FFXIV shows what's wrong with MMOs (Not what you think)

[RiyahArp]

They kind of have their issues, though. They can reuse things a bit too much if they aren't careful; in Stormblood there are a ton of "lovable loser needs your help to discover their hidden talent and save their village" sidequests. The "outcast remnant must deal with their larger, tempered/evil cousins" makes up all but two of the beast tribe quests. And of course, nodding. They are consistently good otherwise, but it must be hard to do the sheer volume of story they do.

[Vhailor]

Because of how well it tells a story. The MSQ is one long continuous chain from the moment you first login at level 1, all the way to max level. And it's brilliant. No other game in the West - that I know of - does that. In SWTOR, you have your class story which goes from 1-50, but that's it. After 50, it's the same story for everyone.

I find myself fully engrossed and engaged in this game. I think about it even when I'm not logged in playing it.

Then I come to these forums and see non-stop complaining about everything. And as someone coming from WoW and other Western MMOs, I truly wonder if you guys know how great you have it. Honestly.

MMOs in the West are having a tough time. Mostly because it's all about ilvls and/or PvP ratings. FFXIV is about the story. And that's rare these days.

Hope you guys recognize that in between your constant complaining.

Many of us do. Speaking for myself, the storyline is the only game-related component that I stick around for. That said... a few other notes for me.

(1) I don't think the quality of the storyline arises from its continuous nature. FFXI had storytelling that matched or exceeded XIV, in my estimation, and that game split it into parallel chunks. I think the storytelling quality arises from the fact that SE has a good development team for it, albeit their writers use about 50% more words than necessary at times.

(2) The storyline does very little for my day-to-day immersion. It simply isn't linked to the game world very significantly. While I'm doing main scenario quests, sure, I'm invested - but as soon as they're done, they go on the back burner again. This isn't a complaint or critique directed at SE, but it's for this reason that I disagree, to a large extent, with your assertion that FFXIV's players have such a great thing on their hands. Storylines are quite compartmentalized in MMOs, even FFXIV; good ones add to the experience, sure, but it doesn't make up for other lacks.

(3) I also disagree with the assertion that FFXIV is about story. Or rather, I think it's selectively* about story. When new expansions launch, I agree 100% - and I don't think it's any coincidence that these initial launch periods draw so many players back to the game for awhile. Afterward, however, the story takes a back seat. I mean, really, we get what, a few hours of main scenario quests every three months? That's a pretty light touch. FFXIV is hardly a story-driven narrative right now, for example. There's no feeling of 'story' when grinding Roulettes, or crafting, or gardening, or messing around in Eureka.

Finally, and this is certainly a matter of perspective, but I don't hold XIV's story up on much of a pedestal, personally. It's good by MMO standards, but it's average at best when put up against single-player titles. The impact it has on individual players really varies as a result. I am glad that you enjoy the storyline, and find FFXIV immersive! Just realize that its quality is very much in the eyes of the beholder, even from a storyline perspective.

[Vahlnir]

This game does a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong. The story is...not high quality, I will say that much. That's not to say it's bad, some people rather enjoy it. I play the game for many reasons...but 1 of them isn't necessarily the story. I do keep myself caught up every patch though because I like to know what's going on. It does have its moments. Again, not bad, but I wouldn't call it this amazing FF story when...we've seen better both in XI and in other FF titles. Imo, HW's opening patch was their best so far in this game from start to finish. SB felt way too rushed.

[NephthysVasudan]

Because of how well it tells a story. The MSQ is one long continuous chain from the moment you first login at level 1, all the way to max level. And it's brilliant. No other game in the West - that I know of - does that. In SWTOR, you have your class story which goes from 1-50, but that's it. After 50, it's the same story for everyone.

I find myself fully engrossed and engaged in this game. I think about it even when I'm not logged in playing it.

Then I come to these forums and see non-stop complaining about everything. And as someone coming from WoW and other Western MMOs, I truly wonder if you guys know how great you have it. Honestly.

MMOs in the West are having a tough time. Mostly because it's all about ilvls and/or PvP ratings. FFXIV is about the story. And that's rare these days.

Hope you guys recognize that in between your constant complaining.

And here i thought I was the only one who saw this...... go figure.

[Fhaerron]

After 50, it's the same story for everyone.

Not sure if I play a different game but here in XIV the MSQ is the same for everybody too ...

Then I come to these forums and see non-stop complaining about everything. And as someone coming from WoW and other Western MMOs, I truly wonder if you guys know how great you have it. Honestly.
MMOs in the West are having a tough time. Mostly because it's all about ilvls and/or PvP ratings. FFXIV is about the story. And that's rare these days.

Again I'm not sure if I play a different game but here I'm always looking to get better and better gear (higher gearscore, unless of course the stats are bad and then I settle with lower gs weapon), I do not play PvP myself but I know some people of the small minority that do play PvP here and are always looking to get a higher score. Like I should just leech and do nothing and get a bad score?

Yes it's about the story, I mean it's a Final Fantasy game ... The reason I bought this (and all the other FF games) IS for the story. Even so, there's quite some annoying filler in this one, for peole who played this game since the beginning it's not so dull but for people who start the game right now you'll hear them complaining about the long ARR slog MSQ's, but yeah now you can buy a skip potion!

Guild Wars 2 is pretty story driven too, and I have to say I'm actually surprised how they are able to keep up that living world content updates without requiring a sub. But yeah, Anet is less greedy then SE I presume and they have less projects where they have to inject cash into.

MMOs in Asia are having a tough time as well, there are dozens of those F2P trash mmo games.


So we should not complain at all and not let SE know if they do something that we don't like? We should just let them do as we please and instead of telling what we like just stop playing? This game will be dead soon then. There are trolls everywhere but a lot of those complaints are actually legit and are made by people who want to keep playing this game for much longer.

I don't play GW2 anymore (or not actively anymore), I just don't really like the combat and skill system in that game. I've played quite some MMO's but the ones I played/like the most are WoW (12 years, +15K hours) & XIV (About 4 years with 2.5K hours).

I'm not subbed to WoW currently since I've taken a break and I just don't really have time for it with my full time job, evening classes playing this game and re-playing XV (windows version) and some other single player games that takes a long time to finish.
I'll check out the expansion and play for a month or two but I'll come back to this game ... UNLESS they don't improve and keep going downhill and that's the reason for my complaints. So that I don't need to leave this game, I don't want to but I WILL leave if I don't have fun anymore and that's how I currently feel for the first time since I ever started this game.

So that's why I will keep complaining and hope they change to better, because this is one of the very few games that I actually really love unlike you apparently or maybe you just don't have opinion on your own or you just like endless grinding?
This is coming from someone who actually don't play RPG games if they don't have some form of grinding into it.

Make this game great again.

[Remedi]

Wow had a reasonably coherent story early on. It was never terribly good, but it made enough sense that you could follow it and there was logical progression as to why things happened. There was a pretty strong RP community for a while and we had a lot to work with.

Then it went full on with "change the story to suit whatever we feel like doing this week" and ceased to make any sense whatsoever.

No, wow had no story early on
It thrived with the concept of exploring the warcraft world and had very simplistic story to it because the foxus was exploring the world.
They started going bonkers when they wanted to focus more on story and ppl got the mess that they are giving them now.

[Vahlnir]

No, wow had no story early on
It thrived with the concept of exploring the warcraft world and had very simplistic story to them.
They started going bonkers when they wanted to focus more on story and ppl got the mess that they are giving them now.

It has had a pretty large focus on the story since at least Wrath. I don't recall people ever complaining about that. They didn't go far enough in Cata, and I genuinely think that the story through Cata was an abomination. They went a little crazy in MoP with the dailies (which had some story behind it) but people weren't upset about the story. The journey from 85-90 was a wonderful experience...also full of story. They were upset about endgame crafting patterns and gear being locked behind daily quests. In WoD...the story was great, there was a large focus on it...but when the story ended at max level, that was basically it. They failed to save the expansion due to many problems (and suffered some pretty major cash loss) and pushed out Legion instead in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Legion has been largely story driven, and again...have heard no complaints about that. How they've handled a few things has been questionable, namely the time gating. But no one has complained that there was too much focus on the story. The story is a large part of the game. Has been for awhile now. They also encourage exploration, which XIV doesn't go far enough with.

FF XIV's focus on story is a bit more intense because it's an FF title. For better or worse. Only difference between WoW and XIV in this case is one game needs cut scenes to do it. WoW uses them sparingly yet delivers a story all the same, whether it's through quests, dungeons or raids. The game's just a bit more action oriented. The most intense moments of the story are usually played out in cut scenes though.

[Remedi]

It has had a pretty large focus on the story since at least Wrath. I don't recall people ever complaining about that. They didn't go far enough in Cata, and I genuinely think that the story through Cata was an abomination. They went a little crazy in MoP with the dailies (which had some story behind it) but people weren't upset about the story. The journey from 85-90 was a wonderful experience...also full of story. They were upset about endgame crafting patterns and gear being locked behind daily quests. In WoD...the story was great, there was a large focus on it...but when the story ended at max level, that was basically it. They failed to save the expansion due to many problems (and suffered some pretty major cash loss) and pushed out Legion instead in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Legion has been largely story driven, and again...have heard no complaints about that. How they've handled a few things has been questionable, namely the time gating. But no one has complained that there was too much focus on the story. The story is a large part of the game. Has been for awhile now. They also encourage exploration, which XIV doesn't go far enough with.

FF XIV's focus on story is a bit more intense because it's an FF title. For better or worse. Only difference between WoW and XIV in this case is one game needs cut scenes to do it. WoW uses them sparingly yet delivers a story all the same, whether it's through quests, dungeons or raids. The game's just a bit more action oriented. The most intense moments of the story are usually played out in cut scenes though..

I don't share your vision on legion and wod story, frankly they are for me all missed chances or just downright terrible with the only execption frostfire ridge.
That said I was talking about vanilla and tbc, where the game had really no story because the focus of the game was more on exploration.
Frankly ppl didn't care about beign the hero or w/e they simply wanted to see the places and heroes of the warcraft games and it continued with wotlk where they started lenieng towards a better storytelling, however they started what I call him the drama soap opera of the faction war no matter the cost, which frankly some ppl are starting to feel tired about, but MUH WARCRAFT is always their response since they have actually no courage about writing anything different, though they created an interesting character like lei-shen so go figure

[Solarra]

I come to these forums and see non-stop complaining about everything. And as someone coming from WoW and other Western MMOs, I truly wonder if you guys know how great you have it...
Hope you guys recognize that in between your constant complaining.

I'm not sure what your point is OP. Is the problem with MMOs...

a) most are focused too much on ilvl and PvP ratings ?
b) the community?
c) both of the above?

I can't say anything about PvP but when you get to endgame you'll find ilvl is important in this game, too. The gear treadmill is very much a part of FFXIV, but we do have various paths to get it, and I can't say I have a problem with that. You need something to do at end-game and some incentive to keep playing.

The forum community is similar to the WoW forum community in many respects, people are heavily invested in the game, passionate about their interests and opinionated, all of which makes the Official Forum a lively place where you can encounter a wide variety of views.
The pure complaint threads like, '(insert topic) is hard, please remove it' are very rare and generally not well-received. However, there are numerous threads criticising content and suggesting improvements.
I don't see a problem with that. I might not agree with everything people suggest and a lot of people have disagreed with me, but I've had some very engaging discussions here.
Let's be honest, no game is going to suit everybody in every respect, there are always going to be some aspects you like, some you dislike and a lot of stuff in-between. The whole point of the forum is so people can talk about their personal likes or dislikes and see how the rest of the community feels about them. Discussion is going to be weighted towards the negative because it's just human nature to be more vocal about things you'd like to see changed.

Do we know how good we've got it?
I'd say yes, judging from the numerous appreciation threads that pop up here, the enthusiastic responses to the Live Letters and community efforts to do things like create a gift for the producer's birthday.
Coming from WoW, I certainly appreciate the fact that criticism is not automatically met with snark or dismissal (when it's acknowledged at all, that is) but is actually listened to, and in many cases, acted on.

Like you, I like the story aspect of FFXIV, but many of my friends are disinterested or have issues with it. I think it's great that they can enjoy the game anyway but when they complain about filler quests or the long quest chain between reaching level 50 and getting to Heavensward, I can still appreciate they have a point, even though the quests are something I personally enjoy.

[Ilyrian]

No, wow had no story early on
It thrived with the concept of exploring the warcraft world and had very simplistic story to it because the foxus was exploring the world.
They started going bonkers when they wanted to focus more on story and ppl got the mess that they are giving them now.

I think that WoW is just a victim of it's own success now - there's only so much story you can eek out of the narrative they set up.
Battle for Azeroth (the forthcoming expansion) seems to be (another) soft reboot after having done the 'elves in space' mad cosmic-opera that was the end of Legion.
The thing that keeps WoW relevant, to me at least, is the characters and time spent with them - for all the crap they get Blizzard are good at creating worlds and characters people want to invest in.