Final Fantasy XIV doesn't actually have that good of a story

[Payadopa]

Hold the presses. People have different opinions. Who knew?!

[ElciaDeiLinus]

The first issue is that there is too much filler in the story that adds next to nothing to the lore or the story. Having to play hide and seek with children is not interesting. Having to harvest vegetables as the freaking Warrior of Light is stupid. The game suffers from being an MMO by having to give you way too much filler.

The second issue is that the game can't be as immersive as modern story-driven games. The Last of Us 2 is capable of making you feel sad, angry, and horrified because the game is designed in a very immersive manner. FF14 makes you read the dialogues which isn't as immersive as modern story games.

The third issue is that even in world-ending, cataclysmic events, there is no sense of urgency. It's also because there are way too many Mary Sue moments in the game where you expect someone to die but they miraculously survive. After a few Mary Sue moments you just don't expect anyone to die anymore. Because of that there is not much tension to be felt in the story.

The 'filler' adds an incredible amount to the lore and story- it doesn't add urgent, CoD style action action action Michael Bay moments all the time sure. It adds character, personality, time to see the world through a different lens and realize what the people you are saving are doing in the background. To say these moments are slow is fair, but to say it adds nothing to the story is plain wrong. Think about what playing hide and seek with Doman children means- what that says about the life they live and how they were taught to survive through play. It's done in a way that seems light hearted and easy to pass by assuming it's just filler, but when you truly think about it and what Yotsuyu does it's actually quite chilling and dark.

As for the second issue- I disagree, I found the game extremely immersive BECAUSE of how much time I spent with the characters, growing with them; viewing Alphinaud's arrogance, disgrace and redemption beside him, knowing the scope of the dangers not because I'm told of it but because I've been to each of the cities and seen through these small filler quests enough to know what they face.

TLOU2 was designed specifically to make fans of the original furious while giving the developer a platform to shout about their hatred for the players who enjoy the game while sucking up to the review site culture that hates gamers just as much. The game itself isn't immersive or engaging since you know everything is designed simply to make the player angry for malicious reasons. It ties into your third issue- since TLOU2 you're constantly under threat of death, with deus ex machinas saving you ever time- it's impossible to be immersed in it because there's no tension when you know the vital characters will escape every situation due to divine intervention.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I played a lot of other Final Fantasy's and a lot of gaming sites say that FF14 has one of the best stories in the franchise so I tried it out. This is an issue of the hype killing the game. FF14 has a good story but it's not as good as the hype makes it out to be so in the end I was disappointed.

Agreed. The FFXIV fandom hypes it up to high heaven and doesn't set expectations correctly.

I personally quite like FFXIV but I don't think it's the bestest thing ever.

The first issue is that there is too much filler in the story that adds next to nothing to the lore or the story. Having to play hide and seek with children is not interesting. Having to harvest vegetables as the freaking Warrior of Light is stupid. The game suffers from being an MMO by having to give you way too much filler.

Some of the chores I hated. A few chores, such as playing hide & seek with the Doman children, or helping the blind man Shamani pick some grapes, I liked, because I was invested in that moment. ARR has way too much filler that I don't like, though.

The second issue is that the game can't be as immersive as modern story-driven games. The Last of Us 2 is capable of making you feel sad, angry, and horrified because the game is designed in a very immersive manner. FF14 makes you read the dialogues which isn't as immersive as modern story games.

Opinion. The Last of Us is effectively a movie game. The only real story told during gameplay are the voiceovers, such as Ellie walking up to a bookshelf, taking book off of it dusting it off, and having a short conversation with Joel, while you are looking around the building scavenging. Stuff that other games already do (which FFXIV sadly doesn't do because party members don't exist outside of cutscenes or dungeons).

I don't think the dialogue boxes are a detriment. If done right, they can improve the game by describing stuff that cannot be told through voicelines or shown in a cutscene, such as prose or a character's inner thoughts. ARR and a few quests in Heavensward made good use of this, such as right before the banquet when you're picking up the glass and standing around waiting for a contact to arrive, and the WoL reflects on past events, building up the tension. Sadly FFXIV sorta stops doing this after HW. Other games, like World of Warcraft, the Trails series, or Utawarerumono, made excellent use of dialogue boxes.

The third issue is that even in world-ending, cataclysmic events, there is no sense of urgency. This is partially because FF14 isn't as immersive as single player games. It's also because there are way too many Mary Sue moments in the game where you expect someone to die but they miraculously survive. After a few Mary Sue moments you just don't expect anyone to die anymore. Because of that there is not much tension to be felt in the story.

Yes, this is one of my problems with FFXIV. After Heavensward's anticlimatic resolution to the Ul'dah storyline, and after the Shadowbringer's patches, there is no semblance of stakes in FFXIV and is one of the biggest negatives of the story.

I enjoyed FF14 and it does have a better story than WoW

Debatable. I think FFXIV has better cutscenes, but WoW is way better at telling the story through gameplay. A few examples:

• Death Knight starting zone, where you are slaughtering innocents and hearing them scream in terror and beg for mercy, riding a dragon and burning the townsfolk. Being sent into a building to execute a prisoner... who turns out to be a close friend who knew you in life, and you kill him anyway.

• Silverpine Forest questline, where you are spying on the Worgen... and then seeing Darius Crowley stir up the townsfolk and convince them to become Worgen to fight against the Horde. You hurry back to camp to report this to your superiors. And then the howling begins. You hurry to man a machinegun as a horde of hundreds of newly turned Worgen begin charging you, and you're machinegunning them down but there's just too many of them. Seeing the invasion of Gilneas from the Forsaken's perspective.

• When you are raiding Orgrimmar and the Kor'Kron start executing their prisoners, including characters you had adventured with earlier in the game. They're torturing Ji for information about the Pandaren artifacts, but their ignorant that he is not a mainland Pandaren and doesn't know. If you take to long he and the rest of the Pandaren will die. It's horrible seeing Aysa scream after Ji, jumping in after him, only to die as well.

• The Warlords of Draenor intro scenario. You and about 40-50 named NPC heroes form a strike force to destroy the Dark Portal. The assault takes a turn for the worst when everybody makes a last stand while you destroy the Portal. After you destroy the portal and the dust settles, you see all of the dead bodies of the NPCs you had fought alongside, and are forced to run past their dead bodies as the enemy pursues you. It's rather shocking.

• The penultimate Alliance quest of the BFA prepatch event, "A Flicker of Hope", has you trying to save as many people as you can from the inferno that consumes Teldrassil. You're tasked with saving 982 civilians in 3 minutes. You will save 30 at most. You feel the dread as you see the fire consume the town, the sky darken with smoke, hear the screams of the townspeople and see the timer in the corner of the screen running out. When you see that there are 90 seconds left and you've only saved like 15 people, your heart starts feeling heavy as the realization hits you. For all of your power as a legendary dragon slayer, you are only mortal, and it imbues you with resolve. The Horde murdered thousands of your people. You know what is at stake. You set out to avenge and to protect these people. One of the most memorable experiences I've ever had in a game.

FFXIV has no powerful gameplay moments like these, and I'm skeptical it ever will.

I don't think it matches up to actual single player games at all.

I'd put FFXIV on the same level as the Trails games, which is high praise from me, but again it is flawed.

So I really don't get the hype and IMO people have just not played enough thought-provoking story games outside of FF14.

The FFXIV fandom is very cultish, which is due to a variety of factors, but the biggest is that a lot of the fandom lives in a "niceness" bubble where any dissenters/opinions contrary to the consensus are demonized and suppressed, and FFXIV superfans deceive themselves into thinking that FFXIV is the bestest thing ever. Also, a lot of the fandom crosses over with the anime fandom, which for years had had an inferiority complex because animation was treated as "kids stuff" in the West for a long time. I think that contributes to all of this buzz around Asmongold and Belular trying out FFXIV, because the fans want validation from WoW players, WoW being the titan, the cultural phenomena of gaming in the late 2000's and early 2010's that no MMO has come close to since. Same reason why when other MMOs were coming out, they had a lot of buzz around them around launch as becoming "the WoW killer", because every single MMO after WoW has lived in WoW's shadow.

FFXIV is capable of making you feel sad, angry, and horrified, because the writing isn't shit.

Eh, there are good moments of writing, but also quite a lot of bad ones too, especially in the Shadowbringers patches.

Shadowbringers story was the best FF story in over a decade.

If you count officially branded mainline Final Fantasy games, sure. But that's a low bar because there has only been 4 other officially branded, numbered FF games within the past 10 years. 13 was developed in a rush and designed by committee. 13-2 has more effort in it but it's weighed down by the junk from 13. Nomura kept changing his mind about what Versus XIII was supposed to be before Square finally booted him off the project, and gave Tabata a mere 2 years to salvage the project.

But on-topic, I think ffxiv probably has the "best" story if we compare it with most other mmorpgs.

WoW's war arc from Cata through MoP was well written IMO, except for the epilogue, which was nonsense. I play Horde, but there is absolutely no reason why the Alliance shouldn't have acted like the victorious superpower they were and just broken up the Horde. It's not like the Horde could have stopped them. After MoP, the story of WoW becomes utterly nonsensical, but it still has great storytelling through gameplay, like the aforementioned WoD intro, or the burning of Teldrassil.

Star Trek Online is also pretty good. Way better than Kurtzman's stuff as a continuation of Star Trek. Sadly STO is held down by the engine being jank. STO released in 2010 but feels like a crappy 2000 game.

The ff14 community seems to have a serious issue with any sort of criticism on their game or comparison to other games, usually resulting in an immediate kneejerk "get lost and quit and go play your other game then!" reaction. It's not healthy. People are allowed to dislike parts of the game in the same way others are allowed to like them. I enjoy the story myself, but opinions are just opinions.

^^^^^

All of the "you're not a real fan, go back and play other games" and "nice bait thread/OP is a troll" posts are a testament to that truth.

The biggest issue personally is the games difficulty or lack there of. It actually destroys the atmosphere and tension the story often tries to create...
The story tries to paint this grim scene where all hope is lost and the world is doomed and then players essentially steam roll there way through... Where is the peril? where is the danger? Where is the atmosphere?

Whats ironic is often many of those filler quests are there specifically to set the mood or paint the picture of how grim the situation looks. Only to find you've steamroller to victory before you even know what happened. Crushes the atmosphere and detracts a lot from the story..

There are a couple of fights that did do the story justice like Shinryu at the end of stormblood but really not many.

Also ^^^this^^^. I was pleasantly surprised by the difficulty of the level 60 Red Mage solo duty, which got me more immersed in the story and took the villain as a more serious threat. He felt more dangerous than almost all of the MSQ villains.

An MMORPG doesn’t have an amazing, memorable and iconic storyline? Jeez. I’m shocked.

It's funny how the OP compares a MMO to literally only singleplayer titles.

What Hype are they talking about? There’s been no massive hype that I’ve ever seen for FFXIV Story.

Well when all of the marketing (cinematics and trailers) and the fandom plays up the story and acts as if it's comparable to other singleplayer FF games, it shouldn't be surprising that people come in expecting that it's comparable to other singleplayer FF games.

This person speaks the truth. The last Final Fantasy game before FFXIV came out with what I would call great story was FFIX (or Lost Odyssey, because it closer to Final Fantasy than what Square has been pumping out)

Lost Odyssey didn't have a good story. Everyone raves about the The Thousand Years of Dream side stories by Kiyoshi Shigematsu because that was the only thing notable about the game's storytelling. The actual story of the game itself was bad.

*cough* Papalymo *cough*

That one was some straight up BS

Papalymo was my favorite Scion, but given how little the creative team cared about him, killing him off there was probably the best thing they could've done for him. At least it made people remember he even existed.

[FONT="Georgia"]I have been told that the race's lore of FFXIV is "amazing, very elaborated" when... yeah, not, not really?

What on earth? Whoever said that should've given WoW or Guild Wars a spin.

The only thing I have issue with is how indestructible everyone is. Like getting destroyed by magic missles and not being dead or having any visible injuries.

Probably ties into the fact that this is a game with 3D models. Games with 2D sprites had more damage states for characters and vehicles, because it is faster/cheaper to draw an image of a character with their arm torn off or a vehicle missing a tire than it is to make a 3D model look damaged. This might also overlap with the fact that FFXIV's writing team refuses to hurt any of its characters. Thancred apparently lost an eye after the banquet in Ul'dah but that was retconned away later, and it feels like Y'shtola losing her eyesight and having to draw upon her life force ever matters. The only time someone got hurt and it stuck was when Raubahn lost his arm.

[Mingqin]

This community really does my head in sometimes, some folks here calling the OP a troll and a troll thread? Because why? Because he criticises the story? What are we now? The CCP?

[Nethereal]

This is false. Multiple outlets have claimed that FF14 has one of the best stories in the franchise.

For example:

https://twinfinite.net/2019/07/final...rs-best-story/

https://www.dualshockers.com/final-f...fantasy-story/

https://www.fanbyte.com/reviews/with...ch%205.3%20isn

The madlad is at it again reviving them threads. And this time he took my advice and revive it with the original account. My Man.

This community really does my head in sometimes, some folks here calling the OP a troll and a troll thread? Because why? Because he criticises the story? What are we now? The CCP?

It's because they have 10(11) different alts all with the same design and pattern or reviving (dead)threads whether it be theirs or someone else.

This is common knowledge to anyone who has been around the block but you seem new.

If you'd like I can give you some evidence.

[GrizzlyTank]

This community really does my head in sometimes, some folks here calling the OP a troll and a troll thread? Because why? Because he criticises the story? What are we now? The CCP?

No it's because it's a troll thread, posted around the same time plenty of other troll threads were made.

The jobs he has unlocked even matches the pattern of a certain forum harasser.

[Naoki34]

If you don't like the story then stop playing it, so you don't have to keep paying for nothing.

Don't try to change the game, but see if you like what the game offers.

It's also a kind of filter, it's still an Asian MMO.

[Caitlyn]

The Last of Us 2 is capable of making you feel sad, angry, and horrified

Yes. The story was so damn stupid and poorly written, TLOU 2 indeed makes you feel sad, angry and horrified about what Naughty Dog did to this franchise.
FFXIV at least cares about the franchise... .


The story of FFXIV may not be perfect. It may lost some potential in some cases. It may takes its time. But damn, its the best story for a MMORPG ever. And that doesnt includes the story itself, but also how it delivers it with its cutscenes, music and the way of telling it.

Name just one MMORPG with a better story than FFXIV.

[Tint]

Didn't have all Final Fantasy games the same story anyway? o.ô

[Aelin_Ashryver]

The complaint of not having every bit of dialogue voiced breaking immersion baffles me. Does nobody read books? Books are immersive.. reading the text chat is no different. I hear their voice in my head, if it is a character that has never been voiced my brain just makes up a voice.. Where is your imagination? xD