Lore, FFXI or FFXIV

[Keramory]

I understand what you're saying, xiv goes out of its way to tell their stories, of what they have anyway.

I think xi had a better structure in general though. Even from the bear beginning.

3 starting cities. One a kingdom, one a republic, one a federation. Sounds Kidish but it worked. Then there was juneo, placing it all together and the city everyone meets regardless of where they started.

Then the crystal war. Beastmen vs us. Ultimate bad guy, the shadow lord! King of the beastmen armies! Each beastmen type affiliated with a city, more or less controlled by the kindred, the shadow lords people. There was a structure for both sides.

And you could feel the aftermath and the still real threat of that war. I was from San. Orcs were scary as a new player. Going into that first outpost was terrifying at first. I had the feeling I could die in there. They played that all well.

I feel like Ffxiv tried to copy this but it by no means played off the same.

[Hinoto-no-Ryuji]

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Which is all fine and good, but my issue wasn't that you can do anything whenever, but instead that the game tosses you into everything without you having a say in the matter, and whether you've established the context you need to enjoy it or not. A bunch of nonsense being thrown at me doesn't make me want to pursue it further - at best, it's a tedious roadblock to whatever I'm trying to do at that time, and at worst it destroys any narrative flow that the game might otherwise have. XIV clearly marks story quests and gives you the option to start them whenever; XI has nothing like the former and outright forces the opposite of the latter. And while I'm sure that XI's refusal to use such petty things as "quest markers" is more immersive for some, the alternative it offers results in very poor storytelling structure.

[CyrusArjuna]

The thing that really grinded my gears about XI was some of the time sponge gating they did. Having to wait for JP midnight on ToAU missions, having to do story sidequests for WotG, or having to have a certain amount of Coalition fame for SoA kinda sucked lol. Despite that though the game still holds a special place in my heart.

[Kallera]

I spend a lot of time at work on wiki during down time, and have been recently going through both ffxi and Ffxiv lore and storylines through various expansions and what not.
Now there's always been debates and topics conparing the two games gameplay, classes, mechanics and what not... But I was curious... What do many find different/better/worse when comparing the two games rich stories and lore?

it eventually came to be that a lot of things I wanted to do in ffxi were inaccessable, I also wasn't feeling connected to anyone anymore. storywise I remember hating aht urghan and everyone in it, with a passion, and didn't have much love for Prishe. i liked stories like the Fellow questline, a lot of stuff in zilart, and what i could get through in wotg.

ffxiv, I like the players, but the story and some details of the game just haven't sat right with me since 2.x. I enjoyed being an adventurer in 1.0, but I don't like being "The Warrior of Light". I like my GC Chocobo but miss my path companion. I was obsessed with completing coil, but I was obsessed with completing coil. without connecting with people , even in some way, outside of the grind, I would have left a while back.

I guess In both games I feel more attached to personal stories involving characters lives, more than "destiny is destiny", "we must crush the darkness" bits.

[Nalien]

JP midnight, as much as I loathed it at the time, did provide a fairly nice narrative function... It gave events more weight, as you couldn't just jump forwards with the plot... As much as I loved 3.2, events did move ridiculously quickly...

We had a disaster at Falcon's Nest, then did the Grand Melee, then back to Falcon's Nest ready to put that show back on despite the previous issues... Knocked all that out in a matter of minutes... It left me going "How would the general population even know about the Grand Melee? We literally just decided to do it and now we're back here doing this like nothing happened...", sure NPCs mentioned it, but considering I'd only just done it literally 5 minutes prior, I had a hard time believing that...

Were this XI? We'd have had a disaster at Falcon's Nest, then had to wait for JP midnight to let things sink in... Then we'd do the Grand Melee! Then wait for JP midnight again... Then we read the mood in Ishgard a day later and the event is back on!

You know... I actually wouldn't mind that... Right now I just blow through the story in a day and I'm stuck waiting until the next major patch... Throw in JP midnight and the plot lasts a bit longer at least... It's a shame content tends to be locked behind story progression here, too... That was probably the biggest issue I had with JP midnight in XI, and I likely see no issue with it here because I'm not playing catch-up with this game... Though I'm also sure a large part of it was just how utterly inane some of the JP midnight waits were...

On that subject of ToAU though, remember how you had to wear specific attire before you could have an audience with the Empress in ToAU? Damn I miss little things like that... How much better 2.55 would have played out had we a system like that... Sadly we can't even unequip our weapons though, so that goes completely out the window...

Fame is definitely a mechanic I'm glad to see the back of, even if Beast Tribe dailies do a similar thing... I think here it works because the "Fame" quests are so closely tied to the story progression of the tribes, where as in XI I was turning in bat wings and crystals so I could get enough Fame to do the next Nation quest? lolwut?

[CyrilLucifer]

I agree. While at the time I really found JP midnight obnoxious, but after playing XIV and how the MSQ really feels like I'm doing nothing but pushing forward, I think XI's breaks after big events were rightly placed.

For example, I'm really of the belief that we should have taken some "off time" after the Vault, not just rushed into Bismarck. You can't just run the WoL into the ground; their mental stability is important, too.

I think the way SE does it now in XI, where it's one in-game day, works better as a balance. You're still getting the sense of time passing as you recover, but you don't have to wait that long.

[LineageRazor]

Fame is definitely a mechanic I'm glad to see the back of, even if Beast Tribe dailies do a similar thing... I think here it works because the "Fame" quests are so closely tied to the story progression of the tribes, where as in XI I was turning in bat wings and crystals so I could get enough Fame to do the next Nation quest? lolwut?

The fame mechanic exists in FFXIV, in a way, and is tied in to the Main Scenario. The game tells you from the start that as you gain reknown, more and more people will be willing to trust you to solve their problems. Translated, this means that the more you progress in the Main Scenario, the more sidequests will open up - which was, for the most part, what the fame mechanic was all about in FFXI, as well, a way to open sidequests (though it did come with a few other perks, such as slight discounts on goods bought from NPCs in the areas where you had high fame).

I'd say that the only way that the fame system in this game could be considered disappointing, is that it's built in so thoroughly that you don't really even notice it. You have no choice but to max out your fame, whereas doing so in FFXI was an optional thing that required a lot of grinding.

That said, fame could also be quite silly in FFXI. Because it can be increased through grinding, it was entirely possible to become the Hero of the City (the highest level of fame) by repeating extremely menial quests. You can just imagine the PC dialogue:

Townsfolk #1: Hey, look, it's <player name>!
Townsfolk #2: <player name>??? Isn't that the chick who gave Secodiand all those bat wings?
Townsfolk #1: None other! Her ability to cut down level 2 bats to hand over their wings to a superstitious git to make charms to ward off evil is second to none! Why, I'd imagine she's given the fellow enough wings to fashon a thousand of the gristly trinkets by now!
Townsfolk #2: Truly a greater hero San d'Oria has never known!

[CyrusArjuna]

Maybe the breakneck pace at which we can do the MSQ kinda ties into some theories about how the WoL (us) is going through some rough times when it comes to mental health? :O

But to be more serious, I suppose the JP midnight stuff wasn't really all that bad if you were doing it as it came out like Nalien said...but having gone back to XI a bit before RoV came out and rushing through the stories...those breaks were killer. It was especially annoying since the ToAU jobs had crafted AF pieces that were tied to the same JP midnight junk still! Of course if you were a smart BLU you'd get the hands made first and maybe get the other crafted pieces for vanity.

...I miss Blue Mage XI's was probably the most badass iteration of it in the series

[Khalithar]

I felt FFXI was definitely more immersive and pulled you in to it's world over time as you talked to NPC's and did the various story missions and learned about the background of what happened to the different races. The San D'oria storyline told you about the creation of an entire continent, showed you the current infighting in the royal family, and showed you a great deal of what life was like for them in their war against the orcs.

The class storylines were memorable for me also, Zeid in particular stood out as my mentor and his final words always stuck with me when I was RPing my character and I still remember them now and I'm going to quote them here because they're awesome, "if you ever doubt the path you have chosen, look at your blade and ask yourself, does it shine with true darkness?" It was a little awkward doing the level 50 story quests as a 60+ though since you do the drk storyline and then you meet Zeid in the 50 stuff and he doesn't know you... but I digress. Or the pld story quests where you meet the strict dad and his son and help them out to.

The storylines and lore from FFXI that stood out to me most were the drk storyline, san d'oria storyline, and all of CoP where you learn the truth of the evil god. I was so sad when it ended as well, no more adventures with Prishe or Tenzen (at the time) and beating CoP when it was still considered hard as a dark knight which everyone had said couldn't beat CoP but I managed to do it without being carried. Then after that going to Aht Urgan, the entire area was really interesting, the different classes had an interesting lore, the monsters and enemies were pretty cool also, from the chigoe infested mammoths to the troll mercenaries and the mamool ja.

[SinSiew79]

All I will say is I hate how dumbed-down XIV is compared to XI. XI actually had difficult things you had to achieve, like going from Windy to Jeuno that first time. It was nerve-wrecking. But thanks to (and im probably an old grouch now) what i see is a massive influx of WoW gamers into this game, SE had to dumb it down, cause "everybody" kept bitching and whining that "things are far too hard, i cant figure stuff out/things are too hard, Im not used to having to think" (sorry; but thats how I feel, I'm sure thats is alot of exWoWers that also likes a good challenge). I feel that SE toning down things in this game, as opposed to the difficulty of XI, made this a lesser game then what it could have been, and tbh its kinda runing the game as it stands today for me.