The truth is we need a remastered XI or a follow up

[Ath192]

One thought on presentation of vibes, I wonder if having such a long forced story causes issues in the game being able to pace itself. As you get funneled to very specific tasks and have a sense of go go go to get to the next step, wonder if the MSQ ends up hampering the wanderlust potential a little.

XIV doesn't have any wanderlust in it. By design. You can't even leave the city until you've completed some quests and most areas are locked behind the MSQ to make sure you don't wander around. The biggest problem with XIV's overworld, and its a huge one, is that its a prop.

In other words the world exists because of the MSQ, the MSQ does not exist because of the world. And this is a critical flaw. In XI the world seems like it was built first and then they developed things to do in it. In XIV the writers do the story and then they create the areas it's going to take place in, making them lifeless and shallow. One of the worst offenders is Ultima Thule.

Again, deferring to other games that have great openworld experiences we can look at Elden Ring, where they asked George RR Martin to design the backstory and world in which the MSQ, related but different to what happened to begin with, took place.

" Miyazaki and his team from FromSoftware were doing groundbreaking stuff with gorgeous art, and what they wanted from me was just a bit of worldbuilding: a deep, dark, resonant world to serve as a foundation for the game they planned to create. And as it happens, I love creating worlds and writing imaginary history.”

There's lore in the areas of XIV but its super shallow. Again, it feels like it got added after the MSQ was thought of.

[R041]

XIV doesn't have any wanderlust in it. By design. You can't even leave the city until you've completed some quests and most areas are locked behind the MSQ to make sure you don't wander around. The biggest problem with XIV's overworld, and its a huge one, is that its a prop.

There was sort of an attempt in ARR, but all of that was basically thrown out, and nothing was really expanded on horizontally - in favor of railroading MSQ vertically. As we know. lol

Imagine if you could explore freely in XIV, and you had Story NPC trusts running around with you. Then split up the story into different series of events that don't need to all be linearly connected with each other.

[Ransu]

There was sort of an attempt in ARR, but all of that was basically thrown out, and nothing was really expanded on horizontally - in favor of railroading MSQ vertically. As we know. lol

Imagine if you could explore freely in XIV, and you had Story NPC trusts running around with you. Then split up the story into different series of events that don't need to all be linearly connected with each other.

You used to be forced to do side quests else you would fall behind the level requirements for the MSQ. They moved away from that and increased the amount of exp you earn for obvious reasons as the campaign got longer and longer.

[Atelier-Bagur]

You used to be forced to do side quests else you would fall behind the level requirements for the MSQ. They moved away from that and increased the amount of exp you earn for obvious reasons as the campaign got longer and longer.

it made sense in ARR since not only was the open world content like FATE grinding and combat leves more valuable but the ARR story in of itself was just one story to go through, so the exp requirement padding made sense to prolong the content. Understandably they shortened the exp requirement the more they dedicated the story aspect of the game by making the msq quest chains frequent and longer as the patches rolled on

[R041]

You used to be forced to do side quests else you would fall behind the level requirements for the MSQ. They moved away from that and increased the amount of exp you earn for obvious reasons as the campaign got longer and longer.

Yeah I know, I was there grinding it out like the rest of 'em. lol

That's not really what I meant though - The MSQ went full steam with the vertical momentum, we kinda expected it to split off at some point. The Exp evolved to match it just to get you through the story, but nothing else expanded horizontally like we expected it to in HW+ either, we even stopped getting Battle Leves altogether. The formula now is basically we get 1 alternate system for exp, otherwise you're just spamming roulettes, and you're always encouraged to keep the vertical train going. They gimped or removed all other exp and reward systems.

They kinda designed themselves into a vertical hole that can never stop.