In 2.0, please improve flow between gameplay and story sequences

[sadrius]

Since XIV's launch, transitioning between gameplay and story sequences (cutscenes, quest instances, etc.) has been a very disjointed experience.

For example, after creating a character in Gridania, you're welcomed with a beautiful, well-crafted cutscene. It's bright and sunny out, leaves are blowing in the wind, lovely piano music is playing...

...and then you're dumped into the world. The piano music is gone. There's a good chance that the sun is no longer out depending on the time and weather. There are definitely no falling leaves; everything is static. Wake the NPCs up...

...and you're taken to another cutscene, where everything is bright, sunny, and full of life—especially the charming NPCs. Then the music changes to reflect that the party is being approached by dangerous wolves. Suddenly...

...you're back in the game. The NPCs who were previously full of life are now just standing there; it's a different time of day again, and the ominous music has been replaced with silence.

This was my first impression of XIV (way back in beta), that unfortunately still persists to this day—an incredibly disjointed experience between gameplay and story sequences. Which is really unfortunate, because some of the cutscenes these days are incredible.

(Possible spoilers)

The ending cutscene to Futures Perfect? Amazing!... but all of a sudden I'm in a cave? Huh? The ending cutscene to United We Stand? Awesome!... but wait, now I'm outside Castrum Nova, alive and well, without any explanation?

I imagine much of the disjointedness is an artifact of the current engine. Hopefully with 2.0, things will flow a lot better—like they would in a single-player Final Fantasy. With every patch, Yoshi-P and the dev team have been bringing us great gameplay and story improvements; it would be a shame for them to remain so... separated.

[Bebekurenai]

Yeah I agree. What I also find a bit annoying and honestly do not know if it has any solution, is that missions and quests are so apart from each other. Like per say, class quests at level 20, 30 and 36, I do lose track of what has been told. I know there's the option to review all cs inside the inn but still. Same happens with main story where I don't know anymore who the bad guy is. But as I said, this must be hard to "fix" if at all, and I'm thankful I can see the cs again in my room.

What I would point out though, maybe not that much related to quests/missions, but more with dungeons and similar: Those annoying cs when you trigger a portal or zone into Chimera and the likes. Imo, once you been through all this, it shouldn't be displayed anymore since it only annoys when you just try to get past something and a cs triggers when someone of your party zoned inside the boss instance. Even those who like to have the same cs repeated over and over again, I can understand it triggering when popping Darkhold's Ogre, but please, the same bloody portal over and over again while we are trying to cast sleepga or curaga? Yeah you can skip them, but it's annoying, totally brakes the party's rythm and makes you lose time while doing it.

[MariyaShidou]

Unfortunately that's the thing you have to deal with with MMORPG, the world isn't revolved around the single character you are playing (Day/Night cycle and NPC). Or they can't make the cs overly long (showing you running from the Antenna room all the way through so many gates and Garleans out to the entrance, wait they actually said that there are teleport safety measure before you enter the fight, that explains why there is 30 mins limit).

[Pawberry]

I think we should go back to the classic "Insert Disc" prompts between quest progression. This will remove those nasty RMTs for sure.

[indira]

as long as i can skip the CS.

[Airget]

For the last mission that CS can easily be explained

The reason you just appear outside is because the scene is over. It's like when a person gets stabbed and they die, do you see the part where they just lay dead and bleed out to the last point or does it cut to the next day where the cops find the body or someone passing by

In the same sense the scene was over Darnus showed his hands the heroes are on the floor defeated and he left them be. All that could be added to that scene is everyone standing up and walking away defeated and do you really want to see your character walk away from the battlefield in defeat? It's an unnecessary scene that would take away from the overall "badass" tone potrayed by the General.
It would be like those overexcessive scenes they have in Family Guy at times when Peter hurts his knee and he holds it aching in pain for at least 30 seconds before it cuts to the next scene, it's just not worth the time to show the heroes doing anything unless they were going to try and attack Dranus but that wasn't the case, that was the end of the scene.

[Valmonte]

Welcome to Instancing...would you like more?

[Skies]

Actually, regarding the weather thing.
That's MORE OR LESS a thing that doesn't happens on most cutscenes, I do remember the more recent quests absorbing the weather of the surrounding area, or at least a few of them (the 1.22b quests, I did one of them in a sandstorm, damn cool).

However, making sure that every cutscene uses the proper weather would be pretty nice, except in those cases where the weather is important to the scene itself, one can handle a bit of suspension of disbelief for a proper setting tone.

Also what Airget said

[Tonkra]

Since XIV's launch, transitioning between gameplay and story sequences (cutscenes, quest instances, etc.) has been a very disjointed experience.

For example, after creating a character in Gridania, you're welcomed with a beautiful, well-crafted cutscene. It's bright and sunny out, leaves are blowing in the wind, lovely piano music is playing...

...and then you're dumped into the world. The piano music is gone. There's a good chance that the sun is no longer out depending on the time and weather. There are definitely no falling leaves; everything is static. Wake the NPCs up...

...and you're taken to another cutscene, where everything is bright, sunny, and full of life—especially the charming NPCs. Then the music changes to reflect that the party is being approached by dangerous wolves. Suddenly...

...you're back in the game. The NPCs who were previously full of life are now just standing there; it's a different time of day again, and the ominous music has been replaced with silence.

This was my first impression of XIV (way back in beta), that unfortunately still persists to this day—an incredibly disjointed experience between gameplay and story sequences. Which is really unfortunate, because some of the cutscenes these days are incredible.

(Possible spoilers)

The ending cutscene to Futures Perfect? Amazing!... but all of a sudden I'm in a cave? Huh? The ending cutscene to United We Stand? Awesome!... but wait, now I'm outside Castrum Nova, alive and well, without any explanation?

I imagine much of the disjointedness is an artifact of the current engine. Hopefully with 2.0, things will flow a lot better—like they would in a single-player Final Fantasy. With every patch, Yoshi-P and the dev team have been bringing us great gameplay and story improvements; it would be a shame for them to remain so... separated.

Well i think that the new grand company story mission show how much better the "flow" is.

the story missions are untouched since release, and are from times where tanaka was the producer.


the grand company missions are the new "storyline" missions