New player(s) thoughts

[caffe_macchiato]

I’d like to illustrate just how dire the situation is with this game’s story.

Refer to this spreadsheet. There are 110 hours of cutscenes in this game. That’s not all dialogue, just cutscenes. No gameplay. If this were a film series, it would be by far the longest film series in history.

And that doesn’t even include the dozens of hours it takes for the rest of the dialogue, or moving from one NPC or the next. The amount of multiplayer gameplay in the MSQ is extraordinarily small compared to text and story. It is, for all intents and purposes, a visual novel with small and isolated gameplay segments. The cutscene-to-gameplay ratio in FFXIV is by far the worst in any Final Fantasy game or RPG ever measured, far exceeding the ratios in games like FF13 and MGS4. And for an MMO!

Fortunately, there are other games out there that are more accommodating to new players. I hope that OP tries those out, and maybe SE will put all this down in book or anime form so we can binge it instead.

[R041]

I’d like to illustrate just how dire the situation is with this game’s story.

Refer to this spreadsheet. There are 110 hours of cutscenes in this game. That’s not all dialogue, just cutscenes. No gameplay. If this were a film series, it would be by far the longest film series in history.

And that doesn’t even include the dozens of hours it takes for the rest of the dialogue, or moving from one NPC or the next. The amount of multiplayer gameplay in the MSQ is extraordinarily small compared to text and story. It is, for all intents and purposes, a visual novel with small and isolated gameplay segments. The cutscene-to-gameplay ratio in FFXIV is by far the worst in any Final Fantasy game or RPG ever measured, far exceeding the ratios in games like FF13 and MGS4. And for an MMO!

This is a really good write-up, and I'm coping that 7.0 will finally do something about the insane barrier to entry into the MMO portion of this game that I love so much. I absolutely detest that we've been praising this 12 year arc as if that's something to be celebrated. It's not for celebration, this is a visual novel with a housing crisis. We're a book club at the end of a 10 book series and venomous at anyone even itching to play current content with their friends without reading it all beforehand.

The WoW exodus brought us an increase of 4x our playerbase and a crazy amount of content creators that are just gushing for all the wrong reasons and twisting truths, only for them to all probably leave in the next few months because they'll realize that they wanted an MMO and not a visual novel. I don't want to doom, but I honestly think we're going to see a playerbase crash pretty soon, just watch the Steam Chart. (At least I'll be able to buy a house then)

[Espon]

This is a really good write-up, and I'm coping that 7.0 will finally do something about the insane barrier to entry into the MMO portion of this game that I love so much. I absolutely detest that we've been praising this 12 year arc as if that's something to be celebrated. It's not for celebration, this is a visual novel with a housing crisis. We're a book club at the end of a 10 book series and venomous at anyone even itching to play current content with their friends without reading it all beforehand.

The story is one of the biggest things that pulls me to this game. WoW completely shat all over its story and lore after building it up in the RTS games and first few expansions. I used to be quite invested into it and was excited whenever we got to learn more about the Titans and Old Gods, but instead they rather ignore everything so they can kill off your favorite characters or turn them into villains. They have absolutely no idea how to handle time travel plots properly and will suddenly retcon over 20 years of story to introduce one of the worst characters ever and justify the horrific actions of another.

110 hours of cutscenes really isn't much when you consider this is a heavily story-driven game that's now on its fifth expansion and each expansion being a full game story-wise on its own.

The WoW exodus brought us an increase of 4x our playerbase and a crazy amount of content creators that are just gushing for all the wrong reasons and twisting truths, only for them to all probably leave in the next few months because they'll realize that they wanted an MMO and not a visual novel. I don't want to doom, but I honestly think we're going to see a playerbase crash pretty soon, just watch the Steam Chart. (At least I'll be able to buy a house then)

Too bad auto-demolition remains off. The whole player-base could quit and you still won't be able to get a house.

[R041]

The story is one of the biggest things that pulls me to this game. WoW completely shat all over its story and lore after building it up in the RTS games and first few expansions. I used to be quite invested into it and was excited whenever we got to learn more about the Titans and Old Gods, but instead they rather ignore everything so they can kill off your favorite characters or turn them into villains. They have absolutely no idea how to handle time travel plots properly and will suddenly retcon over 20 years of story to introduce one of the worst characters ever and justify the horrific actions of another.

110 hours of cutscenes really isn't much when you consider this is a heavily story-driven game that's now on its fifth expansion and each expansion being a full game story-wise on its own.

The core problem is that it's a requirement. I don't think anyone wants to get rid of the story itself, but the format of the MSQ just needs to change and we need better entry points with more in-between MSQ coop engagement. Wanting to keep a good story and also engaging multiplayer components aren't mutually exclusive.

[Arazehl]

Thought this game was an MMORPG? RPG part is the game is driven by it's story plot, with the technical stuff such as experience, loot, skills and combat that which follows the regular mmo genre. So why the surprise of the main story quests to advance the game?