I sort of wish players could only choose one job.

[KyahAlmasy]

Wait, are you saying that if we never leveled, we can get past all these quests and missions? If the said game play is inconsequential, why do we need to be at a certain level? Why do we need gear to do better damage to pass a quest?
Also, gameplay is part of the mechanics of the game. It is by it's very definition.

I believe I've addressed this already

The only thing the game acknowledges in terms of "Gameplay" is that we've finished the quest, not the actions or events during gameplay that may have occurred. The game will NOT let the player continue the story until they've finished the quest as the story intended. Us dying and rechallenging a quest a dozen times is inconsequential because it doesn't reflect in the game at all because it isn't canonical to the story. If it were, our deaths would have a larger consequence then us merely respawning to try again. Hence why it's "inconsequential" because "Canonically" it never happened.

In plenty of instances where the NPC's even witnesses our death (Sometimes dying themselves) and failure during a quest they'll talk as if you never failed at all when you eventually finish it. According to the "Canon" our characters have never failed. Which has nothing to do with us, as the player failing. The mechanics I'm referring to are the ones that govern the plot and how the game operates.

In short, if you lose a fight, if this was a console game, you would have seen the "game over" screen and had to load frm the last save point. But since this is a mmorpg, there are no manual save points, you start at the auto save point of before the fight. And hence that's why you're allowed to view the same cut scene over and over again, which can "canonically" never happen.

To be honest you've sort of refuted your own point in the same post. If we're playing an RPG game and lose in a fight, does the plot or the characters in the game acknowledge the loss? Can you use that instance as an example of the characters strengths or weaknesses? No, you can't because your loss during gameplay is "inconsequential" to the RPG, just as it is in FFXIV. Even the same characters you're playing as don't acknowledge their own loss.

After a while, just about every plot device is contrived. You think it's easy to jam out stories that's mind blowing for every job, every quest? Do you know how hard that is? That's like expecting your favorite to make every song they put out your absolute favorite. This is a game, made by human, on a deadline, with a budget. There are stronger stories and there are weaker stories. If you have a way to create top-knotch, intriguing stories 100% of the time, by all means. All of humanity since the invention of the story has been looking for a way to do that.

No, what makes a plot device contrived is when you can easily spot it's use. As someone else mentioned, it doesn't feel genuine and comes off more like "Gotta catch 'em all" which hollows out the plot, and makes its purpose transparent. And they did a very good job "jamming" out interesting and diverse stories in the other quests, so why should the Jobs be any different?

Well I'll tell you. The Jobs were added as an after thought and weren't as well thought-out as the other quests. They added shallow, trite and equally unlikely sequence of stories for the players to get these new jobs.

So none of the above points by themselves explain why all this seems "unrealistic". But when put together (some bars lowered and other rates of things increased), you can see how these things, although unrealistic to normal people, is still in the realm of possibility, even in the real world, if certain criteria are met. None of which, are the job system.

You don't realize why the story is written like that? It's because they're trying to write to a general template that we fill in ourselves. If you see these stories with characters as Sue/Stu as you put it, that's, as much as I hate to say this, a reflection of *you*. A self projection of *you*. They can't write to complex backgrounds because we fill in the gaps on the own backgrounds. They can't write to flaws because they don't know what *our* flaws are. One of the great things about customization is that they give *us* the ability to choose the character we want. But the flaws of that is that they *can't* write and check for every possibility. Again, due to time, money, budget, etc, constraints. Really, I really hate to have to say this but, after this much dismissal and ignoring of points I've made and replying with points that have nothing to do with the quotes that you've posted, I'm beginning to think that it's not the game that's dull. It's you. Your projection of yourself is dull and you're blaming the system for it.

Our characters are not the template, the only choices we make that have any effect on our characters in the game is when we initially invent them. After that we follow a set path designed for us by the creators. In order for us, the players, to "project" ourselves and immerse is to create a convincing illusion that we are in control. That alone relies solely on how believable the story is.

For example, in a horror movie let's say Jessica is driving down a long highway that winds through the countryside. Uh oh, her phone suddenly has no connection, and she's about to run out of gas, oh and she's naked. Oh and there's a rapist/serial killer who just so happens to have been running rampant on that exact highway. She pulls over and runs down a long empty field completely naked and even though that highway runs on endlessly through several states the killer just so happens to be waiting exactly where she stopped. The plot devices to set her up for disaster are just so unbelievable and contrived that it becomes trite and distasteful.

Though like you mentioned, it's well within the realm of possibility for that to happen. But that certainly does not provide any justification for the improbability of the situation. In terms of FFXIV, the idea that our character always has perfect timing, and never fails is.. well, distasteful and contrived. The stories were poorly constructed, and like a bad horror movie had me rolling my eyes the whole time until I was staring at my own brain wondering what the hell I was even doing.

I'm starting to believe that you don't believe a word of that at all. Well, not the first half. I've already covered most of this before so I'm not going to repeat myself again. But again, all I wanted to point out was that your point of someone being able to master a lot of things being unrealistic is not a logically sound. None of the points, if I might add, you've provided counter proof to and simply dismissed or just restated your initial point.

I'm starting to believe that our ideas of what is, and isn't "realistic" vary greatly. You believe that anything with a possibility of occurring is "realistic", while I tend to have a more practical mindset on the likelyhood of said instances coming to fruition. Even Aristotle mentioned that instances that are improbable aren't realistic. You can rely on an improbable possibility just as much as you can expect to win the lottery.