SE, no effort anywhere lately.

[R041]

Sorry, could you go into detail on the tools WoW uses for their storytelling? I feel like I'm missing something.

Sure, again there's a point being missed about the storytelling toolkit itself. XIV has about a fleshed out toolkit as a Visual Novel and they refuse to expand on it.

I think before BfA the story was especially disjoined, but during BfA it did an OK job of letting you roam and figure stuff out yourself on your own time. Also the whole point of the new expansion Dragonflight is to find a middle ground for a better new player experience without shoving all of the history into it so you can just enjoy the game and storytelling.

You really don't need to know everyone's backstory 100% to be engaged in the overall plot. It's not like XIV was a saint in this regard, most players didn't even get to play XIV 1.0, so who are we to tell them they can't enjoy the plot unless they actually knew who the Path of the Twelve were and how they were started.

XIV MSQ Toolkit:

1. Text Dialog 95% / VA 5% (Sometimes very important story details are only text)
2. Purple glowy with 2 mobs every few hours
3. 1 15 minute dungeon after 8 hours? - Spam AoE button
4. 1 Trial after 10 hours?
5. Solo Duties every 8 hours?
6. Single Player unless Dungeon or Trial (So 95% of the time)
7. MSQ NPC sometimes walks with you in town (woah, high-tech)
8. "It is recommended that you set aside sufficient time to view these scenes in their entirety."

Repeat until end of expansion

Forced formula preventing the story from naturally being told. Means we get dungeons that often don't matter, and areas we wish were dungeons.


WoW MSQ Toolkit:

1. Dungeons open whenever you hit min level (Not required to do them)
2. Story threads naturally push to a dungeon, not forced by MSQ timing
3. Most dialog are VA - Important Dialog seem to always be VA
4. Story threads are rewarding as they can give unique items with special actions
5. All quests/MSQ are coop and can be re-shared
6. You can sync party everywhere
7. MSQ is gameplay focused first
8. MSQ allows you to branch off to different areas and complete them at your leisure
9. MSQ unlocks story progression for alts
10. Gameplay gimmicks all over the place
11. World zones can evolve through quest progress, even small scale.

XIV is just.. Mechanically limited in MSQ. So it's not as engaging as a game.

You could say that if XIV were told in the WoW ecosystem that it would be just as disjointed, so the real difference is you're being force-fed each zone back to back through text dialog.

It's fine if you prefer a forced visual novel. But that doesn't make it mechanically better. It's like saying Doki Doki Literature Club has better gameplay engagement than Valheim.

[DPZ2]

It's fine if you prefer a forced visual novel. But that doesn't make it mechanically better.

The lesson from this is: Don't play FFXIV unless you prefer a "forced visual novel". Fortunately, there are a large number of players who prefer going through the story while leveling, and who don't seem to mind the gameplay.

I've played a number of MMORPGs over the years, and current WoW has the sorriest view of "story". What story? All the important bits in the game, since the early 2010s, is only known from books, rather than engaging gameplay. What value is the vaunted "coop" option if the storyline is little more than "go kill 20+ zhevras in order to collect 6 hoofs"? What value is there in a coop option for the story when it is quicker to level through dungeons? I'm amazed that players in WoW don't complain as much about the lack of skill of players who've gone through the story line so fast that they still don't have a good idea of what their abilities can do at end game.