Why does everyone complain about STORY based MMO's?

[ZedxKayn]

You people sure love to dismiss any opinion you dislike with the same old "muh minority".

Sure, but why bring metacritic in the first place then? Endwalker's user rating is based on 1.4k reviews, which are also less than 1% of the "millions who play". It's less than 0.1% actually.
If you want play the numbers game, don't use such blatant double standards.

Forums are not the whole community, but there are representative of a certain demographic of players. Same for Reddit. Same for Twitter. Same for Metacritic. Same for your server's Novice Network. You can't use one as the definitive judge of quality (which is stupid in the first place, because being popular has never shielded anything from criticism like you always love to imply), and ignore the others.

There's also massive survivor bias within the community, what about the opinions of those thousands who tried and got utterly filtered by the combat or the MSQ or whatever?

My personal experience is that not one single person I've got to try the game out finished the MSQ because of just how long it is for how it's presented no matter how much they push themselves. Point being XIV is very far from being all praises, but it's all people in the community tend to hear because most people who have criticism towards the game either already moved on and/or got backlash, because I've seldom seen a community so allergic to criticism.

[LittleImp]

It is a FINAL FANTASY game.

I have never understood this justification. Many other FF games have 10x the amount of actual gameplay between story beats than 14 has.

14s story is insanely padded by fetch quests and filler arcs, most of which revolve around traveling between npcs and talking to them. This is the only MMO I've ever played where I found myself begging for a 'kill 30 boars' quest to break up the monotony of the 7 million 'speak to alphinaud' quests between dungeons.

The core problem is the proportion of story to gameplay just feels VERY imbalanced while progressing the MSQ. Giving people an option to start at another point, or skip it altogether, doesn't 'destroy the story' or impact your ability to experience it whatsoever.

[Skivvy]

Here comes the broken record.....

My only other real experience with a FF title is XI.....SE's only other MMO. That game also has a lot of story, but it doesn't force you to complete 100% of every prior expansion before you can jump into current endgame (or whatever activity you were looking to do). You can have all the expansion stories (MSQ) open at various parts and work on them as you want. Now...the story isn't that continuous there, so it does make it easier. But then you have games like.....

....GW2, and that game does have a continuous story. They also let you jump around the various chapters and story lines if it suits you.

Players aren't stupid. We don't need to be forced into a mandatory story line, lest our precious story be ruined! If someone is jumping ahead, I'm preeeetty certain that they are aware they may spoil some of the earlier story, or that some things may not make much sense.

But anyhoo, at the end of the day, this is an MMO and not a single-player game. MMOs draw all sorts of people with all sorts of varied interests. SE could have had some foresight to plan for new players who would be jumping in years later, ways to make it easier to catch up with their friends who already play, more jumping in points as mentioned above, etc. Give players more control in how they progress and play the game. People love options. And SE is aware that the MSQ causes issues, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered changing up ARR and modifying instances.

[NekoMataMata]

I think the issue lays with the story to actionable content ratio.

When you play a story game, you know what you're getting into, but you're usually not looking for a whole movie. It's important to let the player have control every once in a while as they're experiencing the story. There needs to be a balance within the story itself between cutscenes and the player actually being able to do something.

There were times as I played that I definitely just chilled out and lounged around for a whole a day or two while playing through MSQ because I knew that there was no way I was going to be doing anything myself besides just reading and watching cutscenes.

They did liven the game up a bit with the parts of the story in SB where you get to play as other characters and directly experience the story through them, but given how limited that was I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that they don't think the majority of the casual player base could handle anything tougher.

[hydralus]

In a game where the story is the main focus of the game, you can slip them $25 and skip 90% of it. If it was a story based game you'd think they'd make playing the story mandatory and the endgame content would be something you pay to skip.

[Ransu]

Here comes the broken record.....

My only other real experience with a FF title is XI.....SE's only other MMO. That game also has a lot of story, but it doesn't force you to complete 100% of every prior expansion before you can jump into current endgame (or whatever activity you were looking to do). You can have all the expansion stories (MSQ) open at various parts and work on them as you want. Now...the story isn't that continuous there, so it does make it easier. But then you have games like.....

What? You absolutely had to progress to specific parts of the story to unlock sky/sea in both RoZ and CoP expansions (Sky needed to be rank 12 in the story if I recall to open up access to the zone). CoP was especially annoying because specific fights lowered your level meaning you had to have level appropriate gear to do the fight.

ToAU also had specific content locked behind story progression.

[Skivvy]

What? You absolutely had to progress to specific parts of the story to unlock sky/sea in both RoZ and CoP expansions (Sky needed to be rank 12 in the story if I recall to open up access to the zone). CoP was especially annoying because specific fights lowered your level meaning you had to have level appropriate gear to do the fight.

ToAU also had specific content locked behind story progression.

I never said it didn't have some requirements, however, you weren't required to complete 100% of the previous story lines in order to play whatever was current.

[Cach]

Yet every day i see the same thing: 'WAH WAH STORY IS TOO LONG'

Are those people in the room with you?
Perhaps you're conflating this with people that have problems with the writing quality/pacing?
Or maybe you're mad that some people would prefer a fresh start for the new arc starting on 7.0? (which is a very reasonable request IMO)

Most people that don't enjoy story quit early on ARR, or more rarely they just muscle their way buying skips or manually skipping.
I would even go as far that most people don't like text dumps and slower pace stuff but that's probably my personal experience being picked on for liking jRPGs during the SNES era talking.

Seriously, The game IS the story.

No

It is a FINAL FANTASY game.

Beyond a certain set of aesthetics, what does this even mean really?

[Jojoya]

FFXIV is a story focused MMO. It always has been and always will be and as someone who also really enjoys the games end game I will always have the same message for people. If you don't enjoy story focused content then you shouldn't play this game because the traditional end game type content will always come second in this game.

By that thinking, Duty Support shouldn't exist because it's a MMO so players should be required to be in player groups for all group content.

I don't think anyone is saying the story focus should be removed. It's what makes the game stand out for so many of us.

What they're asking for is a better option than story skip for those players who are attracted to the game by content/features other than the story so they can enjoy those things without having to waste about 200 hours of their time progressing through story to get to what really interests them. Nothing is harmed by giving that option.

Allowing them to approach the story on their own terms may even spark their interest in the story where if you force it on them from the start they're going to through up the usual human reaction of resisting what's being involuntarily forced on them. Look at some of the content creators out there who started by skipping dialog and cutscenes to rush to end game, get to end game and go "whoa, these encounters are amazing because they incorporate story elements, maybe I should go back and give the story a try now".

Options are not a bad thing.

[Raoabolic]

By that thinking, Duty Support shouldn't exist because it's a MMO so players should be required to be in player groups for all group content.

I know they are just nameless NPCs but the squad system is essentially just trusts. :'(