Please don't harass people for ignoring/disliking the story

[Atelier-Bagur]

It definitely isn't, but it could be on a downturn. I was talking about this over Discord, but EW won't really be a wakeup call for any real changes. They'd have to have a spectacular failure of an expansion, and perhaps the arrival of competent competitors for that to really happen.

Yeah I think this is the fair way to put it. People going on the extreme that because of this, this, this and this that the game is declining when really there's nothing to really show for it where's that actually the case. It's just more doom mongering, in order to actually be declining we have to see a general consensus that is the case not just some troubled few whom love to cry wolf at every single thing they have issue with.

[AngelCheese77]

I don't think it's THAT wild to expect a lesser focus on story in XIV, even disregarding the fact that it's in a genre that doesn't usually focus on linear storytelling.
First off, there was actually a time where the story was minimal and a secondary part of the game back in the 1.0 days, secondly it's not like there aren't games in the mainline Final Fantasy series where the story takes a backseat - XII and XV come to mind.
XIV's story isn't there out of necessity or anything, it was a deliberate choice to make it the focus of the game.

I haven't played all the FF games (just 1, and 7-12), and it is true some didn't have a story driven narrative.

But this one decided to have one. And I feel players should respect that. I mean, my husband skips through everything except the MSQ cutscenes, spending most of his playing time asking me what happened XD

ARR isn't a good story part though. That I agree with. Even with cutting out some of the quests, it doesn't pull people in like HW onwards.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I haven't played all the FF games (just 1, and 7-12), and it is true some didn't have a story driven narrative.

But this one decided to have one. And I feel players should respect that. I mean, my husband skips through everything except the MSQ cutscenes, spending most of his playing time asking me what happened XD

ARR isn't a good story part though. That I agree with. Even with cutting out some of the quests, it doesn't pull people in like HW onwards.

I don't necessarily agree with that statement regards to pulling people in with HW. For starters you have to be accepting and following the plot of ARR to even remotely care for the setup in HW and a lot of character development relies on what was established in ARR.

One major example of this is Haurchefaunt. It blows my mind to see people be dismissive of ARR but then overly praise HW when it waa due to what was established in his role in ARR ( that being a supportive noble knight, whom you grew to establish that trust)

So yeah I think to a lot of people, I feel that indeed ARR pulls in people. It's also why I get very annoyed with many overselling HW or ShB and be dismissive over the other major parts of this game as if they don't even matter. Because they clearly do if you want to have that level of meaning behind the characters, setting and story

[AngelCheese77]

Story is alright, but its not the level of story that it makes people "cry".

only people getting emotional are the same ones watching cheap soap operas and get emotional over that.

Feeling you call me out at this! I've gotten emotional a number of times with he MSQ, especially in EW and a few dungeons. Seeing people you've grown attached to in the story come and help, or lose their lives .... yeah.

[AngelCheese77]

Thats what i did with shadowbringer. Skipped away to try new jobs. Then grabbed myself a nice cup of coffee and watched the story on YouTube. Watching someone else narrate story in 20 mins videos while i can kick back and relax is much more enjoyable and i didn't miss a thing. I play ffxiv for combat, glam and trying new classes. Will do the same with Endwalker.

This is like what my husband does in games. Skips all extra side content and focuses on the MSQ and dungeons. Here and in WoW he did that. I had to explain what is going on to him a lot. Frustrating but slowly realized that is what he enjoys.

Though I don't feel someone TLDR'ing the story has the same impact as seeing it yourself, if you enjoy it that way, go for it. Heh, reminds me when MSQ could be skipped and all the other players would tell a newbie to "skip and watch it in the Inn!"

[Atelier-Bagur]

This is like what my husband does in games. Skips all extra side content and focuses on the MSQ and dungeons. Here and in WoW he did that. I had to explain what is going on to him a lot. Frustrating but slowly realized that is what he enjoys.

Though I don't feel someone TLDR'ing the story has the same impact as seeing it yourself, if you enjoy it that way, go for it. Heh, reminds me when MSQ could be skipped and all the other players would tell a newbie to "skip and watch it in the Inn!"

Too bad a lot of the cool instanced solo fights and extra cutscenes can't be seen at the inn. Aka you cant see the fist fight part when you fight Zenos at the end.

So there's still some good story fluff that you miss out. But there's nothing wrong with skipping and looking the story back at the inn. Mostly I feel sometimes it can be hard to get the general context idea behind many of it scenes when you binge watch them back to back

[AngelCheese77]

Yoshi needs to stop trying to "send messages" and focus moreso on telling entertaining fantasy stories. When I write things the last thing I focus on is any specific "theme" I'm more concerned with the plot of what I'm trying to put out. Themes can arise naturally as a reader takes in the story without me spoonfeeding them the way Alphi did to us at several junctures in EW.

If Endwalker demonstrated anything is that his view on things is too different from my own for me to want to endure such preaching, from the forge ahead nonsense to brownie points scored by removing the gender lock from gear hardly anyone buys or wears. Appeals to virtue mean nothing to me, especially when such real-world morals have little place in what used to be a game set in a fantasy world and time period.

I find your first paragraph interesting, as media on television has sent messages for years. Look at Star Trek's original series, or GI Joe. Always had a moral to it.

Heck even games now do the same thing.

I liked and disliked EW. Especially towards the long "walking" part which rubbed me the wrong way.

[Xeronia]

In general I do think EW is starting to fray at the seams. This is the most vocal I have seen the community in years of various aspects of the game, I will just take the easy two of story and PvE balancing/current job design. Yes there are complaints every expansion but this is the first time since HW I have seen such a pushback from multiple sides of the community at once. I don't think it will harm the population numbers massively in the short term but there are several examples we can point to that started their descent in a very similar way.

[kaynide]

It definitely isn't, but it could be on a downturn. I was talking about this over Discord, but EW won't really be a wakeup call for any real changes. They'd have to have a spectacular failure of an expansion, and perhaps the arrival of competent competitors for that to really happen.

I’m more or less here.

I love the game and it is an important part of my hobby-life, but I can’t help but think the dev team over-reached, or was pushed for time, got lazy..or just felt it was a good chance to try a lot of different things artistically.

My distaste is I can’t really see where 1 part was really good to make up for the bad…

Like, while I didn’t love the Stormblood storyline, the battle content was great. The alternative content (like Eureka) interesting. I could see where the budget went.

I mean, there certainly is much more mocap work in EW, and the cutscenes are generally better quality…but good enough to give a pass on a below average story… we’ll see!

[MilkieTea]

Semi joke post but here's how we get people to stop buying story skips.

Delete ARR. It's hot garbage.

ARR, after the reworks to the dungeons and the story reworks, is actually pretty solid right now. There's a couple of bumps but it feels a lot more cohesive with the rest of the story.