Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
I disagree. There's by far more combat in the average JRPG than what FFXIV has on offer. In the most recent patch the only mandatory combat takes place in the dungeon itself. Whereas if I fire up, say, the FFVII remake there's a much healthier balance of combat and story to be found.
You're comparing full blown single player games to an MMO though. Granted we joke around the fact that FFXIV is a single player game especially with its msq but the fact is that due to development resources having to go all sorts of avenues this game tries very hard to handcraft the experience akin to single player FF game but despite its efforts it cant do so without fully sacrificing the MMO aspect. This is why we have quests that just involved talking to npcs because it has to adhere to the game design of an MMO and thats really not that fun. It does have its strentghs as an MMO story you have more means of side content to do in-between breaks in the story.

But yeah its still tricky business. I'm saying this as an avid old school FF veteran, the presentation for the single player experience is an admirable attempt...but it cant ever fully embrace it like the older titles that manage to do it much better. And thats not on FFXIV's fault, its just how it is for an MMO game.