In-Game music - do you like it??

[HuaTuo]

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

[RyuDragnier]

Stormblood, the Ala Mhigo side is very lacking in many ways, music included. The Far East is a lot better in music, and in almost everything else for that manner.

[HuaTuo]

Things to look forward to then! Onwards we go xD

[Enkidoh]

I respectfully disagree, I feel Masayoshi Soken is very much at the top of his game with his composition skills (his work on the Shadowbringers OST has blown me away, and his utter devotion to music just astound me, he composes game music because he loves to do it, not because it's 'his job' - I mean, for instance he composed the battle theme for the Seat of Sacrifice trial battle from his hospital bed while battling cancer! - he's thankfully now in remission), but game music design requires a certain skillset seperate from conventional composing - instrumentation is usually just sampled at most or completely synthetic, but modern sound processing technology makes modern game music still vastly superior to the beeps and squeeks of the old 8bit chiptune days.

And even having access to proper pre-recorded orchestral insturments does not mean a great soundtrack if the composer forgets about melody and just goes for texture (this is part of why I generally dislike FFXIII's OST due to it's composer Masashi Hamauzu going for soaring orchestral instrumentation with no real actual melody or leitmotif to them, it was too avant garde for my liking).

Maybe my own preference for synthetic/electronic and classical music has kind of biased me, but I feel FFXIV has one of the best soundtracks in the FF series. Music is one of my favourite parts of the FF series (I admit I actually spend more time just listening to FF OSTs than I do actually playing the games!), and FFXIV is right up there with the best Nobuo Uematsu and his contemporaries have done. Of course I'm not a fan of every track, but all in all the quality of the music is exemplary. But that is just my personal opinon.

[Jirah]

The one track of Music I despise is the SHB sub-boss music in dungeons. For one it was patched in, and two it sounds too similar to the Boss music just crappier and not as dramatic. And it only fits in with Twinning everything else it’s out of place even freaking Amurot

Music is A+ overall beside that example

[KageTokage]

I usually leave the mount music off for a while after each expansion releases so I can appreciate the zone themes.

I echo the previous poster's mention that them opting to have the same sub-boss theme for literally every ShB dungeon was kind of disappointing, though.

[Adeacia]

Considering I bought the Shadowbringers soundtrack, I'd say that yes, I do like the music.

[Fenral]

Obvious troll is obvious? But sure, I'll play along.

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!

All of the best Final Fantasy soundtracks have been composed by a "1-man job" on a basic MIDI keyboard. It's practically tradition.

I can't explain it very well, so I will defer to FFX, FFXIII, and FFXIV contributor Masashi Hamauzu:

It has been quite a while now since synthesized audio began to have an influence on the world of orchestral music. I think it will be hard to ever create something synthetic that’s more convincing than a live performance, but at the same time, there are a lot of people with whom it really strikes a chord; gamers and game music fans in particular. The advances in game music in recent years have been remarkable, and the amount of data you can fit into a game has increased to such a degree that it can’t even be compared to what we had in the past. Still, we older gamers grew up accustomed to the shackles of onboard sound generators, and I think that familiarity with clear, distinct sounds and very regular rhythms is very big for us. If you ask people who don’t really play games, on the other hand, they will agree overwhelmingly that a genuine performance is better for music. How to take into account those two differing views is always a major issue of concern, especially in the FINAL FANTASY series, which, traditionally, has made use of hardware-generated music. There are also factors to consider beyond music. Other things have changed over time as well, like the greater movie file sizes resulting from advances in graphical quality, and the balances there have to constantly be taken into account as well. We game music composers are still very much in a transitional period. I often hear things like, “Isn’t synthetic music good enough?” but that means sampling, and that there won’t be a musician playing the piece who actually understands it. I think we tend to dance around the issue of what that really means. Then again, even if it is recorded live, the recording process involves cutting and pasting pieces of the performance together. Some people may say that at that point there really isn’t any difference. Synthetic audio is based on the laws of physics, employed to work with the atoms that make up our human ears and brains. At the end of the day it may well be that it plays to our sensitivities and moves us in a strange but definable way.

(Full transcript here.)

Which is, of course, disregarding entirely how much of FFXIV's music actually uses live instrumentation. It's just not orchestra. There's even a point in the daytime version of Kugane's BGM where somebody elbowed their mic and it somehow wound up in the final mix.

[Gerel]

Like others, I will also respectfully disagree. "To The Edge" is on constant listen for me whenever I need to focus on something and just get lost in the moment, and the repetitious melody that often surfaces in an expansion's OST is something I adore from a creative standpoint for cohesive reasons.

[Anonymoose]

I graduated from Prague Music Conservatory as a pianist, composer and conductor

But do you know... LA HEE?

I could do far better

Debates about the feasibility of non-synthetic composition in a game with data limits that once had enough tracks to merit a Guinness World Record aside (and not even taking into account the budgetary concerns of several hundreds of live recordings for something that has, yes, a great story, also a pile of challenging and entertaining mechanics, silly puns, anime tropes, and cartoon cat girls)...

...or that I will defend Masayoshi Soken to the death for not only having the talent to elevate his reputation from "Who?" to "Not Nobuo Uematsu" to "The Second Coming of Nobuo Uematsu" to "Do we really need to compare everyone to Nobuo Uematsu?" to "Masayoshi M.F. (Knee-)Soken" but for having the courage to be experimental and true to himself in the face of a typically critical fanbase...

... are you not gonna drop your SoundCloud?

I can like you both. I wanna hear the SoundCloud.