Quote Originally Posted by Avarghaladion View Post
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?