SE stop doing the "norm"

[syntaxlies]

The story is only "throwaway" if the player doesn't care about story. Those of us who do will read them. Even in 1.0 there were a great deal of quests that had interesting stories, some even going back to patch 1.16 that mentioned Dalamud. Also what you described is quests in general, there's really no way to make it vastly different than that basic concept. GW2 tried to do it with their "dynamic quests" but really they're just on repeat timers.



Things are similar because we're in the same genre. You don't see people calling FPSs clones of each other, because they're in the same genre. The basics tend to work the same or very similarly and the details are where things start to diverge. Just like with FFXIV: ARR.

What will attract people? Probably the same thing that caused us all to buy FFXIV at release despite having played the atrocious beta. Same reason people are still playing. There's something about the game that brings people back. I've had a handful of friends leave in 1.0 for various MMOs only to come back to this one because they missed it. Even flawed 1.0 was able to bring people back from other MMOs. 2.0 will do the same.

read, what is read, 2.0 voice over ftw

[Xmbei]

Indeed they did, that's what I liked about XI and XIV most, the quests actually had good stories but that's mostly because it wasn't setup in the fashion that was there to level you. When I mention "throwaway stories" it's because in most quest grind MMOs the story is just there to fill the box, not much else, the real purpose as we know is for the exp and reward at the end which is why they all tend to be the exact same quest repeated countless times. The Guildleve system was basically the quest grind of XIV while sidequests were actual lore and stories about the world.

When you need to make more than enough quests to level players the quality usually takes a hit, something SWTOR definitely had happen to it after the early levels and that was a game banking on it's story.

You just proved you don't read or know jack about ARR, Yoshi said the questline story is to tell you what the hell happened the 5 years we were in Stasis and then another set to tell about the beastman and the primals and their signifigance, and the third is to explain the significance and threat of the Empire... Yoshi said it in the live letters, in interviews and multiple times it has been stated. I do not consider that throwaway "for the heck of it leveling" storyline, that sounds like something I am interested in and want to know what happened. On top of the class and job storyline that will be in it as well to explain their significance and place in the world. That is a lot of "I want to know what is going on" story and that they put it in text bubbles like we have seen (which I love WAY EASIER TO READ at first then if I missed something catch up in the chatbox.) but there is plenty of old school XI and XIV way of doing quests and story in XIV this time they just reward you (finally) with xp or a tangible reward. YAY!!!!! I am happy, if you like quests that don't give xp, should go back to XI, because thats the only MMO that does that today and no successful one is going to have quests just for story and no reward. XP or gear or a title is a tangible reward we want from a quest.

Edit: oh ya and as stated above they hired a lot of voice actors for ALL regions and languages now (a first for me to see done) for quest and cs's and atmosphere.... that is a HUGE step up for omg.... I am going to say it... immersion... oOoOoOoOhhhhhh I went there!

Edit 2: Have we ever known SE not to deliver a good storyline? In any of there main games... Dirge of Cerberus can go burn lolol.

[Lirion]

About the voice acting, they will only be for the mainstory. It's not fully voiced like SWTOR, reason for this was it would take a lot longer to release content for the game.

[Firon]

About the voice acting, they will only be for the mainstory. It's not fully voiced like SWTOR, reason for this was it would take a lot longer to release content for the game.

Better that way IMO i don't need every single npc talking to me about the most simple quest ever.

[Lirion]

Better that way IMO i don't need every single npc talking to me about the most simple quest ever.

Yeah I don't mind that.

[Shougun]

Better that way IMO i don't need every single npc talking to me about the most simple quest ever.

You there!

I have important task! Will you accept?

-> yes | no

Great!!!! Please collect 10 Dhamel hides and return to me once the noble deed is complete.

yes | -> no -_-;

[TomCarroll]

Better that way IMO i don't need every single npc talking to me about the most simple quest ever.

Truth. It was obnoxious when everyone and his brother spoke to you during trivial fetch quests.

It also drives up the cost of production. These people have to be paid for their work. Lots of people will spacebar through meaningless quests too, unlike a single-player game where it's part of the immersion.

[Elexia]

You just proved you don't read or know jack about ARR, Yoshi said the questline story is to tell you what the hell happened the 5 years we were in Stasis and then another set to tell about the beastman and the primals and their signifigance, and the third is to explain the significance and threat of the Empire....

That's the main storyline, they didn't say anything about that being the regular "repeatable" quest storyline.

[Firon]

That's the main storyline, they didn't say anything about that being the regular "repeatable" quest storyline.

Stop pretending XI didn't have throw away quest as well, XI had tons of quest but a lot of them was throwaway but also a lot of them was really good. That does not mean they cannot do the same thing here as well.

[Elexia]

Stop pretending XI didn't have throw away quest as well

These are your words.

That does not mean they cannot do the same thing here as well.

It doesn't mean that, but when an MMO purely built on the premise of a grand story could barely keep the quality up after awhile, you have to wonder if it's because of the volume of quests needed or if it's the developer, usually you can conclude that the volume of quests is why the quality drops off. It happens in all MMOs with a quest grind progression, there's not one MMO that didn't end up having it's quest quality drop off as you progressed.

Hell, Yoshida even said that internal testing there's still not enough, so it could go either way in terms of quality (you either want quantity or quality, it's very hard to do both as proven by recent MMOs), but people seem to be thinking we'll get hundreds of top quality quests to progress through when not even story focused MMOs achieved that.