Quote Originally Posted by Seif View Post
This is what I mean when I say that MMO player's are used to lower standards than single player game players.
Like XI and every other FF game I've bought until this point I thought the game should have a complete story from beginning to end when it's for sale.

But I do agree with you that the characters should stand out more in the main storyline. The number of missions is so small they should definitely add more in between massive amounts of required grinding and they should let player's skill level decide what content they can or cannot do and not decide these things for us by setting cap-triggers.
Several points my good Sir!

1. FFXI's storyline does have completeness. Each expansion and set of main quests has a beginning, middle, and end. The story lines in each case are vivid and the characters memorable.
I remember having a lot of good memories with nation quests, Zilart, CoP, ToAU, WotG, and now Abyssea. (the three tiny expansions ACP, MKE, ASA were fun but not what I consider "main".) I mean the main ones... You grew attached to those characters, a lot and when you beat them there was a solid sense of accomplishment.
So I wouldn't say MMO players are used to lower standards at all, but I think in this case it really is SE needs to not drop the ball ... rather stop dropping the ball.

2. I agree that the number of missions is small, but more than that... They're just all half baked. In XI when you started nation quests you stuck to your nation, despite having certain missions that bled in with other nations- i.e. Rank 5 Shadow Lord Fight.

In XIV you start off at a nation, and for 2/3 nations you have a pretty sweet setup and then... they melt together. You get a fairly useless NPC companion and you lose all originality. I won't even go into how badly they dropped the ball with Gridania... it still makes me cry.

3. Right again Sir Seif but only partly?! They need to add more in between quests and missions regarding the nations and their place in the main storyline!

However... they already have skill requirements in regards to what content you can/cannot do. It doesn't work very well because the leveling is all weird. So it becomes frustrating and disjointed and any hope of entering the flow state or becoming attached to an NPC is shot.

XI had level requirements for their missions but because the way you leveled up in the game you didn't feel them and was able to progress through the missions/quests smoothly.

I've made a thread pointing some of this stuff out a while back. It's a bit of a read but you can check it out if you feel up for it. It's called Continuity and it's under General Discussion.

In any case, thanks for your time! =D