Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[Ardeth]

I don't think the story is as good as people say it is. It has it's moments and it's certainly made with quality, but it has all the same contrivances and convaluted plot issues that have plagued JRPGs for decades.

[Oizen]

I don't think the story is as good as people say it is. It has it's moments and it's certainly made with quality, but it has all the same contrivances and convaluted plot issues that have plagued JRPGs for decades.

Its more like a roller coaster of quality with some exceptional high points but some god awful low points that remind me of why I typically don't take MMO stories seriously

[Eastwall]

I don't think the story is as good as people say it is. It has it's moments and it's certainly made with quality, but it has all the same contrivances and convaluted plot issues that have plagued JRPGs for decades.

Here is the problem. Content is locked behind story. It feels like a chore because of that implementation. The real bs is that l got to pay to skip the chore. Well, But l liked my lala enough to pay to skip that bs

[Absurdity]

I don't think the story is as good as people say it is. It has it's moments and it's certainly made with quality, but it has all the same contrivances and convaluted plot issues that have plagued JRPGs for decades.

When people say the story is good they seem to regularly forget the qualifier "for an MMO", probably because it sounds a lot less impressive considering the competition.

But to bounce off of what Vyrerus has already said, XIV didn't just miss the mark when it comes to portraying the gravity and scale of it's events as those escalated over the years.
It takes little advantage of the strengths of it's own visual medium, video games, in general, the majority of the MSQ is just walking to an NPC and then reading a whole lot of textboxes.

[Ardeth]

When people say the story is good they seem to regularly forget the qualifier "for an MMO", probably because it sounds a lot less impressive considering the competition.

But to bounce off of what Vyrerus has already said, XIV didn't just miss the mark when it comes to portraying the gravity and scale of it's events as those escalated over the years.
It takes little advantage of the strengths of it's own visual medium, video games, in general, the majority of the MSQ is just walking to an NPC and then reading a whole lot of textboxes.

I've been clearing my backlog of single-player games, and it astounds me who average 14 is as a story.

Also, yeah, how the story is presented is terrible. It's walk to npc. Npc talks to you. Then you teleport over here and talk to this npc, then walk over here and find 3 things in red circles while talking to more npcs. I'm not saying it needs more kill quests, but my god, break up this dribble. And you know it's not going to change with Dawntrail. They added the npcs walk with you quests and assumed they broke some new ground. Now I get to babysit! Oh how fun!

[fulminating]

I've been clearing my backlog of single-player games, and it astounds me who average 14 is as a story.

Also, yeah, how the story is presented is terrible. It's walk to npc. Npc talks to you. Then you teleport over here and talk to this npc, then walk over here and find 3 things in red circles while talking to more npcs. I'm not saying it needs more kill quests, but my god, break up this dribble. And you know it's not going to change with Dawntrail. They added the npcs walk with you quests and assumed they broke some new ground. Now I get to babysit! Oh how fun!

I will say that garlemald had an uncommonly good selection of solo missions - metal gear thancred, tailing that npc, in from the cold. With a few tweaks that defend the train one could have been not bad too - I don’t remember the convoy having a fail condition through damage as in fates for instance. Now the pretty severe caveat is that this is relative only to the rest of the msq, not in absolute terms. (And of course the difficulty seeing aoes on white blue is pretty well known.) It is unfortunate that when they do show a spark of creativity it gets stamped out rather than kindled.

I can’t help but wonder if their internal processes disincentivise creative encounters or storytelling. Obviously there’s not many who can answer, but the sleight of hand for leviathan/sophia’s tipped stage remains one of the most memorable boss effects. That kind of creativity feels lacking in solo encounters which should be more suited for experimentation given uptime complaints and wearing thin through repetition are unlikely to rear their heads.

[Ardeth]

I will say that garlemald had an uncommonly good selection of solo missions - metal gear thancred, tailing that npc, in from the cold. With a few tweaks that defend the train one could have been not bad too - I don’t remember the convoy having a fail condition through damage as in fates for instance. Now the pretty severe caveat is that this is relative only to the rest of the msq, not in absolute terms. (And of course the difficulty seeing aoes on white blue is pretty well known.) It is unfortunate that when they do show a spark of creativity it gets stamped out rather than kindled.

I can’t help but wonder if their internal processes disincentivise creative encounters or storytelling. Obviously there’s not many who can answer, but the sleight of hand for leviathan/sophia’s tipped stage remains one of the most memorable boss effects. That kind of creativity feels lacking in solo encounters which should be more suited for experimentation given uptime complaints and wearing thin through repetition are unlikely to rear their heads.

I think it is all deadlines and if it's not broke don't fix it. And I can understand that. I just feel like at this point, you have an established fanbase that is pretty much ride or die. I'm not saying completely change everything, but a 45-degree shift might be refreshing enough to revitalize a rather dead method of story exposition. I think part 1 of Garlemald is fantastic, but unfortunately after that the rest is rather formulaic and honestly horribly disjointed as a story in terms of pace, but I'm not going to beat a dead horse about the failings of Endwalker.

[AnimaAnimus]

but the sleight of hand for leviathan/sophia’s tipped stage remains one of the most memorable boss effects.

The real sad part is, if we got the Sophia fight in EW or even ShB we would not have had the tipping at all. They would have just made scales appear and if they tipped to one side you would have 1 aoe, if they tipped to the other you would have a different aoe. Cause that is the most effort they put into fights these days. I mean look how dirty they did Nald Thal with his scales. The only saving grace that had was a sweet cs, but the content is so easy and was outgeared even in its own patch, so new players will never see it cause he goes down too fast.

[Supersnow845]

I've been clearing my backlog of single-player games, and it astounds me who average 14 is as a story.

Also, yeah, how the story is presented is terrible. It's walk to npc. Npc talks to you. Then you teleport over here and talk to this npc, then walk over here and find 3 things in red circles while talking to more npcs. I'm not saying it needs more kill quests, but my god, break up this dribble. And you know it's not going to change with Dawntrail. They added the npcs walk with you quests and assumed they broke some new ground. Now I get to babysit! Oh how fun!

I’m in the middle of a replay of NG+ with a friend and one of the biggest things I’ve noticed is the MSQ is explicitly designed to be “broken up” and feels badly paced and way too “small” when you don’t

Like everyone always says that doma stole stormblood from ala mhigo (which is true) but go back and do a NG+ run and it’s almost comical how fast they rally half the far east and take back doma, the entire cadence of the MSQ really relies on you taking on a lot of side quests and doing roulettes because the story is not that good when experienced alone

[Gordita]

I've been clearing my backlog of single-player games, and it astounds me who average 14 is as a story.

Also, yeah, how the story is presented is terrible. It's walk to npc. Npc talks to you. Then you teleport over here and talk to this npc, then walk over here and find 3 things in red circles while talking to more npcs. I'm not saying it needs more kill quests, but my god, break up this dribble. And you know it's not going to change with Dawntrail. They added the npcs walk with you quests and assumed they broke some new ground. Now I get to babysit! Oh how fun!

The npc walking with us felt kinda like old school single player games that got me hooked on FF in the first place. I liked the vibe, AFTER they changed it so that you could mount or use aethernet without them pissing off back to the start point