A radical proposal for future content.

[gothikka]

You mean like those meaningless dialogue they shoehorned into the narrative that give us the illusion of choice without actually affecting anything? You can't do that for a constantly updating MMO for the reasons others have described. Instead of a straight line that all the players are kept on you basically will end up with something unmanageable before too long. The reason it works in Skyrim, badly mind you because there story there honestly suffers for it, is because you're alone and the TES series has /always/ been about wiping away the accomplishments of the last hero before they move onto the next installment. Why do you think there's so much time between Oblivion and Skyrim? Why do you think they sent the Nerevarine to Akavir? Why do you think the ENTIRETY of Daggerfall and it's multiple endings were listed as occurring during a 'Dragon Break', where basically all the choices that could have happened /did/ before collapsing back into the reality we currently have? If they didn't do this there'd be no way to continue onto the next installment, pure and simple. (I will say though, kudos to Bethesda for penning the Dragon Break concept. It's a get out of jail free-card if they use it sparingly.)

Or to put it more bluntly. This is what FF14's current storyline looks like: (It's simple, but it gets the job done and allows the writers to tell a more engaging story without having to worry about potential variables.)



This is what it will look like if they implement what you propose: (Taken from atlasobscura where they wrote an article about choose your own adventure stories. Except this is just the narrative map for /one/ such book. Amplify this by however many expansions there are, the jobs you can take, the side quests, and you can see how much of a mess it'd be to write for.)


It's an interesting idea but it's anathema to how MMO's currently work sadly, and especially so to how FF14 works. If it still interests you however, I do believe Crowfall is attempting something similar and might scratch that proverbial itch if it ever releases.

Rotate that flowchart at the bottom 90° to the right with the beginning at the top, then that flowchart will really remind me what the ones from Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward and Zero Time Dillemma looks like.

Something like that really would NOT work for an MMO like FFXIV, and I don’t see how something that complex would work for any MMORPG whatsoever at all, for that matter. You’d have to have instances and servers set up for EVERY POSSIBLE OUTCOME, and I have a feeling that the world as a whole would be very sparsely populated due to players that would be spread out among each individual possibility.

[CainCrimson]

While I do love a sandbox styled role playing game with an open ended story and affiliation...I don't think I'd like that in a massively multiplayer online game (MMO).

I'd be willing to try out a single player Final Fantasy game like that, where I get branching affiliation options.

I dont think it would fit in an MMO though, over time the majority would side with whatever was the "best" affiliation thus breeding all kinds of human imposed issues.

[Nixxe]

Delivering on the sort of choice you want simply doesn't work well in MMOs.

[Ayer2015]

choice doesn't work in MMOs, and frankly it waters down story in more western rpgs..... so no

[Maero]

I am also on the No Thanks train, sorry

[Malzian]

XIV is a playable movie of sorts. The dev team has nearly the whole of the XIV story set in mind for what they want to do and where it is going. To that point, they already know where the end is for what they want to present, the MSQ is simply a conveyor to get you there and you will never have a choice in this. Yoshida has already stated that this is set in stone and will not change.

[Zojha]

"Choice" in a game in which your totally custom but not really totally unique but not really character has his thoughts and feelings dictated by a mere job quest?

A game that has invisible walls everywhere to keep you on the rails? In which accessories are job locked to prevent you from wearing ones not intended for yours? A game that even locks GLAMOUR by jobs and roles? A game that forces you to watch cutscenes by making them unskipable to avoid actually fixing the content? In which every dungeon is essentially a straight line?

Uhm... yeah. Good luck with that. There's a higher chance that we get a preset name, job and voice for cutscenes. And even that chance is terribly slim, because voice actors ain't cheap.

[BillyKaplan]

We "westernize"

Stop.
If you want western games, play western games. This isn't a matter of "the gameplay could be better", "content could be less lacking", this is outright "I prefer a different style of game". If you don't like it and the culture it comes from, play something else, colonizer.
With that out of my system...

Oh man I can't wait to go through five expansions, branching off my choices, only to have the finale differ in hue and saturation between paths [looks at Mass Effect].
They've gotten slightly better at acknowledging character differences, at least, like whether or not you ran the trial battles in the Reach on a healer or not. And compared to HW, I feel like there's a lot more references to jobs and classes you leveled up if you did it by that particular scene. Which is a step in the right direction. But yeah, they're not going to branch off more, they can barely keep up with developing the single narrative they have now.

[Malzian]

They've gotten slightly better at acknowledging character differences, at least, like whether or not you ran the trial battles in the Reach on a healer or not. And compared to HW, I feel like there's a lot more references to jobs and classes you leveled up if you did it by that particular scene. Which is a step in the right direction.

As someone with all 70s, I can tell you there is a LOT of this now. Every time you do something in the MSQ where you interact with someone you've interacted with for a job or even for a craft you get a line saying something like, "Oh hey there <character name>! We did <thing you did> together!" It's actually really nice.

[Skivvy]

I think it could be interesting to have maybe two separate paths you could roam down, but I'm personally not too bothered with the story staying linear as well.

What I WOULD love to see is the MSQ be optional if you so choose. I quite dislike the fact that you are forced to complete the full MSQ if you want to be doing current endgame activities. I've never played another MMO that did this.