FFXIV's current story is less compelling and interesting than a gacha games

For anyone needing to feel something, being starved of anything truly good from FFXIV: I highly recommend Wuthering Waves.

It has its ups and downs and honestly the gacha aspect is very minimal as the story is made in a way where you need basically 0 investment in the game itself to complete.

I won't call it Shadowbringers 5.0 level but the most recent patch 3.1 and also some that come before it has some of the best storytelling in any game (gacha or not). Being free to play also comes with the territory as well.

Give it a go, I did and I experienced something really special!

I tried WuWa and gave up after a few hours because the writing was absolutely atrocious. The game had me piece together a story and then gave me a long-ass cutscene recounting what I had just learned. XIV is also guilty of this but not to that extent.

Already playing genshin, I don't have the time for another gacha.

That said I do enjoy genshin's story and characters (especially its characters) more than FFXIV. Its more consistent, whereas FFXIV is written by wildly different people and it shows.

I've got to say that I've found reading the back of cereal boxes to be way more compelling than compared to all gacha and F2P game's attempt at a coherent plot which is let down by the fact they want more money each banner so there's no real sense of progression unless it's opening your wallet for the next waifu banners.

Also, another reminder that gacha/F2P games are not free but funded by children, whales, and gambling addicts.

I play Wuwa. It’s a great game and very F2P friendly.
I do love the story also, it’s very good. However FFXIV is still better at it.
And I guess current Ffxiv expansion makes more sense for those that have played Ff9.

Eh, they're okay I guess.
A shame their daily loop is not that interesting for me, and neither is praying for lucky pulls on gacha things either.

No hate to them of course, they're good for printing money at the moment.

Depends on the gacha game I guess. Just going by the ones I'm playing...

Blue Archive: Mostly light-hearted anime fluff, and the very times it tries to be "dark" it just ends up cringe.
Azur Lane: The multi-verse plotline is such a mess I just skip all cutscenes and look at the ship booba.
Kemono Friends Kingdom: Literally never finished because the game got sent into maintenance mode until whenever it shuts down. But even before then it was as cute and simple as can be.
Zenless Zone Zero: Fell off incredibly hard during season 2.0 when we went from "cyberpunk corporation espionage plots involving hackers and cults" to "melodramatic magical swordland adventures in not-Genshin town with the two lamest siblings ever". And man... if you folks disliked Wuk Lamat, you'll bloody HATE Ye Shunguang, lol.

Sorry but, you can not be serious? I know this is your opinion and I'll respect it, but you can not in good faith believe that gachas, ESPECIALLY Wuthering Waves has a better story than FFXIV. Dawntrail was not great but this constant "Dawntrail bad" is getting old tbh.

I have played quite a lot of gachas and most of their stories are mid at best, they often are so convoluted with terms you'll hear once every 6 months and designed in a way to just sell the current banner character. There's some good ones, but most of them are just self insert waifu dating simulators which has no depth at all.

Wuthering Waves story boils down to: Main character meets the current banner character and needs to help them with a massive threat, the banner character falls for the main character (not directly stated but heavily implied), the main character fixes everything without any issues, repeat next patch but with the new banner character while the old ones never show up again.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Zenless Zone Zero: Fell off incredibly hard during season 2.0 when we went from "cyberpunk corporation espionage plots involving hackers and cults" to "melodramatic magical swordland adventures in not-Genshin town with the two lamest siblings ever". And man... if you folks disliked Wuk Lamat, you'll bloody HATE Ye Shunguang, lol.

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Man do I ever agree with that. Same thing happened with Star Rail. Like, I get it. It's like every Western fantasy game being about elves and orcs and every Japanese game being about 16 year olds killing God, they just can't stop themselves, PROBABLY because their audience loves that shit. Don't stop me from being a little bummed it keeps happening.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

Man do I ever agree with that. Same thing happened with Star Rail. Like, I get it. It's like every Western fantasy game being about elves and orcs and every Japanese game being about 16 year olds killing God, they just can't stop themselves, PROBABLY because their audience loves that shit. Don't stop me from being a little bummed it keeps happening.

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Those are Chinese games. And they're also all terrible soulless trash that are almost certainly using LLMs for their story development and in some cases even using it for in game dialogue.

You want gacha games with good story and gameplay that doesn't suck ass, Arknights (not Endfield), Limbus Company, Another Eden, Wizardry: Variants Daphne, or even watch the story compilations from dead games like Mobius Final Fantasy or Echoes of Mana. I'm not sure I'd say they have a better story than FFXIV, but they're better than Hoyoslop and Diet Hoyoslop.

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

Sorry but, you can not be serious? I know this is your opinion and I'll respect it, but you can not in good faith believe that gachas, ESPECIALLY Wuthering Waves has a better story than FFXIV. Dawntrail was not great but this constant "Dawntrail bad" is getting old tbh.

I have played quite a lot of gachas and most of their stories are mid at best, they often are so convoluted with terms you'll hear once every 6 months and designed in a way to just sell the current banner character. There's some good ones, but most of them are just self insert waifu dating simulators which has no depth at all.

Wuthering Waves story boils down to: Main character meets the current banner character and needs to help them with a massive threat, the banner character falls for the main character (not directly stated but heavily implied), the main character fixes everything without any issues, repeat next patch but with the new banner character while the old ones never show up again.

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While some of the main stories do follow that formula, this reply reeks of ai-aggregated opinions and it most definitely does not apply to the most recent patch

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Originally Posted by Ankhira

Sorry but, you can not be serious? I know this is your opinion and I'll respect it, but you can not in good faith believe that gachas, ESPECIALLY Wuthering Waves has a better story than FFXIV. Dawntrail was not great but this constant "Dawntrail bad" is getting old tbh.

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Don't know why it's so surprising (and I am someone who also doesn't like WuWa and thinks it's overhyped).
While I do like the patch story in FFxiv right now, Gachas have the same right to a good story as FFxiv has and I would dare to say that an FGO is at least as good if not better ever since the Camelot chapter (with some lows like Agartha).
The Lostbelt setting itself is so full of heavy moments and bittersweet victories that DT really was a kids show compared to it.
Arknights also has a pretty good story and even Genshin has stepped up immensely how it tells it's deep lore with Fontaine and Nod Krai.
No matter how one thinks about the Gacha system (FGO has an atrocious one imo) the story and music have been at the same level as AAA games for a while now.

If anything I would say especially with the Final Fantasy name, a story disaster like DT shouldn't happen. Even more so when the story was what the game prided itself the expansions before it.

the current story is terrible but please don't try and act like your gachaslop is any better

No. I tried quite a few of those titles, including WuWa and they aren't even fun to play let alone how poorly considered their stories are.

I mean, this game is Final Fantasy XIV, you'd be far and away better off picking up any past title in this franchise to play than a gacha title that only cares about making a hot anime inspired characters with skills and stats that invalidate old hot anime inspired characters you already earned. Way easier on your wallet, too.

LOL LMAO EVEN

And people wonder why Wuwa players and by extension most people who play hoyoslop aren't taken seriously at all

I'm playing gacha RPGs for gameplay variety and low time investment, not the story. Their patch cycle and production quality are miles ahead of XIV that Dawntrail seem worse due to how cheap it is with cut-scenes and lack of voice acting.

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Originally Posted by Mayli

While some of the main stories do follow that formula, this reply reeks of ai-aggregated opinions and it most definitely does not apply to the most recent patch

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Implying I'm using AI to form opinions is incredibly insulting considering I played Wuthering Waves from 1.2 all the way to 2.8 before I quit. I think I have a fairly good grasp on what the game is. If your only reply to criticism is "Your opinion is wrong because I don't like it" then you're not even worth discussing with.

This is what happens all the time with you Wuthering Waves fans on any platform, anyone that has anything negative to say about the game is just a doomposter or troll and gets insulted unless they blindly praise everything the game does.

Jesus christ.

I'm more of an HSR fan but I find it hilarious someone would make a post like this after my question post about how people would feel about an HSR cross over would be. TLDR ff14 community sees all gacha games as mobile slop with zero value. TBH I do agree that some story beats in these games are better than some in ff14 but i think over all ff14's story outside of 4.0 stormblood and 7.0 -7.1 dawntrail has been better.

What i don't tolerate is the blind hate from people calling all the gacha games souless trash because there is a lot of good story telling and hype moments that self blinded idiots will overlook. I think WUWA's intro story is trash but genshin and especially honkai star rail had amazing introductions. One we get a slow introduction to the likeable characters of mondstadt followed by an aerial boss fight off rip. HSR has Kafka playing violin music as the anti matter legion attacks the herta space station. We're then introduced to silverwolf hacking into reality to warp into the space station and help Kafka deliver the stellaron to our sleeping MC. From there those two character dissappear and we wake up greeted by members from the astral express. We get some of the best looking turn based combat I've seen in a while before fighting a space dragon and boarding the astral express and moving on from the awesome space station tutorial to our first actual world to trailblaze. Jarillo VI was one of the best planets released until amphoreus came out two versions later and the way every character on Jarillo VI felt well written and the stakes and pay off for the world's conflict was amazing! I don't want to spoil the details but getting new powers in HSR feels a lot more impactful from both a story and gameplay perspective from genshin. WUWA actually does this quite well too because the MC doesn't just touch a statue and oh new form i guess.

Also I feel like ff14 does a horrible job at showcasing the warrior of lights strength outside of expansion trailers. We're seen flying as a dragoon and splitting the sky in half as a dark knight but we can't jump across a small lake to woman and her baby from some trash terminus beasts or even use ranged attacks on our ranged jobs. Naw we just sit there like an idiot while zural ja ressurects and dishonors his fathers duel by using a regulator. I never hated the warrior of light and scions more than when they all just watched gulooja die for now no reason. It was the stupidest death ever. I get some people want character deaths and darker story and I think stormblood and shadowbringers did that a little well with papalymo and tessleen but omg this death was garbage.

Indeed, I wish my wol could be a fanny magnet as well.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

Man do I ever agree with that. Same thing happened with Star Rail. Like, I get it. It's like every Western fantasy game being about elves and orcs and every Japanese game being about 16 year olds killing God, they just can't stop themselves, PROBABLY because their audience loves that shit. Don't stop me from being a little bummed it keeps happening.

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It's probably why Hoyo started to panic a bit and yank us back into Sixth Street with the latest story chapter (even if it also involved a cutesy idol group), because they saw Neverness to Everness and Ananta coming for the audience that Zenless Zone Zero spurned by flipping that game's entire theme and genre into Store Brand Genshin Impact.

Normally I'm horribly biased towards Thiren women where the only good things that came out of season 2.0 were Fufu, Alice, Yidhari, Lucia, and Zhao, but they still got tossed to the side so we could hear more about how great and powerful Shunguang is, how she loves us so much, and how she totally knew us since we were kids but it literally never got brought up until 5 minutes ago when the plot suddenly needed you to care about her possibly dying (which didn't happen of course). They couldn't even resist making her species "DeviantArt OC unique" in that she's some kind of mythical horse/fox thing.

She is the Poochie of ZZZ waifus and oh man did it bring down the room.

That said, I'm not going to pretend like non-mobile games aren't capable of being slop too when it comes to story and characters. I DID mention FF8 after all... and Final Fantasy 1&3 barely even have plots and main casts.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Also I feel like ff14 does a horrible job at showcasing the warrior of lights strength outside of expansion trailers. We're seen flying as a dragoon and splitting the sky in half as a dark knight but we can't jump across a small lake to woman and her baby from some trash terminus beasts or even use ranged attacks on our ranged jobs. Naw we just sit there like an idiot while zural ja ressurects and dishonors his fathers duel by using a regulator. I never hated the warrior of light and scions more than when they all just watched gulooja die for now no reason. It was the stupidest death ever. I get some people want character deaths and darker story and I think stormblood and shadowbringers did that a little well with papalymo and tessleen but omg this death was garbage.

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Genuinely think this is why we had the moment where we tank and entire city sector's electricity in one bolt attack without even passing out, stand firm against Necron's magic, and then had that moment where we attack the terminal with a unique animation for every job.

The the Doom Train stuff in general where the world's bravest most terrified engineer is utterly godsmacked at how casually we just show up and destroy it.

The devs are clearly trying to fix that.

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Originally Posted by Immut

Those are Chinese games. And they're also all terrible soulless trash that are almost certainly using LLMs for their story development and in some cases even using it for in game dialogue.

You want gacha games with good story and gameplay that doesn't suck ass, Arknights (not Endfield), Limbus Company, Another Eden, Wizardry: Variants Daphne, or even watch the story compilations from dead games like Mobius Final Fantasy or Echoes of Mana. I'm not sure I'd say they have a better story than FFXIV, but they're better than Hoyoslop and Diet Hoyoslop.

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Honestly I don't care to really engage with which gachaslop is better than the other. I mean Hell none of these games even come close to something like the layered and genre-defining writing of Doki Doki Literature Club or Disco Elysium, it's like arguing whether the big bang theory is better than 2 broke girls. I just know I like one more.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Also I feel like ff14 does a horrible job at showcasing the warrior of lights strength outside of expansion trailers. We're seen flying as a dragoon and splitting the sky in half as a dark knight but we can't jump across a small lake to woman and her baby from some trash terminus beasts or even use ranged attacks on our ranged jobs. Naw we just sit there like an idiot while zural ja ressurects and dishonors his fathers duel by using a regulator. I never hated the warrior of light and scions more than when they all just watched gulooja die for now no reason. It was the stupidest death ever. I get some people want character deaths and darker story and I think stormblood and shadowbringers did that a little well with papalymo and tessleen but omg this death was garbage.

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This plagues FF14 since the very start. Remember ARR? We deal with demigods, and the realm's mightiest warrior (Gaius) and his pet battle robot. Then at the bloody banquet a grinning midget and three guys with lances enter the room, and we just raise our hands and give up. While Thancred (who is not even close to the WoL's power level) single handedly deals with half the Uldan army.
The WoL's power level is always on the exact same level the writers need to further their plot. This is a text book example of bad story telling, but that's the way it is.

No bait in sight, just unfiltered, awful opinions.