Can we get choices that really matter and have a effect?

[Bright-Flower]

SE is a large company but the game still has a budget and more importantly, a schedule. It can't just have its story continue to balloon out of control with tons of plot altering choices. That will slow down development, and working those choices into the actual game would take time away from actual features. While I do wish the FFXIV team got more to work with, you can't isntantly solve all the problems by just throwing money at it either.You're really underestimating how much work these decisions would be in the long run.

As I said before as well, FFXIV is a multiplayer RPG. For the sake of RP, I think it's better for this game to have one singular linear narrative anyway. Because then when people RP, they're rping in the same world, with common ground. Rather than one person RPing in a world where the WOL was a hero and other people rping in a world where they sided with one of the bad guys and conquored/destroyed Eorzea etc. That would just divide up the rp community and make things needlessly complicated.

If you're wanting a game where you can side with the bad guys just to screw the world over, just for the sake of edge and darkness, that's not going to happen.

I love the opnness that some games like Fallout or Dragon Age: origins give, or the freedom of D&D restrianed only by the imagination of the DM and players, but this is not the sort of game where that's going to work.

Maybe if each expansion had a stand alone story it 'might' but with its ongoing story from one expansion to the next, with many of the same important characters, and often going back to old areas, it just doesn't work. Like, how could you have the restoration of ishgard if half of playerbase sided against nidhogg and burned the city to the ground and there was nobody left to rebuild? How could you go on to fight the garlean empire if Emet turned you into a light warden? How could Zenos be set up to be a big bad again if you turne dhim into your Vegeta esque side kick?

I'd rather just let the writers tell the story they want to write. I can get my decision making affecting the plot elsewhere.

[Lersayil]

A big no from me. I love games with actually branching story choices, but if writing quality suffers for it, then no.

I also dislike the illusion of choice type of writing. It's implied that your choice mattered, but in the end its just changing a few lines here, replacing a character model there.

In the context of the story it also wouldn't work, as our antagonists have goals that are mutually exclusive to ours. Moral relativism is great and all, but the WoL and co. are firmly written to be on the opposite side of the villains perspective. Sure, they are written to be sympathetic, but they're never implied to be right from the Scions and WoLs perspective.

And yeah, you might think it doesn't take that much effort or resources, but in the long run, such choices (even the illusion of choice types) are resource black holes if used often enough. Not to mention the challange of writing a coherent story around them. There is a reason why games with truly branching stories are a rare commodity.

EDIT: that being said, I like our current small dialogue choices sprinkled in and wish for more. They don't amount to much, but it does give a bit of flavour to our usually stoic WoL.

[Alleo]

I really found it a bit funny how the OP said that they would not want any major choices and in the very next sentence say that they would have choosen Zenos or Emet which are major choices because siding with the Ascians would change the whole story.

It would be great to have some differences that in the end wont matter much. For example when Alphinaud asks us to take part in the war we can say that we dont but we are still robbed right into this. This makes our choice just bad and feels like the WoL has no rights themselves. What if we could have said no, then some stuff happens (which we dont see because of us saying no) and later we hear that the reach is under attack and our friends are in the danger. Thus we rush in back into the story when Zenos attacks and we lose. This is a change and yes they would need to give us at least some other quests but in the end the outcome never changes, we just take part of the war a bit later.

[Gula]

Well, we'll see how the NieR raid pans out. Given you are supposedly going to have a different experience later down the line.

[LolitaBansheeMeru]

Okay roleplay is suppose to be complicated not something that requires 0 creativity with the lack of complication it becomes dumbed down golden shire of wow create the split between characters with maybe 5-7 people with common ground and doing their own thing against or with the ones with their common ground that is the entire point of role play to creatively add your story within the games lore and story if anything a choice would make the game better for people who really roleplay. As for it being an RPG even more reason for choices because it creates a REAL emotional bond to the story and lay out this is what makes DnD the best thing in this day, even compared to modern creations due to the fact the maker knew how to set it up so people had true roleplay experience. A Choice doesn't have to add up to millions of other choices through the story you could literaly just put one choice that would have a forever effect and the choice could literally be the personal choice like I said before guild wars even though its a lame sci-fi game had the perfect method of it could literaly make the creation screen ask 3 questions.
The questions could be like
1. Why do you adventure the basic ones are a bit lacking the ... is really the only good one that isn't basic.
Answers you give could be like
1. Money
2. Revenge
3. Power
2. What matters in a goal/objective
1. The payment
2. only the ends
3. the methods taken
and the final question
3. Where do your loyality stand
1. Home -then it would state whatever city your gc/main town is in or even other like ishgard etc
2. To myself
3. To the realm

---- these basic options would create many emotional bonds to it now it doesn't even have to be msq related either with these options they could literaly make character side quest based on the answers you give.

For example You choice money on number one you could get a side quest in Ul'dah to work for a company that could decress your mb tax rate or something
or for revenge could send you to a trainer that puts you through hell to upgread your brute forced/endurence
and so forth....
Even side story wise of stealing items doing things that or not goody toe shoe hippieness for the sake of it or because your character RPLY would need to take such methods for their character/creation.
This wouldn't hurt anyones RP experience unless they are rping for the wrong reasons again golden shire in wow... it would boost the creativity.

[lolicon09]

No. People will bitch like crazy about it

[Gula]

Reading through the thread, and seeing how everyone has provided irrefutable proof that you just don't seem to get, have something new to consider.

Time Bubble.

The game works in a time bubble that is air tight. There is no clear passage of time unless there is literally something that says "X whatever later." And even still, you have to deal with raids and side content. Like completing the Twinning before Alexander or Shadowbringers before Crystal Tower.

The choices you want work when there is no preordained history. The Exarch would not regard you as a hero from his doomed time if you sided with Nidhogg, smooched Zenos or never completed CT in the first place. To which canonically will happen, which is why the quest will always be there. Yes I truly wanted to snap elf Pope's neck (and could have!) much earlier on, but that is not in the historic account to which is found when Ishgard is falling to pieces.

[KalinOrthos]

OP you're talking about a completely different game to FFXIV. Every single game in the series has followed a mostly linear path, with some diversions depending on certain character developments. It's a tied and true method of storytelling; while trying something new could be effective, this is neither the franchise nor the medium to do so. Yet you want to make a radical shift in development resources, something you vastly underestimate the time and money cost of, because...you want it? There'a literally no other reason other than "But I want it though waaaaaaaah". Player agency doesn't mean much when you end up with the exact same endpoint regardless of whatever big decisions you made up to that point; why do you think Mass Effect 3's ending is so maligned?

I get it, there are some games that do develop meaningful consequences for the choices you make (see: Undertale and Lisa: the Painful). But those are entirely different mediums that have the freedom to be able to let your choices have consequence; FFXIV cannot and does not.

[LolitaBansheeMeru]

OP you're talking about a completely different game to FFXIV. Every single game in the series has followed a mostly linear path, with some diversions depending on certain character developments. It's a tied and true method of storytelling; while trying something new could be effective, this is neither the franchise nor the medium to do so. Yet you want to make a radical shift in development resources, something you vastly underestimate the time and money cost of, because...you want it? There'a literally no other reason other than "But I want it though waaaaaaaah". Player agency doesn't mean much when you end up with the exact same endpoint regardless of whatever big decisions you made up to that point; why do you think Mass Effect 3's ending is so maligned?

I get it, there are some games that do develop meaningful consequences for the choices you make (see: Undertale and Lisa: the Painful). But those are entirely different mediums that have the freedom to be able to let your choices have consequence; FFXIV cannot and does not.

Not because want because it would make the story actrually worth something... because when you have a story that you know how its going to end their is no point in even reading/listening the story at all..

I mean really if you paid 27 dollars to go into a movie lets say and from the first 4 mins of the movie the frame work of the story and movie tells you the exactly how its going to end why would you even sit there to watch the movie?

This one reason why most storys flat out suck today because even before you see the "villian" you know that the "villian" will not matter they will create chaos for x amount of days which will be cut down to about 32-40mins of the movie depending on movie length and then no matter what the hero magically pops up gets victory after a few bad things and at the end the hero lives the villian dies or gets locked up that is literaly every story with one side ... however society and people are so dumbed down that they submit to this type of story even though they know it sucks and theres no point in it when there are no twist no turns no suffering in the story no reason to have a emotional tie to it.

[KalinOrthos]

Not because want because it would make the story actrually worth something... because when you have a story that you know how its going to end their is no point in even reading/listening the story at all..

I mean really if you paid 27 dollars to go into a movie lets say and from the first 4 mins of the movie the frame work of the story and movie tells you the exactly how its going to end why would you even sit there to watch the movie?

This one reason why most storys flat out suck today because even before you see the "villian" you know that the "villian" will not matter they will create chaos for x amount of days which will be cut down to about 32-40mins of the movie depending on movie length and then no matter what the hero magically pops up gets victory after a few bad things and at the end the hero lives the villian dies or gets locked up that is literaly every story with one side ... however society and people are so dumbed down that they submit to this type of story even though they know it sucks and theres no point in it when there are no twist no turns no suffering in the story no reason to have a emotional tie to it.

Yes, that's why Avengers: Infinity War is such a bad film, right? /s

A story doesn't need to have audience agency. In fact, it probably shouldn't in the vast majority of cases: humans are a fickle, indecisive bunch. There are some good games that allow player agency, like the aforementioned Undertale, and there are some really, REALLY bad ones, like any of Quantic Dreams' games. Player agency doesn't a good game make. Want a good example? Let's stick with Toby Fox: Deltarune Chapter 1 is a short little game in which player agency and choice expressly, demonstrably means nothing. The character you created? Tossed out the window. Spare or kill your enemies? Doesn't matter they always run away or are pacified and always give you stats and currency. Choose to make a joke of a battle machine design for your enemy? Doesn't matter, it still attacks. But. It's still a wonderful little story with the great promise of something bigger.

This foolish idea that you need player agency to have a good story is absolutely crazy nutso, especially since we have, multiple times, shown you that the idea is demonstrably false and would simply cost too much time and resources. Just stop.