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

[Majidah]

This you see here is a single conversation with an NPC involved in the quest It kills with fire.

Pretty much all quests in FFXIV, even the most miscellaneous ones, have this horrible unrealistic monologue-like dialog.

I've always played final fantasy titles because of the plot more than the gameplay. One of my favorite games is final fantasy tactics just because of the writing in that game...

so I'm wondering what happened with final fantasy xiv's writing.

I have nothing against the current storyline, hey, so far its great. What I do have a huge issue with, is how every time I talk to an npc I get one or two full screens filled with uninterrupted miscelaneous text.

No cutscenes, no pauses, no movement from said npc (other than a few emotes), no one even answering to these people... they just stand there and spew this word vomit in my face.
Its just unrealistic how these strangers start talking and blurting out backstory and explaining themselves for each thing they say...

I find myself just tapping through the dialog on most quests (Not in storyline missions of course), and I know that I'm not missing anything.

Final fantasy xi (yes, another lets take a look at XI's thread, why not? CoP put me to tears) had great, moving quests... what was said there was believeable and needed to be said. Silences were important too. So its not a matter of "hey, its an RPG, npcs are going to talk to you even though you are a stranger...", its about how much and how little you'd talk to a stranger, and how they all seem to ask questions and immediately answer them themselves...

And I'm still puzzled about the lack of cutscenes in quests.

So please, take this into account and correct it for 2.0 's release.

[Rentahamster]

Some people like reading lore , some people don't. It's easy to skip if you don't wanna read it.

[Majidah]

Some people like reading lore , some people don't. It's easy to skip if you don't wanna read it.

Its not about reading lore. Anyone can make up a bunch of stuff and call it lore.

FFXIV fails at delivering it.

[Seif]

Its not about reading lore. Anyone can make up a bunch of stuff and call it lore.

FFXIV fails at delivering it.

Yes the delivery is as cheap as any wow-trash quest but I honestly think the writing itself lacks any coherent theme and most importantly mood.

Every FF title had primary themes that were explored in different ways int the sidequests. Even XI that maintained the theme of repairable loss and the memories of war.

XIV main or sub-plots have no theme nor mood and the cheap presentation of the plot in the NPC-quests only serves to highlight how the story lacks any direction and emotion from it.

Where are the good writers? I think we can tell with 100% certainty that they aren't working on the XIII games... did SE fire them?

[Jennestia]

Where are the good writers? I think we can tell with 100% certainty that they aren't working on the XIII games... did SE fire them?

Huh, XIII, XIII-2 and Versus XIII (thus far) has good writing, just because you dislike it doesn't mean it's bad.

[Celtodeno]

Some people like reading lore , some people don't. It's easy to skip if you don't wanna read it.

I like reading lore, that is exactly why I agree with the OP.

[ShinChuck]

This you see here is a single conversation with an NPC involved in the quest It kills with fire.

Pretty much all quests in FFXIV, even the most miscellaneous ones, have this horrible unrealistic monologue-like dialog.

I've always played final fantasy titles because of the plot more than the gameplay. One of my favorite games is final fantasy tactics just because of the writing in that game...

so I'm wondering what happened with final fantasy xiv's writing.

I have nothing against the current storyline, hey, so far its great. What I do have a huge issue with, is how every time I talk to an npc I get one or two full screens filled with uninterrupted miscelaneous text.

No cutscenes, no pauses, no movement from said npc (other than a few emotes), no one even answering to these people... they just stand there and spew this word vomit in my face.
Its just unrealistic how these strangers start talking and blurting out backstory and explaining themselves for each thing they say...

I find myself just tapping through the dialog on most quests (Not in storyline missions of course), and I know that I'm not missing anything.

Final fantasy xi (yes, another lets take a look at XI's thread, why not? CoP put me to tears) had great, moving quests... what was said there was believeable and needed to be said. Silences were important too. So its not a matter of "hey, its an RPG, npcs are going to talk to you even though you are a stranger...", its about how much and how little you'd talk to a stranger, and how they all seem to ask questions and immediately answer them themselves...

And I'm still puzzled about the lack of cutscenes in quests.

So please, take this into account and correct it for 2.0 's release.

Yes, yes, and yes. As Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation has said, "Shakespeare wrote that 'brevity is the soul of wit'. It applies to everything, and don't tell me you're arrogant enough to claim to know better than Shakespeare."

Some people like reading lore , some people don't. It's easy to skip if you don't wanna read it.

And here's the problem: no, it is not, at least not up to standard. In virtually any other MMO, the quest text appears in a single box, I am not locked into talking with the NPC, I can simply click "accept" and move on. In FFXIV, you must manually scroll through all these screens, hope you don't inadvertently confirm while spamming the "scroll text" button, and you cannot walk away from the NPC until you do so.


The bottom line is that anyone with solid writing ability can deliver the same lore in far fewer words in a much more technically sound fashion, while still keeping the flavor and feel. We're talking writing 101 here.


Besides, I can't help but think of this when I read some of the examples, like the one in the original post...

[Cendres]

And here's the problem: no, it is not, at least not up to standard. In virtually any other MMO, the quest text appears in a single box, I am not locked into talking with the NPC, I can simply click "accept" and move on. In FFXIV, you must manually scroll through all these screens, hope you don't inadvertently confirm while spamming the "scroll text" button, and you cannot walk away from the NPC until you do so.


The bottom line is that anyone with solid writing ability can deliver the same lore in far fewer words in a much more technically sound fashion, while still keeping the flavor and feel. We're talking writing 101 here.

And here's the problem with your lame arsed box: it's completely boring and totally un-immersive.

Do not want. Thanks.

Interesting thing I've seen on the TOR forums, people complain they have to go through voiced cutscenes and want easier ways to skip through. Some people just don't want to spend five minutes experiencing the game apparently, it's all about the gogogogogogo. Which is fine, but please don't ask to water down what's already unique about these games.

[Majidah]

And here's the problem with your lame arsed box: it's completely boring and totally un-immersive.

Do not want. Thanks.

Interesting thing I've seen on the TOR forums, people complain they have to go through voiced cutscenes and want easier ways to skip through. Some people just don't want to spend five minutes experiencing the game apparently, it's all about the gogogogogogo. Which is fine, but please don't ask to water down what's already unique about these games.

FFXIV's writing isn't what's unique about it. At least not in a good way. And its not even about the gogogo.

To summarize (for the second time):

I agree.

The NPC need to be a bit more concise. They are so verbose and fond of circumlocution, full of platitudes and roundabout ways of saying the most simplest of statements that might otherwise have been conveyed in half the words and a quarter of the time. It's such a waste of my time. Mine and yours.

Maybe if they add more voiceovers, then it will encourage the writers to pull back a little bit.

I'm all for lore, but when I walk up to a ! over an NPC and get a diatribe of Old English in my face telling me his life story where all he's essentially telling me is that he needs me to deliver some parcels - I feel like the game's writer took his job a little too seriously.

It gets really bad when you can't tell the personality of one character to another. Everyone just vomits these paragraphs of ye olde English and it feels forced. For good writing, it should only take a sentence or two for players to get an idea of who they're talking to, what they're like, and what they want. Not everyone you meet randomly on the street will just give you paragraphs of info without any provocation.

At least make it a conversation, if you're going to.



You made me nearly spill my morning coffee.


(see kids,? one sentence and you know 3 things about me already. that's good writing)

There's also a nice post about how what NPCs seem to be speaking is written and not oral english. But I'm too tired to look for it at the moment... y_y

edit: here it is

I think there are several problems with NPC conversations and the way in which they are presented. I'll focus on just one, though.

In addition to unnatural verbosity, NPCs tend to use language more suitable for written as opposed to spoken English. That goes for word choice as well as sentence structure. I don't feel like I'm being spoken to. Rather, I feel like I'm reading an essay.

Take this example from the quest dialog in the OP:

"Ever since our founding, we have endeavored to archive all extant knowledge, that man might learn of his origin and destiny both."

This is a beautifully written sentence! Beautifully written. Nobody talks this way--not even very smart, very important people.

It may look OK on paper, but just try saying it out loud. Suddenly it's confusing and hard to understand. That's just not how people order their ideas when they talk. Furthermore, while I would expect that character to know the word "extant", it's unnatural to use it when speaking.

[Estellios]

One of my favorite games is final fantasy tactics just because of the writing in that game...

I hope you mean the PSP version...

I like the writing in this game.