New Player Experience Sucks! - Impending Expansion Problems

[Penthea]

the zones and cities and charachter designs were created in this game before the msq. in fact the story totally changed directions between 1.0 and 2.0. I'm not even sure Yoshida was on the development team for the game initially.

Yoshida asked if he could use a story element to kill 1.0. He asked for permission to use Dalamud as the plot device to break Eorzea so that 2.0 could be made. It didn't even stop there.

The events from Dalamud falling where turned into a raid instance, and we see some of the events from its fall replay at the end of HW, and those events gave us a trial and another raid instance, and brought us to Gyr Abania which then leads to going to Doma.

If that isn't story greatly affecting the direction of a game over long periods of time, then what is?

so many of these visuals, music, much of the lore, many of the charachters were all created before the main narrative.

But so many were not. And likely at this point the vast majority is not, considering Yoshida knows how the story is going to go before the dev and art teams even have a chance to work on the expansions those parts of the story take place. They're not finished ShB but Yoshida knows how the story is going to go far beyond that. So obviously the story back in the offices at SE has pulled ahead in terms of how much is decided.

At this point you're jumping through mental hoops to try to discredit the impact the msq has. Even going as far as to say the creative process is done backwards.

do you think she is actually reading that story again? on two charachters? i doubt it.

I actually do reread the msq on my alts at the parts I don't quite remember or parts I remember enjoying a lot. People do buy blurays of movies they have already seen so it's not outside the realms of possibility for someone to pay attention to the msq a second time.

At the beginning of development, the team created a detailed profile of Hydaelyn, including its relation with other planets, ecosystems, climate, and geography.

Believe it or not this counts as story. Every story needs a setting. Setting is the beginning of a story. The story needs to take place in a world. They made the world before the other content in the world was created.

Unless you're going to start arguing how Hydaelyn's relationship with planets isn't central to the story ;D