Why does everyone complain about STORY based MMO's?

[Tlamila]

The story is the game, everything else is optional.

If this was true, the game would be offline and not requiring a sub. It certainly wouldn't be an mmo.
If it was true they wouldn't put effort into creating any other content but story.
If the whole playerbase thought like that, everybody would just sub for the story and once caught up unsub till next expansion, so basically sub only 1 month every few years, which would be the end of this game, financially. Who stays subbed for 10-20 years to a game just for the story? Unless they're super into charity and think squeenix is a small indie dev who needs help.
And if everybody thought the same, a lot less people would get in this game to begin with. Cause honestly, there's thousands of games with much better story, and none of them requires a subscription fee, and mostly even box price is lower. And many of them have coop, thus having you enjoy the story with other people (while in this game the story is almost the only single player activity).

[Voltyblast]

Yes. Other MMOs do that. This one never has. It's unique. Why can't one MMO be allowed to be unique? Why does it have to just be like everything else?

Not to sound annoying, but FFXIV is not unique: SWTOR did it too when it comes to heavy emphasis on story and character (and choices that actually matter). And yet you're still allowed to skip the story if you don't care or not interested (you kinda are required at the start though, at least until you get the ship), as well as to choose which expansions you want to play without doing the previous one (once I reached level 50 I went straight to the last expansion, skipping everything before)

Also Guild Wars 2 has a lot of story centric parts, with your character even speaking and interacting and you get choices in how to proceed. But you can still explore freely.

And If we want to go back further, I guess FFXI also exists, and while I haven't played it at all I'm fairly sure it is also very story-centric but I heard it has some leeway with freedom. I can't say so someone feel free to correct me on that.

But again, not unique. More restrictive for sure, but not unique.

[Ransu]

Not to sound annoying, but FFXIV is not unique: SWTOR did it too when it comes to heavy emphasis on story and character (and choices that actually matter). And yet you're still allowed to skip the story if you don't care or not interested (you kinda are required at the start though, at least until you get the ship), as well as to choose which expansions you want to play without doing the previous one (once I reached level 50 I went straight to the last expansion, skipping everything before)

Also Guild Wars 2 has a lot of story centric parts, with your character even speaking and interacting and you get choices in how to proceed. But you can still explore freely.

And If we want to go back further, I guess FFXI also exists, and while I haven't played it at all I'm fairly sure it is also very story-centric but I heard it has some leeway with freedom. I can't say so someone feel free to correct me on that.

But again, not unique. More restrictive for sure, but not unique.

SWTOR is starting to lock content behind story. You can't skip as much as you used to. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact it takes them over a year to release 10 minutes of cutscenes though.

FFXI required you to complete certain chapters in their expansions to gain access to specific content.

I personally don't see a problem with locking content away in such a manner and I think the existence of things like story skip in swtors cartel market or FFXIV mog store are in general not a good thing.

[Alaray]

different people play for different reasons, people are fine to want to skip the story if that's their decision.

some people log in just to glamour/gpose. some to rp. some to read the story and log off until next patch. some to half-afk in cities and chat. some to raid and raid only. some to pvp. so on.

jus cuz some people don't like the thing you think is most important/like the most isn't a big deal, and tbqh the story isn't actually important at all unless you... want to know the story.

it's a themepark after all, not everyone likes riding the tea cups and not everyone likes roller coasters. and there's plenty of stuff that ain't either to do.

[ForteNightshade]

I personally don't see a problem with locking content away in such a manner and I think the existence of things like story skip in swtors cartel market or FFXIV mog store are in general not a good thing.

I've never understood this. Why does it matter if people simply want to skip the story and focus on the gameplay aspects? They're literally going to press ESC every single time a cut scene pops up. So jump potions are essentially SE making money off people skipping already. Yes, they'd have to go through dungeons and trials but none of that teaches you much of anything.

[Ransu]

I've never understood this. Why does it matter if people simply want to skip the story and focus on the gameplay aspects? They're literally going to press ESC every single time a cut scene pops up. So jump potions are essentially SE making money off people skipping already. Yes, they'd have to go through dungeons and trials but none of that teaches you much of anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQcRVUlWWc4

Because you get people like Quinn who skip, jump into a fight clueless, complain and then leave the game. I think using a level jumper on another job if you already had a level capped job is fine, but if you're a new account....Nope, shouldn't be a thing.

[Absurdity]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQcRVUlWWc4

Because you get people like Quinn who skip, jump into a fight clueless, complain and then leave the game. I think using a level jumper on another job if you already had a level capped job is fine, but if you're a new account....Nope, shouldn't be a thing.

I don't see an issue. If people skip, don't bother to do any research and learn anything about the game, fail at pretty much every single aspect, then throw a hissy fit and leave... that's entirely on them and nothing of value was lost from them leaving.

[HyoMinPark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQcRVUlWWc4

Because you get people like Quinn who skip, jump into a fight clueless, complain and then leave the game. I think using a level jumper on another job if you already had a level capped job is fine, but if you're a new account....Nope, shouldn't be a thing.

You also have players that do not jump their characters/jobs and are equally as clueless; and complain equally as much about “difficult content” and threaten to leave the game if things aren’t nerfed. See: Will of the Moon and In From the Cold threads. Or any thread about content from HW or 4.x primals (Shinryu and Tsukuyomi specifically).

When one jumps a job, a pop-up appears dictating that the person should look over their actions and familiarize themselves with their abilities and toolkit. If they don’t do that, it’s on them. But there are just as many people who level up manually and never bother to understand their kit either, so.

[Absurdity]

This isn't just exclusive to XIV either. If I would go back to WoW, skip through the leveling process, don't botheer to learn about gearing correctly, don't bother to learn my class, don't bother to learn any mechanics, then jump into a raid and complain when I fail completely... I'll get laughed out of the game for being an entitled, unreasonable annoyance, instead of the game adjusting to my unwillingness to learn anything. The same applies to ESO and I'm pretty sure just about every other mmo out there.

[Alaray]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQcRVUlWWc4

Because you get people like Quinn who skip, jump into a fight clueless, complain and then leave the game. I think using a level jumper on another job if you already had a level capped job is fine, but if you're a new account....Nope, shouldn't be a thing.

okay but who cares?

plenty of people skip/jump and stay. plenty of people touch some arr quests and leave. end of the day he's just another guy who left, and the game's no better or worse off for it.