The Story

[Kio]

I never understood the love for CoP story. To me, it had far too many sub branches of stories that never ultimately had anything to do what so ever to the conclusion of the story and many of the branches simply were never resolved at all.

I don't mind lots of little tales that crop of in the midst of gameplay, but there's always a special admiration if the creators are able to weave it back together into some sort of significance. The sort of "ah-hah!" moment when you realize that all those little things were quite intentional and mean something.

I get turned off more and more by Final Fantasy franchise because the story telling is becoming weak. Maybe it's a cultural thing or poor translation, but most the time the game just becomes complicated and weird. If people need to read and write essays to try to explain what it is you just played, you're doing it wrong.

But anyhow, I'm going off on a rant at this point haha. What I really feel is sort of lacking at the moment in the main story of XIV is a central cast of characters to follow around. XI did well by having a few iconic npc's to mingle about with. Most everyone will always remember the antics of Lion or Prische, but not much yet can be said for XIV.
The main story thus far wasn't really designed for that but hopefully 2.0 will have more mascot characters.

[Seif]

Completely agree. The story lacks memorable characters, theme and most of all clarity. They are also tied to the player actions in a very superficial way. In most cases there is no gameplay involved at all in the missions and your grocery list consists of listening to people talk about things that don't affect you in any way.

[lackofwords]

Spoiler:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPV8CnMYjwo#t=8m30s

But, yes it feels like the main story is really all over the place. You have garleans, something going on with the echo, then beastmen summoning primals. It might be because Yoshi is taking the story to a different direction that Tanaka was aiming for. Not to mention, it seems like they are aiming to tell a story for changing the entire face of the world when moving to 2.0.

As for allowing players to "parley" in main mission was an interesting touch, but could have been done a bit better. I've always saw it as the non-aggressive solution to missions, such as negotiation. Not all battles should be won by simply slaughtering everyone.

Such as the mission Toll of the Warden, where two beastmen tribes are bickering at each other. You are given the choice to either

1. Talk the beastmen down so they don't kill each other, via parley.
2. Kill all the beastmen

Honestly, I felt it was more morally correct to just talk them down, but it's more fun of course to just kill them all.

Granted, that not ALL situations should be viable to negotiation, such as the last main mission storyline to date. However, there still should be some situation where it is applicable.

There are a few problems with parley which made it not fun

• It requires no character progression, meaning no EXP or leveling for parley
• There are no new abilities you can earn in parley by playing parley.
• It's the same simplistic minigame you play regardless of how advance in the game you are.
• No new challenges arises from the minigame.

[Velhart]

Tell you the truth, we haven't even gotten deep into FFXIV's story enough to be disappointed. I liked where the story was going, but the cliffhanger was off putting. I understand the situation however, due to the developers changing how we transition through the story line, and we are getting more 7th Umbrel Era content through the new year.

Also, RoZ and CoP were my favorites. Especially since both their stories collided together. I agree with the other poster in here that the content should be episodic to one big story. Not leave you at a major cliffhanger, but at the same time, make us look forward to the next entry into the story.

[Jinrya-Geki]

The worst part about CoP was Prishe, now bare with me here.

She is really an adult, but the magicite stuck in her body kept her a kid.

I am a male hume paladin, a holy knight.

She decides for the sake of "showing you the magicite" which is in here chest... yeah... awkward.

Someone who is watching me would more than likely have the wrong idea.