Brevity is the soul of wit: Request to fix the horrible writing on XIV's quests

[quantumsaint]

I think the writing is one of the strong points of the game, in NPC dialogue as well as story missions. One thing that does bug me though is how all the new repair and shop NPCs just say "Well met, adventurer." How incredibly generic. They could at least plug our name in so it's a little more personalized.

[Andrien]

I hope they stop the horrible Pirate slang. It is painful reading Pirate talk.. I just skip through it...

edit:
I mean it is great listening to it, but reading it is a different thing..

[Physic]

maybe the writing is bad, maybe it is not, but consider that they didnt want to give players dialog because it may not represent the player.

SO for that situation you need either other people to do the talking, or you need to have assumed talking. What you get with your average npc is, it is assumed you are responding and prompting them for info. Also in this game setting, it appears the speaking style is in general more complicated, there are times, and social classes where this is the case in most societies. The npc he is talking to for ifrit is a learned man, probably the equivalent of a scientist or scholar, so he speaks to befit that.

Also keep in mind as far as doing a whole interactive scene thing, A some people would rather just read it, than wait for emotes, and also this is in general just a regular npc telling you stuff, its the equivalent of the random npc in town, its not a major plot moving scene.

far as charachters, yeah i love charachter development as well, but most MMOs dont have much of that. Especially when they choose not to give your charachter a voice/past/attitude. side charachters can have this, but at this point we have had very little exposition on what is probably the main storyline charachters, the most we get is probably our companion, who i was admittedly amused by.

[Liham]

I am a cutscenes lover and lore lover too
So of course i wish EVERY dialogues was amazing cutscenes dynamic and with VOICES.
But cutscenes are hard to be done >_<
So with "what they have" they are doing the best they can and focus on the importants part !

Now what i found outrageous is the small amount of "what they have" : when you see the generation and type of game FF XIV is, it would seem normal that they were more voices and cutscenes ! Not all dialgoues can be made into cutscenes but i think for FF 14 this is really too low ; ;

Type of Cutscenes :
A) CGI (opening)
B) True Cutscenes (with voices)
C) Cutscenes with no interface and no voices (which should be voiced !!)
D) Just text in game

I dont ask for cutscences of type A and B because they are hard to be made but there must be a lot more of cutscenes of type C and this one should be voiced !!!!


No ?

[Nayt]

I agree with OP, the monologue trains from the npc's are terribly dull. I found it fun during the initial missions, but the side-quests and late company quests have been pretty boring to read. And as stated, not that what they're saying is boring, but the way it's delivered.

[Mrfox0707]

I love reading the lore and back story for the quests in the game. However I do 100% fully agree that the quest NPCs are far too long winded when telling you about the quest.

I could have swore FFxi had this same problem back in the day that they had to fix... So DEV team, write a great quest story but keep it short I would say. I don't wanna have to skip the story because of it's crazy length.

[Ganvire]

Can't we all just calm our tits and have a cookie?

*casts Cookiega on thread*

[Efrye]

I like the writing in XIV a lot, and so far I enjoyed pretty much every single quest thanks to that. In other words: Don't change anything, thankyouverymuch!

[Volta]

I personally enjoy the text of quests when I take the time to read them. To say they're not well done is a stretch.

Verbose, perhaps, but you can continue to spam enter and not have an issue.

Final Fantasy has always been around strong plots. Don't encourage the developer to skimp in that aspect (not that I think they'd seriously consider it, anyway).

[Hulan]

I personally enjoy the text of quests when I take the time to read them. To say they're not well done is a stretch.

Verbose, perhaps, but you can continue to spam enter and not have an issue.

Final Fantasy has always been around strong plots. Don't encourage the developer to skimp in that aspect (not that I think they'd seriously consider it, anyway).

That is the thing, I don't think, at least I hope, that anyone is suggesting there be skimping of any kind. Quantity isn't necessarily the problem, neither is quality for that matter. It's the difference between reading an excellent autobiography or reading an excellent screenplay. Right now, FFXIV quests are like well polished biography. The writing is superb, the context is interesting but... Games aren't autobiographies, they are screenplays. What I believe "we" (being the OP and a few choice others in this thread) are saying, is that the game needs to examine it's choice in presentation.

Just look at the quest the OP posted, there is only one character, speaking over and over again with no interruption or interaction from other NPCs or environments. As I have said before, I love the writing, what I am posting here is a critique, in the most literal sense. I am offering advice on how I think they could take a good product, and make it spectacular.