What's your opinion about the game's story?

[Dualblade]

I can agree that ARR wasn't exactly "great", but it was good enough for me. HW has certainly been an improvement overall (Dark Knight is still one of my favorite job stories, both 30-50 and 50-60.)

I somewhat agree with the WoL being a silent protagonist being a flaw thats still going...I DON'T agree that just because its 2016 means there should not be a silent main character. It can still work for some games. But for this one, where our character is considered central to the plot rather than just being one of many of the more exceptional adventurers, it doesn't work quite as well.

[dinnertime]

I've had mixed feelings about it.

First off, the good parts I would say was mostly on 1.x and 3.x. 1.x seemed well-executed to me, doesn't have much cheesiness in the story and the cinematics were very immersive that I don't get bored of watching cutscenes, and the nice music also helped.
3.x's story felt like I had companions and I was having an adventure with them. The general story was good and the characters were likeable/memorable. The cutscenes weren't as good as 1.x but the major cutscenes had improvement from 2.x.
In short, 1.x's MSQ has a good atmosphere to it and 3.x's MSQ felt like an actual adventure with friends that FF has been about.

The bad parts have been most of 2.x and some other parts. The 2.x MSQ is a mess because it sometimes strays away from the actual story, and then you have to do fetch quests in order to continue. Examples have been the things you have to do for the Company of Heroes just to get information about Titan's location, and for your feast. The things you have to do for the Ishgardians in order to get back Cid's Airship, so you can get to Garuda. etc. There's a lot more to even name.
The characters weren't very interesting. Sure, Thancred had a moment but I still don't really like him much. I'm not someone who hates characters because they're useless but Minfilia didn't catch my interest either as a character. I kind of expected a lot from Lousioux' successor.

Both 1.x and 2.x's stories didn't feel much of an adventure with companions which 3.x had. It was more of going around the continent doing errands.
1.x lacked some action, but 2.x and 3.x felt anime-ish.

Spoilers:

I hate how they kill off characters very easily.
Gauis seemed like he didn't get the treatment he deserved. I got a good impression of him in 1.x but we was got rid of in 2.0 so quickly.
Moenbryda only got about 2 and a half patches worth of screen time. It was sad to see her go when I was already liking her.
The Sultana and Scions' "deaths" was really cheap. A cheap way to get us into Ishgard. It left a bad taste in my mouth. It was a very bad ending for 2.x and a bad way to start 3.x.
Haurchefant's death was very sudden and felt cheap. He was a character most people actually like and he gets a very cheap way of dying that he doesn't deserve. He could've died in a heroic way like fighting alongside the WoL to the bitter end or just didn't die at all. I guess it was made for the tears.
It was sad to see her go but Ysayle's death is how you make a good death scenario. It felt special...until they said the airship Ysayle destroyed got fixed in no time (and never seen it since) but that at least she bought time for her companions to escape I guess.

In the new patch, I grew to like the Warriors of Darkness but they were got rid of too soon by the writers in my opinion, with Minfilia joining them. It's an okay end, not really what I expected to happen but they really did not seem very important for where the direction was supposed to be heading which has been something that bothered me since the very beginning.
There was some stupid and predictable things like Nidhogg's eyes coming back into play. I knew throwing both of them on the same side of the bridge wasn't a good idea.

I'm honestly not much of a fan of the class/job quests. They're always a hit or miss for me.
Other than that, the story is the most I look forward to in this game. I'm very much excited about Stormblood and all the new lore!

I do wish they continued on with the city-state MSQs, even if optional. I think FFXI did something like it and had a pretty long story for each nation?
It would be nice if the other city-states and regions got some attention while there's also the MSQ you can do. Ishgard had an expansion's worth of moments, why not the other city-states?

For the silent protagonist part people are talking about: I agree, it's another bad part of the story. I'm not sure if it's just challenging for the MSQ devs to give the WoL some involvement but I do know making your character actually fight in a cutscene would be so much work for them since they have to do versions for each race, each gender + every job and update it for new jobs and races. Still, outside combat the WoL doesn't feel "alive" much.
The WoL being the main character, usually the center of attention but for it being the character the devs have the least freedom to work into cutscenes is not a good mix.

[Shurrikhan]

It seems a bit weird to me when people excuse certain multiplayer issues this game has by claiming that "it's a single-player game at heart" when the single-player components themselves are often painfully shallow imo. I can more or less get behind the general story, especially say from 2.45 to 3.2 and again in 3.4 (the end of the Dragonsong War arc felt painfully rushed for me), and its characters aren't bad by any means, but it just feels underdeveloped between the awkward 'destination' interactions, lack of any soft phasing, no player party interaction, poor NPC AI when they're you're combat companions instead, no freely explorable core NPC depth, no core NPC interactions outside of the set quests, little to no relation between MSQ activities and what else you've done, so on and so forth.

I really want to be able to explore the story and give a damn about the NPCs come 4.x. Thus far that just hasn't happened for me yet, leaving the story faint and unimmersive.

[Duelle]

On silent protagonists:

The thing with silent protags is that they need a solid cast of support characters in order to work. This is why something like, say, Chrono Trigger still managed to get us to care about everyone despite the protag being mute. I think part of the problem is that we don't have much of a strong and constant support cast. We thankfully got some of that during the MSQ for Heavensward, and hopefully we see more of it moving forward.

-----------------------------

Spoilers. You've been warned.

I've been "meh" about the whole thing, though I don't let it bother me because it's better than what WoW passes off for lore. The Scions do feel pretty throwaway to me, and I feel we've been cheated out of two actually interesting developments (one being Thancred during ARR, the other being Urianger in this latest patch). I also didn't like how they handled Moenbryda at all, but that's because I can't really care for a character that dies when I barely know them.

Then we hit the game's first loreLOL milestone, which was the resolution of the Ul'dah cliffhanger from 2.55. And yes, I'm comparing the resolution of that to forest elves stealing space ships from alien goat people.

Heavensward was nice up until we hit the FF trope of disproving religion. I was expecting Heavensward to be about both sides of the dragon war before hitting the resolution to bring the war to an end, not the overused "the faith of a nation was built on a lie" thing. Don't get me wrong; I liked it back when it was used for Final Fantasy Tactics, but it's been almost 20 years since then and it's old to the point of being ridiculous. Still plenty of good moments, and I did like the fact that Ysaele, Estinien and Alphinaud actually felt like my companions over the course of the journey.

The warriors of darkness thing sounded cool, since I expected them to do their own thing as I was doing mine. Sort of like a rivalry where they'd be active in the world like I was. And then that got sacrificed to introduce a convoluted concept (the thing with the worlds, and the source world, etc) that reminds me too much of the negative aspects of Kingdom Hearts.

[Zojha]

I personally have mixed feelings.

When I started out, I kinda liked the story, or rather, having "a" story - I liked that bit in guild wars 2, too. It's nice to have some major plot to the setting. It got soured by the fact that it's long, everything is gated behind it and thus I had to do it on six different characters. That pretty much made me hate it as a whole - I just skip it now, I don't care anymore.

To be fair, though, I wasn't exactly a big fan of the characters or storytelling before. I don't really like any of the scions and was happy to be rid of them, only for them to come back anyway (just like some other people >_>). Seeing as we get neither voice nor choices nor really act in cutscenes beyond making a dramatic step forward or drawing our weapon, my character strangely doesn't really feel like a part of the story either, despite being the main protagonist. It's no wonder people joke a beggar could beat the WoL if only he caught them in a cutscene.

The sidequests IMO tend to be more interesting, or at least entertaining. I liked the postmoogle in particular.

[silentwindfr]

i like the story soo far, do it feel like everything is perfect, maybe not. do the filler part bother me? nope, since i don't forget a point, before be the WoL i'm an adventurer a sort of handyman.... then get mission where i'm not the superduper hero allows me to not forget this point.

about the fact that our character is silent or don't show emotion is more because it's our character, is not geralt de riv or any know character, i see it like an avantar of us. do i can't answer one of them question? with my word that will be different of many people. since they have decide to go with the avatar type of hero, they can't come and begin to make our character react like they want, since it will not be our avatar anymore.
they have said while the fanfest that they will try to offer some similis choice... or difference based on the jobs we play, but honestly that all they can do for the cut scene. because honestly they are cut scene we are not in mass effect. they can't work on a tree of discution too complex...

mostly because we are in a mmorpg! not a solo game. a monk, warrior, etc... will not have the same reaction than another jobs, how adapt the talk in function of our race, origin or jobs? it will be an impossible work... especially when, they have a cycle of patch soo short.

some people find that the story is too cliché, that some character lack deepth...we did learn quite a lot about the scion overtime, if you don't care for them is your choice and your miss...

[Laerune]

Main Story Quest
The story it fine, but I do think they rushed the story in 3.4. I get the feeling that they wanted to started the Ala Mhigo storyline as soon as possible and needed to get rid of those characters in 3.4. Aside from that, I see alot of improvements, our character is showing more facial expression and we get the option to pick a dialogue, like western rpgs.

Class/Job Quest
The class/job storyline on the other hand (can not speak for DoL and DoH, but I have finished all DoW and DoM classes) realy need some improving, they are boring and most of them are fetch quests, the best storyline is the Dark Knight 30-50. I realy hope SE improves class quests in 4.0, because aside from 3 questline (PUG 1-30, SCH 30-50 and DRK 30-50) most of them were a snoozefest.

There is still alot of room for improvement, but Main Story is the one thing that SE did did well 3.0.

[Kling-Klang]

I enjoy it. I dont mind that our player character doesnt feel like the "main character", even when we are the WoL, and I am interested where the story will go from here on.

[Alleo]

This post could contain some HW spoilers! Please stop reading if you arent that far into it!

Well I did feel kinda as being part of the story even with our silent WoL until they decided to kill of a well liked character in Heavensward just for the purpose of creating drama...since then I kinda still follow the story because I am a little curious how it will end but barely anything really touches me anymore and I wont let any NPC near me anymore since I kinda have the luck that three of my most liked characters are death..

I do like some of the sidequests in the game because they tell you more about Eorzea and its people and I hope that in the future we will get more of them (just dont make them all that tragic like the little girls one..)

I never really felt much for a lot of the scions, the only ones that I like are Alphinaud, thanks to him traveling with us and having a nice character arc, and Tataru for at least trying to help the Scions in her own way. All the other scion characters felt flat for me and even HW did not do much to make me like them more. Thancred and Y'sthola are two people that I even like less now than before HW..I never hated Minfilia but I also never felt like she was a friend for the WoL so I dont really care what will happen to her. The characters I truly liked are Haurchefant, Ysayle, Moenbryda and Estinien..welp you know what happens to most of them..so in that way HW was quite the catastrophe for me.

I did like the story about the dragonsong war even though I thought that at the end it was over way to fast, the same with the WoD. I wont talk much about the U'ldah arc because that was IMO a complete disaster. It just shows that SE kinda wants to go that way only to halfway say "well lets change nothing much because that might be too complicated.." I hope for 4.0 that we might be a little more free from the scions and I did answer in that last dialog that I just want to go on adventures and fight strong enemies.

I would love to have more possibilities to answer in a dialog and that maybe sometimes it would truly change something. For example that dinner in 3.5, I did not want to go there, because for me that character is not that important for me and I did not feel like I want to party..yet even though I was able to say that I dont feel like it, I was still forced to go there and my character did not react different than the ones that wanted to go there..such things like that really take one out of the story even more..this would have been a perfect chance to just jump over that part of the story and just let us go to Fortemps directly or have a little cutscene where we see the NPC disappointed and us getting the news that we should go to Fortemps manor. After that its the same for everyone..with that it would feel more like we do have some kind of choice. At least for smaller things like the dinner it would be nice to have one..I can understand that they dont want to create x amounts of possible story lines but I am sure that something small can be achieved if they want to.

So in the end I did like and enjoyed it till that death happened and after that I was more like a spectator and even after I still liked some aspect and discussed it I never felt like I did before that point..I am also a little wary if 4.0 is just another war that the WoL will kinda solve..I am tried of politics and I fear that it will play a big part in 4.0 again...

Oh and I am also a little annoyed that we are not threated better by the city states..I mean come on, how many times have we saved their cities and Eorzea? At the end of 2.0 we where the one that defeated Gaius while the leaders and the whole scions stood outside..yet we barely get anything from them..heck at the end of the dragonsong war I did hope for some kind of recognition from Isghard for being the one that put an end to this..yet there was no party for us, some people still dont even know how we look...sometimes it would feel nice not to be so modest all the time..

And I would love if SE would stop trying to tell us that self sacrifice is the best thing ever..show at least some people being appalled by it or at least the WoL being against it..sometimes there might not be another way but they often even dont look for one..

[cammi]

Actually I'mma go more in detail. I don't care that my character doesn't talk ingame. I care that my character doesn't ACT in game movies. I hate that npcs can do all this crazy Street Fighter Anime battle crap but my character stands there like a little princess waiting to be saved. I'm the goddammed WARRIOR OF LIGHT! I save YOU! you don't save me. That is my issue with the story. Let me feel like the BA I'm posed to be. IF that means more solo instances where I have to actually fight things then bring it on. I'm posed to be the BAMF of this plot.. LET ME BE THAT. Show me, stop TELLING me.