Quote Originally Posted by OccamX View Post
Here's my issue. Remember how many people hated FF13 because you were basically stuck in a tunnel-shaped game experience for 20 hours?
Nay, FF13's complaint was that it had "nothing to explore" until you hit the endgame. Most pre-FF7 Final Fantasy games opened up the world the minute you got the airship, which was also always near the middle of the game. The along came FF7 and we got a string of games were "pre-rendered" and thus the exploration got nerfed dramatically, and people hate "overworld random battles" ... that's why they gave you the airship to use. FF7 and FF8, still give you "an airship" around the mid-point of the game. FFX, closer to the end. FFX-2 flipped it around and gave you the Airship right at the beginning... and you could do a lot of optional content while holding off on the MSQ. FFXIII didn't give you an airship at all, and the only explorable place was the end-game... and quest nodes... not NPC's. It felt like the endgame was pointless optional quests. This is what happens when you don't let the players explore the world at their own pace. All the optional stuff serves no purpose once you finish the game.


Quote Originally Posted by OccamX View Post
I like what you said. Yes, perhaps I am rushing through the game. I just don't know what else to do other than the story. To me, clicking through dialog boxes does not feel like a game, at all. So when that's 90% of the game, it just gets tiring for me.

Perhaps I do not see all of my options. The only options I see myself having are:
(1) story story story, so I can play with my friends eventually
(2) level other classes
(3) crafting
The Final Fantasy Experience is story-first... sometimes at the cost of gameplay. FF1-4 were inherently more level-grind-padded because of limited cartridge capacity. FF4 was the first with a character driven plot, it was also originally started on the NES. FF5 and FF6 were started on the SNES and have huge storylines and a variety of characters with their own storylines. FF6 IMO is the best 16-bit era RPG aside from Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG... which were ALL also by Squaresoft.

Compare the complaints about Final Fantasy games to the complaints about XenoSaga, or Tales of Symphonia. Where you could NOT EVER skip the cutscenes. If you died at whatever combat sequence followed the 20 minute long cutscene... you had to sit through it again, and again. Most Final Fantasy games let you skip the cutscenes and had save points immediately after them.

There comes a point where the story starts to interfere with the gameplay when the GAME ITSELF is forcing you to repeat non-skippable content repeatedly. Currently the only thing in FFXIV that comes close to this kind of irritating behavior are the "storyline" cutscenes that are interstitial to the dungeons. If players don't click the "skip cutscene content I've already seen thank you very much" tickbox then the party constantly has to wait, or proceed without the players watching the cutscenes. Fortunately for HW, they made the final boss a Trial alone instead of a 8-man raid with half a dozen cutscenes on the way.

If someone is spending money on this game and is not enjoying the storyline, they are wasting their money on this game and should be playing something else. There are also people playing other MMORPG's that would rather play FFXIV but can't/won't because they don't have the time commitment to pay for a subscription. That's why I never got into WoW... I was not willing to pay money to subscribe to a game I wasn't even fond of the lore for, no matter how popular it was. Same goes with freemium games with garbage fedex quests... there is no damn way I'm paying for cash shop items to "expediate" my experience to catch up with my friends. I'm either going to play it and enjoy it, or I'm just going to silently quit it while my "friends" don't even notice I'm missing.

It's hard to get friends to switch to other games. So may as well pick ones that everyone likes. When there is a cost commitment to switching, people are much less willing to sink that cost.

With WoW all but turning itself into a Freemium experience with it adopting the EVE-style RMT BS, I think FFXIV may be the only MMORPG that hasn't fallen into the Freemium trap. If FFXIV ever pulls this "instant level 90, get gil from the cash shop" nonsense, I'm giving up on MMORPG's. At that point the MMORPG becomes a casino experience.