SE: Please tone it down a hair

[bobbygunz]

I quite like the dialogue, though it can be tedious sometimes. For people disinterested in reading so much of it though, and for those who just want it simplified or don't have the time, do realize that you can always refer to your journal for a brief synopsis of the quest dialogue, presented in layman's terms for your convenience.

S.E. also mentioned that they will be adding more voiced quests and cut-scenes, which may give them cause to reduce some of the verbose language.

[Akira_Tenshi]

I suppose the phrase 'brevity is the soul of wit' really applies here, doesn't it?
Your little quip at the end had more impact then the rest of your cluster of SAT words.

I suppose I should have mentioned my main point was in agreement with the OP. The dialogue, in all its literary glory, is far too convoluted to be appreciated by most people aside from you and Carraway. To be honest, I really am envious of your ability to appreciate it in its current form. The level of the language is fine, however, something that can be said in one paragraph doesn't need to be said in six.



There was actually a really good lore post a while back explaining the origin of Roegadyn names and language, but the gist of it was Mearlwyb meant "Wife of the Sea" and Bloefhiswyn is her father's name.

Also, don't talk about my Admiral like that.

lol she is my admiral to perhaps i should watch my tounge or maybe ask her how the hell to say her name.

[Starlord]

Long Paragraphs about X stuff: SE TONE IT DOWN A BIT ITS TD;LR
Short Paragraphs ( I can foresee this happening lol): SE PLEASE BE MORE CREATIVE THERES NOT MUCH TO SAY IN ANY OF YOUR NPCS.

Forums Logic is awesome! Yeeeeehawww!!

[Majidah]

Lol..the writing in this game is quite a few leaps above the forced 'epic' writing of games like Skyrim and Tera >.>

I expect something better of the writers behind final fantasy though.

Fortuitous for we are bestowed with a myriad of wonderous options in this magnanimous world. Perchance the enlightened citizens of Eorzea shall be graced with literary concepts becomming to their most esteemed stature. Mayhap, those befuddled by the complexities of such literary yarns can find a quantum of solace in other avenues of pleasure. (Or a dictionary).

Let's not dumb it down in a world of Fox ^.^b

Okay, now take that one paragraph. Multiply it by 5, make it so no paragraph interacts with anyone else as it'd happen in an actual conversation, and do this not only for important plot related factors, but for any misc NPC that exists.

That's FFXIV.

Good writing isn't just what happens and it isn't just grabbing a thesaurus. Good writing is also how dialog is delivered. And XIV fails greatly at this.

edit:

People, take a look at FFT's rewrite. It uses old english but the dialogs are superv. Can you say the same about XIV? Hell no. There are no dialogs in XIV. Just monologs.

Can you picture a FFT character speak as much as a misc inn NPC in uldah? Get real.

double edit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_8T2DXAHRs

There. Brevity is the soul of wit.

[Starlord]

I expect something better of the writers behind final fantasy though.



Okay, now take that one paragraph. Multiply it by 5, make it so no paragraph interacts with anyone else as it'd happen in an actual conversation, and do this not only for important plot related factors, but for any misc NPC that exists.

That's FFXIV.

Good writing isn't just what happens and it isn't just grabbing a thesaurus. Good writing is also how dialog is delivered. And XIV fails greatly at this.

edit:

People, take a look at FFT's rewrite. It uses old english but the dialogs are superv. Can you say the same about XIV? Hell no. There are no dialogs in XIV. Just monologs.

Can you picture a FFT character speak as much as a misc inn NPC in uldah? Get real.

That's just how you feel its like, other peoples experience do differ from yours, some agree with you, and some don't. I personally love it so I don't know what to tell you.

[Cendres]

Someone said it really well in an old similar thread; brevity is the soul of wit.

In a video game you really do not need that much verbosity, people are here to play not to read a lengthy novel. If XIV was a novel it would be damned thick! If some of you have written plays before and you know you have to present a whole story in as little wording as possible and you can still evoke a lot of background and emotion in one to two line dialogue, so I'm sure SE can cut back on those paragraphs and still manage to give us the same feeling and keep the tone the same.

[Majidah]

That's just how you feel its like, other peoples experience do differ from yours, some agree with you, and some don't. I personally love it so I don't know what to tell you.

I'm going to go ahead and link everyone to this thread with 102 likes.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...n-XIV-s-quests

Now I'll quote highlights from it.

I agree.

The NPC need to be a bit more concise. They are so verbose and fond of circumlocution, full of platitudes and roundabout ways of saying the most simplest of statements that might otherwise have been conveyed in half the words and a quarter of the time. It's such a waste of my time. Mine and yours.

Maybe if they add more voiceovers, then it will encourage the writers to pull back a little bit.

I don't think you understand what this topic was meant to say. The dialect and vocabulary is fine. What's not fine is that every time you start a quest, you are presented with an entire novel to read and the only way you're interacting with the NPC is by spamming X to make the text go by faster. What makes that worse is that for most quests, once you get past the initial diatribe, you get very little lore text or anything.

Make the NPCs move around or something, give us cutscenes, change the music or tempo, make us answer questions, or simply shorten the dialog. But after the 5th or 6th paragraph of tangentially important backstory that an NPC throws out on our screen, most of us are just hitting X to get rid of it and reading the summary on the journal page.

I may be diverging slightly from the OP's point, but what I have taken away from the original point is this: Fundamentally, FFXIV lacks spice such as dialog. Now in SquareEnix MMOs, you play the part of a silent protagonist. This does not exclude the possibility of dialog, however. The best example I can think of off the top of my head from FFXI would be the Sleepga II line of quests (because they are neither main storyline missions, nor super important quests such as AF quests). In these quests, you follow the exploits of two Tarutaru who are competing streetvendors in Jeuno. The quest introductions are full of dialog between the two NPCs; sometimes they will turn to you, asking for your advice, pausing in the place of your response.

These scenes are quite long, much longer then the posted example by the OP. However, they are for lack of a better word, eventful. Writing, literacy, interest in lore, these things are not limited only to the quantity of text, but the delivery.

I would like to add also, that I love the stories in FFXIV. They are expertly designed in my mind. However, I completely agree with the OP that they are not well delivered when compared to other things we have seen from SE.

I'm all for lore, but when I walk up to a ! over an NPC and get a diatribe of Old English in my face telling me his life story where all he's essentially telling me is that he needs me to deliver some parcels - I feel like the game's writer took his job a little too seriously.

It gets really bad when you can't tell the personality of one character to another. Everyone just vomits these paragraphs of ye olde English and it feels forced. For good writing, it should only take a sentence or two for players to get an idea of who they're talking to, what they're like, and what they want. Not everyone you meet randomly on the street will just give you paragraphs of info without any provocation.

The thread gets really nice after the second or first page, the first page of replies are just people who misunderstood what was written. I recommend reading it.

[Majidah]

Someone said it really well in an old similar thread; brevity is the soul of wit.

In a video game you really do not need that much verbosity, people are here to play not to read a lengthy novel. If XIV was a novel it would be damned thick! If some of you have written plays before and you know you have to present a whole story in as little wording as possible and you can still evoke a lot of background and emotion in one to two line dialogue, so I'm sure SE can cut back on those paragraphs and still manage to give us the same feeling and keep the tone the same.

THAT WAS ME! MWAHAHAHAA http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...n-XIV-s-quests give me a kiss!

[Preypacer]

agreed ^^^

I agree that they did a great job with the dialog overall.

My main gripe with it is I think it's being spread a bit too much to different characters. The only people I find to speak in a manner that indicates who they are or where they're from, are the pirate folk from LL. However, even among people in LL, there's still NPCs who speak with an eloquence or flourish that is not typical of that area, yet they're supposed to be from there. It just seems kind of jarring when you find a supposed pirate speaking in alliterations and using more complex words.

It's not that I can't understand what they're saying. It's that in many cases I've seen, it seems completely out of character.

In FFXI, each race had a distinct way of speaking that made them stand out immediately. People from San d'Oria spoke in an overall consistent way. Mithra spoke in a consistent manner (the "rrrrrrr"'s in their speech being a good example, among several). Tarus tended to be more alliterative or rhyming in their speech. Galka tended to be generally rather harsh and blunt in their speech... and so forth.

I don't see that as much in XIV. It seems more arbitrary. I see NPCs of all races speaking like you'd expect a Taru to. I see Lalafell speaking in a manner of ways. It just makes it difficult to establish any kind of collective personality or behavior for any one of the races, at least for me.

So, I guess in a nutshell, while I'm fine with the way some NPCs talk, I think I'd like to see it applied and used more consistently in the future.

That said, what the hell is going on in your signature pic, fusional? I mean, I can tell it's a spoof on something, but is that from some kind of DJ concert or something?

[Majidah]

Long Paragraphs about X stuff: SE TONE IT DOWN A BIT ITS TD;LR
Short Paragraphs ( I can foresee this happening lol): SE PLEASE BE MORE CREATIVE THERES NOT MUCH TO SAY IN ANY OF YOUR NPCS.

Forums Logic is awesome! Yeeeeehawww!!

Amazingly enough its like this. The NPCs in XIV talk too much without saying much.
Just like cheerleaders!