A radical proposal for future content.

Here's the thing, everyone...

JRPGs are fun, but are inferior to Western and European RPGs if we're talking about the ROLEPLAY aspect in particular.

How about this... We "westernize" future content by giving players a choice. That's essentially the strength of Western RPGs. CHOICE.

Let's make future content like Skyrim! Give us the option of siding with Garlemald! Give us options to deviate from walking the straight path! In other words, let's emphasize the RP aspect of this RPG!

Your thoughts?

Like I said, this is radical.

The reason I personally like J-RPGS is because there is no choice. I like to be part of a well thought out narrative, like reading a book. I don't feel its possible to make a narrative as compelling when adding branching paths. Also as someone who always tries to read all the dialogue and really understand whats happening in the setting/world, having different possible "worlds" were the protagonist makes different decisions is kind of a nightmare for me personally.

TLDR: I personally think it would detract from Eorzea as a whole, there would need to be multiple canons considering how influential our character is.

I'm all up for having different responses to certain questions and such though, like having our character react differently, but not outright changing the events taking place. :)

no, thanks. XIV is mostly a game of inclusion. sometimes i get annoyed i can't use GC gear without the hassle of switching companies. don't want to make choices that will lock me out of stuff and if it doesn't lock me out of stuff the choices don't matter enough to exist anyway.

No, thanks!!
There is Skyrim online already.
I prefer FF14 to be the only JRPG online MMO and enjoying it.

It won't work because almost all the content in this game is driven by the story, and a lot of it you play together with other players. For instance, you encounter certain dungeons as you level, and you play them together in a four-person party. (Likewise with trials in eight-person parties.) But if you made some radically different characterization choices, you wouldn't even be on the same side as other players, so you couldn't party with them for the encounter or it wouldn't make sense. The amount of branching possibilities would only increase over time, and therefore the production value of the story content would go down (since the amount of content would have to increase dramatically to account for all the different choices player characters could make).

They can provide a certain degree of choice on the fringes (minor touches that don't fundamentally change the result), but the main story has to basically be on rails so that everyone is on the same side when completing content together. This focus on a linear story is also a big part of what makes Final Fantasy what it is over the years, so I don't think they will ever change it in a game like this.

You mean like those meaningless dialogue they shoehorned into the narrative that give us the illusion of choice without actually affecting anything? You can't do that for a constantly updating MMO for the reasons others have described. Instead of a straight line that all the players are kept on you basically will end up with something unmanageable before too long. The reason it works in Skyrim, badly mind you because there story there honestly suffers for it, is because you're alone and the TES series has /always/ been about wiping away the accomplishments of the last hero before they move onto the next installment. Why do you think there's so much time between Oblivion and Skyrim? Why do you think they sent the Nerevarine to Akavir? Why do you think the ENTIRETY of Daggerfall and it's multiple endings were listed as occurring during a 'Dragon Break', where basically all the choices that could have happened /did/ before collapsing back into the reality we currently have? If they didn't do this there'd be no way to continue onto the next installment, pure and simple. (I will say though, kudos to Bethesda for penning the Dragon Break concept. It's a get out of jail free-card if they use it sparingly.)

Or to put it more bluntly. This is what FF14's current storyline looks like: (It's simple, but it gets the job done and allows the writers to tell a more engaging story without having to worry about potential variables.)

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This is what it will look like if they implement what you propose: (Taken from atlasobscura where they wrote an article about choose your own adventure stories. Except this is just the narrative map for /one/ such book. Amplify this by however many expansions there are, the jobs you can take, the side quests, and you can see how much of a mess it'd be to write for.)

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It's an interesting idea but it's anathema to how MMO's currently work sadly, and especially so to how FF14 works. If it still interests you however, I do believe Crowfall is attempting something similar and might scratch that proverbial itch if it ever releases.

With the constant excuse of 'our team is too small to do so and so', it's unlikely we'll get anything of this caliber.

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Originally Posted by Maka8295

The reason I personally like J-RPGS is because there is no choice. I like to be part of a well thought out narrative, like reading a book. I don't feel its possible to make a narrative as compelling when adding branching paths. Also as someone who always tries to read all the dialogue and really understand whats happening in the setting/world, having different possible "worlds" were the protagonist makes different decisions is kind of a nightmare for me personally.

TLDR: I personally think it would detract from Eorzea as a whole, there would need to be multiple canons considering how influential our character is.

I'm all up for having different responses to certain questions and such though, like having our character react differently, but not outright changing the events taking place. :)

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Playing off of this idea, I'm in agreement and perfectly content with the storyline itself staying static instead of branching out in loads and loads of family tree branching nonsense. What would be great though, is including more diverse reactions from NPC's based on either our race or job class and acknowledging what we are and what were playing as more often. For example, if you were playing a Xaela during the Azim parts, it would be nice if the Xaela of that region interacted and acknowledged you a bit more often for being a Xaela...like if you're talking with Sadu at that point and she sees that you are also a Xaela BLM, just some little tidbits or casual conversation would be nice reflecting that she notices. The same thing could be said if you were playing a Raen and visited Sui-no-Sato for the first time as well.

I just brought up the idea of branching storylines in another thread. And I understand why people are so against it. I'm not saying it should be like Skyrim which literally gives you the freedom to do anything you want but give the player (as the main character of this story) more to do other than be an errand boy/girl for other characters.

This is a huge problem especially seen in SB where we are pretty much just along for the ride. If this can't be done in the main story, at least make it an option in the job quests or sidequests scattered in the world map. Something like that would give players a reason to actually do that content.

SWtOR does it already, it's not that radical. But because of all of the previous reasons mentioned in this thread, it's still an illusion. You can deal with x person (or planet, or-) in ways A or B, but in the end, all lead towards them disappearing (A = kill, B = help, they 'go underground'). Maybe these choices still have a low-level effect - maybe certain NPCs will hate you and refuse to work with you, but they're never vital to the story.

If all you're looking for is the flavour differences, that's okay, though I harbour no illusions that XIV will ever go down this route, and even if they did, it would be much the same as it is. You decide whether Lyse or Raubahn leads Gyr Abania? Both are still removed from the MSQ chain and all it effectively does is determine who sits in the chair and who stands next to it. In the end, they can't keep a functioning multiplayer game and leave it that open-ended. But in the end, even a single-person game can't handle thousands of potential choice configurations, and in then are still going to give you a handful at best of potential endings.

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Originally Posted by Enla

You mean like those meaningless dialogue they shoehorned into the narrative that give us the illusion of choice without actually affecting anything? You can't do that for a constantly updating MMO for the reasons others have described. Instead of a straight line that all the players are kept on you basically will end up with something unmanageable before too long. The reason it works in Skyrim, badly mind you because there story there honestly suffers for it, is because you're alone and the TES series has /always/ been about wiping away the accomplishments of the last hero before they move onto the next installment. Why do you think there's so much time between Oblivion and Skyrim? Why do you think they sent the Nerevarine to Akavir? Why do you think the ENTIRETY of Daggerfall and it's multiple endings were listed as occurring during a 'Dragon Break', where basically all the choices that could have happened /did/ before collapsing back into the reality we currently have? If they didn't do this there'd be no way to continue onto the next installment, pure and simple. (I will say though, kudos to Bethesda for penning the Dragon Break concept. It's a get out of jail free-card if they use it sparingly.)

Or to put it more bluntly. This is what FF14's current storyline looks like: (It's simple, but it gets the job done and allows the writers to tell a more engaging story without having to worry about potential variables.)



This is what it will look like if they implement what you propose: (Taken from atlasobscura where they wrote an article about choose your own adventure stories. Except this is just the narrative map for /one/ such book. Amplify this by however many expansions there are, the jobs you can take, the side quests, and you can see how much of a mess it'd be to write for.)


It's an interesting idea but it's anathema to how MMO's currently work sadly, and especially so to how FF14 works. If it still interests you however, I do believe Crowfall is attempting something similar and might scratch that proverbial itch if it ever releases.

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Rotate that flowchart at the bottom 90° to the right with the beginning at the top, then that flowchart will really remind me what the ones from Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward and Zero Time Dillemma looks like.

Something like that really would NOT work for an MMO like FFXIV, and I don’t see how something that complex would work for any MMORPG whatsoever at all, for that matter. You’d have to have instances and servers set up for EVERY POSSIBLE OUTCOME, and I have a feeling that the world as a whole would be very sparsely populated due to players that would be spread out among each individual possibility.

While I do love a sandbox styled role playing game with an open ended story and affiliation...I don't think I'd like that in a massively multiplayer online game (MMO).

I'd be willing to try out a single player Final Fantasy game like that, where I get branching affiliation options.

I dont think it would fit in an MMO though, over time the majority would side with whatever was the "best" affiliation thus breeding all kinds of human imposed issues.

Delivering on the sort of choice you want simply doesn't work well in MMOs.

choice doesn't work in MMOs, and frankly it waters down story in more western rpgs..... so no

I am also on the No Thanks train, sorry

XIV is a playable movie of sorts. The dev team has nearly the whole of the XIV story set in mind for what they want to do and where it is going. To that point, they already know where the end is for what they want to present, the MSQ is simply a conveyor to get you there and you will never have a choice in this. Yoshida has already stated that this is set in stone and will not change.

"Choice" in a game in which your totally custom but not really totally unique but not really character has his thoughts and feelings dictated by a mere job quest?

A game that has invisible walls everywhere to keep you on the rails? In which accessories are job locked to prevent you from wearing ones not intended for yours? A game that even locks GLAMOUR by jobs and roles? A game that forces you to watch cutscenes by making them unskipable to avoid actually fixing the content? In which every dungeon is essentially a straight line?

Uhm... yeah. Good luck with that. There's a higher chance that we get a preset name, job and voice for cutscenes. And even that chance is terribly slim, because voice actors ain't cheap.

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Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

We "westernize"

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Stop.
If you want western games, play western games. This isn't a matter of "the gameplay could be better", "content could be less lacking", this is outright "I prefer a different style of game". If you don't like it and the culture it comes from, play something else, colonizer.
With that out of my system...

Oh man I can't wait to go through five expansions, branching off my choices, only to have the finale differ in hue and saturation between paths [looks at Mass Effect].
They've gotten slightly better at acknowledging character differences, at least, like whether or not you ran the trial battles in the Reach on a healer or not. And compared to HW, I feel like there's a lot more references to jobs and classes you leveled up if you did it by that particular scene. Which is a step in the right direction. But yeah, they're not going to branch off more, they can barely keep up with developing the single narrative they have now.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

They've gotten slightly better at acknowledging character differences, at least, like whether or not you ran the trial battles in the Reach on a healer or not. And compared to HW, I feel like there's a lot more references to jobs and classes you leveled up if you did it by that particular scene. Which is a step in the right direction.

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As someone with all 70s, I can tell you there is a LOT of this now. Every time you do something in the MSQ where you interact with someone you've interacted with for a job or even for a craft you get a line saying something like, "Oh hey there <character name>! We did <thing you did> together!" It's actually really nice.

I think it could be interesting to have maybe two separate paths you could roam down, but I'm personally not too bothered with the story staying linear as well.

What I WOULD love to see is the MSQ be optional if you so choose. I quite dislike the fact that you are forced to complete the full MSQ if you want to be doing current endgame activities. I've never played another MMO that did this.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

Oh man I can't wait to go through five expansions, branching off my choices, only to have the finale differ in hue and saturation between paths [looks at Mass Effect].

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Thank you for making the ME reference I almost made. I'm glad I'm not the only one whose brain went there immediately.

Problem with choice in an MMO is that it will always come back to the same ending, because everyone has to reach that ending. You cant have a timeline where the scions die cause youre like "Screw you guys! Imma join Zenos!" cause then the end game content will vary drastically.

So if you give decision, eventually we'll have to go back to a similar timeline. Then the complaint is "My choices are meaningless! This is dumb!"

Honestly, Id rather they go harder and hammier on the story. Sometimes I feel its a little to generic and safe. I want betrayel and intrigue and meaningful and meaningless deaths! I want Garlemald to show up at the end of SB here and obliterate Doma for its insurrection, where we fight hard to stop it from happening but still fail and many die because we made mistakes. I want us to be branded as traitors and have that stick until we can prove our innocense. I want to see allies make heroic sacrifices only to be revealed it was a pointless gesture and amounted to nothing. I want to see things not work out like we want, and to sometimes luck out and get something done.

That sounds like debbie downer status, I know. But I think my biggest criticism of the story broadly is everything seems a bit inconsequential and rushed. You cant have highs if you dont get lows. And I think the game avoids downer moments a lot in favor of more 'muted' and inconsequential moments. Its one of hte reasons why I liked parts of the story with Zenos

where you fight him multiple times but pretty much lose. It shows fallibility, and makes beating him mean more.

Edit:
So one consideration I just had is you could 'technically' incorporate player choice in the game by creating subquests lines (like how hildebrand operates) that have 0 effect on the MSQ, but the sub stories could have their own paths and choices, where these sub plots are more solo content than MMO.

Different games do different things. If you enjoy branching narratives, play a game that has branching narratives.

This is not that game, and when it's a single long-running story that people picked up three games ago because of what it was like at the start, it makes no sense to change the format of it now.

Also, essentially "Western" and "JRPGs" take roleplaying differently. In one, you're creating your own character, in the other, you're literally role-playing as another fixed character.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

I want us to be branded as traitors and have that stick until we can prove our innocense.

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Remember when the ending of ARR was handwaved away with the exception of Rahbaun's arm, but that's ok because he's still more or less the strongest guy after us?

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I want to see allies make heroic sacrifices only to be revealed it was a pointless gesture and amounted to nothing.

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Papalymo.

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I want to see things not work out like we want

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Rhalgr's Reach.

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incorporate player choice in the game by creating subquests lines

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Won't happen because they want you to be able to access all content on a single character. So far the only time they broke that was with the starting cities, but we saw how long that lasted and how often they repeated the feat.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

Problem with choice in an MMO is that it will always come back to the same ending, because everyone has to reach that ending. You cant have a timeline where the scions die cause youre like "Screw you guys! Imma join Zenos!" cause then the end game content will vary drastically.

So if you give decision, eventually we'll have to go back to a similar timeline. Then the complaint is "My choices are meaningless! This is dumb!"

Honestly, Id rather they go harder and hammier on the story. Sometimes I feel its a little to generic and safe. I want betrayel and intrigue and meaningful and meaningless deaths! I want Garlemald to show up at the end of SB here and obliterate Doma for its insurrection, where we fight hard to stop it from happening but still fail and many die because we made mistakes. I want us to be branded as traitors and have that stick until we can prove our innocense. I want to see allies make heroic sacrifices only to be revealed it was a pointless gesture and amounted to nothing. I want to see things not work out like we want, and to sometimes luck out and get something done.

That sounds like debbie downer status, I know. But I think my biggest criticism of the story broadly is everything seems a bit inconsequential and rushed. You cant have highs if you dont get lows. And I think the game avoids downer moments a lot in favor of more 'muted' and inconsequential moments. Its one of hte reasons why I liked parts of the story with Zenos

where you fight him multiple times but pretty much lose. It shows fallibility, and makes beating him mean more.

Edit:
So one consideration I just had is you could 'technically' incorporate player choice in the game by creating subquests lines (like how hildebrand operates) that have 0 effect on the MSQ, but the sub stories could have their own paths and choices, where these sub plots are more solo content than MMO.

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Dude, you mentioned that you wanted things to fail sometimes.

It did. Heavensward... Protagonist got accused of poisoning the sultana. Remember?

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

Remember when the ending of ARR was handwaved away with the exception of Rahbaun's arm, but that's ok because he's still more or less the strongest guy after us?
Papalymo.
Rhalgr's Reach.
Won't happen because they want you to be able to access all content on a single character. So far the only time they broke that was with the starting cities, but we saw how long that lasted and how often they repeated the feat.

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Derp, ok lets break this down real quick:

1) What happened at the end of ARR was cool. Then it was wrapped up pretty quickly in HW. There was no lasting impact really, other than Raubahns arm. And as for that, he's still the toughest guy. "Woops, got my arm lopped off. Its just a flesh wound!" Ill grant Raubahn had better development in SB, but it took a long while ot get there and for basic intensive purposes, nothing changed.

We were literally accused of assassinating a royal (or attempting to), and all that was waved away in pretty quick order. There was no real time in the story where I felt "Hmm, this could be a huge issue for me."

It was "Nah, cleared that up. Everythings back to normal after questing for 20 minutes." It carried no weight, which took a lot of build up and threw it out in favor of rushing us into HW.

2)Paps Gesture is probably the only case of it, at best (and thatd debateable as Im out to point out), and was more used as a "We need to fix this" bandaid rather than a big action that meant nothing. Pap knew more or less what he was doing wasnt going to be a solution, but he had to do it right then and there because it was the best bet given the circumstances. In one light, this meant it wasnt a wasted action, but the right choice, albeit a difficult one. Its not a tragic decision, in the sense that what Pap did was pragmatic and knowingly a short term solution, rather than if he went on a death defying mission, died in that mission, only to reveal the mission wasnt all that important and was a moot point. Like that the intel on the mission was bad or you made a bad choice deciding this was the right course of action and your mistake got a team mate killed.

3)Rhalgers Reach is still there. Zenos literally strolled in, screwed crap up for the MSQ, left, and that was it. And trust me, I like those parts of the MSQ. But The Garleans didnt wipe out Rhalgers. They didnt occupy it. They just came in, broke stuff, and left. Again, part of it is cool, but no lasting consequences and easily resolved.

4)As for solo content, what I suggested was that, a suggestion on how it could be performed. Whether they do it is another story. Likely not, as you have suggested. But it could provide some more lore and engagement that even the devs feel is necessary.

Option that let me choose size my au ra's horns are that be nice. Also be nice if they gave you option to change color of your scales.

I'd rather have one longer, more detailed, more cohesive, and individually more entertaining, even if mostly singular path than several paths of lesser quality in those regards.

I'd be happy just having better emote integration during the in-game cutscenes, more dialogue choices, and less static character animations by our selves and the NPCs. Reacting in our own way is enough. I don't need to jump storylines.

That's why exist both of them. For more lineal RPG, you have JRPG, for more free RPG you have WRPG. If we make both the same... what's the point then? I prefer how is it. I like both JRPG and WRPG, but I do not like they become the same. Variety is the key.

For example, on Star Wars The Old Republic MMO, you can choose side with the Empire or the Republic at the beginning, but more ahead, you ca re-choose again, even changing position like being a Sith of the Republic, or a Jedi on the Empire. Anyway, you will fight the opposite faction, that's mean if you have other friend players in the other side, you basically cannot play with them in most of the content. In FFXIV what happens if you choose Empire, but your players Choose Eorzean Alliance?

And I must add. SWTOR is a BAD MMO. Very bad. Not only because is programed like shit (it is plagued by bugs) but story is bad, and one on the reasons story is bad is because this multi-choice system. Does not have consistence. It is bad, specially coming form Bioware, who is supposed to be good a this. May work for single player, but is bad for MMO.

Personally I like the JRPG mode for MMO for this reason mostly.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Option that let me choose size my au ra's horns are that be nice. Also be nice if they gave you option to change color of your scales.

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What does this have to do with the topic? lol

This is about story choices. NOT cosmetics.

thing is since this game is an mmo that can't really do this in a meaningful way and have it still work from a game play stand point for example you think dps que times are bad now? imagine if the one you are qued for is only open to to people who made x choice or since your friend pick something different from you and you can't run stuff together anymore

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Originally Posted by Super_Bee_Brian

What does this have to do with the topic? lol

This is about story choices. NOT cosmetics.

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Have you tried SWTOR? They offer what you are asking for.