Story falls apart at the end...

[MicahZerrshia]

OP wants to watch cs and be immersed in the game and enjoy it all.

3 months later...op will be raging at ppl watching cs during his roulette because its causing it to last 30 minutes longer than it would otherwise and he has seen them each 90 times

[yoshikwalla]

No, i'm saying it's wrong to expect a Final Fantasy MMO to be like a Final Fantasy single player game. As soon as you make a persistent or even semi persistent world with thousands of people or more, it just cannot be the same.

With that logic, why even bother having cutscenes or characters or a story?

I never said that Final Fantasy XIV should play like a single-player game. It should play like an RPG. All that an RPG has to do is create a progressive storytelling experience. Final Fantasy XIV fails at the most crucial point in any role-playing game - the ending. It doesn't matter if it's an MMO or not.

The most unfortunate part about this is that Realm Reborn did very well as a Final Fantasy game - up until the ending.

[ispano]

With that logic, why even bother having cutscenes or characters or a story?

I never said that Final Fantasy XIV should play like a single-player game. It should play like an RPG. All that an RPG has to do is create a progressive storytelling experience. Final Fantasy XIV fails at the most crucial point in any role-playing game - the ending. It doesn't matter if it's an MMO or not.

The most unfortunate part about this is that Final Fantasy XIV did pretty well - up until the ending.

What ending? That's what you're missing. There is no ending, at least not for a long while. That's part of the point of being an MMO first.

[Malakhim]

The term RPG is nebulous at best. Action games can easily be RPGs if you rigidly stick to the term "Role-Playing Game". It seems like you came to FFXIV from the ENTIRELY wrong perspective, and I doubt that any future installment of Final Fantasy made into an MMO would satisfy what you're seeking.

I can't think of a single MMO that had a compelling story attached to it. Final Fantasy XI sought to create just that, albeit within the confines of what an MMO is, and from that perspective, it succeeded. But MMOs are traditionally very open-ended experiences, and due to this fact, any type of storyline dependent on a singular, tightly-focused character or party with a specific voice, dialogue, backgrounds and feelings are not going to work.

If that's what you were expecting, then FFXIV is definitely not for you, as the story itself is pretty weak in the first place.

[yoshikwalla]

What ending? That's what you're missing. There is no ending, at least not for a long while. That's part of the point of being an MMO first.

The ending to the storyline, not the game. 1.0 had two storylines - the Main Scenario and the Seventh Umbral Era storyline. Two storylines with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Since the Umbral Era storyline was very good, I expected its sequel to be just as good. So burn me at the stake. How dare I expect consistency?

[ispano]

The ending to the storyline, not the game. 1.0 had two storylines - the Main Scenario and the Seventh Umbral Era storyline. Two storylines with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Since the Umbral Era questline was very good, I expected its sequel to be just as good. So burn me at the stake.

You know that some people think the storyline in XIV is great. No company is perfect, no storyteller is perfect. There's almost always going to be someone that won't like some of their work, but like others. And another thing is that the story is only part of what makes a game enjoyable. Long ago I gave up on only wanting specific things from a game, because there's much more to be had that I was missing. And lastly, to be honest, when it comes to have a good story in an MMO, this game does it pretty well compared to most. Your problem isn't so much what you claim it is, but more other players. And that's what you have to deal with in an MMO.

[Huntington]

At least it's not Metal Gear Solid, where every cutscene is about 30 minutes long to flesh out the story: http://youtu.be/pXUe7joRUW0?t=33s

[NefarioCall]

When i did them the first time i went in as a healer on purpose and watched every cutscene.
I enjoyed the boss fights on my second go around.

It's unfortunate ...

[Kerberon]

Ok to everyone that is up in arms and going how dare someone not sit there and watch the cut scenes. You are in the wrong just as much as someone that kicks a new player for watching them. Let me explain. Right and wrong are ethical systems. There is an ethical system called utilitarianism, which states that the right action is the one that benefits the most people. While this system has it's flaws like all ethical systems do, it does point out something in this circumstance. There is no one that is not being rude here The people that want to SR with a new player are rude, the new player that expects 3 to 7 people to sit around and not play the game is rude. The fault is SE's. Instead of focusing your indiscriminate internet rage on other players, focus it on SE who put in long cutscenes into repeatable group content. This is an idea that anyone that's played an mmo before, ever could have told them would be a bad idea. They probably won't ever rework the current dungeons be we should be <expletive> sure to make them know that this is not acceptable in new dungeons they design from here on out. That way we can stop tearing each other apart for something that isn't any players fault.

[Duuude007]

My philosophy on the matter for a compromise is--

Let them watch all the cutscenes they want.
The rest of the party doesn't need their help, and may as well run ahead and finish the dungeon for them.
They can catch up after they finish the cutscenes.

It may be blunt, but everybody gets most of what they want.
Just not everything.
The definition of a compromise.