SE enough of the treadmill, please make the game more interesting!

[WinterSolstice]

Most people need to take a break from a MMO every now and again. Modern gamers who rush through content, don't read text, and just focus on progression progression progression end up playing too much due to lack of self-control. Then they wind up hating the game and seeing more faults than the game truly has. So do yourself a favor, take a break, and come back when you're ready. The game will still be here for you.

By the way, XIV has far more things to do than "gear up". You just might need to play the game with a different mindset to realize that.

Just my opinion, best of luck with whatever you decide to do.

[Wobble]

I have to agree with the OP, I have been capping my tomes but it really doesn't take long. I do feel good when I get a gear upgrade the. Just think what's the use when it's going to be outdated before I finish gearing or by the next patch?
________

end up playing too much due to lack of self-control. Then they wind up hating the game and seeing more faults than the game truly has.

Or are they seeing all the faults more clearly because they play more?

[Fornix]

Modern gamers who rush through content, don't read text, and just focus on progression progression progression end up playing too much due to lack of self-control.

I focus heavily on progression, and play quite a lot. However, none of this has to do with a lack of self-control. Just a matter of time availability. Next to working 46 hours a week, sporting 20 hours a week and sleeping roughly 50 hours a week there's still 52 hours remaining for other stuff to do. And when there's nothing else of interest to fill that time with, FFXIV gets to do it for a sizeable portion. If something else comes by, it's very easy to let FFXIV pass by. And I know numerous players for whom this is very similar.

Not reading text in this game also has nothing to do with simply being progression focussed. I am progression focussed in every game I play, MMO or not. Skipping on text has all to do with the quality of story. And as SE was sending me out as an errand boy for the Sylph still as I was closing in on endgame, it was enough for me. The story in this game has been utter crap straight from the start and all way through to that point, it is very unlikely to get any better beyond that. So I stopped reading.

If SE wants their story to be enticing and worthy enough to read, they should actually have given a damn about it.

[Yhoiryo]

The gear treadmill isn't totally the problem I feel, every mmo has gear that you'll need to grind out to perform better, the problem really lies within the lack of "different" gear.

Basically every job in this game will be the same gear wise save for relic weapons and how people want to spec them, maybe accessories to with materia but that's it. It's very bland as you'll know that once you get all the "best gear" that someone else on the same job as you will have the same set of gear with no difference.

FFXI had the option of having so many choices for gear, certain gear enhanced abilities or shortened cooldowns, raised your elemental defense more, increased your attack speed, increased the number of hits you could put out, ect ect. This way players could build around certain endgame content or for any other thing that they'd want to do, it added interesting variety because players would have varying gear setups even after you had gotten a good amount of endgame gear, and there was plenty of that to go around as well, not just "Oh this 1 set is the best at the moment till the next patch of ilvlxxx gear."

I'd be much happier if instead of adding a higher gear level items SE added same gear level items with different stats that maybe enhanced different abilities or any other thing instead of just slapping on an extra +xx amount of str/vit/dex/int blah blah blah.

[WinterSolstice]

And as SE was sending me out as an errand boy for the Sylph still as I was closing in on endgame, it was enough for me. The story in this game has been utter crap straight from the start and all way through to that point, it is very unlikely to get any better beyond that. So I stopped reading.

If SE wants their story to be enticing and worthy enough to read, they should actually have given a damn about it.

I see this argument about the story quite a lot. It's typically from people that actually don't give it much thought - but not always.

In most good stories, the hero tends to do quite a lot of menial shit. Seriously, pick up near any critically acclaimed book in the genre of your choice and see for yourself. This is because a story that only focuses on action or epic shit ceases to be a story at all. If you want an example, look at any of "The Expendables" movies. Or anything at all by Michael Bay, really. Is there a lot of epic shit? Yes. Do the heroes ever do anything menial? No. Is the story good? ...what story?

The Warrior of Light in the story of FFXIV is portrayed to be a helpful and humble hero. Somebody that understands some of the inner-workings of politics and understands it's not just about fight this, fight that, fight more. The "errand boy" stuff will always be there in near any MMO. Why? Because they're easy to make.

The thing is, if you actually bothered to pay attention to the entire story, there are very good reasons for you to be the one running those errands. It not only fits with the story, but it embellishes it. It makes the story seem more like a story, and that your character is an actual person, rather than just some walking silent death machine.

In the end, the story shows that true heroes get where they are by doing whatever they can, helping in any way possible. And yes, that means being sent to the Sylphs because of your relations with them. That means talking to political figures about bullshit. And while you are running around, being an "errand boy", the game is foreshadowing events to come.

However, most people can't see this. Why? Because they're the ones that have to do it. And they find it irksome because they refuse to see the reasoning behind it. The story that SE crafted is much like the story in a book, and it involves a lot of epic nonsense as well as political/menial stuff. Not saying you have to like it, but please don't call the story "utter crap" just from your own lack of understanding.

[Avarghaladion]

I see this argument about the story quite a lot. It's typically from people that actually don't give it much thought - but not always.

In most good stories, the hero tends to do quite a lot of menial shit. Seriously, pick up near any critically acclaimed book in the genre of your choice and see for yourself. This is because a story that only focuses on action or epic shit ceases to be a story at all. If you want an example, look at any of "The Expendables" movies. Or anything at all by Michael Bay, really. Is there a lot of epic shit? Yes. Do the heroes ever do anything menial? No. Is the story good? ...what story?

The Warrior of Light in the story of FFXIV is portrayed to be a helpful and humble hero. Somebody that understands some of the inner-workings of politics and understands it's not just about fight this, fight that, fight more. The "errand boy" stuff will always be there in near any MMO. Why? Because they're easy to make.

The thing is, if you actually bothered to pay attention to the entire story, there are very good reasons for you to be the one running those errands. It not only fits with the story, but it embellishes it. It makes the story seem more like a story, and that your character is an actual person, rather than just some walking silent death machine. XIV's numbers are hardly jaw-dropping to begin with and they really don't jive with the visible in game population and participation rates.

In the end, the story shows that true heroes get where they are by doing whatever they can, helping in any way possible. And yes, that means being sent to the Sylphs because of your relations with them. That means talking to political figures about bullshit. And while you are running around, being an "errand boy", the game is foreshadowing events to come.

However, most people can't see this. Why? Because they're the ones that have to do it. And they find it irksome because they refuse to see the reasoning behind it. The story that SE crafted is much like the story in a book, and it involves a lot of epic nonsense as well as political/menial stuff. Not saying you have to like it, but please don't call the story "utter crap" just from your own lack of understanding.

It's the same thing they did in XI but in XI they did it well. The "I am an adventurer on an aduous journey" aspects were well punctuated via intelligent applications of seemingly simple but iconic fights, as should be expected in a RPG. Where there weren't fights there were actually involved quests involving new and mysterious facets of the game, like having to scale the side of a mountain, run a maze, sneak through hyper-deadly zones to acquire specific items etc. XIV is go from point A to point B -> repeat. In XIV we get the same "arduous journey" but the punctuation is in the form of riems of politcal dialog and trash content "encounters" that are over as fast as they start. Yes, the errand boy aspect is important but so is the way it's presented. The politics doesn't have to be an expositional nightmare. It never was in XI or any other RPG I've played.

It's not about being right or wrong, but whether you are having fun playing the game. The whole point of gaming is enjoyment. It's been a full year now and fanboyism has it's limits, see SWTOR, so millions aren't playing because they are just waiting for the xpac but are doing so because they are actually having fun with whatever they are doing in the game.

Or they're caught in the grind. Not like human beings are suckers for repetition or anything... and XIV content is carefully calculated to that effect. Ideally, a game wouldn't have multi-page threads like this but it does and there are enough people who take issue. The alternative to intelligent feedback and rebuttal is the slow dying process experienced MMO gamers are used to seeing.

[Nalien]

were well punctuated via intelligent applications of seemingly simple but iconic fights, as should be expected in a RPG

What iconic fights would those be, exactly? I'm having a real hard time thinking of any except the main hitters like the Zilart brothers and Promathia... Treasures had it's fair share throughout I guess. Actually, Treasures was great in that regard, but then again it was its own independent story. Final Fantasy XI up to Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia was a beginning/middle/end sort of deal, as is the existing A Realm Reborn story, and I'd say what we've gotten in this game so far is much better than vanilla XIs "So this is your nations story OHNEVERMINDGOKILLTHESHADOWLORD where were we..." followed by "Lets retcon the ending to that Shadow Lord stuff" for Rise of the Zilart...

Yes Chains of Promathia was amazing, but it was the ending. It's meant to be amazing. The beginning is not, it's meant to establish the world and all it's players. I can honestly say I've enjoyed the Primal fights far more than I enjoyed Rank 2.3 or Rank 5.1 in XIs original story, both in terms of memorability (dem songs) and overall enjoyment, and while I find shit like "Go get Tataru her pickaxe" to be annoying, I find it orders of magnitude less annoying than that thrice damned Sacrarium mission, and all the other Chains missions like it (were they meant to build the world up? They made me hate it, that's all I can say), though that isn't a fair comparison, but I still prefer looking for Tataru more enjoyable than The Rescue Drill and other such awful missions in XI. Most of Chains of Promathia felt like I was trying to read a great book, but the author kept punching me in the face to be honest. Was it a great feeling to finally be done with such awful places as Sacrarium? Sure. I'm sure captives with Stockholm Syndrome also feel pleased when their captor praises them instead of beating them, too. Such places did not enhance the story, they ruined it as far as I'm concerned. I look back on the (handful of) amazing fights and finale with nostalgia, but I brush the rest of it away simply because of what a damn pain it was. Not once have I thought back to Sacrarium and smiled, if I wasn't a bored teenager I'd probably never have passed it, or any of the other such dull pieces of mission fluff XI had to offer.

Only issue I have with A Realm Reborns story is the small map means we end up treading the same places fairly often all the damn time, which sucks, but hey, they did rebuild the world in an astonishingly short amount of time, so I can forgive them for that.

[Avarghaladion]

What iconic fights would those be, exactly? I'm having a real hard time thinking of any except the main hitters like the Zilart brothers and Promathia... Treasures had it's fair share throughout I guess. Actually, Treasures was great in that regard, but then again it was its own independent story. Final Fantasy XI up to Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia was a beginning/middle/end sort of deal, as is the existing A Realm Reborn story, and I'd say what we've gotten in this game so far is much better than vanilla XIs "So this is your nations story OHNEVERMINDGOKILLTHESHADOWLORD where were we..." followed by "Lets retcon the ending to that Shadow Lord stuff" for Rise of the Zilart...

Yes Chains of Promathia was amazing, but it was the ending. It's meant to be amazing. The beginning is not, it's meant to establish the world and all it's players. I can honestly say I've enjoyed the Primal fights far more than I enjoyed Rank 2.3 or Rank 5.1 in XIs original story, both in terms of memorability (dem songs) and overall enjoyment, and while I find shit like "Go get Tataru her pickaxe" to be annoying, I find it orders of magnitude less annoying than that thrice damned Sacrarium mission, and all the other Chains missions like it (were they meant to build the world up? They made me hate it, that's all I can say), though that isn't a fair comparison, but I still prefer looking for Tataru more enjoyable than The Rescue Drill and other such awful missions in XI. Most of Chains of Promathia felt like I was trying to read a great book, but the author kept punching me in the face to be honest. Was it a great feeling to finally be done with such awful places as Sacrarium? Sure. I'm sure captives with Stockholm Syndrome also feel pleased when their captor praises them instead of beating them, too. Such places did not enhance the story, they ruined it as far as I'm concerned. I look back on the (handful of) amazing fights and finale with nostalgia, but I brush the rest of it away simply because of what a damn pain it was. Not once have I thought back to Sacrarium and smiled, if I wasn't a bored teenager I'd probably never have passed it, or any of the other such dull pieces of mission fluff XI had to offer.

Only issue I have with A Realm Reborns story is the small map means we end up treading the same places fairly often all the damn time, which sucks, but hey, they did rebuild the world in an astonishingly short amount of time, so I can forgive them for that.

Don't get me wrong, it's getting better, like WinterSolstice said, and non-main scenario plot is decent. I think the primary issue with the main scenario aside from the tedium is the ludonarrative dissonance. Plot says "zomg we need to fear this swarm of evil" -> character procedes to single handledly decimate hundreds of thousands of said evil's minions. Aside from that I'd agree with you that it's thus far at least on par if not better than vanilla XI. That being said, I do expect a P2P game to learn from it's own company's past experiences and they should know how to make it at least on par with XI expansions, presentation wise.

It would help immensely if instead of the same generic "the person you need to talk to is beside an overturned wagon/is a traitor/needs help/is unconcious" -> get ambushed by the same 3 humanoid trash NPCs that always ambush you they'd just give the errand boy encounters some flavour. The last trash encounter in 2.4 I thought was alright thanks to them giving it a battleground feel and the addition of ninjas in the mix and all. XI errand boy encounters were kept fresh and fluid though. We rarely got generic mobs, we'd get special quest NMs like the Opo threesome or the pots, or the Manticores, and such. They put care into making sure it didn't get stale. My experience with CoP was opposite your though. It felt challenging without being overly difficult and I never felt frustrated. It goes with my earlier comment in XIV that our world is just waaaayyyy too safe. If they'd find a middle ground where players need to at least pay a little bit of attention when they run errands I think everyone could be pleased. The addition of sneak/invis, for me, would be welcome.

Yes, you're right that another big part of it is how tiny our damn sandbox is. Even with our (imo) disturbingly slow movement speed, it's way too small.

Edit: So yes, to rephrase, it's only the main scenario script I find to be lacking. Most of the class/DoH/DoL stories are very well done, Hildebrande is awesome, beast quests are pretty good, coil is good (and should be more readily accessible to everyone considering how fundamental it is to the plot) and CT/ST story is quite good. Come to think of it I'm surprised Main Scenario storytelling isn't as on point as it could be. The secondary plots are actually one of the reasons I'm holding out for future improvements and I especially like that all of the class quests are left wide open for future development with a wink to the audience.

[WinterSolstice]

It's the same thing they did in XI but in XI they did it well. The "I am an adventurer on an aduous journey" aspects were well punctuated via intelligent applications of seemingly simple but iconic fights, as should be expected in a RPG. Where there weren't fights there were actually involved quests involving new and mysterious facets of the game, like having to scale the side of a mountain, run a maze, sneak through hyper-deadly zones to acquire specific items etc. XIV is go from point A to point B -> repeat. In XIV we get the same "arduous journey" but the punctuation is in the form of riems of politcal dialog and trash content "encounters" that are over as fast as they start. Yes, the errand boy aspect is important but so is the way it's presented. The politics doesn't have to be an expositional nightmare. It never was in XI or any other RPG I've played.

Hopefully once (if) they decide to move away from the simplistic style of game-play that's friendly towards people new to the genre, that will open up ways in which the filler content of story lines is presented. Or even sooner, since they technically can if they have the creative power behind it.

However people need to absolutely understand exactly the point that you stated: The errand boy aspect is important. Just recognizing this fact makes the tedious bits not as tedious (for most).

Also, they really seem to be getting better at presenting the story line as time goes on. There is a nice amount of humor in 2.4's main scenario...hopefully it's a sign of better things to come?