Final Fantasy XIV Hot Takes

[Thurmnmurmn]

Hard disagree. The game itself often goes out of its way and infantilizes them, from emotes to voices to mannerisms. Look at Tataru specially, she's so uwu kawaii desu it's not even funny (at least JP Tataru). Lalafel are meant to be the 'small people' archetype, basically garden gnomes, but they could have, or rather, should have toned down the cutesy factor if they wanted Lalas to be taken seriously.

Japan is pretty big on chibi type characters and that's all Lala's really are. They may have the appearance of a child but it doesn't mean they are one. In fact we don't know how old most are.
Here's the definition from the FFXIV website.

"The Lalafell are a folk both rotund and diminutive. Small by any race's standards and possessed of a childlike countenance, it proves difficult for non-Lalafell to gauge an individual's age with any degree of accuracy."

[fulminating]

Zenos being a mirror of the wol and the inability to say this in cutscenes is a lost opportunity in character development. That said, his mirror squad in storm blood was a bit on the nose. Fordola/lyse, yotsuyu/yugiri, grynwahlt/goatse, aulus/urianger and of course asashi/alise.

[Vyrerus]

Hot Take:

Final Fantasy XIV is terrible now, and it'd been getting worse for years before now.

On a narrative level its story is unusually weak with regards to actually showcasing both scale and reality of the main events that happen in the game. This wasn't much of a problem back in ARR and HW, because back then they did not limit themselves by trying to make the game appeal to all potential customers. They just crafted a game, and hoped that it would gain notoriety, which it did.

On a gameplay level, they peaked in Heavensward, and after that they merely rearranged the precedence set there, each new expansion after, gradually dumbing down all play while delivering few new battle mechanics.

To go into detail on the unusually weak narrative:

Starting in Stormblood, the ambition for the storytelling got out of control. Before Stormblood, the stories for FFXIV revolved around small scale operations and adventuring, where it was somewhat believable that just the WoL or just the WoL's 4/8 man group were getting things done. One exception being Operation Archon / Castrum / Praetorium, which adhere to what I've said about weakness in showing actual events.

In late ARR and in Heavensward they gave us things like original Steps of Faith, Final Steps of Faith, Aetherochemical Research Facility, and all their associated cutscenes. A hoard of dragons attack Ishgard's lead in bridge? We fight a giant dragon and the hoard in the actual instance, with dozens and dozens of Ishgardian NPCs throwing themselves into the fray as well. Think about those other instances and their associated cutscenes. You never get the feeling that the scale or actuality of what's going in game is questionable.

Walk into Stormblood, and pretty much immediately the sense of scale fails. It starts with a patrol skirmish with Raubahn against an experimental magitek unit, followed by a night time ambush on the Ala Mhigan Resistance's headquarters. The vaunted Warrior of Light loses a 3v1 that quickly becomes a 1v1 against Zenos. With the Eorzean Alliance moving into Garlean territory, we were supposed to be in all out war, but the fighting essentially gets paused/doesn't move at all from where the Resistance and Alliance were pushed back until we go to and have the entire Doman arc. Where the ocean voyage takes an unspecified amount of time, and very little of our story focuses on actual time spent at sea. Travel by ship across the sea is no small feat, and while we essentially bargain to be taken there by professional pirates (they don't have to wear a suit!) the actuality of this major worldwide traversal is incredibly downplayed. All we get is a dungeon that causes more questions, and then a little hush hush side comment that implies the voyage didn't take all that long because there's a ceruleum engine propelling the ship sometimes (Ceruleum engine not pictured).

We then wind up in Hingashi, which is actually not Doman at all, so that we get colorful and most importantly, non-committal, metropolis untouched by war. In the war expansion...

Doma proper consists of two hamlets and a third slightly larger pirate hamlet, and it leaves us to wonder just what was so great about Doma and what actual Doma is really like, with story events destroying the castle and then the post game having us restore and build up the Doman Embassy.

Once back in Ala Mhigo, after another suspiciously short ocean voyage with literally no troubles, we win our first major battle with the ole Berserk Golden Age arc decoy force holds the main force while the secret force takes the keep (bridge tower in this case). Except the secret force deals with more enemies than are shown in the decoy vs. main cutscene follow up...

Primal shenanigans and scouting ahead shenanigans occur, the villain goes, "Hey I want you to go on a fighting date with me, so just march right in, please." And the first time we get a set piece that makes it feel like we're fighting in a war is the level 70 Ala Mhigo dungeon where all of our allies are dungeon window dressing, bringing the good fight to the Imperials. We don't get a dungeon like this again until Ghimlyt Dark, really, and it's too little, too late.

We interrupt this showing of war to give our writing team something they know how to handle while we pay pesky lip service to the idea that the war we're shying away from is going to ever be relevant again. Here we're going to also rewrite the foundations of the entire narrative, reframe the "true" bad guys as tragic heroes, and show you the most important event in the setting's history via cave painting. I hope you like this cave painting, because it's the only direct, non-metaphorical reference to that most important of events (that's in game).

Endwalker comes in, and we're supposed to get a planet wide existential threat. But I suppose if I'd been paying attention, and hadn't just had one of the best Final Fantasy characters to ever grace the series make me emotionally invested to the point of absurdity, I would have realized from the outset that if they didn't have the balls to show us a war properly, then there's no chance of them handling the apocalypse with any mode of sincerity. Which makes the metaphor scene and its denial of actual events within the Ancient world all the more understandable.

At this point I'm just hanging on for friends and the FFXI crossover(which I have no faith in. Please surprise me SE, I beg).

[mallleable]

Good, and interesting are separate concepts. They often overlap, but it's useful to recognize when they don't -- especially with job design.

[sindriiisgaming]

The game is painfully repetitive and making a dangerously bad amount of poor decisions. In its attempt to make life easier and cater to as many as it could it has basically catered to everyone and noone. The game has no challenge anymore,, older fights and dungeons felt more rewarding and creative. Older raids has interesting mecanics besides spread stack + raidwide aoe. The games failure to innovate is killing it painfully and slowly. The combat system is rigid and stale. Boss fights are 1 dimensional dance rehearsals and the only escape is ridiculously hard content that was never designed for 90% of the players. (Ultimate) yet ppl are doing ult now just to escape the games repetitive systems. Every hub town is discarded after 3 years and left a barren wasteland..

All the new content can be predicted before it's even out. Same 7 dungeons with narration and easy bos mecanics that don't need even a healer.. the same horrible gearing system that makes playing the game more than 4 hours a week utterly pointless.

The savage raids are also getting easier and less fun to play. P10s was genuinely just horrible.

The msq is going downhill as a result if horrible writing that tries to play off nostalgia of arr+hw. Idk wat dt will do.. im worried itl be stormblood 3 tbh.. and I really don't want that. The game is in very big trouble and you can even see square accepting this with more and more cash shop stuff and less and less content.

[Somnolence]

The game has no challenge anymore,, older fights and dungeons felt more rewarding and creative. Older raids has interesting mecanics besides spread stack + raidwide aoe. The games failure to innovate is killing it painfully and slowly. The combat system is rigid and stale. Boss fights are 1 dimensional dance rehearsals and the only escape is ridiculously hard content that was never designed for 90% of the players. (Ultimate) yet ppl are doing ult now just to escape the games repetitive systems.

Given how active is PF and recruitment for old ults its clear there is not enough midcore content and its not changing with DW. So DSR and TOP gonna get some love in DW during content drought.

[Ardeth]

I don't think the story is as good as people say it is. It has it's moments and it's certainly made with quality, but it has all the same contrivances and convaluted plot issues that have plagued JRPGs for decades.

[Oizen]

I don't think the story is as good as people say it is. It has it's moments and it's certainly made with quality, but it has all the same contrivances and convaluted plot issues that have plagued JRPGs for decades.

Its more like a roller coaster of quality with some exceptional high points but some god awful low points that remind me of why I typically don't take MMO stories seriously

[Eastwall]

I don't think the story is as good as people say it is. It has it's moments and it's certainly made with quality, but it has all the same contrivances and convaluted plot issues that have plagued JRPGs for decades.

Here is the problem. Content is locked behind story. It feels like a chore because of that implementation. The real bs is that l got to pay to skip the chore. Well, But l liked my lala enough to pay to skip that bs

[Absurdity]

I don't think the story is as good as people say it is. It has it's moments and it's certainly made with quality, but it has all the same contrivances and convaluted plot issues that have plagued JRPGs for decades.

When people say the story is good they seem to regularly forget the qualifier "for an MMO", probably because it sounds a lot less impressive considering the competition.

But to bounce off of what Vyrerus has already said, XIV didn't just miss the mark when it comes to portraying the gravity and scale of it's events as those escalated over the years.
It takes little advantage of the strengths of it's own visual medium, video games, in general, the majority of the MSQ is just walking to an NPC and then reading a whole lot of textboxes.