Standing There Syndrome

[CaptainLagbeard]

Sometimes things just need to happen for the sake of the plot, but it can be rather annoying to just sit there and watch it happen...

Kind of a spoiler but

The biggest such moment I can think of was in Endwalker with Ahewann, as he gets grabbed by one of the monsters and eaten, while the WoL takes like half a minute to run a few meters just to be dramatically too late.

[Carin-Eri]

Sometimes things just need to happen for the sake of the plot, but it can be rather annoying to just sit there and watch it happen...

Kind of a spoiler but

The biggest such moment I can think of was in Endwalker with Ahewann, as he gets grabbed by one of the monsters and eaten, while the WoL takes like half a minute to run a few meters just to be dramatically too late.

Worst moment I can think of was immediately after we defeated Golbez. We just stood there letting him monologue a "but this was my plan all along" line and throw Azdaja down the pit.

[Archeron]

I mean they can't even voice every cutscene in the game, thats something even Free to play games have found ways to do, and this is a paid, subscription game. The amount of times they fade to black to avoid having to create an animation, or do like anything interesting is simply embarassing, especially with people paying for this game MONTHLY. Make no mistake this is about budget. This is SQEENIX milking every last penny out of their cash cow to fund their other failing business endeavors.

[Rueby]

Worst moment I can think of was immediately after we defeated Golbez. We just stood there letting him monologue a "but this was my plan all along" line and throw Azdaja down the pit.

I mean there's that one scene in HW...

Everyone stood there while Haurchefant dramatically died in slow motion. I'd understand if the light spear or w.e pierced his Lv1 shield and instantly broke it and the sudden death caught everyone off guard....even then everyone just stood and watched the dude die??? Most pointless death in the game imo...I was so upset by it when I first saw it.

[Maxilor]

WOL to Wok Lamar: "Standing here, I realize you are just like me trying to make history."

Wuk Labutt: "What?"

WOL:

[TaleraRistain]

WOL to Wok Lamar: "Standing here, I realize you are just like me trying to make history."

Wuk Labutt: "What?"

WOL:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who had their thoughts go that way.

[Kes13a]

I mean there's that one scene in HW...

Everyone stood there while Haurchefant dramatically died in slow motion. I'd understand if the light spear or w.e pierced his Lv1 shield and instantly broke it and the sudden death caught everyone off guard....even then everyone just stood and watched the dude die??? Most pointless death in the game imo...I was so upset by it when I first saw it.

especially since I was a WHM when I saw that... like.. hmmmm. if only someone was around that could heal or rez....

[Akonyl]

For the most part I don't mind this, because it's just a narrative pacing thing. It's like when a character in anime does a paragraph of monologue in the middle of an attack, but the attack's not supposed to actually take nearly that long. If they wanted, the scenes could be just as easily constructed without characters having a chance to react, but then they wouldn't be able to cover the narration/motivations/etc as they want to in the story, so I let it slide.

But in DT I remember being absolutely baffled by Ketenramm:

Not only just standing there in the throne room, but stopping us from interfering with the Zoraal Ja / Gulool Ja Ja fight. The guy was literally ambushed by Zoraal Ja just a few quests before and he's now just standing there watching him kill his friend with stolen technology? What on earth? Why was he even there? To warn Gulool that Zoraal had stolen the tech of the golden city, and then do nothing about it? ???

[Hallarem]

I mean they can't even voice every cutscene in the game, thats something even Free to play games have found ways to do, and this is a paid, subscription game. The amount of times they fade to black to avoid having to create an animation, or do like anything interesting is simply embarassing, especially with people paying for this game MONTHLY. Make no mistake this is about budget. This is SQEENIX milking every last penny out of their cash cow to fund their other failing business endeavors.

I'll give you the classic defense to this from their defenders when it comes to lackluster quality and weird QoL deficiencies like hats missing from two or three races?:

- Well if they voice acted every cutscene and quest, they don't have time and money to focus on other things and we would have less stuff to do in game (DESPITE the fact that we tend to receive the same exact things in cycles in every patch)
- "Well if they fix this / that / those the game might break and then we couldn't play and I don't like change and I wanna keep playing, the game is fine as it is "

Which would be good enough IF WE WERENT PAYING A MONTHLY FEE FOR THIS GAME. If it was free to play it could be a burning garbage pile for all I care, but I and many others are paying money for this while some FREE TO PLAY GAMES Get more effort put into them than this one is just infuriating and the lacks are made even more glaringly obvious now that there isn't a good story MSQ to blanket over their mistakes and PR shield them.

"But free to play games get their money by cash shops" well NEWSFLASH, so does FFXIV with it's cash shop that doesn't even have ACCOUNT SHARING for the items you bought between characters, forcing you to sometimes buy items twice if you want to do anything for your alts.
What did we get for that money? A whole lot of same, with a horrible story they rushed Endwalker for and stuck two expansions into one for some odd reason, with updated character faces, no character customization and low quality character bodies that still wear wooden clogs because they can't program their own character models to stand evenly on ground or whatever the excuse is. Chat bubbles that npc's have but somehow is mystical alchemical magical technology for the devs to implement on a toggle off/on system. Aaand we got like .. 30-40% of a graphical update they are doing for the next 5 years probably if not more? SO yeah, I 100% believe the conspiracy theory that the C-team was left working on the expansion, while the B and A team work on some project SE is pumping out on mobile or something. Maybe another FF7 remake or FF9 remake to cash in from nostalgia instead of innovating like they used to and rewarding their long term subscribers and fans with some full focus and quality. Look at the new writing teams credentials? One of them wrote a nurse dating simulator while the others wrote a story for a raid series or worked in another department.

[Cenobia]

For the most part I don't mind this, because it's just a narrative pacing thing. It's like when a character in anime does a paragraph of monologue in the middle of an attack, but the attack's not supposed to actually take nearly that long. If they wanted, the scenes could be just as easily constructed without characters having a chance to react, but then they wouldn't be able to cover the narration/motivations/etc as they want to in the story, so I let it slide.

Narrative pacing doesn't excuse bad writing, not to mention that, like you mentioned in your example, people can talk while fighting. Also, as the Warrior of Light, we still have the exposition Get Out of Jail Free Card that is the Echo. Since the Zoraal Ja scene has been brought up several times in this thread, here's how you can get the same plot point across (attacks the city, duels his father, loses, revives and powers up, kills father and leaves) while not insulting every player's intelligence:

>WoL and Co. arrive in the city, it's under attack.
>Jump in to help the Landsguard in the defensive efforts
>Civvies are being evacuated to the throne room as it is the most defensible location in the city
>Other scions peel off to help other areas while WoL and Wuk approach the bottom of the stairs
>You both fight off waves of drones to keep the evacuation corridor open
>Zoraal Ja lands at the top of the stairs, rushes in
>Bakool Ja Ja arrives, joins the WoL in defending the civvies while Wuk runs after her brother
>Drones eventually peter off and WoL sees Zoraal Ja leaving the throne room
>Runs in with scions, sees all civvies in shock, Gulool Ja Ja and landsguard dead and Wuk downed
>Alphinaud(and healer WoL) get Wuk back up
>Echo Time
>We get to see the whole duel thing with Zoraal Ja, but this time the reason Wuk doesn't jump in is because he threathens to kill the civvies near them if she does
>Things happen as canon
>Wuk loses her shit after Gulool Ja Ja goes down, tries to attack Zoraal Ja, gets knocked out easily. Echo ends.

There we go. The plot still happened, but in a way that's justified. As a writer, a big part of your job isn't to just come up with a plot, but to justify it happening. This one wasn't even particularly hard, Hiroi is just a hack.