Why Do MMORPG Can't Make Sense of Their Own Lore?

[ChocoPuni]

closed topic
opinions collected

[Alacran]

Sounds like you have tried a few mmo's & haven't found one to fit your criteria. Nothing wrong with finding you own preferences, mmo's arn't for everyone & i wont say FFXIV is perfect, but seems like it's not the game for you. Good luck with the search.

[Ranaku]

Game: "We explain everything in Coil and in the MSQ. People talk so much about the fall of Dalamu..."

Player: "wHaT eVeN HaPpEnD?!?!!11 I dOnT UnDeRsTaNd!"

You know what bad lore is? When the game throws the stuff right at the start at you and explains everything leaving no room for interpretations or any speculations. If you wanna know more just stick with the story, read and listen and play the content lol. What do you expect? Getting everything presented right at the start so you know exactly every detail?

You know that you start to read a book from the first page on and don't just start with the last page, right? It's called build-up. Something that happens over time. You have to understand that back in the days we got these bits and pieces of lore every 3 months with a patch. It's not the games fault that you only started to play the game now and that you have literally years worth of content and story in front of you to understand. I would say take your time with it and actually do the side content cause it's also important for the story.

But if you don't care for the story, just skip or boost. It's no shame to not be interested in it, if you just want the social experience or the raiding experience you can even boost if you feel confident with your skills in learning a job.

And no we don't have to dumb down the storytelling just cause people have a hard time to get into it and don't take their time, the majority of problems i hear from new players come from them rushing through the game like a new expansion is right around the corner...oh...wait...

[Berkilak]

You aren’t paying attention to the story then complaining that you aren’t paying attention to the story and because of this there shouldn’t be a story.

This is a bad take.

[redheadturk]

This is 11 years worth of lore, naturally it's going to feel a bit bloated. But for the lead up into 2.0 all you really need [Yes, you will need to find the cutscenes on youtube because 1.0 is gone ]is the cutscenes from 1.1-1.2-1.25, and even that primarily Riven Road, the immediate lead up and aftermath to that including the Fall is all you really need to find to understand the rest of it.

Edit to add: I went to seek out that stuff myself, not because I did not understand the whole thing, they give you enough context clues in the game itself to have a decent grasp on it, but because I wanted to see the cutscenes and events as they happened then.

[RobynDaBank]

The story (minus Disney parts) always makes you think and remember previous events, it encourages you to have a full picture of what's going on and where we are going, what is happening WHILE something else is ocurring.

I thought that's been each successive expansion for me, especially Shadowbringers so far. Different strokes for different folks...?

[Atreides]

As a day one player I find the pacing and the deliverance of the story on point, if you actually pay attention to the story and take your time. Granted I did not have to get through several expansions of story in one go I'm sure this is hard to diggest, old players had more time to let the story sink in and speculate about whats to come to get even more immersed. Not saying new players can't get immersed in it they just have more to diggest because the story keeps going for many many hours.

Sure the story does have its flaws here and there but overall they managed to wrap it up really well and everything that was questionable in ARR started to make more sense in ShB which is why this expansion is so well received. I don't know at which point of the story you are but if you played through ShB and still ask yourself ""wait a minute, what does any of this mean?" you clearly did not pay attention.

[Krotoan]

I feel like MMORPG should just follow Overwatch type of storytelling - keep your lore and "mythos" in cinematics, make them impressive, give players hints while doing battles and cut all the fat and time-wasting.
r

As someone who plays overwatch and who is starving for lore.

No thank you.

In a story driven MMO I don't want to have to watch movies AND read books AND scour release teasers for story.

It sounds like you're disregarding all the details we're given and then complaining there's no story.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I never found the story all that hard to follow. Then again, I came here from WoW, where understanding the story meant you had to not only play the game, you also had to read four or five novels, three comics, a handful of online short stories, four developers' blogs, and a fan-made chart of just what they've retconned this week. And that happened every expansion.

[kiagenwa]

I'm so lost in FF XIV lore and what in the world is going on in this story that I don't feel any need to figure it out. But the worst is that it doesn't feel like anything matters anyway. Things always end with the hooded people plotting more stuff, the game is always afraid of making people go "wait a minute, what does any of this mean?" with the worst being in ARR - a full-blown history lesson in your face, treating you like a child.

offline games can wrap their story. online games, on the other hand, cannot.
So of course there must be some new villains plotting new stuff in next expansion.