Let Me Play as an NPC?

[Sylvina]

You can't play as an NPC becuase it stands for NON player character. as soon as you play it it ceases to be an NPC.

[Lukha]

If you mean the side-stories outside MSQ,SE has already added them on Lodestone.
The tale of dragon-something about Aymaric and Estinien’s past,well I didn’t read them though.

But wouldn't it be nice to actually get to play through those events, with pretty cutscenes and maybe even (probably not, but a cat can hope) voice acting? As the game is now, locked into the WoL's PoV, nothing like that will ever be possible.

Youi mean kill the freedom cause then it'll cause a bigger overlap that wasn't there before. Maybe I'm just not seeing it tho, but yeah I don't see the benefits to doing that. I want MORE WOL actions instead of being an NPC doing shit.. make/let ME as the WOL/main character do more things ingame please... not less. D:

The best example I can think of where the game could benefit from it is (HW MSQ spoiler)

when Aymeric goes to confront his father, and you take one path through the vault while your NPC friends go to rescue him. I realize that this was done mainly to avoid similar issues to 2.0 dungeons with a lot of cutscenes, but The whole trip through The Vault felt really empty and disjointed to me, because you missed a bunch of events that really needed to be shown for the sake of good storytelling.

There's also instances like (SB MSQ spoiler)

Thancred sneaking in to the Garlean base to look for Krille, and whatever Estinien's been doing this whole time that led him to save our bacon from being blasted extra-crispy, which could have been very interesting sequences to play through, but instead had to be confined to very brief side scenes.

I understand wanting to be the main character and do everything you possibly can, but the WoL cannot physically be everywhere at once, and there are some places they cannot reasonably be or access at all, and it would benefit the storytelling to have more options to get around that.

[Sylvina]

No thanks I hate playing as something other than my character. I play MMOs becuase I can be my own character if I wanted to play someone else I'd be playing Deus Ex Human Revolution becuase Jensen has the best pointiest beard you could probably cut diamonds with.

[Lukha]

You can't play as an NPC becuase it stands for NON player character. as soon as you play it it ceases to be an NPC.

That's just being overly pedantic, there.

No thanks I hate playing as something other than my character. I play MMOs becuase I can be my own character if I wanted to play someone else I'd be playing Deus Ex Human Revolution becuase Jensen has the best pointiest beard you could probably cut diamonds with.

...
Oh.

[Mysterysword]

I understand wanting to be the main character and do everything you possibly can, but the WoL cannot physically be everywhere at once, and there are some places they cannot reasonably be or access at all, and it would benefit the storytelling to have more options to get around that.

If you've played FF IX, you'll remember the Active Time Events they had. I know a lot of people disliked them because for some reason, they hate experiencing an FF story, but I absolutely love what they do for storytelling. And that's kind of what I want for FF XIV: the opportunity to see a story outside of the WoL's.

[Lukha]

The only thing I didn't like about that feature in XI was having to go back to your last save and re-do the section to see all of them. Otherwise it was a great idea.

I'm eternally bewildered by the people who play FF games but have no interest in the story. Sure, the gameplay is okay and all, but certainly not good enough to carry the game if you hate the story so much...

[Hikuras]

SE PLEASE stop with the stupid post limit... PLEASE. it's 2017 for godsakes....

It's not that I hate story.. but MMOS have that thing where you are part of it instead of playing a movie character you didn't make at all. So while I can understand your idea, it's better done in single player games in my opinion :c. I just don't want MORE stuff taken away from us, like it's bad enough for most of the game all we - WOL - did was 'watch" as NPCs did all the kool shit. It's like canonwise we're nothing and not even the main character. I want to FEEL like the actual main character here and not like I'm just watching NPCs do cool crap. Let ME do all that in cutscenes and gameplay. Not less. T.T

[Mysterysword]

snip

There's also a nostalgia factor in my suggestion, too - so many FF games had sections that allowed or even required you to play as someone other than the main character, not just FF IX. Of course, the gameplay was so much different back then - a turn-based battle system meant that switching to a different player character didn't really impact the gameplay as much as, say, switching to Prompto did in his Episode. And it's not like this would be "taking stuff" away from us. Given how this device has been used in previous FF games, it could instead enhance the story greatly.

For example, let's go back to FF IX: During the fall of Alexandria (no I'm not spoiler-tagging the plot of a 17-year-old game and I don't care if it was just re-released), we got to play as Garnet, rushing around the castle, giving out orders, etc, and then we got to shift perspectives to Steiner and Beatrix right in the thick of the action, which helped to broaden the player's perspective of the invasion so much.

Also, we got to play as Beatrix, and that was sick as hell.

Now, let's apply this to FF XIV: Say that, in the Naadam fight, you were given two options when entering it. You could either play as yourself, normally, or, for that fight only, you got to switch perspectives and play as Hien, alongside your WoL. There could be all sorts of different things to make it unique and challenging: Hien doesn't have the Echo and can't see AoE markers, for example.

Or, imagine if, after playing through Doma Castle as the WoL, there was a small section where you got to play as either Hien, Gosetsu, or Yugiri, cutting their own path through the dungeon.

And finally, having the WoL actually fight in cutscenes would be too much work to animate, really. I get that it would be great to see us not being useless, but SE would have to account for every single job there is in the game, and how it would handle each battle they animate. In all honesty, it's best to just accept that, as the WoL, you're the main character of the story you log on to play every day, but you aren't necessarily the main character of the actual story. If we were the actual main character of SB, Lyse wouldn't have had to exist, and I wouldn't have to resist the urge to slap her stupid lying face every time I saw her.

(also: inb4 we get Final Fantasy XIV: Episode Estinien)