Brevity is the soul of wit: Request to fix the horrible writing on XIV's quests

[Anonymoose]

I have to agree that ffxiv have such a long storyline with just one NPC -.- i love reading lore but that way to much and sometime the thing skip 1 line of storyline and you have to skip it all just to reread everything -.-

Much with FFXI, I just make sure that it's well documented on my friendly neighborhood wiki and go back and read it later (or, if the Plot Details aren't there yet, I copy/paste it into a txt doc bit by bit and PUT it there for later).

------------------------------------------------


If you've got the time to read for a moment, I genuinely hope I don't lose your attention before the end of this post - as I think it encompasses both sides of the issue rather well and offers some insight to fixing it.

My previous assessment of delivery (a few posts up) aside, I have a completely different opinion about in-game lore as a whole:

Quests, missions, etc. usually require a fair amount of time and sometimes require assistance. Stopping to smell the roses when there is more to do and people are waiting for you isn't an option. This creates the first half of the problem - we're almost required to mash enter through most of the important parts just by default out of respect for the other seven people in our party from various other countries.

Problem two is a little easier, but still a pain in the gobbiebags: Often, quests are done distantly from one another and the overall arc of the story fades from memory. Sometimes in FFXI, I'd go back and watch an entire release's storyline in one sitting via the Goblin Footprints and I'd be like, "Man, I don't remember any of this sh!t." You, too? Sometimes, it's like going back and revisiting it all is your only option if you really want to experience it at all.

Lastly, a problem that explains itself, most times, at the time a quest is done, the goal is not the content, it is the progress. It's not the lore, it's the reward. To put it in FFXI terms - when we did the quest, it wasn't to "see the fall of the Zilart," it was to "unlock sea so we can finally get in on that." That doesn't mean we don't care about the lore, it's just not the time. Sometimes, being "in the moment" just isn't possible.

For players like the OP, this is why the journal exists - it's a short, sweet reminder of what's been going on. But that's not enough for some of us - how do we maintain an extensive access to lore without creating the issues experienced by the OP /or/ those outlined above?

Step One: Introduce the ECHO NPC (<-- Link for Description) as a Goblin Footprint.

Step Two: Make the difference between a cutscene and a dialogue as if black to white.
A lot of quest information is delivered in a one-time slathering of text-wall from an NPC outside of a cutscene. If you enter mash over it? It's gone. Forever. Not only this but the delivery is bland and boring because it's not delivered in a cutscene, where NPC animations and environmental object movements are actually posssible, but in the "Live Layer" of the game - forcing the NPC to just stand there... and talk... and talk... and talk. The OP is right about this part - Live Layer NPCs shouldn't drown you in text. Keep it short and sweet. Save the goods for cutscenes, which we can then watch again later via the Echo NPC. Enter-mashing doesn't need to be a bad thing, remember, as stated above, it's practically required.

Step Three: Make it count.
Now that cutscenes are free to be exploited to their fullest - make it count. Movements! NPC animations! Interactiveness with objects in the surrounding environment! You know, things we see in the cutscenes we do have - we just need more of them and delivered at the right times. This way, true enter-mashes can breeze right by it, and true lore lovers can respect their party and complete the quests in a timely manner knowing they can go back and watch it all like a movie later - remember, at the time, sometimes it's just the reward.

Step Four: Spruce up the Live Layer again.
The live layer doesn't have to be left out - design some side-quests that are feasibly things the town needs frequently and have them play out in real-time. Have the NPC deliver some short dialogue in /say and have the NPC / Players complete the quest much like the "lamp lighting" quest in Jeuno. This, plus some environmental realism (NPCs that walk around and do stuff, objects that move, etc) would really give the game a nice boost.

------------------------------------------------------

Twelve willing, this is already in the works for 2.0, but if someone wants to take my roadmap / philosophy and try to get a thread going - it's all your's.

[Gramul]

How about when it comes from every NPC? Including commoners?

I don't really see it.

They just make a comment on whatever happening around them in whatever accent and diction suits their race, region, and allegiance.

[Hulan]

Step Three: Make it count.
Now that cutscenes are free to be exploited to their fullest - make it count. Movements! NPC animations! Interactiveness with objects in the surrounding environment! You know, things we see in the cutscenes we do have - we just need more of them and delivered at the right times. This way, true enter-mashes can breeze right by it, and true lore lovers can respect their party and complete the quests in a timely manner knowing they can go back and watch it all like a movie later - remember, at the time, sometimes it's just the reward.

Thumbs'd up. This is the only part that I disagree with - and not point for point, just a little bit. As Yoshida-san has said, animations are expensive. They take time, money, and effort - a lot of all three. Which is why, if the dev team takes anything away from this discussion, it should the following:

If you aren't already working on one, build a nice, clean, cinematic pipeline. Players are never going to say "no" to more CSs (baring the obvious case in which more CSs means less of something else). If you can create an environment in which you can produce more cutscenes with the same amount of work, everyone will be happy.

[Sarchy_Warchy]

I don't think you understand what this topic was meant to say. The dialect and vocabulary is fine. What's not fine is that every time you start a quest, you are presented with an entire novel to read and the only way you're interacting with the NPC is by spamming X to make the text go by faster. What makes that worse is that for most quests, once you get past the initial diatribe, you get very little lore text or anything.

Make the NPCs move around or something, give us cutscenes, change the music or tempo, make us answer questions, or simply shorten the dialog. But after the 5th or 6th paragraph of tangentially important backstory that an NPC throws out on our screen, most of us are just hitting X to get rid of it and reading the summary on the journal page.

so. much. agreement.

[Anonymoose]

If you aren't already working on one, build a nice, clean, cinematic pipeline. Players are never going to say "no" to more CSs (baring the obvious case in which more CSs means less of something else). If you can create an environment in which you can produce more cutscenes with the same amount of work, everyone will be happy.

Agreed with your points, as well. It's all about optimization and the masterful utilization of that system. I don't expect them to find or maintain this balance before 2.0; but I hope that they do manage it in some fashion in the future. It has to be a possibility in some aspect, their hopes for XIV 1.0 were so much higher - remember the box's claim for FULLY VOICED CUTSCENES that was suspiciously lacking the clarification, "Five of them!"

[Majidah]

Kudos to the OP. Brevity is indeed the soul of wit and kudos again for having started this thread. Were it not for that I would never have had the pleasure of reading all the off topic responses slandering you for perceived points never actually made.

Laughed hard at this :P

[Rhomagus]

Completely disagree with OP.

Everything that guy said has weight to it, either by lore or specific instruction to do the quest. He explains a lot of what is going on in the game. He gives motivations and connections between himself and other major players in the storyline. He also gives a reason why Ifrit must be defeated along with specifics in what must be done in order to finish the quest. There is also a bit of foreshadowing in the language that shows us that this isn't the first Primal we'll need to fight.

OP is wrong.
Even if they were right they chose the wrong text to prove their point.

I'm all for cutscenes or NPC specific animations but it will always take a backseat to story for me. It's there to add flair not substance.

[Pollyanna]

Your character is not mute, you're supposed to fill in the blanks in your own head. Welcome to old school RPGs where the game let's you use your imagination, a dying breed.

This could just be me, but there's an issue of technology and presentation at work when it comes to filling in the blanks. If I take an old title like Final Fantasy 4, there are a lot of blanks to fill. The dialogue is concise to the point of being representational. The characters don't really move. The graphics represent what's going on...they don't show it exactly. But when I think back on the scenes and characters, they're fully realized because the game excited my imagination. You don't ask "why aren't they moving?" because they're moving in your head. You don't think of the characters as pixels, but as people.

But FF14 isn't like that. There's comparatively little gap between its vision and reality. In FF4, you don't complain that a character is making the wrong expression, because you're making the expression for them in your imagination. In FF14, you would notice if they're making an expression you don't agree with. In a scene where everything is moving and everything looks real, if a character makes noises, but doesn't say any words, they come across as mute. The closer a game is to reality, the more noticeable the "unreal" parts are.

Kind of a tangent and just my opinion, but I wondered if other players felt this way.

[Davorok]

We already have an NPC Linkpearl that is under utilized. They could at least let us start the quest and save the "walls-o-text" for the trip to our destination. Doing a little reading while on traveling would be more tolerable than standing still for 10 pages of background text.

Use the NPC Linkpearls to give us the info and back story for our quests. It works nicely for the main scenario quests, expand on that.

[AmyRae]

Use the NPC Linkpearls to give us the info and back story for our quests. It works nicely for the main scenario quests, expand on that.

The way NPC Linkshells are used is kind of dull. It should work something like this:



Minus the "snake, Snake, SNAKE!"