We Really Need To Talk About The State And Path Of FFXIV

[Mahrze]

I'll disagree. If you are playing a MMORPG, you are playing it for the story or role-play component <...> If ones friends don't like story, they are playing the wrong genre, and should step away from RPG's entirely. If you like playing the game, and your friends do not want to play it, then you can't force them.

The crux of your argument is that because an MMO'RPG" has 'RPG' in it and you only play 'RPG's for the story. It's your view, but it really looks like a very narrow and one-line one.

People don't need to enjoy the story to enjoy the game, but if the only way they can enjoy the game is to enjoy the story than already sounds like a game design problem.

Even more so when their solution to the story issue was jump potions. xD

[Corue]

i think its an issue of how much junk there is in the story.. admitedly expansions have had less of the junk.. but in ARR for example there's 44 maybe 48 quests just in that section between killing titan and going to do battle with garuda.. and how many of those 44 or 48 quests have any relevence to the actual plot..............

I think the worst part is how the quests are even written to show that they're wastes of time. It's just "Haha! We're acknowledging that they're pointless filler quests that serve only to pad out your play time. Aren't we so funny?" They acknowledge that it's a problem but they don't want to do anything except lampshade it hIlArIoUsLy because that's what MMOs do. Rather than actively try to improve the flow of gameplay.

[OurMom]

I'll disagree. If you are playing a MMORPG, you are playing it for the story or role-play component.

You don't get to decide what other people play mmos for. BDO is a pretty popular mmorpg, it *barely* has a story/lore and majority of the playerbase have absolutely no clue what's going on lore wise. They only care about grinding to 60, pvp, and grinding silver. I mean I personally tried to get into the lore of BDO and there really isn't any. I played Archeage since before Trion picked it up for NA, I have no clue about the story, same with most people that play that game and I can provide a ton of example of other mmos.

This being a FF game means nothing once they slap "MMO" onto it because mmorpg players just simply play mmorpgs regardless of the lore. The only reason I'm here is because it's a mmo I've never played a FF game outside of this and most likely never will.

[Teraluna]

Well considering people are playing as flame hurling mythical races etc, I’d suggest the role part is present no matter your style of gameplay.

[KisaiTenshi]

You don't get to decide what other people play mmos for. BDO is a pretty popular mmorpg, it *barely* has a story/lore and majority of the playerbase have absolutely no clue what's going on lore wise. They only care about grinding to 60, pvp, and grinding silver. I mean I personally tried to get into the lore of BDO and there really isn't any. I played Archeage since before Trion picked it up for NA, I have no clue about the story, same with most people that play that game and I can provide a ton of example of other mmos.

This being a FF game means nothing once they slap "MMO" onto it because mmorpg players just simply play mmorpgs regardless of the lore. The only reason I'm here is because it's a mmo I've never played a FF game outside of this and most likely never will.

Archeage has a story, it's just not in exclusively in cutscenes like FFXIV. It's usually a wall of text by the quest giver, and the occasional cutscene. It's cutscenes were not really any more impressive than Wizardry Online's, and Wizardy Online had a story with familiar cues, like FF's MMO's.

The point is that if you are playing a MMORPG, especially one with "Final Fantasy" in it, you do not get to decide for the rest of the fan base what part of it is boring. There are parts of the MSQ IMO were padded out in a way that felt like they could have cut some steps out, or reduced the amount of map traversal for an intermediate step, but everyone points to the Company of Heros quest chain before Titan that leads to Brayflox Longstop, all for cheese. Every quest chain has you do something "important", which leads to the dungeon in the MSQ. It could be argued that the dev's probably should have had the first dungeon at level 5 or level 8, instead of 15, because unlike a single player game (where you're usually thrown directly into the combat) the point of the level 1-15 quests is to show you that there is more to the world than just the starting city.

One of the things that SE fumbled, was when they removed the ability to progress through the storyline as anything other than essentially a DPS. Tank and Healer? Combat is still Combat. You can't start as DoL/DoH, and V1.0 let you get through the MSQ storyline as those. If players are going to play a MMORPG and they prefer to RP as a crafter/gatherer, they are not afforded a means through the MSQ in pretty much every MMORPG, because MMORPG's are principally RPG's to begin with.

A pen and paper RPG, is pretty much all storyline with combat, and a bad GM would recognize when their story-telling is terrible and just improvise ways of putting the party in danger to go back to combat.

[OurMom]

Archeage has a story, it's just not in exclusively in cutscenes like FFXIV. It's usually a wall of text by the quest giver, and the occasional cutscene. It's cutscenes were not really any more impressive than Wizardry Online's, and Wizardy Online had a story with familiar cues, like FF's MMO's.

I never claimed Archeage doesn't have a story/lore I said most players don't care enough about it to read it.

The point is that if you are playing a MMORPG, especially one with "Final Fantasy" in it, you do not get to decide for the rest of the fan base what part of it is boring.

Good thing no one said that or suggested anything like that, actually you're the one that said if you play mmorpg you have to play it for the story. No one is trying to dictate anyone else's playstyle but you.

Every quest chain has you do something "important", which leads to the dungeon in the MSQ.

It's only "important" to the people that care about lore/story which again a lot of mmo players don't. In almost every mmo there is lore that provides reasoning as to why you're in the new map, why you're going into this dungeon and why you're killing this boss. My point is a lot of mmos don't force this on you and a lot of mmo players don't care about the reasons why.

If you're going to create a game like this with tons of throw away content and the "fun" is only ever at end game. You shouldn't gate it behind hundreds of forced fetch quests. This game would probably have a better retention rate if they simply made it where you can at least access the dungeon without being forced to do quests you aren't going to read.

[Magic-Mal]

There are definitely quest chains that can go without ever changing the story. Brayflox chain, the Tataru tea chain, the chain in 2.5 where Tataru is searching for a professional, honestly most things with Tataru are complete wastes of time really. Especially since none of them change the story whatsoever.

[Nyghtmarerobu]

I'm not a big fan of WoW, but one thing I like that I praise the game for, is letting newer players jump right into the new stuff unhindered. You want to start playing now? You get a free level booster with pruchase. The game never says you have to go back and do the older content but its also not gated behind 100's of arbitrary quests. The devs at blizzard know that things have progressed, and the game world shows it. You can go back and experience those events, but as it stands in the actual game, Arthas is Dead, Deathwing is dead, Garrosh is Dead. They are gone, and Final just doesn't do that. Every player is in different spots in the game, and while its nice to let them experience it on their own if they so choose. Is it really so bad if they miss out now so that we could actually get and keep newer players? But really this is only 1 stone in the wall of problems this game is facing right now....

[Skivvy]

I really dislike the argument of "If you don't want to enjoy the story, XIV is not for you". What that fails to take into account is that XIV is an MMO, not a single-player game. If anything, we should be comparing how story is handled with SE's only other MMO, XI, as these are actually in the same game genre.

XI has a massive story, which has stretched over each of their expansions, but most of it is entirely optional. Normally you would just need to do a handful of quests to unlock the latest endgame content, then you were on your way. You could unlock what you wanted, and leave everything else alone. They never forced the entire backlog of MSQ on players just to give them access to the latest things. In this case, XI seems to have understood the spirit of an MMO far better than XIV does. Options in an MMO are rarely a bad thing.

Seeing that XIV is the shiny new MMO, you'd think that they would have continued along that line and improved upon it. Instead, they forced full MSQ completion on players. But hey, I guess they were kind enough to introduce paid MSQ skipping potions. -.-

[Theodric]

I play FFXIV for the story, mostly. I can't invest in a game that doesn't have a decent story.

With that said, the biggest mistake of the slow burn in ARR is that there isn't really any payoff. How much time was spent on Ul'dah at the expense of Gridania and Limsa only for the Ul'dah story to end in a way that was both predictable and wrapped up a little too neatly?

I wish the developers had been bold enough to kill off Nanamo. It's becoming a little too predictable to work out who is likely set to be on the chopping block and who will be spared again and again.