Quote Originally Posted by Kenky View Post
And I've still yet to actually get a response from either of you about why you continue to play, when the main appeal of the game (to many, especially with the games design featuring this, mind!) is the story.
You never asked me why I still play (not a mindreader here, gotta help me out). But as it seems you're curious, I've always liked collecting mounts/minions/glamours, etc. BSing with friends or just hanging out was fun, although most have quit now. I still keep up with the beast tribes (this ties more into the mount/glam/minion collection), and I tend to really like the 24-man raids. I love me some fantasias, and running around as a cute Lala. A while back I also took to leveling all of my jobs & classes to 80, almost done now. I'm sure there is more, but that should be enough for this conversation.

Quote Originally Posted by Kenky View Post
However the "stupid mindset" you state is rather odd, if not laughable at best. What do you personally expect from a Final Fantasy game, exactly. If not its main selling point?
My experience with Square Enix games is pretty much XI (their only other successful MMO*), and XIV.

I started playing XI back in the day after a coworker invited me to play with them. I thought the game was amazing. I loved exploring the world, met some really fun people, Dymamis was my jam, got up to drunk shenanigans in Sky, learned how to solo NMs with my Corsair, worked on collecting gear - pretty much your typical run of the mill for MMO* activities. The story never factored into it for me at all. Keep in mind that XI does in fact have an enormous MSQ story to be had for those who want it, quite befitting for an SE title. It's just wasn't my thing at the time. The great thing is that I could simply do the quests I needed to unlock whatever specific content / items I was aiming for, and could ignore the rest until I was needing it (if ever).

Just to note, *MMO is the vital keyword up above and to this conversation. This is not one of their single-player games where linear progression is to be expected. As this is an MMO, it shouldn't try to shoehorn players to follow a rigid path. Some guidance never hurts, but as it is now, if you want to do current endgame, you are required to complete 100% of the old MSQ - and that's just crazy. And a huge turn off for many. There is probably a good reason why Yoshi and crew are working on revamping the old story content. If it was perfectly fine as is, why would they bother fixing 6 year old content?

So yeah, MMOs - they attract people with all sorts of interests. I think I'm pretty decent proof that you can thoroughly enjoy one of SE's MMOs without giving two shakes about the story.

I strongly feel that telling people to find another game simply because they aren't interested in the story is a very bad way to go about things.