What's your opinion about the game's story?

[Keramory]

It's not bad for an MMO...but it's not great. I think by far though the most recent patch hit the absolute lowest. They have a strange problem with drawing out some aspects pointlessly (ugh for years) and then wrap up other portions in a few patches.

Best example (SPOILERS)


WoD was walking on the moon. THE MOON. THIS GUY WAS ON THE MOON! Then bam, wraped up quicker then anything. You don't just get rid of the guy who was walking on the moon in like 2 patches. The hell???

[Katana190]

Actually I'mma go more in detail. I don't care that my character doesn't talk ingame. I care that my character doesn't ACT in game movies. I hate that npcs can do all this crazy Street Fighter Anime battle crap but my character stands there like a little princess waiting to be saved. I'm the goddammed WARRIOR OF LIGHT! I save YOU! you don't save me. That is my issue with the story. Let me feel like the BA I'm posed to be. IF that means more solo instances where I have to actually fight things then bring it on. I'm posed to be the BAMF of this plot.. LET ME BE THAT. Show me, stop TELLING me.

Idk, I would love for our characters to actually do some combat in CS's rather then just standing still or unsheathing your weapon and just stare at the enemy and let someone just hop in front and protect us... because that literally happens all the time. Now obviously it would be hard to make every job do a unique action, so just give our character a universal weapon, I think the best go to weapon in that case would be a Sword of some kind, I don't think a Mage using a Sword in a combat scene would be too unorthodox if a certain ACN uses one. Just my opinion though, would make our characters feel a lot more alive.

[cammi]

Post limit REALLY needs to be sued

Naw they can use our job weapons. If they can put enough animation to have them pose in the battle stance then we can fight in the CS, there is no excuse SE. NONE. I mean it wouldn't even be a BIG change, it'll make our characters more believable being he BAMF they are and make the story more fun. They really should try it. Lets yell at SE to make this happen, I believe we can do it.

[Naunet]

I like certain... parts of the story. I like Y'shtola and Urianger. Some of the job quests were pretty good (particularly BRD and BLM). But there are two main components to why I feel like this story is all-around unimpressive.

1. The presentation. The cutscenes are so static. Any emotion characters should be feeling is completely stifled by the unnatural delays caused by either having to click through dialogue or these weird delays in expression that are built into the cutscene. A character will say something, and then it cuts to another character for reaction, and there's this couple second pause before their face twists into this unnaturally exaggerated surprised expression or somesuch. And if I tried to count the number of times SE tried to convey a serious interaction by having two characters take ten seconds each to stiffly nod at each other and then walk away like mannequins, I'd run out of fingers and toes. The voice acting leaves much to be desired as well, with some exceptions. But overall, the story is hindered by wooden cutscenes that disrupt the flow of conversation.

2. The quality of the writing. I'll set aside for now the hilarity that is how many characters in the story have white hair (my husband and I joke about it constantly). But the characters themselves really haven't grabbed me, with a few exceptions. Y'shtola is one, who steps out of a bland shell with the firm (and importantly: consistent) characteristic of her opinions on the Grand Companies' treatment of the beast tribes. Urianger has been handled well so far, starting out as a quiet book nerd we know little about, and SE has actually introduced hidden pieces of his personality and given him depth in a pretty natural progression. He could have easily remained that static archetype, but he doesn't and it's well done. I also enjoyed Aymeric's introduction in ARR and thought his character presentation balanced snobby traits with an underlying compassionate lean nicely. But those things are the exception to the rule. For the most part, characters are bland and predictable.

In addition to the characters, the plot itself leaves much to be desired. I won't go into detail about how sluggish and dull the ARR story is (and how poorly presented it is through unending fetch quests) - I think that's something many people in this thread have already touched on. What I will turn to as an example instead is peculiar and nonsensical plot choices. ARR's storyline is awash with missed opportunities to create a much more interesting and complex story. Thancred's "betrayal" is a great example. Instead of pulling a cheat card out of their butts, they missed the opportunity to really subvert the Scions' story in the Thancred/Ascian plot. Thancred was exhausting himself. Take that a step further and portray him struggling with a fight that seems futile. His struggle is so great that he begins wondering if all their fighting is for naught. This alone would be enough of an opening for an Ascian to begin influencing him, but I think an important point to make would be that Thancred's actions aren't JUST the will of an Ascian puppeteer. It was Thancred's own feelings that originally stirred him, and these should come to light. As he performs one minor sabotage after another toward the Scions, disrupting their own struggles against the Garleans, Thancred on his own becomes more and more sure that it's simply not worth fighting anymore. That they can save far more lives by allowing the Garleans to conquer than they would by resisting. At this point him and the Ascian are pretty much working together. This, in the end, would make the reveal that much more dramatic. The Scions would still try to save him, still try to rescue Thancred from what they perceive to be Ascian control. But then when they do expel the Ascian from his body, the blow is all the greater when Thancred reveals his own motivations. The Scions' feelings of betrayal and grief for Thancred would be countered by his belief that he's doing the right thing for Eorzea. Such a dichotomy would have a much greater impact than the very simple, "Oh, it was just the evil Ascian and now everything is better!" tripe that we got in the actual story.

That's one example, but there are a number of such poor story choices made by SE where they took an easy out to quickly resolve what should have been (and COULD have been) a very complicated and multi-faceted issue.

The Garleans alone are nothing but a toothless specter for the most part, which is a shame all on its own. SE never quite figures out how to make them the terrifying, dominating force that they are claimed to be in dialogue by more than a few characters. And that's one big problem: SE's story is inconsistent in how characters react vs how the story is written.

Specific to Heavensward, I also find that SE's decision to heavy-handedly lay every single Evil Catholic Church stereotype in existence upon Ishgard as just utterly unnecessary and really damages my ability to connect with the story. Oh, of course the Fantasy Pope is secretly evil. Oh, of course the Fantasy Church is restricting people's access to information (see as an example the Galileo plot copy of the AST quests, which gets the whole Galileo thing wrong anyway because the Church actually funded his research quite happily). Oh, of course they have "Inquisitors" who are pretty much universally and exaggeratedly cruel and harsh about their judgments. Oh, of course Fantasy Religion are the bad guys and us Pure Spiritual Outsiders are going to make everyone see the light. I could go on, but to sum it up: it's a cheap ploy to set up another Big Bad. They could easily tell the story of the Ishgard-dragon war without turning Ishgard into an obnoxious and stereotypical caricature of Catholicism.

And, uhm... I feel like my post has gone on long enough so I'll stop there. To be honest, there are a lot of other plot points I could bring up, but I think I've hit the main points. xD

[Teraluna]

"1. The presentation. The cutscenes are so static. Any emotion characters should be feeling is completely stifled by the unnatural delays caused by either having to click through dialogue or these weird delays in expression that are built into the cutscene."

......except for ''that' cutscene......watched when I happened to be peeling onions....not getting watery eyed at all at the cutscene....no, definitely the onions.....sob.

[Katana190]

Naw they can use our job weapons. If they can put enough animation to have them pose in the battle stance then we can fight in the CS, there is no excuse SE. NONE. I mean it wouldn't even be a BIG change, it'll make our characters more believable being he BAMF they are and make the story more fun. They really should try it. Lets yell at SE to make this happen, I believe we can do it.

Don't get me wrong, I would love for my character to do some crazy warrior stuff like the WoL does in the End of Era ARR Cinematic trailer, BECAUSE THAT S**T IS FREAKEN COOL. The only problem with making every Job do something unique is there are 13 jobs to cover (At the moment! With more to come, even if they did this in 4.0, more jobs in 5.0, they would need to backtrack and re-do the scenes for the newer jobs.) And if they did a really cool animation, people would be complaining that they want the said animation as an ingame skill.

Of course there is the solution of us just doing pre-existing skills like if it came to your character fighting multiple enemies they would do an AoE from their toolkit which is most fitting, or a when it comes to single target combat they would do the most flashy one, Royal Authority from PLD for instance. The problem with this is it would either come out really cool or really lame, but I think the latter as CS's have impact to them. Take one of the most recent CS's, where the Paladin of Darkness charges at us and Thancred steps in, rather then Thancred stepping in, we defend ourselves. As a MNK you would do something like the Forbidden Chakra, which sounds cool on paper but would probably come out lame.

BUT, if our character just used a Sword, which is a pretty iconic weapon, they could really pull some amazing scenes off with our character and have as much creativity with that as they want. Just my opinion though, I don't disagree with you! Just saying it would be hard to do, not like we shouldn't expect SE to not work hard! But yeah, just my 2 cents.

Edit: I'm sure you've watched it. But just for reference, this is how awesome the WoL fights as a WAR. Starts at 1:45: https://youtu.be/39j5v8jlndM?t=105

[cammi]

[QUOTE=Katana190;3907247] :O [QUOTE]

If my character did the FC at that moment I would've been hyped. I get what you're saying about it might come out lame, but wouldn't a stock sword do the same thing? In context that could work and the FC could work too. I would've been happy if my character busted out a FC at that moment shocking the WOD and making him jump back. And it's simple why, because it'll show why I'm the GD WOL! Hell at this point I think both our ideas would make the playerbase happy... cause then we'll be doing something and stop being pretty princesses needing to be saved. :C But trust, I know where you're coming from.

[Katana190]

If my character did the FC at that moment I would've been hyped. I get what you're saying about it might come out lame, but wouldn't a stock sword do the same thing? In context that could work and the FC could work too. I would've been happy if my character busted out a FC at that moment shocking the WOD and making him jump back. And it's simple why, because it'll show why I'm the GD WOL! Hell at this point I think both our ideas would make the playerbase happy... cause then we'll be doing something and stop being pretty princesses needing to be saved. :C But trust, I know where you're coming from.

I think it would just boil down to what skills they use, thinking back. I'm sure doing the Forbidden Chakra at that point would look pretty amazing!

[cammi]

I think it would just boil down to what skills they use, thinking back. I'm sure doing the Forbidden Chakra at that point would look pretty amazing!

Yeah. Agreed. Soo about rising up and yelling at SE to make this a thing.....you in? I'll bring icecream.

[Katana190]

Yeah. Agreed. Soo about rising up and yelling at SE to make this a thing.....you in? I'll bring icecream.

Sounds fun