Larger emphasis on story is needed.

[Zezlar]

Hello folks! It's January the 6th. The day where some actual suggestions can get past all the flooded doomsday threads of who's quitting, and not quitting from some reason or another. Now I would like to stop for a minute, and talk about the current story.

The Final Fantasy franchise has a massive emphasis on story. Each game has a different, and unique story. Final Fantasy XI an MMO even had a captivating story that involved with the starter cities, individual quests, the God Promathia, the Zilart, the imperials over at ToAU, and even in the past (The best of them).

Obviously with how FFXIV was released the growth for the expansions was halted, otherwise we might be playing the first expansion by now or very soon. However going forward Yoshi-P, and team should strongly consider story content. Final Fantasy XIV doesn't feel like a Final Fantasy title at all due to the current disjointed structure of the storytelling.

Don't get me wrong Dalamud, and Nael van Darnus is quite interesting, but it's really hard to get into the situation when you get a 30 second cut-scene every 4 months with a few GC quests tossed in. Final Fantasy XI had between 20-45 missions per storyline. In our main scenario we get like 10.

Individual side quests are also kind of a joke. The EXP reward isn't that great aside from hopping on a job we hate or don't feel like leveling. There are far too many kill/fetch quests. I want to set out to discover ruins, or kill a hard boss located somewhere inside a mountain cove. Get creative because kill/fetch sucks, and it needs to die off.

FFXIV does cut-scenes extremely well with animations. It saddens me that actual cutscenes are saved for spaced out individual side quest, and the very disjointed main scenario (Seriously, what was up with the last quest?).

Obviously the team is using resources to fix up the game, and story is probably hardly on their mind at this point. The sixth umbral era is coming to a close though. What are we going to tell those in the next umbral era other than it was dull?

Here's hoping for a new scenario with the release of 2.0, and the fixing of the current scenario with additions of MANY (not 10, MANY) new quests.

[Sephrick]

This is why we should have quest-based leveling!

Just because it's an MMO doesn't mean they have to abandon that old Final Fantasy charm. FFs were always about fighting your way to the next story event. But that fighting always felt like it was a part of the story.

Granted, in XI and XIV we fight things to gain enough levels to get to the next chunk of story, but it feels disjointed and arbitrary in relation to the world.

How many raptors we kill has nothing to do with the encroaching threat of the empire.

The worst thing for any game is if a new player gets out of the opening toto rial and says "now what?" There should be quests all the way to 50. And the instances they involve should be repeatable once unlocked so that subsequent classes may be leveled.

[auritribe]

My only concern in regards to this 'solution' is an overabundance of dumb quests.

Out of the thousands of quests you did levelling in WoW (If you've ever played it) How many did you actually bother reading the quest text on?

[syntaxlies]

This is why we should have quest-based leveling!

Just because it's an MMO doesn't mean they have to abandon that old Final Fantasy charm. FFs were always about fighting your way to the next story event. But that fighting always felt like it was a part of the story.

Granted, in XI and XIV we fight things to gain enough levels to get to the next chunk of story, but it feels disjointed and arbitrary in relation to the world.

How many raptors we kill has nothing to do with the encroaching threat of the empire.

The worst thing for any game is if a new player gets out of the opening toto rial and says "now what?" There should be quests all the way to 50. And the instances they involve should be repeatable once unlocked so that subsequent classes may be leveled.

I hate doing side quest in this game. they are so boring and bland. If they ever had quest based lvling i hope it wouldbe better then the current side quest.

[Zezlar]

My post is mainly related to the main scenario. I too don't wish to run "exp leveling" quests like WoW. I'm more in it for the story, and the fun rather than the exp reward.

[Sephrick]

I only really played WoW for about 10 levels, though I did read what the NPCs said for those levels.

But in XI I annoyed the crap out of my CoP static because I actually read the cutscenes instead of spamming enter through them. Guess I'm just a rare breed.

[auritribe]

All I'm saying, is that if they're going to go the 'quest to level' route it has to be done right.

WoW had it good in Vanilla and TBC where the quests were a supplement to the grind. Towards WOTLK and Cata the XP you got for killing monsters was so small that there was no point in doing anything other than the quests. I don't want to be forced to do only quests, especially when they're annoying quests that I really, really don't want to have to do.

This is especially true if you were duo'ing with a friend and both of you had to pick up an equal amount of fetch items, which meant you had to double the amount of work to compensate so both people would have the items.

So long as the quests are not incredibly dumb and inane, and they don't entirely replace grinding as an option, I think it'll be okay.

This was also made worse in Cataclysm where you didn't really get to pick which quests you got. It became very linear once they made all the quests in the storyline one huge chain that you had to get through to even access other areas. It got really annoying, real quick. Through their questing system they managed to take what was an open world game, and make it a very linear experience.

Another issue with that kind of questing system was phasing. If you wanted to help your friend with a quest, and they were on a different phase than you, there were many times it was impossible. You had to be at the exact same point in the quest chain as they were. It was unintuitive in it's own way, despite the good intentions.

That is what I'm hoping square will avoid.

[Yelta_Sumasu]

I like the current storyline and hope for even better ones in the future. My one request would be to be able to re-watch all the cut-scenes as they are spread out pretty far apart and by the time I got to the next one I had forgotten what was going on previously.

Please let us re-watch any and all cut-scenes we have previously been shown.

[Zezlar]

I like the current storyline and hope for even better ones in the future. My one request would be to be able to re-watch all the cut-scenes as they are spread out pretty far apart and by the time I got to the next one I had forgotten what was going on previously.

Please let us re-watch any and all cut-scenes we have previously been shown.

I believe a community rep said they would be implementing a feature to re watch scenes for the main scenario.

[Yelta_Sumasu]

I believe a community rep said they would be implementing a feature to re watch scenes for the main scenario.

Awesome, glad to hear it.

That said, yes we do need more interesting and engaging storylines. But, please for the love of all that is holy.... No more walls of text. I love to read so that isn't the issue, but for some reason some of the existing quests are pages and pages of text where I suspect the story could have been told in less words just as easily.

As an aside, does anyone else miss missions?