In-Game music - do you like it??

[Icedmind]

I really am not sure if this thread belongs on this particular part of the forum, but I just wanted to share with you all the fact that I find the soundtrack accompanying you through the entire game lacking "very much and more". I graduated from Prague Music Conservatory as a pianist, composer and conductor - so I accept my personal bias based on my education.

Most of the music is as if made from a soundbank of some cheap £60 Yamaha keyboard, the instruments are terribly synthetic, especially Strings and Brass. It was tolerable until level 60. But now, ever since I entered the Stormblood campaign, it's now so terrible that I created this account only to make this post. It would seem, that they employed "some" acoustic instruments like Guitar and Lute, but in a very chamber setting, consisting mostly two, sometimes up to FOUR tracks (compared to standard 19-21 with average size enssemble) - and trust me I could do some of this (if not most) when I was 10yo.

For a game that is presumably now the most played MMO (yes, me too hanged 10+ years of WoW for sake of FF14), and for the epic and absolutely captivating story, did SE not thought to employ and actual composer and hire an orchestra to best capture ambience of the vast areas of the game world? As much as I dislike WoW more and more with every passing hour spent in FF14, their music is entirely different world in comparison.

I could be wrong, but the game literally "sounds" like the music was 1-man job, some basic version of LogicPro and MIDI keyboard. This game deserves so much more!!! Not saying "hire me" or anything, but yeah, I could do far better xD

Having graduated from some conservatory doesn't mean you automatically are the most skilled musician, to be honest. I've got friends who graduated from Vienna conservatory, although most of them only really know how to play one instrument. Consider, if you will, that Masayoshi Soken improvised A LOT of instruments on the spot (The maracas in Costa del Sol aren't "maracas"), and he plays more than one instrument. And if I'm not mistaken, a few songs were intonated by Soken-san himself, so that's an achievement.
A bit of advice: if you come here to brag about your qualities, at least show a portfolio for comparison. I'm sure many of us want to rate your creations.

[ItMe]

OP, to try and less aggressively respond...

For a game that is presumably now the most played MMO (yes, me too hanged 10+ years of WoW for sake of FF14), and for the epic and absolutely captivating story, did SE not thought to employ and actual composer and hire an orchestra to best capture ambience of the vast areas of the game world?

I think games with more orchestration are generally ones with longer development cycles...
Take into consideration that most companies generally take 4-6 years to develop a game.
FF14, on the other hand, puts out a new expac every 2 years, with no corners cut on the number of new songs added in each.
Doing that with a composer at the helm sounds like a logistical nightmare, especially considering you'd need to do it again and again every two years.

Also, logistics aside it's just not a solid business plan.
Putting the music on the shoulders of fewer people saves the company a LOT of money. Plus, while an orchestrated sound track would be cool, but would not directly translate into more subs, so I can see how a company would see it as extravagant or wasteful, and FF14 was famously almost ended by its initial extravagance (among other things).

Could FF14 use more live music in game?
Maybe?

Should they have hired a composer?
No, probably not.



Though, I also have a question for you OP.
Did you also have these issues with WoWs music? Or is this somehow worse in FF14?

[HuaTuo]

Though, I also have a question for you OP.
Did you also have these issues with WoWs music? Or is this somehow worse in FF14?

thank you for your reply, one of the few that actually makes sense. There's a few keyboard warriors on here with some need to rally to the defence of what they consider a lifestyle choice that playing this (or any, really) MMO entails, and questioning music that is part of the game perhaps gave them the need to be personal. I completely ignore those, one of them with understanding limited by a capacity of his search engine, said something about "resonance of harmony" lol I had to laugh. Harmony resonates just about as much as Maths (the two being in many aspects similar actually). That aside, I'll answer your question:

WoW music, to my taste, is far superior to FF14. Except Ironforge city (and maybe a few BGs), where you can clearly hear the cropped and compressed sound of the synth, every zone has its own ambience done by fully orchestrated score (not to mention the login screen). Don't get me wrong, FF14 music is great, I've heard the aforementioned Eorzean Symphony before even coming to the forums and it was one of the things that made me wanna try FF14 - you can imagine my disappointment and hence the OP - But this music is arranged SO badly that I came to the forums to see what other people think of it. Like, take Rhagdar's Reach for example (may gotten the spelling wrong). The entire 1st half of the theme it has ostinating Tonic in bass (which isn't really bass at all, just midrange tenor-ish), and the second half of it has the exact same melody with very poor attempt at polyphony and counterpoint using imitation of brass instruments. I get it, it's probably to symbolize the Garlean anthem somehow (a beutiful version of which we DO get to hear in one of the final cutscenes after you defeat the crown prince-turned-primal), sounds like taken out of some old church Kancional. But in a game of such magnitude, do you really make due with Tonic - Dominant - Tonic - Subdominant - Dominant cadenza (with ostinanting tonic in bass, that in theory would make everything else Tonic).

Despite the synth, I still do enjoy "some" of the zone tracks, the far eastern capital (doma? cant remember Edit: Kugame) probably ranks highest, although most zones have Idee Fixe (those small structural units that possess thematic identity) incorporated into them, using variety of tempo, tonality and instrument changes.

As you say, yes, I realize the cost attached to such venture employing an ensemble, but as I mentioned earlier, with a revenue in hundreds of millions, I thought it's quite a pity we don't get to enjoy the epic sound like we do when listening to the OST that is sold separately..

[Fenral]

thank you for your reply, one of the few that actually makes sense. There's a few keyboard warriors on here with some need to rally to the defence of what they consider a lifestyle choice that playing this (or any, really) MMO entails, and questioning music that is part of the game perhaps gave them the need to be personal.

I mean, if you need a really blunt example for the level of faux pas you have been perpetuating, you basically walked into a van Gogh exhibit and asked why everything looks so fuzzy, when traditional brush strokes would look so much nicer. Or complained about facial proportions at a Picasso exhibit.

Video game music has fundamentally different requirements than your average sit-down-at-a-concert orchestral piece. Learn those and come back with an actual argument.

[Anivanya]

I'm very late to this thread. The fanbase is a fan of the game to a fault. If anyone is critical of just about anything pertaining to FFXIV, they get really upset and lash out. As you can easily see in this thread. The music absolutely is bland and often sounds exactly as you say. It's nothing really memorable and feels like a very cheap production. It's not the worst but it's definitely not as great as the fans make it out to be. I love this game immensely but I really wish the music was equal to what the story and gameplay. It's just not. To draw from your comparison of WoW, now, I can go in and play a soundtrack from that game and it will hit a real emotional string for me and send me into a true place of nostalgia that this game just does not do. A lot of other games do the same for me, I can listen to the soundtrack and I'm absolutely pulled in. This game could be even more epic if it had a soundtrack to match.

[Carin-Eri]

Not sure if this has already been said, but I'm of the opinion that there is more to the music than just the music itself.

One element of FFXIV that makes the music so good (in my opinion at least) is the choice of accompanying lyrics and the setting in which they utilise it.

Lets use 'Close in the Distance' as an example - this was piece of music that hit all the right emotional notes with me. I'm not too proud to admit that that I was in tears during that 'Final Walk' sequence when I played through it the first time, and having watched more reaction videos than I can count I know for a fact that I wasn't the only one.
In fact, that 'Community Sings Close in the Distance (with 1000 singers)' video says more about that particular piece of music than I possibly could:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmsVf97xB00

Dragonsong is another good example and there are, obviously, others.

The setting, the music and the lyrics all combine to create a truly emotional experience. I mean, it's a masterpiece in it's own right anyway but if, for example, you were to listen to in your car without any context (i.e. not having played the game) it probably wouldn't have the same impact.

And that aside, 'Footfalls' is my favourite piece of music. Period. I adore that song, and again - whilst I feel it's a great song in it's own right, one of the reasons I love it so much is the reminder of the excitement and anticipation I felt when I heard it whilst watching the Endwalker cinematic for the first time and how lost in the moment I was when it was playing during the last fight against Zenos.

[Lustre]

Soken is very very good, but he's no Uematsu. He relies way too much on Leitmotif. When you realise that a majority of an expansions songs are just a slightly altered version of the Main Expansion theme, it kind of takes the shine off a little. Anybody can slow something down, change the VST instrument and loop it. I'd like to see him be more creative with Zone Night themes specifically in this regard as 90% of them are exactly that. Swap the main instrument for a piano, slow it down by 50%. Sure it works, but it feels like creating music to meet deadline rather than anything showcasing ingenuity, something I am guilty of myself so I know it when I hear it.

I tend to find the songs he creates that include vocals to be a bit corny/cheesy as well. Compare Soken's "Fiend" to Uematsu's "Otherworld" from FFX and you'll see what I mean. One's a badass metal song with screeching guitars, harmonic bends, rough vocals etc. The other sounds like an edgy Anime opening song. But on the whole, he's very good especially in comparison to a lot of other MMO soundtracks. I played WoW for years and I can't recall anything other than ambient noises.

[Striker44]

Soken is very very good, but he's no Uematsu. He relies way too much on Leitmotif. When you realise that a majority of an expansions songs are just a slightly altered version of the Main Expansion theme, it kind of takes the shine off a little. Anybody can slow something down, change the VST instrument and loop it. I'd like to see him be more creative with Zone Night themes specifically in this regard as 90% of them are exactly that. Swap the main instrument for a piano, slow it down by 50%. Sure it works, but it feels like creating music to meet deadline rather than anything showcasing ingenuity, something I am guilty of myself so I know it when I hear it.

I tend to find the songs he creates that include vocals to be a bit corny/cheesy as well. Compare Soken's "Fiend" to Uematsu's "Otherworld" from FFX and you'll see what I mean. One's a badass metal song with screeching guitars, harmonic bends, rough vocals etc. The other sounds like an edgy Anime opening song. But on the whole, he's very good especially in comparison to a lot of other MMO soundtracks. I played WoW for years and I can't recall anything other than ambient noises.

I'd disagree there. The main story songs follow a leitmotif, but there's a large variety of other tunes that don't in each expansion, typically many of the town and zone themes. As for the leitmotif part, I enjoy that. It's a common theme throughout video games, movies, etc., including other FF games with Nobuo Uematsu as the composer (my favorite FF6 springs right to mind). And the references to certain songs such as Maker's Ruin that run throughout the expansions have an awesome effect when they kick in in different ways. Personally, I've always loved Nobuo Uematsu; he's probably my favorite VGM composer of all time. And I have no problem also acknowledging that Masayoshi Soken is brilliant, too, and I'm happy to consider them equals.

[Silverbane]

Most of the music is as if made from a soundbank of some cheap £60 Yamaha keyboard, the instruments are terribly synthetic, especially Strings and Brass.

If it sounds that way, there's a problem in the signal chain, because IIRC they use a full orchestra to record the music.
There's videos of them doing that somewhere, I think.

The music sounds very good on my Sennheiser Game Zero headset driven by a Sennheiser USB DAC/amplifier dongle.
It sounds less good on the pair of cheap Logitech speakers I have hooked to my motherboard's Realtek sound chip.
And the soundtrack music sounds great on my home theater system (Yamaha RX-780, Polk speakers in a 5.2.1 config.)
But the in-game music may be compressed more than my ripped copies of the soundtrack CDs I own.

As ever, YMMV. And as you are trained musician, you almost certainly have a better ear for music than I do (as proven by scientific studies).

[Cleretic]

The only time I actually disliked Soken's reliance on leitmotifs is in Stormblood, where basically every big song is either the same song, or it's Beauty's Wicked Wiles. Stormblood's leitmotif is so pervasive so as to be actually confusing, because it's basically the only one that exists in-universe: it's the Ala Mhigan national anthem, but we first hear it in that context as the Garlean Ala Mhigan anthem, and either way it muddies things; if you read it as the Garlean anthem then it doesn't make sense why it plays in Rhalgr's Reach, and if you read it as the Ala Mhigan anthem it doesn't make sense why it plays... well, everywhere else in Stormblood.

The music's good, though. I'm... genuinely not sure why this thread was ever in the lore subforum, because there's never been an instance where lore REALLY benefits from the music (there's some relevant lyrics, but those are usually supplementary to something stated more directly). Not a discredit to either, they're just two almost entirely unrelated, high-quality parts of the game.