SE: Please tone it down a hair

[Cendres]

Have you ever read Shakespeare?

There are reasons Shakespeare remains one of the most popular and enjoyed play-writes in history. Oh yeah, and there's pages upon pages of the same difficult English. But yet, people continue to enjoy it. A surprise! Those people must enjoy reading and/or stories and/or dramatic performances. Much like what the dialogue is aimed at in this game. People who enjoy reading and/or stories and/or dramatic performances. If you as a player do not fit into having the amount of patience required to read, then you may simply skip the stories and do well not to complain.

Shakespeare is interesting because every single sentence has a specific intent. I can't say the same for FFXIV, but I wish I could, maybe someday I will. In XIV right now you've got entirely useless sentences that could easily be condensed and still have the same effect. Talking just to talk is pointless, talking with meaning isn't.

BTW I read everything, I love stories, but even I can recognize there's more then a few times in XIV I want the NPC to get to the point already and quit boring me. If I was hanging on to every word I would not have this perception. Something about the writing can be improved. We are not talking about taking away anything but IMPROVING things.

Criticism of this nature is a good thing.

[Rydin]

The writing is not difficult to understand, but at the same time it isn't incredibly well written either.

To debate that though, we need to separate the dialogue from the story.

The Underlying Story is amazing... but at times it's needlessly convoluted. Generally, a confusing story can aid in the misdirection the writer is trying to get across, and the more confusion present intensifies the "Aha!!" moment
In FFXIV, the shroud of mystery seems overdone. the writers definitely slow walk you to the point....
Everything up to the Level 46 quest would just be the opening scenes in an offline RPG....

I bet you're wondering why, in a thread about dialogue would I bring up the story

Because they go hand in hand. The dialogue is made to build on that mystery concept.
The 7th Umbral era poems and such are actually not bad. NPC's are just unusually verbose, in a Charles Dickens sort of way.
Dialogue for the sake of words... for the sake of time...

And much of it is preference. The dialogue fits the setting for the most part. I just personally DETEST pirate speak (And pirates in general). I've never seen one Pirates of the Caribbean in it's entirety, so of course I'm going to hate all Limsa dialogue.

And part of it is the lack of voice. The writers kind of failed to give each important NPC idiosyncrasies in their speech to bring out their particular personality, but thats not always easy through text only communication. A lot of movies don't do that either, but then the actor is able to take the dialogue and make it unique to that character.

Dialogue and story are such complex systems that one could talk about them ad infinitum, but I do think the job quest NPC dialogue has gotten MUCH better, and for that reason I look forward to NPC speech in the future

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

I could go kick the shit out of a twelve year old and that doesn't make me a bad ass

Skyrim is famous for having ridiculously bad dialogue (See: Arrow to the knee)
If a game only aspires to have better dialogue than Elder Scrolls, then it will forever wallow in mediocrity. Why not aspire to be great!
I would be insulted if I wrote something and someone said "At least it's not SKyrim"
Why even compare it to a game... why can't we have dialogue on par with "No country for Old Men" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"

[Victor]

I'm not here to read Shakespeare, I'm here to play a videogame >.>

[Starlord]

I'm not here to read Shakespeare, I'm here to play a videogame >.>

Then play the video game then.... not that hard :/

[Cendres]

And part of it is the lack of voice. The writers kind of failed to give each important NPC idiosyncrasies in their speech to bring out their particular personality, but thats not always easy through text only communication. A lot of movies don't do that either, but then the actor is able to take the dialogue and make it unique to that character.

Yes that's the reason why Shanttoto from XI is well remembered and beloved, she's different and hilarious in her speech. Of which I never had a problem with XI's dialogue, there was a lot but it didn't feel like too much, while in XIV I sometimes try to speed read because lines are just not that interesting. And I don't like doing that.

[Rydin]

Yes that's the reason why Shanttoto from XI is well remembered and beloved, she's different and hilarious in her speech. Of which I never had a problem with XI's dialogue, there was a lot but it didn't feel like too much, while in XIV I sometimes try to speed read because lines are just not that interesting. And I don't like doing that.

That's more of that Charles Dickens verbosity. It feels like many parts of the text were written to be voiced, in which case the flavor text gives the voice actor more opportunities to bring out the characters personality, however, without voice, it can start to drone on.

[Caliburn]

I don't read... any... of the text.

Not because I can't, but because I don't care. The variation of NPC speech ranges from upper class, to common, to pirate and... yeah that's it. None of the characters are likeable or memorable. I don't give a damn about that mithra Mary Sue singer/dancer character, for example, and I don't see why I should. Also, the voice acting is atrocious; the accents are clichéd beyond all belief.

I wish SE would make this world more quirky and unique rather than clawing at some overused, clichéd idea of medieval- and 'British'-ness.

[Elexia]

Nope not even close.

It is close, how can something be 'too much' if it doesn't come down to wanting/not wanting to read?

[Majidah]

Shakespeare is interesting because every single sentence has a specific intent. I can't say the same for FFXIV, but I wish I could, maybe someday I will. In XIV right now you've got entirely useless sentences that could easily be condensed and still have the same effect. Talking just to talk is pointless, talking with meaning isn't.

Yes that's the reason why Shanttoto from XI is well remembered and beloved, she's different and hilarious in her speech. Of which I never had a problem with XI's dialogue, there was a lot but it didn't feel like too much, while in XIV I sometimes try to speed read because lines are just not that interesting. And I don't like doing that.

This and this.

[Caliburn]

Can I just point out that I deleted my character in Limsa Lominsa and remade him in Ul'dah purely because I could not stand the NPC speech there.