Playing an expansion as current content has been a lacklustre MMO experience

[Raoabolic]

If you are a professional game critic, sure.

Do I make the cut? :^)

[Shurrikhan]

Can you provide a link to that "standard criteria"? Because I'm not coming across any when I do a google search. I am finding a lot of variation on criteria that different review publications ask that their critics follow but they don't fall into a single standard. If it was truly standard, you would think it would be easy to find and that every review publication would point to it.

A professional critic is nothing more than someone who is paid to publish their opinion... and you can never be certain who is actually paying them. It's not uncommon for a professional critic to write a positive review based on their 10 hours of game play just to have the game get trashed by those who actually play the game as a player, not as a critic. It's not that much different from movie reviews. Just because a reviewer finds a movie technically brilliant doesn't mean the general audience is going to find it entertaining.

A bit of a side-rant, but...

It's funny to me how consistent different broad-stroke classifications of "players", "immigrants", "critics", and the like can be in what they tend to hone in on in their reviews, however. I would have expected more person idiosyncrasy than their actually seems to typically be. Instead, the latter tend to be surprisingly (to me, at least) self-similar.

For instance, your Josh Strife Hayes style MMO Reviewer will tend to look at a checklist of fairly universal concerns:

• Does the game offer a significant degree of useful novelty (be that in setting, graphical beauty, customization, the forms of content offered, or even the results of its systems [e.g., how it handles catch-up as to be more intuitive and/or create a more precise positive outcome in terms of player behavior where it would later benefit average player perception and/or perception directly]?
• Does the game feel pay-to-win to a point that devolves the experience and/or worsens the engagement or perception of the game for non-paying players?
• Are there any stand-out annoyances in the early experience that might turn players otherwise likely retained for the time being?
• Do the game's [crafting, combat, use of world, etc.] mechanics seem to last a decent bit, or do they feel more like a pretense (high floor, low ceiling)?
• How long does it take for the game's gameplay to feel "mastered" for most players' purposes? (Time played will typically not be sufficient to answer this, but many can get to where they can at least understand enough to parse the opinions from interviews with more invested players.)
• How long does it take for the game to feel relative "complete" (insofar as a majority of players attracted to the bulk of the game, though not necessarily any single part nor the whole, would be interested in doing)?
• Etc.

(Now, given that those questions end up so interdependent, will most reviewers get to a decent answer to those questions, let alone find a good balance between answering them and just finding things 'naturally' to (dis)like? Probably not so much.
And that's already excluding the majority of Kotaku, Polygon, etc. articles which I... can't really call professional if the word is, however erroneously-but-usefully, used to refer to anyone who actually has to meet certain standards of quality that would cause readers/viewers to come back for their take.)

Whereas someone "coming over from X" tends to focus not just on the differences between the game left [A] and the new game in question [B], but also (depending on the degree of inadvertent bias) may tend to focus on features over their results. "[Game B] does {this cool thing} that's so different from how [Game A] does {the closest equivalent}"... even if the results, in their broader context, are largely the same. (Heck, many things that'd otherwise be taken as negatives can be framed as positives if only for being featurally different. See arguments that it's good that in XIV AoEs' timing have nothing to do with those AoEs' animations, for instance....)

/shrug

[Rolder50]

All this stuff about game critics opinions being the only ones that matter is ridiculous. There is no chance that anyone paid to review the game is going to spend the hundred plus hours needed to organically go through all the story, nor are they going to spend all the time and effort to actually do all the things we do as players. They aren't going to be grinding relic weapons. They aren't going to be doing savage or ultimate raids. They aren't going to spend dozens of hours working on housing or putting together the perfect glamour. So why do we care about their opinions at all?

[Deveryn]

All this stuff about game critics opinions being the only ones that matter is ridiculous. There is no chance that anyone paid to review the game is going to spend the hundred plus hours needed to organically go through all the story, nor are they going to spend all the time and effort to actually do all the things we do as players. They aren't going to be grinding relic weapons. They aren't going to be doing savage or ultimate raids. They aren't going to spend dozens of hours working on housing or putting together the perfect glamour. So why do we care about their opinions at all?

Everybody's different. I pay very little attention to what people have to say unless there's some fact to it or they actually know me well enough.

[Iscah]

No, but most of Heavensward and Stormblood are considered filler MSQ outside of the Hydaelyn Arc itself (I understand there's some sprinkled between and it's world lore, my wishlist was an extreme, have you no imagination!?).

I'm not saying anything in particular is horrible, but my make-believe wishlist for MSQ as a whole is in regards to how linear it is for such long hours. It would be amazing if I had the OPTION to go do some Hydaelyn MSQ, then leave and go do some Stormblood stuff. Everything as it's currently designed encourages a week long linear rush of MSQ each expac then a whole lotta nothing. It's not sustainable, and I'm really afraid that 7.0 is going to be more of the same just pushing us further and further away from the shore. Nobody playing back in ARR-HW thought it'd get this bad, but here we are now.

"Considered filler" by who? And does it really apply to both? On the occasions that I've seen people unhappy with it, it's usually directed at Stormblood specifically.

And if you want to pursue multiple storylines at once, why does it need to be "the Hydaelyn arc versus Stormblood"? Additional story threads exist, in the form of the various trial and raid plotlines. You can be working through Stormblood and switch back to the Warring Triad or Alexander, which essentially are important but not time-critical elements of the Hydaelyn arc.

Also, "fearing for 7.0" before we get there seems unnecessary. They seem to be angling for it to be a new late entry point for the story, which is unlikely to be self-contained away from the rest of the plot but could potentially offer a free story skip as part of the purchase.

[Axxion]

Also you realize most Game Critics are jokes right?

The sad part is an AI can write reviews

[Axxion]

Do I make the cut? :^)

we do not talk about this

[R041]

...

Filler to the arc itself, like nation plots or team building exercises with Alphinaugh for 10 hours. I'm not advocating for removing them, please read carefully (Even if I bold this stuff people still don't read)

They should be multiple threads, and we shouldn't have to explain to people that they need to run through hundreds of hours of an MSQ that provides very little in terms of actual gameplay and the threads are usually pretty weak. It's 95% Visual Novel.

And let's be honest, mechanically.. MSQ doesn't meet requirements anymore, I'd have a better experience if you gave this to me in VN form to click through, rewind, etc.

People act like this story is easier to keep track of and digest than WoW, and I just.. Disagree. It FORCE FEEDS you, that doesn't mean they want to read and watch everything, so they could still be lost.

Why is the thought of splitting the story up so foreign to people, as if we don't already have 16 numbered Final Fantasy games and countless other offshoots where even they do a better job of splitting themselves up, including XI.

I understand we're too deep at this point. There's just not much else we can do about it now. I feel like the writers all blacked out for 10 years and forgot that people need to be able to actually jump in at some point. I understand media like Naruto and One Piece are popular, but I doubt they're really grabbing new audiences in NA. Maybe in Japan? So I think because of that, we might actually start to lose the global audience if we continue this way. (Spare me your anecdotes, I want numbers)

What they need to do is actually pay attention to how they thread everything out, start putting some of that stuff into more 'side-content' and leisure play instead of the fully linear experience. Half of each expansion could have easily been cut up, it's the writers' that are to fault for threading everything the way they are to rely on each other thread. (Or maybe Yoshi threatened them)

If they need wiggle room, do Major Arcs within 2 expacs. So you get the wind-up, then release.

This could also help lessen the feeling of our world being so empty, if we're given the choice instead of almost forced to speedrun this stuff once every 2 years. I'd have more time to review things. And when I'm in the right mood to learn and enjoy the Loporrits then maybe I'd be more receptive to stuff like that instead of feel like they're an MSQ wall. If they forced Hildibrand into MSQ it would be less liked I'm sure.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Filler to the arc itself, like nation plots or team building exercises with Alphinaugh for 10 hours. I'm not advocating for removing them, please read carefully (Even if I bold this stuff people still don't read)

They should be multiple threads, and we shouldn't have to explain to people that they need to run through hundreds of hours of an MSQ that provides very little in terms of actual gameplay and the threads are usually pretty weak. It's 95% Visual Novel.

And let's be honest, mechanically.. MSQ doesn't meet requirements anymore, I'd have a better experience if you gave this to me in VN form to click through, rewind, etc.

People act like this story is easier to keep track of and digest than WoW, and I just.. Disagree. It FORCE FEEDS you, that doesn't mean they want to read and watch everything, so they could still be lost.

Why is the thought of splitting the story up so foreign to people, as if we don't already have 16 numbered Final Fantasy games and countless other offshoots where even they do a better job of splitting themselves up, including XI.

I understand we're too deep at this point. There's just not much else we can do about it now. I feel like the writers all blacked out for 10 years and forgot that people need to be able to actually jump in at some point. I understand media like Naruto and One Piece are popular, but I doubt they're really grabbing new audiences in NA. Maybe in Japan? So I think because of that, we might actually start to lose the global audience if we continue this way. (Spare me your anecdotes, I want numbers)

What they need to do is actually pay attention to how they thread everything out, start putting some of that stuff into more 'side-content' and leisure play instead of the fully linear experience. Half of each expansion could have easily been cut up, it's the writers' that are to fault for threading everything the way they are to rely on each other thread. (Or maybe Yoshi threatened them)

If they need wiggle room, do Major Arcs within 2 expacs. So you get the wind-up, then release.

This could also help lessen the feeling of our world being so empty, if we're given the choice instead of almost forced to speedrun this stuff once every 2 years. I'd have more time to review things. And when I'm in the right mood to learn and enjoy the Loporrits then maybe I'd be more receptive to stuff like that instead of feel like they're an MSQ wall. If they forced Hildibrand into MSQ it would be less liked I'm sure.

Its not force feeding if story is part of the game. Like every little thing, every quest, every piece of content all have a narrative with cutscenes and dialogue and part of its major appeal is seeing how this content is giving more meaning and context because you learn and engage more with the characters, world and lore.

[Iscah]

They should be multiple threads

Not they should not.

If they were separate threads, you wouldn't have a sequential story that flows from event A to B to C. You'd have to find it all jumbled out of order and piece it back together, and try to keep track of what state the world is according to this story fragment. Is Ala Mhigo supposed to be a free state here? Is Garlemald still intact? Have we met XYZ before or is this earlier in the story for them?

There are stories that could take place as individual threads, but the segments of the existing MSQ cannot be converted into such a state without losing the flow of the narrative that is enjoyed by current fans of the game.

If that puts off other people from playing.... so what? No game caters to everyone. The people who like this format will play it, and the people who don't will find something else.