work hard! But yeah, just my 2 cents.

Edit: I'm sure you've watched it. But just for reference, this is how awesome the WoL fights as a WAR. Starts at 1:45: https://youtu.be/39j5v8jlndM?t=105

[QUOTE=Katana190;3907247] :O [QUOTE]

If my character did the FC at that moment I would've been hyped. I get what you're saying about it might come out lame, but wouldn't a stock sword do the same thing? In context that could work and the FC could work too. I would've been happy if my character busted out a FC at that moment shocking the WOD and making him jump back. And it's simple why, because it'll show why I'm the GD WOL! :D Hell at this point I think both our ideas would make the playerbase happy... cause then we'll be doing something and stop being pretty princesses needing to be saved. :C But trust, I know where you're coming from.

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Originally Posted by cammi

If my character did the FC at that moment I would've been hyped. I get what you're saying about it might come out lame, but wouldn't a stock sword do the same thing? In context that could work and the FC could work too. I would've been happy if my character busted out a FC at that moment shocking the WOD and making him jump back. And it's simple why, because it'll show why I'm the GD WOL! :D Hell at this point I think both our ideas would make the playerbase happy... cause then we'll be doing something and stop being pretty princesses needing to be saved. :C But trust, I know where you're coming from.

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I think it would just boil down to what skills they use, thinking back. I'm sure doing the Forbidden Chakra at that point would look pretty amazing!

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Originally Posted by Katana190

I think it would just boil down to what skills they use, thinking back. I'm sure doing the Forbidden Chakra at that point would look pretty amazing!

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Yeah. Agreed. Soo about rising up and yelling at SE to make this a thing.....you in? I'll bring icecream.

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Originally Posted by cammi

Yeah. Agreed. Soo about rising up and yelling at SE to make this a thing.....you in? I'll bring icecream.

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Sounds fun :D