What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[ReynTime]

Again, Meteia would have been a fine villain if they weren't introduced in the latest expansion and instead were properly built up alongside Zodiark. This is not something that would have been hard to do if the game wasn't an MMO and had to adapt to keep people playing. I strongly believe that if XIV were single player, it would be the best FF game to date. But we have to keep people who would otherwise never touch an MMO playing so it be what it be.

Based on what?
Apart from story it does all single-player FF aspects worse than every decent FF game. Even some of the bad ones. Because of its design compromises to fit as a MMO that caters to people who don't like learning how to play video games.

[CrownySuccubus]

Based on what?
Apart from story it does all single-player FF aspects worse than every decent FF game. Even some of the bad ones. Because of its design compromises to fit as a MMO that caters to people who don't like learning how to play video games.

Eh?

Being quite frank, FFXIV's post-2.0 gameplay (especially combat gameplay) is way more directly involved than most mainline games in the series. If we're arguing that this game caters to people "who don't like learning to play videogames" more than FFXII's Gambit System, the FFXIII series' Auto-Battle system, or FFXV's "Just get close and hold one button" system, I'm gonna have to disagree.

I'm nowhere near a fan of FFXIV's gameplay or progression loops, but I'm seriously curious how one can even come to this conclusion.

[CrownySuccubus]

Ah yes nothing more engaging and directly involved than spamming the same one button as a healer.

I mean, the games I mentioned have you either pressing 1 button or 0 buttons.

Also:

I'm nowhere near a fan of FFXIV's gameplay or progression loops.

[ReynTime]

Eh?

Being quite frank, FFXIV's post-2.0 gameplay (especially combat gameplay) is way more directly involved than most mainline games in the series. If we're arguing that this game caters to people "who don't like learning to play videogames" more than FFXII's Gambit System, the FFXIII series' Auto-Battle system, or FFXV's "Just get close and hold one button" system, I'm gonna have to disagree.

I'm nowhere near a fan of FFXIV's gameplay or progression loops, but I'm seriously curious how one can even come to this conclusion.

Both XII and XIII already have more depth than XIV for the simple fact they actually require you to shift your party configuration, gear, etc, unlike in XIV where party comp only matters for speedruns, all resemblances of skill/trait setups were scrapped years ago, and all aspects of gearing are more homogeneous than the dull job design. On top of that, there is nothing remotely close to paradigm shifts requiring decision making and reacting since combat design is always a dance act that depends entirely on boss dance step prompts, most which have been recycled to death at this point in time.
Furthermore Trusts and Squads are both infinitely more shallow than Gambit even if you strip Gambit off 3/4 of its unlockable conditions and triggers. And even if you master Gambit you're not going to be sitting on an easy setup that will take care of every optional boss fight nor will the setup cover all your bases, that's by design made impossible, which means again, even with XII's own official internal bot mechanic you need to use your head and prepare your AI for specific fights. If you want to argue it doesn't matter for the main story, well, XIV's MSQ's only challenge since all the nerfs and buffs has been to actually not clear something no matter how bad your partners are.
Then there's dungeon design. XII trumps XIV no contest. They're actual dungeons. You might have a case with XIII, which shares XIV's genius level design of focusing on hallways, setpieces and flash over substance. But while XIII is the notorious hallway simulator, XIV literally takes the exact same enemy per boss distribution setup and repeats it every single time. Even XIII has more variety if you're not distracted like a child by all the pretty non-interactable things one has over the other.

I'm not going to argue against XV much, but to say you can beat the entire game just holding a button and pressing another is like saying you only clear job quest duties by wiping on purpose and toggling the very easy mode, or saying Mario 3D World has no challenge because you used the white tanooki suit.

[CrownySuccubus]

Both XII and XIII already have more depth than XIV for the simple fact they actually require you to shift your party configuration, gear, etc, unlike in XIV where party comp only matters for speedruns, all resemblances of skill/trait setups were scrapped years ago, and all aspects of gearing are more homogeneous than the dull job design. On top of that, there is nothing remotely close to paradigm shifts requiring decision making and reacting since combat design is always a dance act that depends entirely on boss dance step prompts, most which have been recycled to death at this point in time.

The homogeneity of FFXIV is largely derived from the necessity of being a cooperative/multiplayer game heavily favoring Best-in-Slot as opposed to other setups. Paradigm Shifting, and choosing individual party member abilities is likewise no more engaging than occasionally using OCDs or ability healing/buffing combos to provide burst support. Granted, I'll give you that you have make more decisions in, say, an FFXIII superboss fight because you have more abilities to choose from, but even against those foes, there's a lot of time spent sitting at the menu waiting to see what the boss is going to do before making a choice to respond to whatever it was. But once you've got the proper flowchart of what to do, it's not hard whatsoever.

Furthermore Trusts and Squads are both infinitely more shallow than Gambit even if you strip Gambit off 3/4 of its unlockable conditions and triggers. And even if you master Gambit you're not going to be sitting on an easy setup that will take care of every optional boss fight nor will the setup cover all your bases, that's by design made impossible, which means again, even with XII's own official internal bot mechanic you need to use your head and prepare your AI for specific fights. If you want to argue it doesn't matter for the main story, well, XIV's MSQ's only challenge since all the nerfs and buffs has been to actually not clear something no matter how bad your partners are.

Once again, superbosses aside, I was able to make a Gambit/Abilities set up in my FFXII playthroughs that pretty much remained unchanged for the majority of the game, and I'm hardly any kind of god of gaming. It's been a while since I last played, but I recall setting up a two-mage party which abused Reflect and Full Health bonus setups to pretty much torch anything (bosses included) without me having to put in much direct work at all. Sure, there are times I would need change things up for "specific fights", but I could count the number of times that was required in any dungeon or map on one hand. The few times I died in the game were because the repetitiveness lulled me into autopilot and I didn't notice those few enemies which ruined my setup until it was too late. But those few times that I was forced to change don't ignore the majority of times I pretty much did nothing.

Then there's dungeon design. XII trumps XIV no contest.

Yeah, no argument here.

I'm not going to argue against XV much, but to say you can beat the entire game just holding a button and pressing another is like saying you only clear job quest duties by wiping on purpose and toggling the very easy mode, or saying Mario 3D World has no challenge because you used the white tanooki suit.

Sure, but by the same token, claiming that you can easily get through any Duty in FFXIV just by spamming 1 button on healer is just as hyperbolic. I would love to see a live stream of someone running a synced Savage boss or expansion trial with every button removed from their hotkeys besides DOT, Damage, and Basic Heal.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Based on what?
Apart from story it does all single-player FF aspects worse than every decent FF game. Even some of the bad ones. Because of its design compromises to fit as a MMO that caters to people who don't like learning how to play video games.

Based on the fact that it would have no crowds to cater to therefore the story won’t get as compromised as what we have. The gameplay would also have been considerably different too, either turn based or whatever XVI is doing.