Why is race and nationality ignored so much in the lore? (why does the lore fail)

[Azurymber]

Let me give another wonderful example of TWO quests (and these were like my fav ones story wise lol)
-obv spoilers-

"i randomly lost my journal pages in some underground place with opo opos help. You run 30 min, kill 5 opo opo and get some journal pages. "oh thanks" < great lore there
but wait, theres another quest in the quest line!
meet some girl "i found this page. so romantic, he must love me, go talk to him"
-run 30min-
"oh i wrote that about opo opo's not her... i dont like her, creeper"
-run 30 min-
"oh its not about me? /sad"

Or 3 quests (one in each city)
"Zomg marmot/rat infestation go kill"
-kill marmots/rats-
"hurray saved"

[Abriael]

i'm sorry. one of the quests was like "zomg i made cookies, i want ppl to like my cookies, run around limsa and give 5 ppl my cookies and like totally /psyche them up about it"
How is that great lore? or great writing? or interesting in anyway. You literally just run around town for 10 min and /psych at 5 npcs who are like "nom nom good".....

this compared to ffxi in which a quest might have you watch a 5 min cutscenes with child elvaans talking about wanting to take part and help out in the war, the adults telling them not to, one of the kids running off to take on an orc, having to go save said kid from a crazy orc overlord, epic fighting, etc.

You have VERY low standards my friend.

So my friend....
run around town and give people cookies
or save a headstrong kid from his stubborness to help protect a nation from a beastman onslaught.

The interesting part of the cookies quest is not what you're doing, but the comments you receive, which do give quite a few interesting hints on the life in Limsa, on some of the races and other things. Of course, reading comprehension and the ability to resist speedclicking is necessary (not to mention actual interest in the actual lore of the world, not just in the lore of the impending war against enemy X).

What people with poor taste and poor understanding don't really manage to grasp is that realistic worlds are populated with real people, that have everyday problems. Great lore and information about the world can be conveyed very well through those people.
In a realistic world not every headstrong kid needs to be saved to help protect a nation from a beastman onslaught.

In a realistic fantasy world there are both people with their everyday problems, and other people rallying companies of elite soldiers to prepare against the invasion of a ruthless empire of machina users.

FFXIV is building up having both. Immersion is built by a sense of realism, and if there were only quests to save the world, that sense of immersion would go down the drain.

I'm afraid the one with low standards (and no knowledge on how to build an immersive, realistic world), here, isn't me.

[Mack]

your confusing lore with main story. Lore is about the world of the game. Not the main story currently taking place. Like you learn why beared rock is called beared rock. Which is infact lore of beaded rock.

You guys mix up words alot like immersion and lore, yet complain about my "lack" of understanding the english langue. >.> kinda silly.

yoshida said the quests were to learn more about the world we are in. Learning the tale of how beared rock was named is infact just that. We were not going to learn more about the main story from quests or the quests had any ties with the main story. You guys were the ones you misunderstood them.

Your English language is hardly the problem here, its readable. Its how you put your words together and generally how your brain functions...or doesn't. You like to read what you want to read and you ignore what is actually being said, and on top of that you always defend everything, you never criticize anything and you always say "just a lil fyi in FFXI....blah blah blah freakin blah"...and you wonder why no one takes you seriously? think about it for a second, if everyone tells you they don't take you seriously is it because they are all the problem or because you are? learn to adapt and stop being a fangirl.

[Azurymber]

The interesting part of the cookies quest is not what you're doing, but the comments you receive, which do give quite a few interesting hints on the life in Limsa, on some of the races and other things. Of course, reading comprehension and the ability to resist speedclicking is necessary (not to mention actual interest in the actual lore of the world, not just in the lore of the impending war against enemy X).

What people with poor taste and poor understanding don't really manage to grasp is that realistic worlds are populated with real people, that have everyday problems. Great lore and information about the world can be conveyed very well through those people.
In a realistic world not every headstrong kid needs to be saved to help protect a nation from a beastman onslaught.

In a realistic fantasy world there are both people with their everyday problems, and other people rallying companies of elite soldiers to prepare against the invasion of a ruthless empire of machina users.

FFXIV is building up having both. Immersion is built by a sense of realism, and if there were only quests to save the world, that sense of immersion would go down the drain.

I'm afraid the one with low standards (and no knowledge on how to build an immersive, realistic world), here, isn't me.

alright then, what have you learned from the cookies quest?
People dont play an MMO to experiance real life. People play real life for that
People expect things in a game to be INTERESTING. Spending 1 hour walking around for 2 lines of meaningless lore is not interesting to the average person.

[Physic]

the nationality is built in to everything just talk to npcs in a town, you see huge differences

[Gramul]

alright then, what have you learned from the cookies quest?
People don't play an MMO to experience real life. People play real life for that
People expect things in a game to be INTERESTING. Spending 1 hour walking around for 2 lines of meaningless lore is not interesting to the average person.

Who are you to speak for the average person? I for one enjoy daily life lore and I feel it adds a nice touch to the depth of the overall setting. Mind you I think we should also have the sort of high action and adventure side quests like the one you mentioned from XI, but these more relaxed side quests are nice too.

I say we have both.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

The quest that you learn of beared rock, made me want to go see it. So i spent some time looking for it. (and since the map text is hard to read for me) It took me a good while. When I found it And looked at it I was oo that is pretty cool. Pretty much yoshi said the side quests were about the people and places of Eorzea. Lore is everywhere in this game. Just a matter of understanding it. Lore doesn't need to make a huge impact, it just needs to help with the setting. Much like the Elder scrolls ihe reason the game is called the Elder scrolls is they talk of a long standing prophacy spaning 1000s of years. Each occurance from areana to oblivion was prophosised and leading to skyrim so far and the return of dragons. And the dragon born Much like the of Zelda isn't really about Zelda but about Link. Even those games had quests that had no real importence but added life to the game. Like the coco lady from village under death moutain you had fetch all her coco because she was allergic.

[Azurymber]

Who are you to speak for the average person? I for one enjoy daily life lore and I feel it adds a nice touch to the depth of the overall setting. Mind you I think we should also have the sort of high action and adventure side quests like the one you mentioned from XI, but these more relaxed side quests are nice too.

I say we have both.

I study / work with behavioural economics and neuroscience. So essentially i know the scientific reasons behind what makes the average person enjoy a game, why they enjoy it, what parts of the brain are active during specific tasks in a game, etc.

I'm not saying daily life lore is bad. I'm saying without real quests this game is not competitive with other games.

Further i'm saying that the -average- person's brain is not designed to get pleasure from monotonous boring tasks such as walking from one city to another along identical looking pathways without agro mobs. UNLESS its their first time. So if the quests had you explore new areas then there might be a benefit to them. But the fact that they have you walk to places you would normally go makes them fail.

put another way: if this game was FFXI standards and these quest were implemented then they would have value. But alone, they just make the game look rushed and uncompetitive.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Your English language is hardly the problem here, its readable. Its how you put your words together and generally how your brain functions...or doesn't. You like to read what you want to read and you ignore what is actually being said, and on top of that you always defend everything, you never criticize anything and you always say "just a lil fyi in FFXI....blah blah blah freakin blah"...and you wonder why no one takes you seriously? think about it for a second, if everyone tells you they don't take you seriously is it because they are all the problem or because you are? learn to adapt and stop being a fangirl.

I do not critizied things in ffxiv because i could care less. I play to have fun and I'm not overly picky. If i find something fun, I will do it. If i find something not fun I just do not do it. I do not need a gane catered to me. If i do not like or enjoy an mmo i just do not play it. I did this For WoW Aion and DCUO. And the f2p ones I tried out.

[Seif]

What really kills the immersion is how pointless following the story is. After a cs is done all you have to do is follow a map marker anyway so what's the point of reading any of it?

This to me kills the immersion. It feels like all the text is just slapped on a game without being a substantial part of it.

All the nations feel like leve counters because of this because that's what missions are when it boils down to the actual actions you need to do.