Why is the Post-MSQ Content so Passive in Endwalker?

[HappyHubris]

I'm catching up on the post-MSQ Endwalker content and am struck at how it encapsulates the worst element of Square's MMO design: a lack of interactivity for the player. Outside of the token dungeons and trials, questing generally centers around traveling and watching endless written exposition dumps and reaction shots. It feels more like a disjointed YouTube video than a game.

As a simple example from my recent content, there is a part where we are told about rampaging monsters being a threat to supply convoys, and how a faction does not want us to deal with the monsters. (I'm being vague here to not spoil the "content.") Now we could find this out by hearing that supplies are being lost en route with casualties and investigating the disappearances. Then with our hunch we could start escorting convoys to see the monster issue ourselves. Finally the other faction could show up during our combat and complain in real time or even challenge us while we dispatch the threat. This is good storytelling. Instead, the concepts are dumped on us in a shot->reverse shot->reaction->repeat dialog cinematic. If my character's gameplay is simply traveling from point to point without interacting with the environment, just make them half hour long cutscenes with the travel baked in.

And let's talk about these cinematics. Some are dynamic action setpieces with cinematography. But most are a character walking into the shot and then endless shot-reverse shot dialog, with ample reaction shots thrown in. It's like the Star Wars prequels with reaction shot filler. If nothing is happening and the dialog is mundane, have it occur while the character is doing something else. Share thoughts with an NPC while you move supply crates together or track down the magical part or whatever, instead of taking the characters control away for "He said this and then she said this and then he said this and then..." Think of how much more interesting it could be watching us patrol or experiment with magitek or whatever while the NPC tells us "Bob might disagree with our approach" instead of showing a Scion standing there and querying the NPC, the NPC telling us about Bob, and then multiple characters standing for reaction shots. Before jumping to more shot-reverse shot dialog This is what movies do to keep the player engaged during the transfer of mundane information.

I laughed out loud at one point when my character was tasked with activating magical devices during a ritual and...it was a cutscene. I couldn't even control my character walking over and triggering the devices.

Moving forward, let's give the player more to do as we move through the primary questline!

[Rolder50]

Unfortunately the games been like that since... well, it's entire existence really. And people endlessly shower them with praise for it so I don't see their methods changing any time soon.

[Iscah]

Having the characters do an activity while talking would probably take control away from us even further, since any conversation needs to proceed at the rate of the action.

More text boxes would need to be force-timed and automatically proceeding, and you would get more instances like your complained-about "character does a thing automatically in a cutscene instead of the player piloting it".

[Asari5]

people hate to walk forth and back only to click on something... now the game does it for them. the result is even less a game as it was before.

[HappyHubris]

Having the characters do an activity while talking would probably take control away from us even further, since any conversation needs to proceed at the rate of the action.

More text boxes would need to be force-timed and automatically proceeding, and you would get more instances like your complained-about "character does a thing automatically in a cutscene instead of the player piloting it".

But right now we're not doing anything either. Adding the appearance of action is better than standing around and talking. And indeed you could have the character perform tasks in real time (say by taking a stroll with a character or completing a task, where each step executed triggers more dialog) while the dialog appears in our chat box.

[Jeeqbit]

lack of interactivity for the player

Doubt that's going to change much to be like SWTOR or something.

Outside of the token dungeons and trials, questing generally centers around traveling and watching endless written exposition dumps and reaction shots.

It's always been this way. Final Fantasy games have always been story/cutscene/text heavy, followed by bosses that you have to tackle with a small team. The developers have discussed this. I remember Yoshi-P and the creator of the final fantasy series discussing this as well. They seem fine with the fact it is mostly like watching a film/series and commented how it was like that from the start.

For quite some time we've had a few people try to come up with ridiculous ideas like "interactive films" and "the metaverse", but the reality is that already exists in the form of games. So maybe this could just be thought of as an "interactive film" if you want.

It feels more like a disjointed YouTube video than a game.

I wouldn't say disjointed (maybe you are skipping some of it).

Now we could find this out by hearing that supplies are being lost en route with casualties and investigating the disappearances. Then with our hunch we could start escorting convoys to see the monster issue ourselves. Finally the other faction could show up during our combat and complain in real time or even challenge us while we dispatch the threat.

It could, because there are a lot of single player games that tell a story while mostly moving around and fighting stuff still, with the voice actors still talking while you fight things. Just difficult to see how it would make a difference at this point, because they likely won't redo the old stuff and new players will still have to go through to Endwalker seeing the old style.

the concepts are dumped on us in a shot->reverse shot->reaction->repeat dialog cinematic.

I think they seem to do it for emphasis. Otherwise you could be not paying as much attention to important conversations. Also in games where there isn't a cutscene, the audio can vary depending on your proximity to them.

I laughed out loud at one point when my character was tasked with activating magical devices during a ritual and...it was a cutscene. I couldn't even control my character walking over and triggering the devices.

I don't know about things like that. But the way you would press stuff in this game is really boring, like click, menu comes up, click Confirm. They would need to make a proper animation for pressing things. Maybe adding interaction animations like that is something they could look at with the graphics update.

[Iscah]

But right now we're not doing anything either. Adding the appearance of action is better than standing around and talking. And indeed you could have the character perform tasks in real time (say by taking a stroll with a character or completing a task, where each step executed triggers more dialog) while the dialog appears in our chat box.

I don't think it would be better for storytelling, necessarily.

It would be potentially distracting, especially if people are trying to read textboxes, doubly if the animatedness means the conversation gets rushed along.

Also, we effectively have a few of these "cutscenes" already in the game where we get on a mount and someone chatters alongside us giving exposition to the location we're riding through – and they're really not that exciting.

[MeanDragon]

Don't forget the head tilt! The only reaction my WoL can do.

[Sjol]

Honestly, I think a lot of it is limitations of their engine, which I feel is really bad. I think this is why we haven't gotten entirely new activities. It can only do a few things and those have been since the beginning:

* watch a cutscene
* kill an enemy
* FATEs
* click on a thing to increase a counter or trigger next stage
* the camera zoom thing
* talk to NPCs at specific points
* use a special action
* act as a character with a special move set (usually once per patch at most)

That's a really short list and some of those were the only new kind of activity in an entire expansion. It's partly why I think Island Sanctuary was so poor -- their engine didn't really let them do anything interesting.

The idea that you would get a game where you chase someone, or bombing runs, or taking over a super powerful vehicle or entity and laying waste to things seems impossible. Or even just mini games in the overworld or hunting for treasure chests that randomly spawn. Honestly, I find the overworld painfully dull, even visually most of the time. It's partly why everyone's in the cities. Why on earth would you do anything in the overworld unless forced.

[Jeeqbit]

Honestly, I think a lot of it is limitations of their engine, which I feel is really bad.

It's philosophical because look at what they did with FF16 and look at what they did in the FF16 event and look at what they did with the Nier raids.

That's a really short list and some of those were the only new kind of activity in an entire expansion.

They said they've slowly increased what cutscenes can do and we did get the NPCs follow you around thing in Endwalker, as well as riding mounts with them.

I don't think it's that the engine isn't capable of stuff, they just didn't code it in the gameplay code. I think that's because they designed it as a "traditional MMO" where you click things always, unlike recent ones where chopping trees is more realistic than "target and click and wave your hand around while a bar loads".

I think to change it they would have to look at games like New World and really aim to change the whole way that you do things in the game, so that for example you press Overpower and it collides with nearby objects and pushes them away or chops them into pieces.