Why does everyone complain about STORY based MMO's?

[Larirawiel]

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

Seriously? I have never seen that ingame.


Cheers

[Dzian]

That's the point of them.
They're meant to relieve tension after a climax and build towards the next.

If the story was sitting at 100% from the get go, it would honestly take away from from the high points in the story.

Good story writing always has highs and lows, so that the high's really feel impactful.

Then what they should do is instead of having tons of brain dead filler crap they should just pause the main story. Make the next quest available at level x sort of thing. Then after the climax as you call it. Players can unwind in there own ways rather than go from slayer of gods to squisher of bugs eating our crops.. that stuff feels like am absolute chore which is why it gets so much hate.
or just make it all side quests instead of main quests.

FFXIs CoP still one of the most memorable stories I've ever gone through in an mmo and it was paced really well. No arduous filler crap. Once you beat a chapter or something you could unwind level up a bit. Chill out and then jump into the next chapter whenever you felt ready without having a wall of chores in-between

An other issue with the story is the difficulty.. It's too easy. Now I'm not saying make it savage hard or anything.. but when the story is trying to paint a picture of inescapable doom any battles that connect to that should at least feel like you narrowly avoided defeat. Instead of feeling like you just bad slapped that peril away.. and i don't mean like the zeons fights where the game essentially cheats.. you can roflstomp the hell outta zenos but magically the game still drops you to 1 hp... cheap..

XIVs problems with difficulty though in my opinion are never actually down to things being too hard to do. But nearly always come down to a lack of guidance in what the game expects you to do..

You can see this all the back in many of the earlier job quests. One of the smn ones I think (35) got so much hate in arr because it was "impossible"... but then players found hey there's fissures all the way over there let's get them and that "impossible" quest became easy peasy.. just the game did a terrible job of pointing out to players what they were meant to do in the first place. And nearly every example of something that was too hard in the msq is the exact same thing.

But rather than offer players a hint of guidance they just nerf the content instead.
Sometimes the player does get a hint.. in the chat window. which is
A: the last place anyones going to look in a fight. and
B: likely to be pushed off the screen before they even see it. if players havent changed there log filters too much from the default.

[Rayne6665]

Some people just dont care for the storylines so they skip every cutscenes except the ones that can’t be skipped and want to get right to the unlocked contents lol . From ARR to EW , i have never once skip any cutscenes cus the story gets me hyped, get me edge of my seat, etc xD but hey, they do them lmao

[TaleraRistain]

Don't drag Xenogears into this, the scene where Ramsus crucifies Chu-Chu was VERY serious! lol

Bahahahahahaha the Chucifixion

I love watching Let's Plays where someone gets to that point

It's funny that they crucify the Gears in the first place instead of the people (do they think they can't just get out of them?) , but then you pan over to Chu-Chu

Bart was also super serious 100% of the time and never acted like he'd fall over dead if he didn't make a joke

[drtasteyummy]

Because it's badly designed.

- The story is not encapsulated, one expansion is usually as big as a Harry Potter book so
new players have to get through all at once just to enjoy some raiding or dailies with their friends
- If you're late you probably faced an endspoiler along the way anyway
- It's a story based game with fewest voice lines I've ever seen even tho' it makes the biggest profit for the company
ignoring the absolute abysmal face animations that often take any seriousness out of the conversation like it's some Warcraft 3 unit plate animation level
- There is barely any refraction of the old story content
- The story really isn't as godlike as people make it out to be and worse SE hit just the right amount of dialoge so that whenever you're ready to
lean back you have to move your character to a position 10 yards from the current one
- And on top of the top of that they have a gear farming system that punishes you for not rushing through this lmao

[Reap00]

In a game where the story is main focus behind the game, you are not rushed to get to endgame, you are not FORCED to play optimally to get through content...

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

Seriously, The game IS the story.

It is a FINAL FANTASY game.

There are plenty of MMO's out there that destroy their own storylines for the 'endgame progression' aspect of the game, if you want to play those, then do that.

FFXIV should never move away from the story aspect of the game, the MSQ is what keeps this game coherent.

We need more threads like this. Keep them coming friend.

[Carin-Eri]

Oh man if thats the case than the design of ARR being 50 levels of a flat line of Low points until the very last set of quests is genius design then.

When the story is not good this game's gameplay falls apart fast imo, its definately not for everyone, and it shouldn't be immune to criticism.

Its very much a 'with the benefit of hindsight' scenario though.

Yeah, I'll agree that the fetch-quests and 'low point' early content seemed tedious at the time and were a low point overall considering what follows.

However - and to note am only viewing this from my own perspective - this was, basically, necessary world building. I don't think having our character start the game as some big hero would've been as effective. Having them follow the classic 'Zero to Hero' trope worked very well in my opinion, and it felt more impactful as my character achieved more and more and, slowly, became an increasingly more significant figure as the story progressed.

I mean, I loved the callbacks to this in Endwalker - for example, Zenos, of all people, using the fact that he knew we were still an Adventurer in our hearts (if you choose that route) to challenge us one last time. That and the fact that, in the Newfound Adventure content, NPCs seem less inclined to refer to our character a the Warrior of Light.

[Novae]

Because a lot of FF14 players are MMO players first. The game may be the story for you, but not for me. I just see it as a nice bonus, but I'll never stop playing the game because I don't like its story. It's a videogame, not a book.

[Shibi]

Minfilia: WOL, thanks for the burger, look, Limsa is be destroyed on the morrow, you must kill Leviathan and save them all, but first, I'm hungry again, I need wine and cheese for a party in Costa Del Sol!

And just to think, if Brayflox hadn't given us the smellmake gobbie cheese, Limsa and her erper's would be no more.

Darn you, gobbie!

[Theox]

"NOOOOOOO YOU CAN'T HAVE FUN IN MY STORY-BASED MMORPG, YOU HAVE TO WATCH EVERY CUT-SCENE OF GRAHA EATING BURGERS AND Y'SHTOLA BEING SAILOR MOON CUTIE TO GET THE FULL EXPERIENCE AS WELL AS TEACH THE MOON ANIMALS HOW TO SHIT WITHOUT FARTING BECAUSE IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO THE STORY!!!"

On a serious note, the game provides a large variety of content NOT based on a main storyline, and naturally some people are going to gravitate towards that content more than the story. I myself find endwalker plot to be outrageously horrible, so if I get a chance to skip the story moving forward just to get to the content I can actually enjoy I'd be glad. Stop gatekeeping this fucking game, you don't get to decide how people SHOULD enjoy playing it.