Not enough stuff to get me emotionally invested

[Betelgeuzah]

Grahf ? Really ? We dont know if he is a villain, for all we know he can be one of those tragic/villain/hero NPC that gets in your way and in the end was trying to save the world, or he can be a real villain or whatever, the point is, WE DONT KNOW ***, about him or anybody in the empire, 50R of gameplay and all we see is a grafh look alike and thats it

The point is that you are trying to make up *** to diss the game, and are failing horribly at it .

[Arcell]

http://www.ffxivcore.com/index.php?a...attach_id=6906

Not a siiiingle villain. Not even close. Nope. 50 ranks and.. n o t h i n g a t a l l.

And that guy > shadow lord, anyday.

Limsa Spoilers R15

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egh3lxTp_cM

9:40

Don't forget the guy from the Limsa storyline who stole the key to Seal Rock and stored it in his body via darkness. You can't tell me he wasn't evil, just look at him!

[Moth]

Do the rank 46 mission and then say something

[Corrderio]

Don't forget it's only half the story, when PS3 comes out they'll slowly up the level cap and add to the story. In fact there is a R52 in the data IIRC.

[Alcide]

Don't forget it's only half the story, when PS3 comes out they'll slowly up the level cap and add to the story. In fact there is a R52 in the data IIRC.

Actually I would dare to say that the rank46 mission signs the start of the real storyline

[Corrderio]

Actually I would dare to say that the rank46 mission signs the start of the real storyline

Pretty much, remember how useless most nation storylines were until about rank 4 or whenever you go for Magicite? Outside of the dragon/ahirman fight there wasn't any hint at the Shadow Lord.

[Leowilde]

I see your point - look at the latest single player FFs. I still hasn't finished half of FFXIII, and I used to be so eager about the series before. But as we all know, online games work somewhat different, and I have been more than thrilled with the storyline of FFXIV so far. I only wish there was more of it; more sidequests like the class quests to flesh out between the main storyline, for example. It's easy to get cut off the story when spending too much time solely on grinding and doing leves with no cut scenes.

[Cairdeas]

I wrote an Op-Ed about this on Eorzeapedia a while back discussing more the Interaction with individual NPC's, Cutscenes and side quests.

http://www.eorzeapedia.com/2010/12/2...-to-the-world/

[Randis]

woops, double post

[Abriael]

I agree that emotional invested should be a very present element in the game (actually there's quite a bit in some class quests, but there should be more and more distributed through the storyline).

The path companion could be very conductive of that as I explained in this thread.
The main story is a tad too slow in revealing the villain (even if he looks like he has a TON of potential), and the main supporting characters (the miquote from limsa, the hyur ninja from ul'dah and the silly lady+lalafell from gridania) disappear for an excessively long time between the rank 20 and the rank 46 quest (returning with no reason given at all).

The story itself isn't the problem, as much as the fact that the quests are too far apart, so the slower development is excessively felt. I personally would speed up considerably the progression of the current story quests (distributing them between rank 1 and 35) and add more and more involved chapters between rank 35 and 50. I doubt we'll see an extension of the level cap before the PS3 release anyway.