story has great moments but too much filler

[Djuntul]

Im a new player and only recently got through the main part of the HW expansion (lvl 64 now). Ignoring ARR (which was kind of a bad intro to the game as the story was very bad) i really like ff14s story. it has some really nice moments from action to even tear jerking. but thats just the culmination of events most of the time. 99% of the story in between those feels like monotonous, repetetive go to x, talk to y with no real purpose. its not actually progressing the story its just "oh theres a primal/empire/ascian threat? lets go find out more about it first. *spends 20 quests talking to different random npcs to find a way to reach threat*, *spends another 20 quests getting said things to reach threah* rinse and repeat. i often find myself detached from the world and story by those boring wow style quests and frankly am suprised as the community seems to glorify the plot like the second coming of jesus christ. i hope it gets more continuiously engaging with stormblood/shadowbringers

[DPZ2]

Sorry the game's story isn't your cup of tea. Unfortunately, it's how one levels in this game.

As for the story lines and amount of time to work through questing, be aware that the game now has almost 8 years (ARR + 3 expansions) worth of story.

I expect you'd find the same "problem " in any other long-running MMO you'd might care to play. I would take issue with your comment about 'wow style quests', as there really aren't any "go out and kill zevras until you get 10 hooves" quests outside of the level 1 class quest (which, how are you supposed to figure out combat if you don't go kill those nasty ladybugs and squirrels?). The WoW quest text can be entirely ignored. You will miss quite a number of the pieces that make up this great jigsaw puzzle that we call FFXIV if you ignore them in this game. Plus, you don't get to do your first dungeon (and all that come after) without going through the story.

The MSQ has 23 quests to get you to the point where you are comfortable with your chosen class. Almost none of these are fetch quests, but they do take you out of your starting city to give you some idea of what your immediate world is like. There is a different story-line for each of the three main cities, and if you pay attention, you'll get a good understanding of who these people are, and what their immediate concerns are as well.

The next 26 quests give you chances to run through 3 "starter" dungeon instances and 1 "starter" trial. You get to fly to other cities and pick up classes you missed out on by starting as a Bard/Arcanist/Gladiator (<--- your class goes here). You are introduced to the main group you'll be working with for the rest of the game, given a chance to join a Grand Company and finally obtain a chocobo mount, and get an introduction to the next part of the story line.

The next 45 quests take you through that story line, including two dungeons where you can work through your expanded skill set. You get sent to other areas that will become important to you later in the game, and get introduced to some of the other game mechanics, including how to obtain 'materia'. You should be able to hit your first job quest, and be able to figure out where to go to work with that quest if it's not in a city.

The next 37 quests of the MSQ take you through your first 'challenging' dungeon instance and trial (for some value of challenging), and provide plenty of new places to go and new storylines and characters to begin to follow. By this time, you've visited every place in Eorzea that is suitable for level 1-40 characters, and should have all of the relevant aetherytes and chocobo porter points found.



The last 35 quests of the ARR MSQ quicken the pace, bring more story and culminatesin the ultimate (pun intended) main story quest instances that will provide XP (and Moogle tomestones) for your remaining jobs for years to come.

Could it be shorter? It already is, by over 30 quests. The story is much more streamlined than it was back in 2013.

Why so long? And why is post-2.0-going-into-Heavensward almost as long? Historically, players want to play something new in an MMO. Updates to a game that was not successful in its initial 1.0 release had to have enough content (quests and dungeons/trials) to maintain player interest for two years. In this, I believe ARR succeeded, regardless of the number of quests.

Not bad for a first run through of a game with some history that needed to be brought into the game. For a game that still relies on the story line rather than abandoning it entirely, which is how World of "Story? What story? Who needs story, just let me do dungeons at level 15!" Warcraft made itself popular. If I, as a WoW player, wanted story, I'd buy the books and read it outside of the game, amiright?

Like I said, it's an acquired taste. However, compared to Wildstar/Rift/ArcheAge/Blade and Soul/Guild Wars 2/World of Warcraft, this game's story actually has a continuing thread throughout that ties everything together. (I omitted Star Wars: The Old Republic because the class story lines were pretty cool. Post level 50 though ... meh.)

[Brightamethyst]

That's the nature of MMOs. There have to be enough quests to take you through the entire leveling process. Later expansions have cut out of LOT of the filler, but there will always be some.

[Cilia]

A Realm Reborn is particularly egregious with the filler because it was a reboot of the failed 1.X Legacy version of the game. Since it was a (re)introduction to the world, most of 2.0 (and the lion's share of 2.X) is spent fighting Monsters of the Week (in the form of primals), while there is a conflict with the Empire on the backburner that only flares up at the tail end of 2.0. While it's pretty dry for the most part, 2.0 does spend a lot of time worldbuilding, introducing concepts and characters that still have a large influence on things in the story to this day.

A Doylist perspective also tells us 2.0 wasn't as refined because it was a massive risk on the part of SE after 1.0's failure, and they weren't willing to fully commit to it until Yoshi-P proved he could deliver. Once that was achieved they were willing to throw more resources his way, and with the writers able to make longer stories that don't need to be able to be wrapped up in short order because the budget's been slashed. Further with the worldbuilding out of the way they can build on that.

After A Realm Reborn there isn't quite as much filler; though to be fair, one of the things that bogs down Stormblood is most of the Far Eastern "half" of the arc being filler or setup for the "true end." (You could cut out most of the Ruby Sea and Azim Steppe, and it wouldn't change much of anything.) Shadowbringers doesn't have this problem, thankfully.

FF XIV is actually pretty generous with EXP, to the point that if you're playing a fresh character you're going to be overleveled for most if not all of the story if you focus on only one job. I regularly hit previous level caps near the beginning of a given expack on this character. There's no dearth of EXP forcing you to do every quest available; just run dungeon roulettes for big chunks of EXP and practical experience.

[Vyrerus]

Im a new player and only recently got through the main part of the HW expansion (lvl 64 now). Ignoring ARR (which was kind of a bad intro to the game as the story was very bad) i really like ff14s story. it has some really nice moments from action to even tear jerking. but thats just the culmination of events most of the time. 99% of the story in between those feels like monotonous, repetetive go to x, talk to y with no real purpose. its not actually progressing the story its just "oh theres a primal/empire/ascian threat? lets go find out more about it first. *spends 20 quests talking to different random npcs to find a way to reach threat*, *spends another 20 quests getting said things to reach threah* rinse and repeat. i often find myself detached from the world and story by those boring wow style quests and frankly am suprised as the community seems to glorify the plot like the second coming of jesus christ. i hope it gets more continuiously engaging with stormblood/shadowbringers

Not an uncommon opinion at all. You'll change your mind later though, if you stick with it.

[Djuntul]

Seems i wasnt clear in bringing my point across. I already know about the history of ff14 with 1.0, arr etc.; i watched the documentary. And as i said i dont have a problem with the story as a whole, quite the opposite when looking at the grand scheme of things its amazing! having your character be part of the cinematics in a meaningful way, having NPCs with voicelines interact with you character directly and letting you choose what to say, thats what i love about the ff14 story. And what i meant by wow style quests is exactly what another commenter said: standard mmo style quests. for example i get a quest from alphinaud that we need to meet at the rising stones with the scions. then i first meet him outside, talk to him, he needs 5 boxes of text to tell me we're going inside, THEN we actually go to meet the scions. these filler quests have been reduced as i have learned but imo are still far too present. i understand that it needs to be dragged out a bit to increase playtime, but having alphinaud hold what feels like the same monologue about saving the people of eorzia for the 14th time can really wear my excitement to play down.

[Payadopa]

I'm very zen about the length of the story and such since I don't see MMOs as something I must complete in x weeks. But then again I also enjoy just walking around looking at stuff or cross-referencing NPC text lines. x)

[SannaR]

Seems i wasnt clear in bringing my point across. I already know about the history of ff14 with 1.0, arr etc.; i watched the documentary. And as i said i dont have a problem with the story as a whole, quite the opposite when looking at the grand scheme of things its amazing! having your character be part of the cinematics in a meaningful way, having NPCs with voicelines interact with you character directly and letting you choose what to say, thats what i love about the ff14 story. And what i meant by wow style quests is exactly what another commenter said: standard mmo style quests. for example i get a quest from alphinaud that we need to meet at the rising stones with the scions. then i first meet him outside, talk to him, he needs 5 boxes of text to tell me we're going inside, THEN we actually go to meet the scions. these filler quests have been reduced as i have learned but imo are still far too present. i understand that it needs to be dragged out a bit to increase playtime, but having alphinaud hold what feels like the same monologue about saving the people of eorzia for the 14th time can really wear my excitement to play down.

Ahh yes. That gets better. At some point post 4.0 they start to actually teleport you to your destination from time to time.

[Cilia]

Also worth remembering that the X.Y patches, where you get lots of that repeat dialogue, was released (and intended to be consumed) slowly over a period of months. It seems repetitive now, but when the story's only trickling in over months it's not as noticeable. Again, this is most prominent in 2.0 - 2.X, where the game needed to find its footing and get through the growing pains every new MMO suffers from.

The Monster of the Week and Alphinaud's speeches wear away after 2.X, when the game actually has a continuous narrative. Once you get through 2.4 ("Dreams of Ice") it gets better.

[Tensaihime]

Do you (or did you) like Pokémon? I’m asking because as I played each expansion, I treated it kind of like a Pokémon journey. You have to spend some time grinding if you want to get stronger; moving between towns is slow at first but gets better later; and similarly, you only get bits and pieces of story at first, then get to the mind-blowing stuff as you keep playing. And there’s lots of nice scenery and non-essential things to learn along the way, but I’m the kind of person who really likes that stuff.

And I promise it’s not a huge plot circlejerk. We’re allowed to express dissatisfaction. There’s a bit in HW that is widely loved, but when I got there I considered that whole questline to be a chore, didn’t want to be around the characters I was with then, and was sick of the way my character had been treated. I came to this forum and asked “when does [redacted] stop sucking, when will these people realize I‘m not a robot?”, and folks were cool about it! (Some folks acknowledged my grievances, others were laughing because I dropped the name of a certain NPC who did care about my WoL as a person, and they had knowledge I didn’t yet. But everyone was cool about it.) Much later, there will be a request that the WoL agrees to honor, and you will find some players wishing that the story allowed us to refuse if we wanted. You’ll also find hatred for the useless meatsack that the WoL becomes in some cutscenes to let certain bits of plot happen.