I am so freaking bored of Shadowbringer's story

[Nerfworthy]

I will admit that once we hit Il Mhaeg the plot slowed to a crawl and now I am in the latter half of the Greatwood and it still is pretty dull. I love the new areas, characters and story and it began with a bang, but this middle slog is really not interesting. I've been playing since Early Access and I am only 1/2 way through the MSQ because I decided to level up GNB/DNC and MCH all to 80 concurrently. I know the story picks up later but I am in no rush to finish it at the moment.

I will say I like it more than SB, which I hated.

I actually enjoyed Il Mheg and Rak'Tika, the part that started getting a little dull for me was the 2nd half of Amh Araeng. I really just didn't care that much about the tracks or the Talos, lol. I realize it ties in later on but still.

[GreyTigress]

I'm glad I found this thread, because I feel like I've been taking crazy pills. I have NOT skipped the story, and I am deeply regretting not doing so. This is the MOST boring stuff I've seen in the game since ARR. Aside from the moments we get to see Ran'jit or Ardbert, it's all SHAMELESS filler, like they're deliberately trying to pad it out to get more MSQ skip sales. The characters are utterly forgettable, the Ronkan ruins are a joke of quest design, it just keeps going how dull everything is for the most part. I want to spoon out my eyeballs. Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

[MitsukiKimura]

I've been reading how amazing it was and how it rivals single player RPGs... and here I am, bored out of my mind, just skipping through textbox after textbox. And it doesn't even feel like I'm missing anything. It's just that boring and pointless.

The first few hours were amazing. I liked everything until the Greatwood. And since then it went downhill so hard that I can barely bring myself to continue. The entire Greatwood felt like filler to me - from start to finish. The only relevant parts were the very beginning and the very end. Everything in between had so much padding and felt like dozens of sidequests rather than the main story. And then I got to the desert... and it's the same thing again.

I'm about to start the golem duty, and everything that happened in this zone so far felt like 100% filler. I don't even understand how you can write a 'story' filled with so much trivial, menial and pointless crap. It honestly feels like they are trying to pad the hell out of this zone, as nobody can tell me that getting this golem was the best way to reach that area I'm supposed to go to. Every explanation for why I can't just go the simple route is idiotic and unsatisfactory to me. I just destroyed an entire army of sin eaters. Just let me go to my destination directly and find a more interesting way to extend game time, please.

I can honestly say that I'm just completely disappointed with the story so far. The main beats are there, and they are better than anything before, but the everything in between is so utterly pointless that I can't wait to get to the end of it. And I can say with 100% certainty that I could've skipped every single cutscene from the Greatwood until now and I wouldn't have missed anything substantial. I have absolutely no idea what you guys are seeing here, but to me this has the exact same problems every other expansion had as well.

If you're skipping everything how can you even tell what the story is? I'm literally speechless to how to even respond to that. You probably did skip every single cutscene, and you know what? Shame on you.

Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

What choices did you have anyway? It was literally a war expansion between you and Zenos. Right.. Because there's no advertising of those "MSQ story skip sales" anywhere to be found in game. If you're flat out lazy and don't have the time to do the content or story, by all means buy one but I've never been pressured to by one because it's more of a experience to enjoy the content. Your accusation is invalid.

[Enla]

I'm glad I found this thread, because I feel like I've been taking crazy pills. I have NOT skipped the story, and I am deeply regretting not doing so. This is the MOST boring stuff I've seen in the game since ARR. Aside from the moments we get to see Ran'jit or Ardbert, it's all SHAMELESS filler, like they're deliberately trying to pad it out to get more MSQ skip sales. The characters are utterly forgettable, the Ronkan ruins are a joke of quest design, it just keeps going how dull everything is for the most part. I want to spoon out my eyeballs. Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

You know switch your experience with Shadowbringers with my experience with Stormblood and I'd entirely agree. Goes to show you that different people have different tastes because for me Stormblood was the sugary and vapid storyline, as the only time I felt my character had any agency, however false an illusion it might have been, was with the last patch. I can't tell you how much it irked me to sit through 4.0 up till 4.4 and watch my WoL basically scream into the void as the plot was pushed forward by the sheer stupidity of it's characters alone as almost every scenario could have been avoided by everyone sitting down to think.

4.1 and 4.2 were especially bad as that's when the idiot bat was especially harsh upon the characters. What with between Lyse's handling of the Ananta situation (which had no consequences even though logically that mistake should have killed a LOT of people) and the whole debacle with Asahi where from the very moment the Red Kyojin are mentioned you know he's evil but everyone else just keeps on bending to his whims for no reason except that the plot demands it. It isn't till they actually start the Black Rose storyline that it actually gains a healthy amount of stakes, but all that is set up for Shadowbringers in the same way the last few patches of Heavensward were set up for Stormblood.

Seems to me your preferred type of story is less philosophical and more action oriented and that's fair, but I have to question how much you were paying attention if you called everything but the stuff with Ardbert and Ran'jit filler. Especially since Ran'jit is really only there as a foil for Thancred.

[Iscah]

like they're deliberately trying to pad it out to get more MSQ skip sales.

You can only skip to the start of Shadowbringers (at least for the next two years or so) but they do inevitably have an interest in making you spend longer getting through the game.

More generally though, I found a lot of the enjoyment in the game was just seeing the character interactions, and spending more time developing the personalities of the Scions. I was also eager to find out just what was going on with the Exarch.

Do you take interest in the characters, or just the larger plot?

Also have you done the Crystal Tower raids? That was certainly part of why I was intrigued by what might be happening.

[KalinOrthos]

Nothing in this story means anything. It's so sugary and vapid. There's no nuance. So black and white -- literally and figuratively. Stormblood was full of consequences and hard choices. This expansion has nothing of the sort.

This is quite literally the opposite of reality. SB's entire story was based around "Garlemald bad, everyone else good. Zenos bad, us good." Not exactly nuanced. Shadowbringers, on the other hand:

- Involves a multitude of subplots in which characters are confronted with examples of the duality of good and evil, life and death, grief and closure. In fact, the entire narrative is focused on those narrative threads, including the following point;
- has probably the most interesting and sympathetic villain we've had in this game, let alone in the franchise for a very long time. Emet-Selch not only comes off as tragic but also as a perfect antithesis to the game's narratives of closure and the bonds of relationships. His inability to move on perfectly mimics Thancred and Ran'jit's plot with Minfilia (both Minfilias) which serves as a central basis for many of the story's themes.
- serves to turn everything on its head about our understanding of light and dark in the game's universe. Forget about the revelations in Rak'tika; up until this point, we're told and lead to believe that Light should win over Dark. We were told in 3.3 that Light isn't the end-all-be-all, but now we get to see exactly why Light should never win outright, why there must always be Dark, which runs counter to everything we were told before.

Seriously, did you even play the same game? I actually really liked SB, but nuanced it was not.

[Niyuka]

You can only skip to the start of Shadowbringers (at least for the next two years or so) but they do inevitably have an interest in making you spend longer getting through the game.

More generally though, I found a lot of the enjoyment in the game was just seeing the character interactions, and spending more time developing the personalities of the Scions. I was also eager to find out just what was going on with the Exarch.

Do you take interest in the characters, or just the larger plot?

Also have you done the Crystal Tower raids? That was certainly part of why I was intrigued by what might be happening.

Given that SE is actively reducing the playtime of the game in the last patch, and is praised by casuals for it, I dont think its about time spent in game. The perfect player is the one who pays but ultimately doesnt play.

[Titor]

I feel the same way OP. I loved Stormblood a ton, and think Shadowbringers is quite the bore. I am surprised by the community reaction to it haha. There is a ton of filler and irrelevance
.

[LinXiaoMei]

Greatwoods wasn't a filler lmao. Literally went into the entire backstory of the ascians? Maybe your problem was that you were skipping through textbox after textbox instead of actually reading.

[Nandrolone]

I know my opinion is going to trigger a lot of people, but I honestly don’t enjoy final fantasy’s story either. I just skip every cutscene. Been doing it since ARR. I prefer a final fantasy single player’s story, as it feels more personal and immersive. Like FF7, FF8, and FF10. Something about a customizeable character with no voice actor, just nodding and making facial expressions, just seems lack luster.

I play FFXIV mainly for the content rather than the story, and honestly there’s nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has to like what you like.