A serious discussion about abridging the story quest 1-50 (discouraging new players)

[Atrayl]

Why even bother to play ff if not going through the lore, please do answer this.

"Why bother playing a game if you just want a story? Go read a book!"

This argument is ridiculous and invalid.

I also don't understand how anyone could come to the conclusuon that the MSQ teaches you how to play. Or that people wouldn't run the dungeons if the MSQ didn't force them to. The dungeons are the stuff we do want to do. We just want to do them without doing hundreds of fetch quests.

[Felis]

"Why bother playing a game if you just want a story? Go read a book!"

"Why playing a (J)RPG if you want a game with no story? Go and play a Jump&Run!"

because I don't care as much about the story as I do about playing my character and leveling, and raiding, and doing fun stuff, after all, this is a video game and not a book.

But JRPGs should be like books, with graphic and many text.
FF XIV is a JRPG first, a MMO second.

[Nightdreamer]

But JRPGs should be like books, with graphic and many text.
FF XIV is a JRPG first, a MMO second.

If the story was a little more interesting I'd stop and actually read through it. There's a difference between quantity and quality.

[Felis]

If the story was a little more interesting I'd stop and actually read through it. There's a difference between quantity and quality.

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe because I read it instead of skipping it. Or because I don't read it in english.

But the story isn't more focused if the fluff is just stalling time and is completely irrelevant to both the story AND giving your warrior of light any reason for his reputation, the main story does this, not these fluff quests like ok ill find your airship, in the meantime do these bogus 10-15 quests and the they tell you oh its over here talk to him*gets sent to next hub for them to receive that 1 main quest then give another 15-20 quests and come back for the main quest to continue to the next hub* That is completely and utterly ridiculous if it is happening the entire game…..

Your description confuse me. In what lv 10-15 story quests have you to find an airship?

[Madjames]

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe because I read it instead of skipping it. Or because I don't read it in english.

I read the story up to and including level 30, That took a long time, hours and even days. I think that is enough time to see if I like said story book or not. I have never given actual books or movies as much time to see if I liked them before shutting it off or CHOOSING to not purchase said book. The problem is we can not CHOOSE to turn off the MSQ and continue with the rest of the game as the MSQ is a very small and useless aspect of the game anyway. We lost a CHOICE here and that is a problem for new players who want to play the MMORPG side of the game and disregard the FF side of it like I want to do.

You can not say that an MMORPG player does not have a right, nor should they not have a right to CHOOSE what they want to do and how they want to play a game they are paying for. If they like every other aspect of this game EXCEPT the minor small scale MSQ then we should be allowed to skip it and continue to level how WE see fit. If you do not allow us to do so then you are choosing the story huggers over MMORPG players who join this game for the MMORPG aspect no the Final Fantasy story aspect and that is wrong thinking and SE should have just made this game single player.

[Reinha]

. . . I have never given actual books or movies as much time to see if I liked them before shutting it off or CHOOSING to not purchase said book. . . .

You can not say that an MMORPG player does not have a right, nor should they not have a right to CHOOSE what they want to do and how they want to play a game they are paying for. If they like every other aspect of this game EXCEPT the minor small scale MSQ then we should be allowed to skip it and continue to level how WE see fit. If you do not allow us to do so then you are choosing the story huggers over MMORPG players who join this game for the MMORPG aspect no the Final Fantasy story aspect and that is wrong thinking and SE should have just made this game single player.

A game company can make the game however they like and you as a customer have every right take it or leave it. No one is forcing you to pay for this particular MMO if the Final Fantasy story doesn't appeal to you. You said it yourself with your book example. The only time I will suggest a player that they leave an MMO is when they are unhappy and with some aspect that has always been there. MSQ has gated things since level 1, so this is one of those times. If it's too different from other MMOs then go play other MMOs that you think did it right. If you "like every other aspect of this game EXCEPT the minor small scale MSQ" then just get the minor small scale thing over with and enjoy the rest of the game.

There is no formal rules about how to make an MMO and it's super arrogant of you to say that SE did it wrong just because they didn't cater to your wishes. Their playerbase is growing and that can't be said for many MMOs on the market. Thinking in the way of "it should be either a single player game or a mainstream MMO and not something in between" is very black and white.

[KisaiTenshi]

There is no formal rules about how to make an MMO

I'll disagree. While every MMO may go about it differently, there are a few fundamental rules that need to be adhered to or you either bomb the launch or your customer base churn is too high.

1. A MMO is a Multiplayer game, all activities in the game must therefor be "better" in multiplayer than the single-player-in-a-multiplayer-world experience. If people only come to play the single player part and then leave, you've failed.
2. A MMO-RPG, must allow the player to create and name their own character within the programming limits of the game. In otherwords you can't have a MMORPG where everyone has to play Fluffy, and the world is populated with only other Fluffy's.
3. A MMO-RPG must have a clear path on why they are in the world. You can't just drop someone into the world, go "here's a spoon, have fun" and not give them an objective. What's the ultimate goal, reach level 50? Kill the bigbad? Craft a nice house?

Final Fantasy XIV hits most of the right notes when compared to other RPG's. I don't expect it to be perfect (everyone is going into trendy minecraft-clones now) but It just wouldn't be a Final Fantasy game if there wasn't deep lore and story behind every character. This is not a "WoW-clone" with a Final Fantasy skin on top. Most of the MMORPG's out there clone WoW's mechanics but offer very little originality, and all the freemium ones want you to spend hundreds of dollars a month on cash shop items to stay ahead. No thanks. The amount of money you might spend on FFXIV (10-15$/mo + 40$ per expansion) is equal to about 2-3 stand-alone games that give you 15-30 hours of play time each. So if you can get 90 hours of play out of FFXIV, you are FAR ahead of a single player game, and you can play with friends.