When are we as player going to demand from SE a better MSQ experience

[Gralna]

How dare they tell a story by having us interact with people and listen to them talk and doing tasks for them! Everyone knows the best way to tell a story is to mindlessly massacre an entire army worth of enemies!

[Malthir]

How dare they tell a story by having us interact with people and listen to them talk and doing tasks for them! Everyone knows the best way to tell a story is to mindlessly massacre an entire army worth of enemies!

Actually the cornerstone of good story telling is to show not tell. So instead of a 10m cutscene of being told the entire back story of a culture while we sit there like a lemon, we could I don't know say do a solo duty with the lama traders while we're on the back of their wagons defending their stock from mob waves, as we deliver important goods to people. Giving the players something to do while they learn and feel engaged and involved in the story, instead of being treated like a child that should sit there quietly and listen to someone talking at them.

[Gralna]

Actually the cornerstone of good story telling is to show not tell. So instead of a 10m cutscene of being told the entire back story of a culture while we sit there like a lemon, we could I don't know say do a solo duty with the lama traders while we're on the back of their wagons defending their stock from mob waves, as we deliver important goods to people. Giving the players something to do while they learn and feel engaged and involved in the story, instead of being treated like a child that should sit there quietly and listen to someone talking at them.

[Striker44]

Actually the cornerstone of good story telling is to show not tell. So instead of a 10m cutscene of being told the entire back story of a culture while we sit there like a lemon, we could I don't know say do a solo duty with the lama traders while we're on the back of their wagons defending their stock from mob waves, as we deliver important goods to people. Giving the players something to do while they learn and feel engaged and involved in the story, instead of being treated like a child that should sit there quietly and listen to someone talking at them.

On the flip side, other people need to focus on one thing at a time. I know I'm one of those. If I have to actively do combat of some sort or pay attention to surroundings, I can't process the information happening at the same time (for example, in single-player duties I always have to go back after the duty is complete to read the dialogue - I also always do dungeons with NPC support the first time so I can actually take time to pay attention to the surroundings, commentary, etc.). Separating combat moments from lore-giving moments benefits people like me and allows us to better engage with everything.

[CosmoBabylonia]

How dare they tell a story by having us interact with people and listen to them talk and doing tasks for them! Everyone knows the best way to tell a story is to mindlessly massacre an entire army worth of enemies!

It's usually always better to show than it is to tell.

Like if you watch Saving Private Ryan, facial expressions alone conveyed what each person was like and how they think. The whole scene at the AA radar was so good because of it. The entire break down of Capt Miller's character was done so well. Nowhere did we get this long ass exposition describing how each member of the main cast is, and how they think the world should be. It's done through snippets of their regular conversations with others and how they act under fire or dire mission critical situations (the part where Vin Diesel's character dies was an awesome scene for this too).

The scene where General Marshall was reading an old letter sent to a deceased solder's family told the audience exactly how he was. He was as compassionate person and values the lives of his men. It was only done through him reading a letter out loud as oppose to the film down right exposition dump on us.

If you want the epitome of SHOW DON'T TELL, go watch Das Boot. It's probably the greatest war movie ever made. Makes you value good writing. The old one made in West Germany, not the new garbage Netflix series by the way.

Meanwhile in DT, we've had NPCs non stop blasting to our ears how great Wuk is and is the second coming of Jesus.

[Lusarae]

I dont have any big complaints about it. seemed pretty standard FFXIV fare personally.

That is literally the problem. Standard FF14 fare doesn't work when the story is unable to carry the weight of the entire expansion.

IThe game is 10 years now, its golden path design needs to mature past its torrent of fedex quest designs and cutscene vomit.

like if SE could pivot their design philosophy to treating cutscenes and dialog as rewards for gameplay rather than a replacement for it, that would be a good start...

That's the best way I've seen anyone put it.

To be fair if this post about the Japanese forums https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...dawntrail_msq/ is to be believed, the writing is no better in it's native language.

Warms my heart to know the Japanese community feels the same way. Higher chance of the devs actually reading it and listening.

How dare they tell a story by having us interact with people and listen to them talk and doing tasks for them! Everyone knows the best way to tell a story is to mindlessly massacre an entire army worth of enemies!

I'm not really "doing tasks" for them I'm watching others do all the work. It doesn't feel like I'm interacting with anyone either, SE hasn't given us proper roleplay yet. If we had a MSQ in the vein of that KOTOR MMO where we actually had choices we could do that had meaningful consequences and personalized our experience that would be great. But the 5% of the time they game finally asks for our input its essentially, do you pick "Yes!" or do you pick "Maybe, well sure."? Even the meaningless ones where you can poke fun at other characters or be a goofball seem a bit more limited than it used to be in previous content. Please let us RP if you're going to stick us in cutscenes.

All people are asking for is some agency. Agency is what you get when you're allowed to RP in all the cutscenes. Or you're fighting monsters. What's the point of these grand vast gorgeous zones if you don't even get to hunt any of the monsters in it? Is a "fetch quest" really going to be different in tone/narrative if I fetch some rock in the wilderness, as opposed to fetching some npc or a forgotten bowl in the safety of town? We're adventurers not butlers. Let us adventure.

[Ranhansha]

Never. Some people say this story is amazing. Also, I heard SE said they adjusted Summoner this expansion according to player feedfack. ACCORDING TO FEEDBACK! If that's to be believed and they changed the MSQ, next expansion we would have a 100-hour long cutscene where the WoL nods and babysits a lizardman where the villains have been taken from a modern Disney film and the Scions follow you spitting snarky remarks every 5 hours. But it will be fine because Erenvile is so handsome and cute and Estinien will be shirtless for a while.

[Sonoskay]

I kind of agree. I'm taking my sweet time through the MSQ and even if it was partially self inflicted Im taking to many side NPCS as awell as taking every opprotunity to talk to the scions, i found it surprising my first combat encounter was 3 hours in, and was only 3 basic mobs. EW and SHB had this issue too. though they had a little more going on Story wise.

[A_moth_called_rose]

They'll start making a better MSQ when you all can come together to make a coherent singular thought and not 100 different "catmommy bad actually" threads.

[CaptainLagbeard]

The quality of the MSQ and actually reading the story slows down progress quite a bit, but having just beaten the level 95 dungeons and going through the scenes immediately after that... It's very much just been wuk's story, and the WoL is dragged along and forced to agree with everything. I don't even feel like a side character, I feel like I'm not even in the story.