The end of ARR will forever be the high-water mark for FFXIV, to me

[Solakor]

The animation team is just really proud of the levels of animation they can include nowadays. Which can only really be expressed through the slice of life kind of moments. That's why we suddenly have so many meal scenes. Also, it's one of the few things that has left at being able to show the characters bonding outside of saving the world to make them still feel a sense of normalcy.

Creating a good story is hard. Creating a flashy scene and pulling tropes out of anime is not that hard. Even ff16 was more flash than substance after the first 10 hours. It's kinda funny the game advertises itself being a story MMO but did the cardinal sin of not fleshing out a well defined ending that makes sense with the material before. And even better, at the behest of the director himself. Juggling 2 triple A games was clearly a good idea and the damage control has been pretty hilarious with yoship blaming the community and the fanbois saying theres nothing wrong with EW.
I recently watched a josh strife hayes and nerdslayer vids about the mmo rift and how the company behind it got way too ambitious trying to juggle 3 projects at once and ultimately everything fell flat. Rift could have been an amazing game if given care enough. We are not at that point yet but its just a thought.
14 needs to refocus in what made it good and not half ass things. Gameplay first with story that makes sense. MMO content with other ppl and some evolution of systems

[DPZ2]

Rift could have been an amazing game if given care enough. We are not at that point yet but its just a thought.

Rift had a gimmick, one that started to fall flat for me about 2 years into the game. It was overshadowed by the release of competing MMORPGs, including World of Warcraft expansions.

It was never a main game for me, rather, it was one to kick back and play between leveling alts in Cataclysm or Mists of Panderia.

I was never a big fan of Trion Worlds games. The company (under their Glyph name) later came out with Archeage and Atlas Reactor.

If you're interested, you can always try it out. It appears to be free to play at this point, although the better Souls you can incorporate in-game are going to cost you.

[Bonoki]

Creating a good story is hard. Creating a flashy scene and pulling tropes out of anime is not that hard. Even ff16 was more flash than substance after the first 10 hours. It's kinda funny the game advertises itself being a story MMO but did the cardinal sin of not fleshing out a well defined ending that makes sense with the material before. And even better, at the behest of the director himself. Juggling 2 triple A games was clearly a good idea and the damage control has been pretty hilarious with yoship blaming the community and the fanbois saying theres nothing wrong with EW.
I recently watched a josh strife hayes and nerdslayer vids about the mmo rift and how the company behind it got way too ambitious trying to juggle 3 projects at once and ultimately everything fell flat. Rift could have been an amazing game if given care enough. We are not at that point yet but its just a thought.
14 needs to refocus in what made it good and not half ass things. Gameplay first with story that makes sense. MMO content with other ppl and some evolution of systems

I think it's more that the story the devs want to tell and the story the players want to experience are two different things. But the devs also have the "The players will like whatever we throw at them anyway" going for them. Like reading some of their answers from interviews about why the Garlean expansion was cut, that Endwalker was going to be 7.0, their reasons for why we're going to be a normie adventurer again for the rest of the game's lifespan, and other stuff. All of it indicates that the devs were bored with their own story and wanted it to be over. They no longer liked what they were doing. Even admitted that the Ascians and Zodiark had no goal or objective until Shadowbringers when they first decided to start wrapping things up. That Zenos existed to replace the Ascains as the big bad. But then they realized how long it'd take to wrap things up cohesively and decided to rush it because they wanted to tell their brand-new stuff with the Void and Dawntrail. The problem with the story right now isn't even the story, it's the fact that the devs no longer want to make grand compelling arcs. They want us to be in self-contained stories and to sightsee as much of the world as there's left to see before Yoshi-P retires. Not only has the community gotten more casual but even the story wants to be a more casual slice of life environment. The story isn't about saving the world anymore, it's about having fun with your friends. The other scions. We will still have some save-the-world moments here and there like the recent Zeromus, but that's more collateral damage to the Ascians as it's still closely related to their past actions.

[Solakor]

I think it's more that the story the devs want to tell and the story the players want to experience are two different things. But the devs also have the "The players will like whatever we throw at them anyway" going for them. Like reading some of their answers from interviews about why the Garlean expansion was cut, that Endwalker was going to be 7.0, their reasons for why we're going to be a normie adventurer again for the rest of the game's lifespan, and other stuff. All of it indicates that the devs were bored with their own story and wanted it to be over. They no longer liked what they were doing. Even admitted that the Ascians and Zodiark had no goal or objective until Shadowbringers when they first decided to start wrapping things up. That Zenos existed to replace the Ascains as the big bad. But then they realized how long it'd take to wrap things up cohesively and decided to rush it because they wanted to tell their brand-new stuff with the Void and Dawntrail. The problem with the story right now isn't even the story, it's the fact that the devs no longer want to make grand compelling arcs. They want us to be in self-contained stories and to sightsee as much of the world as there's left to see before Yoshi-P retires. Not only has the community gotten more casual but even the story wants to be a more casual slice of life environment. The story isn't about saving the world anymore, it's about having fun with your friends. The other scions. We will still have some save-the-world moments here and there like the recent Zeromus, but that's more collateral damage to the Ascians as it's still closely related to their past actions.

I find it extremely weird that they suddenly just want to erase everything and seem very incompetent writers compared to before. Like axing an expansion because they can't think of a story that fits into 2 expacs? And then coming out with this void arc to just fill the 6.1-5 time with something? Also what about the content and issues with EW in general? I mean something happened from before. Where did the passion go to tell a good story and ending to a 10 year old saga? Did they change so many devs and are they incapable of writing anything good now? I'm just not buying it. DT will definately be a defining expac as to what they want from the game (other than money).

[PactCommander]

ARR imo was okay-ish for me. I must admit that a lot of times back then as a sprout I was so overwhelmed by everything the game has to offer that I didn’t pay full attention to what was happening story-wise. It got better towards the end and this one event which I would like to regard as a very unexpected twist in the story of ARR had me 100% on edge. Also I never will forget this feeling of loneliness and defeat when me and 2 of my scion companions stumbled into Ishgard.
But HW and also ShB will always, ALWAYS have a very special place in my heart. I just loved the slight medieval setting. Both expansions had put me on such an emotional rollercoaster and especially HW made me cry for real more than once o.o Lately only XC3 was able to do that to me.

Stormblood was nice but I felt there were parts of the story where the writing could’ve been better. And with EW… I remember being excited about it but in the end I was mildly disappointed. So I won’t get my hopes too high for DT. The whole notion of suddenly being the casually traveling adventurer with his merry band of friends when the whole time we have been the worlds’ only bulwark between annihilation and survival strikes me as “odd”.
I don’t always need to be on high alert story-wise but this seems to be too harsh of a story turn. But that’s only my opinion.

I do understand that a writer of a story has the liberty to tell the story as they want. But on the other hand the writer shouldn’t be too disappointed if not everyone will be fangirling and fanboying about it in the end.
Also I have the slight feeling that the devs/writers/whoever kind of had the story roughly outlined in the back of their heads till the end of the whole Ascian cycle. And now that this story part is completely told they kind of lack the idea of how to continue.

I do agree here with Bonoki that the story of EW felt “rushed”. Reminds me of Xenosaga which was planned as a 6-part-series originally. Then after releasing part I and II they ran out of money and time and squeezed the story content of the remaining 4 parts into the last part III. The whole story was rather philosophical from the beginning and heavily used biblical imagery and used elements of the works of Carl Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche. That alone was hard to understand at times, but squeezing so much story in the last remaining part… yea, after finishing EW I felt similarly confused like after beating Xenosaga III, lol.

[Absurdity]

Stormblood was nice but I felt there were parts of the story where the writing could’ve been better.

Stormblood imo suffered from the choice of having it play out on two entirely different continents, too much jumping around to really flesh either of them out.
It's also one of the many reasons why Endwalker fell completely flat for me. They tried to cram two expansions (plus patch content) into a single base expansion and it had so much jumping between different locales that I didn't particularly care about any of them.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I quite liked the tone of early FFXIV (up through Stormblood), particularly ARR. It felt grounded. You're a protagonist but not an almighty superhero. The Scions can't waltz anywhere and do anything they please, instead they have to get along with the program and do favors for Ishgard too. There are benevolent sovereigns like Nanamo but they are not almighty and can only do so much. Merlwyb has to do uncomfortable things to keep her people afloat. There is no good solution to refugees; Domans can be squeezed in because they offer intel, but most people are unsympathetic to the Ala Mhigans due to bad blood and they don't have anything to offer so they get turned away. The world felt big and dangerous. That feel starts going away in the expansions once all of the internal problems within the countries and limited resources are handwaved away, so the WoL and Scions start accomplishing everything without problems. I also preferred when FFXIV was about different nations in conflict with each other, be it fighting different beast races or fighting Garlean legions or fighting a dragon brood, etc, rather than fighting depressed lunatics and their minions.

Stormblood imo suffered from the choice of having it play out on two entirely different continents, too much jumping around to really flesh either of them out.
It's also one of the many reasons why Endwalker fell completely flat for me. They tried to cram two expansions (plus patch content) into a single base expansion and it had so much jumping between different locales that I didn't particularly care about any of them.

I didn't have a problem with Stormblood having two continents. While I would have liked to have gotten more Gyr Abania and Othard zones, it wouldn't have been good to follow up a Gyr Abania expansion about liberating an outer province from Garlemald with another expansion about liberating an outer province from Garlemald. Four years and two expansions about the same story. Consolidation was required, though if Square did what GW2 did and added new zones in every patch, then we could have had Othard zones added in every Stormblood patch and thus we could have gotten more zones (6 Gyr Abania zones at launch and then 5 or 6 more Othard zones in patches) in the same time span of one expansion in 2 years, that way both regions would have been more fleshed out.

[DPZ2]

rather than fighting depressed lunatics and their minions.

Ilberd wasn't depressed. Psychotic, perhaps.

Such villains seem to show up at least once every expansion.

< yeah, I deliberately ignored the rest of the post ... >

[Terin]

I quite liked the tone of early FFXIV (up through Stormblood), particularly ARR. It felt grounded. You're a protagonist but not an almighty superhero. The Scions can't waltz anywhere and do anything they please, instead they have to get along with the program and do favors for Ishgard too. There are benevolent sovereigns like Nanamo but they are not almighty and can only do so much. Merlwyb has to do uncomfortable things to keep her people afloat. There is no good solution to refugees; Domans can be squeezed in because they offer intel, but most people are unsympathetic to the Ala Mhigans due to bad blood and they don't have anything to offer so they get turned away. The world felt big and dangerous. That feel starts going away in the expansions once all of the internal problems within the countries and limited resources are handwaved away, so the WoL and Scions start accomplishing everything without problems. I also preferred when FFXIV was about different nations in conflict with each other, be it fighting different beast races or fighting Garlean legions or fighting a dragon brood, etc, rather than fighting depressed lunatics and their minions.





I didn't have a problem with Stormblood having two continents. While I would have liked to have gotten more Gyr Abania and Othard zones, it wouldn't have been good to follow up a Gyr Abania expansion about liberating an outer province from Garlemald with another expansion about liberating an outer province from Garlemald. Four years and two expansions about the same story. Consolidation was required, though if Square did what GW2 did and added new zones in every patch, then we could have had Othard zones added in every Stormblood patch and thus we could have gotten more zones (6 Gyr Abania zones at launch and then 5 or 6 more Othard zones in patches) in the same time span of one expansion in 2 years, that way both regions would have been more fleshed out.

I think that's really well summarized. It sounds counterintuitive, but there's something much more "epic" about nations having believable, grounded conflicts with each other, moreso than "the literal fate of the planet and all life as we know it hangs in the balance".

At the very least, it *does* feel like they're leaning that direction a little bit more. At least, lowering the stakes and having us travel someplace we aren't renowned saviors of the universe. Hopefully they'll introduce a little more grounded conflict. Like "here's a character that's a warmonger, but has a lot of resources, and is inflicting real, lasting pain on the characters you know and love". Heck, even allowing the Monetarists in Ul'dah to make some headway again, or maybe a particularly merciless gang of pirates returning from some far-flung voyage and thrusting Limsa Lominsa into chaos.